Until a few years ago, the first month of the year was a not-so-exciting-a-period for new films. It was the end of the holiday season, and producers got rid of films with little or no prospects. The advent of the internet and mobile phones made January the month where Indians would proclaim their love for the nation. All rationality was altered once the media jumped on the bandwagon. On the one hand, it created an environment of pop patriotism that dictated how days such as January 26 and August 15 were the ‘real’ time to display your patriotism. On the other hand, it continued, for want of a better expression, its all-year-round celebration of the actions that were opposite of loving one’s country in the name of patriotism.
Popular Indian cinema, especially the ‘Bombay’ variety, functioned in binaries when it came to the themes and stories. Similarly, terms such as nationalism and patriotism have been pushed to a place where they are viewed in binaries. Unlike most other genres, patriotic films for mainstream Bollywood remain as straight as possible, and it rarely allows any deviation from the template. Unlike real life where nationalism can be a ‘regular’ feature where one doesn’t have to fight the enemy on the border, et al, masala films in India ensured that saying you loved your country meant you were either willing to give your life or take a life.
For instance, John Matthew Mathan’s Sarfarosh (1999), where some people were not happy with a character called Veeran, played by Govind Namdeo. Ostensibly modelled on the brigand Veerappan, Veeran operated in southern India’s jungles and robbed the common folk to buy arms from Pakistan-based agencies to take on the Indian government. For some ‘fellow travellers’, Veeran romanticised the Naxal movement, and they did not like the film reducing him to a terrorist.
Sarfarosh was the first mainstream film to name Pakistan’s infamous Inter-Services Intelligence as an outfit hellbent on creating unrest in India. Released a few weeks before the Kargil War of 1999, Sarfarosh was as close to reality as popular Hindi cinema would allow at the time. It boldly suggested a direct link between Islamabad and anti-national elements within India, yet it was accused of being jingoistic. Such is the state of conditioning that patriotic films such as Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) that depicts a real event are charged with peddling an exclusive, populist and illiberal ideology in the name of nationalism.
The times that we live in are where films that celebrate historical heroes such as Baajirao Mastani (2015) or Tanhaji (2020) are viewed with a liberal dose of a historian’s fallacy. In a country such as India where popular cinema remained the mainstay of entertainment for the masses, its influence on mass media tools is apparent. Print, electronic, and now, new media continue to turn to Bollywood, and other variants to further any message. This influence has shaped the thinking of masses to an extent where most of us refuse to let go of thinking in binaries irrespective of facts staring in the face. For us, ‘fact is fiction and TV, reality’.
Gautam Chintamani gautam@chintamani.org
Film historian and bestselling author