War Films Are
Right Up
The Parivar's Street
By Saibal Chatterjee
The
Hindustan Times
25 November, 2003
The
steady rise of the rightwing on the Indian political stage over the
past decade has impacted popular Hindi cinema in two crucial ways. One,
it
has fuelled a plethora of feel-good "model Hindu" family dramas.
The other is panning out before our eyes at this precise moment. The
next 12 months or so will witness the release of a larger number of
war films than the Mumbai movie machine has cranked out in its entire
history.
It is no coincidence
that all these films deal, in one way or another, with the perfidies
of Pakistan while singing paeans to the courage and commitment of India's
brave young soldiers. No wonder the current rulers of India simply adore
Bollywood. An influential section of the film industry has willingly
accepted the onus of furthering the one cause that is central to the
perpetuation of the might of the rightwing - kindling and sustaining
the fire of patriotism in the hearts of the masses. Hasn't anybody around
here heard the old adage about patriotism being the last resort of the
scoundrel?
The grateful government
is dying to hand over one of the last bastions of meaningful Indian
cinema - the country's official international film
festival - to the mainstream Mumbai industry by shifting the annual
event to its backyard, Goa. It is obviously a reward for a job well
done. From Sooraj Barjatya's sugarcoated odes to the pure, selfless
Hindu way of life, Maine Pyar Kiya and Hum Aapke Hain Koun, to the all-is-hale-and-hearty-in-good-old-India
melodramas produced by the Yash Chopra school of escapist filmmaking
to the brazen jingoism of Anil Sharma's Gadar - Ek Prem Katha to the
upcoming spate of films designed to fan neo-nationalistic fervour, Bollywood
has kept the saffron flag flying - overtly and covertly.
The leading lights
of the mainstream film industry have clung to political patronage for
dear life. A pliant mass media is exactly what purveyors of Hindutva
- or any intolerant, exclusivist line of thinking - need to propagate
their worldview and keep hatred and distrust of Pakistan on the boil.
In all these years
of its existence, the Hindi film industry had made only four major films
that had war in the backdrop - Haqeeqat, Hindustan Ki Kasam, both helmed
by Chetan Anand, Upkar, actor Manoj Kumar's directorial debut, and the
defiantly kitschy Lalkar, produced by Ramanand Sagar, the man who went
on to contribute television's Ramayan and Shri Krishna to the
increasing religiosity of the nation's popular culture.
Why have Hindi war
films been so few and far between? The primary reason for the reluctance
of Mumbai filmmakers to tackle the genre is the demand for realism that
it necessarily makes on them. Bollywood has rarely been comfortable
with anything other than escapist fare. That perhaps explains why even
the few war films that have been made in Mumbai have allowed, with perhaps
the exception of Haqeeqat, concessions to established narrative conventions
and incorporated songs and comic interludes. Will we ever get to see
a no-frills, gritty war film in Hindi? Highly unlikely unless a Ramgopal
Varma rises above his obsession with the underworld and the twilight
zone.
Significantly, the
war movies that Mumbai has produced over the years have all followed
a major military face-off. Haqeeqat was released in 1964, two years
after the 1962 war with China. It pulled no punches when it came to
its anti-China stance.
After the 1965 war
with Pakistan, Manoj Kumar unleashed the ultra-nationalistic Upkar,
about an upright farmer who gives up his land and joins the Indian Army.
The box office success of the film emboldened the actor-producer-director
enough for him to recycle the formula all through his career, often
with great success.
Chetan Anand was
back with another war film after the 1971 Indo-Pak military confrontation
over Bangladesh, Hindustan Ki Kasam (1973), but this time around, he
failed to make much headway at the box office. A year earlier, Ramanand
Sagar had made Lalkar, a film that extolled the courage
of soldiers in the face of extreme adversity but had little to deliver
by way of cinematic excellence. J.P. Dutta's LOC - Kargil promises to
be a super-refined version of the Lalkar formula.
While the technical
attributes of Hindi cinema may have improved beyond recognition in the
intervening years, the avowed intention of the war films lined up for
release in 2003-04 is no different from what it was when Ramanand Sagar
made Lalkaar. It would be particularly interesting to see how Anil Sharma's
under-production Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Saathiyon shapes up. Will the
bitter harvest he reaped with the Rs 55-crore Gadar sequel, Hero,
about a bellicose Indian spy who single-handedly thwarts a Pakistani
bid to acquire an Islamic Bomb, force him to tone down the shrillness
of
his pop patriotic rhetoric a touch or will he push for an even higher
decibel level?
It won't be surprising
if he opts for the latter course. The climate is just right for stepping
up the Pakistan-bashing exercise a few notches. For the men in power,
the situation is ideal - while one section of the industry churns out
cinematic opium for the masses in the form of designer love stories,
another reminds the people how crucial it is to be ready to lay down
one's life for the motherland even as - this, of course, remains unsaid
on the screen -- the politicians cynically and with impunity exploit
the system to feather their own nests.
Until well into
the 1990s, one important film censorship guideline barred the mention
of the "enemy nation". Once that long-standing restriction
was lifted - again, it wasn't just a stray administrative decision but
a cold, calculated political chessboard move - Gadar struck. And now,
there is no stopping the
you-have-to-hate-Pakistan-if-you-love-India juggernaut.
The suspicion with
which the censors (and by extension the Information and Broadcasting
Ministry) and the Sangh Parivar view independent documentaries and music
videos is of a piece with the overall attitudinal shift that has occurred
in the corridors of power since the early 1990s.
Anybody who nurtures fascistic tendencies has an innate impatience with
truth and independent documentary filmmakers are an evil he can do
without. So he will clamp down on Anand Patwardhan's War and Peace,
but merrily let Gadar slip through the sieve.
The incipient governmental
drive against "raunchy" music videos - granted that some of
them are indeed nakedly exploitative - is another manifestation of the
growing intolerance for any form of counter-culture. Counter-cultures
exist
beyond the pale of official control and that's a situation that a rightist
government can never countenance.
The dramatic increase
in the production of war films is a clear sign that the battle for creative
freedom may have been lost. The war, however, remains to be fought.