Although the India-Pakistan partition wreaked cataclysmic havoc – resulting in 15 million people being uprooted and between one and two million people dead – ironically enough the cinema halls had flourished with Bombay alone, producing 114 films in 1947, the year of Independence from the 300-year-stretch of the British Raj.
Film censorship, legislated way back in 1918 to serve British colonial interests, had rapidly become draconian. According to official records during 1943, as many as 25 films had required revision before they could be released. Torrid kissing scenes which were permitted initially, became a no-no.
Incidentally, the Bombay films, made in Hindustani, a mix of Hindi and Urdu, were linked to the Lahore film industry. In the ensuing migration following the partition, the celebrated actor-singer Noor Jehan, writer-director Zia Sarhadi and music composers Ghulam Mohammed, Khwaja Khursheed Anwar, GA Chisthi and writer-and-occasional scriptwriter Saadat Hassan Manto were among those who left for Pakistan.
Similarly, prominent Indian filmmakers such as Gulzar, GP Sippy, Govind Nihalani, BR Chopra and Yash Chopra, and lyricist-poet Sahir Ludhianvi migrated to India.
However, the tumult did not destabilise the Hindustani film production structure, at that time dominated by traditional, cash-rich studio banners. Yet it is widely believed that Muslim film personalities felt insecure, exemplified by the fact that Yusuf Khan apprehensive of the sub-continent’s divide, had adopted the screen name of Dilip Kumar. Though there is a version that the thespian didn't want his father to know that he had joined the film industry and hence a change in the name. Another apocryphal story states that the name was suggested by Devika Rani, who felt that Dilip Kumar would work best if he wanted to groom a ‘romantic image’.
Inevitably, fervently patriotic films on the freedom struggle were strictly taboo. Still, Kumar Mohan’s 1857 (1947), a love story featuring Suraiya and Surendra set against the backdrop of the Mutiny, had curiously escaped the axe.
Similarly, the song ‘Door Hathon Ae Duniyawallon, Hindustan Hamara Hai...” (Go Away Foreigners, India Is Ours), in Gyan Mukherjee’s Kismet (1943), top-lining Ashok Kumar as a con man, had slipped past the censors -- within six months after Mahatma Gandhi had called for the Quit India movement. The immense popularity of the song coerced the lyricist Pradeep to go underground to avoid being arrested on charges of sedition.
The deepening gulf between the haves and have-nots under the colonial rule was cautiously but brilliantly approached with an expressionist style by Chetan Anand’s Neecha Nagar (1946), inspired by Maxim Gorky’s The Lowest Depths. It remains the only Indian entry to bag the prestigious Palme D’Or Award at the Cannes film festival.
Earlier, V Shantaram’s Swarajyacha Toran (The Flags of Freedom,1931), which politicised the Maratha Emperor Shivaji and showed the hoisting of the flag of victory at Singhad fort, had run afoul with the censors, opposed to the word “freedom”. On altering its title to Udyakal and several changes, it was allowed to be released.
Such exceptional derring-do apart, romance, a plethora of eight to ten songs in every film, Fearless Nadia’s stunt flicks, mythologicals, social dramas and fantasies were the preferred genres to survive in show business. Quite perceptibly, filmmakers of the era to their credit shunned away from confecting films which toadied up the British – perhaps because the audiences would have rejected them. And also because it was obvious that the days of the colonialists were numbered. Would such guts and taking of a stand prevail today in Indian cinema? Doubtful.
The quick-fix gambit during the British Raj, then, was to strictly stay away from mirroring the mounting political unrest and to focus on harmless entertainment. Charismatic actors, music suffused with melody, subtly stirring dialogue and stories of love -- requited and unrequited-- were the catch-all quotients which attracted the ticket-buying public. The templates for lost-and-found, temporary disruptions in family relationships, and triangular love tangles beset by differences between the wealthy and the poor, were created to be used for decades to come.
Indeed, this is evident from the five top cash-earners of 1947: Jugnu the first major hit of Dilip Kumar, and Noor Jehan directed by her husband Shaukat Hussain Rizvi, had also featured a cameo appearance by Mohammed Rafi.
The other major hits were PL Santoshi’s Shehnai (Rehana and Nasir Khan), Munshi Dil’s Do Bhai (Kamini Kaushal and Rajan Haksar), AR Kardar’s Dard (Munnawar Sultana, Suraiya and Nusrat) and K Amarnath’s Mirza Sahiban (Noor Jehan and Trilok Kapoor).
The year also saw the introduction of Raj Kapoor at the age of 23 and Madhubala at 16 in Kidar Sharma’s Neel Kamal, which despite flopping, clearly indicated that two luminous stars had been born.
Of the five prime successes, Jugnu, concerned a triangular romance obstructed by the rich-poor disparity. Shehnai portrayed four strong-willed women in a Jane Austen-like drama about finding the right suitor. Do Bhai touched upon the feudal Thakurdari system. Dard extolled the sacrifices of a woman who’s hopelessly in love with a doctor. And Mirza Sahiban was a romance about a prankster who’s tamed on discovering love.
None of the stories would be likely to connect today with viewers except with connoisseurs of vintage cinema. On watching them, the narratives do seem dated, but were perfectly in sync with the cautious 1940s. Often, their paramount saving grace were their outstanding music scores.
According to film commentator, Bhaichand Patel, “Shehnai took the country by storm with …C Ramchandra, coming up with a new westernised beat with a little help from his Goan assistant, Chic Chocolate. Parents forbade their children to sing that evergreen number, ‘Aana Meri Jaan Meri Jaan Sunday ke Sunday...’ sung by Shamshad Begum, Meena Kapoor and the composer himself under the name Chitalkar.”
As for the music scores of Jugnu, Firoz Nizami’s ‘Hamen Toh Shaam-e-Gham...’ sung by Noor Jehan; SD Burman’s ‘Mera Sundar Sapna Beet Gaya...’ rendered by a teenaged Geeta Dutt for Do Bhai; Naushad’s ‘Afsana Like Rahi Hoon...’ for Dard sung by Uma Devi (who went on to become comedienne Tun Tun); and Pandit Amarnath’s ‘Haye Ud Ud Jaye Mora Reshmi Dupatta...’ for Mirza Sahiban rendered by Noor Jehan, Shamshad Begum and Zohra Ambalewaali, are just some of the imperishable chartbusters of 1947.
The year also witnessed the release of Mehboob Khan’s Elan featuring Surendra and Munnawar Sultana, which emphasised the need for education. V Shantaram’s Matwala Shair Ramjoshi (a bilingual in Marathi and Hindustani) top-lining Baburao Painter, Jayaram Shiledar and Hansa Wadkar centred around a Brahmin poet’s diversion towards folk art and lavni dances. Reformist themes criticising orthodoxy among the rigid societal structure had started percolating.
And Hindustani cinema audiences had begun to recognise the auteurship of a select set of directors, while simultaneously encouraging the star system. Set images were associated with the leading heroines. For instance, there was Swaran Lata the earliest tragedy queen and Munnawar Sultana who frequently had to tackle adulterous husbands. Singer-actor KL Saigal was a national craze, his last film JK Nanda’s Parwana, a romance drama co-starring Suraiya, was released in 1947, posthumously a few months after he succumbed to alcoholism.
Meanwhile, the star trinity of the post-indpendence decade had started making headway, Dilip Kumar with Jugnu, Raj Kapoor with Neel Kamal, and Dev Anand who had been introduced in 1946 in PL Santoshi’s Hum Ek Hain, and consolidated his appeal the next year with Anadinath Bannerjee’s Mohan and the presciently titled Yeshwant Pithkar’s Aaage Bhado.
Of the trio, Dilip Kumar was to headline what is officially considered as free India’s first nationalist film, Ramesh Saigal’s Shaheed (1948). Set in the 1940s, it narrated the story of a freedom fighter who faces dire opposition from his own father and a crafty police officer, who for that touch of romance, is his rival for their childhood sweetheart (Kamini Kaushal). It turned out be the highest grosser of the year, thanks partly also due to the popularity of the Ghulam Haider-song ‘Watan Ki Raah...’.
In effect, then 1947 strikes you as a year of films which were shackled and somewhat mealy-mouthed under the beleaguered British tutelage.
However, the ground was set for the golden age of Indian cinema of the 1950s. Inadvertently or not, the idealism of the Nehruvian era began to be reflected loud and clearly in Hindustani cinema. No longer just entertainment-entertainment-entertainment, purposeful cinema bloomed, in black-and-white as well as colour, in the immediate decade following independence.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)