As we wrap up our interview in filmmaker J.P. Dutta’s office in Andheri, he informs me that he has registered ‘The Hindu’ as a film title and plans to make a magnum opus on it. It will be based on extensive research, he excitedly tells me, one that will date back to the Vedas. “It will explore what a Hindu is all about,” he declares, as four pundits perform a havan in the adjacent room, under a giant poster of his latest film Paltan, which releases today.
“[ Paltan ] is a story that went missing and I had to bring it to the people of this country,” says the 68-year-old filmmaker, sitting on a couch next to a shelf of National Awards. From the posters of Border (1997) and Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), books on war to multiple idols of Ganesha, Dutta’s office speaks volumes about him. He’s a cinephile who refers to himself as a historian. “I’m writing history on celluloid,” he exclaims, taking much pride in his work. Chronicling the Nathu La and Cho La clashes between India and China in 1967, Paltan is the latest in his ‘trilogy’, which began with Border and was followed by LOC Kargil (2003) . “ Cinema goes a long way,” he says. “For generations to come these three films will go down as part of history.”
Cinematic interpretations
Dutta has a personal connection with the Indian Armed Forces. In 1987, he lost his brother, who was a fighter pilot in the Indian Air Force, in a crash. It’s during his conversations with his friends in the Indian Armed Forces that he discovered the lesser-known events of the Nathu La and Cho La clashes, which came hot on the heels of the 1962 Sino-Indian War, where India faced a major setback. But Dutta does not consider the 1962 events a war. “It was backstabbing,” he declares. “It was not a war but complete betrayal of the trust Jawaharlal Nehru had in China.”
War films in India have often been a reflection of the country’s current state of international affairs. Take for instance Border, which released just a couple of years before the Kargil War. With Paltan , Dutta places the 1967 events against the current conflict in Doklam between India and China. So does history repeat itself? “It sort of does,” he says, and he intends on documenting it, with detailed research, for posterity. But Indian war films have often been described as patriotic, nationalistic or jingoistic, so how does he differentiate between them? Dutta calmly dismisses patriotism and nationalism as words coined by British. “But jingoism does not exist in this country because jingoism means aggression,” he says, visibly enraged. “We are liberators not aggressors. A lot of media and journalists use this word, which I get very very angry with.”
Celebrating martyrdom
There’s an interesting paradox in Dutta’s films, I tell him. They give out an anti-war message while celebrating the death of soldiers as heroism. How do these two ideas coexist? “People dying trying to defend the nation need to be glorified because they are basically protecting you and me,” he says. “We can sit in an AC office and do this interview but who is doing that for you?” According to the filmmaker, human beings are far from being pacifists so an argument on those grounds are futile. “There are hundreds of people still dying in Syria. What’s happening to mankind?”
Dutta believes his efforts are towards faithfully depict the fight of those who died at the border. “When LOC Kargil premiered in Delhi, some of the martyrs’ families told the media that they are thankful to me for bringing back the lives of their sons back for four hours,” he recalls. For the filmmaker, it was the best award he could get, and if his office is anything to go by, he has surely had a fair share of those.
