Love India — Bollywood Way

Shriniwas Joshi

Shimla-ite Vijay Ranchan, now settled at Gandhinagar, Gujarat, makes it to Shimla every summer. This time we had a chit chat at ‘Ashiana’ on the Ridge. Shimla, then, was passing through the difficult times of acute water scarcity. Vijay had been Additional Chief Secretary in the Gujarat government when he resigned from the Indian Administrative Service post in 2002, feeling ‘suffocated and uncomfortable’ in the political atmosphere there. Catching up the issue of water-woe in Shimla, I said such qualified and experienced officers were at the helm of affairs, then why an utmost essential commodity, like water, could not be made available to the people. Vijay’s verdict was that their training was such that they were good in regulatory functions, but when it came to providing facilities, they looked blank. He said training was not the ‘be all and end all’. But when we return to the system after training, we are swallowed by the system and the training gets a backseat. The purpose of our meeting was to celebrate the trilogy of Bollywood books written by Vijay Ranchan. His first book was ‘Bollywood ki Naarigaatha’; second, ‘Bollywood ka Gumshudaa Musalmaan,’ which I had reviewed in this column earlier; third and the present one ‘Bollywood ka Rashtravaad,’ published in 2018 by Akriti Prakashan, Delhi. It is a very well researched book having 540 pages and costing Rs 900. He who wants to have a deep knowledge of Bollywood must read this trilogy. These books do not contain Bollywood stories only but are also dotted with Sanskrit ‘shlokas’ and Hindi poems. His style of writing covers the essential ingredients and the decorative sprinkle comes by itself.

Do you know that Mahatma Gandhi despised seeing films? Although his goal for India was to establish Ram Rajya, yet he had seen a few selected reels of Prakash Pictures ‘Ram Rajya’ at a hall in Juhu in the year 1943. This was the first and the last Indian talkie that the Mahatma had seen. There are innumerable such pieces of information that one gets when one reads these books. 

Ranchan introduces the book by saying that there are four bases on which Rashtravaad or Love for India stands. The first base is Gandhiji who believed in Hindu Dharma but never thought that other Dharmas were less. He died with the swansong of ‘Hey Ram’ but his prayers were for Ishwar and Allah. His Dharma was that all religions are equal.   The second base is Nehru. He believed that Dharma always divided the people and so it had to stand out of politics. His belief was that India could be defined without any Dharma and so be it. The third base is that Hinduism is no religion but a way of life. It was confirmed by the Supreme Court when in 1995, Justice JC Verma and his colleagues dittoed it. And the fourth base is Bollywood Films which have shown that all religions are equal. Several songs in single breath sing of the equality of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Isai. Love for India was the theme of films made in the 1930s and the 1940s and to date it continues. In ‘Raazi’, released in 2018, a young girl Sehmat marries a Pakistani just to spy for India, her homeland.

Do you know that ‘Bhakt Vidur,’ a Hindi film made on a character of Mahabharat was the first ever banned film by the British government in the year 1921? Vidur, born of a Dalit mother, was wisdom personified. It is true that his character in the film was chiselled like that of Gandhiji and the durbar of Dhritrashtra was like replica of the British imperial splendour. The English smelled the rat and banned it. During 1943 was screened a film ‘Kismet’ that carried a song asking the British, in the garb of ‘duniya walo,’ to leave India and so managed to escape the eyes of the Censor: “Aaj Himalaya ki choti se phir humne lalkara hai/ Door hato, door hato aye duniya walo Hindusthan hamara hai.” ‘Kranti’ of Manoj Kumar in 1981 was draped in nationalism but an adverse comment on the reformist measure that banned Sati practice appeared anti to Bharat Rashtra. Who can forget the song of ‘Pardes’? “Watan mera India/ Sajan mera India/ Karam mera India/ Dharam mera India/ I love my India ye mera India.” ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’ was screened in 2015 and was an attempt to develop good relations between the two neighbouring countries. The entire gamut of Bollywood films is covered in this book.

Bollywood needs spicy story, songs and dances for its films. Despite this the films, to a great extent, were successful in spreading the message of nationalism and if it failed to establish these ideals, it is due to the complexity of the country and the shirking of the film-makers in understanding and assimilating this complexity within.

Tailpiece

“Saare jahan se achha” is the most sung song in India after the National Anthem/Song. Mahatma Gandhi sang it hundreds of times when he was in Yarvada jail in 1930.