jesus, paranoia and imperialism

15.05.2026

S: With imperialism, you can trust no one. No one is your real friend.

A: What do you mean? There’s always someone that you can trust.

S: Every friend will betray you for the empire.

A: Typical cynicism.

S: It is in the bible.

A: How so?

S: Does not Judas betray Christ? Is it not said that each one of his disciples will deny him? And why do they do it? They do it in service of the Roman Empire. The situation of Christ is the situation of the colonised in the age of Imperialism. It is the same age that we are living in now. The fact is that the oppressor kills the oppressed. The oppressor makes sure that the oppressed is betrayed.

A: No one wants to hear your interpretation of the scriptures. You are not even Christian.

S: Be that as it may be, the oppressed can read the life of the oppressed.

A: Any more jewels to bestow upon us with these readings?

S: In a selfish and greedy regime, where arrogance and a lack of empathy are the hallmarks of those supposedly successful in that society, where there is only the worship of wealth and status rather than spiritual growth, a genius like Christ can only encounter envy, hatred, jealousy and betrayal from even those that call himself his friends and peers. This has been the way throughout the whole of human history. Because those that are the worst lead. Those that are the worst exploit others and win power. Those that are not fit to be called human beings have to prove themselves superior.

A: This lesson is obviously not about Christ, is it?

S: It is about the present, with the rise of fascism in the world and where, unmistakably, powers like America and Russia are clearly empires, as well as the so-called ‘developed’ world which lords it over the ‘developing’ world by exploiting their natural resources and manpower. This age of capitalism, globalisation, what is it except for a new empire, neo-imperialism? It is this world that we live in, this world of the empire. And in it, Christ once more has to watch betrayal after betrayal. Because the clever man, the better man, the god on earth, the genius, the master of living, he has to watch the wretches around him sell him out and deny him.

A: They say that the colonised have a persecution complex. They suffer from paranoia.

S: It is not paranoia. Freud, himself the persecuted Jew, he said that even the paranoiac is not without justification. Man is a wolf to man. It is what the persecuted know. And Freud knew more than most – he was also a genius in Nazi Germany. They hated his cleverness. The colonised and the geniuses know the truth of this society of imperialism, hate and oppression.

the false benevolence of the law and its corruption

14.05.2026

In the Mardaani 3 film, the villains are Amma which means ‘Mother’ and her son. The female cop pits herself against the identity of The Mother, the poor woman.

Or does she?

There is a curious mirroring between The Mother and the female cop (The Law). Amma criticises the law by saying it serves the rich, not the poor girls. The female cop criticises the law for serving the rich and not the poor girls. Amma uses a certain strategy with her son to infiltrate the law. The female cop copies her strategy to infilitrate Amma’s criminal network.

The female cop also uses the body of Amma as a weapon, as the solution to resolving all of the issues in the case. She exploits the mother son bond and the figure of the poor woman Mother. In the movie, there is also the invocation of the Mother figure of power for the female cop as a puppet show is depicted in which Durga The Mother Queen, the Mother goddess fights against her enemies.

At the same time that the movie is hostile to the poor Mother and depicts her as a criminal that exploits poor girls, the film is trying to reclaim her body and position for the law. It is copying the poor mother as the source of real legitimacy. This is because the film is going against the traditional culture of India which is to celebrate the poor mother as the source of legitimacy and authority. Ask me, I am named after it, the son that weds Mother India in the movie of the name with the poor Mother in it. There is this false face of benevolence to the law because the female cop is supposedly trying to help the poor girl, she is supposedly good.

But the law is not good. It is trying to destroy the power and the legitimacy of the poor Mother. It is trying to destroy the Mother/Son bond of protection and love in the movie. While no one is justifying child trafficking or any of the villainous aspects of the villains in the movie, it is worthwhile noting how they attempt to demonise the poor Mother. Amma is supposed to be attacking and killing poor girls, which is actually what the female cop is doing because she kills and silences Amma in the movie by shooting her in the throat, suppressing and marginalising the voice of the poor Mother. She does the same to the son that loves the poor Mother. Amma is supposed to be exploiting the bodies of poor girls, but who else does this? It is the female cop by exploiting Amma’s body as a weapon.

The law is falsely benevolent and it is corrupt. The fact is that the female cop acts for and with the rich and powerful Father of the rich girl. Against the poor Mother.

The Rise of the Anti-Mother and Anti-Son Film and Western Law

13.05.2026

SPOILER ALERTS

Coming from a society that worships The Mother, where the duty is to be the son and lover of The Mother, I have written before about how the traditional Indian film has protested against the sexual repression of the West and its law which is based on an Asian Mother phobia. This phobia of the Asian mother reveals that The Mother is the Other to Western law, which is misogynistic and fears maternal or feminine authority. https://cafedissensus.wordpress.com/2022/05/30/there-is-no-bad-mother-beta-and-the-indian-mother-law-against-the-wests-asian-mother-phobia/

More and more, as I watch current films and watch current movies, I am learning just how far this misogyny and phobia of the mother goes in Western culture, or its unconscious legal culture. I am currently reading the Skandar the Unicorn books. The author worked in the law. Guess who is the villain in the first two books (I have only just begun the second one)? It is The Mother.

I watched ‘Polite Society’ the other day. Aside from the usual racism in these films about British Asian people – i.e. the British Asian man can never get married in these films because ‘there is something wrong with him’, guess who was the villain? It was The Mother. And the film spent all of its time making the mother/son bond loathsome as well through the eyes of the spoilt and Westernised British Asian female in it that seemed to hate the culture of the older generation.

Today I watched ‘Mardaani 3’, a cop film. Guess who was the villain? You guessed it. The character that was named ‘Amma’, or The Mother. And guess what? The Asian man in the film was also a villain because of the maternal relationship between himself and The Mother.

Mardaani 3 is worth analysing. The Mother comes from a poor family and has a Haryanvi dialect accent which suggests the rural. While no one is saying that she is a good character, because she is a child trafficker, the point is how the law in the form of the film’s heroine finishes her. She is shot in the throat. And then, when she can’t answer back, and the law has silenced the voice of this poor woman, the heroine of the film gives a big monologue. Same with the son. He comes from the poor. And he is also silenced when he is finished. The whole point of these films is to silence the poor Mother and the son that loves her and protects her.

Why am I talking about Indian films alongside British Asian films and British Literature? Because India was colonised and Western law was forced on us. This misogyny comes from the West. However, there are still sons that come from poor mothers. I am one of them. We will not accept this misogyny because we have sworn to protect our mothers. I represent the Indian national movement. I was named after the son that married Mother India. Against the hatred of The Mother and this legal culture, we stand for dharma, the organic law of India. I have modelled myself on my mother, the poor, foreign woman. The poor Indian woman. I am her voice. Even when the whole of this Western culture and its law is against us, wants to silence us. Because as I have written before, the dharma is the Mother-Law. We will never stop worshipping The Mother. Just like The Dark Mother stood as a symbol of Revolution against the Imperialists, so we still stand. We are the rivals of the oppressions and injustices of the Western law, its marginalisations and suppressions. Jai Maa Kaali!

the expectation of dismay

12.05.2026

A: What do you think it is that your readers expect of you?

S: They expect dismay, despair, desolation, derision…

A: Out and out negativity. Cynicism.

S: If they want to read about a fool’s happiness, a dupe’s joy, then they should go to the mainstream media.

A: Why can’t you write something that they actually want to read?

S: I’m not going to pander to them. I am the lone voice that actually says the truth. I say it like it is.

A: They are never going to accept your low view of humanity.

S: Yet that is the reality. You know this moment in the world is atrocious? All of the old racism has returned with a vengeance. Fascism, and what is worse, mediocrity, has overtaken the world. There is the climate change disaster which they are hardly doing anything to avert. Then, on top of that there are all the wars, the dismal job market, the growing isolation and loneliness in society, the decline of manners and culture in this supposed civilisation….

A: You always focus on the negative.

S: What is there that is so positive?

A: Be thankful for the good in your life. The loving parents and friends that support you. The fact that you are working and contributing to art and culture. The fact that you can volunteer where you like because you have the health and the talent to do it. The fact that you can follow your creativity. The technology that aids you in this life. Above all, be grateful for the fact that you have that fine mind, that discipline, that amazing body and stamina and that relentless drive and ambition that allows you to perform at the highest levels. That privilege that you were born into a rich country so that they can’t hold you in contempt because you come from the Untouchables and the Dalits. That privilege that you went to one of the top universities in the world and that you have five degrees as well as a doctorate, that you have been published as an academic writer. You crow on about how special you are. Be grateful for the gifts that have been bestowed upon you.

S: There is a man that is a god. And this god spits upon this cheap and mean world and everything in it. Because this man is a god, he should hold the highest honour. And they have not given it to him.

A: Do not let this sourness dictate all of your thought.

S: Why not? Achilles is the greatest and he is sour. The honour belongs to me.

A: Why do you hold onto your humiliation?

S: Because the humiliation is the seed for the storming tree of vengeance.

A: This ego and this revenge, they will crush it. There are more of them than there are of you. You are all alone against them.

S: It is not true. I am the dream of The Oppressed. I am the dream of The Mother. Behind me there stand the minds and voices of all of India, six thousand years of us. I come from Punjab which has fought against every oppressor and won. We are the men that all of India look up to as warriors, as The Tiger. This criticism of this society which they cannot bear, this will be how they look at this civilisation in history. It will be our view that prevails. We are the past, the present and the future. History is written by the victors and we are the victors. We never lose. That is why we are six thousand years old. Nobody can stand against us. No one. Certainly not the non men.

the stupidity of work and the irrelevance of study

11.05.2026

S: The stupidity of work is proved by the irrelevance of study.

A: In what sense?

S: Do you know what portion of a career in art and culture is made up of actual study in art and culture for the workers? Not very much. Less than ten percent.

A: Perhaps in your experience.

S: You always doubt the truth. But that does not make it less true. And then, most jobs, they do not require any particular education or knowledge. You can just pick them up in less than a week on the job.

A: And the conclusion to this?

S: Work is stupid. It is run by the stupid. It makes you stupid.

A: Even in art and culture?

S: It is actually worse than anywhere else in art and culture.

A: What about academia?

S: They pretend they know everything. Yet if you have a different agenda to their Eurocentric bias and their tedious morality, then you will witness the stubbornness and the ignorance of their exclusions. And that in fact is the key to their career. Keeping people out. People like me. That are different. Not intelligence. But the fear of difference. That is most of their job.

A: You are disillusioned by everywhere that you have worked.

S: A genius has to be at variance with society. Because society, my friend, it is abominable. And the genius is not abominable.

A: I do not think you are right that work is stupid.

S: Sit in a taxi cab. Talk to the average person in the country like the taxi driver. Their opinion is that you shouldn’t study English literature because all you can do is teach English literature. Forget about the talk about transferable skills and all that stuff, about being educated and well read. Because the taxi driver lives in an unintelligent country where it is not what you know but who you know that counts. The stupider and more pig ignorant that you are, the better. Because then you fit in with them. Then you can lower yourself to the lowest common denominator. I have heard these taxi drivers saying this stuff, this is not a made up story. And do you know what? It has always been like this. I have been reading ‘The Red and the Black’ by Stendhal. The hero goes into religion and it is exactly the same. He is smarter than everyone else. And because he is smarter, he cannot get ahead. They keep him down precisely because he is smart. They put every obstacle in his way.

A: You want someone to pay you for pursuing your interests?

S: Why not? Is it not labour? Is it not more worthwhile labour than most? Shouldn’t it be valued? Is it not important to learn about the secret construction of the self and to resist oppression? Are not freedom and honour the highest values? Is not this brain that has been very carefully constructed and which has had hundreds of thousands of pounds of education pumped into it to realise its full potential and transform this society?

A: I think you will have to quit work to focus on study.

the conceit of the writer

11.05.2026

‘The reason,’ said Alfonso in his engagingly lazy and erudite drawl, ‘that you write so much is because you are supremely conceited. You really feel as though you are the cleverest and most important person in the room. In any room.’

‘And what is wrong with that?’ I growled at him. After all, it was true. I was more intelligent than everyone else. It was just an intelligence that they did not want. Because it went against their agenda of stupidity and racism.

‘In reality, who they want to hear talk are the mindless.’

Was it not true? What sold the most in this society? The endless drivel that the celebrities came out with, those were the top selling books. And the areas that they neglected were all of the interesting areas, science, literary studies, art historical scholarship. They would rather listen to the imbecilic Farage or Trump than someone that could actually talk some sense. Their sensibilities were for hate. For the puerile. For unjust wars.

‘The conceit of the writer is what allows him to write.’

‘You cannot worship the ego as a writer,’ said Alfonso. ‘Learn humility.’

‘By no means,’ I said. ‘Dickens was one of the greatest of writers. And he called himself ‘The Inimitable’. Is that not the writer’s conceit? I would rather think myself great and strive for greatness. I believe that I am supremely talented. That I am a genius. And that is why I produce. You cannot ask The Untouchable, the Dalit, the low caste for humility. Humility is how they have kept us down. I am a prodigy. I have had this talent of writing since I was six years old. I was acknowledged as the best in my school and later on during sixth form too. I am unrivalled.’

‘But in the real world, who is there that reads you?’

‘Whoever does is amazed and even overwhelmed by my work. As I have told you, I am a genius. It doesn’t matter if the cast of villains does not want to read.’

‘This conceit that you are a genius. Where does it come from?’

‘From my knowledge of what I have produced. The knowledge that I can go into any field and make the biggest contributions. Film, literature, art history, the law, history, sociology, anthropology. I am a polymath.’

‘I have been told that the most intelligent are modest. They know the limits of their knowledge.’

‘I have prepared this ego for the hostility of a world that would crush our thoughts, that would keep us as The Oppressed. This ego is an answer to the casteists and the racists. I believe that I am god. I do not just write it. I am the prayer of the people. Nothing is closed to me. I know the secrets of the world, the things that drive this society of oppression and injustice. A genius is forged by his context. The context is the Independence of India, the Revolution. It is a work that has not yet been completed and it has asked for another genius. The intellectual terrorist. The one that will destroy this world of contemptuous thought for it to be rebuilt again. I am the truth. I am the knowledge. This self belief is unshakeable.’

‘The few pennies that you rub together from your writing, do they not teach you humility?’ Alfonso smirked at me while he said so.

‘The genius never sells in their lifetime. They are never acknowledged. I am so far higher and beyond all that I float in the heaven all by myself.’

‘If you are the genius that you say that you are, why then do you not produce and produce and produce?’

‘I could. It could easily be done. But why should I waste my life upon the ignorant? They will never give up their ignorance. They cannot value rightly. They will never value the gift that I give them.’

‘The conceit and the contempt that you have are both abominable.’

‘It is what they deserve, they who imagine themselves to be better than me. In fact, I am the best. Because I am the truth. I am the voice of the righteous. I am the one to whom the things are given. The stories that are thousands of years old that no one knows except for myself.’

‘The academy did not accept you.’

‘I do not accept them. I am too intelligent for them. All they have is dirty politics and favouritism. As well as the falsity of their Eurocentric bias.’

‘You think that only you are talented?’

‘Not at all. I believe that I am the most talented and that they should throw everything my way, every single honour and award. All the marks of recognition. They should recognise my greatness.’

‘You talk for them. You think for them.’ Alfonso pointed his finger at me in an accusing way.

‘Why not? They cannot talk a good talk. They cannot think a good thing. They cannot see or support genius.’

‘What good is it to have nothing and to rail at the world for it not giving itself to you? You want consolation? You want consolation for being clever.’

‘One day,’ I said, ‘You will understand what it means to be Medea, the intelligent foreign woman that is surrounded by the hostile and inferior minds around you, that is jilted and has her love stolen away from her. One day, you will understand this Greek myth. And one day, you will know that all the genius can think of is the revenge of success when his status will be restored as the hero. It is something that Euripides was dimly aware of.’

the ignorant and prejudiced majority

09.05.2026

S: What is clear in this world is that it is the ignorant and prejudiced majority that drives it.

A: The occasion for this statement?

S: Look at the local election results in England. They have voted for Reform. Reform is a one policy party: hate. All that they can deliver is hate. Yet this is what these fools vote for. Before that, it was the Tory racists. Again, look at Trump in America. For an important political decision, to choose their leaders and representatives, they choose those that are full of hate.

A: They always insist that they are not racists.

S: That is because racism is banned by the law. They do not want to have criminal records for hate crime. Yet what else are they but racists? Just because they are not openly allowed to avow their sentiments, you cannot say that they are not racists. So, despite the fact that everyone hates what I say, I am the one that is right. This culture is based upon racism. That is the key aspect of this culture. Racism. Hatred of the diversity and inclusivity that is the culture of India and Punjab, the openness to the world and its people. Hatred of love.

A: Do you think you can change this culture by condemning them?

S: They are not human. Why pretend that they are? They are monsters. How long have we been trying to teach them not to be racists? We are talking about hundreds of years. Look at them though. They are contemptuous. You cannot make a monster into a human. Theoretically you might think so. They are sick. Their culture is sick. Instead of getting better, they get worse. Yet when you listen to their lip service in their society, they are saying that they have inclusivity and diversity, that the rights of minorities, women and others are being respected. Look at the statistics though. The statistics tell a very different story. They are completely against any form of difference. Everyone knows the open secret at the heart of this society.

A: Therefore, you will keep on writing about how contemptuous they are?

S: Why not? What can they do about it? It is, after all, the truth. You cannot deny or hide the truth of things. They are racists, their culture is racism. They are full of hate. They cannot accept anything other than themselves. They celebrate hate. They make speeches by hate. And they are appeased by hate. They choose their leaders based on hate. While there might be a few exceptions here and there, it is clear what the majority of them think.

fake friends and demob happiness

06.05.2026

S: You know, Alfonso, you are a real friend. You are always reliable. There are no wires crossed with you. It is always comfortable talking to you.

A: Is this a buttering up?

S: Not at all. I am comparing you to fake friends. A fake friend is not dependable. There are always wires crossed with a fake friend. And, eventually if not at first, it is uncomfortable talking to a fake friend.

A: Don’t let these fake friends bother you. They don’t care about you. Don’t care about them either.

S: Because I don’t lie, I don’t expect others to lie to me. To pretend that they are friends. I just can’t believe what users these fake friends are. You help them. You give them presents. You look after them and listen to their troubles. And in the end? They betray you.

A: They are not worth your spit. I don’t know why you worry so much about their betrayals and the fact that they are users. You have seen what they are like. Why be upset about them after that? They are not worth it. You are too good for them.

S: A big heart hurts big time.

A: Harbour your emotions and your investment for those that are worthy of it. You have been told by people that love you that you love too freely. You accept friendship too freely. Learn that they have to prove themselves. You cannot trust others.

S: So you yourself are telling me that you cannot trust other people?

A: Trust is earned. Sadly you have seen what this society produces. There are not worthy and honourable people now.

S: Well let us forget these fake friends the same way that they have forgotten us.

A: Tell me about your day.

S: I went to visit the V and A East. I did the upper ground floor. I went to the gym and pushed some heavy weights and did running on the treadmill, so fast that I went dizzy at the end of it. I shopped at M & S and bought some beef udon noodles for lunch as well as some reduced price Cadbury’s Creme eggs at Tesco’s and reduced price chicken and sweetcorn sandwiches to take around with me tomorrow. I finished the first draft of my dissertation for my Art History degree. So I will take a day off tomorrow before I revise it. I went to the park and smelled the scent of the flowers, watched the work of the bees at the flowers, communicated with nature and admired the flight of the birds. Dinner was chicken biryani, one of my favourite dishes that my mother makes.

A: A good day, forget about the troubles. Live life. It is fuller than theirs.

Dr. Suneel Mehmi: Academic Summary

Suneel Mehmi is a British independent scholar whose work moves across English literature, film, and law, and is grounded in the interdisciplinary field of law and literature. What distinguishes his scholarship is a sustained attempt to uncover what he conceptualises as the legal unconscious: the hidden structures—psychological as much as cultural—through which law shapes how meaning is produced, authority is recognised, and subjects are formed. Drawing on both legal theory and psychoanalytic thought, Mehmi approaches interpretation not as a neutral act, but as a site where power is internalised, repeated, and sometimes resisted.

His academic training in both law and literature informs a method that is at once theoretically rigorous and critically flexible. Across his work, Mehmi returns to a central concern: that the authority of law depends not only on institutions, but on the ways individuals come to feel that authority as natural, necessary, and even desirable. It is in this affective and unconscious dimension that his work is most distinctive.

This concern is developed in his monograph, Law, Literature and the Power of Reading: Literalism and Photography in the Nineteenth Century (2021), where Mehmi revisits the debate around “literal” and “critical” reading. Rather than simply rejecting literalism, he interrogates the criticism of literalism, showing how so-called idealist or critical readings can reproduce their own forms of interpretive authority. What appears to be a move toward freedom—reading beyond the surface—can become another way of regulating meaning and privileging certain readers. In this sense, both literal and anti-literal approaches participate in a deeper structure of control. Photography, as it appears in nineteenth-century literature, disrupts this dynamic by introducing a visual logic that resists both forms of reading, pointing to the limits of interpretation itself.

Mehmi’s psychoanalytic orientation becomes especially pronounced in his work on film and literature, where he explores how legal authority is internalised at the level of desire, fear, and fantasy. In his reading of the Hindi film Beta (1992), he develops a striking account of what he terms a Western “Asian mother phobia.” Here, psychoanalysis becomes a tool for understanding cultural difference: while Western frameworks often cast the powerful mother as a source of anxiety or excess, Indian legal and cultural traditions can position her as a legitimate and central figure of authority.

In Beta, the maternal figure operates not only as a social authority but as an unconscious one. Her power is sustained through emotional bonds, guilt, and identification—mechanisms that psychoanalysis helps to bring into focus. Mehmi shows how the film stages a complex drama of attachment and control, in which obedience is not simply imposed but desired. The mother’s authority is thus both juridical and psychic, revealing how law can be internalised as part of the subject’s own structure of feeling. The apparent stability of this authority, however, is shadowed by tension, suggesting the fragility of the very order it sustains.

A similarly psychoanalytic sensitivity informs Mehmi’s readings of the work of Roald Dahl. In Dahl’s fiction, Mehmi identifies a world structured by violence, punishment, and exaggerated authority figures, where the child is positioned in relation to often grotesque forms of adult power. Rather than reading these elements simply as moral fantasy or dark humour, Mehmi treats them as expressions of deeper unconscious dynamics. Authority in Dahl’s work is at once feared and desired, resisted and reproduced—mirroring the ambivalence that psychoanalysis locates at the heart of subject formation.

Through this lens, Dahl’s stories become more than children’s literature; they are sites where the legal unconscious is vividly staged. The stark divisions between good and bad, justice and injustice, reveal an underlying struggle over how authority is recognised and legitimised. Mehmi’s readings show how these narratives both challenge and reaffirm structures of control, allowing readers to imaginatively confront—and yet remain within—the frameworks that govern them.

Mehmi’s work on race and gender, particularly in his analysis of Annihilation (2018), further extends this psychoanalytic approach. There, he explores how difference is managed through processes that are at once spatial, visual, and unconscious, revealing how law-like structures regulate what is perceived as other or threatening.

Alongside these major interventions, his contributions to venues such as the Literary London Journal explore how urban space itself can be “read” through similar dynamics, shaped by unseen norms that organise belonging, exclusion, and movement within the city.

Across all of Mehmi’s work—including studies of Henry James—a consistent insight emerges: that law operates not only through rules, but through the unconscious life of interpretation. By bringing psychoanalysis into dialogue with law and literature, Mehmi reveals how authority is not simply imposed from outside, but lived from within—felt, imagined, and reproduced in the very act of making meaning.

living with profound despair

04.05.2026

S: I woke up again from another nightmare in the supermarket, the supermarketisation of art and culture, the meanness of the philistines in this world. And as I lay in bed thinking over things, this is what came into my head. There is this line in this movie ‘Gadar’ (Rebellion/Mutiny/Revolt) that I think about over and over again.

A: The film goer. Which is?

S: Let me tell you the story of this film. It is based on a true story. A Sikh man fell in love with a Muslim woman. He married her and had children with her. The partition separated them. Her parents broke up the marriage. He committed suicide.

A: He kills himself?

S: In real life. In the movie, he does not kill himself. He wins her back.

A: So, tell me this line that you obsessively return to.

S: The scene in the film is that the two lovers are going to be separated. They have only just fallen in love. They are talking. He is suffering from the pain of separation already. And he says to her, ‘No matter how merciless this life is, you still have to live it.’

A: This is the line that you think about? There is no elegance or poetry to it.

S: Is it not the whole message of the film? The whole point of the film? In the film, he is to live. Whereas in this brutal and merciless world, he is made to die through its hostility to love and diversity, to an interfaith marriage, to the embrace of difference, to harmony and unity across cultures. In the film he is given his happiness.

A: You love the fairy tale even knowing the reality.

S: You live for your ideals. The ideals of India are the embrace of difference. The actor in the film, Sunny Deol, he is me. I have modelled myself upon the hero of Punjab.

A: It is easier said than done to live through despair.

S: When you are the hero, your duty is to live. In this spiritual war, it is our duty to not only survive but to prosper. Even when you dream of death, you make plans to live. Because we are love. And we keep love alive in this mean and cheap world.

A: You that has nightmares every night, you that has separated yourself from every community, you preach love and life?

S: To stomach injustice is to become unjust. To live with those that cheapen life is not life. To live with those that devalue love, that is not life. It takes courage to separate yourself from communities for the ideals of love and life. I have that courage. I can stand all alone in this world. I have lived through profound despair. And despite everything, still I laugh. I make a life. I love. I was born to be a hero. It is what I am named after, this Sikh hero Sunil Dutt that married a Muslim woman and saved her life, just like in the film Gadar. She is Mother India and I was raised to protect her honour. The story of Gadar is the story of my life. Why? Because I am Punjab. I am India. And this film that we are talking about? It is the most watched film in modern Indian history. All of India loves me. Because I am India. I am Punjab. I am The Tiger. I am love.