My Mumbai Mirror column last Sunday:
Oonche Log, a 1965 National Award winner, is a fascinating take on conflicting views of justice and punishment.
Hindi films, whatever else they may or may not be, have always been an ideological barometer of the section of the country that watched them. I have written, in previous columns, about the gradual disappearance of certain tropes once integral to the Hindi cinema universe. One of these is the faithful family retainer, an old domestic servant who could stand in for the nurturing mother, as well as sometimes offering ethical counsel in lieu of a father. Another such Hindi film fixture was the idea of duty - "farz" - as the defining trait of the good man. The hero could be as attractive and fun-loving as he wanted, a talented student or professional, admired for his wooing or fighting skills—but what really set him apart from the non-hero was his sense of responsibility: to parents and siblings, to the heroine, as well as to society and the nation at large.
Recently I stumbled upon a film that not just contained both these tropes, but did more with them than most: Phani Majumdar's Oonche Log. The film, which released in August 1965, caused barely a blip at the box office, but it won a National Award for Second Best Hindi Feature Film (the top prize that year went to Manoj Kumar's Shaheed).
Oonche Log is a rare film in several respects. The first striking fact is that it has no heroine. The focus is on a family, but one composed of men. The father - a retired army major who lost his sight in action - is played rather superbly by Ashok Kumar, with his particular combination of discipline and warmth setting the tenor of both the household and the film. Major Chandrakant has two sons—the elder Shrikant (played by Raaj Kumar) is a police officer, while the younger Rajnikant (played by Feroz Khan) is still a student. In the absence of a wife or mother, the home is affectionately tended to by Jumman Miyan: a short, bow-legged old servant who cleans, cooks and packs suitcases while simultaneously keeping up a steady stream of comic relief.
Chandrakant has strong views on things, and is deeply cognizant of both his rights and duties as a father: he is a proud, affectionate, even indulgent father, but expects his sons to live up to his high standards of honesty and obedience. But the concept of duty for Chandrakant is not merely filial: the seriousness with which professional responsibility is taken in the household is made apparent from the very beginning, when Chandrakant and Shrikant seem to be playing a sort of family game. We learn that when in uniform, they call each other "Major" and "Officer" respectively, and the son is allowed to interrogate the father. The vardi - as in a whole host of Hindi films - here works literally as a device to alter the relationships between family members.
The happy-go-lucky Rajnikant seems to be following the family tradition - he is a prize-winning NCC cadet - but it soon becomes clear that the vardi in his case serves more as mask than second skin. A smiling photograph of Feroz Khan, resplendent in his NCC uniform, ironically becomes a form of identification for his misdeeds.
This is a film about crimes and misdemeanours, and it pits two notions of justice against each other. The major and his elder son are very close, but their ideas of ethical punishment sit wide apart. Chandrakant may be a nationalist with a deep loyalty to the Indian state, but he is at heart a feudal patriarch. The most remarkable illustration of his belief system is provided by a sequence in which he decides that Jumman Miyan has insulted a guest, and must be punished: with three strokes of the Major's whip! There is an innate hierarchy here, and yet it is undercut by a personal code of equality. Chandrakant has no doubt that he has the right to administer punishment to his servant - and yet he does so on behalf of a friend whom Jumman takes lightly because he sees him as the Major's social inferior.
Meanwhile Shrikant comes to Jumman's defense, telling his father he has no right to do what he did, and suggesting forms of punishment that would be legitimate within a contractual relationship: docking the servant's pay, or even firing him. The major is not convinced. But later he feels guilty, and hands Jumman a compensatory fifty rupee tip.
As the film draws to a close, the same question arises again in a different context - can one's personal code of honour take precedence over the law? It is the exact question that animates not just our cinema, but the real-life court cases that have gripped us as a society: think of the Nanavati case, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago in the context of the recently released Rustom. Oonche Log's overt answer - and its last scene - seems to hand the baton to Inspector Shrikant: "Zyaati usoolon pe duniya kaayam nahi ho sakti [The world cannot rest on each man's personal principles]". And yet, as in so many Hindi films over so many decades, it is Major Chandrakant's position that the audience is invited to admire. The law is an ass.
Published in Mumbai Mirror, Aug 28, 2016.
Oonche Log, a 1965 National Award winner, is a fascinating take on conflicting views of justice and punishment.
Hindi films, whatever else they may or may not be, have always been an ideological barometer of the section of the country that watched them. I have written, in previous columns, about the gradual disappearance of certain tropes once integral to the Hindi cinema universe. One of these is the faithful family retainer, an old domestic servant who could stand in for the nurturing mother, as well as sometimes offering ethical counsel in lieu of a father. Another such Hindi film fixture was the idea of duty - "farz" - as the defining trait of the good man. The hero could be as attractive and fun-loving as he wanted, a talented student or professional, admired for his wooing or fighting skills—but what really set him apart from the non-hero was his sense of responsibility: to parents and siblings, to the heroine, as well as to society and the nation at large.
Recently I stumbled upon a film that not just contained both these tropes, but did more with them than most: Phani Majumdar's Oonche Log. The film, which released in August 1965, caused barely a blip at the box office, but it won a National Award for Second Best Hindi Feature Film (the top prize that year went to Manoj Kumar's Shaheed).
Oonche Log is a rare film in several respects. The first striking fact is that it has no heroine. The focus is on a family, but one composed of men. The father - a retired army major who lost his sight in action - is played rather superbly by Ashok Kumar, with his particular combination of discipline and warmth setting the tenor of both the household and the film. Major Chandrakant has two sons—the elder Shrikant (played by Raaj Kumar) is a police officer, while the younger Rajnikant (played by Feroz Khan) is still a student. In the absence of a wife or mother, the home is affectionately tended to by Jumman Miyan: a short, bow-legged old servant who cleans, cooks and packs suitcases while simultaneously keeping up a steady stream of comic relief.
Chandrakant has strong views on things, and is deeply cognizant of both his rights and duties as a father: he is a proud, affectionate, even indulgent father, but expects his sons to live up to his high standards of honesty and obedience. But the concept of duty for Chandrakant is not merely filial: the seriousness with which professional responsibility is taken in the household is made apparent from the very beginning, when Chandrakant and Shrikant seem to be playing a sort of family game. We learn that when in uniform, they call each other "Major" and "Officer" respectively, and the son is allowed to interrogate the father. The vardi - as in a whole host of Hindi films - here works literally as a device to alter the relationships between family members.
The happy-go-lucky Rajnikant seems to be following the family tradition - he is a prize-winning NCC cadet - but it soon becomes clear that the vardi in his case serves more as mask than second skin. A smiling photograph of Feroz Khan, resplendent in his NCC uniform, ironically becomes a form of identification for his misdeeds.
This is a film about crimes and misdemeanours, and it pits two notions of justice against each other. The major and his elder son are very close, but their ideas of ethical punishment sit wide apart. Chandrakant may be a nationalist with a deep loyalty to the Indian state, but he is at heart a feudal patriarch. The most remarkable illustration of his belief system is provided by a sequence in which he decides that Jumman Miyan has insulted a guest, and must be punished: with three strokes of the Major's whip! There is an innate hierarchy here, and yet it is undercut by a personal code of equality. Chandrakant has no doubt that he has the right to administer punishment to his servant - and yet he does so on behalf of a friend whom Jumman takes lightly because he sees him as the Major's social inferior.
Meanwhile Shrikant comes to Jumman's defense, telling his father he has no right to do what he did, and suggesting forms of punishment that would be legitimate within a contractual relationship: docking the servant's pay, or even firing him. The major is not convinced. But later he feels guilty, and hands Jumman a compensatory fifty rupee tip.
As the film draws to a close, the same question arises again in a different context - can one's personal code of honour take precedence over the law? It is the exact question that animates not just our cinema, but the real-life court cases that have gripped us as a society: think of the Nanavati case, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago in the context of the recently released Rustom. Oonche Log's overt answer - and its last scene - seems to hand the baton to Inspector Shrikant: "Zyaati usoolon pe duniya kaayam nahi ho sakti [The world cannot rest on each man's personal principles]". And yet, as in so many Hindi films over so many decades, it is Major Chandrakant's position that the audience is invited to admire. The law is an ass.
Published in Mumbai Mirror, Aug 28, 2016.
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