Review of the movie The Sabarmati Report
A few weeks ago, when Vikrant Massey was giving interviews for the upcoming movie The Sabarmati Report, someone on Twitter cautioned that take the concept of the movie with a pinch of salt. Most probably they will show a good Muslim coming to everybody’s rescue and the movie in the end concluding that there are good and bad people in all the communities.
Exactly this happens in the movie. Anyway,
On 27 February 2002, a Muslim mob set fire to 2 bogeys of the Sabarmati Express near the Godhra railway station in Gujarat. 59 Hindu pilgrims were burnt to death. They were returning from Ayodhya after performing rituals and karseva.
In the wake of this ghastly incident, the infamous Gujarat 2002 riots happened during which around 700 Muslims and 250 Hindus died.
The leftist and Muslim activists call it an anti-Muslim pogrom, but it was not a pogrom. It was a riot between two communities and just like any other riot, people from both the communities died. The pogrom happened in 1984 when only Sikhs died and not a single Hindu was killed.
But the movie The Sabarmati Report is not about the Gujarat 2002 riots. It is about the burning of the bogeys of the train and the 59 victims, mostly women and children.
Because so much attention was focused on the riots and Modi, people paid little attention to the victims of the Sabarmati Express fire. The only reason why they talked about the fire was to say that the burning of the train was used to instigate Hindus against Muslims when they paraded the dead bodies on the streets.
The investigations were half-hearted and politically biased. A major fact-finding team headed by Lalu stupidly claimed the fire began because people were cooking inside the train bogey. Others suggested it was someone from inside who set the bogeys on fire. The Nanavati Commission, which seems to be the basis for the movie, reported that the burning of the Sabarmati Express coaches wasn’t an accident. It was a planned crime.
The movie begins with the protagonist, a Hindi medium journalist, being questioned in a court. He is being accused of raking up an old issue and trying to provoke Hindus and Muslims. The protagonist, Samar Kumar, played by Vikrant Massey, then begins to tell the story and the flashback begins.
In 2002, Samar Kumar works as a Hindi reporter covering films when he is suddenly assigned to a senior “English-speaking” journalist, Manika Rajpurohit (played by Ridhi Dogra), to cover a big accident in Gujarat. Nobody respects him — even his English-speaking girlfriend is embarrassed of him — because he is a Hindi-speaking journalist.
The big accident is the burning of the Sabarmati Express train. There, along with the senior reporter, he realises that it was not an accident. It was an attack. There are stones and bricks everywhere. The bogeys of the train didn’t catch fire. They were set on fire.
They show some politicians scheming. Suddenly, Manika Rajpurohit changes the entire narrative and reports that it was an accident, and it happened due to the mismanagement of the administration. The news channel, along with its political masters, intends to take political advantage. It is clear that the news channel is NDTV and the senior person at the channel headquarter behaves like Prannoy Roy. It is well-known that the channel completely twisted the narrative and ran years-long campaign to malign Narendra Modi and his government.
Samar makes another video, the video that represent the truth, and then presents the video at the news channel office. He is unceremoniously kicked out.
His girlfriend dumps him. Nobody hires him. He becomes a drunkard. He occasionally earns money working as a voice artist.
Another journalist, Amrita Gill (played by Raashii Khanna) joins the channel as a newbie journalist who looks up to Amit Rajpurohit. This is 5 years after Samar was discredited and kicked out.
The events take a different turn and now Amrita is assigned to create another report on the “accident” and she comes across the tape made by Samar. She contacts him and persuades him to go to Gujarat with her to find exactly what happened.
After this, the entire plot turns childish. Although the protagonist, Samar repeatedly says that the truth about the victims must come out, no victims are particularly shown in the movie or during the investigations. They don’t visit even a single family of the victim.
On the other hand, they visit multiple Muslim families to verify the various versions of the story. From “telling the story of the victims” they digress into finding the real culprits and debunking the accident story. In itself this is not problematic, but when you’re constantly talking about highlighting the stories of the victims, that should have been the main focus of the movie.
There is no clear ideological stand which the audience often looks for. For example, there is a scene when, in order to find the Muslim girl who claims that she was about to be abducted by one of the travelers in the train and that’s why a big fight broke out, they go to a Muslim area. A World Cup cricket match between India and Pakistan is going on. Amrita is surprised that a group of people sitting in front of the TV celebrate when they think Pakistan is winning. Samar says that this is normal in such localities. Which it is, and everybody knows.
They are pretending to be from an NGO. When they’re interviewing the girl, suddenly the mother of the girl realises that they’re not from an NGO and she starts screaming at them. They run for their lives because men chase them. During the chase, suddenly there are fireworks in the sky and Muslim children are running here and there bursting crackers. “Oh, India has lost,” Samar laments. But then he suddenly realises India has won and the Muslim neighborhood is celebrating India’s win. The whole sequence seems unnecessary and forced.
Then there is a “good” Muslim lawyer — it is unclear whether she is working for the victims or the people of her community who have been falsely accused of certain crimes. She seems to be championing some cause. But she’s the one who ultimately leads them to the right people. She carries the central point of the movie — every community has good and bad people.
Have you ever noticed, in Hindi movies, the Muslim characters who come to the rescue of the main, Hindu characters, are quite visible about their presentation.
If it’s a woman, she prominently wears a hijab so that it is crystal clear there is no confusion about her identity. If it’s a man, he wears a white cap, or prays multiple times, or has a beard that immediately highlights his identity. It has become too predictable and hackneyed now.
On the other hand, there is no clear identity of Hindu characters. They wear normal clothes with normal hairstyles and no visible religious affiliation.
This statement has got nothing to do with the movie, but if you pay close attention, you will find this common trait in almost every such movie.
So, different turns of events lead them to the main culprit. It’s not sure why the train was set on fire but at least they have shown that the petrol was prearranged one day prior to the incident. It can be inferred that the train was attacked because pilgrims were coming from Ayodhya, but it is open to interpretation, nobody says anything.
The subject is good. It is heartening that after more than 12 years, the plight of the victims is being talked about in a mainstream movie.
The production quality is childish. The dialogues are as if they have been written by a teenager. The acting is so-so. You can make out that it is a Balaji Production movie.
Nonetheless, you should watch this movie. If nothing else, then just for the names of the victims that are displayed in the end.
