JUNOON 1978 (HINDI)~~ A SHYAM BENEGAL CLASSIC [with Eng Sub] 34
Scat Laboy
When I was in school, all the boys would hire video players for the night and have a sleepover and watch films together. This film sent us into a violent rage. In the morning, we were actually looking to pick up a fight with anybody. It was the classic anti-establishment and young-man-fighting-the-system kind of story. I was highly moved and influenced by this film.
Kalyug (1981): Benegal once again teamed up with producer-actor Shashi Kapoor for another multi-award-winning film that was universally praised. A modern-day interpretation of Indian epic Mahabharat, it revolves around the conflict between rival businesses. The complex contemporary version of a classic told the story of feuding families in a clever way and had camerawork that was universally appreciated. It would win a Filmfare Best Film award.
Bhatia also composed for theater and was known for his creative partnership with Indian theater doyen Ebrahim Alkazi. The composer was also adept in Western and Indian classical music and recorded several albums.
ROCHONA MAJUMDAR, DIPESH CHAKRABARTY W e begin with an acknowledgement: that what happenedenacted a crisis of authority in governance. Historicals werein British India in 1857 cannot be comprehensivelydifferent from socials in their placement of a films dramaticcovered by any one particular name usually given toaction in antiquity; they literally erased the presence of foreignit the Mutiny, the First War of Independence, a peoples war,colonisers by transposing visions of a future nation onto aa peasant uprising, and so on. There were no doubt particularfantasised past.1 Not that the colonial government was dupedelements in the events that partially justify such attempts atby this aesthetic sleight of hand. To cite Jaikumar once again,classification but we believe that, taken as a whole, what hap-The state gauged sedition based on assessment of intent; novelspened was no one thing. So after the fashion of calling the eventsand films were of interest to the state for their submergedof September 11, 2001, simply 9/11, we will call the eventsmeanings and for their intentional as well as unintentionalof 1857, 1857. Precisely because 1857 was no one specificeffects.2 Despite their departure from tropes of classical realismevent and had its impact on many different scales, it has been which in the context of Indian cinema is the aesthetic counrecalled on several different registers ever since its occurrence:terpart of the political project of nation building the colonialas memoirs, as travellers experience, as history, as fiction, asIndian historical film can be interpreted as a text that locates thephotographs, paintings and sketches, and as films. Ketan Mehtasharsh and strange spots of the past in an even more distantfilm Mangal Pandey (2005, with Aamir Khan as Pandey) wasor imaginary past if only to allow the viewer to conceive goodone such recent filmic reconstruction of the early events of 1857:wishes for the future.3 the rebellion of a lone soldier, Mangal Pandey, of the 34thJaikumars conclusion about the historical in the age of Empireregiment of the Native infantry of the East India Companys army.has a direct bearing on what we argue in the forthcoming pagesOur point of departure is the fact that the film Mangal Pandey and is therefore worth dwelling upon at some length. Colonial(hereafter MP) gave rise to a lively debate in the Indian presscinemas realisation of an ideal future society, she argues, isabout historical films and their relationship to actual historiescontingent on an Antigone-like rejection of (the potentially(as historians might write them). This general point about filmicauthoritarian, unreliable, or corrupt) contemporary state/commurendition of the past and its relation to the past itself the pastnity. The colonial historical most closely fulfils a peoples romancethat historians try to recover is something that interests us inwith the notion of a future Indian nation, imagined as a predesthis essay. But there is also a second point of interest. MP was tined tryst with ones unrealised but innate, antique potential forsomething of an exception in stirring up such a controversy aboutrighteous self governance.4 history (for more details on the controversy, see below). MP, It seems to us, however, that with the attainment of indepenfor instance, was not the first filmic representation of 1857. Twodence, historical films lost this political function. They becameother films that readily come to mind, if we excluded Sohrabthe stuff of mythic lore, stories inserted into the past with noMerwanji Modis 1953 Jhansi ki Rani, are Junoon (1978, directedbasis in either fact or politics. Hence Sharmistha Gooptusby Shyam Benegal) based on Ruskin Bonds A Flight ofobservation that the 1960 historical drama Mughal-e-Azam which Pigeons and Shatranj ke Khiladi (1977, directed by Satyajitwas only loosely historical hardly ever attracted the kind ofRay). Both these films were set against the stormy backdrop ofmoral and political attention that got focused on MP.5 Films such the political turmoil of 1857. Yet, neither raised the hackles ofas the more recent Legend of Bhagat Singh (2002, directed byintellectuals, politicians, film critics, and journalists in the wayRajkumar Santoshi), The Making of the Mahatma (1996, directedthat MP did. by Shyam Benegal)), Sardar (1993, also directed by KetanIndeed, as Priya Jaikumar has pointed out in her recent workMehta) have all modelled themselves on historical research. Buton films in colonial India, historicals as a genre have had a longfew were roused about the historicity of these films, or theirlife in Indian cinema. From the colonial period on, Indian filmssupposed impact on the audience. Yet, with MP, all kinds of in the historical genre depicted imaginary pasts, while mytho-anxieties, concerns, and strong sentiments were expressed in thelogicals incorporated stories from the epics and puranas orpress. Thus, to only give two examples, a commentator in The constructed fables to narrate allegorical tales about Indian society.Hindu complained:But the lack of realism that characterised either genre is readBollywood continues to defile history. Now distorting, now disby Jaikumar as serving a direct political, i e, nationalist or anti-paraging, Bollywoods arthritic treatment of the past goes on.colonial purpose during colonial rule. As she argues, AlmostKetan Mehtas much panned Mangal Pandey is only the latestin direct defiance (of the state) Indian historicals repeatedly In the garb of artistic licence truth is short-changed, and only
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