Those of who grew up in Doordarshan era remember being fed a steady diet of the late Bollywood legend Manoj Kumar’s patriotic movies. In this article, Shekhar Gupta describes the impact this Bollywood star on the decade which, by a comfortable distance, should be deemed to India’s most perilous: the 1962-72 period was characterised by three wars, the deaths of two Prime Ministers, famines, the oil shock of the early 1970s and the outbreak of Naxalite insurgency.
Mr Gupta writes: “The passing away of “Bharat” Manoj Kumar (born Harikrishna Giri Goswami, 24 July, 1937) at 87 gives us that moment to reflect. He, more than any other actor, defined patriotism, nationalism, good citizenship, lawful living and a virtuous lifestyle. Playing diverse characters under his chosen name, Bharat, he portrayed the perfect Indian.”
The article then goes on to describe the pivotal moment in Manoj Kumar’s career: “Manoj Kumar played Bhagat Singh in the 1965 film ‘Shaheed’. It was a hit and brought him enormous notice. The story goes that Manoj Kumar met Lal Bahadur Shastri (then PM), who had just seen Shaheed. ‘Why don’t you make a film on the theme of Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan,’ Shastri asked. The result, in double-quick time, was Upkar in 1967, shot in the villages of outer western Delhi and Haryana. Bharat was a humble farmer (kisan) who fights in the 1965 war as an ordinary soldier (jawan). You will find posters of this Bharat in dhoti-kurta, carrying a plough, as well as in the Army uniform with a rifle, war paint and blood.
Songs that became hits across generations are too many to list. We need to think of just one: mere desh ki dharti sona ugle, ugle heere moti (the land of my country disgorges gold, diamonds, pearls… all the treasures of the world). How enduring are these lines from Gulshan Bawra? Delhi High Court judge Prathiba Singh used these in her bail order for JNU activist Kanhaiya Kumar. Of course, in the movie, the song rises to its crescendo with the cry of jai jawan, jai kisan.”
Mr Gupta’s article then focuses on another Manoj Kumar hit which has aged less well but whose themes still trouble India: “He took the Bharat franchise to a very different plot with Purab Aur Paschim (East and West) in 1969…Unlike Upkar, this was built around cultural nationalism. A betrayed (and assassinated) freedom fighter’s son reaches London and the family friend’s daughter he’s being set up with (Saira Banu) is so ‘awfully’ westernised that she smokes, drinks alcohol, wears a blonde wig, has never been to India and neither she, her father nor hippie brother even care.
The NRIs of that generation had only scorn for India and Bharat got down to fixing it. This included singing at a bar ‘zero jo diya mere Bharat ne… (when Bharat gifted zero to the world)’ after somebody taunts him by saying what’s India’s contribution to the world. It’s because India gave the world zero and decimal that it learnt to count, India measured the distance between Earth and the Moon. Ultimately he also ‘straightens’ Saira Banu in a way that, today, will be frightfully misogynistic. He humiliates and harasses her until she becomes a Bharatiya naari.
The film held its own against two super hits announcing the rise of a megastar for generations: Rajesh Khanna. Purab Aur Paschim held its own between those two. And while it ridiculed the NRIs, it ran in London for 50 uninterrupted weeks, a record equalled more than a quarter century later, by Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994).”
Then Mr Gupta discusses Manoj Kumar’s last megahit, Roti Kapada Aur Makan (1974). This movie ushers in a new less idealistic era in Indian cinema and showcases the next generation’s superstar who captures the altered zeitgeist of an increasingly troubled nation: “A new Bharat was therefore born in Roti Kapada Aur Makan. It’s about a qualified engineer too straight to find and hold a job, making a modest living singing for Akashvani with his girlfriend Zeenat Aman, who dumps him for her boss Shashi Kapoor.
But Bharat fights the good fight, wins, and shows us all (especially my generation in its teens), the way. In between, for Shor (noise), he prefers Shankar to Bharat, the theme is again a victimised but brave poor Indian, a labour strike and the good fight against the rich. His musing is still hummed: ek pyar ka naghma hai.”
It is tragic and ironic that half a century on from the release of Roti Kapada Aur Makan, India is still grappling with the same issue of large-scale graduate unemployment.
After Roti Kapada Aur Makan, Manoj Kumar delivered two more hits – Sanyasi and Kranti – before this career graph declined. Even as India eulogises the idealistic patriotism showcased by Manoj Kumar, Mr Gupta essay nicely shows Mr Bharat as the bridge between Raj Kapoor’s socialism of the 1950s and Amitabh Bachchan’s ‘Angry Young Man’ of the 1970s.
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