Shamshera: A Spiteful Movie

Sanjay Dutt as Shuddhi Singh

The Brahmins have helped preserve India’s heritage under hellish circumstances. During the Middle Ages (from the seventh century to the middle of the nineteenth), India was ravaged by a series of invasions. The invaders sacked thousands of temples and universities—they plundered the treasure stored at these institutions, they destroyed the idols and paintings, and they burned the ancient manuscripts. In regions where the invaders gained power and established their kingdoms, restrictions were placed on the practice of Hinduism—new temples could not be built and the destroyed temples could not be rebuilt. 

The ancient knowledge of Hinduism would have vanished if the heroic Brahmins had not waged a long and traumatic struggle to preserve the practice of Hindu rituals. During the period of foreign domination, the Brahmins guided the masses on the practice of Hinduism, and they preserved the exact wordings of Hinduism's ancient manuscripts through their oral tradition. More than any other community, the much-maligned Brahmins were responsible for the preservation of the rituals and teachings of Hinduism. 

The leftists, who dominate India’s intellectual establishment and entertainment industry, despise the Brahmins because they were responsible for preserving Hinduism. The leftists don’t like Hinduism—they see Hinduism as the primary hurdle against the imposition of a Western or Middle Eastern style ideological (communism) or monotheistic (semitic religion) statism in India. In articles, history texts, and movies, the Brahmins are often vilified as the deluded obscurantists who oppressed other castes and hindered India from modernizing. Shamshera is the latest Bollywood movie to launch a spiteful attack on the Brahmins. 

I have not seen Shamshera. My view of this movie is based on one two-minute trailer and one review. The movie is of the time when the British ruled India; its villain is a Brahmin called Shuddhi Singh who flaunts the religious symbols associated with the Brahmins with such outrageous excess that he appears like a caricature from hell. Shuddhi Singh is a tilak-wearing, janeu-wearing, sikha-wearing Brahmin. He looks like a cartoon character. He is a sadistic tyrant who oppresses the tribals and the so-called lower castes. According to this movie, the British and the Islamists were good guys who wanted to help the poor, while the Brahmins were the villains.

As far as real history is concerned, Shamshera is bullshit. Shuddhi Singh is not inspired by any real figure in India’s past. He has no parallels in history. There is no record of any Brahmin, employed by the British, who committed the kind of atrocities that Shuddhi Singh is depicted committing in the movie. Shuddhi Singh is a myth. He is the product of the nihilistic imagination of the Hindu-hating leftists who dominate Bollywood. The makers of this film want Hindus to feel ashamed of their religion—that is why they bequeathed Shuddhi Singh with all the traditional symbols of the Brahmins. The movie has flopped. No one wants to watch bullshit movies.