dharma’s rejection of the rich – ikka film review

14.07.2026

SPOILER ALERT

Without a doubt, my favourite Hindi film actor is Sunny Deol. One of his most famous roles is playing a lawyer in Damini (The Lightning). Here, again, Sunny reprises the role of a lawyer. However, this time, in a reversal of the movie plot in Damini, he is on the side of the rich rather than on the side of the poor. It is a reversal of roles.

Why? Just like Damini explored how corrupt the rich are and how they monopolise the legal system against poor women, so Ikka explores this topic. However, what Ikka suggests, is that the law cannot reject the rich and neither can we reject the rich.

Arjun, Sunny’s character in the movie, cannot reject the rich man, the defendant. He has to fight for him in the court to save his daughter’s life who would otherwise die of cancer. The murder victim in the movie, the poor woman (not so poor however this time), also cannot refuse the rich man’s advances. The rich man kills her as a result with his wealth, forcing an expensive car’s key into her throat. The law cannot reject the rich man by treating him as a criminal in the film.

The rich man is protected by his wealth. He can put any kind of duress on anyone because of his wealth. Not only his wealth but his very being and identity as a rich man – the duress he places on Arjun is because he has a bone marrow compatible with that of Arjun’s daughter. He has biological wealth deriving from his stature as The Father – he is the biological father of Arjun’s daughter.

In the movie, Arjun as a father has to bow down to The Father, the patriarchal ideal. In one scene, he makes his ‘son’ Abimanyu (Abimanyu is Arjun’s son in the Mahabharata) testify for the rich man, showing the corruption of the patriarchal relationship and its foundation in lies and misdirection.

There is only one person that can reject the rich man in the movie: The Mother. She is the only one powerful enough to do so. Because The Mother is not the law. She is the dharma. Arjun’s wife, once the former girlfriend of the rich man defendant, she rejects him. She slaps his face. She married Arjun instead of the rich man and rejected him entirely. Again, the victim’s mother, she rejects the rich man. She can only see the rich man as a villain. And then the female lawyer that is fighting against the rich man is also a mother. And she is the one that eventually sends him to jail in the ending of the movie.

The fact is that the rich man dishonours The Mother. He is The Mother’s enemy. At one point, fighting for the rich man, Arjun is forced to dishonour The Mother in court. He hates himself for it. The film is about the honour of The Mother against the dishonourable rich man and his degradation and devaluation of women’s power (this is how the crowd protest against the rich man with their banners, invoking the idea of ‘nari shakti’, women’s empowerment).

Just like Damini, the film is about the power of the rich man pitted against the power of The Mother, of divine female energy. But all this revolves around the idea of rejection. How is it possible to reject the rich man when he has all the financial power? When he has all the resources that sustain life? The answer? You have to go along with the rich man, according to his intentions. You have to accrue resources, wealth and life from him. You have to follow his anti-Mother and misogynist oppressions. And then, when he believes that he is untouchable and invincible, then you have to defeat him with the truth, by fighting for the innocent. It is the story of how to become free. You can only become free from slavery by becoming strong, by having resources. You cannot do it out of nothing. And this is where the film is different from Damini. Because in Damini, the lawyer has to fight with nothing. In this film, the full corruption of the rich man’s law is exposed. The law is financed and serves the corrupt rich man and therefore it is absolutely corrupt itself. To gain justice is to defy the law and the legal structure entirely. Justice relies on rebellion, not adherence to the law.

the energy of the master of the field

25.04.2026

A beautiful day apparent, and it being my day off, Alfonso and I had arranged a programme of events for the day. I met him at his house first thing in the beautiful sunshine and we walked through the park reflecting on life and everything.

Our first stop was a mission of charity. We were going to see our friend in the hospital through the park. Alfonso had bought a comb at his request and we had picked it up from the chemist’s in the corner. I had begun joking around there and suggested to the cashiers that he was starting up his hair stylist business which had aroused a few smirks and then some conversation from the old lady that was sitting there waiting for her medicines. The visit in the hospital had not gone very smoothly but then our mutual friend was not very well and was having a bad day. We had told him that we would see him next week at the close of about half an hour.

We walked again back through the park and again to Alfonso’s house where he made himself some coffee and tea while I gulped down some water. The first stop was a woman’s brass band that was playing in Holy Sepulchre church in Holborn Viaduct. We then set out for a poster exhibition which was about politics, democracy and resistance in the Eastern bloc at Europe House. Alfonso was older than me and had lived through the events in the late eighties and nineties so he was teaching me about them while I made some comments about the aesthetics, intentions and meanings of the posters.

We decided to walk to St James’s park which was in the vicinity afterwards and ended up in the Institute of Contemporary Arts which had a 1K challenge to promote Puma trainers. We realised that we could pick up some free running T-shirts if we collected a few stamps so we did so.

Having gone through a day of medicine, music, art, politics and sport, we then settled back down into Alfonso’s house after buying much reduced price chocolate in the form of Easter eggs and then watched the film ‘The King’, which was a creepy thriller about Christianity and its interaction with the military minded and violence.

According to Alfonso, the film was about revenge. Alfonso asked me how it contrasted with the film I had watched recently, Dhurandhar: The Revenge, ‘The Master of the Field’.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘the difference can be encapsulated in one cinematic moment. The hero is rescuing his sister who has been gang raped. He kills everyone. We have a scene where he disappears from the camera. Then he rises. His head is brought up to a whirling circular firework behind him. We focus on his face. It is the face of his revenge. Why the firework? In the film, they talk about the energy that is required to have revenge. The hero says that not all have this energy. He is the firework. The revenge is within him. It is a whirling circle of energy. Whereas in The King, the anti-hero is silent and evil, seemingly low in all energy except for sexual energy, low-key and understated, in the Hindi film the hero is full of energy. In fact, the actor Ranveer Singh is known for his energy. In fact, he is Punjabi and we are known for our energy. The whirling firework becomes a halo around his head. It represents the energy of the Sikhs, because he is a Sikh in the film and in real life. He is a hero, a guru. The energy is full of light and power, it is dazzling. It is the splendour of Punjab. The firework is fire. Fire which will burn the world. Fire which is full of the sparks that will ignite this world. That is the difference between ‘The King’ and ‘The Master of the Field’. It is a difference in power. The Punjabi is powerful. The Tiger is powerful. We have endless energy which illuminates and burns this world, this energy of revenge. And remember the last thing. The energy is the law: it is the wheel of the dharma. It is the beauty of law.’

Writing with Fire Review

12.03.2022

Often, we retreat from the very great but empty noise that the Oscars make. However, on this occasion I decided to watch one of the films that was up for the nominations, ‘Writing with Fire’. Famously, if one is from an Indian ethnic background, the documentary is the first Academy Awards nomination which has been directed by an Indian director (Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh). It is also one of the only films, Indian or otherwise, which has ‘untouchable’ women as heroines. Luckily for me, the film is on BBC IPlayer and is available to stream online as part of their ‘Storyville’ series.

‘Writing with Fire’ is about the perils and adventures of three lower caste (‘Dalit’ which translates as ‘oppressed’) women journalists, Meera, Suneeta and Shyamkali. They work for the only entirely woman run newspaper in India, Khabar Lahariya or ‘Waves of News’. In the opening credits, the film makers write that when these Dalit women set up a newspaper in 2002, they ‘started a revolution’. The film follows the newspaper story from 2016 when the publication went digital. The attempt is to show a sea-change. Meera says, “In our region, a journalist meant you are an upper-caste man. A Dalit woman journalist was unthinkable. Over the last 14 years we’ve changed this perception.” Meera asks us to consider what it would be like if Dalit women had power and what they would do with it.

What follows in the film is a traditional and thoroughly conventional hero narrative which has been built up over thousands of years. The difference is that the hero is not a hero, but a heroine, and from the lower castes. What is the traditional hero narrative? The hero comes from humble origins, like the Greek demigods raised secretly by peasants as children. However, such humble origins disguise the greatness, nobility and royalty of the hero, which are revealed later. The hero faces adversity and mortal danger, as in a glorious battle. It is stated in the credits that India is one of the most precarious places in the world to be a journalist, with many murdered. The film shows the response to one murder of a female journalist by the workers of Khabar Lahariya. The hateful trolling of the women journalists is illustrated as well as their vulnerability to the Indian mafia. The hero is threatened by a return to quotidian life, like Hercules compelled to clean the stables. Thus, the women’s husbands attempt to stop them writing for the newspaper to work in the home instead as housewives. Finally, the hero must triumph. Khabar Lahariya is presented as an out and out success, measured by the amount of YouTube views it attracts, which number in the tens of millions.

This hero narrative unfolds amidst a glorification and justification of journalism, the pursuit that the women have dedicated their lives to. Towards the end of the documentary, Meera recites that the journalists are fighting to transform society. That they are holding the powerful to account. That they have made their journalism the voice of democracy. That they didn’t let the fourth pillar fall. And that they continue to hold a mirror to society. Thus, the film seems to be about everything that lip service holds dear: truth, balance, democracy.

Not only this, but the journalists are presented as law-givers. The screen first jumps into motion with Meera asking a woman in person about being raped multiple times in her home by four men. The opening credits mention how many Dalit women are subjected to violence across India and the film shows how Meera and others are trying to challenge the justice system which doesn’t respond to these atrocities. The unnamed rape victim says that the police refuse to lodge her complaint and intimidate her when she attempts to do so. The woman is going to newspaper because they are the only ones that listen to her story. As the husband of the victim says, “We don’t trust anyone else. Khabar Lahariya is our last hope”. Meera confronts the police about the multiple rapes and she proclaims that she is “fighting for justice in a democracy”.

My impression of the film as a whole was that it was a story told well. Certainly, Dalit women deserve to be seen as heroes too. The focus on the stories of the three women journalists gave that personal touch which made the abstract ideals the film supports into something concrete and something that the viewer could really relate to. The cinematography by Sushmit Ghosh and Karan Thapliyal was very beautiful. However, I am more pessimistic about the role of journalism in society. The documentary aims to present the journalist as objective, neutral, impartial, a server of truth, justice and democracy. These are claims that are a stretch of the imagination much too far for me. Again, I am troubled by why the Western media has nominated the film for an Academy Award. Khabar Lahariya is the voice of the poor, oppressed women in India. Naturally, they are pessimistic about power and the government in India. That is, they criticise the society they find themselves in because they hope to transform it and make a better position for themselves. This is fine. This is acceptable. Indeed, I support these women in their mission. However, what is unacceptable, is that the Western media and its public discourse always criticise India when they know nothing about it, in a supreme act of Orientalism and racism. The Academy seems to have selected a film which presents India as a colossal sewer because this is what they think about the country. This is not fine. This is what is unacceptable. And in this, they are trying to use that objectivity associated with journalism to try and present their racist notion of a whole country as the unqualified truth. Final verdict? A good, revolutionary film spoiled by an Oscar nomination and Western practices of racism.