Nakkash/The Craftsman, Review: Balancing Dharma with Karma

Carving is a fine art that is dying, like many other man-made enterprises, what with mechanisation and changing tastes. One can see many shops along the Bandra-Mahim Causeway in Mumbai run by hand-carvers, who sell exquisite furniture. And if you take the film Nakkash, described as fiction, to represent the state of this dying art in the holy city of Banaras-Kashi (Varanasi), even the last expert who carved many a mandir (Hindu temple) is dead. Murdered, to be precise. It’s a sad film that sends out signals of tolerance and symbiosis in a society that it underlines is sinking into rabid, religious fundamentalism. Deeply moving and worth a watch.

A supremely talented Muslim craftsman and widower, Alla Rakkha of Varanasi gets boycotted by his community because he does engravings of Gods and panels in Hindu temples, a profession that his family has followed for several generations. His wife leaves him and his young son, Mohammed, is denied admission in a Madarsa (Muslim religious school). Alla Rakkha, who is addressed as Alla Mian (a variation of Allah, the name of God in Islam), dons Hindu attire when he enters the Hindu precinct of the town and reverts to his Muslim clothing when approaching home. This is done on the advice of Vedantijee, the priest of the temple where he is currently working. Vedantijee is his pillar of support, and trusts him with the temple’s gold, which he takes home and melts, to use in his work.

A second marriage is arranged for him by Samad, his best friend, a rickshaw-driver, and a lady, for which he has to go to Jaunpur and Lucknow. Samad does not accompany him because he needs to raise a lot of money to send his father on Haj (pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, an essential part of a Muslim’s life), which is his last wish, as he is ill and very old. Alla leaves his home in Samad’s care and sets of. The marriage is solemnized, and Alla really likes the girl, who, he feels, will be able to look after him and his son very well. Unfortunately for him, on his return to Banaras, with his new wife and his son, he finds his house sealed by the police, is arrested by and severely beaten, for apparently no reason. In lock-up, he finds Samad sharing his cell, and even more severely beaten up. Samad then confesses to him that he stole the gold from Alla’s home to pledge it for borrowing money for his father’s Haj.

Written and directed by Zaigham Imam, a name that means The Lion Leader/Priest, Nakkash is very much about priests, and Alla Rakkha is the true lion among the various species that surround him. As a premise, a Muslim carver decorating Hindu temples (he has decorated many, in Banaras and elsewhere), donning the garb of a Hindu, storing the temple’s gold worth millions in his own house, could be controversial and dangerous at the same time. But if we stay at this level, we are missing the woods for the tree. This is not a story about victimised Muslims in a Hindi majority town, rather, it is a tale of intolerance and dogma preventing mingling and interaction with members of other faiths. When accused of promoting the faith of a different religion, Alla counters it with, “It does not say anywhere in the Quran that you cannot do things for followers of other faiths. I believe that I might be doing a service to humanity, even according to Islam.”

Such subjects appeal to the nobler and kinder instincts of mankind, rather than the crass, selfish tendencies of mob psychology, ambition and manipulated religious traditions. While the Hindu priest is tolerant and encouraging in an act that gives livelihood to a poor Muslim and magnificent décor to the temple, the Muslim priest refuses to admit Alla Rakkha’s son into his school. When it comes to mobs, and even the police, whosoever knows what Alla Rakkha does as a profession, turns against him, shuns him, beats him and even …..

In the end, through a very thoughtfully written piece of dialogue, Zaigham counterpoises Vedanti’s advice to his aspiring politician son, Munna Bhaiyya, “Don’t mix religion with politics. Politics is not Dharma but Karma.” On the other hand, the political party official who is compiling a list of candidates for the forthcoming elections warns him about Alla Rakkha working in the temple. “So far, he has been interviewed only in one small newspaper. If this becomes big, your candidature might be in danger. Remember, politics is about Dharma, not Karma.

Part III of Zaigham’s trilogy set in his home town, Dozakh and Alif being the first two, paints a very realistic picture of life in Varanasi and the characters are leaves from the local Society’s genealogical tree. Even the Lucknow chapter is brilliantly done, with the marriage proposal visit coming across as if one is sitting right there, among that bunch of contrasting characters. Sabeeha’s introduction, with some well;-crafted editing, is very well executed. Though he has cast real-life Muslims as the two main characters, Sabeeha is played by a Hindu. Hindu characters, going by the billed names, are all Hindu actors. Maybe this has been done so that the language (Urdu) is properly intonated, as Urdu words, even when they occur so frequently in Hindi, are mispronounced as a rule. Even then, the Muslim actors too falter on a couple of occasions. But those are exceptions.

Inaamulhaq is surely in for some recognition as a poor, tormented, lonely soul, who battles both societal divides with no weapons except conviction and true grit. His unconventional looks are an asset and his illiteracy is not feigned, as is often the case with such prototypical delineations. Not far behind is Sharib Hashmi, who gets to play an auto-rickshaw driver, a woman in drag (burqa) and a religious zealot, all as part of the same personality. The change that he undergoes after the gold theft is so convincing that the climax gives you a severe jolt.

Dependable Rajesh Sharma as the Sub-Inspector is a natural, while Kumud Mishra’s slanting-eyed recurring grin is curbed and kept to the minimum, extracting a decent performance. Pawan Tiwari, a producer on the film, as his son, is the quintessential rabble-rouser you find on the streets of Uttar Pradesh (where the story is set) or Bihar. All it requires to play such men are gusto and bombast, and neither is lacking. Gulki Joshi, making her debut, is composed and sincere, but does not look completely a UPite. A cameo was all but expected from Anil Rastogi, who was magnificent in Mukti Dham. He does not disappoint us here either, as the party ‘fixer’. The child actor, not billed in the credits available to me (Siddharth Bharadwaj?), does a good job too.

Aman Pant delivers a sonorous music score that underscores the engravings and art director Sumit Pant needs to work very little on sets as there are virtually none. Imam is let down by a below par camerawork, with Asit Biswas behind the lens and editing by Prakash Jha leaves a lot to be desired, with shots lingering before cuts, cuts with no specific motivation for choosing the point or simple and protracted fade-outs.

Technical finesse could have enhanced the inherent appeal of the film, which scores high on subject matter, screenplay and dialogue, direction and performances. One cannot expect a film of this nature not to be preachy, and yet Nakkash (should have been spelt Naqqash, to stress that it is not the usual k of Hindi, but the qaaf of Urdu) manages to do so in an integrated, organic way. In the end, the message that comes across is that we do not have to play-off religions against each other but strike a balance between dharma (religion/faith) and karma (acts/deeds) to create a humane society that believes in secularism and respects all religions and their followers as brother. A million dollar conversation between son and father, repeated in the film for due effect, includes two profound philosophical lines rendered in childlike innocence:

Mohammed (note the name): Who is Bhagwan?

Alla Rakkha (meaning protected by God): Allah’s brother.

Nakkash, which was shown at Cannes 2018, got a delayed release, better late than never.

Rating: ***

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLqyBaQyuwk