Bina Paul in conversation with Madhusree Dutta

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

The post “Religion is taking over public discourse” appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image Courtesy: Cinestaan

The woman in the eye of the storm was journalist Priya Ramani, who has been fighting against a criminal defamation case filed by MJ Akbar, an ex-minister in the Narendra Modi government and a journalist himself for many years.

Sunday was the second day of MJ Akbar’s cross examination by Ramani’s lawyer Rebecca Mammen John, during which Akbar flatly denied all accusations against him.

In October 2018, journalist Priya Ramani and at least 17 other women had accused Akbar of sexual harassment, and in one case, even rape. Despite the various accounts on public platforms, Akbar’s selective decision to sue only Ramani was called out by several women as vindictive. All of these women, including Ramani, had described the same pattern of sexual harassment where Akbar insisted they meet him for job interviews at hotel rooms.

In the Delhi court however, Akbar not only denied the defence lawyer’s charges, he also dismissed the evidence and said that he was only hearing about the cases by some of these women for the first time. He added that he could “not recall” the names of these women.

While Ramani was “cheered on by family, friends, and colleagues”, Akbar was alone and friendless. This image of women standing with each other against a powerful predator who came to the court room that day, and also on the first day of the cross-examination earlier this month,  speak volumes about women solidarity in the media.

On 18 May, a day before this hearing, a group of women artists were in Delhi to talk about sexual harassment at the workplace. Separated by geographical boundaries and professional spheres, the narratives of these women revealed similarities in the designs of powerful men who exploited and abused scores of young women and yet remained protected by institutions of patriarchy.

These women, Rima Kallingal and Padmapriya, both well-known artists from the Malayalam film industry, have been fighting against discrimination and sexual harassment for two years as part of the Women in Cinema Collective. Formed in May 2017, the WCC is a pioneering organisation constituting women creative workers from the Malayalam film industry. The collective continues to challenge the patriarchal world view of Indian cinema. It “has dragged into limelight the ugly underbelly of commercial film-making controlled by cliques, cartels, and celebrity power¹”. Despite its path-breaking overtures, the collective has not received much attention in national news media organisations set in Delhi or Bombay.

At a panel discussion organised at the India Habitat Centre as part of the ongoing Habitat Film Festival, both Kallingal and Padmapriya spoke about the formation of the collective, of the challenges it faced along the way, and those it continues to face. The panel was moderated by film journalist Anna M Vetticad who has been following the collective since its conception and director Judith Namradath. The screening of Namradath’s directorial debut film, Aabhaasam preceded the panel, and had come into controversy when the #MeToo movement emerged in Kerala. Actor Divya Gopinath who stars in Aabhaasam had accused senior actor Alencier Ley Lopez of sexual assault during the film’s shooting. In a moving video posted on her Facebook account, she wrote of the many occasions when Alencier had entered her room drunk. One time she was alarmed to wake up and find him in her bed.

Soon after Gopinath’s video, director Judith Namradath stepped in to support her. “I will reiterate Divya’s written and spoken words over a 100 times. Any sensible person who has worked in Aabhaasam will stand by her,” he wrote in a Facebook post. The women on the panel, including Vetticad, commended Namradath for his extending support to Gopinath and spoke about the importance of feminist male allies in the movement.
The account of the women on the formation of the WCC was as inspiring as it was enraging.

In 2017, a popular actress of the Malayalam film industry was abducted and sexually assaulted for hours inside a moving car. On the basis of the woman’s FIR, Malayalam “superstar” Dileep was found to be the prime conspirator in her abduction and assault because he had certain personal issues with her. “The WCC was started as a sort-of support group for the actress,” recounted Padmapriya. “But that one incident triggered discussions around sexual harassment that we had all faced at some point. All of us had these experiences to share that we had never spoken about to anyone for years.” As a result, the WCC was formalised as a collective in May 2017 and since then has been engaged in breaking down the structures of power and abuse. 

Moving forth, the members expressed the desire to not stop at fighting against issues of gender and sexual violence but also to shatter the glass ceiling, to enable women who are joining the film industry in larger numbers to “lay claim to legitimate spaces for self-actualisation and creative satisfaction.”

Courtesy: Indian Cultural forum

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Kumravatara(2011)

A still from Kurmavatara

In Hindu mythology, kurma, which means turtle, is the second avatar of Lord Vishnu(variously represented by ten avatars). Like the other avatars, Kurma is said to appear in times of crisis to restore the equilibrium of the cosmos. His iconography is either that of a tortoise or, more commonly, as half-human-half-tortoise. These figures are found in many Vaishnava temple ceilings or wall reliefs. The story of Kasaravalli’s film Kurmavatara takes seed of this mythological legend and produces it through the lens of a contemporary character and the changes that happen in his life. The film is based on a short story of the same name by Kannada poet and writer, Kum. Veerabhadrappa.

The story revolves around Rao, a government employee, and ageing widower, living with his son, daughter-in-law and grandson, who owing to his strong resemblance to Mahatma Gandhi, is picked up by a television producer to portray Gandhi’s role in a television serial. Rao resists the offer initially because neither had he acted before in his life nor was he a Gandhian; but is forced to accept the assignment by his son and daughter-in-law to help their son get admission in a good school. However, after having reluctantly agreed, he pours himself wholeheartedly into the character. His work in the serial makes him famous instantly. Fans begin crowding his home and the lifestyle of the lower-middle-class family improves drastically as the son and daughter-in-law cash-in on his new-found fame.

However, the most dramatic change occurs in  Rao’s character as he begins reading on Gandhi and his ideology for a role he had never dreamt of performing. The serial turns his life around, as he starts examining his life and philosophy. As the fans keep growing,  the humble Rao has to come to terms with the fact that simply ‘portraying’ Gandhi does not “make” him a modern-day Gandhi. The serial, thus, transforms his life into a journey that enriches him as an individual with a new perspective on life, family, and relationships.

Dr Shikaripura Krishnamurthy who played Rao, an ordinary man, who is asked overnight to step into the mighty feet of Mahatma Gandhi for the small screen, gave an outstanding performance – bereft of glamour or chutzpah, investing the character-within-the-serial with as much sincerity and authenticity as possible. A moving sub-plot explores this man’s warm and humane interaction with Kasturba(played by famous Kannada actor, Jayanthi) within the serial, and off the sets. The sub-plot shows Jayanthi empathising with the predicament of her co-actor who suddenly finds himself famous overnight owing to his portrayal of Gandhi, and endeavours to befriend him not as an actress or even a co-actor, but as a fellow human being.

The film is enriched by Kasaravalli’s signature low-key handling –  no pomp and show, loud colours or music, but extremely realistic and natural performances by the entire cast. Kurmavatara was screened in 17 film festivals and won acclaim at Bangkok, New York and Vancouver. It won the Feature Film Award for the Best Kannada Film at the 59th National Film Awards. The cinematography is low-key and appears as if most of it is shot in natural light. Gandhi does not appear in the film but we discover him through the metamorphosis in Rao who portrays him for a short while but changes forever.

About his statement, Kasaravalli says, “It is a question of whether Gandhian values can lift our present world from degeneration. Today, we are moving in the opposite direction. Gandhi believed in small things. Nowadays, we believe only in big things. Even if you are telling a lie, you only want to sell your product.”

The Salt Stories (Documentary) (2007)

The Salt Stories (2015)

Nearly eight decades after the Dandi March, filmmaker Lalit Vachani made The Salt Stories, an interesting documentary raising questions about the contemporary relevance of the Salt March. Set in modern India, The Salt Stories is an 84-minute documentary, presented as a road movie that follows the trail of Mahatma Gandhi’s salt march of 1930. The film puts the historic Dandi March into perspective by juxtaposing it against the reality of the poor being denied freedom by depriving them of basic needs like food, clothing and shelter. Has Gandhi’s non-violent means to attain a political end for the benefit of the entire country really brought freedom to their descendants, the poor and the oppressed? Or, has the Dandi March been reduced to a token for non-violence to be relegated to history textbooks? – are some questions the film seeks to ask.  

The film introduces the viewers to Mohammed Bhai, standing in, what remains of his bangle factory, where the number of workers has dwindled to a handful after his machines and workshop were destroyed by Hindu fundamentalists during the riots. The team then sets off on a road journey to Dandi passing through rickety roads and small towns, talking to people on the way to find out if they knew who Gandhi was, or about the Dandi March.

One of the people we meet on the journey is, Ketanbhai, Dalit leader of Navagam village, who was forced to resign as upper- caste members refused to let him go on. 102-year-old Gordhanbhai Bakhta, the sole living survivor of the Dandi March, who passed away soon after, is also seen recalling and sharing his experiences.

Explaining his motivation, Vachani says, “In 2002, I was completing The Men in the Tree. It revisits the RSS and Hindu fundamentalism when the Gujarat massacre happened. I was horrified and shocked. How could this happen in Gandhi’s Gujarat? On the other hand, I surmised that this could happen only in Gujarat. This is one state where the ideology of Gandhi has been completely erased. The Men in the Tree explores RSS’ attitude to Gandhi. I tried to show how the RSS denigrates and neutralizes Gandhi and his ideology, yet appropriates him when they feel he is convenient for the Hindu right. This is what motivated me to revisit the Salt March trail and find out how things are.”

Set against the backdrop of Gandhi’s original journey, this road-movie makes caustic comments through its telling visuals and one-to-one interviews, on how the globalization of Gujarat equates Gandhi’s ‘salt’ to a metaphor on poverty, forced migration, joblessness and injustice. Secularism, as the film points out, is conspicuous by its absence. The film meanders through time and space –  juxtaposing the present scenario, shot in colour, with the past, compiled with silent Black-and-White archival footage (courtesy: Gandhi Films Foundation in Mumbai). Such a presentation lends the film a unique stage to place a sense of history, time, place, people and events in perspective, while at the same time pitting old and new values against each other to provide an objective view of how relevant the Salt March is in today’s India.

Gour Hari Dastaan – The Freedom File (2015)

Gour Hari Dastaan – the Freedom File: Movie poster

Among films inspired by or based on the honesty and integrity of Gandhi is, Gour Hari Dastaan – The Freedom File, a biopic on Gour Hari Das, a Gandhian, living in his eighties. Actor-director-scriptwriter Ananth Narayan Mahadevan decided to make this film on the struggles of this Gandhian whom he had met and interacted with and whom he confesses to having been enriched by as a human being. In the film’s title, Gour Hari Dastaan – The Freedom File, the surname has been extended from Das to Dastaan which means “story.”

During his teenage years, Gour Hari Das actively participated in the struggle for independence in Balasore, Orissa where he was growing up. He was enrolled in Gandhi’s vanar sena for younger freedom fighters. His job was to courier messages and letters between freedom fighters by running alongside rushing trains to hand over the letters. When he was 14, he was arrested and imprisoned for three months. “I read about Gour Hari Das in a tabloid. The headline screamed, “It took him 32 years to prove that he is a freedom fighter”. The irony was there for everyone to see. I probed further and tracked him down in a distant suburb of Mumbai…Dahisar,” says Ananth Narayan Mahadevan who directed the film and also co-produced it along with Bindiya and Sachin Khanolkar.

His story became interesting after an episode, around mid-seventies, when one day his son complained that he was refused admission under the freedom fighter’s ward’s quota as he could not produce proof that his father was a freedom fighter. It was then that it dawned on Gour Hari Das that he had not received the Tamra Patra which every freedom fighter is entitled to, as he had not really fought for any award. He was left speechless with shock when his son turned around and asked him, “Were you really a freedom fighter?” At that moment something ticked inside him and his fight for another ‘freedom’ began. He embarks on a journey to find proof that he was indeed, jailed for three months, that he really was a freedom fighter, that he was a genuine member of Gandhiji’s vanar sena and that he was a true Gandhian who did not believe in rewards for fighting for his country’s freedom.

Das wanted to get his own proof. It took 32 long years for him to be finally given the Tamra Patra – now by the Maharashtra CM himself. In his struggle, as the director, informs us, Das knocked on 321 doors, wrote 1043 letters to different officials, climbed 66000 steps, and pleaded 2300 times in Post-Independent India to prove that he was the freedom fighter who was once blessed by Mahatma Gandhi and even jailed for fighting against the British. During this turbulent journey, he visited government offices, influential politicians, ministers, media, jail officials and so on and was called ‘fraud’, ‘thief’, ‘crazy’, ‘eccentric’ by others. The struggle cost him 32 years of his life to get what he feels was justice.  

Vinay Pathak, a gifted and trained Bollywood actor, who was chosen to play the title role says, “In 2008, Gour Hari Das was front page news. The Maharashtra Government had just conferred the freedom fighter certificate to him. I remember reading the article and I was amazed by it and later when Ananth asked me to play him. It was an author-backed role no actor would let go of.”

The film revolves around Gour Hari Das. He is like a solid tree from which the branches of interesting characters emerge to add to his story. There are fictional interpolations to detail the struggle of Gour Hari Das and a fictionalised climax which ends the film. But these factors do not take away from the core message of the film – that the honesty Gandhi upheld endures albeit among a handful of Indians, for whom his teachings mould their entire life.

Babar Naam Gandhiji (2015)

Babar Naam Gandhiji 

In Babar Naam Gandhiji, Gandhi assumes the form of a biological father, – for a street urchin named Kencho (snail) who was discarded in a dustbin by an old alcoholic and grew up in the dredges of Kolkata – after a policeman jokes about Gandhi being his biological father by showing him a currency note with Gandhi’s face printed on it. Kencho takes this seriously and his life changes forever.

“The story is not mine, it is Kencho’s story,” says the voice-over of Pavel (Parambrato Chatterjee) who runs an NGO for street children who attend his classes only because he arranges tiffin for them. Kencho is their leader, who not only uses his intelligence and shrewdness to fool people to part with their money but also teaches clever ways of extortion to other kids. He hardly attends Pavel’s classes but uses this young man as his bank. “I have faith in you,”  this worldly-wise ten-year-old tells him.

Kencho is a friendly chap and enjoys the support of all the fellow beggars in the locality, though a couple of goons bash him up black and blue when he refuses to part with their demand for hafta. Yet even these goons rally behind him when he decides to join the big school in the neighbourhood in response to a teacher who insults him in his father’s (Gandhi) name!

The entire group of beggars take out a procession with their indigenous band, in support of Kenchu as he nervously marches towards the big school for his final interview. In fact,  his first instalment fee is put together by a medley of street men, women and children who have saved from the “weekly” hafta; even the goons surrender their hafta to contribute to the target sum of Rs. 5000. And what does Kencho do? He upturns a sack of small coins in the principal’s cabin with the promise that “more will come when needed” from the same source. The smooth falsification of every single document needed for his admission test from birth certificate to ration card to age proof to the name of his father written in full as “Kenchodas Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi” and many more such small bits and pieces picked up from real life are portrayed on celluloid. These make Babar Naam Gandhi a film worth watching!

The life-changing story of Kencho is based on a string of lies, dishonest and corrupt practices – by individuals and institutions, including the police and high-nosed gentlemen, which are in fact, diametrically opposite to the Gandhian ideal of honesty and integrity. But for Kencho, these lies lead to a decent future and an honest way of life – and perhaps this is where the strength of the film lies.

Shoma A Chatterji is a National Award winning author, freelance journalist, and a film scholar, based in Kolkata, India.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum
 

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Mumbai: A coming of age LGBTQ romantic comedy titled ‘Love, Simon’ has been making waves across the world for its story and characters. It came as no surprises that the Indian LGBTQ community was looking forward to watching it in their country.
 
Early this week, it was reported that it was going to release on June 1. It also happens to be International Pride month and the community couldn’t hold their excitement to see it in their nearby theatres. GayStar News released a report saying that CBFC board had banned the film in India on the day of its release due to its gay content. The writer Shannon Power, who lives in Melbourne, Australia also wrote that the Indian Certification board has a history of silencing or banning films with LGBTQ themes.
 
We spoke to the Regional Officer of the Mumbai Branch of CBFC who cleared the rumour mongering and said, “My system shows that we have already released the certificate for Love, Simon in February. Now it is Fox Studios lookout when they want to screen it in theatres.”
 
Love, Simon is produced by 20^th Century Fox and we also contacted the Fox Star India Studios representative, whose name was on the certificate, to know what the actual news was. She said, “I don’t know where you heard this from. We are not releasing the movie in India. If you’re saying that tickets were being booked on BookMyShow, I don’t know where you got that information because we didn’t declare a release date. That’s the only information I can give you.” She also said that it’s their prerogative when they release or whether they release the movie. There was no reliable source online to verify the films release announcement in India.
 
The community was proverbially up in arms online, requesting and bashing CBFC to release the movie. We also tweeted Shannon Power, to ask what her sources for this news were as she didn’t quote any relevant Indian sources in her article. That article is being cited as the original news by many. We are yet to receive a reply. It surprising that many Indian blogs and websites decided to carry this unverified news without contacting Indian officials and the studio responsible for its release.

Noted equal rights and animal rights activist Harish Iyer spoke at length about the ban on Twitter yesterday before the news was cross-checked.
“I do regret posting without verified facts about the ban but I don’t regret calling CBFC a regressive body, which it is. We do tend to believe the news we read online and not everybody cross checks it. You don’t expect a common man to call authorities and find out for themselves. But this new development isn’t a reason to rejoice either. In this case, the CBFC was misquoted and was receiving misdirected hate but the truth is that it acts as a censor board when it is just a certification board. Many LGBTQ films are still languishing and are in trouble because CBFC is regressive,” he said. 

He tweeted saying that, “Every year scores of children commit suicide, slide into depression, adults and the young battle loneliness, mental health issues because of unjust laws and the idea that sexuality is a monolith. More depiction would lead to more acceptance.  #LoveSimon.”
 

The post Exclusive: Was Love, Simon actually banned? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

लेकिन बीजेपी के नेता कैलाश विजयवर्गीय ने शाहरुख खान पर ट्वीट करके भरसक विवदों को पैदा करने की कोशिश की हैं उन्होंने ट्वीट करके लिखा है हमारे भारत के काबिल किसी भी परदेस के रईस से, हर हाल में बेहतर हैं।

इस्से पहले कैलाश विजयवर्गीय ने ट्वीट कर कहा था जो रईस देश का नहीं, वो किसी काम का नहीं. और एक काबिल देशभक्त का साथ तो हम सभी को देना ही चाहिए।

ऋतिक की ‘काबिल’ और शाहरुख की ‘रईस’ दोनों ही फिल्में 25 जनवरी को रिलीज होंगी। ऋतिक ने कहा कि फिल्म का कारोबार एक तरफ होना चाहिए और दोस्ती दूसरी तरफ। रईस और काबिल बॉक्स ऑफिस पर टकरा सकती हैं, लेकिन इससे दोस्ती पर कोई असर नहीं पड़ेगा। हमें ऐसी समझ होनी चाहिए।

‘जोधा अकबर’ के अभिनेता ने कहा कि फिल्म रिलीज की तारीख साफ हो जाने के बाद उन्होंने एक-दूसरे से बात की थी। ये पूछे जाने पर कि तारीख के टकराव से क्या बचा भी जा सकता था, उन्होंने कहा कि उन्हें इससे अच्छी कोई तारीख नहीं मिली और ये गलत नहीं है।

Courtesy: Janta Ka Reporter

The post बीजेपी नेता का शाहरुख ख़ान की फिल्म पर विवादित बयान, कहा, ‘जो रईस देश का नहीं वो किसी काम का नहीं’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image: Scroll.in

Karan Johar’s video statement on Tuesday pleading for his new movie to be allowed to run in theatres without disruption looks like a better lit version of the victim videos released by kidnappers and terrorists. As he reiterates his patriotism and beseeches protestors to allow Ae Di Hai Mushkil to be released without violence on October 28, Johar looks less like the master of ceremonies he often plays in TV shows and more like he is seconds away from an executioner's dagger.

The mood in the video, which runs one minute and 46 seconds, is appropriately funereal. Johar is dressed in a black t-shirt with white markings and seated against a deep grey background as he addresses his hyper-nationalist critics, many of whom are nested in the film industry. There are minimal hand and head movements. Johar’s tone is even but the despair is unmistakable.

To the demand that he stall the release of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil because it features Pakistani actor Fawad Khan in a few scenes, Johar points out that when he shooting the film between September and December in 2015, there was no sign of the hysteria that would wash over India months later, after a militant attack on an Army camp in Uri in September killed 19 soldiers.

“The circumstances were completely different,” Johar notes. “There were efforts made by our government for peaceful relationships with the neighbouring country and I respected those endeavours then, those efforts then. And I respect the sentiment today.”

Having reiterated his loyalty to the nation, Johar cuts the final threads that connect us to the very brief (and very pleasurable) Fawad Khan era. “Going forward, I would like to say that of course I will not engage with talent from the neighboring country given the circumstance,” he promises.

The statement dispels lingering doubts that Pakistani actors or singers will be hired by Indian producers in the foreseeable future – or, possibly, ever. India discovered the bounty of Pakistani talent in scriptwriting, acting and singing through videotapes of television serials in the 1980s. In the 1990s, the internet brought Pakistani stars closer to India, and in 2014, the television channel Zindagi brought them into living rooms across the country. But Uri has resulted in an angry chorus demanding retribution: the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena in Mumbai has threatened violence against theatre owners who show films featuring Pakistanis and the Indian Motion Picture Producers Association has issued a ban on Pakistani talent being employed in future productions.

Zindagi has dropped Pakistani serials from its programming, while the Cinema Owners and Exhibitors Association of India has issued a directive to its members in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa and Karnataka against screening films with actors from across the border.

The decision of the exhibitors' association directly affects Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, and Johar’s statement seems to be aimed at assuaging distributors and exhibitors that they will not be guilty of sedition if they screen his quadrangular romance.

“Today I’d like to clarify that the reason why I’ve remained silent is because of the deep sense of hurt and the deep sense of pain that I’ve felt that a few people would actually believe that I’m being anti-national,” Johar said, stating the obvious. “I need to say this… and I say this with strength that for me, my country comes first, nothing else matters to me but my country.”

It's all about loving your country

Any disruption of screenings of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, which has been given a UA-rated certificate by the censor board, will only harm the 300-odd crew members who have worked on the film, Johar said. He “beseeched” his attackers to respect their “blood, sweat and tears”, even as he emphasised his respect for the Army. “I salute the Indian Army for everything they do to protect us in our environment. I respect them with all my heart, and I say that I condemn any form of terrorism, any form… and specially the terrorism that would affect my people in my country and me.”

Murmurs of the heart have inspired all of Johar’s films, and he seeks to broaden the understanding of love in his video statement: “We love and respect our country over and above anything else.”

Johar’s films are characterised by their unabashed celebration of wealth, beautiful people, attractive foreign locations, chart-topping songs, haute couture and occasional subversive digs at conservative values. With the video, the act of buying a movie ticket for Ae Di Hai Mushkil has become an expression of subversion and protest, like defying the diktats of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad to watch a documentary about Kashmir, Muzaffarnagar or Dalit killings.

The video provides an apt mirror to the Hindi film industry, whose celebrated secular fabric has been revealed to have gaping holes. There are many filmmakers, actors, singers and technicians in the film trade who suck up to power rather than stand up to it. There are others who rail against the Bharatiya Janata Party-led regime (but mostly on Twitter and Facebook). And there are still others like Johar who seek a live-and-let-live middle path.

All these filmmakers want to do is make movies and money, be featured on magazine covers, grace red carpets, and be the object of public adoration. But the increasingly divisive political atmosphere in the country makes distance from and indifference to social and political debates impossible. For Johar to sit in front of a camera and beg for tolerance and understanding is a new low. Some commentators might dismiss his effort as a craven compromise, made in the service of commerce. Others will regard the video with the same sadness they feel when they watch agitations by Muslim beef traders and striking students at the Film and Television Institute of India, whose acts of protest, major and minor, strengthen the spine of Indian democracy.

Journalists are already drawing up their lists of the most noteworthy films of 2016. This year, the candidates need to include Pahlaj Nihalani’s tacky thank-you notes to Narendra Modi and liberal-bashing videos by ultranationalists. To that ever-expanding roll of dishonor, let us add “Karan Johar breaks silence, speaks up on the Ae Dil Hai Mushkil controversy.” Save it on your desktop, for it is of this moment as well as a sign of things to come.

(This article was first published on Scroll.in)

Related story: Revisiting ‘Sadgati” by Satyajit Ray: Caste in Indian Cinema
Related story: Cinema & Secularism

The post Karan Johar’s Video Plea reflects our current Crisis – and is a Warning of Things to come appeared first on SabrangIndia.

अमिताभ बच्चन की चौहत्तरवीं सालगिरह राष्ट्रीय ख़बर थी. आख़िर वे महानायक हैं. लेकिन अमिताभ बच्चन के महानायक होने के मायने क्या हैं? क्या इसकी कसौटी उनकी अभूतपूर्व व्यावसायिक सफलता है? या, वे एक असाधारण अभिनेता हैं जिनका जोड़ कम से कम हिंदी सिनमा को अब तक नहीं मिला? इन प्रश्नों पर अलग-अलग राय हो सकती है.

इस महानायकत्व के सामाजिक आशय को कैसे समझें? अपने जन्मदिन पर उन्होंने एक सरकारी या राजकीय प्रवक्ता की तरह देशभक्तिपूर्ण वक्तव्य जारी किया, कि यह समय अपने सैन्य बल के साथ खड़े होने का है. इस बयान का कोई ख़ास अर्थ नहीं है क्योंकि शायद ही इस देश में आज कोई ऐसा है जो सेना पर सवाल कर रहा हो. कम से कम दहशतगर्दों के ख़िलाफ़ उसकी कार्रवाई पर. सारे राजनीतिक दल एक स्वर से इस कार्रवाई का समर्थन कर रहे हैं. तब इस समय अलग से सेना के साथ एकजुटता के बयान में कोई ताजगी न थी. इस बयान की भाषा में भी कोई प्रेरणास्पद शक्ति नहीं थी. फिर एक अभिनेता यह बयान देकर क्या साबित कर रहा है?

दहशगर्दी के ख़िलाफ़ किसी क़दम का विरोध शायद कोई आत्मघाती ही कर सकता है. आलोचना अगर हो रही है तो भारतीय जनता पार्टी की सरकार और उसके नेताओं की जो कई क़दम आगे जाकर असभ्य तरीक़े से पाकिस्तान के खिलाफ बयान तो दे ही रहे हैं, सेना के एक पेशेवर क़दम को उत्तर प्रदेश के चुनाव में भुनाने में भी लगे हैं. इसकी आलोचना करने वालों पर हमले हो रहे हैं, उन्हें पाकिस्तान जाने की नसीहत दी जा रही है.
 

अमिताभ बच्चन हिंदी सिनेमा के बुज़ुर्ग हैं. उनसे यह संसार संरक्षण की उम्मीद भी करता है. उनसे कनिष्ठ अभिनेता संकट में उनकी ओर देखें, यह स्वाभाविक ही है. दूसरे देशों के कलाकार भी अपनी हिफाजत के लिए उनकी ओर ही देखेंगे.
 

इस समय अगर अमिताभ बच्चन जैसी सार्वजनिक शख़्सियत लोगों के गलत की आलोचना करने के अधिकार का समर्थन करे तो उसका कुछ मतलब हो, लेकिन ऐसा उन्होंने नहीं किया.

अमिताभ बच्चन हिंदी सिनेमा के बुज़ुर्ग हैं. उनसे यह संसार संरक्षण की उम्मीद भी करता है. उनसे कनिष्ठ अभिनेता संकट में उनकी ओर देखें, यह स्वाभाविक ही है. इतने लंबे सिनेमाई जीवन के कारण और एक अखिल भारतीय व्यक्तित्व होने के चलते उनकी बात का असर व्यापक होगा. दूसरे देशों के कलाकार भी अपनी हिफाजत के लिए उनकी ओर ही देखेंगे. लेकिन अगर हम उनके रिकॉर्ड पर नज़र दौड़ाएं तो मालूम होता है कि उन्होंने अभिनेता के तौर पर अर्जित शक्ति का इस्तेमाल कभी भी अपने लाभ के अलावा किसी और मक़सद के लिए नहीं किया.

अभी हाल में जब पाकिस्तानी कलाकारों को भारत से चले जाने का अभियान चलाया गया तो सलमान खान तक से न रहा गया. पिछले दिनों अपने ऊटपटांग व्यवहार के लिए बदनाम ओम पुरी ने भी इस घृणा अभियान की आलोचना की. लेकिन अमिताभ बच्चन का बयान आज्ञाकारी, अनुशासित अनुचर जैसा था. उन्होंने कहा कि अगर ऐसा कोई फ़ैसला हुआ है तो वे उसका पालन करेंगे. यानी किसी पाकिस्तानी कलाकार के साथ काम नहीं करेंगे.

अमिताभ से इस समय क्या अपेक्षा थी? ‘क्या सीमा पार की सैनिक कार्रवाई’ पाकिस्तान की फ़ौज के ख़िलाफ़ थी? क्या वह पाकिस्तान पर हमले की शुरुआत थी? क्या पाकिस्तान ने भारत पर आक्रमण कर दिया है? ज़ाहिर है, इनमें से हर सवाल का जवाब ‘नहीं’ में है. सरकार की ही बात मानें तो यह एक सीमित कार्रवाई थी जो दहशतगर्दों के एक जमाव को नाकाम करने के लिए की गई. ऐसी स्थिति में पाकिस्तान के कलाकारों के बहिष्कार का क्या अर्थ है? यह सवाल कोई भी विवेकी उठाएगा. यह तय है कि अक्सर सवाल उठाने में ख़तरा है. लेकिन अगर ख़तरे से महानायक डरेगा तो फिर मैदान में कौन रहेगा?

इस घटना को छोड़ भी दें तो पहले भी अमिताभ बच्चन ने अपनी बिरादरी के असुरक्षित साथियों के लिए आवाज़ उठाना ज़रूरी नहीं समझा है. हाल में कन्नड़ फ़िल्म अभिनेत्री सपना को सिर्फ़ यह कहने पर कि पाकिस्तान नरक नहीं है अपमानित और प्रताड़ित किया गया, तो अमिताभ को यह अपने क़द से बहुत छोटा मामला जान पड़ा.
 

हाल में जब आमिर खान पर पूरी सरकार ने हमला बोल दिया तो अनेक कलाकार उनके समर्थन में सामने आए लेकिन अमिताभ को यह मुंह खोलने लायक मामला नहीं लगा.
 

आमिर खान पर एकाधिक बार हमले हुए हैं. मेधा पाटकर के आंदोलन का समर्थन करने के चलते जब गुजरात में उनकी फ़िल्म के प्रदर्शन को रोका दिया गया, तो भी अमिताभ ने चुप्पी बनाए रखी. हाल में जब आमिर खान पर पूरी सरकार ने हमला बोल दिया तो अनेक कलाकार उनके समर्थन में सामने आए लेकिन अमिताभ को यह मुंह खोलने लायक मामला नहीं लगा. इसी समय नयनतारा सहगल समेत और लेखकों पर सरकार और सत्ताधारी दल की ओर से भद्दे आक्रमण की सूरत में भी उन्होंने अपनी सुनहरी ख़ामोशी बनाए रखी. नयनतारा उनकी मां की मित्र भी होंगी और अमिताभ की बचपन की कुछ यादें उनसे जुड़ी होंगी, लेखक उनकी पिता की बिरादरी के थे, लेकिन अमिताभ को यह सब अपनी ऊंचाई से दिखाई न दिया.

कहा जाता है कि अमिताभ जैसे कलाकार से ऐसी संवेदनशील स्थिति में स्टैंड लेने की मांग ग़लत है क्योंकि एक-एक फ़िल्म पर करोड़ों रुपए लगे होते हैं और सैकड़ों की रोजी उससे जुड़ी होती है. यह बहाना लेकर अक्सर अपनी तटस्थता का बचाव किया जाता है. अगर महानायक इतना असमर्थ है तो उसकी इस पदवी का क्या अर्थ है?

ऐसा नहीं कि अमिताभ ने सत्ता से एक सच्चे कलाकार की तरह दूरी रखी है. ऐसे कलाकार भी हैं. वहीदा रहमान शालीनता से जीवन जी रही हैं. लेकिन अमिताभ बच्चन को राजनीतिक दलों से नजदीकी रखने में कोई उलझन नहीं रही है.

अमिताभ की कुरबत (नजदीकी), जो अब उतनी नई भी नहीं है, भारतीय जनता पार्टी से है. 2002 के गुजरात के जनसंहार के बाद उसे दर्शनीय स्थल के रूप में मनभावन बनाने में अमिताभ ने अपनी आवाज़ की दैवीय देन का भरपूर इस्तेमाल किया.

क्या हिंदी सिनेमा संसार ऐसा ही रहा है? हाल में हमने शर्मिला टैगोर, महेश भट्ट, शबाना आज़मी, आमिर खान या फ़रहान अख़्तर जैसे कलाकारों को समय-समय पर बोलते हुए और उसके कारण मुश्किल में पड़ते भी देखा है. लेकिन बड़ा तबक़ा ऐसा है जो सत्ता का चारण बनने में हिचकता नहीं.
 

जिस समय भारत का महानायक राज्य का प्रचारक मालूम पड़ रहा है, लगभग उसी समय पिंक फ़्लॉयड के पुराने और अलग हो चुके गायक एक जगह इकट्ठा हुए: फ़िलस्तीन और ग़ाज़ा पट्टी की आज़ादी की ओर ध्यान दिलाने को निकले जहाज के समर्थन में एक मज़बूत बयान देने के लिए.
 

कई फ़िल्मी हस्तियां राज्य सभा में गई हैं, फ़िल्म में होने के कारण. लेकिन वहां उनकी भूमिका सचिन तेंदुलकर जैसी ही रही है. पृथ्वीराज कपूर का वक़्त कुछ और था!

जिस समय भारत का महानायक राज्य का प्रचारक मालूम पड़ रहा है, लगभग उसी समय पिंक फ़्लॉयड के पुराने और अलग हो चुके गायक एक जगह इकट्ठा हुए: फ़िलस्तीन और ग़ाज़ा पट्टी की आज़ादी की ओर ध्यान दिलाने को निकले जहाज के समर्थन में एक मज़बूत बयान देने के लिए. ये गायक खुलकर डॉनल्ड ट्रम्प की मुख़ालफ़त भी कर रहे हैं. ऐसे अमरीकी कलाकार कम नहीं हैं जिन्होंने खुलेआम कहा है कि अगर ट्रम्प राष्ट्रपति हों तो वे अमरीका में रहने पर सोचेंगे. लेकिन वहां उन्हें जलावतन करने या देशद्रोही ठहराने के बारे में किसी ने कुछ कहा नहीं है.

यूरोप, अमरीका में जनतंत्र के लिए, दबे-कुचले लोगों के लिए अपनी कला की शक्ति का इस्तेमाल नया नहीं है. वहां कलाकार, भले ही, करोड़ों में खेलते हों, राजनीतिक जोखिम लेते रहे हैं. वियतनाम युद्ध हो या इराक़ पर हमला, कलाकारों ने राष्ट्र के मानस को युद्ध के ख़िलाफ़ तैयार करने में पेशकदमी ली है. हमारे यहां, दुर्भाग्य से कलाकार, ख़ासकर फ़िल्मी, आत्मसंरक्षण और आत्मोत्थान से आगे जा नहीं पाते.
अगर कला का समाज की आत्मा की लौ जगाए रखने से कोई वास्ता है, तो यह क्योंकर है कि हमारे बड़े कलाकार अपनी आत्मा को कुचल कर अपना ओहदा बचाए रखते हैं? इस लौ को उकसाने का काम रंगमंच के कलाकार करते रहे हैं, लेकिन, वे भी व्यवसायीकरण के साथ, कम होते जाते हैं. अगर कोई सबसे मुखर तबक़ा है तो अध्यापकों और लेखकों का. अमिताभ बच्चन इस फ़िल्मी दुनिया के एक सबसे ज्यादा बिकनेवाले उत्पाद हैं. उन्होंने अपने भीतर किसी सचेतन सत्ता का अनुभव नहीं किया तो क्या आश्चर्य?

Courtesy: satyagrah.scroll.in

The post अगर वे इतने ही असमर्थ हैं तो हमारे महानायक कैसे हो सकते हैं? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Popular cinema in India is a strange social animal. Hailed as the primary popular culture in the country, it is also considered the filmi villain that has killed several pre-cinema cultural practices, most of which were community based. It is assumed that reproducibility has multiplied the outreach of cinema to such an extent that by the mid-20th century, it had become the only source of visual and narrative rhetoric in the complex cultural trajectory of the subcontinent.

Image: Subhash Sharma / roadsandkingdoms.com

Cinema has gradually replaced the sayings and adages in social communication. It has shaped the behavioural pattern for love, aspiration, rights, identity, ideology and so on. It creates visual references or templates for opulence and poverty, success and failure, rural and urban, and the good citizen and bad citizen. Sushila, a thirty two year old woman who has lived all her life in this city, in an interview in 2010 said, ‘Last year I went to town (colloquially means the southern end of the city) …saw the sea, the train lines, buildings, roads …they are exactly like in cinema. …I felt like I have seen them all. [i] In her case, the live experience of the space can only be negotiated in reference to the images seen in films.
 
This phenomenal width of its outreach and thus its ability to create, preserve and circulate rhetoric has made popular cinema essentially an affair of the public. I use the word public here in the sense of groups of peoples who together make an overarching entity, the cinema viewer in this case, and yet may not ever meet each other, possibly not even otherwise share a common language, livelihood practices, eating and clothing customs, social and cultural heritage and so on.
 
In short, popular cinema in India binds together a public under a common referral system and yet completely bypasses, at times even destroys, the tenet of the communal. This essay aims to look at the public-popular configuration around cinema viewing – how the public got consolidated around the popular and when they became alienated from each other. Moreover, the role that the constructed site of cinema halls play in making and dismantling this configuration. For the sake of convenience, this essay concentrates only on the city of Bombay as a case study.
 
The first public exhibition of moving images in India is recorded as a special show of French pioneers, the Lumière Brothers, at Watson Hotel in Bombay followed by regular public shows at Novelty Theatre in 1896. But in effect another two decades had to pass before cinema could attract enough public attention and thus draw finance to become a viable commercial enterprise. In 1923 for the first time an entertainment tax of 12.5% was levied on commercial exhibition of moving images. Even at that point revenues from entertainment tax on Bombay and Poona horse races far exceeded returns from cinema.
 
By the third decade of the 20th century, cinema halls became an essential part of the urban development scheme. Till then films were mainly shown intermittently in the drama houses or in informal shacks that were predominantly constructed and run by the film producers/studio owners. Construction of buildings that would be exclusively dedicated to cinema exhibition began in the middle of the two world wars, around the 1930s. The world wars and the interim years between them brought heavy traffic of people, skills, goods, capital, ideologies and technology to the port cities. The churning of all these diverse elements resulted in various hybrid urban enterprises and expressions that would be later known as urban culture – cinema was primary among them.
 
Since then the construction of cinema halls, in a way, outlined the expansion of the Bombay city limits. Studying maps of decade-wise construction of new cinema halls helps to comprehend the urbanization pattern of the pastoral and coastal land of the seven islands that made Bombay. The colonial island city, the native city of bazaars, and the port city during the first and second decades of the 20^th century existed only in the South of the peninsula and so did the cinema establishments. Through the following decades the manufacturing industry expanded the city to the middle of the land and then in the last quarter of the century the service industry and media industry expanded it towards the North. The construction pattern of the cinema halls clearly traces that territorial expansion.
 
Sometimes, the cinema halls even preempted official urban development. Samrat, a 1500-seater cinema hall in the erstwhile pastoral land of Goregaon West was built in the 1970s. The old neighbours testified that looking at the large plinth, they thought that the government was building a night shelter for buffalos from the numerous tabelas in the area! The construction of the cinema hall was their first experience of urban infrastructural intervention, well before other attributes of urbanization reached them. At other times the inception of the cinema hall marked the economic and social history of the locality.
 
In the industrial precinct of Girangaon (literary translated, villages of textile mills) cinema halls were built around the 1920s to keep the workforce, who came from the agrarian hinterland, from escaping back to the gaon. Sometimes these halls ran shows round the clock with show timings adjusted to the end of the shifts at the textile mills. Despite the severe real estate onslaught on the area that was ushered in following the decline of the textile industry in the 1980s, one such theatre still exists with the Marathi speaking working class as its primary patron. This hall was built as Laxmi Theatre in the premises of India United Textile Mills in 1923, but changed its name to Bharatmata Cinema during the Quit India movement in 1942 when the industrialist class pledged its support to the independence movement.[ii]
 
The cinema halls located on Falkland Road are part of the designated entertainment district – Play House (hybridized by the locals as Pila House). The area was carved out by the British government from a Muslim graveyard in 1850 and earmarked as an entertainment district, modelled on the Play House area of London. The remains of its past can be spotted in the numerous dargahs and mazars strewn in the area. The public entertainment centres in the area have metamorphosed from tents showcasing variety entertainment programmes, circus and wrestling matches, to drama houses for Parsi theatre companies and cinema halls during the period from 1870s to 1930s. Almost a dozen of such establishments still run three shows a day.
 
Many of these more than a century old halls that currently screen old Hindi films or adult films for migrant wage workers and low-end sex workers from the adjacent red light area, house a shrine or two in their premises. It is quite a common sight to find an eager audience paying obeisance at the dargah moments before rushing to catch an x-rated film. The dargahs are not hidden, nor are the explicit ingredients of the films.
 
Moreover, the urban neighbourhoods could be categorized by the specificities of the cinema exhibition centres in the area till the 1980s. Sleazy cinema at Falkland Road halls at the edge of the Bazaar city and the red light area for the mixed race and floating public, English and Hollywood cinema at the art deco halls at the former European precinct for the elites of South Bombay, South Indian cinema at Matunga-Chembur for the service class in the public sector, Marathi cinema at the Dadar-Parel area near the industrial town, Gujarati cinema at the sea facing the northern suburb of Juhu-Vile Parle and so on.

 
Cinema halls were (still are to a lesser extent) the landmarks for the neighbourhoods and cultural signifiers for the local population. So the halls not only showed films that were conducive to their distinct clientele, but facilities were also developed to cultivate the primary clientele. Parsi cuisine would be available at Grant Road-Lamington Road halls, and continental at South Bombay. Crèche facilities were available at theatres frequented by the upper middle class women; separate zenana quarters were marked in the halls in poorer neighbourhoods. Female patrons were specially cultivated through exclusive zenana shows in the afternoon. Lead actresses were made to attend the zenana shows and interact with the audience in order to build patron loyalty.[iii]
 
The lanes outside the neighbourhood halls would be strewn with kiosks and carts selling cinema memorabilia (booklet of songs, audio cassette of songs and dialogue tracks, posters of matinee idols), fashion accessories, photo studios with cut-outs of the stars, tea and street food stalls. A substantial volume of livelihood would be generated through these ancillary enterprises along with the working population in the cinema halls – ushers, guards, projectionists, electricians, box office men, banner painters, announcers, gardeners etc. The area would be regularly visited by the locals
even when they were not going to watch a film.
 
But despite the distinct local/neighbourhood flavour of the cinema halls, people would also travel the length and breadth of the city to avail the special experience of watching a particular film in a particular ambience. The Liberty cinema, opened in 1949, was the first ‘A’ grade establishment with air conditioning and push back seats to exclusively show Hindi cinema. People travelled across the city to watch its inaugural film Andaz (dir. Mehboob Khan, 1949). The film that centred on the lives of the urban super rich seemed to be appropriate to watch in the luxury of the newly constructed Liberty Cinema. It ran in Liberty for 28 weeks. Sholay (dir. Ramesh Sippy, 1975) was first released in 24 theatres across Bombay, yet people rushed to watch it at Minerva that screened the 70mm print. The queue for advanced tickets reached a bus stop three kilometres away from Minerva, rechristening it as Sholay Stop.

Mughal-e-Azam (dir. K. Asif, 1960) was premiered at Maratha Mandir. The print of the film was carried to the theatre on an elephant and a large crowd gathered to watch the spectacle. In later weeks the façade of the theatre was adorned like a palace and the elephants were kept tied at the entrance to create a shahi ambience. It ensured a continuous flow of audience for months
to come. Hence, while the cinema halls reflected the neighbour-facilitated movement of people across the city.
 
Thus the popularity of cinema was framed within a public mould as the near euphoric response to films was performed, collated and displayed at a public place – the cinema hall. The collective aspect of viewing films in a public hall in an era of single screen theatres made the reception end of cinema a public affair. A heterogeneous public gathered for a homogenous experience – viewing of cinema.
 
‘I came to Bombay during the period of Emergency, in 1975. I got married and within a week I was in Bombay. When you get into a local train nobody recognises you… you stand at a paan beedi shop nobody recognises you; you can enjoy your freedom. For me Bombay is liberation from a lot of do’s and don’ts and from unwanted ties. It is a city that lets you be. I suppose films in some way give you that platform of shared activity… Sometimes I saw three films in a day at Amber Oscar Minor, Gaiety Galaxy Gemini. One show after another and yet another… those were not the days of multiplexes, but I created my own multiplex. I was 23 when I came here and since then it has been one rollercoaster ride,’[iv] said Farukkh Waris, a self-confessed film buff who is a descendent of a royal family in Lucknow.
 
The cinema hall along with the railways brought in the first homogenized spatial experience across class, caste and gender in modern India. Though there were differently priced tickets and a hierarchy of seats, the consumption of the film happened in the same space and at the same time for a diverse people – something that I would like to argue, is an essential aspect of public culture. Waris’ memoirs of her journey from the secluded life of an aristocrat in Lucknow to a member of the public in Bombay is complimented by Aqila’s sense of longing for a more public life. As of 2010, Aqila lives in Mumbra, a distant suburb of Bombay.
 
‘I always tell my friends who are from Bombay that they enjoy such a great life. They can watch films whenever they feel like or just go to the sea front. I think Bombay life is different from our life here and it is much better. Bombay is so big, people from different places go there and so it is easy to have a wide circle of friends. But in distant suburbs like Mumbra or Ambarnath there is no option. Whatever small gateways of entertainment we have in our life keeps shrinking. If we go to a theatre close to our house… everyone knows everyone here, and so you will be reported or be taunted. There is no escape. But once you go to Bombay no one has a clue. Everybody is just part of the public.’[v]
 
Ironically, though, the state played a role in making Indian cinema such a volatile public culture. The trend of travelling across the city to catch a particular film or experience a particular theatre ambience is unique to Indian conditions, in contrast to other cinema cities. Despite the phenomenal volume of cinema productions, the number of exhibition centres even in 2007-08 for per one million people in India was only 12, whereas in China it was 31, Japan 25, UK 62 and in the USA 132 (Unesco Institute for Statistics – UIS Report, 2013). There were only 12000 theatres spread  across the country, with Greater Bombay accounting for 110 screens catering to 18 million people in 2000.
 
Though by independence, Indian cinema, as a combination of Hindi, Tamil, Telegu, Marathi,  Bengali and other language films, was already crowned as the pivotal popular culture of the 20th century, state policies continued to view this phenomenon with suspicion. The state control over cinema was primarily concerned with public exhibition and thus control was exercised through restrictions on the cinema halls – sometimes on the pretext of public health, at other times by invoking public morality, or in the guise of law and order.
 
It is important to note here that the censorship laws of both the colonial government and the national government bestow the power to stop the screening of any film on the police and other state agencies, notwithstanding its censorship status, as it may cause disturbance to public life. Hence, control is exercised on the exhibition of a film and not on its production. As long as the general public does not see it, the state has no objection to any film being made. Hence, the government never had a policy of encouraging the construction of cinema halls.
 
In 1950, the newly independent state imposed a freeze on new construction of cinema halls in response to a crisis in cement and other building materials. The restriction on construction was meant to cover all non-essential buildings, and cinema halls came under that category. While the number of films produced rose dramatically from profits made in the war, the lack of exhibition spaces created a forced scarcity. The freeze on new cinema halls was revoked only a decade later. Curiously this scarcity of exhibition infrastructure only increased the desirability of cinema for the Indian urban public. People waited longingly for a new release and endured any hardship to see the film – travelling long distances, standing in serpentine queues, braving familial restrictions, and buying tickets at a hugely inflated price, and then relived the experience through ancillary portals – radio programmes, audio reproductions, performances by duplicate artists and so on.
 
Another way of controlling cinema exhibition was through the exorbitant entertainment tax levied on tickets by the state government, and the sales tax on film prints by the central government. This was calculated at 4% of the cost of the film. As a result, many ordinary theatres could not afford to screen the big budget films. Thus, in effect, certain established theatres enjoyed a monopoly over the new and big budget films. Films that became block busters then ran in a theatre for several weeks. The exhibitors marketed them as ‘silver jubilee’ and ‘golden jubilee’, giving them an iconic status. This in turn resulted in repeat viewing, to the extent that people often boasted of watching a blockbuster 20-odd times at a single theatre. This iconicity further enhanced the status of cinema in public life and became part of urban lore.
 
This public character of popular cinema began to fade out from the late 1980s. As the manufacturing industry in the urban areas declined, the class composition of the city too began to change. In Greater Bombay, employment in manufacturing industry fell from 36% in 1981 to 28.5% in 1991, and employment in trade and services industry increased from 52% to 64% in the same period (census report 1991). The expansion of service industry and financial corporations in the city increased the consumption capacity of the middle class. At the same time the demise of the organized sector began to usher in unorganized migrant labour with an uncertain financial capacity. Simply put, the upper end of the middle class turned more solvent and the lower end of the class  structure became poorer. So it became highly incongruous to expect that the two sectors could be entertained in the same place at the same time.
 
This phase of urban development coincided with some other historical turns – the emergence of video followed by digital technology which made cinema accessible to individuals in their domestic spaces. Second, following economic liberalization, the value of land in Bombay skyrocketed. All these parallel developments occurred in the last decade of the previous century and the beginning of the 21st century. The cumulative effect of this was a segregation of the act of viewing cinema by the different classes, resulting in the closure of single screen halls.

 
The multiplex era was initiated in 1997 when Samrat Cinema at Goregaon (mentioned earlier in the context of a night shelter for buffalos), was upgraded to Cinemax with two screens with its seating capacity reduced from 1500 at the single screen to 698 for both screens together. This was followed by a series of multiplex franchises – Cine Star, Cine Magic and Cine Planet – taking over the single screen cinemas in the western suburb of the city. This was welcomed by the film industry as a fresh lease of market investment in the ailing sector of cinema exhibition. In 1997-99 in only the western suburb, the seating capacity across four single screen halls reduced from 4500 to 2100 in the process of being converted into multiple screen theatres.
 
On the other hand, in 1992 the government liberalized the broadcast industry and foreign private channels such as BBC, Star TV, CNN, and domestic channels like Zee TV and Sun TV began satellite telecast. In 1993, Star TV acquired 49.9% shares in the domestic Hindi Zee TV network.[vi] Besides, pirated VHS cassettes brought cinema closer to home. The first casualty of all these developments was women’s access to public entertainment. Domestication of entertainment technology and avenues resulted in the closing down of the erstwhile popular convention of zenana shows in cinema halls. ‘Now we have got everything at home… we watch whatever comes on TV, chew our food and sit at home. That is all we do now. There is nothing left to do now… Earlier I got to see pictures in nearby theatres – Kalpana Talkies, Sheetal Talkies, Bharat Talkies. I went to each and all of them. We used to go with friends, only we girls went in a gang. We used to carry the brooms on our heads and roam around the gullies. We sold brooms and with the extra profit we used to see pictures… you can’t do such things now,’ said 60 years old Pochutai.[vii]
 
In the last one and a half decades the profit margins have increased manifold but the public nature of cinema viewing got severely curtailed. It has turned into a familial or peer activity. In later years, facilities such as downloadable cinema entered the computer screen and then the cell phone screen. As against this kind of personalised consumption of cinema, the public outlets metamorphosed in its next avatar. As more and more multiplexes take over the single screen cinemas and open new franchises, the audience profile goes through a fundamental alteration.
 
The multiplexes, mostly located inside the shopping malls, did not retain the specific characteristics of the earlier cinema halls. Hence, no patron loyalty developed on grounds of either being the pride of the neighbourhood or for having any special ambience. The landmarks of Bahar, Lotus, Darpan had to give way to the generic title and standardized architecture of the PVR, Fame, Cinemax outlets.
 
Now within the sprawling, brightly lit malls, the only gated zones are the cinema spaces. While the all accommodates the hangers-on, the window shoppers and the urban escapists, the cinema spaces restrict entry only to ticket holders. The sensory experiences of the escalator, the shop windows, the gaming zone, and the food mall have proved to be more cinematic than the darker space of cinema exhibition, generally tucked away in the deepest corner of the highest floor. With so many screens and many more shows at each screen, the choice for the multiplex audience has increased dramatically. Yet, with an average occupancy of 80 per screening, the multiplexes have become sites for special facility and not sites of public culture with heterogeneous participation.
 
In Maharashtra, the revenue from the entertainment tax (ET) levied on cinema exhibition is 45% of the ticket price. The tax has been uniformly applied on tickets of all denomination, and no control over the price of the ticket is exercised. Moreover, in order to encourage investment in the entertainment sector, the Maharashtra government offers total tax exemption for the first three years, then a concession for the next four years for multiplexes with four or more screens and total seating capacity above 1200. Hence, while a single screen hall with tickets priced at Rs 20 would pay Rs 9 as ET, a multiplex with tickets priced at Rs 250 would pay nothing for the first three years, Rs 66.25 for the next two years, Rs 99.38 for another two years and only after that Rs 112.5 per ticket. In 2013, the tax slab was amended to consider the rates of tickets. This move was initiated to curb the random and unregulated escalation of ticket prices that multiplexes charge before the release of big films.
 
In the new tax slab, tickets priced Rs 251-350 would pay 49.5% as ET, for tickets priced Rs 351-500 the tax is 51.75%, and for tickets priced above Rs 500 the tax levied is 54%. But this still does not protect the single screen halls as their ticket prices are never more than Rs 100. This tax structure too has become one of the prime reasons for single screen halls to shut down since 2000. As discussed earlier many of them got converted into multiplexes. But still there are some that completely changed land use and turned into an industrial complex or departmental store or residential building. Most cases of complete change of land use are in the area from the southern end up to Mahim, administratively called the Mumbai City District.
 
As per the Census report of 1981, the population of suburban district had surpassed the population of the city district. The newer entrants to the city crowd in the developing and expanding suburbs, making its demography swell up while the population of the older city in the south stagnates. Hence, it can be deduced that there has been a greater reduction in the cinema going public in the city district than in the suburban district and that has prompted the single screen halls there to go in for a complete change of land use. Between 1997 and 2011, 21% of single screen halls in the suburbs have converted either into multiplexes or into a mall with a multiplex in it; 34% of halls have simply shut down and are lying vacant, expecting more wild speculation on its real estate; and 45% are still functioning.
 
With the homogenization of the cinema exhibition centres, the specialized screenings of regional language cinema came to an end by the early years of the 21st century. Nobody paid any attention, as by then regional films could be seen on DVD or through television channels. But there is yet another side to the story, another kind of privatization of the public. The number of migrant workers from other language belts of the country continued to scale upwards. The workers are generally brought to the city by contractors to work on daily wages within an irregular work flow. Most of them live in language- and clan-based clusters across the suburban district which is where the cheap entertainment shops that show films in their native languages pop up – Tamil cinema at Dharavi, Telugu cinema at Orlem, Bhojpuri at Nalasopara, Punjabi at Sion Koliwada. Contrary to popular belief, this floating population does not subscribe to the overarching popularity of Hindi films. Their near exile existence makes them a diehard audience for flicks made in their native languages.
 
These shanty cinemas function with rudimentary infrastructure, sometimes using cheap video projectors, and often manage with a mere TV set. These makeshift structures are inserted within the unassuming rows of lottery ticket kiosks, tobacco shops, tender coconut stalls, tea vendor’s carts, mobile phone repairers, and so on. For the rest of the public in the city, these camouflaged cinema exhibition centres remain hidden, if not completely invisible. Often they are demolished by the municipality only to mushroom at another location a few metres away.
 
The fluidity of these shanty cinemas corresponds with the transient status of their patrons.  Availability of work for them depends on various external factors: weather, festive season, supply of raw material, transportation facility, and so on. So working days are punctuated with days of unemployment. Most often their accommodation arrangement only provides them rights over a mat to sleep on for eight hours. The tenements are rented out in multiple shifts. Hence, on the days without work, the workers hang around the shanty cinemas until it is time for them to reassert their claim on the mats. The cinema establishments function as an entertainment house, temporary shelter, waiting zone to get work, and also as a community centre for people speaking the same language.
 
It is grey all the way – the workers are unorganized and outsiders, and thus their livelihood is not regulated; their accommodation is informal and temporary and thus they are not entitled for residents’ rights; and their mode of entertainment is unaccredited and thus remains hidden. A little shift of balance in this precarious existence may push the wage workers and their entertainment shops from unauthorized to illegal and then may even, at a point of some heightened political manoeuvring, get termed as a site of criminality.
 
When cinema exhibition was a stand alone and homogenized phenomenon at the time of celluloid and large theatres, its audience profile at any given point was heterogeneous and composite. The site of cinema consumption, quite like the composition of the urban public, was a junction where identities made of different economic and cultural backgrounds could intersect. Currently cinema viewing, it is claimed, has been democratized, with diverse practices taking place in multiple sites across time. Yet, the audience profile at a given time and space is increasingly narrowing to a peer group defined by class congeniality or familial proximity or language and clan affinity. The cinema still reigns over the chart of popular culture, but with the fragmentation of its sites of consumption, it is slowly disengaging from the public domain.
 

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The Merchant-Ivory Production Bombay Talkie (1970), about a married film star’s dalliance with an American writer, stars one of the best-known Pakistani actors and voice artists. Zia Mohyeddin had appeared in several plays in London, including as Dr Aziz in a BBC adaptation of EM Forster’s A Passage to India in 1965. In Bombay Talkie, Mohyeddin plays Hari, a frustrated writer who is love with the American writer, played by Jennifer Kendal.

 
‘Bombay Talkie’ (1970).

Over the years, big-name Pakistani actors made appearances in Hindi films, including Nadeem in Ambrish Sangal’s Door Desh (1983) and Talat Hussain in Sawan Kumar Tak’s melodrama Souten Ki Beti (1989). Zeba Bakhtiar, the daughter of former Pakistan Law Minister Yahya Bakhtiar, played the lead along with Rishi Kapoor in Raj Kapoor’s cross-border romance Henna (1991). The story of a Kashmiri (Rishi Kapoor) who strays across the Line of Control after a bout of amnesia was inspired by the Pakistani classic Lakhon Mein Eik. Directed by Raza Amir in 1967, and based on a story by Zia Sarhadi, Heena has dialogue by legendary Pakistani television writer and playwright Haseena Moin, who wrote such iconic TV shows as Dhoop Kinare and Tanhaiyaan.

Bakhtiar was briefly married to singer and composer Adnan Sami, who became an Indian citizen in January 2016.

Among the Pakistani actors who have enlivened Hindi cinema through standout cameos is Salman Shahid. He plays a Taliban fighter in Kabul Express (2006) but is better known as Mushtaq Bhai, the hoodlum who tries in vain to tame Iftikhar (Naseeruddin Shah) and Babban (Arshad Warsi) in Abhishek Chaubey’s Ishqiya (2010) and Dedh Ishqiya (2014).

 
‘Ishqiya’ (2010).

The patrician Javed Sheikh has had a longer run, starring in John Matthew Matthan’s Shikhar (2005), Shirish Kunder’s Jaan-E-Mann (2006), Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om (2008), Anil Sharma’s Apne (2007), Vipul Shah’s Namastey London (2007) and Imtiaz Ali’s Tamsaha (2015). Sheikh’s most recent release is the cross-border rom-com Happy Bhaag Jayegi (2016) by Mudassar Aziz, who also stars his daughter, Momal Sheikh.

India-Pakistani co-productions are rare, but two examples stand out. One is Khamosh Pani (2003), directed by Pakistani director Sabiha Sumar, written by Indian filmmaker and writer Paromita Vohra , and starring Kirron Kher and Shilpa Shukla. The moving period drama, about a widow’s troubled relationship with her radicalised son, won the Best Film (Golden Leopard) prize at the Locarno International Film Festival.

Kirron Kher in ‘Khamosh Pani’.

Nandita Das crossed over to the other side to appear in Mehreen Jabbar’s Ramchand Pakistani (2008) as Champa, a Pakistani Hindu woman whose husband and son stray into India. Naseeruddin Shah has also been appearing in Pakistani films, such as Shoaib Mansoor’s Khuda Kay Liye (2007) and Zinda Bhaag (2013), by Meenu Gaur and Farjad Nabi. Khuda Kay Liye, which starred Pakistani superstar Shan and Fawad Khan, was released by Eros Entertainment in India, followed by Mansoor’s Bol in 2013. Two of Bol’s lead actresses, Humaima Malick and Mahira Khan, have been signed up by Bollywood. Malick headlined the Emraan Hashmi-starrer Raja Natwarlal (2014), while Mahira Khan has been paired with Shah Rukh Khan in the 2017 release Raees.

Nandita Das in ‘Ramchand Pakistani’ (2008).

India has also been able to share the talent of Pakistani musicians over the years. Chupke Chupke, the popular ghazal by Ghulam Ali, whose concerts in India have been regularly blocked by Shiv Sena, was used in BR Chopra’s marital drama Nikaah (1982).

Subhash Ghai recruited renowned Pakistani folk singer Reshma to record her classic love ballad, Lambi Judai, for his romance Hero (1983). In a 2004 interview, Reshma, whose family left Rajasthan for Pakistan when she was a toddler, said, “I was born in India and brought up in Pakistan. To me, India and Pakistan are the left and the right eyes.”

One of the greatest Pakistani exports in music is the qawwal Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who recorded several songs in collaboration with Indian musicians and lyricists, including remixed versions of Piya Re and Aafreen Aafreen (with lyrics by Javed Akhtar) and Gurus of Peace with AR Rahman.

Article was first published on Scroll.in

The post ‘India and Pakistan are like the left and right eyes’: A short survey of cross-border cultural ties appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Sadgati is a Hindi TV film directed by Satyajit Ray and released in 1981. It is an adaptation of Munshi Premchand’s short story of the same title published in 1931. The film explores the cruel and ruthless nature of the exploitative caste system in the South Asian subcontinent with cinematic precision. Unfortunately, both the story and the film remain relevant in 2016 as news of a Dalit college girl being forced into consuming a toilet cleaner makes headlines.

It is not the worst manifestations of physical violence meted out to lower castes, but the everyday exploitation they face, which is cinematically represented. The issue of caste is also linked to the superstitious practices of Hinduism in the film.

The film revolves around Dukhi, a Dalit who wants to fix an auspicious date for his daughter’s engagement according to Hindu customs. Despite being ill he goes to the house of the village Pandit with a large amount of fodder as gift, which he carries on his head and requests him to fix the date. The Brahmin priest, seizing the opportunity of getting free work done orders Dukhi to clean the terrace. After Dukhi comes back with the hope that the priest will tend to his services now, is again sent to clean the stable and also asked to chop a huge block of wood.

Having not had anything since morning and being ill, Dukhi is exhausted and unable to cut the wood. He sleeps off due to exhaustion. When the Pandit finds him napping, he wakes him up and asks him to get on with his work. Despite Dukhi pointing out that he had not had anything to eat since morning, the Pandit asks him to continue and have food once he gets back home. What follows after this is tragic.

The strength of the cinematic adaptation does not lie solely in its storytelling, but also in its precision to detail while exploring something as complex as caste. Dukhi refers to the Pandit as Ji even while conversing with his wife, showing how he respects the man responsible for exploiting him.

Scene where a drained Dukhi is labouring free for the Pandit should sensitise anyone who hires workers in the country at dirt cheap prices, or in many cases for free. Or where the Pandit while conversing with his wife tells her that they should be glad that the work is being done for free, will convince one that the only way the lower castes can get salvation, is through their own political struggle.

How caste and Hindu superstitions affect everyone is beautifully crafted visually. Dukhi’s wife, his daughter, the Pandit’s wife and other characters make their presence felt and caste is shown as a complex phenomenon where the oppressor is insensitive and the oppressed has internalised inhumane hierarchies.

It’s a brutal indictment of a society which is not only ravaged by class but also caste. It is not the need for money which makes Dukhi work for free. It is a strong belief in superstition. The film makes a strong political point about caste, which is not just seen as a superstructure of economic inequalities, but as an exploitative tool in itself tied closely with religion. This film should especially be seen by those individual who either tend to ignore or downplay caste. And most definitely by the ones who want to bring an end to caste based reservations in the country.

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