India in flashbacks: Early years of celluloid magic

From the ’40s to the ’60s, Hindi cinema championed hope, change and humanism, in original and entertaining films

To watch the movies made in the first flush of Independence is to enter a world of hope and humanism. Film after film gave audiences characters, themes, songs and scenes that reaffirmed the daring idea of a new, free India. The opening shots of Mehboob Khan’s seminal Mother India (1957) are a defining moment of that era’s cinema history, and of the nation’s history. A water canal is being inaugurated in a village by Radha (Nargis), the woman regarded as the mother of the village. Her faced lined by suffering, walking slowly with the aid of a stick, Radha releases the reddish water into the fields. The opening montage is at once a symbol of a young, modern nation (even the prosaic shots of heavy machinery digging up the soil manage to give one goosebumps) and a reminder of the trauma the nation had emerged from.

Radha had faced flood, abandonment, death, starvation, rapacious moneylenders, but withstood it all with tenacious courage, and kept her honour and dignity intact. The Baroda-born Mehboob Khan created this indelible motif of Nehruvian socialism in an epic film that has never been forgotten.

So many other potent moments created on screen at the time came to symbolise the nation’s dream of a prosperous, compassionate state. Like the song written by poetlyricist Sahir Ludhianvi in the Yash Chopradirected Dhool ka Phool (1959) that became the song against religious bigotry: “Tu Hindu banega na Musalman banega, insaan ki aulaad hai insaan banega. (You won’t become a Hindu or a Muslim. As the child of a human being, you will be a human.)”

India had seen a painful and bloody Partition, but chose to reject religious fissures and strove to embrace harmony. This harmony was manifest behind the screen too. A great example is the evergreen bhajan Man Tarpat Hari Darshan Ko Aaj from Baiju

Bawra (1952), written, composed and sung by three great Muslim artists, Shakeel Badayuni, Naushad and Mohammed Rafi.

In K Asif’s landmark film Mughal-eazam (1960), Anarkali dances to a song about Krishna in the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar: “Mohe panghat pe Nandlal chhed gayo re. (Nandlal troubles me when I go to the river bank.)” Before Akbar goes into battle, a pandit puts a tika on his forehead and a maulvi ties a taveez around his arm as marks of their blessing.

These were films that bore testimony to the fledgling nation’s pledge to reject the British policies of divide and rule.

The constant belittling of India’s history and culture by the colonial power was one of the factors that spurred directors to create films about Mughal splendour, films such as Mughal-e-azam, Anarkali (1953), Taj Mahal (1963). Sohrab Modi tapped into the same cultural milieu with his film Mirza Ghalib (1954), a film on the life of the legendary Mughal-era court poet, which celebrated Urdu (and was, incidentally, written by Saadat Hasan Manto).

A highly developed social conscience marked much of the cinema of the late ‘40s and ’50s, though it was always put together in an entertaining package with glorious music. There was the realisation that there were an infinite number of problems to be fixed. Caste prejudice, poverty and inequality were dealt with in films too numerous to recount. Films such as Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin (1953), the tragic story of a farmer unable to save his land from the grasping fingers of the cheating local landlord. Or Sujata (1959), the love story of a Brahmin boy and a Dalit girl. Or V Shantaram’s antidowry film Dahej (1950).

The big city became the focus of many films of the period. It was a marker of change, a place of optimism. But it could also be heartless and dangerous, revealing the flip side of urbanisation. In what is arguably Raj Kapoor’s best film, Shree 420 (1955), innocent Allahabad lad Raj is lured by get-rich-quick racketeers in Bombay, though eventually he returns to the righteous path with the help of the woman he loves, Vidya. (And at some point of course sings the catchy classic that became a veritable anthem: “Mera joota hai Japani, yeh patloon Inglistani, sir pe lal topi Rusi, phir bhi dil hai Hindustani.”)

The urban slum became a fixture of films set in big cities too; its residents were poor but they could also exhibit warm camaraderie.

In essence, the Hindi films of the time were a strong unifying force, advocates of reform and change, and unwaveringly on the side of the oppressed. Their heart was always in the right place.