The living myth of Amitabh Bachchan

The transition from brute force to knowledge to wisdom is evocative and pedagogic.
Amitabh Bachchan. (Photo | PTI)
Amitabh Bachchan. (Photo | PTI)

Indian cinema has created a cornucopia of myths, and Bollywood, in particular, has been adept at inventing and sustaining them. But of late, Bollywood as a myth has been declining, subject to attacks from the Shiv Sena and the scandals that ensued after the Sushant Singh Rajput suicide. One desperately needs the solace and power of these myths.

As the writer Saadat Hasan Manto claimed, Bollywood as a myth represented the power of undivided India, the syncretism of faith and languages that made creativity possible. It was a world where Nargis and Ashok Kumar could be equally loved. These myths provided a narrative to understand modernity.
Probably the last of these was the myth of Amitabh Bachchan. He was eighty a week ago, and both advertisements and headlines celebrated the birthday of our perennial hero. This column hopes
to capture the myth of Bachchan that has immaculately transformed itself over the decades.

The Bachchan of the Sixties was a solitary figure, out of sync with a corrupt and unjust society where brute power dominated. One sensed this sociological reality before the movie interval, where the good cop and good father were easily eliminated. There was a sense that mere goodness was incompetent to fight evil. Goodness seemed almost naïve before evil’s understanding of power and corruption. Enter Amitabh.

He begins as a naïve figure who appeals to law and respectability but soon realises that idealism alone is powerless. By the interval, he senses that only the sheer heroic, brute power of violence can overcome the evils of society. From Deewar to Sholay, Amitabh creates the myth of violence as catharsis, as a substitute to the slowness of reform. Violence has clarity and epic power that the idea of normative democracy lacks. Bachchan represents that power and its charisma.

During election time, he defeats a major leader like Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna with ease. But he treats legislative power like a rotary club badge to be kept on the shelf but not for use. Through the Seventies, the myth of Bachchan was prevalent. Only Dharmendra was a challenge. Dharmendra was more rustic and amicable and they virtually twinned in Sholay as an answer to Indian corruption.

By the Eighties, India was changing. The information revolution was already building a new image of Bangalore. Brute violence, like primitive accumulation, seemed out of date, lacking the subtlety of information to alter the system. A middle-aged Bachchan could not play the pot-boiled hero. He needed to change.

He shifts to TV and comperes the legendary Kaun Banega Crorepati. It is about aspirational India during the information revolution. The quiz becomes the tool to sustain his image; only the iconicity now is not brute force but the subtle power of information. Information out-thinks brute force. The Gunda gives way to the mentor and the consultant Amitabh Bachchan becomes the compere and mentor of a great quiz programme.

There is no sense of violence, just a mentor’s genteel artful guiding hand. But the message is clear as outdated parents mumble before their speedy kids. Even Gandhi is reduced to a quiz by Sanjay Dutt. There is a sense of laughter, statesmanship, and conviviality in Bachchan. He has power but does not need to reveal it. He oozes an amiability, a wisdom that is subtle as he becomes the doyen of pedagogic TV.

But the body, like information, ages quickly. Bachchan has to be more alert to stay on top. Information becomes easily obsolescent as even Narayana Murthy and Sam Pitroda fade as icons. Bachchan has to create a sense of change, a subtle one where age acts in a positive way. Subtly, information becomes wisdom as Bachchan becomes a more elderly, worldly-wise figure—as a living myth, he cannot belong to an outdated world.

He oozes insight, laughter and wisdom and plays an avuncular figure to a Deepika Padukone. He treats the problem of middle age with laughter, a subtlety. He has aged but not returned in the new advertisements, be it Muthoot or some investment agency. The message is clear. Investment beyond information needs judgement.

The logic is clear. Investment judgement equals wisdom, and that is what the new investor needs.
Critically, Amitabh is the avuncular advisor but never the patriarchal one. At seventy, he is playful and conveys an ease, a comfort with generations which few Indians capture. The transition from brute force to knowledge to wisdom is evocative and pedagogic. It is the tripartite wisdom of modernity in three immaculate avatars.

The danger is Bollywood—which anchored the myths of modernity—losing power to the South as films are more competitive commercially than as myth. Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth are no longer myths, especially after they tried to convert charisma into votes. What MGR could do effortlessly, they bumbled at. Maybe that is why he is seen as divine, and they are not.

I am not talking of Bollywood as mere entertainment. Bollywood provides a folk philosophy which is paralleled to sociology. Nothing of mass communication can match the folk idioms of Bollywood and its creative efforts to capture the imagination of the city.

In that sense, Amitabh is an urban imagination, a creative way of looking at modernity contagious as tradition and transforming them into liveable dreams. India should be grateful to Amitabh for the three avatars. He gave it a literary power and a sense of performance where modernity seems doable and liveable, even quite lovable. That is Amitabh’s gift to us, a choreography of modernity as performance and value. The least we can do is wish him “Happy Birthday at 80”.

Shiv Visvanathan is a social scientist associated with THE COMPOST HEAP, a group researching alternative imaginations

(svcsds@gmail.com)

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