Yash Chopra: A Socio-Political Reading
By Amaresh Misra
The
Contemporary Background
During the re-making of the Hrithik Roshan starrer
`Agneepath’, filmmaker Karan Johar made a startling revelation: that the movie,
originally produced by his father and directed by Mukul Anand with Amitabh
Bachchan in 1989, was too violent for him to direct. Known for making candy floss,
Mills and Boons marka `romantic’ films (`Kuch Kuch Hota
Hai’, `Kabhi Kushi Kabhee Gum’, `Student of the Year’), Karan Johar is part of
the breed of directors who emerged in post-liberalisation India in the 1990s
with the uncannily aggressive—but softer than tissue—feel—that ended the era of
underdog violence—reflected by the angry young man icon—in Hindi-Urdu cinema.
Why is
the afore-mentioned instance relevant to a Yash Chopra obituary? Because Karan
Johra regards the Yashraj genre of filmmaking his primary inspiration—by this,
it is obvious that Johar restricts Yash Chopra’s legacy to so-called romantic
and social films. But Yash Chopra was larger than life. He made huge romantic
spectacles—and he also directed `Deewar’ and `Trishul’, the two films that
provided a new dimension to the subterranean confrontational
spirit, apparent in the angry young man.
It is
not easy to assess Yash Chopra. If BR Chopra, his equally prolific and good
filmmaker elder brother, symbolized the pro-Urdu, secular spirit of the
Nehruvian era, Yash Chopra represented truly, the nuances of the Indira Gandhi
period. Yash Chopra was a centrist. But like the works of Balzac—the classic
French novelist—a political reactionary—who revealed more about capitalist
decadence than any official Marxist—Yash Chopra’s films—more than movies made
by art filmmakers—echo his times.
Yash
Chopra was a master at combining opposites. Even his romantic films carry
social and class contradictions that never get resolved. They are simply, great
social documents.
Right
Wing Shift in Indian Cinema
For many
of us who belong to the pro-underdog, belligerent, `Sholay’ generation, the
rise of Suraj Barjatya, Aditya Chopra, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Karan Johar, and
several others in their vein, still signify a hidden political agenda. This was
a cinema that made the overseas market look more important than the home one;
in its stories of rich NRIs, plush houses and plastic, semi-westernized `beautiful
people’, there was no place for dirt, grime, hardboiled action, the working
class hero, the earthy, curvaceous Indian beauty, or even the sophisticated
glamour of yore.
Especially
in the films of Sooraj Barjatya and Karan Johar, the landscape did not reflect
even the average Indian cinema reality—family replaced the individuality,
displays of jewellery replaced human stories of flesh and blood, mush replaced
romance, conservatism replaced liberalism, masochism replaced machismo,
surrender to status quo replaced rebellion, homogeneity of culture replaced
celebration of plurality, garishly decorated bungalows—with a vapid, neo-rich,
quasi-feudal, quasi-colonial reactionary atmosphere—replaced the smells and
sounds of slums, middle class homes, sons of the soil, patriotic villages and
the Indo-Muslim—or Anglo-Indian—havelis and bungalows—of the traditional
elite. Furthermore, soft, infantile sentiments and tears replaced intense,
adult emotions; ritualistic wedding music replaced classical and
post-classical, original, Indian harmonies of pain, love and longing; soft
Hindutva replaced secularism; locales in US and Europe replaced indigenous,
regional/local contexts. More importantly, the Muslim social—a genre in its own
right till the 1980s—disappeared without a trace. Worse, even the sympathetic
Muslim character—an essential ingredient of the average nationalist/patriotic
or ordinary Hindi-Urdu film—simply vanished—or was replaced—by the Muslim
terrorist villain.
Needless
to add, in this unreal cinema of the 1990s, phirangs and phirang as
The
Underdog Centric Upsurge of the 1970s
After
going through the elite/middle class fury against old generation values and the
corrupt, unfeeling, criminal elite in the 1970s—the note of anger and
mutiny—evident in Hindi-Urdu films from the late 1960s onwards—went on to
assume—by the 1980s—the form of an anti-system upheaval. In 1983, Amitabh
Bachchan played a working class hero—raised in a Muslim household—celebrating
composite Hindu-Muslim-Sufi symbols—in Manmohan Desai’s `Coolie’—a super hit film. In society and
politics, this was the militant trade union/communist/Dutta Samanta era. It was
also around this time that the anti-Muslim, anti-working class lobby in Mumbai
woke up. Meetings of cinema personalities—boycotted by secular artistes/stars
like Devanand—were arranged with Bal Thackarey—the ultimate strike breaker,
anti-working class, and anti-Muslim, figure, of Mumbai. If you watch `Cradle will
Rock’, a 1999, Hollywood film based on a true story (http://www.imdb.com/title/
In
India, the 1990s thus represented a classic U turn—a betrayal entrenched in
class, caste, ideology and notions of taste—made by pro-urban, pro-bania,
pro-NRI sections—unleashed by the liberalisation drive—that dominated
society—and Hindi-Urdu cinema—by default. These forces did not just overhaul
the working or the lower middle class ethos in films. They came down hard on
the pre-liberalisation elite—represented by Jawahar Lal Nehru and the
communist/Left team of Indira Gandhi—that used revenge, Urdu poetry, and
anti-rich anger, as tools, to set a mainstream, secular/composite, pro-poor,
Left-of-centre socio-political schedule into motion.
The `Bollywood’
Conspiracy
On
hindsight, the term Bollywood—criticized heavily by Amitabh Bachchan—the hero
of the pre-mush era—clearly seems part of this anti-underdog, anti-Urdu
politics. Before 1991, no one had even heard of Bollywood. A cinema which
always prided itself on its different/eastern style of narrative, aesthetics
and mood, was now being marketed in the west as some sort of an extended VHS
footage with twists and turns of a Bania-Gujarati-Marwari wedding.
It is
another matter—that even as squishy songs celebrating re-invented (for the
neo-rich) Gujarati melodies—played out in a Sanjay Leela Bansali or a Karan
Johar film—Muslim houses were being burned—men killed and women raped—and
Indian working and middle class soldiers of all faiths were dying
in hundreds in the remote, hilly, frigid battlefields of Kargil. No one
ever thought of making a film on these hardboiled issues. Far away from the
cushy, comfortable world of these films, Adivasis and Left activists of all
faiths were being killed in fake Police encounters. The fact remains that
behind the turn towards the `sab kuch achcha hai, sub kuch meetha hai, sub
kuch theek hai’ idiom in Hindi-Urdu cinema, lies the story of a whole,
ugly, Nazi style/fascist, right-wing shift of Indian society.
Yash
Chopra’s Trajectory
It is
here that Yash Chopra struck a different note. Even in the late 1950s—Chopra—in
early films like `Dhool Ka Phool’ (1959) and `Dharmaputra’ (1961)—celebrated
Hindu-Muslim unity and composite culture. In `Dharmaputra’ Chopra went as far
as presenting the only critique of what we know now as Hindutva fundamentalism;
with a RSS style hero—actually the illegitimate son of a Muslim couple raised
by a compassionate Hindu family during the pre-Independence days of composite
culture—played by Shashi Kapoor—gunning for Muslim blood in a puritan frenzy
during the partition days—as its centre-piece—`Dharmaputra’ is simply, too
radical a subject. Today, it cannot be said with certainty that even
ideologically committed filmmakers would touch say, a subject involving RSS
type terrorism unearthed by Hemant Karkare (something which can be seen as a
contemporary corollary to the kind of hate and intolerance depicted during the
days when Chopra made `Dharmaputra’).
`Dharmaputra’ generated controversy
and violent protests from the far-right. In the mid-1960s—at a time when the
post-Independence consensus of an alliance between classes was giving way to
violent class conflicts that would change Indian polity for all times to
come—Chopra re-introduced the concept of class in the making and unmaking of
love and destinies. Earlier, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Shammi Kapoor’s
apolitical, pro-rich romances had obliterated all traces of class. Besides
inaugurating the trend of multi starrers, Chopra’s `Waqt’ (1965), redefined
romance as a stylish emotion carrying the vicissitudes of fate, class to class
relations—in this, a poor boy’s shy missives to his rich
girlfriend gets strangled from within. `Waqt’ also brought into focus the
behavioural aspect of class; the pain a man—raised in a rich
household—undergoes after learning of his original orphan status in which his
foster parents found him—as he prepares himself—to give up his rich
fiancée—voluntarily.
After
`Waqt’, Yash Chopra made `Aadmi aur Insaan’ and `Ittefaq’—the latter, a nerve
racking, song-less thriller; earlier, in the 1960s, BR Chopra, Yash Chopra’s
elder brother, made the highly successful `Kanoon’, another suspense drama
without songs.
Deewar
and After
By the
1970s, Yash Chopra set up his own banner. `Daag’, his first film as a producer,
tackles issues of bigamy and compromises a man has to make in order to shed the
burden of past—and to come to grips with the often numbing, varied faces of
love; seen today, `Daag’—termed a romantic film—overturns the very idea of a
Mills and Boons romance.
Soon,
Yash Chopra—in Deewar (1975), Kabhie Kabhie (1976), Trishul (1978), Kala
Patthar (1980), Silsila (1981)—the films he made one after the other in a
tumultuous era of Indian politics—took head on the challenge of exploring the
various/multiple/darker shades of the angry young man. `Deewar’ can be seen
more, as a Salim-Javed script than a Yash Chopra film. Here, Amitabh Bachchan’s
anger transcends the status-quo—it becomes a weapon for the underdog to enter
the big game, make money and live a good life before tragedy—and the strange,
idealistic values of a society bound by dated duty, law and rigid morals (a
semi-feudal society were notions of good and bad, right and wrong stand twisted
in cinematic subtext)—strikes him down. Played by Parveen Babi, Amitabh
Bachchan’s lover too originates from the lower depths of society. The 1970s
were perhaps the only time when the woman from the wrong sides of the track—the
prostitute—or the call girl—a word that could have appeared only in those
morally ambiguous times—was shown without pity—as an individual in her own
right—capable of making or breaking decisions. The absence of maudlin drama was
a product of Salim-Javed’s astoundingly encrusted and well-heeled writing. But
Yash Chopra’s filming of Parveen Babi’s first encounter with Amitabh—at a time
when Amitabh’s character—originally a Bombay dockyard coolie—has literally put
his life on the line to rise as a cool, handsome, well-dressed
gangster—and Parveen Babi’s character—with the famous `I am falling in love
with a stranger’ song—playing tenderly and tantalisingly—in the
background—a minute ago—saves him accidentally—through the 786
number—considered auspicious by Muslims—badge—which Amitabh’s Hindu character
carries—from his coolie days—is the stuff of legends. Danger, glamour, the threat
of betrayal, inherent everyday secularism of Hindus and Muslims of India,
sexual undercurrents, baritone of the base guitar, the elusively posh words
from female lips, come together to create perhaps, the most modern of all
scenes in Indian cinema as a
whole.
Chopra
followed `Deewar’, with `Trishul’—in which an `illegitimate’ son seeks
revenge—in another unforgettable piece of writing from Salim-Javed—the script
writers of this film as well—on his `illegitimate’ father. To achieve his goal,
Amitabh Bachchan’s character is willing to go to any length, even trying to woo
with cold but intense, brooding detachment his stepbrother’s fiancée. In this
moment of cinema, Amitabh’s character crosses the line reserved for heroes
playing negative characters in Hindi-Urdu cinema. `Trishul’ harks back to an
earlier era—the films of Mehboob Khan—who showed in `Amar’ (1955)—a perfectly
respectable Dilip Kumar character—engaged to a beautiful Madhubala—suddenly
raping Nimmi—a village lass—without motive—in an abrupt moment of passion, heat
and desire. It is at this point that you finally realize that Chopra knew men.
And he knew that like any passion, revenge too carries a darker side.
After
`Trishul’, Chopra explored Amitabh’s dark side even in `Kabhie Kabhie’, perhaps
one of the best romantic films of the 1970s. Starting as a poet, Amitabh’s
character turns his passion into a brooding, self inflicted drive of pain and
outburst, with vengeance always lurking around in the corner. In `Kala Patthar’,
Amitabh plays an ex-naval officer turned coal mine worker; a man—much like the
characters of Joseph Conrad—haunted by the burden of a past guilt—where—in a
moment of weakness—he betrayed his comrades. Then in `Silsila’, Chopra extended
the line of romance to bring in extra-marital issues—a forbidden topic
then—with the dream cast of Amitabh playing the husband, Jaya Bhaduri the wife,
and Rekha, the other woman.
The
Lamhe Moment
Chopra
flirted with unconventional issues even in `Lamhe’ (1991), a film about a young
girl’s obsession with an older man who once nurtured unrequited love for her
late mother; unlike films today, `Lamhe’ was not a copy of a Hollywood
movie—previously, Chopra made `Chandini’ (1989), that ended his post-`Kala
Patthar’ dry run at the box office during the 1980s. This was a time when
Chopra made films like `Mashaal’ (a critical success but a commercial failure)
and `Vijay’.
But, and
this is important, Chopra did not fall prey to the philistine mayhem of the
1990s. He made the unconventional `Darr’—that launched Shahrukh Khan—as a
phenomenon in his own right—a hero with negative shades and positive potential.
From DDLJ to `DON’, Shahrukh just seems to walk around the territory by Yash
Chopa for him.
Despite
containing candy floss elements, ‘Dil To Paagal Hai (DTPH)’ still retained a
whiff of Chopra’s strong grounding. DTPH also introduced new age jazz dance
style in Hindi-Urdu cinema.
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