Bollywood’s shadowy underbelly

Often, it is the underworld that dictates what gets made in Mumbai’s film industry

Partha Chatterjee Delhi

Far away and long ago in 1959, Guru Dutt (Padukone) made Kagaz Ke Phool in black and white and Cinemascope. In it, an unhappily married director falls in love with his protégé. It was a truly-felt love story, and a resounding flop, commercially. Now, in 2006, it is a cult classic appreciated even by non-Hindi speaking audiences in Europe and US. Nothing has been produced of its calibre in Hindi cinema in the last 45 years.

In truth, the Hindi cinema industry has regressed into an infantilism that can in part be attributed to spiritual malnutrition. Legitimate financing of films has always been a problem. Producers, at the beginning of their careers, and often even later, have to borrow money from loan sharks at a back-breaking 4 per cent per month (or 48 per cent per annum), thus inflating costs due to production delays; mostly attributed to clashing dates of stars who “sell” films and try to make the most of their usually short-lived careers. Banks rarely, if ever, back films for they regard them as high-risk investments.

Corporatisation can certainly streamline production methods; keep films within budget by completing them on time. It can, in the near future, also attempt to create an exhibition chain, parallel to the existing one, which represents certain unseen, vested interests. What corporate investment in mainstream Hindi film production cannot guarantee is meaningful yet entertaining films. Entertainment translates as “manoranjan” in Hindi. It is an exquisite word, meaning painting or rather illuminating the mind - since any idea of painting involves light.

The exhibition, distribution and financing of motion pictures in Mumbai is thus usually controlled by a shadowy underworld. It dictates the kind of films that get made and seen. The strategy of this conglomerate is simple – limit the choice of the paying customer and make him believe what he sees is what he likes. This formula does not always work, because of the shabbily written scripts and badly structured, sluggishly paced editing.

It is no secret that black money had entered the film industry by the mid-1960s. There is a photograph still in circulation of Hindi Cinema’s greatest showman, Raj Kapoor, touching the feet of Mirza Haji Mastan, the first known gangster-smuggler of Bombay who started as a coolie on the docks. Ratan Khatri, king of the numbers racket, even had a film made on himself. The Dholakiya brothers, who once owned Caesar’s palace, an infamous nightclub, also had a financial interest in certain films. Dawood Ibrahim and his lieutenant Chhota Shakeel had others front the productions they had backed. Producer S H Rizvi - said to be Chhota Shakeel’s man - was picked up by the police on the basis of a tapped cell phone conversation in which he had named a prominent Indian right wing politician who had always gone out of his way to help him. To say that gangsters and politicos work hand in hand these days is an unassailable fact. 

It is now possible for a fugitive from justice to be a resident of Dubai and actually dictate through his operatives in Mumbai the kind of films that are to be made and the people who will feature in them. Recent revelations in the press of non-controversial singers like Alka Yagnik and Kavita Krishnmoorthy having sung at Dawood Ibrahim’s sister’s wedding 15 years ago only confirms the idea of the Hindi film industry as always having been an extension of the underworld. The prospect is frightening indeed.

Amitabh Bachchan’s biggest hit in 2005 was Sarkar, modelled on Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. It was directed by Ram Gopal Varma, a Hyderabadi entrepreneur who rode to fame and fortune on the crime wave. He did Satya, a well-researched glamourised look at the world of crime, then followed it after several years and films later with Company. His assistant E Niwas did Shool, on an honest police officer whose wife is violated by thugs and who is himself largely marginalised by politicians and gangsters working in tandem - till the last 10 minutes.

What of Prakash Jha’s two films that profess to be on the side of the law? In Gangajal, there is a strong committed cop going hammer and tongs to straighten out a corrupt town run by a nexus of thugs and politicos. Apaharan has a decent, unemployed boy forced to take up with gangsters and to kidnap a Chief Minister’s daughter. Whatever the message tacked on at the end of either film, violence is glorified and the triumph of evil over good obliquely suggested.

If gangland money is not involved in the production of a large number of Hindi films, why then is there a glorification of the gangster? Why is there a palpable suggestion that the state itself is in connivance with organised crime and is indeed giving it a fillip? No matter which party is in power, crime and politics seems to feed off each other and terrorise law-abiding citizen through the police.

Samuel Johnson had observed that patriotism was the last resort of the scoundrel. A rash of patriotic films like Refugee, Gadar, Border, LOC Kargil and Lakshya only make clear that dubious intentions of the filmmakers and the backers, seen and unseen. Wars from time immemorial have been fought for strictly commercial reasons.

The advent of the multiplex in cities has raised the price of admission tickets by at least three-fold. Therefore, the question is, what would corporatisation achieve other than a cosmetically pleasing product that can be marketed to captive NRI audiences in the US, Canada, Australia and England?

The Italian, Irish and Jewish mafia in the US went legitimate by gradually laundering its black money through investments in big, reputed industrial concerns. It is rumoured that something similar is happening in the Indian subcontinent. Although there are new players in the game, Dawood Ibrahim’s shadow continues to loom large over Bollywood. Hindi films continue to be caught in a reactionary political, social time warp. What good then can possibly come of Adlabs being bought by the Ambanis who own Reliance?

Will the day ever come when simple, elegant, deeply felt films shall engage with an audience of mainstream Hindi cinema? Will such efforts be made possible by the active patronage of a paying audience?