When photographs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his senior Cabinet ministers intently watching a special screening of the Hindi film, “The Sabarmati Report,” hit social media site X recently, it was soon juxtaposed with images of Adolf Hitler watching propaganda film screenings in Nazi Germany.
The resemblance was uncanny.
It raised comments on social media about regimes using propaganda films to burnish their image.
“The Sabarmati Report” is pegged on the politically explosive and controversial incident on February 27, 2002, when train coach S6 of the Sabarmati Express caught fire in Godhra town in Gujarat. Fifty-nine Hindu pilgrims — they were karsevaks (volunteers) returning from Ayodhya, after a religious ceremony — died in the fire. It had been a decade since the Babri Masjid was pulled down in Ayodhya in 1992.
The incident at Godhra spiraled into deadly communal clashes under the watch of Modi, who was then chief minister of Gujarat state. The majority of those killed in the violence were minority Muslims.
While Hindutva proponents believe that the fire on the Sabarmati Express was a deliberate conspiracy carried out by Muslims, sections of the media and independent investigators of that time asserted that it was an accident. Two commissions that investigated the incident, the Nanavati Commission and the Banerjee Commission, differed in their conclusions. While the former stated it was a deliberate act, the latter maintained it was accidental.
The film, “The Sabarmati Report” claims to reveal the “true” story of the infamous Gujarat violence. It is the latest in a series of films that are unabashed propaganda vehicles for Modi’s Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.
One of the major projects on the agenda of the BJP since it came to power nationally in 2014 has been rewriting and retelling history and events to best serve their majoritarian Hindutva agenda. The event that Modi and the BJP have wanted to portray in a favorable light the most was the 2002 Gujarat violence. Modi has been keen to rewrite its history.
For over two decades, the BJP and affiliated organizations of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) have maintained that the “truth” of Godhra was erased by vested interests. Therefore, the necessity to depict, in their view the “true” story that the Godhra train fire was an act of sabotage, a pre-planned conspiracy by Muslims. “The Sabarmati Report” retells the story of the Godhra and Gujarat violence with this framing in mind.
Indian news media, especially the NDTV news channel of that era, worked to report the truth from the ground. A truth which was at odds with what Hindutva supporters would have liked to reveal. The film’s main protagonist is a journalist who is victimized for wanting to expose the cover-up.
“The Sabarmati Report” was released in movie theaters on November 15, amid the assembly elections in Maharashtra. Within days of its release, Modi endorsed the film. Interestingly, the prime minister posted his endorsement of the film on November 17 although it was only on December 2 that he watched it.
Reacting to an audience review, Modi extolled “The Sabarmati Report” as “truth.” “Facts are coming out,” he claimed, adding that “a fake narrative can persist for only a limited period of time.”
It is significant that Modi endorsed the film with much fanfare.
Despite the courts not indicting him in the 2002 riots, Modi was well aware that a certain section of the Indian population doubted his government’s version of the Godhra incident. So even after 22 years, Modi felt the need to “correct” the narrative by publicizing his endorsement of the film.
Incidentally, in 2023, the Modi government went to great lengths to prevent the public from viewing the BBC documentary “India: the Modi Question,” which was critical of his role in the Gujarat riots. It banned the documentary in India.
Several overtly propaganda films like “The Kashmir Files,” “Bastar: The Naxal Story” and “The Kerala Story” have been released in recent years. These films claim to reveal the truth about the past and have mainly portrayed Congress governments then in power as traitors and anti-nationals. Through the extreme vilification of the Congress party, the BJP’s principal rival today, the BJP hopes to make it difficult for the Congress to be seen by the masses as a possible alternative to the BJP.
In an article on the film, “The Kerala Story,” I wrote about the BJP’s use of false communal narratives, such as its claim that 32,000 Hindu women in Kerala were converted to Islam and recruited into the Islamic State, to polarize voters and further its divisive agenda. Similarly, through “The Kashmir Story,” the BJP sought to stoke Islamophobia by portraying the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Kashmir valley as a “genocide.”
Propaganda films are intended to influence the masses with their simplistic narratives shorn of any complexity, with victimized heroes finally being avenged, their stance vindicated.
Interestingly, most of these propaganda films have English titles to ensure they are taken note of by English-speaking liberals, who have mostly discredited Hindutva politics.
Making propaganda films has benefited filmmakers. The latter have been quick to cash in on the propagandist bandwagon.
Interestingly, two films on the Godhra incident were released over a span of 100 days. The first, “Accident or Conspiracy: Godhra” sank without a trace. The other, “The Sabarmati Report” was made tax-free in several BJP states to draw audiences. But it was a commercial flop. Had Modi not endorsed the film, it would not have garnered much attention. Most film critics also panned the film.
Modi has long-used film stars to project his rule favorably and actors have complied. Superstar Amitabh Bachchan was a mascot for Gujarat after the 2002 riots.
Over the past decade, the Modi government has co-opted the Hindi film industry, popularly known as Bollywood, more systematically. Film stars servilely crave an audience with Modi. Several Bollywood A-listers were present at the recent swearing-in ceremony of the BJP government in Maharashtra.
Those who have refused to toe the line of the current regime, have borne the consequences. Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan was in jail for close to a month on drug possession charges, which were subsequently dropped. Cinema and OTT film content, critical of the current regime have routinely been subjected to harassment. Right wing groups call for boycotting the films and filmmakers have been threatened with arrest.
Given how important it is for autocratic regimes to improve their image and establish the legitimacy of their reign, propaganda films are unlikely to cease in the Modi era.
As film scholar and (retired) professor of film studies at JNU Ira Bhaskar told Al Jazeera, the trend of propaganda films “is no longer episodic” and timed to elections only. According to Bhaskar this trend “will only grow with big budget and big banner” propaganda films being made increasingly now.