Bringing Back Bapu !

    

This week Bapu made a comeback !

His signature was unwittingly highlighted when the Khadi Board decided to have him replaced on their calendar. The ensuing brouhaha on TV channels brought out one thing very clearly: his is a name ( and a surname) to reckon with, 70 years after his demise.

It prompted me to find out how our dear old Bollywood dealt with the Mahatma , specially in the songs churned out ever since independence.


The film Sona Chandi is said to be a 1946 film. It  had a song exhorting people to take an oath in the name of  Bapu. I don't know whether the film was released before independence or after Gandhiji's death, because the lyrics also mention that he laid down his life. Puzzling, to say the least.
Another interesting fact about the song is that its music director D.C.Dutta had confidence in a young voice owned by a young girl Lata Mangeshkar and this became one of her initial successes.





Gandhi ji was eulogised for the next few years by the grateful nation, to the effect that he became an inspiration for the new generation. Seven years into independence, a film was released which continued to be remembered at least till the kids of my generation were in the teens: Jagriti 1954.

Jagriti was a children's film and its story was full of ideals and great hope for the future of the country. The lyrics show how the lyricist Pradeep viewed Gandhi ji in the period when the country had just achieved independence. 
This song praises Father of the nation for all that he had done, all his life .


 

Within a matter of a decade and a half, things started to change. The country had had two general elections by then in 1951-52 and 1957. The countrymen saw the type of leaders they were getting , asking votes in name of Gandhi and yet, so far removed from his ideals.
This was the time when lyricists in the film world expressed this anguish in their words and an example is this song by Ramesh Gupta in the film Matlabi Duniya 1961. The song laments the deterioration in the morals of the country and wants the message to be given to bapu that his sacrifice was in vain. Sample a few lines...

tumhare naam ka bapu yaha vyapar hota hai
mere bapu se ye kehna, tumhara desh rota hai


Listen to the full song, sung by Talat Mehmood.

Cut to 1966. We again have a song evoking Bapu, from the lips of a kid. The words of Bharat Vyas again show that the new generation wanted the promises to be kept. The entire picture of the nation is depicted in great detail in the song and through the vocals of Suman Kalyanpur.

It is clear that 20 years after the azaadi, we were racing close to a point of no return, as far as the ethics and governance are concerned. Gandhi was available on currency notes and they had become the main source of all dealings, good and bad.

Half a century ago, the words of Bharat Vyas have come back to haunt us, in stark reality.

praant praant se takarata hai
bhaasha par bhaasha ki laat
main panjabi tu bangali
kaun kare bharat ki baat

By then, Bollywood had already become another name for escapism and larger-than-life depiction of contrived drama. There was little place for serious discussion or presentation of the real-world agony and Gandhi was rarely mentioned in the films ( sometimes in dialogues) and that too, in passing or in a symbolic, token manner. For example this 1970 song mentions his three monkeys  and set in a western -style catchy composition made it popular, too.
Just goes on to show that in order to get the message , the messenger had to become more attractive to the target audience !

 
The era of soft emotions ( enacted by Rajesh Khanna) gave way to the era of strong emotions ( displayed by Amitabh Bachchan) and more than a decade passed. Violence took over the narrative and there was space for song and dance, buffoonery and revenge but no mention of Gandhi.

It is ironic that a foreigner Richard Attenborough brought Gandhi back into limelight through his magnum opus Gandhi 1982. The stalwarts of "parallel" cinema , active in last one decade or so were all itching to get the role of the protagonist but Ben Kingsley got it and acquitted himself very well. The bilingual made a strong case to discuss Gandhi, for all it was worth. Gandhi's favourite bhajan was , naturally, a part of the film.
                                                               

That flash in a pan was soon forgotten, with the changing moods of cine goers.
The 80s were one of the worst periods in hindi cinema and its music and cacophony was the order of the day, By this time the concept of Bapu  was totally alien to the young India and the Nineties brought an anti-hero to the forefront. The leading man was no more a law-abiding , dead honest guy. he was a murderer, a stalker, a conman, a muscle-man  and a cheat.

However, like a Phoenix arising from its ashes, Gandhi made an appearance in form of a back-ground loving spooky figure, regulating a wayward Munna Bhai in 2006.
Gandhi was re-packaged through the concept of Gandhigiri and insistence on speaking truth ( satyagraha), even if it meant material loss. Lage Raho Munna Bhai , in 2006 , had Swanand Kirkire  as the wordsmith and he, alongwith music director Shantanu Moitra  brought Gandhi back, albeit as a parody of Vande Mataram !

sach baat hai, BANDE MEIN THA DUM !

Wishing that Bapu comes back into the focus, not through cosmetic measures or negative utterances but by having discourses in public on his ideas and imbibing his ideals.
Jai Hind.