Nor is the right-wing, nationalistic trend limited to Hindi cinema. SS Rajamouli’s RRR (Rise, Roar, Revolt) has a spectacular, inclusive, all-India appeal, that makes Bollywood’s right-wing films like The Kashmir Files and Uri look modest. It celebrates a fictionalised freedom fighter story, based on two real-life Andhra Pradesh political activists, Komaram Bheem (Jr NT Rama Rao ‘Tarak’) and Alluri Sitarama Raju ‘Ram’ (Ram Charan), set in 1920s India, with an explicitly glorifying right-wing tone. Yet, it is a cleverly inclusive film that also celebrates Muslims, a pretty Christian and tribals—but ends up with muddled political signals. Komaram Bheem (Jr NTR), a Gond leader from Telangana, goes to Delhi and runs into Alluri Sitarama Raju ‘Ram’ (Ram Charan), a police officer loyal to the Crown. They have a Sholay-style bromance as buddies-turn-foes-turn-buddies, before it becomes a Ramayana story with Ram and Sita. The film glorifies the right-wing—Ram the cop wears a janeu (sacred thread); transformed into Lord Rama, he wears a saffron dhoti, and people wave nationalist Vande Mataram flags with BJP-style lotus buds. But its hero Bheem also plays Akhtar, a good, brave, loyal Muslim, who reunites Rama and Sita. However, there are lots of mixed signals: Bheem the Gond pretends to be Akhtar the Muslim, who prays at a Shiva temple while making a snakebite cure for Ram. While checking all the boxes thus, the film falls between many stools—but the audience going for the big action doesn’t care about its politics. Ironically, this is V. Vijayendra Prasad’s story, who earlier wrote the pacifist Bajrangi Bhaijaan, and does a complete switcheroo here. Rajamouli’s previous actioner Baahubali the Beginning also had religious references to Shiva and Krishna.