Revisiting Prakash Jha’s ‘Raajneeti’ As It Clocks 15 Years

Raajneeti has more characters lunging for the ballot box than the popcorn-nibbling audience can keep track of. A taut, clenched drama of devastating nemesis, “Raajneeti” moves across its epic-inspired canvas with vigour and velocity that sweep audiences off their collective feet. The way Jha captures the parched, dusty, bustling energy of political rallies is impressive. This is no amateurish attempt to yoke the Mahabharata with Indian politics.

The truth-defining moments in Raajneeti are truly shattering. The lies that co-writers Anjum Rajabali and Jha’s characters live have ricocheting ramifications.

Jha delves deep into the characters’ conscience to emerge with penetrating insight into the corroded heart of the Indian body politic. But his storytelling never touches those nerve-ends in his narration where his characters would have actually expressed what they feel. A sequence like the one where the mother figure (Nikhila Tirkha) meets her illegitimate son (Ajay Devgn) for the first time is more interesting for its dramatic possibilities than their actual realisation.

The crisscross of relationships is an intricate tapestry of trust, betrayal, murder and atonement. But no character is allowed ample space to express his or her innermost desires and ambitions.
Katrina’s character, for example, is so underdeveloped that we never know what she really wants to get out of her space in life. The brutality with which she is shoved by the male characters—from rebuffed love to a marriage of political convenience to a widowed political career—is a plot of immense dramatic potential, alas sketchily realized.

We see Jha’s gallery of dynastic politicians in all their ruthless glory. But we never get close enough to them to connect with their lust, greed, pain, anger and hunger. The squalor and ugliness of Indian politics are put on screen with cutting immediacy. There are interesting side characters, like the ambitious female politician from Sitapur (Shruti Seth) who uses sex for barter, and women newscasters, rallyists and petty politicians played by actors who seem to know the world they are meant to occupy from the fringes.
The trouble with the over-laden plot is that all the major characters clamour to be individualistic. They are unique in their portrayal of political clichés.

What really elevates “Raajneeti” to the level of a powerful political parable of our times are the performances. Nana Patekar, Manoj Bajpai, Arjun Rampal and Ajay Devgn get a firm grip over their characters and carry their tumultuous karma to a logical culmination.
Katrina comes into her own in the last 15 minutes. She looks vulnerable and resplendent as a girl forced to put power over her heart. As for Ranbir, he is actually the backbone of “Raajneeti”. He brings a reined-in, steel-edged ruthlessness to his character. For sure there is no other actor from his generation who could have played this character.

The pair’s goodbye sequence at the end is so deftly handled, that you wish there were more moments between the two.

“Raajneeti” is not just a film that opens up the tattered edges of Indian politics. It dares to walk right into the muck with restraint, vigour and some sensitivity. The film has some outstanding cinematography by Sachin Kumar Krishnan. The camera seems to be looking into places in the characters’ psyche that perhaps even the screenplay isn’t aware of.

In Prakash Jha’s sweeping, damning and definitive look at Indian politics and its power-hungry players, Sarah Thompson is Ranbir Kapoor’s Irish-American girlfriend who suddenly finds herself thrown into the vortex of murky Indian politics.

Jha, known earlier for his powerful Devgn-helmed Bihar-centric political thrillers “Apaharan” and “Gangaajal,” this time explores the Mahabharata for a look at the way politics in our country governs almost every aspect of existence. Thompson’s shocked realization of the immoralities of Indian politics cuts across the audiences’ perception of the world bathed in blood and corruption.
And now, Prakash Jha is all set to make a sequel to Raajneeti. Confirming this, Jha says, “The script is finally ready. And the time is ripe for the sequel to Raajneeti. There is so much more story to tell than what we have seen so far.”

Raajneeti had created history on many counts. Katrina, earlier known for her glamour alone, had played a character resembling Sonia Gandhi and she was fully committed to getting it right. One wrongly-pronounced word in her crucial public speech in Raajneeti had Katrina Kaif almost hysterical with anxiety just days before release. The incorrectlypronounced word was satta (politics) which came out sounding like Satya (truth) in her speech. Katrina had worked relentlessly to get the speech right. She had worked on every word until she thought it was polished to perfection. When after seeing the trailers friends pointed out to her that the word satta was pronounced as Satya, Katrina was aghast. She immediately contacted her director Prakash Jha to get the word corrected.

We’ve all heard, read and mulled over Katrina’s determination to get the shudh Hindi-Urdu right in Raajneeti and how she got herself a Hindi tutor, etc., etc. But the level of her determination to get the speech pattern in the crucial political speech was so high that Katrina actually corrected one word in the public speech sequence. This is surely the first time in the history of Indian cinema that such a thing happened.
Prakash Jha just can’t stop preening over the fact that his Raajneeti featured the maximum number of National award winners in its cast. Says Prakash, “It was Ranbir I was most hopeful about. I hoped in fact I was pretty certain, he would win the National award for his performance.” Ranbir played a US-educated scion of a political dynasty who had to reluctantly return home to shoulder his family’s duties. Says Prakash, “This film took Ranbir to another level. In fact, everyone was outstanding in the film. And why not? I had a line-up of National award winners in the cast, from Naseeruddin Shah and Nana Patekar to Manoj Bajpai and Ajay Devgan.”

Incidentally, Prakash can’t stop preening over the fact that his Raajneeti was the biggest multi-starrer since Sholay. “I think it’d be impossible to get so many stars under one roof for any other director.”
As for Katrina Kaif, Raajneeti says Prakash, in many ways was her film. “The girl breathed fire and passion into her role. From the way she metamorphosed from a young vivacious girl to the way she walked and talked to giving her public speeches as a politician. Audiences couldn’t believe the transformation of Katrina Kaif. I had hoped both Ranbir and Katrina would win National awards.”

For his intense political drama, Prakash Jha hired and trained 5,000 theatre actors to play the participants in various political rallies. Recalls the gritty political filmmaker, “Bhopal turned into a city of rallies. We shot rallies with Nana Patekar, Manoj Bajpai, Arjun Rampal, and Naseer… all the actors who play politicians. The rally spectators, all 5,000 of them, were selected and trained by us in a workshop.”

To ensure that the local Madhya Pradesh citizens did not protest about the hiring of the unit’s workforce from outside their state, Prakash hired the entire 5,000-strong assemblage of actors exclusively from MP. Says Prakash, “If we had hired ordinary crowds we wouldn’t have got the energy of a real political rally.

These actors playing participants in rallies were selected from Jabalpur, Satna, Indore, Ujjain, Gwalior and other cities of Madhya Pradesh. They were all from street theatre, and local and folk theatre. We selected them and put them through a rigorous workshop. We brought them down to Bhopal and made arrangements for their boarding and lodging. Our unit was quite used to working with crowds.”

Prakash Jha chose Bhopal in lieu of India’s political capital where shooting a sensitive political film would have been impossible. “Bhopal is a beautiful city. And we needed a Hindi-speaking capital city. Earlier, Ismail Merchant’s In Custody and Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool were shot here.”