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September 19, 2004
REVIEW: In the spotlight
“THE young people who were growing up and watching films in the 1940s were looking for stories and heroes who would appeal to them. While they would read novels, films were a more vital medium for engaging their sensibilities,” notes Lord Meghnad Desai, author of the book Nehru’s Hero: Dilip Kumar in the Life of India. Lord Desai was born in Baroda but in 1950 he moved to Mumbai — the centre of Hindi films — where he studied, watched films and participated in theatre. He has a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and teaches at the London School of Economics. He is a member of the House of Lords since 1991.
The book Nehru’s Hero is among the first endeavours of its kind. Revisiting the Nehruvian era as reflected in the films of Dilip Kumar — the actor who has become a legend in his own lifetime — the author takes a close look at the life and career of this film icon, as well as at the Indian cinema of the two decades of the Nehru era, and he does that painstakingly — making the entire experience worthwhile on that account.
But the book leaves one craving for a more detailed relationship between ‘Dilip Kumar’ and ‘the life of India’ in that particular period, and as such it falls slightly short of its claim. One also wishes that the quality of the few black and white pictures in the book were better. To make the case of ‘politics through the prism of cinema rather than the other way around’ stronger, the addition of a few archival photos of real people in real-life settings would have further enhanced the understanding of younger readers while evoking nostalgia in the older generation.
As a Muslim (Dilip Kumar’s real name is Yusuf Khan) entering filmdom in the India of those days, it is said that he took on a Hindu name for purely commercial reasons as there was no Muslim male actor who had risen to stardom. Despite playing only one Muslim character in a career span of 60 years, (Prince Salim in the epic film “Mughal-i-Azam”), Dilip Kumar came under suspicion, just as all Indian Muslims did, soon after 1965, when Pakistan and India went to war with each other. The communal riots in Mumbai in the wake of the Babri mosque destruction during December and January 1992/93 saw Dilip Kumar emerge as a leader of the Muslim community. Ever since, he has been routinely denounced in the Shiv Sena newspapers, and the Nishan-i-Imtiaz award conferred on him from Pakistan in 1997 has not helped matters either.
In 1944, Dilip Kumar made his first film “Jwaar Bhata”. It was a romantic film with the usual muddled plot of the Hindi cinema. Other films followed. While the book is insightful in its elucidation of Dilip Kumar’s films, it is the exploration of the undertones of films like “Ganga Jamuna” and “Leader” that make especially interesting reading. Incidentally, the actor also turned storywriter for both these movies. In “Ganga Jamuna”, a film about two brothers, about an oppressor and the wronged, about old and young, about rebellion and conformity he has played the tragic character of Ganga: a simple, rural youth who becomes bold and assertive, taking the law in his hands as the story progresses, and ultimately gets killed by his own brother, the righteous police chief.
According to the author, India has changed from the old days, when the law sided with the wealthy. Now the police realize that Ganga has a point and so the zamindar is not automatically favoured as he is in “Do Bigha Zameen”. In Nehru’s India, justice has to be meted out and unlawful conduct punished. But Lord Meghnad declares that “Ganga Jamuna” is also reflective of a “waning of the hope in Nehruvian promises as shown in “Naya Daur”. The village is larger and busier, but the power of the landlord has not gone away”.
In the film “Leader”, contends Desai, Dilip Kumar has paid a palpable tribute to his real life leader and hero — Jawaharlal Nehru. As opposed to “Ganga Jamuna”, this is a film set in the urban context, invoking the Indian prime minister explicitly by referring to certain well-known episodes during his tenure, as well as to the socialist policies of his Congress party. “Leader” not only portrays the protagonist Vijay, (Dilip Kumar) as the slogan-shouting, fun-loving young man who upholds people’s rights and Gandhian principles, it also depicts a rival party poorly disguised as Jan Sangh, the forerunner of the BJP.
This was the India of 1964, conveying the problems faced by it, and marking the real life turnaround in Indian politics as the year proved to be the final curtain drawer on the life of Nehru as well as his policies.
As discussed in the book’s final chapters, entitled, “From icon to target”, and “A nation’s icon in a national cinema”, India’s secular ideals, as propagated by Nehru, have declined and the labels of religion, caste and language have become all-important. The author’s nostalgia and discouragement prompts him to conclude the book on this note: “As Indians were defining themselves as individual men and women trying to fashion a new society with new approaches to personal and social morality and to place themselves as citizens vis-a-vis their fellow Indians, they looked to their prime minister’s speeches for didactic guidance but to their film heroes and heroines for the models.”
The handsome, soft spoken, charismatic actor, Dilip Kumar, whose hairstyle and mannerisms were adopted by not one but two generations of men who adored him as their box-office ideal, deserves to be revered equally on both sides of the divide. Perhaps Lord Meghnad Desai will take up his pen once again to continue from where he has left, and compare India’s socio-political life spanning 1964 to 2004. This time around Amitabh Bachan and another Khan — Shahrukh — who has retained his Muslim name — could perhaps be Indira and Vajpayee’s heroes?
Nehru’s Hero: Dilip Kumar in the Life of India
By Lord Meghnad Desai
Lotus/Roli Books. Available with Liberty Books (Pvt) Ltd, 3 Rafiq Plaza, M.R. Kayani Road, Saddar, Karachi. Tel: 021-5683026 Email: libooks@cyber.net.pk Website: www.libertybooks.com
ISBN 81-7436-311-4
139pp. Rs485
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