BALDEV Raj Chopra who died a few days ago in Mumbai made many important films of social relevance in a career spanning six decades, actually as old as India itself. Most of his films made under the legendary BR banners had a perspective that was largely influenced by the romance of Nehru or Gandhi. Two of these films were Dharmaputra and Naya Daur. The first dealt with the partition and religious insanity that came with it. Few if any have attempted the theme as boldly as Chopra did with this movie. The other film, Naya Daur, released almost a decade earlier, was inspired by Gandhian socialism but had many other details in the storyline that would have considerable relevance today.

Chopra was a journalist in Lahore before he was driven out of his home at partition. As a Hindu refugee he had first hand experience of religious mistrust, but he remained an unwavering secular visionary. In a sense he represented the best impulses of India’s romance with what we can call the Nehruvian tryst, ingredients that endeared the producer-director to throngs of cine-goers. It was truly an era of hope and national renewal. So how are the two seminal films he made with his younger brother Yash Chopra relevant today?

The title of Naya Daur means new era or new dispensation. Released in 1957 “it fitted nicely with the new initiatives in economic planning and rural community development”, says British economist Lord Meghnad Desai in his book on the film’s hero Dilip Kumar. As a story it was touted around for a while but many producers refused to touch it because it was thought to be too didactic or political. Yet it represented much of the contradictory thinking and compromise that had to be worked out at that stage in India’s history. Modernisation was to come through industrialisation and mechanisation. Yet that would not touch the countryside nor generate enough employment. Much enthusiasm was generated with dams being built, but there was fear that all these developments may not benefit the poor, may not trickle down.

As Desai puts it, in some ways Naya Daur was like a Soviet film with brave rural heroes defying the might of the city slickers. Lala Maganmal is popular with villagers as an entrepreneur who looks after their interests. He leaves his business to his son who wishes to mechanise the sawmill putting all the saw operators out of work. There is a bus introduced at the same time that threatens the livelihood of the tongawalas. The state of affairs is unacceptable to the villagers whose traditional lifeline is threatened.

Tonga-driver Shankar offers to race the bus to prove that his horse-driven cart is a better option. This is suicidal, of course, but he hits upon the idea of building a road, which is a short cut. The villagers, grudgingly at first, join him in the venture. Man and beast beat the machine. But the end is a compromise when Shankar tells the moderniser, Kundan, that what is needed is humane use of machinery. If we replace the tonga-bus race with a more rational choice exercised in a democracy, the masses would always vote out the entrepreneur, such is the traditional lack of faith in his inclination to help society. An economic worldview predicated on profit-motive could scarcely be a popular choice.

Today more than at any other time, with neo-liberal economists commanding its destiny, the entire vision of big dams and industrial development rests on the subversion of India’s popular will. From Narmada, where inhabitants were displaced to build dams, to Singur, where peasants were deprived of their land to build a car factory, it’s been nothing short of theft of the people’s natural resources that seems to pass for state policy. Interestingly, Chopra had warned us about how private capital could subvert people’s lives.

It uses religion. In Naya Daur, perhaps the most important insight that has relevance today is the way the capitalist engages a priest to divide the people engaged in building a new road, which is a short cut, for the tonga to ply. In a desperate attempt to stave off the project, the priest surreptitiously plants the image of a deity, a Devi, on the path on which the road was to be built. He shows it up as an omen and the gullible villagers advise Shankar to stop the road there. How the hero befriends a difficult neighbour to use his land for the road to avoid the Devi is a different aspect of the story. What concerns us here is that Chopra appears to have anticipated Ayodhya 50 years ago. The use of religion to stall a nation’s equitable progress in which the poor too would have a stake, and to transfer it to neo-liberal profiteers (the kind we saw collapsing in America) has lessons that are too vital to ignore.

Chopra’s other film, Daramputra, directed by his brother Yash, dealt frontally and honestly with communal fissures within India. If there is an unremitting critic of the RSS, the Hindu revivalist group at the heart of the country’s miserable record with sectarian amity, it is the Hindu refugee from Lahore, not anyone else. The story of Dharamputra is the story of a Muslim boy who is brought up by his Hindu foster parents and grows to become a fanatical Muslim-hater. I haven’t seen anything so uncompromising in its message on religious absurdity.

When Nawab Badruddin’s dearest friend Gulshan Rai dies, it is but natural for him to take his son Amrit under his wing and for his daughter Husn Banu to consider Amrit her brother. Amrit grows up to become a doctor and is happily married to Savitri. One day the Nawab Sahib comes to Amrit for help. Husn Banu is pregnant with the child of her teacher Hamid who is absconding.

After discussing the matter with Savitri, Amrit comes up with a plan. Husn Banu is taken to Simla where the child is born and handed over to Savitri. Amrit and Savitri adopt the baby boy whom they name Dilip. A grateful Nawab bequeaths half his property to Dilip. Nobody in the two households gives a thought to the fact that Dilip is a Hindu boy of Muslim parentage, till the country is torn apart by communal hatred of the partition. Dilip, influenced by this, takes his religion to be his national identity, hating all Muslims, even Husn Banu who has now married Hamid and staying next door.

As the fire of communalism rages in Dilip’s heart, he goes to Husn Banu and Hamid’s house to kill them. Will Dilip learn of his true parentage? Will his hatred for Muslims allow him to reconcile the religion of his birth and his upbringing? Dharmputra is a courageous film from the B.R. Chopra stable. Acharya Vinoba Bhave, getting the film National Award for Best Hindi film and Akhtarul Iman the Filmfare award for the Best Dialogues, bases the story on a novel. The film was Shashi Kapoor’s first movie as an adult actor. It is curious and also ironical that the villains of B.R. Chopra’s seminal movies have become the rulers of the country half a century after he alerted us about their nefarious ambitions.

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