Manmohan Desai's Enchantment of the Mind

by Connie Haham

  politics

  Direct allusions to politics are not common in Desai’s films. However, in Dharam-Veer, made during the Emergency (l975-l977), a Mrs. Gandhi-like figure appears in the form of Raani Ma (Indrani Mukherjee) who, though kind and good herself, reigns over a palace in which intrigue and hunger for power flourish. Her own brother5 Sattar Singh (Jeevan) is seen scheming ruthlessly to put his son (Ranjeet) on the throne in place of the prince Veer (Jeetendra). Rather than attack Veer openly and directly, Sattar Singh adopts a sinuous plan to replace the harmonious friendship between Veer and the poor-but-noble-hearted Dharam (Dharmendra) with an enmity Sattar Singh is sure will destroy both Dharam and Veer. To this end, Sattar Singh has Dharam’s adoptive father, the blacksmith, framed to appear responsible for the accident in which the queen’s coachman loses his hands. Following the law of the land, ‘khoon ke badle khoon’ (an eye for an eye or, literally, blood in return for blood), means Dharam’s father must lose his hands. Dharam passionately cries out against this injustice in terms that give a foretaste of the language that Iqbal (Amitabh Bachchan) will use in his election platform speech several years later in Coolie. Dharam’s words could be seen as having a special significance against the backdrop of the Emergency, ‘If you continue to play with the lives of the poor, this reign will not continue. The fires of revolution will flare up in the hearts of the poor and this palace will be consumed.’ When Raani Ma protests that all are equal before the law, that her law applies even to herself, Dharam answers with prescience, ‘I’m awaiting the day when the law’s thunderbolt will strike this palace. Then I will see whether the walls of this palace will crumble or whether, to save those inside, the law itself will crumble.’ In a matter of speaking, the walls do crumble, and yet, at the same time, they do not. The film, while providing a forum in which the poor can rail against oppression and injustice does not implicate the good queen herself in any form of tyranny. Sattar Singh continues his treacherous plotting and has one of Veer’s arrows, identifiable by the royal mark, kill Dharam’s adoptive mother. In fury, Dharam marches into the palace, his dead mother in his arms, and demands justice in the terms established by the queen herself: ‘Ma ke badle Ma.’ (A mother for a mother.) Exact retribution, to his mind, though, does not require that the queen mother die, but rather that she live to keep him company in his humble home in the place of his lost mother. She nobly agrees and, preparing to leave, appoints her son to rule in her stead. If Raani Ma is honourable to the end, her son Veer is shown capable of succumbing to the temptation offered by power. Veer, once on the throne, immediately attempts to use his new position to forbid his mother’s departure and to order Dharam’s arrest. It is Raani Ma who halts his tyranny, who refuses to allow him to place himself above the law, and who willingly walks out of the palace at Dharam’s side. If one sees Mrs. Gandhi in Raani Ma (whose hair was likewise grey only on one side), one could interpret Veer’s power abuse as a reminder of Sanjay Gandhi’s heavy-handedness at the time of the Emergency. This possible reference to contemporary politics is not harsh however. Veer is, after all, basically good. After a flirt with power misuse, he proves his valour by joining forces with Dharam once again to fight the real villains upon whom evil, power lust and injustice are exclusively placed.

  the law

  As Desai said, foreign critics tend to read into his work concerns which he did not consciously intend. One such subject for reflection is common to popular Indian cinema in general. It is the recurring argument which, though rarely intellectually formulated, nevertheless frequently illustrates the split between what might be designated as ‘the old law’ and ‘the new law.’ Quite simply, the new law is the modern legal system that came into being in l947 and which, except for economic law, is largely inspired by the British model. It is enforced by the police and administered by the judiciary. Significantly, it is represented as a blindfolded woman. If blind justice holding the scales was originally intended to designate impartial judgments for all without fear or favour, it has been reinterpreted by Indian cinema as a symbol of the unjust court system that functions coldly and mechanically, impervious to individual needs and extenuating circumstances. B.R. Chopra’s Insaaf Ka Tarazu (1982) gives precisely this reading to the statue which appears during the credits. Blind justice, rather than being seen as unbiased, is instead portrayed as one who uses the logic of the woman in Idries Shah’s The Exploits Of The Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin:

  In a dark alleyway an agile pickpocket tried to snatch Nasrudin’s purse. The Mulla was too quick for him, and there was a violent struggle.

  Eventually Nasrudin got his man down on the ground. At this moment a charitable woman passing called out: ‘You bully! Let that little man get up and give him a chance.’ ‘Madam,’ panted Nasrudin, ‘You ignore the trouble which I have had getting him down.’

  If the new law is clear cut and easily defined, the old law is multifaceted and somewhat hazy. At one level it is almost instinctive, prescribing the protection of the family at any price, even at the risk of endangering society at large. So it is that, up to a point, Radha (Nargis) in Mother India defends her son Birju (Sunil Dutt). He may become a violent dacoit without losing her loving protection. It is only when he infringes on what is for her an inviolable law and attempts to dishonour a village girl that he loses her support. Another characteristic of the old law is its demand for revenge. One who has been personally injured or had a friend or family member wronged, should, according to the old law, use no intermediary to establish justice. Films with revenge as a major or minor plot line abound in Hindi cinema. Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay (l975) is one of the most notable examples, though the theme is likewise present in Mother India and many, many others.

  An extension of the need for revenge is the potential for repentance and forgiveness. Upon seeing that a transgressor is truly sorry and prepared to change, a likely avenger may turn clement and leave justice to fate. In Mohan Segal’s Kartavya (l979), for instance, the character played by Dharmendra recognizes Jacob’s (Ranjeet) change of heart and, therefore, does not punish him for his actions of the past. The old law reserves vengeance for the truly evil and unrepentant. In contrast, the new law insists that anyone judged guilty be made to pay, whether or not the offender has, in the meantime, reformed. The clemency offered by the old law may be based on an understanding of a criminal’s motivations. In K. Balachander’s Thaneer Thaneer (1981) a community listens carefully to a man’s explanations of the events that led him to commit a murder; they come to the consensus that his act was justified. Furthermore, because the villagers need his services, they follow the old law to its logical conclusion. They reject the new law entirely and take a solemn oath to hide the fugitive from the police. Thus a criminal is rehabilitated into normal society through group action, in direct opposition to the official legal system.

  Vengeance, repentance, justification and rehabilitation are key aspects of the old law from the points of view of both the accuser and the accused. As a final resort, however, the old law rests on divine justice. In Sultan Ahmed’s Ganga Ki Saugand (l978) a dishonest priest is spared by an avenging dacoit (Amitabh Bachchan) but killed by a sacred cobra. And in Bimal Roy’s Yahudi (l958) ‘Roman qanoon’ is opposed to ‘khuda ka qanoon’. Roman law only appears all powerful; God’s law is ultimately supreme.

  Old and new law are often confusedly fused (or, it might be argued, harmoniously blended). In Raani Ma’s (Indrani Mukherjee) kingdom in Dharam-Veer, with ‘khoon ke badle khoon’ the most basic law of the land, revenge has been ennobled; what was originally an often savage form of self justice has been transformed into a guiding legal principle, condoned, controlled and executed by the state. It has also been expanded—for the sake of humour—to include non-violent areas of human interaction and contention. So it is that Roopa the gypsy girl (Neetu Singh) pleads to Raani Ma for justice in romance. Since her heart has been stolen, she says, a fair reading of the law would require another heart in exchange: ‘Dil ke badle dil.’ Legal
ly, Roopa’s love for the prince (Jeetendra) cannot go unrequited. The lines of separation between the old law and the new are dangerously blurred in Amar Akbar Anthony. Police officer Amar (Vinod Khanna), representing the new law in all its coolness, has a hot, gut reaction when his superior officer (and adopted father) is shot by an escaping criminal. Amar’s duty to the new law is simply to deliver the felon to the justice system. His uniform, however, provides him with the authority to achieve the ends of the old law, that is, to wreak vengeance against one who has harmed a member of his family. The means he uses—beating prisoners to obtain information—is more understandable, if not more excusable, in the light of his dual allegiance to two sorts of law.

  In Suhaag the fusion operates in the opposite direction. In the line of duty, police officer Kishan (Shashi Kapoor) is blinded by a dangerous gangster (Amjad Khan). Amit wants immediate revenge and vows personally to find and punish the man who has taken his friend’s sight. Kishan, however, rechannels this desire for justice. To Amit’s talk of taking the law into his own hands, Kishan replies by holding up a police uniform. ‘This is the answer,’ he says. And Amit responds by joining the police force.

  The modern legal system is not the only law that revokes the elementary notion of family above all. In the Bhagvad Gita Krishna counsels Arjun to forego family loyalty for the sake of a broader duty. In Parvarish (as in Yash Chopra’s Deewaar, l975) a policeman faces a situation similar to Arjun’s. In each case, the teachings of the Bhagvad Gita hold sway, and the policeman pursues, rather than shields, his brother gone bad. One of the many complexities of Parvarish lies in the layered, intermingled loyalties the characters exhibit to three overlapping forms of justice which are often distinguishable lexically and which more or less correspond to periods of Indian history. Shammi Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan, playing police officers, are official representatives of the modern legal system, referred to as ‘qanoon’. Though more or less British in form, ‘qanoon’ is Mughal in vocabulary. Insaaf (justice), adaalat (court), faisla (decision), mujrim (criminal), muqadma (a legal case), vakil (lawyer), and many more legal words are of Arabic origin. Another evocative, motivating word is farz (duty) which, as it is most often used, transports us back through the centuries to the Bhagvad Gita. Amit uses the word in Parvarish as though to explain his relentless, even obsessive tracking of his smuggler brother Kishan (Vinod Khanna). Sharm (shame) carries us still further into the past, perhaps to original justice as embodied by the mother, keeper of the power to shame a misguided child away from evil and toward good.

  Dramatic moments are often developed around decisions made difficult because of the conflicting ‘shoulds’ that rage inside, heightening tension. Amit faces such an inner clash when his mother (Indrani Mukherjee), ignoring both Krishna’s lessons and the rationality and inevitability of the modern justice system, pleads with Amit to destroy the evidence that will prove her son Kishan’s guilt. Her tone is that of a helpless woman full of protective love for a son who, she agrees, has gone astray but who she does not feel deserves to go to prison. Amit is torn and troubled, but his sense of love for and duty to his mother is such that he renounces his duty to his uniform in order to submit to her will, the highly internalized ultimate law before which all other allegiances disintegrate.

  The binding nature of a mother’s law, of course, rests on her own moral invincibility. Radha in Mother India was capable of killing her son to protect the honour of a village girl only because she herself had already undergone a most difficult test, yet maintained her honour. When Amit’s mother pleads to him, she appears both weak and unjust. She is a changed woman, however, when she confronts Kishan. Her pitiful tone has given way to a sure and powerful voice as she lashes out at him from the fortress of her moral strength. It soon becomes clear that she has saved Kishan from the law only to better punish him herself. She shames him and curses herself for having borne him. And like Ashok’s (Shammi Kapoor) mother (Lalita Pawar) in Bluff Master, Kishan’s mother succeeds, better than any official legal body could have hoped to, in setting her son on the right path.

  behind the lost-found theme

  No doubt Desai’s most central, most often repeated, and perhaps also his most criticized theme is that of separated family members reuniting. Manmohan Desai did not, of course, invent the theme. It is present worldwide: in the Bible, in Greek tragedies, in Shakespearean comedies, in American television serials, in European popular songs, in legends, epics, stories and films from countless cultures. And, as Desai stated, it was commonplace in Hindi cinema even before he began to make films:

  There was a film called Kismet. It starred Ashok Kumar and Mamta Shanti (N.B.: probably Gyan Mukherji’s Kismet, made in l943). To the best of my knowledge, that film had a lost-and-found theme and it ran for 120-125 weeks in Calcutta. So that was the first lost-and-found theme film that clicked in a big way. Then in1951 Raj Kapoor made a film called Awaara which I still maintain is his best film to date. He has not been able to make anything like it again. That too was a lost-and-found film, and a beautiful lost-and-found film!

  Desai’s point of reference is not only cinematographic. Karna, his hero from the Mahabharata, learns just before his death that Kunti is his long-lost mother. While Manmohan Desai did not create the theme, he nevertheless expanded it, polished it, and formalized the rules governing its use as no other filmmaker before or since. The source and the proper execution of the lost-found theme, though intriguing, are of minor interest compared with the mystery of its continued appeal. One cannot but wonder what personal experiences the spectators have had, what psychic motivations may make audiences identify with such an ancient but not outdated plot device. The most elementary answer would be that the device—used out of habit by filmmakers—is accepted almost unthinkingly by the public purely as a matter of convention. A slightly different response comes from looking at cinema in various countries and noting that each society seems to have a set of themes or centres of interest which recur with surprising regularity. Schematically speaking, the French, for example, appear to be intrigued by adultery, the Spanish during the Franco years by religion and death, Americans by the idea of an ordinary person becoming exceptional when placed in exceptional circumstances. Such recurring themes may result from imitative writing; it is equally possible that they fill the needs and address the concerns of specific audiences. Certain moments in history demand to be exorcised. The disrupting influence of wars would seem especially difficult to eliminate from the collective psyche. The violent conquering of the West and the 1860-65 Civil War (and more recently the Vietnam War) have occupied a sizeable amount of footage in the U.S. Likewise, World War II in France, England, the U.S., and the U.S.S.R., or the rise of fascism in Italy have held the attention of numerous filmmakers. In India one historical event that has surely not yet been collectively worked through is the partition of the subcontinent following Independence. The turmoil created by some ten million people being displaced in Punjab and Bengal caused both short-and long-term repercussions. Scars have been left on the national memory by this historical trauma. Many families were broken up. Though some were reunited, many others were not. A few films have approached Partition head on—M.S. Sathyu’s Garm Hawa (1973), Deepa Mehta’s 1947: Earth (1999), or the Pakistani Khamosh Pani (by Sabiha Sumar, 2003). Ritwik Ghatak’s films look eastward to the separation of Bengal; many are laden with nostalgia and a sense of exile. In Desai’s first film Chhalia, Partition sets in motion the events central to the plot. A woman (Nutan) who is left behind in Pakistan is eager to meet her own family, her husband, and his family as she arrives in India six years later. The rejection she faces is total. ‘You are not our daughter; our daughter is dead,’ her family tell her in a scene that echoes the experience of all too many women of the period.

  It is possible that in certain cases cinema functions a bit for the collectivity as the dream self works for the individual, replaying problems and traumatic moments again and again; at best, offering creative sol
utions, at worst, leading a person’s psyche in circles, allowing sores to fester. In his film The Prisoner (1948) Ingrid Bergman probes the painful dreams of an abused woman whose nightmares go unheeded and whose end is tragic. On the level of a group, films centered on the lost-found theme—Desai’s as well as those by other directors—might be considered a form of turning in circles: there is endless repetition and the solutions offered are not realistic. On the other hand, these films in which the family is reunited could be considered a psychological relief, a sort of moral aspirin, the happy endings counterbalancing a reality that is not always so happy.

  fate

  The lost-found angle in Desai’s cinema depends on the ever-present, intervening hand of Fate and its cousin, Coincidence. Desai honoured fate twice in film titles (Kismat and Naseeb). And taqdeer, muqaddar, vidhaataa—the other words in Urdu and Hindi for fate—reappear regularly in dialogues. Manmohan Desai clearly believed personally in the power of fate. Dharam (Dharmendra) could have been speaking for the director in one line in Dharam-Veer, ‘If it is written that I am to die, nothing can save me. If my fate is to live, nothing can harm me.’ If as a human being Desai felt subject to fate, as a filmmaker he controlled it. Humans have a limited power over their own lives in reality; in fiction, within the confines of a three-hour script, for example, one can mold and determine the lives of one’s characters, temporarily playing God. Fate in real life is often cruel. At times the same is true in Desai’s films, but more often it is a benign presence that, say, brings saving recognition a moment before brother kills brother. The notion of fate can, of course, be a convenient excuse for refusing personal responsibility. Human beings are limited but not powerless. In Desh Premee the character played by Jeevan substitutes himself for fate, orders some women killed, and then hypocritically places the blame for their deaths on destiny. ‘Naseeb ki baat hai,’ (It’s a question of fate) he says. ‘Some people’s fate is to eat bread; others’ is to eat bullets.’