The Aesthetic of Revolution in Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi

mad desire in university, village, capital

I have referred, previously on this blog, to the transformative impact my Class 11 political science teacher had on me. A particular memory from that time that remains with me is her recommending the 2003 film Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi in relation to capitalism, Marx, and revolution. She would often refer to the last dialogue of the film, said by the lead character Siddharth after being left disillusioned by the Revolution and moving to London to study medicine: “It will perhaps be easier to understand the complexities of the human body.” Due to the glamour of Netflix, I never actually got to watching the film all these past years. Recently, we were asked to write a blogpost for a class I am taking on capital. I leapt at this opportunity to finally watch the film and write my reflections. Here’s my take on Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi - dedicated to my teacher.

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Baawra mann/Dekhne/Chala ek sapna

Baawre se mann ki dekho/Baawri hain baatein

Baawri se dhadkanein hain/Baawri hain saansein

Baawra mann/Dekhne/Chala ek sapna

(Baawra Mann, Swanand Kirkire, Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi, 2003)

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This mad heart embarks on a journey

To dream

Behold this mad heart’s

Mad suggestions

Its mad heartbeat

Its mad breath

This mad heart proceeds to dream.

(My Translation)

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Thus ends Sudhir Mishra’s pathbreaking film Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi (These Thousand Desires; 2003). Geeta, the film’s lead character, sits on a rock in a faraway Indian village. The love of her life, Siddharth has left for London, disillusioned by the revolution. Her friend Vikram, paralysed after a brutal police attack, sits by her side. She stares into oblivion. Swanand Kirkire sings the melancholic Baawra Mann in the background. I ask myself: is this a story of defeat? Or of life’s madness? I will return to this question towards the end.

Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi unravels itself as a commentary on the aesthetic of revolution. What does revolution feel like? How do people experience it? Or better: how does revolution insert itself into the lives of its actors? The film, set in the 1970s India of the Naxalite movement and the Emergency, tells the story of three college students – Siddharth, Geeta, and Vikram. Siddharth joins the Naxal movement. Geeta, in love with him, follows. Vikram makes his way up the business ladder. The three friends inhabit different physical, social, economic, emotional locations through the film. Yet, the revolution touches all of them. Bhojpur and Delhi are not too far. Delhi University and the Naxal camp come in conversation with each other. Desires are ignited and extinguished. Madness gets enacted everywhere – the university, the village, and the national capital.

University/Theory

The film begins in Delhi University. Siddharth and his friends are Marxist revolutionaries. They speak in English. They talk theory. They listen to rock music. They consume drugs. And they desire to change the world. Ha. Pretentious. What can 20 year-olds in a fancy university situated in the national capital possibly understand about injustice and revolution? All high theory.

What do we make of this disdain for the university revolutionary? I am remined of a conversation with an old friend who’s now in medical school. I was telling him how an alum from NLS had gone on to get a doctorate in anthropology from the US and was back at NLS as a professor. His response, etched in my memory, “That just shows a failure of your university.” I was rendered speechless. But he was right. Our imagination of the university today, especially of the engineering/medical/law school variety, is a site of factory production of trained professionals – doctors, engineers, lawyers. Forget becoming a revolutionary, the very idea of a to-be lawyer becoming a social scientist evokes great discomfort. There is no place for desire, let alone desire for revolutionary change, outside the logics of the factory production system that is the contemporary university.

Has this always been the case? The film tells us otherwise. It tells us a story of these young college students who give up lucrative careers to join the Naxalite movement. Faculty at NLS tell us stories of students going to join the Narmada Bachao Andolan. This is a story of thousands of young people of an older generation, harbouring a courage that our systems of security today do not allow us to fathom. Regardless, I would argue that even if students do not travel to a far-away place to foment revolution, the university retains the potential to cradle a new generation of mad dreamers who can dare to desire otherwise.

I am often told by my family that “my theory is very different from their reality.” I refuse to believe that. Theory is not useless; or rather, it is useful precisely because it is useless. “To change the world” is radically different from “To reform a society.” One can reform a social practice as a civil servant, but one cannot dream to change the world. Only the luxury of not having to translate thought into action allows for the birth of revolutionary desire. Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi is not an argument against high theory. To the contrary, it brings together the university and the village – theory and practice – in ways that are at once revolutionary and tragic.

Continue Reading on Fruits of Our Labour by the Capital and the Making of Modern Life Elective Class. Also check out the other posts!

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