P

ATRIOTISM, LIKE RELIGION, IS a personal emo-

tion. It lends itself to very intimate interpretations,

and thus means different things to different people,

much like religion does. And like religion, it can get

inflammatory too. Patriotism is a delicate emotion

which, I believe, needs careful handling by cinema.

The first patriotic film I ever saw was Kranti

(1981). Strangely, it didn’t make me feel very

patriotic. I was too young at the time, and as children, I’d argue, we don’t watch

films to soak in philosophical concepts. Film-watching is more a visceral experi-

ence that impacts you later, perhaps when you are older. You react to films very

differently with time. When I was growing up, the texture of patriotism was very

different. Through much of our childhood, for instance, the villains of the piece

were our colonisers, either the Mughals or the British. At school and at the movies,

we’d learn the same things.

When I go back further and look at films of the ’50s and ’60s, I try and keep in

mind their context. We had just gained our independence. We were finding our feet

as a nation. Our economy was nascent, at the cusp of its birth. Songs like ‘Mere desh

ki dharti’ and ‘Ae mere watan ke logon’ found tremendous resonance with audiences

because they had been made with a specific intent—to instil a sense of self.

Movies have a very symbiotic relationship with society. There’s an osmosis that

happens. Films reflect our times, and society, in turn, absorbs from films too. So,

TOWARDS

A QUIET

ALLEGIANCE

MEGHNA GULZAR

THE HUMAN SPIRIT TRIUMPHS

IN A TRULY PATRIOTIC FILM, NOT

JUST THE NATION

Illustration by RAJ VERMA