Jawaharlal Nehru observed that the influence of cinema in India surpasses that of books and newspapers combined. Its sway has only grown since his passing: week after week after week, it delights, informs and stirs millions. Its portrayals are very often kitschy and over-the-top, but it reflects popular social concerns of its times, discusses ideas, and is both shaped by and shapes popular cultures. Its pull extends to diverse audiences, especially to young people, of all social classes, cultures and education. In a country which produces more films than any other, it is also the biggest window to the world for large masses of unlettered working people.
The celebrations of 100 years of Indian cinema set me thinking of which Indian films have most influenced me in my growing years. I recalled nostalgically many films, both art-house and popular, some of which I will describe in this and later columns, as my personal tribute to an art industry which has nourished my mind, heart and soul.
On the top of my list stands indisputably Satyajit Ray’s
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The most moving recreation of the enormous human costs of India’s Partition is M.S. Sathyu’s
The last sequence of the film is iconic and I often recount it when I speak to young people about my understanding of the integral place within secular India for its minorities and oppressed people. Mirza’s family is leaving on a tonga for the station to catch a train to Pakistan. On the way, Mirza sees a procession of red flags, and stops his tonga . He asks his family to return home, as he joins the procession. He seems to say: India does belong to the Muslims as much as to anyone else — but their future is secured best not if they organise under ‘green flags’ of separate identities, but instead if they build solidarities with other oppressed groups.
My daughter often complains about the number of times I made her watch Bimal Roy’s
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In the film, the farmer migrates to Calcutta, where he pulls a rickshaw in a desperate futile bid to collect money to save his land. Years later, when I was posted to Mussoorie, memories of the film may have partly impelled me to help build a group of young civil service recruits to end the practice of hand-pulled rickshaws in Mussoorie.
Another film which I would watch and debate with my students — civil servant trainees in the Mussoorie Academy — is a harrowing, morally complex meditation on corruption and the dilemmas that confront every public servant. In Satyakam — which director Hrishikesh Mukherjee rates as his best film — the protagonist enters adult life when India became free. Steeped in Nehruvian idealism, he studies to become a civil engineer, and joins government service. There he battles rampant corruption, but life-long remains fiercely, uncompromisingly honest.
However, he suffers badly because of his principles: his career collapses, he is isolated and ostracised, and is falsely framed. His childhood friend advises him to compromise even a little, at least to overlook the corruption that he sees around him, but he remains stubborn. Eventually he dies broken, leaving his wife and young son penniless. Yet they resolve to adopt his life choices, and this before he dies is his only affirmation.
A film that says goodness may cause life-long suffering, yet is worth pursuing for its own sake, is more philosophically sophisticated than you would credit a mainstream Hindi film. But films like this — many films — over the years speak to you of life, suffering, injustice, goodness and hope – and some enter your soul.