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The book focuses as much on the making of Mother India as
on its critical appraisal. The author sees the film in multiple
contexts, be it social, cultural or historical. She explores the
relationship of the principal characters with mythological
figures. The female protagonist is identified with several
goddesses, namely Bharat Mata, Lakshmi, Radha, Durga and Kali.
But the identification seems somewhat contrived in the case of
other characters.
Regarding the
famous finale, in which Radha shoots her son Birju to uphold dharma,
Chatterjee rightly observes: "His death reinforces the fact
that representations of desire for protest and change in popular
cinema in India have always given way to normalisation of the
social order—to the maintenance of the status quo."
The creation is
not treated independently of the creator. Zooming in on the
complex personality of Mehboob, the author sees him as a
"good patriarch" whose alter ego is none other than
Radha, "one who is untouched by bodily demands or
troubles." Although regarded as a titan of the film world,
Mehboob used to bow and scrape before any figure of authority.
The insignia of his production company was the communist hammer
and sickle, even though the film-maker was a devout Muslim who
believed that "wohi hota hai jo manzur-e-khuda hota hai."
From
experience, however, he might as well have replaced "khuda"
in this line with the censor board. Mehboob clashed in vain with
the censors many a time during his career, Mother India
being no exception. Several sequences were deleted, including
the one in which famine-hit villagers were to be refused help by
moneylender Sukhi-lala. In another scene, Radha was to tell
Birju: "Son, if you kill one Sukhi, another will be
born." Birju was to reply: "Mother, if one Birju dies,
a thousand Birjus will be born’’. The censors saw
"red" in this exchange and snip, snip went the
scissors.
The film shaped
the destinies of its artistes in more ways than one. After three
successive failures, Mehboob got a hit, his biggest. During the
shooting, Nargis was rescued from a fire on the sets by her
on-screen son Sunil Dutt, who thus became her off-screen lover.
The two married a few months after the film’s release.
According to an anecdote (not mentioned in the book), the
marriage was kept secret to safeguard the film’s box-office
prospects and made public only after its mega success had been
confirmed.
Mother India
is a good example of a trend-setting film getting linked with
history. While requesting Indira Gandhi to get the then Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to see the movie, Mehboob addressed
her as the ‘’mother of the nation’’. These words proved
to be quite prophetic. In fact, M. F. Husain said he had Nargis
and the film in mind when he painted a series depicting Indira
as "Mother India". Going a step further, if one takes
into account the chalk-and-cheese sons, the parallel becomes
uncannily striking.
Cutting from the past to the
present, one may ask: Is Mother India frozen in time or
does it have some contemporary relevance? Surely, it is very
hard for today’s young generation, fed on a staple diet of
consumerism, to understand the significance of Radha’s
sacrifice and Birju’s rebellion. But then, Chatterjee’s book
can facilitate that. It can go a long way towards winning fresh
admiration for this invaluable socio-cultural relic, this
towering cinematic achievement.
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A
classic usually suffers the fate
of a historic monument—both are taken for granted by the
masses. Familiarity breeds indifference, if not contempt.
However, there are always those "passionate few", as
litterateur Arnold Bennett put it, who keep a classic alive
from one generation to the next by rediscovering it.
