What if German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche were to view one of the most iconic scenes from popular Indian cinema history: the scene from the film Deewaar (1975) where Shashi Kapoor famously tells Amitabh Bachchan, “Mere paas maa hai”?
Nietzsche would be totally unimpressed by Shashi Kapoor’s self-righteous declaration! But what about what triggered it? The anger and resentment that Vijay—played by Amitabh Bachhan—has grown up with all these years.
Vijay grew up with the resentment of wanting to right the wrongs of history, to reverse the false moral verdict imposed upon his father, following which he and his brothers’ hands were inscribed with the words, “Mera Baap Chor Hai,” or “My father is a thief.”
Nietzsche’s response would correspond to four of his writings.
First, “On Redemption,” from Thus Spoke Zarathustra!
According to Nietzsche, the will wants to change the past. But it discovers that the past is unchangeable. And the inability to reverse the past creates hostility towards the present. So, the will becomes hostile towards time itself, and everything that belongs in that time.
Vijay’s father’s humiliation belongs to a past that he cannot reverse. Nietzsche would tell Vijay not to forgive his enemies or that revenge is wicked or that God is watching! Rather, he would tell Vijay that the his anger could be redirected to something in his personal identity in the present.
Second, On the Genealogy of Morality!
Here, he writes that morality in human society begins through an opposition to an external enemy. Nietzsche here distinguishes between noble morality and slave morality.
Noble morality would be a triumphant saying of “yes” to oneself, whereas slave morality would be a kind of a quixotic “no” to everything perceived to lie outside the self.
So Vijay’s problem according to Nietzsche would not be that he is responding to a humiliation that happened a long while ago, but the real problem would be that it is not creating the beginning of a new kind of self-assertion.
Third, Beyond Good and Evil!
Nietzsche wrote of prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge as characteristics of noble morality. Revenge according to Nietzsche is not some kind of moral inferiority or weakness. But revenge should not come from an unresolved attachment to a humiliation of the past. It should rather stem from an abundance of power.
Finally, to return to On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche talks about forgetting and forgetfulness not as an intellectual weakness, but rather forgetfulness is a beautiful generative power for necessary psychological healing. Nietzsche compared the person who was unable to forget to someone suffering from chronic indigestion.
Vijay’s problem is not that he has not been able to forget his father’s humiliation, but that is surely a problem. The bigger problem is that he has never been able to digest it psychologically.
While his brother seems to have wiped off the letters, the words that were inscribed on their hands, Vijay is still carrying their marks in his heart.
And maybe that is what Ravi’s words actually mean when he says, “Mere paas maa hai.” That belonging to the mother and belonging to a greater identity than his father’s humiliation has helped him grow in life.
But then that does not mean that in the end the audience claps for Vijay because, after all, he is the hero of the film.
So, if God is dead, so is Vijay. And for the masses, Vijay is the God the audience would mourn over and over again. So, there you have it, Nietzsche! All writing and no dying makes Nietzsche a dull philosopher, who doesn’t understand Hindi cinema, at all.
