Reality television, shot on location in UP

The killing of the gangster-duo live on TV must have thrilled ‘new India’, where we love cinema-like instant justice

Thrill is everywhere in new India. There is, for example, that everyday thrill of surviving inflation, of seeing rapists feted and civilians die of heatstroke waiting for politicians, of learning about dissidents languishing in jail or Opposition leaders harassed; of knowing history has evaporated from textbooks and civility from parliament. There are numerous such small mercies. But what the nation saw recently was the “mother of thrills” in our “mother of democracy”: a televised, live, planned shooting of a gangster-duo.

On April 15, when the nation was well into the post prime-time lull, in-custody gangster Atiq Ahmed and his brother, while chatting with a gathering of reporters, were walking handcuffed from a police van toward a facility for a ‘routine’ check-up. They were surrounded by cameras, and hence all this was coming live from Prayagraj -- one of India’s famous centres of law and order, which is as squeaky clean as the mythical confluence nearby. By the way, Atiq and his brother Ashraf were also encircled by a motley group of men in khaki, who belonged to the incorruptible police force of UP. Suddenly, a gun appeared on the television frame to the left of Atiq and bullets started to be pumped into his head. The cameras shook and the images blurred. When things settled, the gangster-duo were seen lying in a pool of blood, having been murdered, live on television.

Also Read | Atiq Ahmed’s killing leaves many unanswered questions

It has been more than a week since that most thrilling night. It is a minor matter that there is no clarity yet on the real reasons behind this gory, UP adaptation of reality TV. There could be any number of reasons for killing Atiq -- gang rivalry, real estate deals gone wrong, political vendetta. But the television audience is not really concerned about police investigation, or the legal course of action, or how to get a hold on UP’s criminal landscape. In fact, only a minority of those who caught it live that night got worried about the state of law in the country, the sheer audacity of a staged encounter, or how legal procedures were being totally abandoned at the altar of gangland strife.

But for the majority, it was a dream come true. A gangster and his brother have been shot and killed live on national television, in front of the police and the national audience! What could be more rewarding! Atiq had 160 cases against him, was a former MP from Samajwadi Party, controlled his crime empire from behind the walls of prison, and was generally a man of heft in UP’s dusty and bloody political badlands. In short, he was in the hall of fame of the ‘most wanted’ types; so the majority saw this as being witness to what real justice in new India should be: instant, spectacular and daring. That night, for example, blood was avenged in blood. Period. This was just like the dear leader’s declaration of demonetisation, which had, in one decisive and real-time spectacle, ended corruption forever. The thrill of that televised broadcast in 2016 had unveiled much of what we call new India, which is ever ready for instant solutions and televised gratification. No wonder, the assailants of Atiq that night also surrendered on television, in an equally charming display of a live spectacle.

In Bengali, there is a popular phrase ‘thik cinemar moto’, or just like in the movies. This indicates anything that resembles, in its unfolding, a cinematic reality. In other words, when things get stretched to assume a shape larger than real, bending laws of social (or physical) nature, they become cinema. In a country like India, the overwhelming ubiquity of popular culture feeds heavily into this desire for existing within a cinematic realism, so to say; and expecting reality to unfold in cinematic space and time.

This can come in several molds, depending on the genre of cinema. In romance, for example, it once meant the liberty to stalk, tease, harass the woman of desire, because that is where romance on screen always seemed to begin. Her lack of consent would be merely a facade, for she would soon relent to the advances of the man she secretly pines for. Or so would attention-seeking masculinity tell itself in the actual world.

In gangster movies, which have a veritable presence in the Indian collective imagination, crime and punishment are always to be found as constituent parts of a visible straight line. The likes of Satya (1998), Ab Tak Chappan (2004) and the two-part Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), among numerous others, have mined the genre to considerable cinematic effect, manufacturing a parallel cinematic ecology of illegality and extra-legality which exists within the political life of a region. If seen closely, they represent an idiomatic world of their own, a cycle of action and effect, of crime and redemption. And most importantly, the factor of time is folded within it. In other words, an act of crime must always find its nemesis from within the arc of that narrative, giving the audience the great pleasure of seeing the closure in a singular, measurable time. Compared to this, ‘real’ justice in the ‘real’ world is so unbearably slow.

For an Indian audience immersed in gangster realism, Atiq’s ‘live murder’ that night represented an actual cinematic action where a case of instant justice unfolded in real-time, making the audience a willing witness to this act. What can be more thrilling than witnessing the bloody closure of a criminal life? If this is not satya, what is?

(The writer is an author and academic)