Agnihotri’s disdain for a person like that is evident as is his distrust in NGO head, Indira Joseph Roy (Mandira Bedi), who screams lines like “No! That is misogynistic” and “Capitalism will kill you with burgers” (to an auditorium full of critics who have just been served the same). Main historian hoon mujhe bohut saari batein pata hai (I am a historian, I know a lot)” as a well thought out rebuttal. Joshi’s character, Aiysha, is the most interesting of the lot, as she embodies the archetype of an “armchair intellectual” (she is literally in a wheelchair) and her only motive apparently is to maintain her top position on the bestseller list. The characters - who are part of aġ2 Angry Men (1957)-style committee formed to debate and investigate Shastri’s mysterious death - are shrill and loud. The filmmaker wishes to be subtle by not taking names (for the most part) and even censoring them in “official documents” but clearly subtlety is not Agnihotri’s forte. The Tashkent Files ’ agenda comes clear only in its climax, although it's a no-brainer, as the film keeps referring to the Emergency in as many ways as possible. Not to mention the casting of the vocal critic of the current regime, Naseeruddin Shah (albeit to play a malicious minister). Then there are some facile and tokenistic “balanced” arguments, or “war of narratives” as a historian character, Aiysha (Pallavi Joshi) puts it, which are bound to throw off right-wing ideologues completely. It’s quite amusing how the film appropriates terms like “anti-national”, “presstitutes” and “fake news”, which have famously been the armour of the current regime and its followers. How did the second Prime Minister of India die? That’s a question that could very well make for a captivating thriller with its many conspiracy theories but the filmmaker uses this opportunity to take down left, secular and socialist ideologies and institutions, in a fashion that is unintentionally comical. It’s quite apparent that Agnihotri is presenting an ideological slide show using Shastri’s death as a conduit. India, he insists, became a colony again ten years after Shastri died. The ones who are not a terrorist, it appears, is Lal Bahadur Shastri, around whose death the film is centred, and the ones who fought against Indira Gandhi’s Emergency.
Through his characters, he classifies them -NGOs are “social terrorists”, Supreme Court judges are “judicial terrorists”, writers and historians are “intellectual terrorists” and the media, of course, is “TRP terrorists”.
The Tashkent Files begins with a dedication to “all honest journalists of India”, and thus begins, quite early on, the filmmaker’s not-so-discreet jibes at all the institutions and ideologies, he believes, have wrecked the nation.
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