The one thing that struck me while watching the meeting of young members of the Raj Kapoor clan with prime minister Narendra Modi was not merely how pleased and eager all of them looked, but also how Modi was delighted to be with them. Modi is at his best and most comfortable when interacting with the glamorous and the powerful and here too he is at his best. The actors, used to adulation and fandom, are tongue tied in his presence. Who edited the video and uploaded it is not known.
The ostensible purpose of this meeting was to inform him of the centenary of their patriarch Raj Kapoor, but it turned out that each of the attendees had nurtured a dream to meet him or to sit next to him. This was therefore a dream come true for all of them. The manner in which the short video has been edited makes it clear who the real star in the room was.
Modi spoke of India’s soft power and then recalled how he, along with two other Jan Sangh colleagues, had gone to see the film Phir Subah Hogi (1958), Ramesh Kaul’s adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. And now that subah (morning) had come, he beamed at the Kapoor descendants.
Anyone familiar with the film will right away notice the irony. Phir Subah Hogi was a decidedly left-leaning film, a critical look at post-independent India and its failures. I cannot say how much of the film Modi recalls, but he would do well to see it again or at least listen to the songs. Sahir Ludhianvi was at his best, and the song, ‘Chin o Arab Hamara, Hindustan Hamara’, is a bitter critique of how the poor have been let down. It may tell Modi a thing or two about how little things have changed.
But there are other ironies too about the Kapoors-Modi meeting, chief among them the fact that they went there to talk about Raj Kapoor. He was part of the golden era of Hindi cinema, and among the leading lights of filmmakers whose cinema contributed majorly to the nation building project.
His films were not bombastic, nationalism-spewing propaganda. They told stories of the ordinary citizen, one who had hopes in the new, post-independent India. In Awaara (1951), Raju became a criminal due to circumstances and his father’s petty suspicious about his wife; in Shri 420 (1955), he was a migrant who came to Bombay to find his fortune and eventually found love.
Beyond them, Kapoor also produced Boot Polish (1954), Ab Dilli Door Nahin (1957), and Jagte Raho (1956), films that reflected his singular humanity, a quality not found in the films of today.
His grandson Ranbir Kapoor has built up a reputation of being a sensitive actor, but it was not until he made Animal (2023) a violent, misogynist film that he tasted blockbuster success. This is the New India, the subah we live in. Raj Kapoor would not have acted in Animal because no one would make a film like that at the time.
Kapoor Senior worked in most of his films with his close team among whom were the music directors Shankar Jaikishan, lyricists Shailendra and Hasrat Jaipuri and script writer K.A. Abbas. They helped shape his cinema.
The contribution of Shailendra and Abbas was crucial. Both were attuned to the ethos of the times, both brought sensitivity to their work. The left-leaning Abbas wrote stories that centred around the common man and which showed the exploitative capitalist class, but were also essentially love stories. Shailendra was ready there too. Whether Shri 420 or almost two decades later, Bobby (1973), Abbas wrote tenderly about young love. He knew where he stood ideology but was not a flag waver.
And Shailendra expressed that young love – in Awaara, Shri 420 and Chori Chori (1956) among others – sweetly and gently. But deep down, like the characters of their films, they too had hope in the emergence of a new India that would take its rightful place in the comity of nations. They believed in unity in diversity and they believed in the Nehruvian idea.
Both the stars of today, Kapoors or not, are a product of their times, just like Raj Kapoor was of his. Today’s prime minister is happy to meet with film stars, is all smiles with them, and beams when they lob soft questions at him, like his love for mangoes or make cringe-inducing, fawning remarks.
There is a photo doing the rounds of the three big stars of the 1950s – Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand – with Jawaharlal Nehru and while no video is available, one doubts that the discussion was about mangoes.
Nehru is of course persona non grata for this regime, a villain responsible for most of this country’s ills. And if Raj Kapoor had made the kind of films he did, he would have been too.
Imagine K.A. Abbas writing a satirical script about how tycoons milk the system and Raj Kapoor directing it—a new Shri 420, where the common man is without hope. He would be called an anti-national and wouldn’t long last too long in this New India.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
