Of Johnnys and Gaddars

Hahaha…don't worry I am not going to talk about Johnny Gaddar or Neil Nitin Mukesh. There is this random thought that’s running in my mind for a while, especially after watching an Italian film called Romanzo Criminale, which had this scene (NO SPOILERS) where a friend calls other JUDAS because he isn’t agreeing to this guy’s ideologies and wants a way out. It is indeed a compelling scene in the film, but what compelled me more was, the parable- Judas.

Judas- The Historical Character, who can aptly be called Johnny Gaddar (Judas was apparently designated to keep account of the "money bags") of the story, where he betrays Jesus into the hands of Romans.

Anyway rather getting into the details of the Judas story, I would like to come back to the actual topic: The Traitors. What makes a traitor a traitor??

The history of traitors is as old as the human history. From Vibhishana in Ramayan to Yuyutsu (one of the 100 Kauravas, who joined forces with Pandavas to battle against his own brothers) in Mahabharat . Despite being having an idiom in common usage for a household traitor dedicated to Vibhishana - घर का भेदी लंका ढाये; one might not consider Vibhishana as a traitor, just because he shook hands with Lord Rama and helped him in defeating/killing the greatest villain of them all- The Mighty Ravana and I believe most of the people don’t even know about Yuyutsu.

I always think shouldn’t these two guys be labeled as traitors for deceiving their own brothers??Motives of a traitor can be different, the outcomes may be different, but deceiving act remains the deceiving act, and a deceiver remains a deceiver. Calling a spade a spade!! ehh…

I still remember I came across this word TRAITOR for the first time in my 5^th Standard History book (traitors have a long history, I tell you), where there was this chapter on The Battle of Plassey in which Nawaab Siraj Ud Daulah was defeated by the British thanks to a traitor Mir Jafar. (The fact that was omitted in the book was - Mir Jafar succeeded Siraj-Ud-Daulah as the eighth Nawab of Bengal. It is still unknown to me if he was a good ruler, but the word "mirjafar" in Bengali and the phrase "meer jafar" in Urdu are now synonymous with traitor.)

Despite of the fact that Mir Jafar was a traitor, the teacher asked us to mark the question on him IMP. IMP as we all know stands for an important question, which means you have to mug the answer (no matter how long it is), as the IMP questions always have a better chance of being asked in examinations. I am mugging-impaired since childhood (my marksheets can vouch for this), so I tried to understand the story behind the answer and started hating Mir Jafar more than my classmates (who hated him because of the lengthy reply they had to mug, anyway that’s another story).

I grew up and came to know more about the traits of other traitors like Raja Jaichand of Kannauj, who was responsible for Prithviraj Chauhan's defeat at the hands of Muhammad Ghori (though this story was always omitted in our history books, for some known unknown reasons). I don’t know why I always had this feeling that, Sudhir’s character in DEEWAAR was named Jaichand after this historical traitor only.

Nevertheless, since I saw the film and I am unable to digest the fact that unlike Judas, these traitors from our history and culture have always being deprived of their due credits from media, films and pop culture. हिन्दुस्तानी गद्दारों के साथ ऐसा अन्याय क्यों??

P.S. What will you call a backstabbing friend of yours??

1. Judas

2. Jaichand

3. Mir Jafar

4. Johnny Gaddar