50 years since the Emergency: 5 essential films that captured the moment
These five essential films document, interrogate, mourn, and even mock the Emergency period. Some were shelved, others destroyed, and a few slipped through the cracks of censorship. Half a century later, their resonance feels cautionary still.
Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (2003)
Sudhir Mishra's Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi explores three young lives entangled in the political, emotional, and ideological turmoil of the Emergency. Set in the 1970s, it traces the intersecting paths of Siddharth, a Naxalite revolutionary; Vikram, an opportunistic fixer; and Geeta, a privileged woman torn between love and rebellion. Through their stories, the film delves into the disillusionment of a generation caught between the romanticism of revolution and the brutality of state power.
Kissa Kursi Ka (1977)
A blistering satire directed by Amrit Nahata, Kissa Kursi Ka is one of the most infamous victims of censorship during the Emergency. The film lampoons authoritarian politics and state propaganda through the character of Gangaram, a naive politician manipulated by the powerful and corrupt. With thinly veiled caricatures of Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi, the film's critique of dynastic rule and media control felt so pointed that all existing prints were ordered destroyed by the government.
Aandhi (1975)
Directed by Gulzar, Aandhi is a subtle yet potent film that uses a personal love story to reflect on political power and public perception. Though not explicitly set during the Emergency, it was released just as the political climate was tightening, and its protagonist — a strong, stoic female politician — bore such striking resemblance to Indira Gandhi that the film was banned midway through its theatrical run.
Piravi (1989)
Shaji N. Karun's Piravi portrays the loss and bureaucratic indifference during the Emergency. Inspired by the real-life disappearance of a student allegedly tortured and killed in police custody in Kerala, the film follows a father's futile search for his missing son. Piravi premiered at Cannes in 1989, where it won the Camera d'Or – Special Mention, and went on to garner acclaim at festivals in Locarno, Chicago, and London.
Nasbandi (1978)
I. S. Johar's Nasbandi takes direct aim at one of the most infamous legacies of the Emergency: Sanjay Gandhi's mass sterilisation campaign. A musical political satire, the film uses parody and slapstick to mock the coercive family planning drives, portraying a fictional India where every male citizen is hunted down for vasectomy. Johar cast lookalikes of major Bollywood stars to circumvent censorship, and the film's irreverence led to it being immediately banned upon release.
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The Print
10 hours ago
- The Print
Restoring J&K's statehood won't be enough. Kashmiris need to be treated like other Indians
A last bit of the story remains. In 2020, Ghulam Nabi's children were served notice by the government, ordering them to vacate the premises they were provided to protect them from terrorist attack. The High Court ordered Ghulam Nabi's release, but that wasn't quite the end of the story. In 2018, the elderly politician, battling cancer and on a trip home to arrange his daughter's wedding, was shot dead by terrorists. This time, the parties he'd served for decades — the Congress and the People's Democratic Party — denied their association with him, so they would not have to condemn the assassins. Late one night in 1978, in a nation illuminated by the end of the Emergency, police dragged Ghulam Nabi Patel out of his home in Srinagar's Batamaloo, and into the city's Central Jail. Leviathan still cast a long shadow in this corner of the republic, it became clear. 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A state of abnormality Kashmir has never been, in any sense of the world, allowed to be a normal state, with normal politicians and normal citizens. The state might have been the first to get rural radio sets, scholar Navnita Chadha Behera notes, but authorities were careful to disable their tuners with wire, so as to ensure only Radio Kashmir could be heard. There were elections to a constituent Assembly in 1951, true, but politician Syed Mir Qasim observed notices posted on walls, ordering people not to discuss politics. Thus, Kashmir was bound to the republic with terror and blood, not ideas or culture. For this, the long jihad Pakistan unleashed against Kashmir in 1947-1948, and has since continued without interruption, must be held responsible. Like many other regions in India, from the adivasi heartlands in central India to parts of the Northeast, democracy has struggled to grow in exceptionally harsh conditions. All blame, though, does not lie across the Line of Control. Elections that served to undermine democracy, the state-enabled subversion of the political system through corruption, the use of coercion unconstrained by law: All these, the story of Ghulam Nabi Patel should remind us, were Indian inventions. Today, the challenge isn't just to restore statehood in Kashmir. The task Indians need to embrace is to build a state that is Indian, an unremarkable part of our republic. Also read: Medieval Kashmir was confidently multicultural. And dazzled the world with art and ideas The death of a dream Eighty years ago, Prime Minister Abdullah had promised that a utopia would be built from the ruins of Partition and war. The Naya Kashmir manifesto — which, Andrew Whitehead reminds us, liberally helped itself to text from the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union — held out promises to redistribute feudal landholdings to the peasants, to uphold the rights of women, and introduce universal access to healthcare and education. The communist couple Freda Houlston and her husband Baba Pyare Lal Bedi wrote the manifesto with Abdullah's encouragement, though it is unclear if his commitment to communism was ever serious. To the great Kashmiri poet Ghulam Ahmad Mahjoor, it seemed Abdullah was leading the region out of the darkness: 'The ranges of the mountains shall yield gold,' he gushed, 'Pearls shall emerge out of the Wular lake.' Less than five years after Independence, though, the poet had encountered disillusionment. The reality of 'New Kashmir', it turned out, was one-party authoritarianism, electoral malpractice, and communalism. 'Freedom being of heavenly birth, can't move from door to door,' he acidly wrote, 'You'll find her camping in the homes of a chosen few alone.' How did this come about? The story has something to do with bad luck, scholar Aijaz Ashraf Wani has written, in an excellent survey of the roots of misadministration in Kashmir. Two successive bad harvests, in 1949-1950 and 1950-1951, created enormous rural discontent. Forced levies of crops from farmers, imposed in a desperate effort to stave off famine, sharpened the resentment, while shortages of food in the cities grew to alarming levels. The National Conference succeeded in dominating the Constituent Assembly, winning all 75 seats in the 1951 elections. This was only possible, though, because 45 out of 49 candidates of the Hindu-nationalist Praja Parishad party were barred from contesting, mainly on frivolous technical grounds, Behera has observed. The media was muzzled, and opponents were intimidated and imprisoned. Less than five years later, though, the relationship between Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Abdullah had begun to break down. The Praja Parishad, denied electoral space, started a mass movement seeking the full integration of Kashmir into India. Abdullah, in a 10 April 1952 speech in RS Pura, suggested it was becoming impossible to 'convince the Muslims of Kashmir that India does not intend to swallow them up.' The threat of war with Pakistan was alive, Nehru could not countenance this rebellion. 'I am afraid Kashmir is heading in an adverse direction,' Nehru warned in a 28 June 1953 letter. Following several failures to secure a rapprochement with Abdullah, the Intelligence Bureau of India facilitated an intra-party coup, which deposed him in September 1953. Also read: India needs to focus on winning in Kashmir, not fighting Pakistan The unfinished endgame The new regime of Prime Minister Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad came to power on the back of a unanimous vote of confidence from Jammu & Kashmir's Constituent Assembly, many of whose members were released from prison that very day. Early in 1954, the Union government restricted Kashmir's special status by passing constitutional amendments that cut back the state's autonomy. Long before Kashmir's special status ended, 260 of the 395 Articles in the Indian Constitution were already applicable in Jammu & Kashmir; the remaining 135 were identical provisions found in the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir. Like his predecessor and incarcerated friend Abdullah, Bakshi hoped development would subsume the urge for political agency and dialogue. The plan failed. In 1963, mass protests which followed the disappearance of a relic from the shrine of Hazratbal led the government to, quite simply, be swept aside. A parallel government, made up of Abdullah and the clerics Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq and Maulvi Mohammad Sayeed Masoodi, had to step in to restore order, regulate prices, and even direct traffic. The prominent Congress politician Ghulam Mohammed Sadiq, Behera records, wrote a sharp letter to Prime Minister Nehru: 'One of the beliefs, which have been commonly entertained in the past, is that the influence of Pakistan on the Kashmiri Muslims is fairly wide and firmly rooted. From this belief has stemmed a primordial fear of the people.' Few lessons, though, were learned from the bitter experience of 1963. Large-scale state repression of opponents continued. In one case, Supreme Court records show, politician Ghulam Nabi Zaki was held under the Preventive Detention Act of 1964, without the state government even troubling itself to serve him the grounds of his arrest. Later, the government argued that no grounds could be disclosed without compromising the security of the state. Then, in 1974, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi finally allowed Abdullah's release, subject to his signing an agreement which led him to merge the National Conference into her Congress party. This ceded the opposition space in Kashmir to Right-wing clerical forces, which would eventually form the political foundations of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, as well as their allied ethnic Kashmiri jihadist groups. Another rigged election in 1987 added to the frustrations of the opposition, providing an opportunity for jihadism to find large numbers of recruits. Like Indians everywhere, Kashmiris seek the right to speak their minds, to vote for who they wish, and to tune their radio sets and mobile phones to content of their choice. They resent arbitrary detentions, indiscriminate violence, and a security apparatus that seems to have been liberated from the laws of the republic. These demands cannot, and ought not, be made contingent on the behaviour of Pakistan's Generals. Kashmiris need to be embraced and treated like all other Indians. The Supreme Court could lay the foundations for a Kashmir that looks more like it did in 2019 — but that was no idyll. There is hard political work ahead that is needed if the wounds of eight decades are to be healed. Praveen Swami is contributing editor at ThePrint. He tweets with @praveenswami. Views are personal. (Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)
News18
19 hours ago
- News18
Farhan Akhtar Says Sholay's Original Ending Had Thakur Kill Gabbar – But Censors Cut It
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Hindustan Times
a day ago
- Hindustan Times
Student leader to guv: How Meerut College shaped Satyapal Malik's political journey
MEERUT The political journey of former governor and Union minister Satyapal Malik, 79, who passed away on Tuesday, began not in the corridors of Parliament but on the historic campus of Meerut College. A native of Hisawda village in Baghpat (then part of Meerut district), Malik's early foray into leadership was marked by his election as the first directly chosen student union president of Meerut College in 1969 at the age of 21 — a turning point that set the course for his public life. Satyapal Malik at the golden jubilee celebrations at Meerut College in 2017. (File Photo) Before Malik's tenure, student leadership positions at the college were filled through indirect elections, with the 'premier' being nominated rather than elected by student votes. That changed in 1965-66, when Malik was chosen as the first 'premier'. When the student union elections were discontinued in 1967, Malik led a fierce student protest, culminating in a gherao of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly in Lucknow and voluntary arrest by hundreds of students. This movement resulted in the reinstatement of direct elections in 1969 when Malik made history again by becoming the first student union president elected directly by students. Malik pursued his and LLB at Meerut College, which became his political nursery. His close associate and former MLC Jagat Singh recalls that during the Emergency, he, Malik, and Vedpal Singh were jailed together for their activism and later sent to separate jails on the basis of intelligence reports. He served as the governor of four states -- Bihar (2017), Jammu and Kashmir (2018), Goa (2019) and Meghalaya (2020). But his most impactful assignment commenced in August 2018, when he was named the governor of J&K. The tenure saw two significant events -- the 2019 Pulwama attack in which 40 CRPF personnel lost their lives, and the August 5, 2019 revocation of Article 370 and the division of the erstwhile state into two Union Territories— J&K and Ladakh. Malik was the last governor of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Malik's political roots run even deeper — he first gained prominence during the 1965–66 'Remove English, Promote Hindi' movement. Injured during a police lathicharge, Malik's leadership inspired a fiery student backlash that saw the local post office set ablaze. His rising popularity caught the eye of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh, who inducted him into the Bharatiya Lok Dal along with Jagat Singh. According to Arun Vashishtha, who served as the student union general secretary in 1973–74, Malik was a widely respected student leader. 'Even I used to seek political advice from him,' he recalled. Malik's popularity translated into electoral success when he was elected MLA from Baghpat in 1974. He went on to serve two terms in the Rajya Sabha and was elected to the Lok Sabha from Aligarh, and became a minister in the Union government. After joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Malik was appointed governor of several states. He also played a vocal role during the 1973 Lata Gupta student abduction case in Meerut, where his leadership of a powerful student agitation led to police-imposed curfew across the city. Charan Singh, deeply impressed by Malik, once referred to him as his political heir. Malik remained close to Singh for years, until a fallout led to his expulsion from the party. In 2017, decades after his college days, Malik returned to Meerut College as the Governor of Bihar to attend its 125th anniversary celebrations. There, he inaugurated the new History Department and museum building, calling the institution his 'political nursery' and fondly reminiscing about the days that shaped his ideology and career. Ancestral village remembers him as humble, simple leader A wave of grief swept through Hisawda village after the news of Satyapal Malik's passing reached here. The village, where Malik was born and raised, still houses his 300-year-old ancestral haveli- a structure that has witnessed his journey from a shy village boy to a prominent national leader. Locals fondly recalled him as a 'grounded and humble leader' and how he spent hours chatting on the haveli's stairs during his childhood and teenage years. Though his immediate family no longer resides in the village, several members of his extended family stay here. According to relatives, Malik had last visited the village in 2023, after his retirement from gubernatorial duties. During that emotional trip, he reconnected with childhood friends, acquaintances and local residents. Walking down the familiar bylanes, he had reportedly said with deep emotion, 'Yeh mitti meri taqat hai' (this soil is my strength). Elderly villager Virender Singh Malik, recalling his bond with the late leader, said: 'He was about six years younger than me, but always showed immense respect. Whenever there was any event in the village, he would ensure I was invited and honoured.' Reflecting on Malik's early years, he added: 'He was quite shy as a child. If someone said something to him, he would come to me with complaints. He also loved playing volleyball.' A senior family member, Satypal's uncle Bijendra Singh Malik, shared: 'He was extremely soft-spoken and had deep respect for his family members. His demise is an irreparable loss to our family.' According to his nephew Amit Malik, Satyapal received his early education at the local primary school in the village. He later cycled several kilometres daily to attend MGM Inter College in Dhikouli and eventually graduated from Meerut College. 'He was always disciplined and passionate about education. That left a lasting impression on the children in the village,' said Amit. Family member Manish Malik recalled that Satyapal Malik was the only child of his parents and had a deeply emotional and family-oriented nature. 'No matter how high a position he held, he never turned away a villager who came to meet him,' he said. Satyapal Malik's cousin Gyanendra Malik shared memories of his last visit to the village in February 2023. The village held a special 'chaupal' (community gathering) in his honour, where Malik had addressed the villagers, saying: 'I have always spoken up for farmers and labourers, and I will continue to do so.' For the residents of Hisawda, Malik's passing marks the end of an era. 'He was one of those rare leaders who, even while occupying high constitutional offices, spoke fearlessly for the common people. And he never distanced himself from his roots,' said villager Rajesh Singh. Satyapal Malik died at 1.12 pm on Tuesday at the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in Delhi after a prolonged illness, his personal staff said. He was in the ICU of the hospital for a long time, getting treatment for various ailments, the staff said.
