The trailer of Mohan G Kshatriyan’s latest film ‘Rudra Thandavam’ was released on August 24 following the release of the film’s poster.
Actor Richard Rishi, a constant in Mohan’s ventures, plays the lead character of Rudra Prabhakaran, a police officer dealing with drug trafficking. Gautham Vasudev Menon, who has of late been donning the actor’s hat, seems to be the lead antagonist playing the role of an ‘aandolan jeevi’ Communist leader.
The story seems to revolve around a dutiful police officer who gets slapped with a false case under Protection of Civil Rights Act (PCR Act) and Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Prevention of Atrocities Act (shortened as SC/ST Atrocities Act) for taking action against an accused involved in drug crime. It also touches around the larger subject of rampant illegal religious conversion among Scheduled Castes as Radha Ravi, who seems to be playing the role of a public prosecutor, mentions in the trailer that the PCR Act does not apply to those who get converted to Christianity.
This premise of the film seems to have upset the proselytizing cabal along with certain section of the media and film industry.
Just days after the trailer released, The News Minute published an article in which it called the film a ‘new age propaganda film promoting caste pride’. It mentions how Tamil cinema had for long made films Thevar Magan and Chinna Gounder promoting caste pride and that it was now with the films of Pa Ranjith and Mari Selvaraj in the recent years that mainstream Tamil cinema saw a welcome change.
It said that these films by Dalit directors told stories of assertion, systemic injustice, and strength. While this may be true of Mari Selvaraj’s two films – Pariyerum Perumal and Karnan, Pa. Ranjith is known for infusing problematic propaganda in his films. In his film Attakathi, one character asks the protagonist (a dalit) to ‘finish the matter’ (make the woman have sex) before marriage, of the girl he is in love with (a non-Dalit). Kaala starring Rajinikanth was nothing but anti-Hindu vomit which is glorified by far-left intellectuals and academia. In the recent Sarpatta Parambarai, Pa. Ranjith had peddled a narrative favourable to the DMK while demeaning the actual contributions made by Dr. M. G. Ramachandra to boxing.
The author of The News Minute article claims that the dominant castes find it hard to stomach these films while it in fact seems to be the other way around. When Mohan G Kshatriyan’s ‘Draupathi’ was released last year, it received rave response from the public as it spoke about the unspoken issue of ‘naadaga kaadhal‘ (deliberate trapping of women of other castes by Dalit youth by luring them into relationships), an equivalent to the ‘love-jihad’ in northern part of the country. However, The News Minute back then had published an article demeaning the movie as a ‘vile casteist film‘ while it just shows the other side of the issue. Anybody familiar with the case of 17-year-old Naveena from Vizhupuram would understand that the issue cannot be viewed in binary terms where the victim is always from one community as portrayed by the Tamil Nadu mainstream media.
Now it is again the same bunch of self-anointed guardians of Scheduled Caste people and torchbearers of free speech who are suffering a meltdown and trying to run down on Rudra Thandavam even before its release.
Mohan G Kshatriyan this time seems to have hit the raw nerve of people who act as catalysts for illegal religious conversions.
Watch the trailer here:
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