Moviegoer Bhagat Singh liked it first day, first show

Sarika Sharma
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, September 27

The Excelsior Theatre in Lahore was screening ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ and Bhagat Singh told his friends they must watch it. It was a silent film and Bhagat Singh delivered a passionate speech after the screening.

The film is based on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic anti-slavery novel of the same name, which is said to have laid the groundwork for the civil war in America.

A lot has been written about Bhagat Singh the martyr, but not enough about Bhagat Singh the moviegoer. In Lahore’s vibrant cinema scenario, there was a lot for him to soak in on and he often liked it first day, first show. And among the films he loved was ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’.

Advertisements in newspapers of the time, including The Tribune, had been inviting people to watch the film at the Lahore theatre on December 15, 1928. According to historian KC Yadav, Bhagat Singh had proposed  to his friends that they must see the “revolutionary film”, which they did.

Yadav quotes Bhagat Singh’s comrade Bhagwan Das Mahor, who recalls that Bhagat Singh gave an impressive lecture after the film and underlined the usefulness of it for the revolutionaries.

Bhagat Singh’s fondness for cinema has been documented in the memoirs of revolutionaries as well as works of historiography. Prof Kama Maclean, Associate Professor, South Asian and World History, University of New South Wales, says Bhagat Singh would often spend his daily food budget on films.

In a write-up, his comrade Sukhdev Raj recalls that Bhagat Singh loved cinema and they together watched numerous films.

“He liked his films first day, first show. He didn’t bother about the class that he got to watch the movie in. Sometimes, he even borrowed money from friends to buy tickets. We saw so many films together… ‘Wildcat of Bombay’, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’. The last that I saw with him was ‘Wings’. This film had the sound of aeroplane in it; rest of it was silent.” ‘Wings’ is known as the first to win an Oscar for the Best Film.

J Daniel Elam, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Hong Kong, recently wrote a paper — “The Martyr, the Moviegoer: Bhagat Singh at the Cinema”. He says Bhagat Singh was no Uncle Tom, even in the most generous of textual interpretations of the novel. Unable to stand by and wait for revolution to occur, Bhagat Singh repeatedly argued for revolt in the continual present — inquilab zindabad — and in the active voice.

While both Yadav and Elam have not been able to find any record if Bhagat Singh’s speech after the film, the latter says oral history sources have quoted that he enjoyed films starring Jewish actress Ruby Myers, who went by the name of Sulochana. “He especially loved (Myers’) ‘Wildcat of Bombay’; re-released with sound in 1936 as ‘Bambai Ki Billi’, wherein Sulochana plays eight different characters, some of whom are Indian men and British spies.”

Chris Moffat, author of the recent India’s Revolutionary Inheritance: Politics and the Promise of Bhagat Singh, says Bhagat Singh’s love and access to world cinema reminds one of the “vibrant cinema Lahore had in the early twentieth century. Many of the architecturally-striking old cinemas are still operational today, especially around Lakshmi Chowk, even though the middle classes have shifted their support to new commercial multiplexes in the south of the city”.

‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ in The Tribune

A review published in The Tribune on December 18 called the film “stirring”. The reviewer wrote “every foot of this film is worth as much as a whole film of the fairest type”. And perhaps going by the response, it said the “Excelsior management will have to extend the show if they want to satisfy the people”. The film stayed in Lahore through December 1928, showing alternately with ‘Wings’, the first film to be awarded an Oscar, writes J Daniel Elam.