I did not study literature at St Xavier's College, but such was poet and professor Eunice de Souza's aura, that I had smuggled myself into a few of her lectures, and was dazzled. I had always been an ardent admirer, from afar
Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in his film, MSG: The Messenger of God
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Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the Dera Sacha Sauda chief, is given to awarding himself titles like moongphalis. Not to be out-Sri Sri'd, he calls himself 'Saint Dr Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insan'. But that didn't save him from being sentenced to 20 years in jail and being fined R30 lakh for raping two of his sadhvis. His devotees, called “premis”, went on a rampage to protest his conviction, leaving 38 dead and 250 injured. The army was called in and internet services suspended in Punjab and Haryana. A powerful vote bank, the Dera is popular among the marginalised, especially Dalits.
Mr Singh has made five PR films on himself, masquerading as feature films: MSG-the Messenger, MSG-2 The Messenger, MSG The Warrior Lion Heart, Hind Ka Napak Ko Jawab: MSG Lion Heart 2, and Jattu Engineer. In his films, he plays a multi-purpose saviour, rock star, lover boy and warrior. He impresses a tarty apsara Punjabi-trucker style, by lifting a truck tyre over his head; he fights aliens in flying saucers with disco lights; and, he sails through parted seas on a white horse. His Love Charger song goes, “Billions battery when goes down/ You charged up with love/ So strong your power love/You are The Love Charger.”
Unable to trust anyone else to do his hagiography, he cheerfully does it himself. MSG The Warrior Lion Heart, for instance, is a cellotaped series of random acid-trip scenes designed to make him look heroic. Embarrassingly, he takes full credit for it, all 30 of them, including director, actor, screenplay, singer, SFX etc. Earlier, he was a tagda Punjabi hunk with hairy shoulders and a pot belly; in his recent video avatars, he is waxed and Himesh Reshammiya-ish in shades.
His films made me reflect on other films on gods, godmen, messengers of god and prophets. Majid Majidi's Muhammad: Messenger of God is an elegant, evocative account of the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Stunningly shot by Vittorio Storaro, its stateliness keeps our emotions in check. A number of films have been made on Jesus Christ, of course. These include Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ, which critics complained was more about macho-masochism than Jesus' message of love and peace. In Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, Jesus seems to experience guilt, sorrow and even longing as he watches a fiery, tattooed Mary Magdalene engage in prostitution. And in Jean-Luc Godard's Hail Mary, the Virgin Mary is the daughter of a gas station owner.
More telling is Chilean director Pablo Larrain's Silver Bear winner, The Club, about a group of scandal-tainted priests who have been cast out by the church for paedophilia and kidnapping the babies of unwed mothers (based on real-life incidents in Chile in 2014). There's also Tom McCarthy's Spotlight, in which The Boston Globe's reporters do a Pulitzer Prize-winning expose of paedophilia by the Catholic Church, that triggered scores of class action suits. Rajkumar Hirani's PK is a wonderful, courageous expose of fraudulent babas, with which India is teeming; no wonder those aligned with frauds were so anxious to ban it. Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh's life is an explosive story waiting to be made into a film. If the filmmaker can survive his short-fused premis, that is.
Meenakshi Shedde is South Asia Consultant to the Berlin Film Festival, award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist. Reach her at meenakshishedde@gmail.com
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