Twenty-two years ago this week, at the start of what seems like a particularly fertile period in Hindi film history — at least in retrospect — two “patriotic” films hit movie screens. Both ultimately made history in their own way. Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India, an underdog story about a bunch of Indian villagers beating the colonial sahibs in a high-stakes cricket match in 1893, made it to the Oscars that year in the Best Foreign Language Film category. For Hindi cinema, it helped kick off the new millennium on a high note, signalling the hope that global acclaim was no longer too far out of reach for an industry that had, in the previous couple of decades, descended all too frequently into a formula of melodrama, violence and low-brow comedy.
While Lagaan won critical plaudits, at home and abroad, the winner of the June 15, 2001 box office face-off, by far, was Gadar: Ek Prem Katha, which became the highest-grossing Hindi film since 1994’s Hum Aapke Hain Koun. Directed by Anil Sharma, Gadar told the story of a Sikh man, a patriot and devoted husband to a Muslim woman who was willing to go to war with the entire nation of Pakistan to bring his love back home to India. It was the kind of high-decibel drama that the audience clearly still loved — it made full use of its star Sunny Deol’s talent for roaring out paisa-vasool lines that would come to be mimicked and memeified. Lagaan may have earned 3.5 out of 4 stars from Roger Ebert, but Paul Blackthorne’s “Teen guna lagaan” was no match for Deol’s “Hamara Hindustan zindabad tha, zindabad hai aur zindabad rahega”.
That zinger of a line was delivered by Deol’s Tara Singh as he stood on Pakistani soil and faced off with Amrish Puri’s villainous Ashraf Ali, the man who had reclaimed his daughter — parted from her family during the violence and chaos of Partition — and was forcing her to give up Tara, whom she had fallen in love with and married.
Perhaps it carries some resonance even today, for audiences seem to have flocked back to theatres as the movie has been re-released in theatres in 4K, as part of the build-up to the August release of its sequel, Gadar: The Katha Continues. The second movie is set during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 and, according to the teaser released today, it shows Tara Singh returning to Pakistan, this time in search of his son.
Considering that high-volume patriotic dramas seem to be back in vogue in Hindi cinema, it is possible that Gadar: The Katha Continues will do as well — maybe even better — than the original. But the India in which the latter was released is very different from the India of today. Back then, it was possible for Gadar, despite the loud jingoism and nationalistic packaging to be, at its core, a love story in which a man is willing to leave behind his mitti and mazhab to be with the woman he loves.
After all, the scene in which Tara screams about the greatness of Hindustan, also shows him willingly saying “Pakistan zindabad” and embracing Islam, if it means that he can be with his wife. Viewers back then seem to have accepted this as part of the sacrifice that a lover must make, their regard for him not diminishing in the least.
It was also a film that could show Partition as a tragedy where the madness and violence gripped Hindus and Sikhs in East Punjab, just as it did Muslims to the West.
Would it have been possible to write such a scene and make it acceptable to the audience in an India where, not too long ago, a young student activist was arrested for saying “Pakistan Zindabad” (along with “Hindustan Zindabad”)?
pooja.pillai@expressindia.com
