Aheli Moitra
In June, Netflix dropped a dystopian future fiction bomb—Leila. Set in 2047, the web series shows the future nation state of ‘Aryavarta’ that will leave viewers amply disturbed if they are plugged into factual reportage emanating from the Indian sub-continent today.
In the series, Aryavarta, which in Sanskrit translates to “abode of the noble or excellent ones (Aryas),” has achieved its destiny in 2047 through technological advancement, segregation of its population, birth control, punishing dissent, oppressing women and complete securitization. Only ‘pure blooded’ categories of human beings are to have the right to life; divided by humongous concrete walls, minorities, mixed blood children, women who like to decide for themselves and other anomalies can, well, go to hell. Hell, here, is signified by the other side of the wall where the poor have access to muddy, black, or no water, live amidst garbage mountains, breathing poisonous gases, living under black rain. Aryavarta is led by an all-powerful autocrat whose fans have helped him construct this dystopian nation, secure in their belief and propagation of a ‘pure race,’ their faith in a destiny contained only in lineage, their complete lack of empathy for human beings, upheld by principles like allowing access of water to only the rich.
The film aptly mirrors our times, of all the democracies and their values that are being run roughshod by ruling political parties that value race, religion, region, caste, tribe or gender over democracy and the merits of equality therein. With more young, educated youth joining the bandwagon of blood/race/colour politics, the series is, perhaps, not as much fiction as it is fact.
Umpteen examples are adrift. Recently, the President of the United States of America (USA) called for Congresswomen of colour, all citizens of the USA, to “go back” to fix the “totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” The irony of the people of Caucasian race themselves being immigrants to the USA was lost to the President, leave alone respecting the slave labour of immigrants of colour on whose backs the USA was built. In Iraq, the ISIS has routinely tortured or killed the minority Yazidis who have been forced to flee from place to place. Italy is willing to watch as thousands of refugees fleeing persecution drown off their shores. Mob lynching and demonizing of minorities, militarizing the majority, using rape as a tool of subjugation, more value to securitization over human rights are hallmarks of India today. A feeble few have protested the mass murder and eviction of the Rohingya from Myanmar. In a recent interview, Russia’s President declared that liberal values have “become obsolete.”
It is not so hard to find streaks of similar thinking on Nagaland’s horizon. Already, young technocrats writing in English have been promoting bloodlines, lineage and patriarchy as determinants of future Naga citizenship. Nobody knows where these politics will take the people but Leila provides a good view of the destination.
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