Veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal’s Welcome to Sajjanpur (2008) opens with a cautionary tale of changing the names of cities for political gains. While introducing the titular fictional village, the protagonist, Mahadev, says Jawaharlal Nehru changed Durjanpur (‘land of rogues’) to Sajjanpur (‘land of gentle folk’) after Independence. He recalls that the residents of Durjanpur were decent, but after the name was changed to Sajjanpur, all of them turned into scoundrels.

A decade later, Benegal notices a similar situation playing out in Uttar Pradesh, where the Yogi Adityanath government changed the name of Allahabad to Prayagraj.

On a whim

“It’s so silly,” says the 84-year-old filmmaker. “Tomorrow, you will say, ‘No, I think we don’t like the name Hyderabad, it’s too Muslim sounding, so let’s change it.’”

Set at a time when the village is going to the polls, Welcome to Sajjanpur explores several facets of electoral politics. Muslims being marginalised and being branded as ISI agents is one such. “Communalism has constantly come into play at election time in our country because this is an area we continue to feel sensitive about,” Mr. Benegal says.

He feels that India, as it stands today, is largely at peace with itself, and communal comments are used essentially to strengthen a party’s political base at election time. “The fact is that we have a very large majority of Hindus and it becomes their responsibility to see that minority communities don’t feel threatened and democracy is a system designed for that,” he says.

‘Bigger than party’

Mr. Benegal’s regard for a democratic system is championed in Welcome to Sajjanpur, where a transgender woman defeats a local goon accused of murder in the panchayat elections. She fights the elections with a development agenda, while the goon relies on arm-twisting and fear-mongering. The filmmaker, who identifies his political ideology as “slightly Left of centre”, says the problem in a democracy arises when a leader becomes bigger than their party. “We saw that happen during the time of Indira Gandhi and [Jawahar Lal] Nehru, and we have a similar situation today,” Mr. Benegal says.

Over the past four decades, the filmmaker’s works have reflected the changing landscape of Indian politics. “I have looked at the system in so many different ways, right from my early documentaries,” he recalls. “Whether one likes it or not, one reacts to the world and country one lives in.”

The filmmaker points to his films such as Ankur (1974), which chronicles the downfall of the feudal system in rural India, Nishant (1975), which references the Telangana movement, and Well Done Abba (2009), which dives deep into everyday bureaucracy burdening the common man.

Even as Hindi cinema has captured the dynamics of Indian politics over the years, the trend of releasing films for political gains in the run-up to the elections seem to be a recent occurrence. How does he analyse this trend? “When you make a film on a living leader, it either becomes a critique or a hagiography. If it is critique, then it can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, and useful in terms of understanding how that person reached that position of power. But if it is a hagiography, then it can easily fall under propaganda,” he says.

On the other hand is the question of censorship and curtailing the freedom of expression. Does he see that to be a threat under the current regime? “We tend to see censoring hands where there aren’t too many,” he says. “Although we have the censors behaving in utterly stupid ways, that is not necessarily because of the government.” He says the level of freedom of expression any ruling government allows is a good indicator of how insecure it is.

3 simple rules

The filmmaker shares three simple rules when it comes to casting his ballot. “On a municipal level, I vote for the small area and who I think is the best person there. On the State level, again I am concerned with the constituency where I am, and whether the person standing there really cares about the constituency. And when it comes to Parliament, one is concerned about national policies. I don’t go by the parties but whether the representatives are capable and what their beliefs are,” he says. “But one thing I will never do is vote for an Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram (‘frequent floor-crosser’).”