Farhan Wahab
Gangs of Wasseypur presents itself as the epic of third world politics, it is the story of bastards and fucks who control the entire game played out in the underworld: a dirty game of deceit and disguise. The movie was released in 2012, and it runs around 315 minutes. A long version was released as two parts in the same period.
Aesthetically, the film goes a long way: it can be reviewed in that sense, but I prefer to approach it in its historical and political sense because that is what differentiates Gangs of Wasseypur from cliched gangster movies.
Ultraviolence and bloodbaths are tools to convey that story of betrayal; the story of stealing a nation and exploiting three generations of men. The parody and violence meet at a point to turn that outrage into an absurdity. This can be seen all over the movie, in every frame, all of the characters are plotting against each other. Betrayals become normal gestures; everyone is eating their fellow humans’ flesh and drinking their blood, in that predatory world.
Wasseypur is a town filled with insidious, rotten bastards, plunderers and power hungry dogs. It is a dark jungle where everyone thinks that they are the lion of that corrupted kingdom.
This story begins in the latter part of British reign in India. The hard-earned Independence of India brings the semi-feudal society into one large-scale capitalist scam. Since the coal was the only source of power, the Brits seized the grain fields and started mining the coal.
Literally, they ran the typical imperial slavery in the post Independence period. The coal mines go to the hand of elite cronies which means the old feudal lords. So the local looter began to exploit their workers by controlling the workers’ union. The union becomes the mafia of elite bosses. They run the coal welfare association and the national trade union at the same time. The workers’ union even stands against the legislation of nationalising the mines, and they began extortion in exchange for union membership. Union leaders start lending money and keep the workers’ income with themselves as the interest.
Later on, they get into politics to become ministers. When the government intervenes to organise the mine businesses, these goons who run the show dismantle the policies and wipe out the rules and regulations.
Through its corrupted bureaucracy, the origin of modern India and its politics emerge from that callous circle of plunderers. We can witness the mess created amid every tribe, every sect, leading the powerful and the powerless to create their own imaginary empire. This is what the story Gangs of Wasseypur is built on.
The raging desire for revenge leads the characters to chop each other’s heads off for three generations. Bloodbaths and slaughtering become the usual aspects of their life, in a society which desires to oppress human beings through its power, money and bureaucracy. Gangs of Wasseypur isn’t itself a story of revenge and deception alone. It is the story of politics in every third world country, the ignominious life of people after their independence, a tale of an imbalanced society that is left in the middle of nowhere.
When they were battling to oust their coloniser, they never imagined of being caught up in the hands of local colonisers who treat their people a hundred times worse than the British.
When the movie was released, it was largely seen as a tale of revenge: revenge porn or a gangster flick, because of the bloodshed and its intense violence.
It was celebrated for certain things back then, but in a very straight way that portrays the history of the corporate mafia, and how that had changed the lives of ordinary people, and how those very people became bloodthirsty animals in the end.
Shahid Khan, the father of the protagonist Sardar Khan, was introduced as an ordinary man who does small work to earn his living, but in secret, he robs the state coaches which transports the coal. The most exciting thing about his robberies is that he pretends to be the famous robber of his time the legendary Sultana Dacoit. When the Sultans, the sect identified as Quraisies chase him out from the village for his unethical behaviour.
He had to move from Wasseypur to Dhanbad, where he joins to work at a coal mine which is run by the British through a Hindu manager. After the Independence, the coal mine automatically comes under the hand of the manager Ramadhir Singh- a guy with all the qualities to be a cruel elite villain. (the new government hands over the mines to their industrialist friends).
Shahid becomes his muscle man after killing his predecessor for being the reason for his wife‘s death. Once he muscles up for Ramadhir, he ill-treats his fellow workers. Under Ramadhir‘s command, he sets fire to the workers’ colony to move them out of the area so Ramadhir, so he can expand his property. Violence becomes the inevitable factor of their daily life. Everyone firmly believes their dreams could be achieved only through violence and power.
Through all these outrages, Shahid learns the strong taste of perverted power and greed. So in a chat, with his valet (like his half-brother) he shares his desire to defeat Ramadhir Singh to pursue his position and wealth. Accidentally, Ramadhir stumbled on this conversion and got to know about his underlying notion of defeating his power, so he kills Shahid Khan by cooking up a great conspiracy. After the killing of Shahid, the valet escapes with Shahid’s son to Wasseypur.
Now Sardar Khan’s era begins with his ambition to avenge his father’s death. He becomes the gangster of Wasseypur to take revenge. He builds his own empire to survive in that jungle of carnage and uses every mean to gain the power. He becomes the godfather of Wasseypur bringing every illegal resident under his control and runs a killing mafia to terrorise his opponents and the masses. But Ramadhir manages to wipe out Sardar from this world by allying with Quraisies who were his father‘s enemies. The revenge continues with his sons, and they avenge their father’s killing. The film portrays the story starting from before the independence in 1943 to 2009 in modern India, the killing and hatred go for half a century.
At a point, Sardar Khan’s son Faizal asks Ramadhir Singh why he killed his father and grandfather
He replies: if I hadn’t killed your father, he would have killed me.
Faizal: But you also killed his father.
Ramadhir: True … He wanted to kill me too – that’s how the story has begun.
I had nothing against them, but I killed them so I could live. Tell me – who wants to die needlessly?
I hated every single character in this movie: all of them are power hungry, corrupted, rotten bastards and depraved fuckers.
Indian Bollywood cinema plays a big role in their life: already their lives were antagonised and destroyed by the system. And now the Bollywood’s heroic portrayals begun to fuel their self-centred, narcissistic dreams making them kill their fellow human beings with arrogance.
The movie depicts the lives destroyed by the system with an utmost sense of humour. The vulgar melodramatic songs are being played in their wedding houses even including funeral houses. Tarantino showcases that American society ‘s violence is being fuelled by American pop culture and desire for unlimited material wealth, in his movies. The same theory is what Anurag Kashyap tries to portray in his movie. In a way, Anurag ‘s cinema is the extended version of Tarantino, Indian Bollywoodised lifestyle ruins many young lives. They firmly believe their dreams could be achieved only through violence and power,
This song depicts the sorrowful story of that looting (Sardar’ widow sings)
My darling walks in dark caves …
His life’s dark mine swiftly filling with water ….
Where have you led the poor workers, our leader?
Where have you led the people
Our great leader?
Was this the workers’ movement
Dear leader?
Was this the flame you lit?
People’s leader?
At the rate of coal
Sold at the rate of coal
Every day my dear ….
My darling, my dear …
My Bihar
Mountains of lament burst through
Mountains of sadness….
On another note, this is the contemporary reality of third world corporate plunderers: they loot the minerals of third world countries, and they are aligned with governments.
So the authority orchestrates the scam through their corrupted ministers, and the ministers deal with the Mafias. The mafia douchebags run the show through local gangsters. This vicious circle is thoroughly documented in Gangs of Wasseypur.
The middle class do not encounter the real flavour of the crux of the sociological and political problems third world in their routine life.
A murder, a rape or a robbery are merely paper news for them. The real partners of this mess are the lower bottom level marginalised people and ruling elites. Gangsterism has always been nurtured by the ruling class to deal with matters that concern the powerhouse elite. So this systemic violence is mostly perpetrated through a class of people, so they keep others at a lower point of society and feed them gangster dreams. This picture can be seen in every metropolitan city in the third world. Gangs of Wasseypur is portraying that very tale, and at the end of the day, they would lynch each other within themselves to remain as watchdogs of the ruling class.
The final killing of Don Faizal is the topmost betrayal of that carnage: To carry a plot like that, you need motivation that goes beyond the lure of gain. You need a raging desire to humiliate, to utterly destroy and bring down a family, an empire. Money alone cannot be the driving force; this was the vengeance, hatred and desperation of being victimised. At this point, Gangs of Wasseypur presents itself as the epic of third world politics.
