I am scheduled to return to Mumbai on November 18. Since time is incomprehensible now and that seems a lifetime away, I'm doing a series on Mumbai through films. Send in your suggestions!
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[Spoilers ahead. Also, warning for brief mentions of sexual assault.]
Nayakan is a fictionalised version of the story of Varadaraja Mudaliar, an underworld don. In the film, he is known as Velu Nayakan. (Nayakan also means "chief".)
Most of the events take place in Dharavi; some others with Gateway of India and Jehangir library as backdrop. It's the ideal setting for the themes of systemic inequality and capitalist liberalism. But it also poses questions that are relevant everywhere today as wealth gaps increase and as we all reckon with questions about the police's role.
What the film is really about is violence. Velu's origin story is forged by violence: he flees to Bombay from Thoothukudi after avenging the death of his father, a union leader, at the hands of police. He grows up in the slums doing petty smuggling. We are told he is a good person... because he hires a child prostitute but lets her study instead of sleeping with her. (The bar is low for crime dons. Also, he marries her later.) His place as a leader is cemented, again on the back of revenge, when the community protects him when he is wanted for killing the policeman who killed his adoptive father. Being a good person, he financially supports the slain policeman's family and later hires his mentally ill son as an assistant.
That the slum land and people are disposable pawns in the government-business-police game is stated in no uncertain terms. The house of the Seth who plans to build a factory over the slum is obviously in stark contrast to the slum houses, and the slum-dwellers' rightful anger is taken out on it. However, when Velu builds something of a mansion of his own, with his smuggling gains, it doesn't go down badly with the others as he continues to act as an intermediary between them and the cruel law enforcement. He pays for their medical expenses and mingles with them in festivals.
The spiral of violence continues. He embarrasses some other dons; they kill his wife; his men kill them. Velu is not unaware of this - he discourages his son from following in his steps. His unheeding son ultimately dies in a suicide mission to kill a witness.
A pivotal scene features a moral conundrum, versions of which we have to deal with even today. A police superintendent, having lost faith in the justice system, approaches Velu to take revenge on the powerful men who raped his daughter. Velu's men do so, as Velu's horrified daughter looks on. A relatively sheltered young woman, she still believes in the courts' monopoly over the right to administer justice. In a scene mirroring Velu playfully chasing his children earlier, he and his right-hand man have a showdown with his daughter, culminating in him hitting her. He explains that sometimes killing is necessary to keep others alive, while she contends that all violence is wrong, and who is he to dispense justice. She clearly personifies a liberal outlook, and eventually marries a policeman to "atone for her sins".
It is a question we still have to grapple with as a society: when violence is built into the system, isn't violence justified in combating it - when peaceful methods fail? Can we equate violence coming from different directions? Crime is a social construct - some murder is sanctioned, some is not. Some murder takes the form of slow impoverishment and this will continue to exist even if police brutality (for example) in its current form ceases, or if there are no outright casteists/classists/etc in the system. That said, this girl did not ask to be in the middle of this, and lose her mother and later her brother (apart from her father slapping her).
Additionally, it is still very much the case that when it comes to the vast majority of sexual violence cases, the justice system is of little help at best and capable of further traumatising violence at worst.
Eventually, the very police officer who tore down Velu's extralegal ambulances and other efforts to help his people, seeks his help in maintaining peace when Velu is sentenced. "Our aims are the same; the only difference is that I wear a uniform and you don't.", he says without a hint of irony. The film portrays this as a sort of reconciliation between the lifelong enemies, Nayakan and the state, but it is quite unsatisfactory to the viewer. Ultimately, Nayakan is released but immediately killed by the earlier-mentioned son of the policeman. He is finally on the other end of the filial thirst for revenge.
"Are you a good person or a bad person?" asks his grandson before the sentencing. He is unable to answer. The film also doesn't take a side. There is clearly an ethical problem with the system we live in. While quietly complying with it can't be morally right, Velu was made an enemy of the state as a mere child. (மான்போல வந்தவனை யார் அடித்தாரோ - Who could have hurt this innocent boy, asks the musical refrain.) Fighting the system was the natural route for him, but it thrust his loved ones into the cycle and took them away, one by one. Was this fair on them?
The film doesn't provide easy answers as there aren't actually any, at least at an individual level. Really, the only thing to do is to rethink these systems altogether. Over in America, defunding the police has quickly become a less fringe political position. Everywhere, millennials and generation Z are disillusioned with capitalism. Maybe the cycles of violence can indeed be broken in our lifetime.
