The Cinema of Tolerant India!

Cinema of Tolerant India !

Not long back, just 3 years ago Sanjay Leela Bhansali was coerced to make certain changes in his film Padmaavat, including changing the name. The film was backlashed and demanded to be banned by the right-wing group because they believed Rani Padmavati was misrepresented and their history was distorted. The right-wing group believed that the film was offensive and disgraceful to Rajputs and Rani Padmavati.

On the other hand, An Indian Air Force Officer and a Pakistani girl-based melodramatic love story. Yes! I am talking about Veer Zaara, an epic piece by Yash Chopra beyond pseudo-nationalism and typical Bollywood romance. It was a new India, a more tolerant India, and its international relations with Pakistan. It is a Yash Chopra film. As much as Shahrukh Khan and Preity Zinta are instrumental, so are their characters. The beautiful location of Punjab, Pataudi palace, grandeur music by Madan Mohan, etc.

It’s such cinema and India I was brought up in, which I very much enjoyed. I discovered this melodramatic and high beat Bollywood at the age of 6 and when I saw Veer Zaara, I was 8. Perhaps 2 years make no difference and that's all it took to make me a hardcore Bollywood fan, and honestly, it was a home for me. It was an escape from reality until the reality of new cinema and India hit me. It was colourful, melodramatic, musical, and above all Shahrukh Khan. Shahrukh Khan the ambassador of inclusive, secular India and Indian Cinema.

The film was released in 2004, when for the first time an independent India was proudly led by its minorities. The highest chairs of the country were governed by the minority representatives. Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister with President APJ Abdul Kalam, as the executive head. The thing is that India was a sanctuary for everyone let alone for minorities – the cries of the Gujarat 2002 pogrom were still audible. Times I can certainly say it’s not relevant to contemporary cinema, as a matter of fact to India as well. My father, who is a frequent film spectator after watching Veer Zaara asks me every single time, “Is it possible to make such film now”? Now!! Honestly, it’s a precariously political film that I certainly believe would not have seen a theatrical release if made in Aatmanirbhar Bharat. As a kid, whenever, I would watch it I would cry out and feel pity for Veer Pratap Singh but now I feel for this country, of what it became. The India and Cinema I saw in Veer Zaara perished with time, not surprisingly, not with the advent of New Media but New Social and Entertaining Ideologies and methods. The fact that a mainstream Hindi commercial film without a direct and hyper-nationalism context would rather not be made in the present day, speaks the volumes of freedom and liberty left in the art and film making in this country.

The question is simple, will there ever be any another such experience of cinema? The fact that such a mainstream masala Hindi film would not be made in the present day.

Veer-Zaara is a story of a Pakistani who visits India for 2 days and in the meanwhile, falls in love with an Indian Air Force Officer. A story of an Indian Air Force officer who would willingly just resign from his duty after he falls in love with a Pakistani woman for the reason that defence personnel is not permitted to visit Pakistan during service.

The plot does not cling to narration of Jihadis and Patriotists between India and Pakistan. There is no disrespect for either nation, no political agenda sticked with the plot. Instead, characters and the story are shown to be at odds with each other due to circumstances but nationality. Raza Shirazi (Zaara’s Fiancé) acts against Veer not because of his Indian nationality but because his fiancé Zaara publicly embraces Veer in his presence and of his other family members. Raza, and others were simply the villains of love story, by framing Veer.

In the climax, Veer Pratap Singh recites a poem he has written (a monologue) describing Pakistan (the land where he was wrongly imprisoned for 20 years) is no different from his motherland India. How he finds Pakistan kindred to India in many ways.