Cinema and the I-word

Aamir Khan's comments have added fuel to the already blazing intolerance fires in India, but everyone, including the stars, should know that cinema is above it all Khalid Mohamed.

Let's rewind, for a moment, to a truly poignant scene in Garm Hava. Set in the days following the partition, the film shows Salim Mirza, an elderly Muslim man of Agra - superbly enacted by Balraj Sahni - who has to decide whether to stay back in India or move to Pakistan. The upright, distinctly nationalist man was subjected to all sorts of calumnies and ostracised. He is on the way to the railway station to leave for Pakistan, when he has a change of heart. He decides to continue to live with his family in the city of his ancestry.

Unarguably, M S Sathyu's Garm Hava (1973) has been the most eloquent statement on cinema yet about how countless Muslims chose to assimilate into their heartland. Initially, this milestone of a movie faced censorship snafus and remained banned for eight months. Sathyu screened the film to garner positive feedback from an array of politicians, artists and journalists, before he was finally given the go-ahead by the censors.

Right-wing political parties were displeased and protested vehemently, describing the film as 'anti-national'. Fortunately, since critics and audiences raved about the film, jointly written by such stalwart names as Ismat Chughtai, Kaifi Azmi and Shama Zaidi, the protests fizzled out. Ironically enough, Garm Hava went on to win the National Award for the Best Feature Film on National Integration.
For some inexplicable reason, I kept having flashbacks of that last decisive scene in Garm Hava when the huge controversy sparked last month, when Aamir Khan stated that his wife, Kiran Rao, and he felt insecure in India. And that they had even contemplated the prospect of settling down elsewhere. Acrimonious debates and attacks on Aamir Khan for articulating his thoughts quickly followed, however paranoid or spoken in the heat of the moment they may have been.
In fact, that exacerbated the situation with literary writers and filmmakers returning awards bestowed upon them by the government in the past. Shah Rukh Khan, too, came under fire for expressing his feelings about the escalating atmosphere of 'intolerance.'  All hell broke loose. The word 'intolerance' flew fast and furiously over social media. Even Mumbai's film world was divided into factions, what with Anupam Kher, Raveena Tandon, Paresh Rawal and Madhur Bhandarkar reacting with volatile squelchers against those who dared to state their anxieties with the I-word.
Be that as it may, I can't help feeling that Aamir Khan was overcome with the sort of fleeting question mark faced by the character of Salim Mirza in Garm Hava. My intention isn't to defend the actor's momentary lapse of reason or break into a how-dare-he-say-that tirade. It's merely to suggest that cinema itself is the greatest leveller, if not healer. We need more films to underscore the point that Muslims in India aren't outsiders in any sense of the term. 
Fortuitously, over the decades, a handful of significant films have delved into the subject with quite an impact.
Indeed, even the wizard of fantasies, the late Manmohan Desai, had started his career with Chhalia (1960), loosely adapted from Fyodor Dostoevsky's story White Nights. Revolving around the dilemma of estranged families in the aftermath of the partition, it remains Desai's most undervalued work. Although the film featured the popular actors of the time, Raj Kapoor and Nutan, it failed to find a wide audience. As a result, Desai chose to fly off into hyper-fantasies but, even in that mode, he did design Amar Akbar Anthony, justly rated as a delightful ode to secularism.
In a similar vein, the maestro of romance Yash Chopra had tackled the issue of religious bigotry at the time of the partition in the black-and-white Dharmputra (1961). Headlining the upcoming Shashi Kapoor, the film didn't connect with the audience. Yet, Chopra wasn't completely stymied. He returned to emphasise the need for harmony decades later with Veer-Zaara (2004). This time around, his ostentatiously-mounted opus with Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta and Rani Mukerji clicked big-time.
So had Henna (1991), a long-nurtured project by Raj Kapoor, that was eventually directed by his son Randhir Kapoor. 'Compassion knows no borders' was its mantra, as it was for this year's resoundingly successful Bajrangi Bhaijaan. The point is that secularism, tolerance and national integration have been the recurring themes of purposeful cinema, ranging from Govind Nihalani's Tamas (1988) and J P Dutta's Refugee (2000) to Chandraprakash Dwivedi's Pinjar (2003).
Many more such films are imperative today. A re-dekko of Garm Hava - a rare blend of sensitive writing, low-key direction, authentic locations and a magisterial lead performance from Balraj Sahni - asserts that cinema can speak out with clarity and persuasion.
In fact, it's the film industry itself that has to shun inadvertent controversies of the Aamir Khan-kind that can only be injurious to the heart and mind.