Sunny Deol and Patriotic Cinema

Just as Dharmendra will forever be etched in the popular consciousness as Veeru from Sholay; and Bobby Deol is known as a ‘loverboy’, Sunny Deol has become associated for many people with a certain kind of patriotic Hindi cinema. 

It’s Sunny’s association with films like Border (1997), Gadar (2001), and Indian (2001)(among several others) – films with a central, explicit theme of Indian nationalism; and a tendency for many of these films to be…less than subtle in conveying their messages that tends to put people off pretty quickly.

Patriotic and nationalistic films are nothing new in Hindi cinema – the cinematic history of patriotic/nationalistic films stretches back to the 1960s when the loss of the war with China in 1962, and the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965 spurred filmmakers like Manoj Kumar (the ultimate patriot) to start making films celebrating Bharat. Interestingly, in the 1960s, Dharmendra starred both in India’s first war film, Haqeeqat (1964, dir. Chetan Anand) and in Satyakam (1969, dir. Hrishikesh Mukherjee), both films about martyrdom albeit in different forms.

  

Patriotism varies, from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy.

- W.R. Inge

There have always been different types of patriotic/nationalist film:

Historical, anti-colonialist films – like Lagaan (2001), or The Legend of Bhagat Singh (2002): depicting real life or fictionalized accounts of overthrowing colonial oppressors.

Anti-west films, in which India is held up as being superior in contrast to the Western world (it sounds harsh to call it Anti-West because it’s not necessarily OVERTLY damning the West as evil; but holding India up as better. It’s a patriotic film after all). A good example of this kind of film is any film in which a troubled NRI is brought home to India and ‘returned to their senses’ through contact with the Motherland and their own people – like Namastey London (2007), for example.

Films addressing Indo-Pakistani conflict. Following Partition in 1947, Pakistan was barely mentioned in Hindi cinema for the next 50 years. However, starting in the late 90s, around the time Border (1997) was released, a spate of films taking terrorism and various Indo-Pakistan conflicts as part of their central plots began to emerge.

This is the type of patriotic film that Sunny Deol has most often appeared in; consolidating his niche role as “patriot” in Gadar: Ek Prem Katha.

Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (Anil Sharma, 2001)

I can’t write around it, so I’m just going to have to come out and say it bluntly.  Anything there is to like about this film – and there is actually a lot: the tender romantic story of star-crossed love between Sikh truckdriver  Tara Singh (Sunny Deol) and aristocratic Muslim Sakina (Amisha Patel) that blossoms as communal riots break out across newly Partitioned India and Pakistan; touching performances from both Sunny and Amisha – both of them for the most part admirably restrained; lovely music and cinematography;

is rapidly overshadowed by the growing realization that Gadar is written with an undeniable bias. I’ve seen patriotic films before – where the characters are all about their love of their country, and are prepared to die for their country, etc; but Gadar is different. Gadar, it soon becomes remarkably clear, is a STRONGLY nationalistic film:  pro-India, and strongly anti-Pakistan.

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.

- Charles de Gaulle

The disturbing thing? Gadar, an epic period piece based around a political issue related to colonialism released on THE SAME DAY as that OTHER epic period piece related to colonialism – Lagaan. You know, the one that got nominated for an OSCAR. And yet to this day, Gadar remains one of Hindi cinemas highest grossing films OF ALL TIME, and one of Sunny Deol’s most beloved and popular roles.

This is despite – or perhaps, cynically, because of – the fact that the unmistakeable anti-Pakistani bias of the film fuelled protests across the country from Muslim groups, prompting petitions to parliament calling for greater censorship of films depicting cross-border terrorism.

Sure there’s the overt bashing: Amrish Puri as a Pakistani villain crowing about how much he hates India can’t get much more blatant; but I think what is dangerous about films like this one is that they often do contain a lot to like. I can TOTALLY see how this film was a super hit. The gorgeous tender love story entirely sucked me in. Who wouldn’t get behind a popular action hero fighting baddies in increasingly impressive, over the top superwow action sequences? The waterpump scene from Gadar is ICONIC – but now that I have seen it in context, it makes me feel a little bit sick. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the drama and emotion and not question what you’re actually being sold: and in Gadar, what you’re being sold is a very one-sided story that occasionally pays lip service to being balanced

 Except that clearly, several Sikhs and Muslims disagreed. And even Shabana Azmi had something to say about it. 

often by using the “we only did to you what you did to us” excuse,

The audience is led to side with Tara, because he's the hero. So we're implicitly on India's side. I kept asking myself all the way through though, "How would I feel if I were Pakistani? Or if this film were about New Zealand being split into Maori versus Pakeha?"

or by using ‘unreliable’ characters like the feeble minded Muslim who is unaware that Partition has occurred: living in Pakistan, he refers to Pakistan as India to perhaps indicate that the split should never have happened?

 His point is undermined because he is depicted as...simple. 

BUT CRUCIALLY portrays Muslims (the Pakistanis) as instigators of violence and Hindus/Sikhs (the Indians) as retaliating heroes. An excellent discussion of how Bollywood portrays ‘the other’, with particular reference to Gadar, can be found HERE (seriously, go and read it, IT’S REALLY GOOD).

What IS important to note in Gadar particularly is that the nationalism comes down to land – it’s all about the border between the countries, not the religion of the characters. More than once, a nod is made to the idea that essentially,

which is quite interesting (but also probably politically necessary given the demographic makeup of India and the potential audience for the film; since as the film points out at the beginning: the laws around Partition created Pakistan and India as a Muslim and Hindu country respectively, but couldn’t force people of either religion to move from one country to the other. EDIT: In reality, history shows people were still violently forced out of their countries or felt like they couldn't stay; my original point was that there is still a Muslim population in India, and a Sikh population in Pakistan).

The overwhelming popularity of, and storm of controversy over Gadar does seem to have had a lasting impact on how cross-border relations are depicted onscreen.

When you contrast the strongly nationalistic, strongly anti-Pakistani sentiment of films like Border (we must do everything we can for our country India, Pakistan are the enemy, they must die) and Gadar, against the sentiment running through more recent patriotic films Heroes (2008) you can see how radically the depiction of the ‘enemy’ has changed.

In the film, two film students on an assignment to interview the families of soldiers who died serving in the Indian Army are flying a kite somewhere in Punjab, when it  goes over a fence. Their young companion stops them from retrieving it.

 But their young friend tells them that the two countries are NOT exactly the same.

 And when questioned as to whether he has ever crossed the border - a mere fence (albeit studded with barbed wire):

It's a far cry from Amrish Puri's hate speech in Gadar, or the decades when there was literally NO mention of Pakistan/India relations on film at all; yet this a poignant acknowledgment in a mainstream Hindi film that real people are implicated in war, and that each side believes they are fighting for a reason. Patriotic films are never going to go away as long as there are borders and people within them; but hopefully the progression towards a more balanced view will continue.

 The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?

- Pablo Casals