From Nehru to New India: Five films that capture Hindi cinema’s 75-year journey

One of the most powerful communication tools, cinema, has long been used by powers across nations to craft the thinking of its people. Close on the heels of the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin understood the power of the moving image. He set up a special department to communicate the virtues of Marx and the Communist Manifesto via cinema to the masses that couldn’t afford the opera or were illiterate to understand art. Unlike Russian cinema or early American cinema, which the Soviet imagery inspired, Indian cinema significantly inspired, and specifically, early Hindi cinema remained firmly rooted in Indian ethos for the most part.

A significant reason for this was that cinema could be used as a tool to evoke nationalism. In its early days, Indian cinema was promoted by the likes of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The former allowed his stories to be filmed, and the latter understood the medium’s power to evoke nationalism and inspired pioneering filmmakers such as Dhundiraj Govind’ Dadasaheb’ Phalke to make more films based on Indian mythology. It’s hardly surprising that Kavi Pradeep then chose to target the colonial masters with the patriotic song ‘Door hato Duniya walon’, he used a negative reference to the Axis powers’ German ho ya Japani’ only to get past British censorship.

Considering the ‘Indianess’ of our cinema, one would have imagined that the cinema of the 1950s would aid nation-building. While it did to a considerable extent, a new kind of narrative seeped into mainstream Hindi cinema that was inherently committed to socialism and, for good or worse, a deep-rooted communist ideology. This was due to the influx of talents such as writers (Krishan Chander, Ismat Chugtai, Rajindra Singh Bedi, Balraj Sahni), lyricists (Sahir Ludhianvi, Kaifi Azmi, Shailendra, Majrooh), and filmmakers (Chetan Anand, KA Abbas). Many were affiliated with Left-leaning organisations such as the Indian People’s Theatre Association. The so-called Progressives made it known that loving your nation was somewhere overlooking the stark reality of poverty and other ills of society, which, according to them, were supposed to have been eliminated with the freedom of India.

Mainstream Hindi cinema was practically run by the talent that didn’t like the idea of nationalism as it was known in the 1930s and 1940s. It created a template that celebrated India’s ‘tryst with destiny. Three of the most prominent male actors — Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand and Dilip Kumar — routinely imbibed Pandit Nehru’s personality traits in the characters they played to showcase the idea of Nehurivian socialism, which, in more ways than one, was the driving force of the generation. Not just the themes of films such as Naya Daur (1957) and Ganga Jumna (1961), but Nehruvian idealism also inspired many Dilip Kumar dialogues. A scene from Paigham (1960), where Kumar, a labour union leader, chastises an industrialist (Motilal) that money has value only because a mazdoor works hard to create, seems a paraphrasing of Pandit Nehru’s Independence Day speech from 1954 where he extols how we don’t look at the heavens to help us for we work hard and have hands, legs and brains to forge ahead.

In Naya Daur, considered the cinematic epitome of Nehruvian ideology, Kumar’s character tries to provide the human face, which needs to be considered before embarking on modernisation. It leaves the audience feeling guilty for what is presented as progress in the narrative. It’s the same sentiment Nehru reportedly conveyed to JRD Tata when he told him never to talk about the word profit as it was a dirty word.

While, on the one hand, Nehru was all about budding India, mainstream Hindi films interpreted that vision in a completely different manner. It’s interesting to see how Left-leaning industry insiders such as Majrooh or Sahir did not think much of Nehru’s fabled tryst with destiny. Majrooh was imprisoned for an anti-Nehru line in a poem - ‘कॉमनवेल्थ का दास है नेहरू, मार ले साथी जाने न पाए’ (Nehru is Commonwealth’s slave. Kill him, companion, make sure he doesn’t escape) and Sahir’s lines in Pyaasa (1957) asked for those who were proud of India to show themselves - ‘Jinhe Naaz hai Hind par woh Kahan hai.’

This also coincided with the emergence of Satyajit Ray and Bimal Roy whose cinema presented India in the light of the era. Films such as Pather Panchali (1955) or Do Bigha Zameen (1953) were considered masterpieces by the audiences and critics. Still, a near-obsession of the West with poverty and helplessness in third world countries and its celebration at festivals et al created two kinds of cinema — one that tried to talk about transforming the society (Naya Daur) or completely escapist fare that dominated a large part of the 1960s.

Commentators have waxed eloquent about the concept of ‘national cinema theory’ — ‘identity where a film is from and use the country to describe it. What is, then, India’s national cinema theory? Like the rest of the world, cinema in India, too, has been routinely used to create particular sentiments. The abject hopelessness that suddenly seemed to become the calling card of the young in India in the early 1970s with films such as Ray’s Pratidwandi (1970) and Gulzar’s Mere Apne (1971), a remake of Tapan Sinha’s Bengali film Apanjan (1968), can be traced to the Dilip Kumar-Vyjayanthimala starrer Leader (1964). One of the first to show criminal-political nexus, in the film, Kumar is the idol of the youth, and he fights a somewhat doomed battle with the political class — by the time the film ends, you lose all hope.

One of the greatest Indian films made during this period, Manoj Kumar’s Upkar (1967), spoke of the post-Nehru ‘Nav Nirman’ where the nation was ready to rebuild but found few takers within the industry. Instead, the sentiment that echoed for over two decades with the ‘Angry Young Man’ films of Amitabh Bachchan, the anti-hero films of the 1980s such as Arjun (1985), remade as Sathya (1988) in Tamil and Ankush (1986). This phase peaked out with Tinnu Anand’s Main Azaad Hoon (1989), a bad remake of Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe (1941). It was released when old ideals were dying, political turmoil was rife, and the youth expressed their disdain in new ways in India and worldwide. Main Azad Hoon laid it threadbare — youth had little hope in the system, and everyone would exploit them.

For a cinema that claims that it is inspired by society, mainstream Hindi films did not offer a single great film on the 1991 reforms that transformed the common person. The 1990s came to be known for the cinema of global India (read NRI) with Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995), Dil To Pagal Hai (1997) and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998). It further divided the audiences into tiers, and soon cinema that depicted anyone other than the upwardly mobile city slicker was relegated to the uncool category. Hindi cinema’s logic was straight — people will aspire to see the Yash Chopra-esque fare. It was only towards the end of the decade that one got to see a film that captured the then India as close as possible to reality in John Matthew Matthan’s Sarfarosh (1999) — a film that, in all likelihood, was the first to call out Pakistan’s ISI and ‘Bleed India with a thousand cuts’ policy.

In the first decade of the new century, films generally ‘rediscovered’ India and went on to celebrate the sentiment of nationalism across genres. Lagaan (2002) and Gadar-Ek Prem Katha (2001) explored the wrongdoing of the colonial masters across different eras, and Dil Chahta Hai (2001) put post-liberalised India on the silver screen. A few years later, Chak De! India (2007) presented a new template for patriotic film, which pleased critics and audiences alike. Ironically, the same critics would shake their heads at the sentiment a few years later when cinema started showcasing today’s New India.

In the last few years, popular cinema that found great acceptance with the audiences with Baahubali (2015), Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (2017), Sui Dhaaga: Made in India (2018), to name a few, has been called jingoistic and propagandist by critics and commentators. Nothing can be a bigger testimony of New India in cinema than Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019), and the reaction of the critics and audiences sums up the 75-year journey. The audiences lapped up a film that depicts an actual event where India avenged the brutal killing of its soldiers by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists in what was described as “the deadliest attack on security forces in Kashmir in two decades”. The critics labelled it “too bad to be given any credence in the public domain” and questioned the needless chest-thumping. Hindi cinema has come a long way in the last seven and a half decades. While a lot has changed, some things such as the disconnect of the critics, and the love of masses for some films remain the same.

So, here are the five films that capture Hindi cinema’s 75-year journey: Naya Daur, Upkar, Main Azaad Hoon, Sarfarosh and Uri: The Surgical Strike.

The writer is a film historian. Views expressed are personal.

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