Tandav: ‘House of Cards’ Rip-off is an anthem of BJP and Right’s Loserdom, and Trailer of Upcoming Left Strategy
By: Mrinaal Prem Swarroop Srivastava
Tags: Hinduism, Bjp, Hindutva, Muslims, Media

I don’t know how to sugar-coat this, so as to make this palatable for the Bhajan Mandali of BJP, PM Modi, and peddlers of “Right is Resurgent” narrative peddlers, so I’m just going to say it plain, out loud-Tandav is certainly a propagandist art hit-job, but mostly against BJP, not the Hindus or Dharma itself. For a change, the target of demonization in the Amazon Prime web drama is the political right-wing and not the people they claim to represent- the ordinary, practicing Hindu, his belief systems and customs and traditions, her rituals and fasts have all been miraculously spared the attack this time.

And this should be an alarm bell for the BJP and RSS ecosystem because it shows how the Left has its ear to the ground, is responsive to the ground sentiment of the majority of this country. It is also a warning about how if BJP (and specifically PM Modi) doesn’t clean up their act of snubbing the core electorate, they are in for a rude, 2004-sque shocker in 2024.

Usual tropes, but sans the usual viciousness

It’s not like that the Bollywood (of which the web series business is just an extension) has suddenly decided to take a complete U-turn, and become mouthpieces of Hindutva. The usual, sociologically anti-Hindu cliché- all Brahmin/Savarna men are closet casteist bigots (whereas Muslims are perpetually-victimized embodiments of virtue- is still there, but only as a token. There is no elaborate, subtextual demonization of Hindu gods and goddesses (or an attempt to change their fundamental nature), no ‘perpetual reform’ disrespect is shown to any festival or ritual, no excessive demonization of any community or group, there is no gaslighting of any popular grouses like 2002 Godhra train burning, Kashmiri Pandits’ genocide of the 1980s-1990s, or anything of the sort.

The target of demonization and propaganda was BJP, and the focus of narrative guns has remained fixed more-or-less there. They have been shown ambitious, two-faced hypocrites, and full of cynicism, whereas the Leftist student movement opposing them (curiously, the legislative is completely missing from the series’ canvas, very much like the real world) are shown to be honest, idealist ‘fools’ whose biggest mistakes would also invoke a reaction of only further endearment, not hatred.

Farmers, JNU, Arnab Goswami

It has to be handed to the Left that no matter whether their narrative hits the intended bull’s eye or not, the right has eons to learn from them in terms of contextualizing and contemporary-zing the messaging via the fictional medium. This series makes use of every pop-culture political trope it could fit in- there is an ongoing farmers’ protest, there is a young and good-looking corporate media crony of the protagonist/antagonist (beauty in the eyes of the beholder, and all that) Saif Ali Khan, the veteran leader invokes his Emergency jail stint credentials when his integrity is under fire, the premier university is facing unrest due to fees hike, and even a Leftist student goes missing from there (hello, Najeeb).

Sparing the Hindutva and Dharma (and even attempting to re-contextualize them)

While the series has been unforgivingly, unsparingly ill-intentioned in its attacks on BJP’s fictional counterpart, curiously that’s all the attacks have been about, in this round- the BJP. The political party, and its leaders.

The larger Hindu Dharma has been mercifully left alone, for the most part. In fact, at a critical juncture in the series, the ‘hero’ Shiva Shekhar (Zeeshan Ayyub) even draws from his name ‘Shiva’, equating himself with the Mahadev’s simple nature. He even names his party ‘Tandav’ after Shankar’s world-ending cosmic dance.

Even the major sub-plot (see below for details), of a power struggle between an heir apparent and his step-mother (and her ambitions being egged by blind love of her own son), is a darker, cynical call-back of Ramayana. Saif is the villainous, shadow-Rama, complete with a wife constantly accompanying him in his political mechanizations, and a loyal brother-cum-operative (hello, Lakshman Ji and Hanuman Ji).

The only blatantly anti-Hindu picturization in the series is Guru-bashing- Saif’s psychopathic enforcer is a devout bhakta of a TV Guru who looks like a cross between Osho, Sadhguru, and Sri Sri Ravishankar. The enforcer is also seen to be using his Hindu belief system, and the pariharam of feeding the pet cat as his ‘evening out’ of karma of murder.

The Demonization of Right-Wing Leaders

The entire series can be summed up as evil, murderous, treacherous right-wing leaders vs. paragons of virtue, even if a little stupid and hot-headed (or even morally compromised), left-wing student leaders, who are only trying to do the right thing- even if it means doing legally black and ethically grey things.

The right-wing ringleader Samar (Saif) poisons and murders his casteist, three-terms PM father Devaki Nandan (Tigmanshu Dhulia), but is prevented from ascending to the premiership by his father’s concubine/keep, ‘senior’ party worker Anuradha (Dimple Kapadia), and the entire series is all about Samar trying to outfox Anuradha and get the PM’s chair back for himself. He is aided by his dark, mysterious enforcer Gurpal (Sunil Grover) who has no qualms in anything- from ordering murders, to doing them himself. He is a vegetarian (remember Hitler, the right-wing nutter who killed close to 12 million people but didn’t eat meat for the love of animals?)

Holy cows remain so

Another aspect pf core Left that remains intact in the series is the ‘Holy Cow’ status of women and Muslims- they are shown to be completely blameless victims, full of moral aplomb about how they’re right, and the ‘right’ (pun actually not intended) wrong. Interestingly, even among these two groups, a hierarchy of preferences does exist- the Muslim male character is marble-white, who does no wrong; a Muslim woman is off-white who acts immorally only under duress or is framed by evil Hindu policemen, and Hindu; Savarna women are shades of grey, in that while victimized by bad, Hindu Savarna men, they become as dirty as their victimizers and start oppressing other victim groups, mainly the Muslim men and the poor farmers.

The Muslim man picked up by the evil, upper-caste policemen is so altruistic that he ends up voting for his rival, former best friend Hindu in the college elections. The Muslim woman, despite sleeping voluntarily with her Hindu, upper-caste professor, is still a victim. She is alternatively threatened and manipulated by him (but not when breaks up with him, but goes back to sleep with him out of her volition, so that she can make him vulnerable by making him orgasm, make him drop his guard, and then ‘hesitantly’ ask him for ₹10 lakhs.)

The upper-caste Hindu women, markedly, lie in the grey territory- while they’re poor victims of patriarchy., marriage and norms, etc., they’re also ‘strong women’ who can play as dirty as the evil Hindu men when it comes to it. Sandhya Mridul’s character insulting her (soon to be ex-) husband by telling him how her lover is strong, manly enough to ‘control’ her is not bad, but her husband (Dino Morea) pleading to her to give the relationship one more chance is the epitome of evil. Dimple Kapadia’s Anuradha is absolved of any personal responsibility of her actions even further- she is ‘forced’ into letting her beau Devki Nandan be murdered because it’s justified for a woman to make her ladder to power out of backstabbing men, but she is merely being pragmatic and ambitious in trading PM position with his murderer in exchange for not spilling beans on him.

But these are all classical cinematic stereotypes in Hindi film industry- nothing new in that. What’s new, and refreshing, is that to compensate for the moral vacuum, Hindus as a category are not scapegoated, by and large. Outside of the evil, right-wing party, Hindus are not particularly evil and religious- which was the standard norm of Bollywood for decades, pious Hindus being unwaveringly evil, be it the moneylender, priest, landlord, or a simple, otherwise persona non grata full of anti-Muslim, casteist prejudices.

But why?

This transformation does beg an investigation into its causes. It’s obviously not for nothing. Perhaps, the exceedingly negative reactions of a large and vocal section of Hindus, against some of the online releases like Sacred Games 2, Sadak 2, Aashram, etc., or even Mirzapur 2 (although the grouse against him had more to do with Ali Fazal’s support to anti-CAA rioting than to the series’ content specifically) have drilled into the makers that the Hindus will not take any more insults and biased portrayal of them lying down. Simultaneously, the good box office ROI (return on investment) of pro-Hindu films, like Kesari, Tanhaji, etc. may have also convinced the makers of financial virtue of at least not being overtly anti-Hindu.

However, what might have turned the cultural Marxists away from extremely anti-Hindu positions could not be financial considerations alone. It has to be, at least in part, rooted in the fact that the contemporary Hindu has at least started to speak for itself, speak its mind, vocalize his anger- although they still, at the end of the day, remain fixated on electoral gains to BJP as a unicorn-ish panacea to their woes. In the last year, after the death/murder of Sushant Singh Rajput, the Bollywood elite have been under attack and pushback by the common persons hitherto unheard of. While a couple of outlier film stars like Kangana, Ranveer Shourie, etc. have definitely tried to capitalize on these emotions, lead them, and give them the shape and direction they desired, but it’s really unclear as to how far did they succeed. It would be safer to assume that the ownership of Hindu anger remains with the common Hindus, which seems to have prompted this volte-face.

The creative and thought leadership of the Left might also have been promoted into extending this olive branch to Hindus by that BJP has massively failed them. Despite the official rendering of it ineffective, articles 370 and 35A are still operational, in that Hindus still have to pay for the domicile status of Kashmir with their lives; instead of freeing temples, BJP has gone on to engulf them; it is seen to be in cahoots with Jagan Reddy administration which is bringing back Mughal- and Teepu-era temple vandalism; PM Modi is today presiding over an era that is described as the worst for Hindus after the times of Aurangzeb.

House of Cards Rip-off

The similarities with House of Cards are far too many to be a mere coincidence. The usurper, on the verge of taking control of the country in his own hands, as PM, throws it away to a pawn because he’s started to enjoy the backseat chase and control game. He is aided by an ambitious wife who prefers to remain in even darker shadows and a trusted aide who can be relied on for all the dirty work in the world. The protagonist/antagonist puts hooks on his own party members, with the opposition reduced to such insignificance in the elections that they don’t deserve even a representation on the cinematic backdrop. An idealist, dreamer girl, who falls prey to the mechanizations of this vile politician, forced to do his dirty work and ends up losing her life to his games (although Kritika Kamra’s Sana Mir can’t be definitely ticked off as dead, Bollywood knows how to improvise).

Last wake-up call to BJP

The series is the final warning for BJP, that while it may continue winning elections for some more time, owing now more to the oppositions’ ineptitude than any particularly heroic acts of the centre. But politics is downstream from culture, and the Left knows it from decades before Andrew Breitbart articulated it for the Right. Left is acting upon the knowledge, ceasing its firefight with the ordinary Hindus perhaps because it now sees Modi-Shah’s election machinery as a bigger threat to its existence than the idolator heathens. And it’s not very clear if Hindus would continue to have any reason to stick with the BJP, if it continues on the path of weakening Dharma and Hindutva.

The Left has made its first move, and the ball is now in BJP’s court for taking a call on whether it wants to continue taking Hindus for granted as a captive vote-bank with nowhere else to turn, or does it want to avoid repeating the same mistake it did with Shiv Sena.