Casting The List: The Screen Test Story : Outlook story

Sriram Raghavan, Anupama Chopra, Jai Arjun Singh and Srinivas Bhashyam submit 20 of their favourite films, not necessarily canonical, and pare down a list for...

 
Gaiety Galaxy, in Bandra, is one of India’s first multiplexes. Rumour has it that even today’s big producers—like Karan Johar and Rohit Shetty—call up its proprietor Manoj Desai on Fridays to ask, “Film chalegi ya nahin?” Our jury to select the ‘52 Films To Light Up Your Life in 2016’ met at Gossip cinema, at the complex; it was the brainwave of our Mumbai correspondent Prachi Pinglay-Plumber. Our jury comprised writer and critic Anupama Chopra; author and film historian Jai Arjun Singh; filmmaker and critic Srinivas Bhashyam; and film director Sriram Raghavan. The discussion was moderated by deputy editor Satish Padmanab­han. The idea was to come up with an eclectic list, some canonical, some whimsical, all enjoyable. A working rule was to include only one film from a director. Serious cineastes will rage the list doesn’t have Fellini, Antonioni, Bergman, Ghatak.... Excerpts from the discussion will illumine why some films were chosen, some left out.
Who’s Afraid of Bresson?
Satish Padmanabhan (moderator):
Thank you very much for being part of this jury. As we have said, our list is of films this jury absolutely loves, watches again and again, and would like our readers, too, to be touched by their magic. We have consciously tried to avoid coming up with a list of canonical films—the ‘must-see’ that film scholars and critics would urge us to watch—but to come up with a completely subjective, whimsical and eclectic list. Sriram Raghavan had, for instance, sent me two lists—one was the truly great films, the other was films he loved. We chose the second for this discussion.
Jai Arjun Singh: I broke into a cold sweat when you asked me to put together a list of my 20 favourite films. I might be able to put together a list of my 200 or 300 favourite films without sweating too much. But with 20, the first thing you tell yourself is that, if I make the same list one hour from now, most of the films on it will be different. I think the biggest function an exercise like this can serve is obviously to provide a glimpse of some very personal choices and also throw out some important films in favour of films that are relatively obscure, that can lead a viewer down new paths of discovery.
SP: Yes, and since they are all your favourite films, I can’t question your choice, but we can always discuss why one particular film and not the other —of a genre or of a filmmaker.

Photograph by Amit Haralkar

“Conventional thinking is that when you’re young you like what you’ll find kiddish later. With me it’s often the other way.”

Jai Arjun Singh

Anupama Chopra: To emphasise what Jai said, my list would truly change one hour later. It is all about who you are at that moment and what you are res­ponding to. And when I go back and see some of the films I’ve loved, some choices are really embarrassing. I wept through the climax of Kal Ho Na Ho and now when I go back to it, it’s like, oh my god, you are just hamming, you know, in that 20-minute death scene.
JAS: (Laughs) No, I would say that’s a strong point as a critic if you open your­self that way to anything without worrying about highbrow or lowbrow.
SP: Do you think our lists change as we go through various stages in our lives, the films we really remember in our middle age are a little different from what we liked in our teens?
AC: I think you change so much and you see so much more. And as you see more, maybe something that seemed to be inc­redible isn’t frankly that amazing.
JAS: The conventional way of thinking is that, when you are younger, you tend to be more easily moved by what in later life you might consider kiddish or overly sentimental. But with me, sometimes it works in the opposite way. I find myself responding more emotionally to certain types of films later in my life than when I was 15 or 16, when I was thinking of Godard and Bresson as real cinema. As a young person you will love Anand, at the age of 40 you are looking at it and saying, “Hmmm, well...”, you know.
Sriram Raghavan: When you are young you are a little snobbish, depending on which college you come from. And when you grow older, maybe you think Don is actually fantastic.
SP: Which you might have dismissed as a student of serious cinema?
SR: No, I take the films I loved as a kid very seriously, though if I watch them now, they may be a little tacky. But it doesn’t matter, because for me, the impr­ession they’ve had on me is very important. As a filmmaker, you are supposed to be a kid all the time in your head. I have put Yaadon Ki Barat in my list simply because it is the movie that gave me terrific pleasure. Even today, if somebody watches it with the perspective that it was made in early 1970s, they would enjoy it as much. When I first joined the institute (FTII Pune), I remember we used to get completely frazzled...that these movies were not working for us. For instance, many of the Tarkovsky films we saw in the first year and all, what I wished was they would show Hitchcock instead. When there is French Connection, why are they showing us this? So we used to all plead, “Can I make the next week’s list? Can I add my couple of films?”
Srinivas Bhashyam: I think it comes with the confidence of having seen films for like 20 years intensely. Initially, you are overawed by peer pressure to like those intellectual and serious films, whether you actually like them or not, even when you are slightly unsure about them and they bore you. But I think that, much later, you can separate the things and you can confidently say that this one is truly intellectual, deep and influential. And the other thing was quite indulgent and sort of turgid.
AC: It’s what Mahesh Bhatt calls the tyranny of taste.
SB: Absolutely. To mix the profound and the profane confidently is still a big problem. When people look at a list like this, for example, where we have mixed some really important and serious cinema along with kitschy or funny or trivial films by those standards, some of them are going to wonder, “What is this film doing along with this?”
SP: Yes, and that’s the whole point, not to come out with a predictable list. So shall we start? Initially, each jury member came up with 20 of their favourite films and now we will narrow them down, hopefully without any fisticuffs, to 52.

Beat The Censors The Cary Grant-Ingrid Bergman kissing scene from Hitchcock’s Notorious involved many little breaks.

SB: (Smiles) I have a little point here. In my list, I have mentioned a couple of films that are south Indian classics. There is a chance that the others may not have seen them. I am sure others will also have their unique films. So in those specific cases, it may be a good idea to talk a little bit about why that film.
SP: Sure. If you talk about the film a little and the others are convinced that it should go into our list...that’s our aim. This discussion should hopefully unearth new gems for our readers. We can begin by each member picking five films from their list in round one. Jai, let’s start with you.
JAS: You are going to make me pick five....
SB: It’s a kill list. Let’s say these are your kids, which five are you going to pick?
JAS: One film that I have no problem at all choosing—it may not be a great film, but it is the film that for me is more responsible than any other for getting me into taking cinema seriously. Hitchcock’s Psycho. I was struck by it long before I even knew about such things as camera angles. I found myself observing those things and then getting into film literature. But there is another reason why I would try to make a case for this film as compared to, say another Hitchcock film. As we all know, films like Vertigo are the canonical ones.

The listing rules: Only one film from a director; try to make the list whimsical, enjoyable.

You have this whole debate about Psycho: is it a film that deserves to be taken seriously or is it just a cheap slasher film? That as late as the 1980s, we had Indian film critics like T.G. Vaidyanathan who was saying Psycho is a film that doesn’t take death seriously. Robin Wood, one of my favourite writers, who wrote a great book called Hitchcock’s Films Revisited, which has a long essay about Psycho...he tried submitting that essay to Sight & Sound magazine, which was being edited by Penelope Houston at that time. And Penelope Houston wrote back a very polite letter to him saying, “It’s a very good essay but I am afraid we can’t publish it because you have failed to grasp that Hitchcock meant Psycho to be (taken) as a joke.” It was not meant to be taken seriously, she said, and I think that change is very symptomatic of what often happens with film criticism—where you want to make this clear distinction between serious, entertainment or artistic when it comes to popular cinema. SP: But among Hitchcock’s films, would you say that our choosing Pyscho is a little bit of going back on what we said we will not do. To go for the safer Psycho and not select a more breezy film like Notorious or Spellbound or Strangers On A Train?
SR: I think I would blindly say Psycho because I love about 50 of Hitchcock’s films too much and I will still defend all the others too. I mean, if someone says I don’t like Marnie, I will say, oh why?  But I feel Psycho, I will not talk academically about it, but I remember when I was in the institute that was a film I used to try to watch. But I had never seen it till 1984 or something. I had only heard about it and knew it—it never made it to the institute’s list. I think it is pure cinema, visual storytelling.
SP: Since we have this rule, only one film by a director, it is Psycho then, of Hitchcock.

Photograph by Amit Haralkar

“One of my favourites is Tampopo, for it’s about food, sex, seeing movies... everything sensuous. Funny and mad.”

Anupama Chopra 

JAS: Anyone who has an issue with that?
SR: I would have put Notorious as the film which people haven’t heard of and need to see. Recently, I had gone for some workshop. I had given the participants some exercise and I had their answers, which I had to evaluate. So I told them to watch this movie while I go through their answers as it will take me an hour or so. I put Notorious on the projector, none of them had seen it. I was done sooner than I thought and so midway I stopped the film. I thought they will all protest, saying we want to watch, you must give us the DVD etc. But nobody said anything. I was stopping Notorious at a crucial point and nobody said don’t....
SP: That’s shocking.
JAS: You know, Notorious is in a strange way pertinent to a current Indian censorship situation. Those days the Hollywood censors would not allow a kiss to go on for more than a few seconds. And Hitchcock very craftily got Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman to do this long kissing scene where they are talking and nibbling at each other. It goes on for three to four minutes; it is a very sensuous scene, but they never really kiss for more than five or six seconds in one stretch.
AC: That’s a neat resolution.
SR: Yes, one of the ads said the longest kiss in the history of Hollywood films.
SP: Hitchcock really liked Notorious. In the book Truffaut on Hitchcock, both of them rate Notorious very high.

At one point, there was a line of thinking that Psycho wasn’t to be taken seriously.

AC: But if we all agree on Psycho, let’s go on. JAS: So Psycho and I am moving quickly through the rest of it. Then Sholay.
AC: Sholay we don’t have to really discuss.
SR: I didn’t put it on my list simply because I knew somebody will have it. It’s the film I have seen the maximum number of times.
JAS: Good we don’t have Naseeruddin Shah on this panel, if you read what he has written about Sholay in his book....
SR: My thing for not putting Sholay was I thought everybody knows Sholay.
AC: But they don’t, Sriram. You would be amazed. The other day I asked this kid who works as an intern in my office when his film education started, and he said from K3G.
JAS: For many, and here I am talking about people who are scriptwriters and even filmmakers, cinema begins with The Godfather 1972. If you ask them what are the old classics they love, you will never hear of anything before Godfather. Or it will be Tarantino in the last 20-25 years.
SP: Not wanting to sit through Notorious is bad enough but not knowing Sholay seems catastrophic. Is it because we are  looking at some screen or the other all the time and don’t sit down quietly to watch a film any more?
JAS: It has to do with the viewing habits of today. I cringe at the thought  of somebody experiencing Sholay for the first time on a cellphone.
AC: Okay, Sholay is through, let’s get on with the rest.
SP: Yes, the matinee show starts in this hall 12.30 pm. If we don’t vacate by noon, the manager has said we will have to deal with the angry mob outside.
AC: (Laughs) Then you will have to watch Prem Ratan Dhan Payo.
JAS: I am just assuming we have to have one Satyajit Ray on this list.
AC: Correct.
SB: I would agree.
SR: I am not sure.
JAS: Well, I am choosing Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne and that again is, I think, more enduring....
SR: My problem is I would have put Apu trilogy or so many of the other films. With Ray, there is no saying why this and why not that.
SP: But if we have to have one Ray, are you all agreed that it will be Goopy Gyne? It certainly is fantastical and whimsical but there are so many Rays that are...
SB: I have a conflict here. I would choose Apu Trilogy. Pather Panchali.
JAS: If it’s the trilogy, I’d go with Aparajito.
SR: They are very different kind of films. But I like Goopy very much.
JAS: Okay, since we have reiterated that we will not be canonical, let’s go with Goopy for Ray. The next I have listed is this film called Safety Last, which is a Harold Lloyd silent comedy. My idea was to put in one of the great physical silent comedies, whether it’s Chaplin or Buster Keaton. Safety Last is a wonderful film that is about climbing this mountain, that building....
SB: And the clock.
JAS: Yeah, that too in an age when you didn’t have safety nets or special effects. And I think that sort of silent comedy movie is the fount of so many interesting things that have happened in the cinema subsequently. But we could easily substitute it with one of Buster Keaton....
SP: The General?

Framed In Timelessness An iconic scene from, need we say it, Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali

JAS: So if any of you are bigger fans of Keaton’s, I am happy to go with The General or something.
SB: No, let’s go with this....
JAS: Next, V. Shantaram’s Navrang, the film I think is such an explosion of...
SB: ...kitsch.

“Onibaba, in black-and-white, is such a moving film and yet so scary.”

JAS: Kitsch is a slightly patronising word for Navrang. This film is about colour and classical Indian music and it brings tog­ether so many of the things that are so good about traditional Hindi cinema, which came from the theatre traditions. And it’s done by a director who was unapologetic about it. He just didn’t bother to tone things down, so I will put that in my list. The last in this round, I am going with a film which is very close to my heart: it’s the 1944 Michael Powell film A Canterbury Tale. I nominate it partly because it takes a more profound look at issues of faith and faithlessness than almost anything that Bergman has ever done. It is a narrative-driven film, a British film about three people heading to Canterbury and the experiences they go through there. SP: Sure, Jai. But I think the other film that nobody else will have on their list, which is not so profound, and which I think you will have to really push hard for will be Parvarish.
SR: (Laughs) Which Parvarish? Manmohan Desai’s?
JAS: Yes, Manmohan Desai’s. I see that you have Naseeb....
SR: Yes, I have Naseeb.
AC: Really? You like Naseeb?
SR: I love Manmohan Desai. I would have put Amar Akbar Anthony.

SP: But that would be the canonical film from Manmohan Desai’s body of work?
AC: (Laughs) He is just being hat ke.
SP: Okay, we will come to Parvarish later. Anupama, let’s go with yours. I saw in your list you had listed a few Korean and Japanese films, it would be great if you could talk a little bit about them.
AC: Okay, my first film is Tampopo. It is one of my favourites, because it’s a film about food, about sex, about watching movies; it’s about everything that so pleasures your senses. It is so funny and completely mad, but there is a strong sensual narrative. There are random off-shoot stories happening in it, there are item numbers, which have no link to it to the actual narrative. The whole thing is about this truck driver teaching this widow how to make noodles...perfect Ramen noodles. There are dialogues like: “How are my noodles?” “They have sincerity but they lack guts.” It’s a film I have gone back to again and again because it’s so beautifully done. Well, I must warn though, for vegetarians it may not be so appetising, there are some really graphic shots of cut heads and chopped things. But other than that, Tampopo is a fantastic film. The next is an unusual film—In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones. I just love it. Which I don’t know how one can watch, though. Pradip Kishen once said there is going to be a DVD, but I don’t know if it ever came out.
SB: It did, but the quality isn’t so good.
AC: I remember I had to go to the film arc­hive to see it when I was working on a book on  Shahrukh, because there was no DVD.
SR: I still remember ‘grotesque’.
SP: Sorry, what’s that?
SR: The way this guy says ‘growths’.

Photograph by Apoorva Salkade

“My thing with Stalag 17 is that it’s a little obscure film, a satire on how war doesn’t unite us but brings out our worst.”

Sriram Raghavan

AC: It is an original indie film and it was such a path-breaker in so many ways. The Arundhati Roy character is living with this boyfriend, I mean back in 1984, I think it was. And I just wish more people today would see it and know it and see what they didn’t back then. It was commissioned by Doordarshan.
SB: Arundhati Roy scripted it.
AC: Yes, and it is of course Shahrukh’s debut film. He is there for maybe three seconds, walking in the background.
SP: It’s the film they used to show in the Jamia Milia film and media course test to critique, the course Shahrukh Khan fam­ously left in the middle.
AC: Okay, next. Y Tu Mama Tambien.
JAS: That’s the road movie, right? These two young boys and the woman?
AC: Yes.
SP: Yeah, amazingly bold film. But don’t you think the lead actor Gael Garcia Bernal sort of  anished after such a brilliant role? This and Motorcycle Diaries.
SB: No, he is still around; he continues to do interesting films. Recently, he made a film called Ardor, which is very interesting.
AC: He was there in Desierto, the film by Alfonse Cuaron’s son Jonas. My next is Kung Fu Hustle. It is the most madly inv­entive Stephen Chow film ever....
SB: It’s just pure energy, it’s completely crazy. But hard-worked upon, superbly choreographed.
AC: And stolen in half a dozen Bollywood films. I know both Farah and Sajid have stolen from it in parts in different films. There is one scene when they are throwing daggers and they keep coming back, that’s been copied. I used to know one of the executives at Sony who was part of setting up the local production there and he said Stephen Chow literally wrote the film on a napkin. So, since there is no script, it was just inventiveness. My next, DDLJ. Is it there on anyone else’s list?
SR: It was there on my mine, but now I will not put it in my first five.... Okay, my first—Groundhog Day. I don’t know if anybody has seen it.
SP: Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, outstanding. It’s about this man who is stuck in a time warp and lives the same day again and again.
AC: Yes, it’s brilliant.
SR: Then, Stalag 17. It is a little known Billy Wilder film which I loved but I have not seen recently. Of course, normally one would have The Apartment of Billy Wilder and so many other great films but I will go with Stalag 17.
JAS: If I had to choose a Billy Wilder I would probably go for another less known film called Ace in the Hole....
SR: Yes, I love Ace in the Hole also but....
JAS: It’s a bit of where Peepli Live comes from, this is the one about the minor trapped in the hole and the media goes all wild....
SR: Yeah, I have seen all the Billy Wilder movies. But my thing with Stalag 17 is...it’s a little obscure film. It’s a black and white film,  set in a prisoner of war camp and it is a satire on how war doesn’t really bring us together but actually brings out the worst in us.
JAS: It was actually made before Catch 22 was written....
SR: There is one song in Baaton Baaton Mein—Na bole tum na maine kuch kaha—which they have whacked from Stalag 17.
JAS: When Johnny comes marching....

Song Sung Blue Waheeda Rahman and Dev Anand in Guide

SR: I have Pulp Fiction, is anybody else going to put?
SB: Go ahead.
SR: Then, Yaadon Ki Barat. Is anyone going with Guide, then I will put Tere Ghar Ke Samne of Vijay Anand.
SP: But we can have only one of one director.
SR: Oh, then we can’t put Tere Ghar Ke Samne over Johnny Mera Naam, my ultimate fav.
SP: Okay, you have one more in this round.
SR: I will say Company.
AC: That’s an interesting one. Not Satya of Ram Gopal Varma?
SR: Again, that is the obvious one, even though Satya was more impactful for me.
AC: I would go with Satya.
SB: So would I.
SR: Okay, if everyone else is saying Satya, I am okay with that.
JAS: You are not taking RGV Ki Aag.
AC: Yes, why not?
JAS: I mean, we should tell our readers to watch that too.
SP: Oh, there are so many then, like Daud....
SB: I told Ramu once that I actually liked Daud and he said you have just got very bad taste.
AC: I wrote a review in India Today saying what a great film Daud was, and the editor told me bas ab aap pe bharosa nahi raha (I have lost faith in you.)
SR: (Laughs) I didn’t like the film at all, though I love Ramu. What happened is, I wanted to see it first day, first show, so I had booked a 12 o’ clock show—those days we had to book in adv­ance for Friday. But another friend had also booked tickets for four or five of us for the 3 o’ clock show. So I saw it first at 12 o’ clock, hated it, then I had to watch it again at 3 o’ clock. I couldn’t tell my friends that I had already seen it so I had to sit through it again.
SB: Ha, ha. Nobody can like Daud so much. But you have got Company in your list, or are you changing it?
SR: I am changing it to Satya.
JAS: I want to say something quickly before Srinivas starts with his. I was looking at Sriram’s list and you have a little film called Citizen Kane. Aren’t you going to name that?
SP: Because the whole thing is inverted now? It has become more difficult to get the truly great films into the list.
SB: I am embarrassed to say that I have actually seen Citizen Kane 15 times and I love it. What I am trying to say is, even a canonical film can actually give you pleasure....
AC: Of course, they do. Most of them are pleasurable films.
JAS: My favourite Orson Welles is Touch of Evil.
SB: So I would go first with all my personal favourites, underdogs which I have seen many, many times. First up is Nayakan. Then, I would go with Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi. I think it has achieved things that a lot of Indian cinema has not been able, which is mixing politics and poetry, period and whimsical personal semi-autobiographical storytelling of Sudhir Mishra. It captured a certain era so well but without being self-important. It is one of the most sophisticated films and I feel is underrated. He did so many different things in the film and he used songs very well.

Photograph by Apoorva Salkade

“I love horror films more than anything else. I hope I’m ambitious enough to make one in my life, but I may disappoint myself.”

Srinivas Bhashyam

AC: Yes, Bawraa mann dekhne chala ek sapna...is superb.
SB: Then I would go for this Kannada film called Hamsa Geethe. I am sure that nob­ody here has seen it.
AC: No, I haven’t.
SB: This is a film by G.V. Iyer, who also made the first Sanskrit film. Now, cinematically, Hamse Geethe is quite shoddy but it is a very powerful story and I think it is the most authentic Indian classical music film ever made. The music director is the legendary M. Balamuralikrishna. The story is reminiscent of Amadeus: it has got ego clashes, it’s set a couple of hundred years ago, it’s got really amazing use of rocks and landscapes, which it captures with austerity. It captures an India we don’t know too much about.
AC: Is it easily available?
SB: Yes, it’s there on YouTube. If you ign­ore the technical and editing part of it, you will see it’s a moving film about music. Then I would go for one of my favourites. I think I must have seen it 30 times. It is called Michael Madana Kama Rajan.
SP: Oh, yes, the Kamalahaasan-Sin­geetam team at its best.
JAS: Isn’t it made by the director who also did Pushpak? Pushpak is my all-time favourite.
SP: And Appu Raja.
SB: Yes, I was lucky enough to assist the director, Singeetam Srinivasa Rao, much later. So it is about Kamalahaasan playing four characters, Michael, Madan, Kama, Rajan and it has got all the cliches. It has got a fable-like storytelling, it has got a frenetic cartoon-like pace, from the beginning to end nothing is taken seriously but done with a lot of design and care. It has got a literal cliff-hanger ending. It has got visual punch, it has got language punch....
SP: All the four characters are from different backgrounds and social settings. So, one of them is a Tamil Brahmin so he speaks in that language. The other one is a street guy so he speaks a kind of Tamil which the others cannot follow....
SR: Even the waiter character, he speaks a different kind of Tamil. But won’t all this get lost in translation in the subtitles for a non-Tamil audience?
SB: To some extent yes, but still you would appreciate what’s going on visually, it’s a completely crazy film. This combination of Kamalahaasan, who wrote the screenplay, and director Singeetam Srinivasa Rao, who has worked with him many times. They know exactly how to do this bizarre thing very well. They did it in Pushpak, they did it in Appu Raja and they did it in this film. But this film again, for the so-called serious filmgoers, it’s an underrated movie. But it has got Chaplin, it has got Buster Keaton, it has got Marx Brothers because of the verbal play. It has got all of that and it has got absolute Indian sensibilities....
JAS: It is recommended to me by so many people but I just haven’t been able to see it yet.
SB: Last one in this round, I would go for The Exorcist. I am a big fan of horror....
AC: Really, you like horror?

Whose Terrain? A haunting scene from Tarkovsky’s Solaris

JAS: I am a huge horror fan.
SB: Actually, I love horror films more than anything else. I hope I am ambitious to make one horror film in my life as a director but I am scared that I will disappoint myself. I saw The Exorcist as a kid and I could not sleep for one week. I think I lost my virginity with it! It is based on a powerful novel, it’s the most influential horror films of all time and even today when I see it, it evokes the same feeling. It’s made by William Fried­kin... we have seen him doing other things equally well, like the French Connection.
AC: Would you allow The Shining?
SB: I would, absolutely. My cho­ice would weigh very closely bet­ween The Shining and The Exorcist. But The Exorcist scared the shit out of me much more than The Shining.
JAS: You know, I would have been happy to just do this exercise, 52 horror films you must watch this year, all kinds, lowbrow horror or highbrow horror, everything. In fact, I think The Exorcist is almost too respectable a film to feature in the horror genre.
SP: What would you have?
JAS: I have far too many to list here. This early 1960s Japanese film, Onibaba, for instance. I don’t know if you have seen it?
AC: Don’t want to. Can’t stand horror films.
SB: Yes, it’s an amazing film.
JAS: Like you know this film didn’t have any real jump-out-of-the-seat stuff. It’s such a moving film and yet such a scary film. It is set in medieval times, in the times of the samurais. A widowed old woman and her daughter-in-law are living together in this desolate, bare place with tall grass. It’s a black-and-white film, very atmospheric. The daughter-in-law is waiting for her husband to come back from the wars and they are scavenging for food. So what they end up doing, they have dug this deep hole in the grass where the wounded samurais who pass by are made to fall in. The women kill them, steal their armour and sell it for food. And then a lot of things happen, they meet this one samurai who is strange. This is just one of maybe 20-25 horror films of various kind I can think of now.
AC: Have you seen Hate Story-3?
SB: (Laughs). That is beyond The Exorcist. I don’t know how scared I will be but I am going to try it.
SP: It’s on here in this theatre, in Gaiety, you can catch the matinee after our discussion. Okay, that brings us to the end of our first round, now for the next round. Jai, let’s start again with you.
JAS: Well, this is actually to continue on the discussion we are having about horror films, one film that is very close to my heart is the French film by Georges Franju called Eyes Without a Face.
SB: I love it, that’s a great movie.
JAS: It works on multiple levels for me, at the horror level and at the artistic level. My next is this really beautiful film, Godard’s Weekend. Now again, it is a film that may seem today as somewhat highbrow or difficult. But I think in addition to being cinematically wonderful, it is brilliant because it is so relevant in some ways now. There is this amazing shot of the highway in the French countryside....
SB: Done in one long tracking shot....
JAS: Yes, the spectacular tracking shot of the road and...
SB: ...the traffic and the jam.

Not In Raj Kapoor’s Ram Teri Ganga Maili did not make it to the list. To keep a Raj Kapoor film in, the panel chose Jaagte Raho.

JAS: And horns creating a symphony...
SB: ...and many, many things going on. It’s a commentary on everything. On civilisation.
JAS: Ouch...on civilisation...how pretentious it sounds. Also, I just feel like, at the risk of getting canonical, I feel that there has to be a Godard....
SP: Yeah, sure. But if there has to be Godard, shouldn’t it be....
SR: You are going to say Breathless?
SP: Or Contempt.
JAS: Breathless would be quite predictable. My second favourite will act­ually be Contempt.
SB: If you are avoiding the canonical, this is a very good choice.
JAS: In fact, I will be even more interested in Contempt than Weekend bec­ause it is one of the first meta films. Today, we talk about how Hindi film directors like Anurag Kashyap and Dibakar etc are more children of cinema than of literature, their houses are full of DVDs. The same charge was levelled at Francis Ford Coppola’s generation in America in early 1970s. But Godard in 1963 had made what was one of the first meta films that is actually commenting on the workings of cinema. What happened was Carlo Ponti, who was this very commercial producer, told Godard we are giving you money, you have to make this film, you have to have Brigitte Bardot in it. And since she is there, you have to have a nude scene in it. And what does Godard do? Right at the beginning of the film he puts this nude scene where the Bardot character is in bed with her husband and she is deconstructing herself. She is there completely naked and she is asking her husband questions like what do you like best, you like my fingers, you like my toes, you like my mouth. She is obsessing with herself in such a way that it bec­omes very unsexy....
SB: He subverts it completely.
JAS: And the film itself is about her husband, who is a writer and he wants to make these highbrow films of integrity but then he sells out. He binds himself to a commercial producer. So Godard is making a film about the circumstances of the making of this film. The film also is about the fights that he had with his reallife wife, Anna Karina; that how she is a serious actress and how she is compromising with her art for money.
SP: So, is it Weekend or Contempt then?
JAS: Contempt.
AC: Satish is like, so get to the point. He is stressing about the time.
SP: No, no, I just have that Prem Ratan Dhan Payo mob waiting outside hanging on my head. Otherwise the whole point of this exercise, more than to come up with a list finally, is to talk films, it is so enriching to know so much about films and filmmakers....
JAS: So, it is Contempt then. Third, Parvarish by Manmohan Desai.
AC: (Turning to Sriram) You want to argue with this?
SR: I also like Parvarish. But I love Dharam Veer as well....
JAS: Dharmendra in a mini skirt....
SP: But why Parvarish, if I may ask?
JAS: It is lunatic, with all the underpinnings of reflections on the nature-nurture debate, which is done in a really corny way with such bizarre plot twists....
AC: But it can’t beat the plot twists of Dharam Veer. The prince of the kingdom is kidnapped, then he returns but no one knows if it is actually the right prince. They think it is, because he is brave, but actually it is not the right prince. C’mon, who can beat that?
JAS: I am fine with Dharam Veer in place of Parvarish.
SR: Let’s go with Dharma Veer then, it has my Dharamji.
JAS: Sure, but what sticks to me really about Parvarish are its sheer brilliant moments. So Amitabh Bachchan is pretending to be blind because he wants to figure out whether illegal activities are being done by his brother (Vinod Khanna) whom he suspects is a smuggler. And at one point Amitabh is at the hospital with his dark glasses over his eyes and somebody comes and talks to him. When the person goes away, Amitabh takes the glasses off, picks up a book and he turns to us, the audience, and winks. That’s a meta moment.
SR: (Laughs) Yes, Amitabh does that a lot. And isn’t it the one where there is an item number with Neetu Singh? Or am I getting confused between Parvarish and Suhaag, which has this song where the girls are saying they want to commit suicide and Amitabh and Shashi Kapoor say please go ahead.

Sequence Red Irene Jacob in Kieslowski’s Three Colours: Red

SB: That’s Suhaag. So is it Parvarish or Dharam Veer?
JAS: Dharam Veer. Okay, now after that, to get a little arty. There is a very interesting film which brings out the Indian theatre traditions in a film very beautifully. It’s Ketan Mehta’s Bhavni Bhavai. My other choice in that category would actually be Shyam Benegal’s Charandas Chor, which is based on Habib Tanvir’s play. It has Govind Nihalani at his best as a cinematographer, with black-and-white photography. It is perhaps one of Benegal’s least known films but it is so stimulating.
AC: There is no Benegal in our list....
JAS: But between the two, I would go with Ketan Mehta’s Bhavni Bhavai. Then the next, again I am going by art. It is Goving Nihalani’s Party.
SR: Not Ardh Satya?
JAS: I prefer Party and I also think Party badly needs to be rediscovered....
SP: Nihalani’s Party, based on a play by Mahesh Elkunchwar.
JAS: Yes, it is a very rare example of the Indian chamber drama, the sort of thing that Renoir was doing with The Rules of the Game. We were just now talking about how Godard made Contempt about its own making; Party is a film that is a reflection on the sort of people who are making those art films. It is a film about people who, on the face of it, are activists, they are concerned about social issues, the rights of tribals. Yet all of them are basically sitting in a plush house in South Bombay and talking about all this. Party has got that self-condemnation built into it which I think is terrific.
AC: Okay, my turn now. So is Deewar on the list, or can I pick up Kabhie Kabhi? We can have only one of Yash Chopra?
SR: I would back Deewar.
AC: Okay, Deewar it is then. Next, All About Eve.
SB: Billy Wilder, excellent.
SR: No, not Billy Wilder....
JAS: Joseph Mankiewicz.
SB: Sorry. Mankiewicz.
AC: Next is my guilty pleasure, which I am sure nobody will want. 48 Hours.
SR: It is my guilty pleasure too, I enjoyed it thoroughly.
SB: You are on your own here. I enjoyed it too but I wouldn’t bring it into the list.
JAS: You know what my great guilty pleasure is which I feel embarrassed mentioning to you all...it is No Entry.
AC: No! Aneez Bazmi, I cannot defend...
JAS: Despite all the allegations of it being regressive and chauvinistic.
SP: I think if we dwell deep on No Entry, this discussion may take an altogether different course.
AC: OK quickly, next, Hum Dono.
SR: But we already have one by Vijay Anand, Johny Mera Naam.
AC: Then, Raise the Red Lantern. Then one horror film, though I am not a fan of the genre, one horror film I love is The Shining.
SB: It doesn’t scare you that much.
AC: It scared the jeebies out of me.
JAS: But if you have Stanley Kubrick on the list, then should we go with The Shining or say, The Clockwork Orange?
SP: Or Dr Strangelove. Though The Shining, along with Kubrick, is also Jack Nicholson’s film.
SR: I am fine with The Shining.
SR: OK, here are my next five. First, Fargo.
JAS: Are we looking at any other films by the Coen brothers’?
SB: I would go for Blood Simple but Fargo is absolutely fine....
SR: I love Burn After Reading also.
SP: Miller’s Crossing?
SR: I remember I bought the DVD of Miller’s Crossing for Rs 2,500, it used to be that expensive at that time. But I will go with Fargo. Then, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
AC: I love it.
SR: I wanted to have a Mani Ratnam but I think we already have Nayakan? OK, Jaagte Raho.... I mean I would want a Raj Kapoor in the list, though technically this is not a Raj Kapoor. I love Ram Teri Ganga Maili too. Does anyone else like it?
AC: No.
JAS: No. But my heart was singing when in Tanu Weds Manu Returns they start Sun saiba sun. I just went back to the 1980s.
SP: But there are many Raj Kapoors before Ram Teri Ganga Maili. I mean, there is Aah, Aag, there is Barsaat, there is Shri 420, Chori Chori, Anari, Awaara...
SR: I know, Shri 420 is fantastic.
JAS: I would actually go with something like Mera Naam Joker as a giant folly, a magnificent failure, where the ambition just overshadows everything.
SR: But it would look like we are just trying to put Mera Naam Joker for those reasons. I will go with Jaagte Raho. Next, Brian de Palma’s The Untouchables. Or any other choice?
JAS: I would actually go with Sisters.
SR: I love Sisters. It’s a very early film.
AC: There is also Dressed To Kill.
SR: You like Dressed To Kill? I also love it. Let’s go with that then.
SR: The other two I have left are Guru Dutt’s Aar Paar and well, Casino Royale, because I basically love Bond.
SP: That’s a tough choice, between Aar Paar and Casino Royale.
SR: Of Guru Dutt should we have Sahib, Bibi Aur Ghulam or Aar Paar? Or Pyasa?
JAS: And I have to say I am from that very rare sort of minority of people who is not a huge Pyasa fan actually. Mukul Kesavan once said to me that Pyasa is a film which is much less than the sum of its parts. And I agree with that.
SP: In Nasreen Munni Kabir’s book on Waheeda Rehman, if I am not wrong, also brings up this point about Pyasa.
SR: So Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam.
SP: We are treating that as a Guru Dutt film then? The direction is by Abrar Alvi.
SR: There’s a big controversy on that.
AC: But that will be another full discussion. Let’s just stick to the film.
SB: Next, I will go with Blade Runner. It’s so influential, it’s an amazing film on so many levels. And it’s truly a science fiction film in the sense that it asks really philosophical questions, while entertaining you with a really gripping story....
AC: That line about my memories will be washed away like tears in the rain.
SB: Then I want to bring in a documentary since I love documentaries. I am going to go with an old documentary although the recent documentaries are also amazing. I will go with The Last Waltz, by Martin Scorcese. It captures rock music, an era, documentary film-making at its best, camaraderie between a generation of musicians who came together for the last concert of a band. It is an extraordinary film.
Then I am going to bring in an animation film which I love, the Triplets of Belleville. The use of sound, almost no dialogue, it’s a feature-length film, the animation style is incredibly original, hand-drawn. And it’s got use of colours, light, compositions. It is pure cinema and it is very poetic, and yet it tells a fable-like tale. In parts, it’s incredibly sad.
JAS: I got a little depressed watching it—I loved it and appreciated it as a film but found it a little depressing in some ways.
SB: Yeah, it’s French.
JAS: (Laughs) Triplets of Belle­ville is also part-tribute to the great comedian Tati. I would have loved to have one of his—in fact I had one of his films on my list. But I think this could be a substitute almost for a Tati film.
SB: I wanted to put Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, but instead went with Triplets of Belleville. And I am going to go with a Tarkovsky, unashamedly Solaris. Again it’s like Blade Runner. It is science fiction but it’s asking really fundamental questions. But it’s a very solemn, very serious film. Again the use of Bach on the soundtrack is amazing and meditative. It does all kinds of things. I think Solaris is a great film of a great Stanislaw Lem novel. Next I will pick a Kieslowski. It is very difficult to pick one from the three colours trilogy but since we can only have one film, I will pick Blue. It’s got Juliette Binoche.
SP: Red’s incredible, it’s got Irene Jacob.
SR: I like Red also very much.
SB: I also like White. It’s a completely different story. And there is Julie Delpy in it.
AC: What about the Decalogue?
SR: If it has to be one film from it, then it should be A Short Film About Killing.
JAS: Okay, in this round, again my list is skewed towards older films, my next is Max Ophuls’s Letters from an Unknown Woman. Has anyone seen that? Now, again at the risk of sounding very representative here, I think it is one of the great women’s films I have ever seen, one of the great romantic films. It’s really beautiful. Next, Red River, as it also puts a western in there. And if I didn’t have that, I would have a John Ford instead. Red River is pertinent in the sense you have these two acting giants—you have John Wayne playing the older man and Montgomery Clift who is, in the pre-Brando era, one of the first generation of method actors playing his adopted son. And this fascinating contrast between two very different acting styles. You know, years later, you hear those anecdotes about Lawrence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman and their acting styles. But here decades before that you have John Wayne doing a very intuitive, natural sort of thing, Montgomery Clift doing method acting, you know, scratching himself and being effeminate.
AC: My last two. Lage Raho Munna Bhai. I would choose this over the first because of what it said to me and how it stayed with me much, much longer than the first film. It moved me very deeply. I was literally weeping.
JAS: I would agree with that. I would also add that the first film I just couldn’t get out of my head to some degree is Patch Adams. Whereas the second one just seemed more tied in because of the Gandhian thing.
SR: My next is Chupke Chupke. Is there an agreement on Gol­maal over Chupke Chupke, if we have to choose a Hrishikesh Mukherjee.
JAS: I’d say Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s....
AC: But we can’t go with Jai on Hrishikesh Mukherjee.... I think Chupke Chupke is fine.
SB: Okay, my last. So we’ve already got a Hitchcock. I want to talk about this really obscure, unknown film which I love: I will bring in 27 Down. It is one of the Indian films which is arty-farty and yet amazingly elegant made by Avtar Krishna Kaul....
JAS: Also it was his only feature film and then he died shortly afterwards. And you keep wondering what he might have done if he had lived longer to make films.
SB: It is one of those art films which is not dated. You watch it today it looks like a French film. It is not contrite, it is not awkward, it is not pretentious.
AC: Is it easily available?
SB: There is a new NFDC DVD of it, but the quality is not so great.
SB: I had a film in my list...Gunda.
AC: (Laughs) Oh, it is so bad that it is really good. Satish’s heart fail has happened!
SP: Well, I don’t know what to say.
AC: Gunda nahin kar saktey.
SB: Nobody has got Citizen Kane?
SP: Now, this is really rich—Citizen Kane or Gunda. Would it come to this anywhere in the world of list-making?
JAS: Sadly in this one instance, we should give the canonical a little leeway.
AC: Absolutely. Let’s please stop it and go with Citizen Kane, I say

Okay, Robert, Okay The 52 films that make our jurists’ canon, with their twists and turns duly explained

Deewar (Hindi) Pulp Fiction (English) Bandini (Hindi) Solaris (Russian) Johny Mera Naam (Hindi) Three Colours Blue (French) Blade Runner (English) Hamsageethe (Kannada) Sholay (Hindi) The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (English) Amar Akbar Anthony (Hindi) Satya (Hindi) Navrang (Hindi) The Triplets Of Belleville French (Animation) Red River (English) Jagte Raho (Hindi) Lage Raho Munna Bhai (Hindi) Sahib, Bibi Aur Ghulam (Hindi) Michael Madana Kamarajan (Tamil) Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (Hindi) The Exorcist (English) 27 Down (Hindi) Y Tu Mama Tambien (Spanish) Psycho (English) Godfather (English) Party (Hindi) Kung Fu Hustle (Cantonese) In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones (English) The Shining (English) All about Eve (English) Chupke Chupke (Hindi) Hazaron Khwaishein Aisi (Hindi) Singin’ In The Rain (English) Citizen Kane (English) Yaadon Ki Baaraat (Hindi) Shakespeare In Love (English) Contempt (French) Bhavni Bhavai (Gujarati) Safety Last (Silent) Dressed To Kill (English) Fargo (English) Eyes Without A Face (French) Nayakan (Tamil) The Last Waltz (English) A Canterbury Tale (English) Tampopo (Japanese) Stalag 17 (English) Goopy Gyne Bagha Bayen (Bengali) Annie Hall (English) Letter From An Unknown Woman (English) Groundhog Day (English) Raise The Red Lantern (Mandarin)

Our cinema will emerge stronger’ -mahesh bhatt

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Mahesh Bhatt. For all his candour in real life, his films, such as Arth (1982) and Saaransh (1984), have made the best possible statements on his behalf. Bhatt quit film direction after the intensely personal Zakhm (1998) got critical acclaim, national awards and commercial success. In this interview, he talks about the evolution of Hindi cinema, from the time of Alam-Ara to the modern period when multiplexes have redefined cinema. By ZIYA US SALAM

Hindi cinema down the ages has often been derided for its escapist fare. Is it not a travesty of justice?
There are two streams that run through our cinematic landscape. One is the popular cinema, the post-Independence Gangotri, so to say. It derived its strength from giants like Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy and Guru Dutt. There is another stream, as first shown by the great Satyajit Ray. He captured the complex reality of rural India in his own distinguished way.
The two streams were always like two railway tracks that run alongside but never meet. However, they met in the mid-1970s with the birth of parallel cinema thanks to the works of Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani and M.S. Sathyu. It gave birth to middle-of-the-road cinema. By the mid-1970s, the two streams crossed each other’s path. My best work, too, came roughly in that phase… Arth, Saaransh…
Having said that, I agree that by and large, Hindi cinema has been an escapist proposition because the nation used the cinema as an escape parlour. Our predecessors always harped on the truth that cinemas were distilleries of pleasure. Theatres were like Disneyland for them. They believed, and most still do, that when millions go to taste a narrative which is never going to be possible in real life…where equality will prevail, love will win, it has to be an escapist venture. However, I don’t necessarily find the expression demeaning.
When we talk of Hindi cinema, it is convenient to use the stereotypes of serious or commercial cinema. Does not the reality lie somewhere in between? For instance, the cinema of Guru Dutt or Mehboob blended both....
They were both geniuses, rooted in Indian reality. They came from the salt of the earth. They did not learn their movie craft in cinema halls of Metro or Regal. They picked it up through trial and error. Their reality was reflected in their movies. Mehboob’s Mother India remains a defining film for all of us. The moral compass of the film remains a benchmark for our society. These film-makers were like moral science teachers of an idealistic India, they lived their lives among the people who had just won freedom. It was natural that Nehruvian ideology inspired the colours and content of that period.
The challenges for our film-makers have always been to make cinema a medium of the masses. For instance, early silent films drew heavily from the mythological font to draw in viewers, subtly reminding them that cinema was their medium, relating their tales....
Before Alam-Ara, the movie landscape across the world was monopolised by Americans and, to an extent, by Europeans. They had a head start. The moment sound came into cinema, songs came. With songs, the monopoly of the West was broken. Ever since, song and dance have become an entrenched part of our cinema, its unique selling point. Anybody who claims his movie is different because it does not have songs actually does not know the strength of Indian cinema.
Every nation operates within the stronghold of the mythology of the region. The mythologies do control our consciousness. They influence the narrative. It is like the air you breathe. Our film-makers have been happy to breathe the same air. No film-maker will ever break the hold of mythology. The great family dramas, the feuds, the Radha-Krishna template, the Ram-Sita model…they are the life-blood of storytellers of this nation. They will influence all film-makers of today. The films may not be out and out mythologicals today but the inherent values remain the same. Why just us? It is the same everywhere. Christian mythology controls the American psyche. Their films talk of resurrection, doomsday and the like.
The subjects of Hindi films changed post-Independence when Nehruvian socialism found film-makers happy to toe the political line...Were the films of the 1950s an extension of the state policy or actually a mirror to an evolving society?
They were educated film-makers who were groomed by the institutions of those days. That showed in their worldview. Not just Roy, Mehboob or Dutt, even K. Asif adhered to a similar Nehruvian vision of India. He was no intellectual, yet he had imbibed similar values. His Mughal-e-Azam presents that notion beautifully with the film using Persian words in essentially Urdu dialogues, Sanskrit slokas in the Mughal emperor’s court, a bhajan and a naat. And to think that the film-maker was a Muslim! The idea of Nehru’s India was sold to all.
The 1960s and 1970s were all about exuberance, romance, a light-hearted fare catering to the urban middle class. Was the cinema then reflective of our society, which was undergoing great urbanisation?
That was the time when certain films became the footsteps of impending doom and gloom. India had experienced the India-China war, it jolted us from the self-congratulatory coma our leadership had slipped into post-Independence. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru never quite recovered from the betrayal. Something died within that robust optimism that soon we as a nation will soar to great heights. Mao Zedong held a mirror to that psyche. However, the period gave rise to two reactions in cinema. One was the birth of the so-called war films. The other was the escapist fare to avoid the grim, biting reality of the times.
What came of the war was Ae mere watan ke logon, which made Nehru cry. And then came Chetan Anand’s Haqeeqat. He had made his presence felt with Neecha Nagar much earlier in the 1940s. They both found acceptance among the masses. As did those easy narratives of “boy meets girl, fall in love”. Those one-line superficial narratives gripped us. With Junglee, Kashmir ki Kali and their like, films worked magic at the box office. They provided a change from the reality of the times. And their music still had an Indianness about them although the films themselves were not necessarily Indian in ethos. The film-makers of the 1950s consciously kept away from the Western style of film-making. They thought adapting any foreign technique or content was nothing short of treason. Film-makers did away with kiss as it was not considered an Indian body language. For them, Julie was an incarnation of evil, Sita and Raziya were embodiments of good. The film-makers of the 1960s-70s, relatively speaking, were more exposed to Western ideology, more impressed by it. It showed in their works.
Around the time Amitabh Bachchan acted in “Zanjeer”, “Sholay” and “Deewar”, Shyam Benegal come up with “Ankur”, “Nishant” and “Manthan”, Sathyu gave us “Garm Hava”, and Gulzar and Hrishikesh Mukherjee gave us their middle-of-the-road cinema. Where do you think we lost this range, this ability to cater to the different layers of our society?
There was this realisation that we were a diverse nation. One stream of film-making could not express all realities. Film-makers chose to occupy a moment and make a film around it. Hence, we had a film like Bobby. You could also make a Deewar, expressing the loneliness of urban India. It was an aspiration film that debunked the moral fibre of society. If you scratch Deewar, it still had blood, which was the same as Mehboob’s Mother India or Nitin Bose’s Gunga Jumna. The more things change, the more they remain the same. The big drama was throwing the moral compass away, and getting going. Then around the same time we had a film like Ankur, in which Shabana Azmi’s violent outburst remains embedded in my soul. The film showed a mirror to the feudal system, the tendencies to wipe away the weak, and yet, it also gave you hope. Remember, we had been through the naxalite movement; the movement itself had seen peasants and the lower middle class trying to emulate the Mao model of revolution. The nation had to get down from the merry-go-round as encapsulated in the films of Shammi Kapoor and Rajesh Khanna and embrace a complex reality in myriad ways.
Was not the decade of the 1980s and partly the 1990s the worst phase for Hindi cinema? Except art house offerings and films such as “Arth” and “Saaransh”, most of the films were tacky potboilers catering to the basest instincts of the masses.
As a film-maker, I connect with Hrishikesh Mukherjee more. I was groomed by the cinema of the 1960s and some part of the 1950s. He did influence my likes and dislikes. Even Ray impacted my psyche. The best of Indian cinema was responsible for pushing a man like me to make heart-breaking narratives with Arth, Naam, Saaransh. The 1980s were troubled times for this part of the world. [Mikhail] Gorbachev was there, it marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War. The Indian nation was fighting terrorism in Punjab, there was Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the 1984 carnage. The Nehruvian model was not delivering, and made way for the neoliberal economy.
Naam, Saaransh, even Daddy had a strong moral fibre. They talked of a family struggling to keep everyone together…They struck a chord with a section of the audience at that time.
However, largely, the decade was notable for tacky potboilers. It is said that if you really want to see the moral fabric of the country you have to see its cinema. By and large, the action model had taken over in the 1980s, the fighter master was the most powerful of artists and technicians. Music died in our films. Countless films such as Himmatwala and Maqsad were mere tamasha, chewing gum for the eyes, so to say…they had double-meaning dialogues, action, suggestive dances… the masses watched films that catered to baser instincts. The educated middle class started staying home with the onset of television serials.
For the masses, if you had a chauvinistic narrative, it worked. For them, in these films you needed a woman doing what she was traditionally told to do, either pandering to carnal needs as in the many portrayals of Sridevi, or becoming a breeding machine, a kind of revered mother who sacrifices her all, as Jayaprada is portrayed in many films. They both found acceptance because they catered to different thoughts of men with respect to women.
But truly it was a bad phase for cinema. Post-Operation Blue Star, the nation was going through a painful phase, cinema became a difficult exercise in north India, night shows were cancelled at many places. Technology, too, was creating problems—television provided an alternative and competition, video parlours cut into the business. Only the masses with limited access to television went to the cinemas. The films in turn spoke their language. There was narrative bankruptcy and the films were musically sterile.
The 1990s brought new audiences thanks to liberalisation. Young Indians wanted simple narrative of boy-meets-girl backed by hummable music. Films such as Aashiqui, Dil Hai ki Manta Nahin worked. The 1990s also saw the birth of another cinema-going experience with the opening of multiplexes, the onset of the digital technology, and the worldwide web… Suddenly a new model was there. Film-makers began to pander to non-resident Indians. Many had contempt for Indian viewers; for them the pound was more powerful than the rupee. The films unabashedly catered to the metros or NRIs, rural India was forgotten except in whiffs of nostalgia. They talked to 5 per cent of the population because the money came from them, and left 95 per cent out. But this phase also saw the coming back of the privileged middle class to cinema. Bollywood came to acquire a new respectability. And popular matinee idols started coming to national and international film festivals.
For all the celebrations surrounding the centenary of Hindi cinema, when can we actually begin to make films with a universal theme to be experienced by a universal audience? After all, if Mohsen Makhmabaf’s and Akira Kurosawa’s fare can be lauded despite the language limitation, there is no reason why we cannot attract non-Indian audiences.
A new narrative shaped the new blockbuster with big stars, big budgets. Money has often been the sole matrix in recent times. Forget Rs.100-crore sagas, shortly we will talk of Rs.200-crore films. Having said that, one must realise that the human heart refuses to succumb to despair; the darker the night, the greater the need for hope. The obsession with the opening weekend collection shall pass, too. A new beginning is being made by young film-makers like Anurag Kashyap, Anurag Basu and Shoojit Sircar. Our cinema will emerge stronger. But again, there will always be two streams: one of superb blockbusters, another of those with distinct artistic taste.

What Secularism is and Where It Needs to Be Headed - Romola Thapar

A secular society and polity does not mean abandoning religion. It means the religious identity of an Indian has to give way to the primary identity of a citizen. And the state has to guarantee the rights that come with this identity, as the rights of citizenship.

Romila Thapar in her study. Credit: The News on Sunday

Romila Thapar delivered the Asghar Ali Engineer Memorial Lecture at Jamia Millia Islamia on August 19, 2015. This is the text of her lecture.
In speaking about Indian society and the secular, let me say at the outset, that secularism goes beyond just politics, although our political parties have attempted to reduce it to a political slogan. So one party endorses it in theory but hesitates to apply it properly in practice, the other makes fun of it since the party’s foundational ideology is anti-secular. Supporting secularism or dismissing it, is not just a political slogan. It is deeply tied to the question of the kind of society that we want. This is perhaps why it was widely discussed in the early years of independence whereas now attempts are being made to scuttle it. Questioning the secular would mean seriously changing the direction that we have intended to give to Indian society. If secularism is removed from the constitution then democracy becomes a victim, with an unthinkable future.
If however we want a secular society, then we would have to stop identifying ourselves primarily by religion, caste or language, and start thinking of ourselves primarily as equal citizens of one nation, both in theory and in practice. This involves mutual obligations between the state and the citizens and between citizens, not just in theory as of now but in actuality. The relationship of other identities such as religion, caste, language and region will inevitably become secondary. These latter have to be adjusted so as to ensure that rights of citizenship together with what they entail remain primary. Eventually the state will not be expected to support any religious organisation, even those it is currently supporting.
I would like to begin by trying to explain what I mean by the terms secular, secularism and secularising. Secular is that which relates to the world and is distinct from the religious. Secularism involves questioning the control that religious organisations have over social institutions. This is sought to be justified by arguing that it ensures morality. But the morality fundamental to secularism goes beyond any single religion and extends to the functioning of the entire society. Secularism does not deny the presence of religion in society, but demarcates the social institutions over which religion can or cannot exercise control. This distinction is fundamental. And finally, secularising is the process by which society changes and recognises the distinction.
What secularism is and is not
When the term was first used in 1851, secular had only one basic meaning. It described laws relating to morals and social values as having been created by human society in order to ensure the well-being and harmonious functioning of the society. These laws were neither the creation of divine authority nor did they require the sanction of divine authority. Authority lay in working out – through reasoning and sensitivity – what was best for society in keeping with generally accepted values of tolerance and social responsibility, by those who constituted that society. Authority was exercised through laws. Social values therefore grew out of rational thinking, debate and discussion. This was needed to establish a moral code agreed to by the entire society and was not linked to any particular religion, caste or class.
What this means is that the laws and social values that govern the society should be observed as laws in themselves and not because they carry any divine sanctions. They have their own authority distinct from religion or caste or whatever. Religion involving belief and faith in a deity and in an afterlife continued to exist. However, the civil laws were sanctioned and upheld by secular authority and did not require the sanction of any religion. Secularism therefore is not what it is sometimes said to be  – a denial of religion – but a curtailment of the control that religious organisations have over social functioning. And I would underline this definition repeatedly.
This theory after it came to be widely discussed had various consequences. One was that it allowed people the freedom to think beyond what was told to them as being religiously correct. Again this did not mean throwing religion overboard but disentangling the codes of social behavior from religious control. This did not make people immoral as some had feared at that time, since the threat of punishment for breaking laws was enforced, and punishment came immediately in this life. It was not postponed to the next life as in most religious codes. So it made people think about the purpose of their laws and such thinking is always extremely useful. The observance of the law is strengthened when people understand its purpose.
Having to reason things out meant that people had to learn to think independently. The thinking came from their education. Here too the explanation of everything being part of a divine plan and requiring divine sanction was not always the answer to simple questions. Therefore, education began to involve searching for explanations other than those based on faith and religion, or possibly even honing these explanations if there was evidence to do so. But preferably, social laws began to be drawn from rational enquiry into both the natural and the human world in which we live. Occasionally there might even have been a small leap of imagination ultimately to be explained by reason. So the explanations for the laws and a discussion of these, became an essential part of education, and of thinking about the implications of being secularised.
Religion had originated as a personal emotional need. This was then extended to explanations of how one experienced life and beyond that how the universe functioned. This was all attributed to a supernatural power who was held in awe. Gradually however, this personalised religion became a complex organised religion and took the form of institutions ambitious to control society and politics. With this change, religion became powerful both as the focus of belief and as an authority controlling social institutions through various religious organisations. In some places, its power paralleled that of the governing authority – the state. It is this particular aspect of religion – the control that religious organisations have over social institutions – that the secular person wishes to keep separate from the state. The distinction is important because we often overlook it, in saying that secularism denies religion altogether.
Secularism then takes on an additional meaning. The state having authority over the making and observing of laws by human agencies should be distinct from religion since religion has its sanction from faith and from deity. The authority of each was clearly different.
Social laws are the spine of a society. They should protect the right to live and they should ensure that there should be no discrimination that affects life and work. This is crucial to protecting the points of change in the human lifecycle for which laws are necessary, such as registering birth, marriage, or even divorce, processes of education by which a child is socialised into society, occupation and employment, and inheritance, generally of property. Actions linked to these come under the jurisdiction of civil law. To make this link effective, social laws have necessarily to provide the basic aspects of welfare in a modern state – the absolute minimum of which are equal access to education and to health care for all members of society, and to employment, and this is to be irrespective of religion and caste. If civil laws are to be universal and uniform as they would be ultimately in a secular society, then we must guarantee this endorsement by the state. Discrimination on any count would be completely unacceptable.
So religious authority continues in a secular system but is limited. It extends only to governing religious belief and practice. It has been argued that there should be no rigid barrier between religion and the state, but there can be a negotiated, principled distance between them. This can allow for new alignments within the religion or between religions or between religion and the state. The overall relationship would disallow the dominance of any single religion since each would have equal rights on the state and the state on them and equal status before the law. Nevertheless, there is a degree of stipulated separation in this arrangement in as much as religious authority would no longer be controlling social laws.
‘Indian’ secularism
This is not of course the same as what is sometimes described as the Indian definition of secularism, namely the coexistence of all religions. Mere coexistence is insufficient as religions can still be treated as unequal and some be marginalised, as they often are. The acceptance of coexistence together with equal status before the law can certainly be a first step. But we do have to ask how far does this go and what should be the next step.
This definition based on the coexistence of religions is incomplete in many ways since the question of the jurisdiction of religious authority remains unanswered. The intention would in any case be not to put up barriers between state and religion. It would be to demarcate the activities that come under a civil jurisdiction and those that would continue to be controlled by the organisations representing religious authority. In a democratic system the equality would be essential – as essential as spelling out who controls which laws. In contemporary India, the coexistence of religions exists but their equality has yet to be established. The secular is less evident and some might even say that it is virtually absent. Political and state patronage does not invariably distance itself from religious organisations. In fact, it is sometimes closely tied together as we know.
Some oppose secularism by arguing that it is a western concept not suited to India. Should the same be said about nationhood and democracy, both new to post independence India? And surely our internalising the new liberal market economy is a far stronger imprint of the west. To support the secularising of society does not mean subordinating ourselves to a western concept but rather trying to understand a process of change in our contemporary history. Being a nation-state is a new experience of modern times and is current now in every part of the world. We have chosen democracy as the most feasible system despite its being new to us. I would argue, that a secular society is essential to democratic functioning.
Let me turn now to the specifically Indian aspect of the subject and comment on how I see religion and society in the past in order to compare it with how it is viewed in our times. My argument is that colonialism introduced a major disjuncture in how we perceive ourselves and that we have accepted this without much question. Any deliberate social change with sizeable consequence becomes a little easier to handle if one can see the earlier historical forms of the society and its gradual mutation. The present, after all, does emerge out of the past. In the important area of the relationship between society and religion, we have been nurtured on ideas about how religion functioned in India. These ideas came from colonial views of Indian religion that we have internalised without adequately questioning them. So a brief look at these might be useful.
Colonial view of religion
Colonial perceptions were based on the European experience of religion in the context of European society. With reference to Europe, secularism is often described as the separation between Church and State. This is taken as a one-to-one relationship because generally the religion was a single monolithic religion. This was so strongly asserted that in past times those that questioned Catholic belief and practice in Europe were heavily punished as heretics. Some were burnt, some had to recant as did Galileo and many faced the punitive actions of the Inquisition. Although Protestantism later was more flexible, the earlier experience was not forgotten.
This was the perspective of religion that was familiar to the colonisers. Their reading of Indian religion was through this perspective. Recent writing on Indian religion and society suggests that this was a defective view and therefore needs reinvestigation. The colonial image of Indian society projected two nations – the Hindu and the Muslim – defined by monolithic religious identities and inherently hostile to each other. And because of their mutual hostility, a controlling authority from outside was required. This became one justification for colonial rule. As many historians have pointed out, this image was then imprinted on the history of India – especially on the medieval period – thus enforcing a distancing between the two religions.

Recto title page of The Code of Gentoo Laws, compiled by N.B. Halhed on behalf of the East India Company

The concept of majority and minority communities identified by religion was also introduced by colonial policy. This further consolidated the idea of monolithic religions and these in turn fueled communal politics. Permanent majority and minority communities are of course contrary to the norms of democracy. A democratic majority is formed on each occasion when a large number of people come together in support of a particular opinion. The number has to be larger than of any other group, and those that join it are not restricted to membership of any previous affiliated organisation. Forming a majority, therefore, is not based on any pre-existing religious, caste or linguistic identities. The constituents of the majority change with each issue. There are no permanent members of majority or minority communities.
Anti-colonial nationalism tried to confront this image since broad based nationalism has to be inclusive, has to induct a range of opinion, and has also to draw on a shared history. The shared history is crucial. I would also like to quote Eric Hobsbawm who wrote that history plays the same role in nationalisms as does the poppy in the life of opium addicts. It is the source. It feeds ideas of identity. Anti-colonial nationalism did not question the monolithic nature of religious communities. It focused on denying their antagonism and projecting their coexistence. This became central to its idea of secularism. But this did not fully succeed. One reason was that the colonial view of religion in India was, and it still is, also foundational to the ideologies of what are now referred to as religious nationalisms, Hindu and Muslim, that went into the making of the communal landscape of India. In other words, anti-colonial nationalism and both the religious nationalisms build on the colonial construction of Indian religion, though the first borrows much less so whereas the second make it foundational to their ideologies. A century or so ago, the organisations propagating religious nationalisms were the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha. These were not religious orthodoxies but rather ideologies using religion for political mobilisation. Today, religious nationalisms include a range of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and other religious organisations, politically ambitious and anxious to continue their control over community laws to ensure a political constituency. History in religious nationalisms is not shared, it is divisive and it becomes the arena of battle. The struggle over history text-books, therefore, is the attempt to ensure the projection of a history slanted towards one religion and a denial of a shared history.
We may well ask was this actually the way in which religion functioned in relation to Indian society from early times? Have we looked analytically at our past? Have we examined the role of religious organisations from that past? What form did these organisations take, how did they exert authority and which sections of society supported which organisation ?
The place of religion in Indian history
I would argue that the historical picture of religions in India was complex. It was not just a simple binary of Hindu and Muslim, because religious groups took the form of an array of sects, and not of a large monolithic community. I see it in terms of two sets of relationships, each required for investigating the link between religion and society. The first was the interaction of sect with a close social linkage through caste connections, present in every segment of Indian society. The second was the mediation with and through political authority that then became a three-way process involving sect, caste and the state. There was no church to bring together the sects into a single entity. In other words, I’m arguing for a much more decentralised way of looking at religion.
In the Indian past, the crucial relationship lay in the connection between multiple religious sects and many castes. The sect propagated belief, the caste often determined its social context. Status was measured through an interdependence of the two. Upper castes across religion – whether they observed caste restrictions strictly or not – tended to be more closely associated with the text-based formal manifestations of the religion, whereas the lower castes, perhaps being less text-based, were far more flexible. Caste determined the social code, maintained formally by those who claimed to be educated and knew the law. For most people, however, it was the hearsay of tradition. The authority of caste and sect over the social code has now to be replaced by civil law applicable to all. This will require looking afresh at the civil law claimed by all religions to ensure its secularity and its endorsement of social justice. Both secularity and social justice are familiar as values but their application in social institutions is new.

Relic depicting Siddhartha Gautama leaving home, i.e. The Great Departure. Credit: Wikipedia

Many valuable and meticulous studies have been made of religious texts that have enhanced our understanding of them. However, less attention has been given to examining the institutions created by various religions both to propagate their beliefs and as agencies of social control. Rather than focusing on monolithic undifferentiated religious society in general, what may be more insightful is if we study the link between caste and sect in order to comprehend more precisely the interface between religion and society in our past. The link between caste and sect had a flexibility, even a fluidity that monolithic religions lack. We could then ask whether the rigidity lay less in religion and more in caste discrimination. In that case, the colonial construction of religion in India, so readily accepted by us, would need to be examined again. Perhaps we need to look more carefully at how caste in past times and now class in its turn, has shaped and is shaping the relations between religion and society. Which groups in society support which politico-religious organisations and why.
In pre-Islamic times, there are no references to any monolithic type of Hinduism. Interestingly, what we today use as labels for religion, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, are not mentioned as such. Instead, there is reference to two broad categories of sects that propagated their distinctive ideas. These were the Brahmana and the Shramana. The basic differentiation was based on belief in or denial of, divinity, and the theories of the afterlife. Brahmana referred to brahmanic beliefs and rituals, Shramana referred to the shramanas or Buddhist, Jaina, and other monks of so called heterodox orders, the nastika/non-believers, and their followers. The latter rejected the Vedas, divine sanctions and the concept of the soul. They were consequently associated with more rational explanations of both the universe and human life. Within each of the two, distinct sects with various beliefs were recognised.
Neither of these were monolithic groups. They were a collection of diverse sects. This duality of Brahmana and Shramana continues to be used in a variety of texts with reference to what we would today call religions, and over a period of 1500 years from the edicts of Ashoka, to the accounts of Megasthenes, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims, and Al- Biruni in the 11th century AD. References are made in Brahmanical texts such as the Vishnu Purana, and in Buddhist texts, to occasional hostilities between the two. Interestingly, they use the same abusive terms for each other. The grammarian Patanjali of the early centuries AD, refers to the two and adds that their relationship was comparable to that of the snake and the mongoose.
A third category that is not mentioned was that of those who were discriminated against because of their caste or lack of it. Because of this, they had their own belief systems and forms of worship. This was the category that was intrinsic to caste. The equivalent of what we call the Dalit today is found in every religion under different names, such as, pasmanda, mazhabi, etc;. The Dalit is present even among those religious sects that claim that all men are equal in the eyes of God. Technically all Dalits, irrespective of religion, should have the same rights but this is not generally conceded.
The importance of sects
Among the multiple sects that were emerging over time, some adhered to the orthodox and others were supporters of the heterodox. The advantage of sects over monolithic religions is that sects shade off from the very orthodox to those far less so. This allows the less orthodox to assimilate new beliefs and these are not treated as heresy. The heretics function in a stream of their own.

Nammalvar. Credit: ramanuja.org

Our understanding of conversion would be much clearer if we could focus on sect and caste, wherever the evidence exists or can be traced back. This would provide a far better explanation than merely going on referring to Hindus becoming Muslims. What we understand of historical interactions in the past moulds to a fair extent our thinking about present-day interactions. It is, therefore, incumbent upon us to be far more analytical and precise in our historical exploration and explanation. We should not allow history to be reduced to, or dismissed, as political slogans of various kinds.
The creation of a sect was open and led to a plurality that became characteristic of every religion in India. This constitutes an important aspect in understanding the relationship between religion and society, and these relationships differ from society to society. We cannot assume therefore that the role of religion that emerged for Europe can be applied automatically to India – a mistake made by colonial scholarship. This does not imply that the meaning of secularism can change, but that the manner in which it is introduced into a society may vary.
Since Shramanism in the main was based on historical founders, it takes a fairly linear form with segments referring back to a central teaching. The history of Brahmanism is far more complex. An early phase was Vedic Brahmanism focusing on the ritual of sacrifice, the yajna, invoking many deities and specially Indra and Agni, and performed by upper castes. A variety of heterodox sects, pre-eminently the Buddhists, Jainas and Ajivikas, questioned these beliefs. Heterodox groups tended to provide rational explanations about social institutions and established a critical tradition of questioning orthodoxy, although eventually establishing their own orthodoxies.
By the early centuries AD, Brahmanical ritual became more individualised with a shift to the worship of Shiva and Vishnu. Sects of worshippers came together differentiated by particular deities, as for example the Vaishnava Bhagavata and the Shaiva Pashupatha. From the seventh century, religious belief and worship took the form of devotional sects – what we call the Bhakti sects. They arose at varying times in different parts of the sub-continent. The earlier recognisable ones were the Alvars and Nayannars in the south to be followed by many in the north. Some among the later ones reflected striations of new religious ideas.
Both Brahmanism and Shramanism received hefty patronage and became wealthy, powerful, established religions. This gave them status and enabled them to control social laws. Donations were made to sects and not to a monolithic religious entity because this did not exist at that time. This continued to be the norm even in later periods.
Centres of the wealthy sects became the nucleus of education. This added to their authority and they could induct the elite. Frequently, sects with large followings and authority began to function as castes in themselves as for example the Lingayat in Karnataka, and many others in others parts of the country. They did not necessarily identify with the formal religions, and some actually opposed them. But in colonial records they were assigned to either one or the other.
The arrival of Islam
With the arrival of Islam and more so with the presence of the Sufis, the exploration of religious ideas – orthodox and heterodox – expanded, as did the number of sects. Some took orthodox positions, others held out mixed beliefs and worship. The latter were popular among the larger number of ordinary people.
The new presence was marked by the elaborate mosques and khanqahs built by royal patrons and the wealthy. The religious endowments became richer and richer, as is so in all well-patronised religions. As with Buddhist monasteries and Hindu temples and mathas, these endowments tied to Islamic centres also enabled their recipients to participate in the world of scholarship and in politics. Detailed studies of the social institutions controlled by various religious authorities that we refer to as the Hindu, Muslim, Sikh etc. would be revealing.
As in earlier times the sect remained the popular religious identity among the majority of people. This becomes more evident if we look at two processes involved in the coming of Islam – settlement and conversion. Today this event is projected at the popular level largely in terms of invasion and its subsequent political consequences. But there were many other avenues that took different forms, as in the settlements of traders, migrants, Sufis and such alike.

19th century post card showing the Khojas of Bhavnagar, Gujarat

Mohammad bin Qasim’s conquest of Sindh is known. But far more interesting were the settlements of Arab traders all down the west coast of India from Sindh to Kerala. Some Arabs entered the service of the Rashtrakuta kings of the Deccan dating to the 8th and 9th centuries. The more senior among them exercised their right to give grants of land to temples and brahmanas as had been the prevailing custom in the area. Arab traders inter-married locally and new communities evolved with a new take on existing religions. Inevitably, these became new sects – such as the Bohras, the Khojas the Navayat, the Mapilla and many others – where belief, ritual, and civil law did not hesitate to draw from existing practice. So no two were identical. Gujarati Bohras had little to do with Malayali Mapillas. Many such sects mushroomed all over but have not been sufficiently studied as part of the history of society and religion.
This pattern continued into later centuries at the level of the wider society. This was despite the emergence of other patterns that arose from political power and administration. Such dichotomies run through history and only their constituents change. The newly emerging teachers of various persuasions attracted supportive followers. Until recently, these remained the essentials of how a major part of Indians experienced religion irrespective of having to declare conformity to formal religions in colonial times. This was prior to the ingress of Hindutva and Islamisation, that have considerably hardened the boundaries and even altered practices. Many people today who identify themselves with the monolithic religion, whichever it may be, when pressed further, will mention the sect that they belong to, or the holy man whom they revere – the baba, guru or sant – who can be of any persuasion. This link is often more pertinent to the lives they actually live. And interestingly, the sects that they identify with are generally those that were established in the last thousand years.
Myth-making about medieval history
In the history of India, medieval history, which colonial historians called the Muslim period, is located in the last thousand years. This history has had a raw deal from religious extremists and politicians in being described as the age when, to quote the slogan, “We were slaves” – the assumption being that Islamic rule tyrannised an oppressed Hindu population. This is a continuation of the British interpretation of Indian history eagerly taken up by religious nationalism. Viewed historically, the scene differs at many levels.
The interaction between what we call Hinduism and Islam had its moments of confrontations and conflicts in the face offs between competing politics and were manifested in various ways, and often through religious organisations. What was a largely political act at that time is often interpreted today as an entirely religious act, with the politics left out. Some confrontation was to be expected. Such confrontations were not new to the Indian scene if in earlier times the brahmanas and the shramans had a relationship comparable to the snake and the mongoose – and this was probably a correct assessment as we know that in some regions Buddhist monks were killed and in others Jaina monks were impaled. In the subsequent millennium, that is the last thousand years, things may not have changed strikingly. It was neither a culture given over to religious aggression as colonial scholars maintained, but nor was it entirely free of such aggression. It was, in fact, a normal culture similar to many others in the world at the time.

An illustration to the Sursagar of Surdas., Mewar, mid-17th century. Credit: Christies

But as was so in earlier times, the medieval period continued to be a time when striking creativity enriched facets of Indian culture and we still live with these. The intellectual liveliness of the time expressed in Sanskrit and Persian and in the regional languages matched that of earlier times, although in different genres. It was precisely this period that gave shape and form in various ways to much, although not all, that we now identify as Hindu in the landscape of present times.
Leaving aside for the moment the interaction of cultures practicing diverse religions, even some of the activities clustered around the Brahmanic tradition are most impressive. Throughout the second millennium AD, that is the last one thousand years, from Kashmir to Kerala and in between, there were scholarly commentaries being composed on Brahmanical texts and religious practice. Sayana’s explanation of the Rig Veda is a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a learned scholar of the 14th century with its mix of reality and fantasy. Social change draws out new commentaries on existing social codes. Kulluka’s commentary on the Manu Dharmashastra incorporates a reaction to the social change of the times, as in the debate over the status of temple priests vis-à-vis other categories of brahmanas, a matter of concern only when temples became powerful institutions, at a time simultaneous with the arrival of Islam in the sub-continent. The looting of some of the wealthy temples did not prevent the building of other equally wealthy ones and striking innovations in architecture.
There were many commentaries, digests, discussions on classical Sanskrit poetry and literary compositions. With the gradual switch to the regional languages, grammars required commentaries. New and prior philosophical theories are discussed in texts such as the Sarva-darshana-sangraha of Madhavacharya in the 14th century. Discussions on the Advaita Vedanta and Mimamsa schools of philosophy, to mention some, date to this period. There were explorations into theories in mathematics and astronomy going from Ujjain to Baghdad and beyond, with Indian scholars at the cutting edge of knowledge. Classical Hindustani and Carnatic music was patronised by the courts of Maharajas and Mughals and in the homes of the wealthy.
In addition to Sanskrit and Persian, literary compositions of high quality began to be composed in regional languages that acquired a new standing in the royal courts and in places linked to religious sects. These compositions carried much of the thought and creativity of their own times, as is evident in the Ramacharitamanas, and the Krittibasi, distinct from the Valmiki Ramayana and much revered by Hindi and Bengali speakers. There were even alternate histories sung as legends by folk poets and bards, very different from the court chronicles that we quote. These were the voices of numbers of people as also expressed in the bhajans of Meera and Surdas and the compositions of Tyagaraja. These were not the achievements of enslaved people. We are today unable to look beyond what we have been told by those who colonised us, and those who loyally continue to carry on with that legacy.
The task of secularisation
In this rather scattered attempt to look at some aspects of the past, I have tried to underline the plurality in the articulation of religion in India often in the form of sects and their interface with caste. To eventually disengage religious institutions from controlling the functions of civil society would help us in bringing about a more equitable society. The process of secularising society will have to address both religion and caste, and to that extent it requires a different kind of analysis from that of religions elsewhere. We have internalised the colonial version of the relationship between our religions and our society, and are experiencing its aftermath in the stridency of dominant religious organisations. We have also allowed some of these to become mechanisms for political mobilisation. Secularisation therefore will have to be thought through with sensitivity, care and thoroughness. Although it cannot be a rapid change, nevertheless a serious beginning has to be made to introduce secular values through establishing confidence in a secular society and explaining its necessary link to democracy. The resort to assassination to silence secularists can never succeed – it merely leads to the suffusion of terror that will one day rebound on those terrorising others. If there is one lesson that history teaches us it is this.
A secular society and polity does not mean abandoning religion. It does mean that the religious identity of the Indian, whatever it may be, has to give way to the primary secular identity of an Indian citizen. And the state has to guarantee the rights that come with this identity, as the rights of citizenship. This demands that the state provides and protects human rights, a requirement that at the moment cannot be taken for granted. Such an identity, while adhering to human rights and social justice, would also be governed by a secular code of laws applicable to all.
A beginning could be made in two possible ways. One would be to ensure the secular in education, and the other, the secular in civil laws. Education means the availability of all branches of knowledge to all citizens without discrimination. Knowledge means updated information and training young people to endorse the method of critical enquiry. I would like to add to this the need for young people to know what is meant by a shared history. Given that we are a democracy, we can perhaps work out how best this could be done.
Our civil laws were drawn up in colonial times although we have made some changes after independence. In a turn to the secular, we shall have to comb through the existing civil laws to ensure that they conform to equal rights for all citizens with no exceptions. Resolving the differences between the civil laws and the laws of each religion and caste, will have to be discussed with the communities concerned and not only with those currently controlling religious and caste codes. A uniform civil code does not mean merely doing away with the laws of one religious code. It means reconsidering jointly the social laws of all religious codes and arriving at a common secular civil code. In this process, injustice and discrimination against minorities and against the underprivileged – whether because of religion, gender or caste – will need to be annulled. Law does not remain law if it can be manipulated to allow discrepancies. This is likely to be the most problematic in our turn toward secularising society. Is it not time now to start work on this?
The overwhelming projection of religiosity – not religion but the excessive display of religiosity – in the world that surrounds us sometimes appears to be a surrogate for not coming to terms with real life problems; or perhaps it is due to our having become a competitive society with all its unexpected insecurities. Can we instead consider how we can make the reality of citizenship a guarantee of our social welfare, our well-being, our understanding of our world, and our wish to bring quality into our lives? The secularising of society is not an overnight revolution. It is a historical process and will need time. But hopefully it will be assisted by the recognition that the state and society need to function in a new way. Implicit in democracy is the upholding of the ethic of human action. Secularising society is an advancing of that very ethic.
Romila Thapar is Emeritus Professor of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has been General President of the Indian History Congress. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and holds an Hon D.Lit. each from Calcutta University, Oxford University and the University of Chicago. She is an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and SOAS, London. In 2008 Professor Thapar was awarded the prestigious Kluge Prize of the US Library of Congress, which honours lifetime achievement in studies such as history that are not covered by the Nobel Prize.