Opinion The Deewar stands

In 1975, an angry young man raged against the system, questioned the cruel ironies of god’s will inside a temple and turned to a life of crime. His brother, an obedient son and strait-laced cop, has nothing on him in terms of material wealth, resources and success. But, with arguably one of the greatest one-liners in Hindi cinema, Shashi Kapoor silenced Amitabh Bachchan (Vijay): “Mere paas maa hai”. Since Deewar released, and more recently with PhD candidates in film studies departments studying Bollywood, much has been made of the themes in the film and their symbolism. The “system” that produced Vijay’s criminality, the dominant power in the country, was the Congress under Indira Gandhi. Cut to 2021. Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra is now the underdog – and unke paas behan hai.

During an interview on the campaign trail in Uttar Pradesh earlier this week, Gandhi-Vadra invoked Deewar and placed her faith in her “sisters”, women voters. As political one-liners go, it is not as convoluted as “Jupiter’s escape velocity” nor as pithy as “garibi hatao”. And no one can object to focusing on the woman voter as a political principle or strategy. But there is something poignant about a scion of what was Indian politics’ first family being, even if only metaphorically, the one without “bangla, gaadi, daulat, shohrat”. The solace, as with Shashi Kapoor, is the invocation of a filial bond.

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The lesson here, if one is needed, isn’t the truism that political fortunes change. It is that good, mainstream art has far more resonance and longevity than petty barbs. Like motherhood and apple pie, there is something comforting about political wit in India relying on Deewar, Sholay or Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam. They bind the high and low, the Nehru-Gandhi and her would-be behans. At a time when politics offers more lows than highs, that’s nothing to scoff at.