The Telegraph has been one of my favourite newspapers for many years now,” Prakash Jha tells us as we settle down for a chat in his suite at Aauris on Robinson Street. The man behind some of the most impactful films Bollywood has churned out in recent years — Mrityudand to Raajneeti to Aarakshan — was in Calcutta recently to kick-start the promotions for Jai Gangaajal in which Priyanka Chopra takes over from Ajay Gangaajal Devgn’s top cop. Jai Gangaajal also marks Jha’s debut as an actor.

You’ve started promoting Jai Gangaajaal a good 60 days before release. Any special reason why?

We have a whole lot to cover before the film releases. We don’t really have a lot of big faces in the film, except Priyanka Chopra, of course. Priyanka is now in the US shooting (her American TV show Quantico). I wanted to use this time to do as much promotions as I could. Normally, we don’t really get the time to spend a few days in each city when we promote films and I wanted to change that this time. We have a small film and it’s important for us to promote it as much as possible. 

And Calcutta’s your first pit stop…

I like starting things from Calcutta. I have very fond memories of the city right from my Damul (1985) days. I also came here to promote Raajneeti and Aarakshan. I feel that people here understand cinema better than anywhere else in the country.

Is Jai Gangaajal a sequel to Gangaajal or a completely different story?

The characters, the story, the backdrop, the issues… everything that we talk about in Jai Gangaajal is very new and very different from Gangaajal. The only similarity is that this film, too, deals with society’s equation with the police. But we are carrying the story forward 13 years later from Gangaajal and focusing on the limitations and the challenges that face our police force today. The police is a very strange species… nobody wants to go and meet them and no one wants that the police should come knocking on their door. And yet, we have to deal with them, whether we want to or not… and they are the ones who come to our rescue. I always find that very fascinating. Also, this film wants to tell you that we get the police we deserve. And because we don’t respect the police, the police doesn’t respect us. 

Is it a real-life story?

It’s made up of several stories that I stumbled upon as I spoke to a host of IPS officers. We are quick to blame the cops, but they work under so many pressures and restrictions. A top-level officer who I was speaking to told me, ‘Do you think the police can take any kind of action independently today?’ If there is a crime somewhere, the police act because someone wants them to act; the police stops because someone wants it to stop. So, the police has no independence of its own when it comes to investigating a crime and maintaining law and order. It’s very interesting… if you want to arrest somebody in today’s India, you will have to think 10 times because the arrest means you have to answer to so many people… Vidhan Sabha tak mudda lekar chale jayenge.

This is very different from the time when I was young… that time, the cop at the corner of the street was the dada of the locality and he could handle things at his level. Today, a cop is a kutta for everyone… then how and why do we expect them to work for us? 

The story of the law-and-order system in our country always resonates with the audience here. I have met people who have told me they have watched Gangaajal 40 or 50 times! I am like: ‘Why?!’ But they tell me they love the fact how we have shown the way the police function in this country… they find it shocking and amusing at the same time. 

And was a female protagonist this time essential to take the story forward?

Yes, that’s the requirement of the story… that’s what sets up my film beautifully. As the elections approach, an honest and upright officer is transferred and they bring in a woman officer (Priyanka’s Abha Mathur) thinking she won’t be a threat. The minister even tells her, ‘Tumhare liye toh golden posting hai’. It just turns out that she takes them head-on. Priyanka was always the first choice. We had been speaking about working together for a long time. When I was ready with the script, she got busy with Bajirao (Mastani). But we wanted to work together on this film so much that she squeezed out some time between Bajirao and Quantico and shot this.

She has become an amazing actress… she stunned me every day on set. The way she’s portrayed the character… every woman police officer will want to become like her and she will also inspire many young girls to at least think about joining the police. And the kind of reaction that I am getting to Priyanka in the trailer is exactly how people reacted to Ajay Devgn as a cop when the first trailer of Gangaajal came out.  

You make your big acting debut with this film. How did that happen?

I wrote the role, but as I met people and researched the character, I felt myself getting drawn to it.  He’s a bit of a corrupt guy… a smooth-talker. I felt that I got the nuances of that character very easily. He slowly got into my skin and I felt that I could play him well. And anyway, for sometime now, I have been thinking of acting. I have done direction, writing… this was one thing that was left, so I thought, ‘Why not?’
But I found acting tough in the sense that you are out there, you are exposed; as a director, you are not exposed. People watch a trailer and see the actor and say, ‘Kya idiot dikh raha hai!’ An actor is so vulnerable to criticism from all quarters. But if you ask me about my performance, I can say that I think I have done a good job (smiles).  Nothing stunning, but definitely competent.

Will this be a one-off or will we see more from the actor in you?

If there is a role in my film that I feel suits me, I will cast myself for sure. And if others feel that they want me as an actor in their films, then they are more than welcome to cast me (laughs). My appearance in the trailer left some of my peers shocked… they couldn’t see me as an actor. 

How do you react to criticism that you make only one kind of films?

If they think I only make films on issues, then that’s wrong. I try and highlight major social changes in my films. Mrityudand (1997) arose out of the Mandal Commission and the open market economy…. By the time I made Gangaajal six years later, the Mandal effect had saturated and the backwards were rising… one Yadav was killing another Yadav and that’s what I showed in Gangaajal. Apaharan (2005) dealt with industrialisation of crime. These are reflections of whatever is happening in society. Now, I feel the country is witnessing a new kind of politics. I feel now is a good time to revisit Raajneeti (smiles).

The censor board demanded many cuts from Jai Gangaajal, though you were finally lucky to get away with it. What is the fundamental problem with our film censorship?

The whole idea of censorship is fundamentally wrong. Why should I decide over what you should be deciding? Then that means I don’t trust your judgement, right? Who is Pahlaj Nihalani (censor board chairman) to tell people what to watch? I have faced censorship all the time, but Nihalani has taken the censor board to the dark ages. How can he even say that Jai Gangaajal should be an adult film? Is there any mindless violence or sexuality in my film? Is there any double-meaning song like his films used to have? My film has nothing like this. He’s such a confused man that he passed the word ‘saala’ in my trailer, but had objections to it in the film! Is he mad?! Saala kaun sa gaali hai, yaar? I asked him: ‘Why have you demanded these cuts?’ He said: ‘Yeh hamare sanskriti ke khilaaf hai’. I told him: ‘Tu sanskriti ka pehredaar banke baitha hai kya?!’ The irony is that Nihalani himself uses cuss words in every sentence he speaks. Such hypocrisy! These are dark days for us. 

Priyanka Roy

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