<img style="float: left;" src="http://origin.mid-day.com/images/2023/aug/Mayank-Shekhar-op_e.jpg" alt="Mayank Shekhar" width="150" height="83" />A conversation between Dev Anand and Indian Army&rsquo;s General Pargat Singh at Nathu-la Pass, during the making of Jewel Thief (1967), led to the creation of which popular trope in Hindi movies, first used in Anand&rsquo;s film, <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/web-series/article/neeraj-ghaywan-pallavi-menke-is-me-23304588" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Prem Pujari</a> (1970)?&rsquo;
That&rsquo;s a quiz question I set after reading Balaji Vittal&rsquo;s book, Pure Evil: The Bad Men of Bollywood. I won&rsquo;t ask it at a trivia night anymore, since have written it down here! Answer?&nbsp;
&lsquo;Pakistan&mdash;as the Bollywood villain!&rsquo; <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/bollywood-news/article/ghoomer-movie-review-one-tip-one-hand-23304369" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Shatrughan Sinha</a> was Pak Army colonel, in Prem Pujari, first film he signed up for. Sinha went on to play several villainous parts, thereafter&mdash;also did the cigarette-to-lip jugglery onscreen, which became Rajnikanth&rsquo;s trademark, later.
What&rsquo;s the most successful film, with Pakistan, as the unifying villain? Doubtlessly, Anil Sharma&rsquo;s Gadar (2001). That, in terms of footfalls (five crore plus), fared better than Ramesh Sippy&rsquo;s Sholay (1975). Or so folks in Bollywood wouldn&rsquo;t tire of educating me, when I began reporting on the beat in Bombay.&nbsp;
Also, that Gadar was the last film to crack both small towns and big cities at the box-office, when the split between the two audiences, namely, multiplexes and single-screens, was growing wider. 22 years later, Gadar 2 (2023) appears to have done the same.&nbsp;
As you watch the film with a crackpot Pak Army villain, General Hamid Iqbal (Manish Wadhwa), who&rsquo;s sworn to &ldquo;Ghazwa-e-Hind (holy raid of India)&rdquo;, because he lost his own family to &ldquo;vibhajan mein hue gadar (revolts during Partition).&rdquo;&nbsp;
Hence, he places Bhagwat Gita and Koran, before a Hindu man to be guillotined, basis which book he literally heads towards. The narrator, in the picture&rsquo;s prologue, similarly weighs in on &ldquo;Hinduon ke liye nafrat, Hindustaniyon ke liye nafrat (hate towards Hindus, Hindustanis)&rdquo; from across the border.&nbsp;
The great Indian, Tara Singh (Sunny Deol)&mdash;himself married to a Pakistani, Sakina (Ameesha Patel), very much a practising Muslim&mdash;offers the sobering counterpoint: &ldquo;Even the people of both countries want peace; what&rsquo;s up with the politics?&rdquo; Making it unambiguously clear: &ldquo;India belongs to all religions.&rdquo;
The first Gadar was roughly inspired by the Ramayan, wasn&rsquo;t it&mdash;Ram, rescuing Sita, from Lanka. The second seems closer to Abhimanyu&rsquo;s Chakravyuh from Mahabharat, wherein Tara&rsquo;s son (Utkarsh Sharma) infiltrates Pakistan, but gets caught in the whirlpool. Prompting his Papa to pull him out. Both films written by Shaktimaan Talwar.&nbsp;
What&rsquo;s common to the two is, of course, the metal handpump that Tara merely stares at, and hundreds/thousands of Pakistanis run for cover. Although there&rsquo;s nothing to beat the climax sequence, set in a mosque, that doubles up as a military establishment, with a full battalion, loaded with canons and machine guns, firing at the hero. Nothing can touch Tara.&nbsp;
None of it makes sense. What to make of it, ideally with a wild crowd in cheap, front-row seats, of a reasonably priced multiplex, over a packed midnight show? Who do you attribute this leap of [Hindu-Muslim] faith to?&nbsp;
Obviously, the working-class, action hero, that audiences can convincingly repose their faith on&mdash;a commodity that Hindi movies stopped suitably manufacturing since the &rsquo;90s. That&rsquo;s Sunny Deol, 66, at the centre, still.&nbsp;
Although the last time I met Deol, in 2019, he reminded me that Gadar, as in the title, was &lsquo;Ek Prem Katha&rsquo; (a love story). And that throughout his career, he&rsquo;s been attracted to &ldquo;vulnerable characters, pushed to the brink,&rdquo; which is when the heroism reveals itself. Fair enough&mdash;Ghayal (1990), or Ghatak (1996), no different from Gadar; no?
He also said that he was deeply drawn to Sylvester Stallone&mdash;the reason his son (Karan) is nicknamed Rocky. Love for Stallone is something he shares with Salman Khan, who told me once that &ldquo;heroism in movies must equal people flexing their imaginary muscles, on their way out of the cinema.&rdquo;
Even when Deol was less &lsquo;massy&rsquo;, in terms of, literally, body-mass&mdash;after his breakout romantic debut, Rahul Rawail&rsquo;s Betaab (1983)&mdash;he bet his career on Rawail&rsquo;s Arjun (1985). Written by Javed Akhtar, of Salim-Javed, who had similarly scripted the &lsquo;angry young man&rsquo; for Amitabh Bachchan in the &rsquo;70s.&nbsp;
Deol said he&rsquo;d signed up for no other film then, which was such an anomaly in the &rsquo;80s, that he had a hard time fetching co-actors&rsquo; dates. Arjun tanked (if you&rsquo;ll excuse the pun). Akhtar regretted this. It remains a cult film. Deol rediscovered his image in time. Gadar (2001) was its peak.&nbsp;
By 2019, Deol was in the mood to crib about Bollywood&rsquo;s corporate firms, who weighed creativity on balance-sheets, and that he felt his director, Sharma, had the sense of scale: &ldquo;I just don&rsquo;t know what people want anymore.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Gadar was one of Zee Telefilms&rsquo; first productions. Gadar 2 is the same team together. I guess it&rsquo;s called conviction, when a full-on masala movie works&mdash;and that &lsquo;people have moved on, if it doesn&rsquo;t!
The astounding success of Gadar got linked to a &lsquo;post-Kargil phenomenon&rsquo;. Just as Salim-Javed&rsquo;s &lsquo;angry young man&rsquo; was diagnosed as catharsis of India&rsquo;s disillusioned, jobless, young&mdash;even the before- and after-effect of Emergency, if you may!&nbsp;
Much as I enjoy such analyses, perhaps it&rsquo;s always been about that perfect alchemy of raw action, emotions (love, rage), and a relatable, working-class hero&mdash;love for none of which left audiences. Only those movies did.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com The views expressed in this column are the individual&rsquo;s and don&rsquo;t represent those of the paper.
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Audiences never abandoned the onscreen angry man (young or old); only the cinemas did

Gadar machane ka time aa gaya!

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Gadar machane ka time aa gaya!

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