From Ritwik Ghatak to John Abraham: A Radical Cinematic Legacy

The Hindu

29-07-2025

Published : Jul 26, 2025 17:49 IST - 14 MINS READ
The birth centenary this year of Ritwik Ghatak, the redoubtable chronicler of the partition of Bengal as also of the naxalite movement, is as good an occasion as any to recall the insightful words of the independent American critic Jacob Levich, who studied the cinemas of both Ghatak and, arguably, his foremost student, John Abraham, with equal keenness: 'Ghatak's stint as vice-principal of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) for a short while in the 1960's left something of him in his students. A John Abraham would never have happened were it not for the tutelage of Ghatak. Abraham did what he did because Ghatak validated his angst. Perhaps, similar was the case with his other protégés, but besides these few men, the legacy of Ghatak seems to have terminated. We need more people to be aware of this great man's ouevre and humanity. We need young filmmakers to continue in the tradition of this alternative school of filmmaking.'
When Abraham died at the age of 49, there died with him a part of what is known as the 'Ritwik vision', for none of his Institute students had so tenaciously stuck to his credo, if not his craft, as Abraham.
Ghatak had faith in Abraham; he sensed in the young man a capacity for creativity springing from a sense of protest that he did not find in too many of his students at the Pune institute, or elsewhere. Talking to an interviewer, Ghatak said that he 'pinned' his faith on Abraham; and Abraham did not fail his Ritwik-da. Especially in his last film, Amma Ariyan, which may be read as a homage to both Mother as well as to Mentor, but in a language far removed from that of the Bengal master. We should not fail to notice that though their social philosophy was uncannily similar, the two were quite different when it came to the use of poetics or aesthetics to make their respective personae felt.
It was poor consolation to those who knew and loved Abraham that the short, lean, bearded man died with the knowledge that his last film had won two prestigious prizes at the National awards for 1986: the special jury award for excellence in direction and another for best black-and-white cinematography (by the gifted Venu).
The New Wave
I first heard of Abraham sometime in the second half of the 1970s when his second film, Agraharathil Kazhuthai (Donkey in a Brahmin Village), caused a wave of critical interest. Made in Tamil and not in his native Malayalam, Donkey was a delightful and disturbing satire on Brahmin bigotry and superstition told through the story of a little donkey. The poor creature is blamed for all the ills that descend on the village and is ultimately killed by some people hired by the local Brahmins. But the tongue-in-cheek Abraham would not let the story rest at that. The humble four-legged on which The Family rode into Bethlehem was invested with posthumous miraculous powers as also a frightening capacity to invoke an apocalyptic end.
Following the death of the donkey, an absconding son returns out of the blue, a lame woman is able to walk again, so on and so forth. The sinner becomes a saint overnight: a temple is raised to the memory of the benevolent creature, and black humour expressed in an almost documentary style has a field day.
While the film was eminently successful in giving an idea of how people with closed minds give birth to a rigid and cruel society, it could also be read as an allegory with recognisable parallels in human experience. Many an innocent person is hounded out of his wits in his lifetime, only to be pronounced blameless, even blessed, when he is safely dead and buried or cremated or whatever.
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When Ghatak was alive and made his kind of films with a conviction and vengeance hard to come by in Indian cinemas, which naturally caused a lot of discomfort to varied vested interests, he was declared to be insane as a result of excessive drinking over a period of many years. But once he was dead and could no longer be a thorn in anyone's flesh, or so they thought, retrospectives of his films began to be held all over, and such homage started being paid to him by word of mouth or in writing as would have perhaps caused him to wither away in embarrassment had he been living.
A similar fate was reserved for Abraham. For many years, he was treated as some kind of a joke, on account of his drinking and his offhand lifestyle. Little or no mention was made in well-defined circles of his importance as a filmmaker and intellectual. But those who knew him well and had also done a bit of history-reading could easily make out that those who laughed at him were extremely nervous in their laughter, for they saw in Abraham a threat to the iniquitous established order of things.
Born in Changanacherry in Kerala, Abraham graduated from Kerala University. After adorning a clerical chair at the LIC office in Bangalore for a while, he joined the FTII in Pune. His first film won the National award for best story, but went largely unnoticed. It was with Donkey, his second film, that he made many sit up in admiration. It was five years before he could make his third film. Amma Ariyan, his fourth and last work, made Abraham a legend. Rarely has a film established a director as firmly in the minds and hearts of viewers as Amma Ariyan did. Crossing State boundaries and regional frontiers with a sureness that was difficult to believe when it first began to happen in the late 1980s, Amma Ariyan has acquired a pan-Indian audience today that is characterised by mature thinking about cinema as art, politics, and philosophical discourse, not confined to metaphysical niceties. Abraham's political philosophy is full-bodied, rooted in the searing lives and experiences of the people he chooses to portray, and yet ethereal in a moving, contrarian sort of way.
One of the mysteries of what goes by the name of New Indian Cinema, that never ceases to haunt me, relates to the question of what further conquests Abraham would have made had he not died at the young age of 49 after taking that quantum leap with Amma Ariyan, which could be the dream of many a filmmaker of high substance. To leave just at the moment when one is poised to join the pantheon is a sadness that is difficult to express adequately. It is impossible not to get emotional while discussing this unforgettable 'people's artist', not so much in the sense of social realism as value-driven humanism with an unflinching agenda not to submit to the tyrannies of history or the market, come what may.
While on the subject of the near-hysterical allegiance on the part of many viewers in Kerala, Bengal, and elsewhere to the artistic and political legacy of Abraham, I strongly repudiate any suggestion made by some 'established' filmmakers that the allegiance is juvenile or mindless over-enthusiasm. It is the likes of Abraham and Ghatak who have given to film art in India that cutting edge, without which the viewing experience is reduced to, well, viewing for the sake of viewing. Cinema is a many-roomed mansion; and the master and his pupil, who was himself maturing into a master when prematurely snatched away, inhabited a particularly ill-furnished chamber reserved for those opposed to mathematical precision or clinical cleanliness in art. Perhaps, making it big in the world in his lifetime may not be the best thing to happen to an artist.
A teacher's worth
It has been said that one reliable way of measuring the worth of a teacher is to explore the quality of the work done by his best students. By that standard, Ghatak appears to have succeeded splendidly. For the brief period that he taught at FTII, he had among his students some brilliant young minds who, in subsequent times, went on to be major contributors to what is known as New Indian Cinema, a creative and interrogative movement lasting all through the fourth quarter of the last century. They included Mani Kaul, Saeed Mirza, Nirad Mahapatra, Kumar Shahani, and Abraham.
It was only to be expected that a modern and powerful medium like film should take note of the naxalite movement in its different regional avatars in this vast and variegated country. In this connection, two films immediately come to mind—Ghatak's Jukti Tokko Aar Goppo (Reason, Debate and a Story) and Abraham's Amma Ariyan (Letter to Mother)—not only because they deal with a common theme, but also because the viewer is repeatedly reminded of the commonality of their makers, their attitudes, purposes, and sensibilities.
Abraham was able to direct only four films in about two decades. Of these, the last, Amma Ariyan, gave rise to important discussions by virtue of its depiction of what the director perceived to be the naxalite persona in Kerala, and many things besides. Amma Ariyan has a slow, stretched-out beginning lasting for half an hour or so. For those who know their Abraham well, there is nothing exasperating in this; for others, it could well prove to be a test of patience. But for those who pass the test, the next one and a half hours could come as a revelation. The film is structurally reminiscent of Jukti Tokko Aar Goppo, which tried to come to ideological grips with a group of militant young naxalites holed up in a jungle, both fearless and vulnerable at one and the same time. Ghatak's film starts in the port city of Calcutta and ends in wooded hill country; Abraham's starts in the northern highlands of Kerala and ends in the port city of Cochin. Both cities carry memories of the arrival of foreigners who turned into exploiters.
Thematically, too, the two films are of a piece. The same attempt at indicating the historical links between the past, especially the post-Independence past, and the present; the same fierce faith in the coming generations which, however, would do well, or so the directors seem to maintain, to seriously examine the dialectics of human relationships before plunging into the maelstrom of political and social liberation and, finally, the same preoccupation with the idea and being of the Mother as the fountainhead of strength and energy.
Amma Ariyan's camerawork is tailored to a feverish design, in tune with the film's total spirit, reflecting the director's vision and convictions. One sequence, in particular, should be mentioned: Purushan, the protagonist, and his small band of comrades coming out of an ancient church in Cochin. Unforgettable in its quiet impact, it summed up the feeling of unity of humankind in the service of a common ideal.
'We ought to miss original men and artists like John Abraham or his teacher, Ritwik Ghatak, if we are to defeat the mediocrity currently invading our regional cinemas.'
It is this oneness of spirit that is at the core of what Abraham himself had to say about his last film: 'Amma Ariyan is an analysis of the extremist movement in Kerala during the late seventies. Many of my intimate friends connected with the extremist group committed suicide in that period. They were very intelligent, sensitive and had high aesthetic sense. Their deaths were haunting me and this provoked me to make this film. The way I see it, films should speak to the people and people should speak through cinema. The cinematic experience should rouse the social consciousness of the audience. Through Odessa [a film co-operative started by Abraham and his friends to reach good cinema to the masses], I will show my films to the people. If they don't have money, I'll show them free. Amma Ariyan is an open letter from a pampered child to his mother and it is also a letter from all those of my generation who cannot communicate. I am writing on behalf of them to Mother.'
How do we bring back originality?
In the premature death of Abraham, Kerala's New Cinema, which had a profound impact on filmmakers and audiences throughout the country, lost one of its brightest and most original practitioners. The word 'original' is being used with a definite view in mind, for one heard the criticism after Amma Ariyan, that it resembled Ghatak's last film in some ways, for some people's comfort. Yes, Abraham was influenced by Ghatak, which the former readily conceded with a touch of unmistakable pride, but he never imitated Ghatak: he was too talented for that. Abraham was too much of an artist and an individualist to imitate anyone. Like all original talents, he would take whatever he needed from one or more sources and then mould them according to his own artistic notions and political needs; according to his own vision of place and people, of ideology and history.
In fact, we ought to miss original men and artists like Abraham or his teacher, Ghatak, if we are to defeat the mediocrity currently invading our regional cinemas. If the naxalite movement was aimed at radical political change, the small band of artists that sought to record different aspects and delicate nuances of that movement may be said to have infused fresh and challenging vision into the largely moribund film scene in the country.
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How deeply Ghatak was embedded in Abraham's soul, in his psyche, in his absurd and fanciful ways, comes across vividly in a poem called 'A Tribute To Ritwik Ghatak', snatches from which may be recalled: Ritwik Daa,/ let me call you Ritwik Daa, / I know that you are no more./ But I am, alive for you, believe me./ When the seventh seal is opened/ I will use my camera as my gun/ and I am sure the echo of the sound/ will reverberate in your bones,/ and feed back to me for my inspiration./ Thank you Ritwik Daa,/ I am thanking you/ not with impotency and insipidity./ Ritwik Daa,/ I remember you,/ when the words fail to criticize you,/ Ritwik Daa,/ eternally you are/ in my brain/ in my spirit and / in my Holy Ghost/ Amen.
Nearer home, another homegrown poet but certainly not blessed with an iota of the social or artistic credentials of such extraordinary intellectuals as Ghatak or Abraham, sought to give vent to his soul thus: Some artists die/ go to heaven/ or some such place/ rub shoulders/ with heroes and saints/ spend/ rest of their lives/ like museum pieces/ cold/ remote/ untouchable/ Other artists die/ go to hell/ deserve or not/ they burn/ head heart liver spleen/ lower organs too/ burn and burn/ till to ash/ gas/ they turn/ There's one other set/ smallest/ select/ they die like the rest/ but cannot leave/ for another shore/ love of earth/ love of fellows/ follow them/ like hunting shadows/ Love of students/ love of donkeys/ love of cruel deeds/ love of mothers/ love of letters/ love of reason/ love of stories/ love of arguments/ love of fumes/ love of myths/ love of roads rivers/ love of the absurd/ love of the impure/ love of love/ pursue them/ singly/ and in packs/ to hold them back/ where they were/ No heaven/ no hell/ no earth/ no in-between/ only where they were/ exceeding god/ shaming satan/ these unquenched artists/our pride/ joy/ solace.
To return to where we began, namely, the brief period during which Ritwik set FTII on fire with his alcoholic tantrums, not to mention the depth and range of his reportedly past-midnight lectures away from the classroom. Saeed Mirza, who went on to build a formidable reputation with his kitschy working-class classics around the violent and sordid underbelly of Bombay, is on record that Ghatak was given to saying that to be a filmmaker, one must carry his childhood in one pocket and, in the other, a bottle of alcohol! While Saeed or Nirad Mahapatra, the one-film Odia auteur remarkable for his poetry of small-town dailiness, took their teacher's mock-heroic, impish advice as no more than an enjoyable metaphor, Abraham embraced it so literally as to singe and scorch and finally burn himself to an untimely end. But not before he had proved himself a resounding credit to his angry, sad, great teacher.
Vidyarthy Chatterjee writes on cinema, society, and politics. For several decades now, he has pursued New Malayalam Cinema with great devotion.