Bollywood Movies - Agents for Social Change?
Modern Indian Movies are Not Merely Aimed at the Box Office
Jul 8, 2009
Often thought of in the West as a simply a source of colourful movies - with plenty of songs and dances designed to entertain the subcontinent's impoverished masses - India's film industry has been using its appeal to send out powerful social messages to its huge audiences
Three such movies provide good examples of how India's film makers are using their success at the box office and access to millions of fans throughout the subcontinent to subtly send powerful messages to their audiences with the intention of changing anachronistic traditions.
Veer Zaara
Ever since the traumatic partition of British India in 1948 created the mutually hostile nations of India and Pakistan, the two nations have fought three wars and remained in a state of thinly veiled enmity - with this hostility permeating to various levels of society in both countries.
Veer Zaara is a moving story of Love - not just a story about a love affair, but a story of Love.
Squadron Leader Veer Pratap Singh (played by Shahrukh Khan) is a reserve pilot in the Indian Air Force who is accustomed to risking his life to save the lives of others.
One day on duty he rescues a stranded Pakistani girl (Zaara - played by Preity Zinta) – a carefree spritely young lady who has come to India to fulfil her surrogate mother’s dying wish. She meets with a bus accident among the Indian mountains which leaves her stranded in a foreign land. The rescue pilot saves her life – and his life is never the same again.
Twenty two years later a young Pakistani lawyer Saamia Siddique undertaking her first case finds herself assigned to defend an ageing prisoner called Pratap Singh languishing in a Pakistani jail – a man who for 22 years has not spoken a word to anyone. Her mission is to discover the truth about Veer Pratap Singh – and here begins her journey to unravel the truth.
This is not an ordinary story, it is a legend of love and an epic saga of separation, courage and sacrifice. A classic not for an age but for all time, Veer Zaara through a love story that appeals to all, demonstrates that there is much more that unites rather than divides the people of India and Pakistan.
Baabul
Veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan plays the father in law of the young widow Millie (played by Rani Mukherjee) in Baabul which has as its theme the role of widows in traditional Indian society.
When Millie’s childhood playmate Rajat (played by John Abraham) marries Millie after her first husband Avinash is tragically killed, it causes considerable commotion and confusion in the family. The role undertaken by Avinash’s father – Millie’s father in law – in helping Millie's second marriage to be accepted in upper class Indian society sends a powefful message to audiences about the need to dissociate anachronistic traditions from true religion and the need to recognise the worth and humanity of those who hitherto have been relegated to a role of merely “existing without living.”,
Lagaan
This is another classic Bollywood production – set in 1887 in a remote rainless hamlet in central India. A village youth Bhuvan (played by Amir Khan) accepts the challenge of an arrogant English army captain to take on a team of Englishmen in a game of cricket. Against almost impossible odds the village yokels gather together a team of Punjabis, Hindus, Sihkhs, Muslims and Untouchables (which includes virtually all the major religious groups in modern India), form themselves into a united cricket team – and then succeed in the last ball of the match to defeat the English. The theme of the movie is that unity is strength, emphasising how the disparate peoples of India can come and work together to emerge victorious against even the most powerful aggressor.
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