Sholay is 50. What scholars have written about it

The Print

5 days ago

Set in Thakur's (played by a sombre, greying Sanjeev Kumar) house, it shows his daughter-in-law Radha (Jaya Bachchan) slowly turning down the lamps in the balcony, bringing the day to a close. Jai (Amitabh Bachchan) plays a soulful melody on harmonica as he watches her.
One scene in the Ramesh Sippy movie even inspired an academic paper in the 1990s.
New Delhi: The blockbuster Bollywood movie Sholay has been referenced in a thousand memes over the years. Its dialogues, songs, dances, and trademark moves are all part of Indian vocabulary. It is also a movie that university scholars love to sink their teeth into.
University of Delhi professor Nellickal Jacob called it 'dialectics of desire and its repression'.
Sholay is 50 today. But the movie is a gift that keeps teaching. Between memes and research papers, it has seen it all.
Jacob's paper is one of the many academic reflections on Ramesh Sippy's film. The fascination with the so-called 'curry western' has even crossed borders, drawing interest from international scholars. The moniker was bestowed on the film for its desi avatar, inspired by the cowboy movies, and Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954).
'The film was on the radar of every cinema studies scholar and a popular text to research and write books and scholarly pieces,' said Professor Karen Gabriel, whose research areas include sexuality, visual cultures, and social theory.
When he presented his paper in the 1990s, Jacob focused on the lamp-and-the-balcony scene as an interplay between desire and social taboos around a widow's silence.
'Hers is a muted and unspeakable desire that, for the most part, is revealed through minimal gestures and facial expressions,' said Nellickal Jacob about Radha
'Her encounter with Jai clearly awakens in her a desire that Sippy realises can only be obliquely referenced. Hers is a muted and unspeakable desire that, for the most part, is revealed through minimal gestures and facial expressions,' said Jacob. He argues that it is one of the best scenes in the entire film. Radha's slow, laboured movement shows how her repression is a reiterated ritual, and how Jai's gaze is not voyeuristic but a mix of melancholy and longing. He doesn't articulate his desire with words, but plays the harmonica.
Emergency and Sholay
'The audience derived vicarious pleasure from playing the avenging angel, playing out their fantasies of securing justice against evil moneylenders, corrupt policemen, and rapist,' said Meenakshi Shedde.
Released in a few months after the Emergency was imposed by Indira Gandhi, Sholay has been read in context with the making of the nation, and its political preoccupations. It was a time when the young democracy was gripped with all kinds of existential questions. In her paper 'Bollywood Cinema: Making Elephants Fly', Meenakshi Shedde explains that the 1970s were a watershed moment, as cinema became the 'conscience keeper' of the nation, both mainstream and parallel.
'In the mainstream, it definitely shaped the early success of Bollywood's superstar Amitabh Bachchan, now in his sixties. His protagonists broke the law to deliver justice and equity. The audience derived vicarious pleasure from playing the avenging angel, playing out their fantasies of securing justice against evil moneylenders, corrupt policemen, and rapists,' writes Shedde.
Outside, political opponents of Indira Gandhi were being jailed, and underground protest movements were being mapped.
Sholay marks the subaltern hero—a figure that was also synonymous with the growth of Bachchan's career. Such a hero was either an orphan or of ambiguous lineage, an affiliation with the masses, and capable of mobilising them. As film scholar M Madhava Prasad puts it, he offers 'a pleasurable 'subversion' without undermining the supremacy of the law'.
'The 'villainy' of Gabbar Singh is established through the gaze he casts on women too,' said Karen Gabriel
Thakur is the only character who is referred to by his upper caste surname and class status in the village. He represents the feudal system, a status quo that the film establishes.'Thakur's plight elicits sympathy and by sharing in his desire for vengeance, we are also seduced into participating in a reaffirmation of the feudal order,' writes Prasad in his book Ideology of the Hindi film: A historical construction.
Even Thakur's dismemberment serves a dual purpose. On the one hand, it represents the disabling of the apparatus of law and order, especially through its confrontation with criminality, represented by Gabbar (Amjad Khan). On the other hand, it also signifies a temporary breach of the coalition between the rural rich and the state. The film is also a nod to restoring the feudal system, which is equated with law, and the removal of all peripheral elements, represented by Gabbar.
Though Jai and Veeru are petty criminals, they are employed by the state, rendering them 'infra-legal' but not irredeemably criminal, unlike Gabbar. 'They are figures with whom the new proletarian and other disaffected audiences could identify. One of the truly astonishing features of the developing cinema culture of this period is the success with which criminality could be deployed as a metaphor for all forms of rebellion and disidentification,' writes Prasad. It is also what separates them from the dacoit Gabbar, another subaltern figure, who challenges the feudal system.
Thakur, who used to be a cop, temporarily sets aside legal protocols to deploy justice that the law cannot bring about. ' There is, of course, also the commentary that the legal and due processes in India are slow, by making the police arrive late in the movie, and the jailer, played by Asrani, a comical figure,' said Gabriel.
In Sippy's film, there is a restoration of order rather than rebellion, through the figures of Jai and Veeru. Since Jai and Radha's love story is impossible in the society they live in, Jai is eliminated while Radha also goes back to her spectre-like existence. Veeru assimilates himself into the society by ending up with Basanti (Hema Malini), and most likely, marrying her.
'The 'villainy' of Gabbar Singh is established through the gaze he casts on women too—how he makes Basanti dance or how he looks while Helen is performing in front of his men,' said Gabriel. Sholay's 'ideal' men are shown as homosocial and transformed by the women into being pillars of the state. Veeru and Jai want to be better human beings, even refusing Thakur's money, to avenge Gabbar. They start caring about the people in the village and their plight due to the dacoits.
The next few years, however, took a different route in scholarly ruminations over the movie.
Homoeroticism in Sholay
'If Amitabh Bachchan can express undying love for other men on the screen, all in the name of yaari, why can't they too indulge in a little mischief?' asked R. Raj Rao.
In the late 2000s, a wave of queer readings of Sholay began. Prominent Indian scholars focused on the camaraderie between Jay and Veeru, locating their interactions as one laden with sexual innuendo.
Scholars R. Raj Rao and Ashok Raw Kavi, in particular, focused on the lyrics of the song 'Yeh Dosti', celebrated as one of the best songs of friendship in Hindi cinema. They interpret the text as a declaration of homoerotic desire.
'One verse, openly sexual, says: 'I will take anything from you'— 'Tere Liye Lelenge.' 'Lelenge' is Hindi street slang for the phrase, getting fu****', writes Kavi. In a similar vein, Rao calls the 350cc motorbike a phallic symbol in his essay, 'Memories Pierce The Heart.'
According to Rao, Bachchan's popularity as a male brooding hero created a homoerotic bond with his young audience. 'The bond that Amitabh Bachchan formed with other male actors on the screen, complemented by the presence of an all-male audience that had gathered to watch him, engendered a sort of homoeroticism in the dark of the movie hall,' writes Rao.
He does acknowledge that men in India are open about physical proximity, and even show affection among themselves through physical contact. But when an actor like Bachchan sings the song with lyrics ' People see us as two, but actually we are one, o God, bless us, so we never separate, never wound one another,' it opens up possibilities. 'If Amitabh Bachchan can express undying love for other men on the screen, all in the name of yaari, why can't they too indulge in a little mischief?' asked Rao.
However, these readings have also been challenged as limited and inadequate and as a bit of academic retrofitting.
Mausumi Bhattacharya, in her paper 'Bromance in Bollywood: Is it dismantling homohysteria and homophobia?', interprets the friendship between the two as bromance with a homosocial subtext instead of homosexual or homoerotic. She uses Kavi and Rao's works to highlight that reading the song as a homoerotic text dilutes the essence of 'bromance' that exists in the social fabric of India.
'Being brothers-in-crime underlines the aspect of shared interest, a key criterion of bromance. Though much is not revealed about the background and upbringing that they belong to, the identical socio-economic condition can be presumed. They partake in crime together, get arrested together, and serve jail sentences together is all too evident from the film's narrative,' writes Bhattacharya.
Homoerotic or not, the song and the film established a definite career trajectory for Amitabh Bachchan.
Also read: Feroze Khan's Dharmatma released the same year as Sholay and Deewar. It still stood out
The Bachchan phenomenon
'As an actor, Amitabh's anger was never ugly. Other actors mix anger with arrogance. Amitabh's anger was mixed with hurt and tears,' said Javed Akhtar
When the film was released in 1975, it was promoted as a significant multi-starrer, and the first poster had passport-size images of the entire cast. They were placed in a line at the bottom with the wild brushstrokes of smouldering orange flames and the title occupying the rest of the frame.
'The first week was difficult for Sholay, creating a minor stir among the producers and distributors. Subsequently, another set of posters with Bachchan and Dharmendra prominently in the frame, along with Amjad Khan (as Gabbar Singh), were printed,' writes Ranjani Mazumdar, who teaches cinema studies at Jawaharlal University.
A few weeks later, Sholay was declared a success at the box office and Gabbar Singh its most popular character. A new set of posters was made with Amjad Khan as the dominant icon of the poster, clearly indicating the film industry's perception that Gabbar's persona had been successful with audiences.
Khan, while continuing to do many hit films, was nowhere close to creating the brand of films that Bachchan eventually did. From the occasional drunk and gentleman of Hrishikesh Mukherjee films, he developed his brooding persona in a full-fledged brand with the Salim-Javed movies, especially with Zanjeer (1973), Sholay and Deewar releasing in quick succession.
'Amitabh doesn't tower over his strapping co-star Dharmendra in Ramesh Sippy's Sholay, the groundbreaking 'curry Western' that confirmed his arrival as a new kind of superstar, a disaffected Angry Young Man who takes the law into his own hands. But with his short-waisted, long-legged physique, he can look downright gangly, and when strategically photographed, he becomes an honorary giant,' writes David Chute in his 2005 essay, 'The BIG B: The Rise and Fall and Rebirth of Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan'.
Javed Akhtar, one half of the writing duo Salim-Javed, gave his take on why Bachchan's portrayal of proletariat or subaltern characters became popular with the audiences.
'As an actor, Amitabh's anger was never ugly. Other actors mix anger with arrogance. Amitabh's anger was mixed with hurt and tears,' said the screenwriter and lyricist in Talking Films: Conversations on Hindi Cinema with Javed Akhtar. He does, however, note that the later Bachchan developed arrogance. But in the 1970s, he was very much the guy who won because he did not let the more privileged determine his worth.
Scholars have continued to read Sholay through multiple lenses to understand its undying appeal.
As Sholay enters its 50th year, its charm is far from over. Naman Kumar, a law student at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, was fascinated by the movie. His term paper for the contract law course looks at the 'promise' made by Jai and Veeru to Thakur to get him Gabbar, under the ambit of the then prevailing definition of contracts in Indian law.
Jai dies, but Veeru fulfills the promise. That, however, is not enough, under the laws of the times.
'In the contract scene between Thakur and Jai and Veeru, while Veeru completes the promise on behalf of Jai as well as himself after his death, due to the lack of consideration, it will only be a promise. Additionally, it can't be considered a contract because the object of the promise/contract is illegal, and renders it void,' writes Kumar.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)