The Case of the Missing Masses: The Emergency Period in Two Malayalam Films

Abstract

The south Indian state of Kerala has the odd history of being the region which saw massive support for the Congress Party led by Indira Gandhi in the election after the lifting of the Emergency, winning 111 out of 140 seats in the state legislative elections, and all the 20 seats in the Parliamentary election which otherwise saw, in the rest of India, a stupendous defeat with even Indira Gandhi losing her seat. This election result is often translated as the support Indira Gandhi enjoyed in Kerala despite the condemned Emergency (1975-77).

The representation of Emergency in Kerala is entangled with the issue of Naxalism, which became source of nostalgia in later years Malayalam films in various guises. This paper will look at two Malayalam films from the 1980s, a period closer to the actual events—Ithiri Poove Chuvanna Poove [Little Red Flower] (1983) and Aranyakam [The Woods](1986), both of which refer to the Naxalite movement and indirectly to the period of the Emergency. These films are important because they represent a sympathetic commonsensical approach to the Naxal issue and the Emergency period which was purportedly made necessary by the coming together of extremist forces of which the former represented one element—that of treating the Naxalites as idealist heroes who were nevertheless deviant.

Such a commonsense is reflected and produced in these films through the crucial absence of masses in these films. The ‘revolutionary’ figure is dominated by the themes of interiority, and societal concern is just a passing reference in representation which otherwise forebodes with the affective strokes of alienation. A close look at these two films reveal the chequered reaction that Malayalam cultural sphere adopts towards the period of Emergency, embroiled as it was in contradicting discourses with valence in Kerala such as dictatorship, socialism, democracy etc. that were marshalled in instances like nationalization of banks, the abolishing of privy purse, etc., and caught between various interested factions such as the various factions of Congress, mainstream communist parties, community and religious organisations, each of which also had to contend with emergent ideas and organisations built around such ideas.