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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Book Excerpt | Picture Abhi Baaki Hai
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Book Excerpt | Picture Abhi Baaki Hai

In her new book, a film historian analyses how political and religious narratives shape Hindi films

A scene from ‘Hum Saath-Saath Hain’.Premium
A scene from ‘Hum Saath-Saath Hain’.

Hindi cinema’s HFV affliction

It is difficult to distinguish signs of Hindutva from those of ‘Indian values’ or from a powerful set of Hindu beliefs and practices often referred to as ‘Hindu Family Values’ (HFV), which have been particularly celebrated in films featuring India’s diasporic population. In the 1990s, the diasporas were shown endorsing ‘Indian values’ centred around the family, food, religion and nationalism, as in Hum aapke hain kaun...! A striking, if sometimes heavy-handed, approach to the diaspora or NRI-film can be seen in Pardes, which featured an Indian girl, Ganga (her name, the goddess of the River Ganges, implying her purity), whose family want her to marry the son of a wealthy family friend who lives in America but she still sings, ‘I love my India’. The film’s slogan is ‘American dream: Indian soul’. From this time, HFV films became more popular, and perhaps it is not a coincidence that they rode the Hindu wave when the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party, the political party of Hindutva) was in government: 1998–2004.

Picture Abhi Baaki Hai—Bollywood As A Guide To Modern India: By Rachel Dwyer, Hachette India, 296 pages, Rs.499
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Picture Abhi Baaki Hai—Bollywood As A Guide To Modern India: By Rachel Dwyer, Hachette India, 296 pages, Rs.499

While two major ‘Hindu genres’ of Indian cinema, the mythological and the devotional, are no longer made as mainstream Hindi films, the epics have remained important texts....

The BJP and its allies harnessed the media via popular visuals and cheap technology such as the music cassette to get their message across. One of the most important ways in which this was done was via the televised religious soap operas of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana from the 1980s. Indian cinema has made many versions of stories and episodes from the epics throughout its history, from the silent mythologicals to current animated films. Its earlier films, notably in the mythological genre, also drew on the epics for stories that evoked India’s quest for nationhood and identity, and the industry has set the pattern of referring to the epics, whether their stories or characters, in easily recognizable ways, to underline and discuss problems in the family and other social issues.

The epics have remained vast resources, perhaps more so after the massive success of the television dramas. During the last twenty years they have remained key to ways of thinking about family relationships, with the ancient and already-known stories bringing their mythological resonances to contemporary cinema. In this two-decade period, the Ramayana has no longer been drawn on for stories about the restoration of the righteous king, as it was in earlier films such as Ram Rajya/The Kingdom of God (dir. Vijay Bhatt, 1943), nor for those about the ending of fighting and evil as in Chhalia/The Cheat (dir. Raj Kapoor, 1960) or virtuous women being ‘Sita-Savitris’ (Sita, the ideal woman in the Ramayana; Savitri being the epitome of the devoted wife in the Mahabharata). Instead, the Ramayana has been looked to for the tales of family relationships that underlie this epic, in particular those that involve remarriages and adopted children.

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A scene from Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham.

A few films refer to Ravan, a character from the Ramayana, as a force for ill—this is a figure who is very much in the public imagination with the burning of his image at the annual Dussehra festival marking the end of evil and the restoration of good. In Agneepath/The Path of Fire (2012), Kancha Cheena lives on the island of Mandwa, a modern version of Lanka in the Ramayana. Vijay, however, has no brother, only a mother and a sister, so the reference is attenuated, and Vijay and Kaali are no Rama and Sita. At the death of Kancha, Vijay also has to die as he has no righteous rule to bring once he has avenged his family.

The Mahabharata’s numerous stories have featured throughout Indian cinema over the last twenty years, but often indirectly. For example, when the wives’ brothers intervene in the affairs of their in-laws, in films such as Beta/Son (dir. Indra Kumar, 1992) and Raja Hindustani, the figure of Shakuni Mama comes to mind without there having to be an explicit reference. Using names from the Mahabharata also brings the associations of the epic’s characters, so Arjun is always a hero. The two brothers in Karan Arjun take the names of cousins who fight each other, though for the film it seems more important that each of them represents the ideal hero.

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Manoj Bajpai (left) and Ajay Devgn in a still from Rajneeti.

Raajneeti reworks several key scenes from The Godfather, such as the fiancée killed in a car explosion meant to kill the fiancé, and two of the heroes, brothers Prithviraj Pratap (Arjun Rampal) and Samar Pratap (Ranbir Kapoor), are modelled on Sunny and Michael Corleone, but there are also scenes and characters taken from the Mahabharata. Samar Pratap is as much Arjuna as Michael Corleone (although reading for a PhD in Victorian literature), while Prithviraj is also Bheema. Their opponents are Veerendra, the Duryodhan figure (Manoj Bajpai) and Sooraj Kumar (Ajay Devgn), the Karna figure, an illegitimate half-brother of the Pratap brothers and adopted by Dalit parents, who becomes a Dalit leader. The Pratap brothers’ mother, Bharti, has a son before marriage, like Kunti in the epic, but, instead of her affair being with the Sun himself, it is with her political guru, who is called Bhaskar, or ‘the Sun’, and their son is called ‘the Sun’—Sooraj. His adopted father is the Prataps’ driver rather than the charioteer as he is in the epic.

There is no Yuddhisthira, King of Dharma, in Raajneeti, but Brij Gopal (Nana Patekar) is Krishna the statesman rather than the pastoral god. Brij Gopal is Bharti’s brother and hence mama (maternal uncle) to Prithviraj and Samar, drawing parallels with the wicked Shakuni (although he is on the wrong side of the family), while his name and skilful negotiations suggest Krishna.

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Rachel Dwyer.

Although the heroine is called Indu, recalling Indira Gandhi, she appears more like her daughter-in-law, Sonia Gandhi, not least because the star (Katrina Kaif) looks as (non-)Indian as Sonia. Indu is a quasi-Draupadi—she wants to marry Samar but marries Prithviraj despite still loving Samar. Indu joins politics as a widow, with her first post being as Chief Minister, so the references to Sonia Gandhi are clear, but Samar goes to the USA, though he says he will be back, and a sequel is expected.

The analogies to the Mahabharata are not heavy-handed in this film, which suits viewers who do not know the story. Today the epic remains a living story for many in India and its use here as a drama of family conflicts and of governance, linking the private and the public, underlines the imagining of the destructive nature of family politics that calls to mind the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. India’s modern myths are being built in the political sphere, yet no one dares to make a film about the Gandhis, although the Mahabharata can be retold endlessly.

Edited excerpts, with permission from Hachette India. The book will be available nationwide from 19 August.

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Published: 02 Aug 2014, 12:01 AM IST
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