It was that kind of a timeZeenat Aman and Dum maro dum,the Emergency and Vijay Tendulkar. Looking back at the 1970s,a decade that gave us the first taste of rebellionThe men fussed over handlebar moustaches and side locks; they also discovered geometric prints and pink. The women had already slipped out of modest saris and into skirts. And they gladly welcomed the next big rage,two-piece bikinis. Polyester ousted cotton,kitsch replaced sober. It was that kind of a time. Beatles was playing on every screechy stereo set but the Fab Four,inspired by Pandit Ravi Shankar,were far away from the hysteriaseeking refuge at Osho Rajneeshs ashram. The angry young man took on the system and Amitabh Bachchan found his way to the top. Dev Anand launched the oh-so-sexy Zeenat Aman in Hare Rama Hare Krishna,bringing drugs,sex and rock and roll out of the closet and into the Indian courtyard.That Seventies show is now into reruns. Filmmaker Vipul Shah is revisiting the decade through his comedy drama Action Replayy; Milan Luthria looks at the incestuous relationship of gangsters and glamour that defined Bombay then in Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai. It was a decade,says Luthria,that defined us. The 1970s to India are what the 60s have been to the world, he says. Director of the forthcoming film Aisha Rajshree Ojha is making a documentary on the Seventies; she calls it the formative years that made India what it is today. Zeenat Aman remembers it as a time when Indians gave up on a few shibboleths. Fashion shows were a borrowed concept from the West but it was only in the 70s that Indians first became willing to let go of the traditional definition of beauty and the role of a woman as a homemaker alone, she says. She would know. Delhi-based artist Vivan Sundaram calls it the most free-thinking period of Indian art. The biggest names in contemporary art belong to this timeFN Souza,Akbar Padamsee,MF Husain and Tyeb Mehta, says Sundaram. In the late 60s,anything new was not considered respectable,could be dismissed as too Western. But as the cultural exchange with the West grew and artists like Husain and Raza became known,the avant garde artists in India got legitimacy. That sowed the seed for the contemporary movement that is today associated with the Baroda school of art. For the country as a whole,the decade marked,in some ways,the end of innocence. The first flush of Independence and the optimism of the Nehruvian project had faded away. And it faced the first serious challenge to democracy. The two wars with Pakistan and the Indo-China war between 1965 and 1971,followed by the Emergency in 1975 were big blowsthey drained the nations resources and the common man found himself in no better a position than he was in under the colonial rule, says Shyam Benegal.It was,most of all,a political time.The anger against the system bubbled under major works of the time. Writers of the Progressive Writers Movement like Kaifi Azmi,Shambhu Mitra and VP Sathe had openly aligned themselves to the Left. Playwright Vijay Tendulkar was one of those who scorched the system and made the smug middle-class squirmbe it through his play Ghashiram Kotwal,which faced trouble at the hands of the emerging Shiv Sena,or Sakharam Binder,which was banned in 1974 because it did not comply with moral norms; or in screenplays for films like Nishant or Aakrosh. For every Mera Naam Joker,there was a Satyajit Ray film and for every Raj Kapoor,there was a Benegal. The figure of the anti-hero was waiting to be born. Javed Akhtar,who,along with Salim Khan,is credited for having created the character that found its way into iconic films like Deewar and Sholay,says,Sociologists say that Bachchans character represented the man who was losing faith in the institutions and hence rebelled,but we didnt create such characters consciously. They probably came to us naturally since we were a part of the situation. The character became the ultimate hero to the common manthe one who did what you could not. Ironically,this was also the time when government patronage pushed a new movement in Indian cinema. The government had declared that films depicting real life in the country will receive financing and that set the stage for the evolving film scene in Bengal,with makers like Mrinal Sen,Ritwik Ghatak and Satyajit Ray, says Benegal. As the movement grew,filmmakers like Adoor Gopalakrishnan in Kerala and Girish Karnad in Karnataka also joined in. But Hindi cinema shook itself out of the stupor when people like Kumar Shahani,Hrishikesh Mukherjee,Mani Kaul,MS Sathyu,Saeed Mirza and Govind Nihalani ventured in, he says. The result were films like Garam Hawa,Bhumika,Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastan,Ardh Satyawhich in many ways reflected the losing faith in the state and established conventions. And beyond the watch of the government,another alliance was being stitched up. The underworld had discovered the movies. Shobhaa De,a former film journalist who is a consultant to Luthrias film,says,The underworld was very out there during the 70s. Stars hobnobbed openly with these dons,attended their family functions and accepted their lavish gifts. It was a very cosy and surprisingly open relationship.The wheel has turned. The angry young man moved on long ago to host Kaun Banega Crorepati. No one has turned up to claim Vijay Tendulkars mantle. Parallel cinema died,the indie movement was born. It was the best of times,the worst of times. Everything of consequence,from the politics and the Emergency to the IITs and the concept of NRIs,was formed then. The Seventies were truly the years that made us a democracy, says Ojha.
