Alongside a flourishing career on the stage, Feroz Abbas Khan has also pursued filmmaking. Dekh Tamasha Dekh (2014), his second movie after Gandhi, My Father (2007), unleashes playwright Shafaat Khan’s satirical gifts onto an examination of the communal divisions that plague India.

The Hindi drama is set in a generic small town where communal harmony is as precariously balanced as the giant cut-out of a local businessman that flattens a tonga driver. Muthaseth (Satish Kaushik) is apologetic about Hameed’s demise, but also sniffs a chance to raise his public profile.

The air is thick with opportunism. Hindu and Muslim hardliners compete to claim Hameed and decide on how he is to be laid to rest.

For the Hindus, led by Bavdekar (Sharad Ponkshe), Hameed was Kishen, one of their own who lost his way after meeting the widow Fatima (Tanvi Azmi). For the Muslims, whose champion is Sattar (Jaywant Wadkar), there is no question about Hameed’s faith.

Already, books on history written by the progressive professor Shastri (Satish Alekar) have been burnt. The inter-faith romance between Hameed’s daughter Shabbo (Apoorva Arora) and the photographer Prashant (Alok Rajwade) is in peril. Senior police officer Vishwasrao (Vinay Jain) tries to soothe tempers, but gets absolutely no help from the thick-skinned inspector Sawant (Ganesh Yadav).

Dekh Tamasha Dekh is available on YouTube, Apple TV+, JioHotstar and Google Play Movies. The film’s staginess was criticised at the time of its release. However, the parade of numerous actors and scenes with lengthy stretches of dialogue actually make the movie perfect for a streaming device.

The comedy is a barely disguised allegory about India after the Babri Masjid demolition, inexorably heading towards a majoritarian state. It appears that Hameed’s death is like a lit match flung on dry wood. But the film reveals the hypocrisy and double standards that are actually at work.

The humour is broad as well as cuttingly sharp. When the Hameed matter reaches a magistrate, his attempt to understand why Kishen converted points to more urgent problems than religious affiliation.

Shafaat Khan’s skill for creating absurdity as well as tragedy is at its peak in the iconic courtroom scene, led by the acclaimed actor Kishore Pradhan as the nonplussed magistrate. “Every person living in Hindustan is a Hindu,” thunders the lawyer in the Hameed-is-Kishen corner. This sequence, like so many others in Dekh Tamasha Dekh, is as much about India in the 2010s as today.

It’s remarkable what the film gets away with. It’s also clear that a film like this would simply not have been possible today.

A movie that skewers self-serving politicians who rile up the populace and allow a riot or two to take place without caring for the consequences? Dekh Tamasha Dekh, purportedly inspired by an actual incident, is a news report masquerading as a satire.

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