Revenge cinema

The fortunes of Azamgarh, whose current capital consists mainly of notoriety, may be  looking up. In January, Mulayam Singh Yadav thanked its voters with a Rs 5,700 crore development package. And now, reportedly with the backing of Azamgarh boy Amar Singh, a new film director, whose passport application was held up for two years allegedly because of his roots in Azamgarh, is determined to correct mass misconceptions about the district. How dreadfully brutalised does a reputation have to be before someone is driven to retaliate with a full-length feature film?

Azamgarh earned its notoriety in the Eighties and Nineties, when the chronically poor and underdeveloped district supplied cannon fodder for Mumbai’s gang wars. In the last decade, it was perceived to have become a recruitment centre for terrorist organisations, and this unpleasant history swamped all competing accounts. True, Abu Salem is from the district and Haji Mastan and Dawood Ibrahim have family connections there. But Azamgarh was also home to the leftist poet, lyricist and theatre activist, Kaifi Azmi, and to the polyglot author, Rahul Sankrityayan — what was he, Buddhist or Marxist, and did he perceive a contradiction? The bilingual writer Shamsur Rahman Faruqi spent his early years here.
From Azamgarh, Pakistani cinema pioneer Syed Shaukat Hussain Rizvi began his professional journey to Lahore via Kolkata. His legacy included Pran, most beloved of villains, whom he launched in the lead of Khandan, 1942.

So now, when Yogi Adityanath threatens to purge Azamgarh of its current villains, there may indeed be provocation for revenge cinema. It may not be a national hit, but it should be well received in India’s many Azamgarhs, whose people have been demonised en masse for political capital.