As a part of thinking Activity of a Tale of tube by Jonathan Swift , here I write a blog about religious controversy in movie Oh My God!
Identify any one movie/web series/song/poem/novel which talk about the sensitive topic like religion. Write in brief about it and explain what kind questions are raised through that work.
So much about religion is spoken every day in India. But it somehow still doesn’t seem enough. While it started as a personal connection to the divine power, religion has become rather commercial in the modern times. Age old customs are still in practice today even though times have now drastically changed. Some religious practices result in discrimination amongst gender, race, color and more.
This is seriously a massive issue that exists in our society and over the past few years, we have seen many Bollywood films address the issues. Obviously, many of these films faced protests and a lot of pressure across the nation from political parties and religious groups.
OMG – Oh My God! is a 2012 Indian Hindi language satirical comedy-drama film written and directed by Umesh Shukla, The film's core plot is based on 2001 Australian film The Man Who Sued God, and produced by Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, S Spice Studios, Grazing Goat Pictures and Playtime Creations. The storyline is based on a Gujarati stage-play entitled Kanji Virudh Kanji, originally written by co-writer Saumya Joshi, with Bhavesh Mandalia as an additional co-writer. The film features Paresh Rawal and Akshay Kumar in the lead roles, along with Mithun Chakraborty, Om Puri, Govind Namdeo, Poonam Jhawer, Puja Gupta and Mahesh Manjrekar in pivotal roles.
OMG- Oh My God! Movie Official Trailer
In a country like India that is widely God-fearing, a film like OMG Oh My God, that fearlessly and unwaveringly raises fingers at the commonplace commercialization of religious customs, is certainly an audacious attempt. Oh My God shouldn’t be mistaken to be a film that endorses atheism. Rather it questions blind faith.
Storyline of the movie Oh My God!
Kanji Lalji Mehta (Paresh Rawal), a middle-class atheist, owns a shop of Hindu idols and antiques in Mumbai. He makes fun of religious activities around him and one such day, a low-intensity earthquake hits the city, and Kanji's shop is the only shop that is destroyed. His family and friends blame this on his atheism.
At the insurance office, Kanji learns that the disaster claim does not cover any damage caused by natural calamities classified under "Act of God". Running out of options, he decides to sue God but fails to find a lawyer for such a lawsuit. Hanif Qureshi (Om Puri), a poor Muslim lawyer, helps him file the case after Kanji decides to fight on his own. Legal notices are sent to the insurance company as well as to religious priests, Siddheshwar Maharaj, Gopi Maiyya, and their group's founder, Leeladhar Swamy (Mithun Chakraborty), summoning them to court as representatives of God.
As the court case commences and gains traction for its bizarre quality, Kanji finds himself facing armed fundamentalists and harassment, with his mortgage bank occupying the house, and his wife and kids leaving him. He is rescued from all of this by Krishna Vasudev Yadav (Akshay Kumar), who claims to be a real estate agent originally from Gokul, Uttar Pradesh, but appears to do fantastical tricks not possible for a human.
In a steadfast devout nation, this film has the nerve to openly point out how religious traditions like pouring milk on idols in temples or offering sheets of flowers in mosques or burning candles outside churches are merely moneymaking gimmicks, devised in the name of God. The film rightly points out how devotees, without a second thought, would make divine donations but hardly even consider charity for the needy.
Since the film is primarily argument-oriented, it heavily relies on dialogues and it’s important to point here that the lines are pensively penned, making even the improbable seem persuasive. Kanjibhai draws your attention when he says ‘ Dharm insaan ko bebas banata hain ya antankwadi’ (Religion makes humans either vulnerable or terrorist). Subsequently Krishna enlightens ‘ Tum kisi se uska dharm mat cheeno, phir woh tumhe apna dharm bana lenge’ (If you take away a human’s religion, they will make you their religion). Perhaps one can attribute the sensibility and thoughtfulness of the written material to the Gujarati play ‘ Kanji Virrudh Kanji’ on which the film is based.
The lawsuit causes a public outcry. On Krishna's advice, Kanji goes to the media and gets wide coverage. Many people in a similar situation join him in the lawsuit, causing the amount of claims to skyrocket and Catholic priests and Muslim Mullahs to also be summoned as defendants. When the court demands written proof that the earthquake was an 'Act of God,' Krishna steers Kanji toward holy books like Bhagavad Gita, The Quran and The Bible. Kanji reads them and finds a passage in each that says the world and all that happen in it, from beginning to end, is a creation of God and comes from God's will alone. This strengthens his case and increases public support. However, Kanji suffers a stroke in court and is rushed to the hospital where he goes into a coma and is paralyzed. When he opens his eyes after a month, he finds Krishna, who reveals that he is God, and proves it by curing Kanji completely. He further reveals that He created the entire world, animals and humans but religion was created by humans, and he was the one who destroyed Kanji's shop because he sought to punish the godmen who showed his fear to the public, to earn money. He adds that he created the entire world and thus doesn't like to live in temples contrary to what the godmen claims and he is not interested in the offerings he gets from devotees. Instead, he created millions of humans who die of hunger and would be glad if those offerings were given to them instead. He figured out that an atheist like Kanji would end up exposing them if he destroys his Shop, and thus destroyed it by causing the disaster and started to help him with lawsuit by appearing as a human and befriending him, and revealed himself in his true form so that Kanji realizes that although he does exist, he doesn't live in temples, but in every creature he created.
Kanji learns that the lawsuit's verdict was in his favor and religious organizations were ordered by the court to pay the compensation to all the plaintiffs; people have begun revering Kanji himself as a god. Leeladhar, Gopi Maiyya, and Siddheshwar have taken advantage of this by opening a temple dedicated to Kanji and accumulating millions in donations. Krishna explains to Kanji that his job as God is to show people right and wrong - people do with it what they will. Kanji decides to fight back. He breaks his own statue, admonishing the crowd about trusting in God-men. He advises them to search for God in themselves and in others, not in statues; that God is everywhere, not just in temples, and faith should come from within. He tells them not to believe in fraudulent God-men, as their job is to turn religion into business.
Krishna looks on proudly as Kanji speaks, then vanishes when Kanji tries to reach him after. Kanji is reunited with his family and sees Krishna's key chain on the ground. When he is about to keep it, he hears Krishna's voice, telling him to get rid of the key chain as fear of God and reliance on religious objects was what he'd fought against all this time. Kanji smiles and throws it away, watching as it disappears in the sky with a flash.
Oh My God is moral science lesson that doesn't sound preachy. This is a film that not only entertainment and inspires but also enlightens.
Lessons to be learnt from OMG - Oh My God
OMG – Oh My God' is an exception from the films that release in Bollywood for the way it tackles a thorny issue and actually leaves you thinking.
The structure of this movie pits an atheist versus god. Now, the very notion of being an atheist in a country with the maximum number of gods is baffling to many Indians. We see God everywhere and want to share our experiences with the divine power with others. Therefore, an atheist always finds himself being the subject of pity. “Poor soul. God’s love and power have yet to touch him,” the believers say to themselves and their neighbors. 'OMG' manages to tell the story of god from an atheist’s point of view by making the latter a strong figure. This is the first film where despite getting pity from others, Kanji Lalji Mehta (Paresh Rawal) does not arouse any sympathy from viewers. He is strong enough to stand by his beliefs even when his life has hit rock bottom.
Nor is Kanji painted out as a weirdo. His arguments are logical and to the point. Pushed against a corner, he knows what he must do and never shies away from the fight. And the fight is huge. Kanji, and the movie, take on the centuries old system of worship in the country, not an easy task by any means. Fair warning if you haven’t seen the film yet: Spoilers ahead.
'OMG' talks about the cause of humanity over idol worship. This is one of the strongest points of the film. It does not shy away from telling that people should help others as and when they can instead of blindly going to religious places and placing their offerings. As a society we are so inured to any suggestion that our faith has gone haywire over so many years that making a stand against idol worship is truly commendable. But if the example of a beggar drinking milk flowing from a gutter that has been filled from worshippers pouring the drink over a shelving to sustain himself doesn’t rouse people, I don’t know what will.
The movie also tackles the thorny issue of Godmen. These ‘agents of God’, who in real life have been accused of amassing property worth crores, being manipulated by politicians and even having sex videos of them circulated in recent years, still have a huge following among their fans. The thinly veiled reference to various Godmen in the movie is nothing short of courageous and the film’s directors deserve applause for bringing out the hypocrisy of this tribe in the limelight. If nothing, at least we should ask these Godmen to be frank and clear about their business transactions. While Kanji comes off as being shrewd and manipulative of other people’s faith in the beginning, it is only towards the end when he himself is turned into a God to be milked money out of, do audiences get a taste of how badly religion has been taken over by vested interests.
One of the most interesting points of the movie is the difference people need to know between being God-loving and God-fearing. Love of God will mean living in peace and quietude in such a way that their religion will never harm any other human. However, a God-fearing person will be either very shrewd or very angry in case anyone defames his religion. Kanji says that religion gives birth to only two types of people – cowards and terrorists. Truer words were never spoken. The example of Sai Baba, who lived in penury but whose statue is now adorned with gold is a telling example of the state of affairs among us. We shower a part of our ill-gotten gains to God, as if giving him a part of our profits will absolve us our own sins.
It is high time we realized the highlight of the movie and applied it in our lives so that we can spend our lives in peace and not be bothered about terms like Hindu terrorists and Muslim jihadis. For it is true what the movie says, “Where there is Religion, there is no Truth, and where there is Truth, Religion is not needed.”
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