Hindi film director Anubhav Sinha’s latest outing Anek, meaning ‘many’ is a case of good intent (perhaps) gone bust. And that is the best that can be said about this Ayushmann Khurrana-starrer about a police official and his covert operation of working out a peace accord between an insurgent group and the government of India.
For the most part, Anek reels under the weight of being a mainstream film that speaks for the North-East with the opening credit making a show of highlighting the ‘NE’ in Anek. By doing so, it falls into a grave of its own digging for North-East is a mere geographical direction. The constant use of the term throughout the film ends up playing into the majoritarian tendency of clubbing the entire North-Eastern region of India into one homogenous entity. The term conflates the diverse socio-cultural identities; but hey, let’s focus on the film shall we? So then, we have Tiger Sangha who heads a separatist group that has been up in arms against India for decades but wants to settle for peace with certain riders: a separate flag and a separate Constitution. This, of course, is a nod to Thuingaleng Muivah of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), a Naga nationalist separatist group, whose demand for a Greater Nagaland seeks to include all Naga inhabited areas in North-East India and Northern Myanmar.
When a rival faction becomes active with their opposition to the peace talks, the Union government wants a grip on the situation so the peace talks are not questioned. This is where Ayushmann Khurrana as Aman (a word that translates to ‘peace’ from Hindi) enters as the covert officer. So far, so good. Just that, Anubhav Sinha, who is also the scriptwriter of the film adds other thematic issues of racism faced by people from North-East India in the country. Cue for a boxing track a la Mary Kom with Andrea Kevichüsa playing Aido, complete with an energetic song playing in the background and strenuous physical exercise scenes. Aido’s character portrays the need to prove one is Indian, that she counts. Hence, she has to play a crucial match against another player to represent India internationally. Now, the night before the match, she goes to a pub where there is a raid and the police subject her to racial slurs (a pretty convenient plot point). Cue for words like ‘chinky’ ‘Nepali’ ‘Bangkok massage’ and then a coach at the training center says, “You all drink and eat dog meat, right?’. This and other dialogues end up looking like a checklist that the director has to tick off to show just how aware he is of the issues around the region.
Ayushmann Khurrana’s character is a man on the high moral ground with a mainland saviour complex rolled into one heady mix you can do without – his heart supposedly gets in the way, according to his higher-ups, when he spouts the usual questioning of the national narrative on them. He moves around with the locals under the name ‘Joshua’ which is all it takes for everyone to trust him and come running to him with their problems. Aman/Joshua whitewashes the entire history of political movements across North-East India, which he justifies by telling an official, “Maybe, no one wants peace. Isn’t that why the problem hasn’t been solved all these years?” And, because Aman is the representative of the do-gooder nationalist Indian whose dream is one country, he does not even mention the horrors committed by the defense forces in the region once. There is a single mention of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act by Tiger Sangha and it comes along with a factual error when his character says in the opening scenes to a journalist, 'Nehru and Patel sent forces after 1947 along with AFSPA'. The Act came into effect at different time periods across the region.
To all those who say films are fiction and there is something called ‘creative liberty’, well and good. How else can one club the seven states in the North-East region of the country into one entity and squeeze in the various separatist movements within each state into the mess that is Anek without this caveat called ‘creative liberty’.
The film is not situated in any of the states in North-East India but in a non-existent firmament called ‘North East’ which is thrown around so liberally as a term that you might consider looking up whether that is a new Indian state that exists. The ‘North East’ fixation is so strong that the vehicles in the film have license plates starting with ‘NE’! But let’s still stay comfortable with the said creative liberties and agree that films are films. All good again but for the fact that the film director and lead actor have been making statements about how they love the ‘North East’ and how Anek is a sensitive film about the region. Making a film on the political conflicts in the region would mean approaching it with the humility of wanting to know.
Anubhav Sinha’s ‘sensitivity and inclusiveness’ card translates to two sentences in Manipuri, a few in Nagamese, a Naga folk song, and women characters seen wearing Jainsem, the traditional dress worn by Khasi women, exposing just how unaware he is of the socio-cultural diversity and where to situate them in his zeal to over romanticise and blur boundaries. Anek continues the Hindi film industry’s long tradition of appropriating stories and narratives from North-East India, all the while misrepresenting them. The inclusion of faces from Assam, Nagaland, and Manipur is one positive step after years of actors with no resemblance to people in the region playing them on screen. Remember Yeh Gulistan Hamara made in 1972 with Sharmila Tagore in a hideous wig as a tribal from the region or Priyanka Chopra as Mary Kom? Unfortunately, Anek falls in the same category as another Hindi film Tango Charlie where a lead character is shown as being posted in Manipur to fight militants belonging to the Bodo community, a major error as Manipur has no Bodo population.
Andrea Kevichüsa has a natural ease about her while Ayushmann Khurrana looks stilted, almost as if he is holding his breath, making you wonder whether he is struggling to find his bearings. Loitongbam Dorendra as Tiger Sangha has only a few scenes but the experienced theatre actor sinks into his character with aplomb. The most delightful turn comes from JD Chakravarthy who cinema watchers will remember as the lead actor of Satya. He doesn’t have much screen time where he gets to speak but grabs your attention when he does.
As a film, Anek is heavy-handed and continues to enforce the stereotypes associated with North-East India like people fighting amongst themselves, not wanting peace, and seeking validation that they belong to India. Anubhav Sinha fails to narrate a coherent story, much less do it sensitively, and is a prime example of the Dunning-Kruger effect which occurs when a person’s lack of knowledge and skills in a certain area causes them to overestimate their own competence; the overestimation being a result of the fact that they don't have enough knowledge to know they don't have enough knowledge.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the series/film. TNM Editorial is independent of any business relationship the organisation may have with producers or any other members of its cast or crew.