So you say Murali Gopy is Sanghi? Get your brain checked

(Republished on Medium since first posted in 2017)

There is left liberalism, liberalism and pseudo liberalism. And then there are the Sanghis. Just Sanghis. Purebred Saffron.

But looks like when it comes to misinformation campaigns, pseudo liberals take the cake and flaunt it too.

I laugh whenever someone says Murali Gopy is a Sanghi based on his films, Left Right Left and Ee Adutha Kaalathu. Honestly, which world do they live?

Writers as social commentators need not have to sift through what they see around them so they can be in the political good books of the liberals.

Today, there is a deliberate misinformation campaign started by someone I assume is a liberal. He says Murali & Arun Kumar Aravind (the director of both above-said films) have been using the #Mersal debate to say, ‘hey guys, look we too were victimized by the leftists.’

Sadly, neither of them ever said that — not in the context of Mersal. Apart from a post in June about Left Right Left, and about how there were deliberate efforts to stifle it by whoever.

The argument is that, ‘no the Left did nothing to the film’ (which was well-intentionally critical of its leaders).

Well, that the film did not get its due release in northern Kerala districts might have missed the attention of the critic, who then hurries to say, ‘you know what, this guy is saying so because he must defend the Hindutva agenda.’

I told this to a respected wisened friend, a journo since the days the above-said critic might have been in his jaddi, and the instant comment was ‘a guy who thinks Murali Gopy is a Sanghi, must be retarded.’

Well, why am I defending Murali? Yes, I see it as a deliberate misinformation campaign, with the sole aim of tainting, by the so-called informed liberals. Their voice gets amplified in today’s online journalism (rather, online drivel) as they resort to FB posts as ‘stories.’ The net result: A lie is not just propagated but reinforced.

Left Right Left might not be ‘world-class’ — as the said-critic repeatedly posts (what is world-class, sir?) — but the impartial view it put forth on leftist politics cannot be ignored.

Unless, of course, you are one of those learned liberals, who much like Sanghis, cannot digest criticism. After all, free speech ends when it comes to being critical of your steadfast views, right?

Look, my friend, there are leftists, rightists, Sanghis — and above all, there are a lot many more people out there who have the choice to be these and none of these.

They are not opportunists, they are not fence-sitters. They, to give them the very basic due, have the minimum common sense to attempt to sift the right from the wrong. To see life and society not through prisms of ideologies. That does not make them dumb. Or bad.

From a very basic level, as someone who loves films, I don’t think or believe for one minute that LRL or EAK put forth any Hindu ideology.

A few lines in a film, which you feel put forth the voice of Sanghis, don’t make the writer a Safffronist. And what is wrong in saying what a cross-section of people believes in? Are they pariahs? Have you heard of Jan Sangh people who do extraordinarily good things without thought of power or recognition?

Now, you will call me a Sanghi too? The good and bad exist in everyone, and to believe it doesn’t, is the height of naïveté.

Ok, now to Tiyaan: Having read through all the vicious reviews and then watching the film, honestly, I found none of the Brahmanical hegemony or the suppressed Hindutva ideology in it.

Oh, I am blind because I too am a Hindu? I won’t be surprised if that is your instant reaction because that is how you are conditioned to believe. To see things as black and white. To be with us or against us.

What really was wrong in Tiyaan? What was the ‘wrong’ message of Brahmanical superiority it put forth? A few scenes in the film were taken out of context (as it happens always) to say the things you want to say because of course, you don’t want to watch films for what they are right?

I don’t know if you have the patience to read through a deconstruction of all the trite self-celebratory critics have been penning about Tiyaan. If you have, and only if you have, visit this space later.

But before you resort to misinformation and smear campaigns based on whatever your bad intent and intellectual assholism, remember that, you have no right to brand people with whatever tag because you simply do not know them.

If you have it in you, take the phone, talk to them, get your real ‘journalistic’ perspective. If not, well, I see no difference in your liberalism and blind saffronism.

And to put on record here, repeating something he has said many times over, and something I know personally, Murali Gopy is NOT a saffronist. And he does not subscribe to any such idiotic nationalistic ideologies. Oh, you don’t believe it right? No sir, don’t. And he doesn’t care either.

ENDS