Teeja tera rang tha main to... is a haunting song. It plays in the background of the 2007 hit, Chak De India. The Indian hockey captain, a Muslim, gets branded as an anti-national because he makes a wrong call during a crucial match with Pakistan. Many years later, he redeems himself by coaching the down and out Indian women’s hockey team to win the World Cup. The song is about a man’s love for his country and his sense of nationhood. What hits you when you see this film or hear its lyrics is how far Indian films have come in dealing with the country’s problems. Even 10 years ago, using the word Muslim or Pakistan or Pakistani would have been politically incorrect. But films such as A Wednesday, Sarfarosh, Aamir, Guru, Black Friday, Company, Khosla Ka Ghosla, among scores of others, have no qualms about showing the warts of India — the prejudices and the injustices that go on in the name of caste, religion, colour, class or money. If popular cinema is a mirror to society, it has been performing this task rather well of late. For those of you shaking their head in disagreement, I would say forget the song and dance. That is part of our narrative style. Even Slumdog Millionaire and Moulin Rouge used that to critical acclaim. Look at the stories — Omkara mirrors the political rot in UP to tell a Shakespearean tale. Apharan is a gripping look at the business of kidnapping in Bihar. Gangaajal is an outstanding film about the Bhagalpur blindings. Even the recent Wake up Sid is a startlingly honest look at the aimless narcissism of youth. Lage Raho Munnabhai, Rang De Basanti, Lashkya, Taare Zameen Par, the list could go on.This is good because this sort of common ground, of shared grief or prejudices or injustices, is what finally helps society move forward. Compare the Partition to the Holocaust to understand that.
One of the biggest reasons the Partition still remains a sore spot is because we never had the cultural chest-beating that popular art forms, with the power to influence millions of people, provide. Think of the Second World War and the killing of millions of Jews. There was an outpouring of grief in books, films, television shows, plays and so on. While these cannot erase such scars, they improve society’s ability to handle them. We never had that with the Partition in spite of its impact on our collective psyche. Perhaps because we did not want to deal with the possible conflict. So, except for Saadat Hasan Manto’s writings or MS Sathyu’s Grama Hawa (1973), there were very few books, plays or films written on the Partition. Many years later, TV shows like Tamas and Buniyaad handled it well. The fact that Hindi films, one of the most popular art forms, have begun to tackle these things in their own way, is wonderful. You could argue that they did it earlier too. Yes they did in the 50s and the 60s with films like Anpadh, Bandini or Sujata. Much of this stopped after the studio system broke up. For many years during the licence raj, the businessman was the villain followed by politicians and cops. In that sense, films did reflect what was happening, but they did not tackle contentious issues and prejudices head on, the way they do now. Take the whole Hindu-Muslim issue. For years, the stock Muslim character in Hindi films was a sweet uncle or chacha who everyone loves. Films rarely tackled issues like, say, a Hindu-Muslim marriage and how society deals with it. There was the odd Dharamputra (about a Muslim kid brought up by a Hindu family) or Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro. Most, however, did not find popular success.
Many years back when I was younger, I remember being the only idiot in a Mumbai theatre who cheered when the hero, Arvind Swamy, in Mani Ratnam’s Bombay, says: “My wife or I are not Muslim or Hindu, we are Indians.” In that sullen silence, it hit me that others did not agree with that sentiment. Since we had never discussed these prejudices or tried to tackle them, they had frozen, just like the emotions of the people in that theatre. The thawing happens when these things are discussed openly and films provide a forum to do that. If all popular art forms help push the social envelope bit by bit, then Hindi films are finally doing their bit after a longish break.
The author is a media consultant
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