That viral video of Kangana Ranaut on a dummy horse without legs , issuing a blood curdling cry  is emblematic of the kind of fake nationalism we are being asked to adhere to these days. It allows the lady in question to diss anyone she dislikes from Alia Bhatt to Shabana Azmi without watching her tone or language, all because she now has the license to dispense lessons in deshbhakti. In a sound byte that Ms Ranaut gave sometime back, she said among other things, “main inki vat laga doongi.” When translated, it means that she will not forgive the film industry for not rallying behind Manikarnika because in her own words, “the film was not about my chachi..it was about a freedom fighter.” She was, after all making a film to educate future generations (aane wali pushton ke liye) and we all owed her support,  and admiration, and perhaps even national awards because you see, her brand of nationalism is transactional. It cannot exist in isolation.

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Hasn’t Akshay Kumar nailed the art of transactional patriotism? And Anupam Kher? And Prasoon Joshi?  Wasn’t Vivek Oberoi trying to get on the same band-wagon? And Vivek Agnihotri whose wife Pallavi Joshi in different times  starred in the television adaptation of Nehru’s  Bharat Ek Khoj but now defends the Rafale deal and parrots lines like, “we are taught that only two people got us independence.” We were not taught that but that is another story for another time.
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We were talking about nationalism.   What did a man like Sohrab Modi for instance, know anything about it. The man made a stirring film on Jhansi Ki Rani in 1953 under his Minerva Movietone banner (also responsible for numerous historical epics like Pukar, Sikander and Prithvi Vallabh). It was the first Indian technicolor film and starred Modi’s wife, Mehtab (yes, a Muslim )  in the title role, with Modi himself playing the Rajguru. It was the most lavishly made Hindi film of that era and flopped. Not once did India hear the director complain about how the industry or the audience had failed their patriotism test because you see, there really was a time when we were free to define what nationalism meant to each of us.

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AK Hangal did not know anything about the current brand of nationalism, either. He joined the Indian freedom struggle as a young man, was jailed for almost three years, did theatre activism in IPTA with the likes of Kaifi Azmi and Balraj Sahni and in his old age was labelled  a traitor because he had applied for a Pakistani visa to be able to visit his birth place. He had no work for a long time, his effigies were burnt and his roles were erased from a few films.

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Then there was Sadashiv Amrapurkar. A philanthropist, a social activist  who  worked all through his life for marginalised rural  youth, for the cause of rational thought  and democratic  freedoms, but was beaten up when he protested against the waste of water during Holi.

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None of these men ever worked for the India they obviously loved to get anything in return or to settle scores or to get political patronage and at times lost more than they received but we are in a different time now, aren’t we? A time when political and not national loyalty can get you on a gravy train and you are required to not just toot your own horn but run others down as well. Kangana even took on Shabana Azmi and ‘her kind’ for “emboldening the enemy” in not so many words by indulging in cultural exchanges with Pakistan and insinuated “anti-nationalism” . Even though the Azmi legacy of social activism and patriotism is older than Ms Ranaut.

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Shabana is the daughter of poet Kaifi Azmi who spoke for all Indians living on the margins,   worked for the welfare of mill workers in his youth, and in his old age despite paralytic attacks, tirelessly toiled  for the upliftment of his village  Mijwan in Azamgarh , UP.Who wrote in India’s most realistic war film, Haqeeqat , a wrenching tribute to the nameless young soldier , “Kar chale hum fida jaanotan saathiyo.” Who once wrote, “Koi to sood chukaye, koi to zimma ley..iss inquilab ka jo aaj tak udhaar sa hai.” Because in his book, revolution was not a cinematic term. Patriotism was not transactional. If you were a patriot, you  spent your life not in demeaning  but uplifting fellow Indians. Today under Shabana’s watchful gaze, Mijwan has a Kaifi Azmi Inter College for girls, a Computer Training Center  and a  Sewing and Tailoring Center. Before he passed away, he   got a rail service connected  to the village.
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Shabana Azmi’s activism is a part of her oeuvre. She spent a large part of her childhood in a one room home in a commune where her parents  Kaifi and  Shaukat practised what they preached..a life dedicated to ideals rather than easy compromises.Despite winning more national and international honours that can be counted, and redefining the female protagonist in Hindi cinema with path breaking roles,  she at the height of her success, was never afraid to go against populism.  She fearlessly spoke out against the  murder of theatre activist Safdar Hashmi on stage during an international film event in the eighties. In her book, Kaifi aur Main, mother Shaukat also recalls the time, she  fasted to draw attention to the plight of slum dwellers in Mumbai. But anyone can call her anti-national today.

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Today, it is enough to use cinematic slogans to not just proclaim patriotism but to insulate its ideals from “the others.” Even though there was a time not too long ago when patriotic films were about all of us and not just some of us. Even a film about sports, Chak De, spoke about the composite ideal of India where only if you went above and beyond regional divides and gender disparities, could you conquer the world. But even that film had a sense of foreboding as when the protagonist Kabir Khan is told, “It wasn’t your fault that India lost. Ek galti toh sab ko maaf hoti hai.” And he says, “sabko nahin.”
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What we are seeing today, is a brand of cinematic nationalism  driven by a religious sub text and blatant political opportunism of artists who will sell what they can to get what they can. Refer to the recent Cobra Post sting operation. Still, Vivek Oberoi can remain unfazed and say, “If what I am doing is propaganda than even the film on Gandhi was propaganda.” Because of course, Gandhi or perhaps his think tank commissioned Richard Attenborough to make a film just before  he  was about to run for the top prize in national elections.

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The Indian film industry  never seemed to be a divisive or a divided entity and it will take a long time to sum up the diverse synergies of the creators from all faiths who shaped Indian cinema post independence.But to cite a few examples, Guru Dutt and Abrar Alwi, Raj Kapoor and Khwaja Ahmed Abbas were among the collaborative teams that created socially relevant, incisive but never divisive cinema. Classics like Mem Didi and Anari had human stories that transcended religious distinctions. The biggest tribute to the archetypal mother figure, Mother India, starred Nargis, was directed by Mehboob Khan, had music by Naushad and lyrics by Shakeel Badayuni.

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Even Mughal-E-Azam was an ode to love beyond social and religious barriers (refer to Jodha’s character and the Janam Ashtami sequence that has been copied but never bettered).  In PL Santoshi’s marvellous Muslim social, Barsat Ki Raat, the sanctuary the lovers escape to is a Hindu ironsmith’s  foundry who hides them from danger and says when interrogated, “I swear, in my home, you will find only my daughter and her husband.” In the same film , Sahir triumphantly proclaimed, “ishq azaad hai..Hindu na Musalmaan hai ishq..aap hi dharm hai aur aap hi imaan hai ishq.”

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Be it V Shantaram or Bimal Roy or BR Chopra or Yash Chopra whose Dharam Putra is a searing critique of communal forces, the intention was to take India into a space where nation-building meant inclusion, harmony, the triumph of the human spirit over tragedy and darkness. Some of the greatest bhajans as has been well-documented  were created by Sahir  and Jaidev (Allah tero naam and Prabhu tero naam in Hum Dono ), Shakeel Badayuni, Naushad and Mohammed Rafi (Insaaf ka mandir hai yeh in Amar, Man tarpat in Baiju Bawra).  “Tu hi sagar hai, tu hi kinara, ” with interwoven Gita shlokas was written by Kaifi and tuned by Khayaam for the film Sankalp. Rahi Masoom Raza wrote BR Chopra’s cult classic Mahabharat. Even Manoj Kumar who redefined the kind of nationalism Akshay Kumar revisited in Namastey London, opened a Bharat Darshan sequence in Poorab aur Paschim with these lines, “kahin na aisi subah dekhi.. jaise balak ki muskan
ya phir  dur kahin mandir mein halki si murli ki tan
gurubani gurudware mein to masjid se uthti azan.”
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From the seventies onwards, we had writers like Salim-Javed , Kader Khan among others and film makers like  Yash Chopra and  Manmohan Desai creating a secular sub-text even in simplistic tales of heroism. The emphasis was always on the notion that there was more to unite us than to divide us.  Billa number 786 in Deewar and Coolie, the blood streams of Amar, Akbar and Anthony reviving the comatose Mother India in an medically implausible scene, the hero of Naseeb proclaiming , “Allah, Jesus , Ram hain Mere,” and songs like “Mere Desh premiyon..aapas mein prem karo” were reminders that India was composite.

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Post the era of ornate Muslim socials, a reality check like MS Sathyu’s Garam Hawa (1973) reminded us that the “otherisation” of those who had chosen to  stay back in India  had not ended with Partition.  But characters like the blind imaam in Sholay and Sher Khan in Zanjeer reminded the audience even in stories that were not about them that no Indian narrative could be complete without them. Contemporary films like Bombay and Black Friday addressed dark chapters post independence and braved controversies to show that somewhere we had lost our innocence. And that hate was catching up with us again. Even an idealist like Kaifi was compelled to  write in anguish once, “basti men apni Hindu musalman jo bas gae, insan ki  shakl dekhne ko ham taras gae.”

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More recently films like My Name  is Khan , Chak De and  Gully Boy  went beyond tokenism in the mainstream space to tell stories of  characters whose Muslim identity was part of their Indianness and their humanity. While narratives like Raees, Aamir, Shahid, Aligarh, Firaq, Mr and Mrs Iyer and many others  negotiated the quicksand of social and religious divides.

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Things have changed however. Not just on screen but off it. Manikarnika ended with a religious symbol even though Laxmi Bai  battled not for a religion but a nation and Padmavat was clearly painted as a war of civilisations. And now we are revising history  via films at the behest of those who had no role to play in it.

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This era of petty mudslinging and name calling in the Hindi film industry may appear interminable now. Esecially because cinema does mirror social reality and politicians use cinema too to alter perceptions and there are always those who are willing to be used . Many propaganda based films were made in Nazi Germany where sloganeering targetted raw instincts and emotions and there was even a propaganda minister overseeing the workings of a film department. And sometimes films inadvertently foresee the rise of exclusionary leaders. In 2006’s Hollywood film The Good Shepherd, an isolationist uses the phrase, “America First,” which as you know became the buzzword for the Trump campaign.  There is really no need to overstate which Indian films in recent times have used sloganeering to embolden the nationalistic fervour that is rooted in majoritarianism and not diversity. The thing to remember is this though. Hate runs out of steam, be it in cinema or in life. And self-destructs.

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Maybe, our cinema will sooner than later rediscover   that nationalism cannot exist in isolation from the well-being of the people of a nation. And that be it art or a nation, nothing is ever built only by the rhetoric and the theatrics of a few but the blood, sweat and tears of many. And that a pony without legs  can only gallop thus far and no further.