Someone Finally Bells The Emergency Cat: ‘Indu Sarkar’ Trailer Out; Promises To Be A Riveting Watch

It was the time when the entire populace of this country lost their civil liberties overnight. Sixty two lakh innocent youth were forcefully sterilised - a monstrous number that would’ve put even Nazis to shame. The press was forced to churn out blank pieces of papers. Thousands of families were driven out of their poor dwellings. The Gandhi Mother son duo unleashed a reign of terror and tyranny on the unsuspecting nation and sustained their gruesome campaign for two years. That was the Emergency of 1975-77.

Despite all civil rights violations and criminal acts, the sordid saga of those two years has hardly found a place in popular culture, much less the popular cinema. But this is now about to change - thanks to the initiative of one director filmmaker - Madhur Bhandarkar.

His new film, Indu Sarkar, which is expected to tell the tale of those two darkest years of the Indian republic is releasing next month. The first trailer of the movie was launched today. (17 June)

This promising drama features Neil Nitin Mukesh in the lead role who is playing Sanjay Gandhi on the big screen. If the trailer is any indication, one can expect a riveting account of the darkest chapter of the country’s modern history.

With the freedom of expression recently gaining currency in the country and becoming a bipartisan feature of Indian democracy by virtue of even the Left supporting this noble idea, one hopes that there won’t be any censorship demands.

It would be delectable to see the Congress taking to the streets demanding censor-cuts or a ban on this movie. They, after all, have been haranguing the current government for allegedly muzzling freedom of speech.

But the chances of such a protest by the Congress seems remote since more than Indira Gandhi, the movie appears to show Sanjay Gandhi in poor light. And we know for a fact that there is no love lost between Sanjay’s family and Sonia Gandhi who may be more than willing to let the curtain fall on Sanjay’s infamous role during the emergency.

The movie may or may not change the fortunes of Neil Nitin Mukesh for better, it promises to do justice to the millions of victims of those dark days - dead or alive.