Vivek Agnihotri’s Buddha In A Traffic Jam is one of those films that has made more news pre-release than once it’s out in cinemas. It’s also disrupted the lives of hundreds of students of two universities – Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jadavpur University – who had nothing whatsoever to do with the film. Till of course, director Agnihotri in his wisdom, decided to join hands with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and screen the film at these two universities, whether or not the students wanted to watch the film.

Keep in mind, the timing of the JU screening: precisely on the week when exams were beginning in JU. Give the director and ABVP — the latter should know the university’s exam schedule even if the director doesn’t — 10 on 10 for not disrupting students’ lives.

At JU, this was no ordinary screening organised by a filmmaker. Speaking from experience — I’m an alumnus of JU. English (hons), if you please — many films are screened at the university and plays are performed regularly too. However, the screening of Buddha in a Traffic Jam was organised by a political party – ABVP. Why would a filmmaker not contact the university directly and organise a screening, if they did indeed want to inflict their film upon students disinclined to see it?

Agnihotri, who spends an awful lot of time on Twitter following his critics, first claimed that the screening did take place (which it did) at JU, then forgot his own tweet and claimed it did not take place; then claimed his shoulder and car were broken (there isn’t proof of any of this). There is proof, though, that permission was denied for screening in the auditorium and that the film was nevertheless screened (without authorisation) on campus, in an open-air spot. If you’ve been to JU, you will realise that’s a far better option than sitting in the hot auditorium.

What has ensued since the screening is that ABVP conducted a rally in Kolkata and attempted to break past police barricades and rush into campus while shouting various slogans, including “Bharat Mata ki Jai” and “Doodh mangoge toh kheer denge, Kashmir mangoge to cheer denge” (“ask for milk and we’ll give you rice pudding, ask for Kashmir and we’ll rip you apart”). It’s safe to say no one in Bengal or JU cares that much about demanding Kashmir — although we may like a plate of Kashmiri food — and certainly not enough to part with a bowl of good paayesh (kheer or rice pudding in Bengali). Following the rally, JU filed a first information report against four BJP workers for allegedly sexually assaulting female students.

The cherry on the cake, after creating chaos on campus, was the wild victim-shaming and misogyny that was on display. Suman Dutta, district secretary of ABVP, said in a speech on video, “Have you seen the faces of the women who have made that accusation? Can they even be molested? Do they have any modesty? If not, how can they be molested? These girls are kissing men openly, everyday.”

Yes, these are the kind of people you should join hands with while reaching out to students.

As a cursory glance at Agnihotri’s Twitter timeline reveals, the director has claimed his film is revolutionary (either directly or by virtue of the praise that he’s chosen to retweet) and that JU students are violent vandals (unless they belong to ABVP of course, who only molested a few women and said that they’d cut off the legs off any students who left the JU campus).

I decided to see for myself what was this film that every student must watch and whether it was indeed propaganda. Before Buddha In A Traffic Jam, Agnihotri made the puerile and vulgar Hate Story and Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal.The latter depended on John Abraham’s acting talents. In a similar vein, the “hero” of Buddha… is the equally wooden and beefy, Arunoday Singh. Accompanied by Pallavi Joshi (Agnihotri’s wife), Mahie Gill and Bharat Pitah himself, Anupam Kher. Kher, incidentally, has been surprisingly absent and silent through all the fracas surrounding this film.

I saw the film in an empty theatre on a Tuesday afternoon, in the first week of its release.The emptiness being part of the Leftist-Naxal conspiracy to stem Agnihotri’s message, because as we all know, they hold immense influence over multiplex audiences. Now I really don’t care what a filmmaker’s politics or religious beliefs or sexual deviances are when I watch their film as long as the film is well-made and interesting. Which is why I love Leni Reifenstahl’s Triumph Of The Will, and Mel Gibson’s Passion Of The Christ and Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. Keeping that in mind, let’s look at Buddha….

First off, the film was made with a budget of Rs 5 crore by Indian School Of Business, Hyderabad, and was shot there.

As Ravi Agnihotri (@agniravi), the ISB student who is part of Friday Night Productions, the producers of Buddha…, very graciously tweeted to me: “conceptualizing movie on naxalism, proposing biz sol to naxal problem, raising funds, we isb students had done, we had raised funds, to cut long story short it was our idea, not any biography, will write my blog soon on this, but this issue of naxalism, biz sol, it was all from us, in hindsight, made many mistakes. Could have made a better product”.

I’ll synopsise said product.

Arunoday Singh is a student at ISB, which is called “IIB” in the film. He is friends with a girl who gets drunk and stands on a bar and takes off her shirt. She’s wearing a pink bra. Right-wing goons walk in and blacken her face. Singh then starts the Pink Bra campaign on Facebook, which is a take-off on the Pink Chaddi campaign started by Nisha Susan of The Ladies Finger. Susan has written about the genesis of this film and how the producer told her that Singh (and not a woman) was playing Susan – because it wouldn’t be realistic to show a woman leading such a movement. Naturally.

To cut an unnecessarily long story short, Singh’s professor, Anupam Kher, gives him a file on adivasis. Singh’s inner activist is stirred. He then meets Joshi who plays Kher’s wife and runs a pottery studio that sells pottery made by tribals to the government. The NGO she works with is headed by Mahie Gill. Gill and Kher are actually closet-Lefties, Naxals no less. With six feet by six feet posters of Mao hanging in their camp in the jungle, which is swathed in pristine red sheets. Singh’s brainwave is to sell the pottery that the tribals make, online. The sales will lift all India’s adivasis out of poverty and the clutches of the damned Naxals.

Kher realises this is the solution to all of India’s problems and shouts at Singh. Singh then has sex with a prostitute. Kher and the Naxals get upset with Singh – not because he had sex, but because he wants to sell pots online. So they plan to kill him. But Singh finds out and first has sex with Gill. Then Gill pretends to kidnap Singh, but blows herself and the Naxal leader up. Singh then screams at Kher and then launches his online site.

Ergo, he saves us from Naxals and the adivasis from poverty.

To describe the film as convoluted and childish is an understatement. Agnihotri’s claim that the film is biographical is a lie, as stated clearly by the producer. Agnihotri should be thankful for that clarification, because if that story had been true,it would be very worrying. How selling pots online will save adivasis from poverty, is beyond my understanding. More worrying is that students from one of India’s premier business institutes actually thought this was a viable solution.

The paranoia that Naxals walk amongst us like Nicholas Cage and other angels did in City Of Angels is a conspiracy theory to beat most. Agnihotri is basically our answer to Mc Carthy. He is going to smoke out the Commies amongst us, one poorly-made film at a time.

What upsets me is that in a country like India which is steeped in poverty – a poverty Agnihotri claims he is very concerned about – Rs 5 crore was spent on creating this. A far better way of pulling the adivasis out of poverty would have been to donate this money to doing something that would be directly beneficial to them. But that’s so old school.

Should Buddha… be shown in universities? Of course it should –if only as a lesson to students to not fund or be involved in shoddy cinema.

The author can be reached on twitter @rajyasree