Song and Dams
Duration: 00:13:02; Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1; Hue: 150.919; Saturation: 0.033; Lightness: 0.286; Volume: 0.390; Cuts per Minute: 10.271
Summary: Cinema as an apparatus of modernity takes on particularly interesting role in the history of India, with a number of films from the fifties and sixties being shot on dams. These film clips along with archival footage of Raj Kapoor speaking about the influence of Nehru on his films
Mother India:
The iconic classic of the fifties that established the everlasting theme of mother as nation and nation as mother which would be repeated in Ganga Jamuna, Deewar etc. This is the opening clip of the movie which is shot entirely on the construction site of a dam. Nargis who went on to become a member of the Rajya Sabha plays Mother India, and she is said to have hated Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchani because it showed very bleak images of India and its poverty. When asked what more positive pictures of India may be, she replied that films should show more images of the dams that were being constructed in India.
This clip begins with Nargis being asked by local leaders to inaugurate a dam in the village, and when she is garlanded it takes her through a flashback, into the memory of her struggle. In Mother India, we are shown how Nargis struggles after the death of her husband to raise her two children in the village. One of them becomes a rebel (against the feudal order). But because of his form of rebellion (he is a dacoit), she finally has to kill him and his blood symbolically fertilizes the soil. This shot is merged with that of the opening of the dam.
We are then brought to the sphere of the public memory, in which it is only through the suffering of people and the sacrifices, made by Mother India of her children that there can be any progress.
At this stage it would be interesting to quote Nehru, India's first prime minister who said that "Dams should be the temples of modern India". In 1948, speaking to the villagers who were about to be displaced by the Hirakud dam he also said that "if you are to suffer then you must suffer for the sake of the country" The two messages seem to ring a common tone and just as the private memory of Mother India is subsumed in her mythification. Similarly the narrative of the number of people who have been displaced by the large dams in India is subsumed under the twin trajectories of modernity and development of the nation state.
An interesting image to watch out for in this clip is towards the end of the song, when the leaders are persuading Nargis to inaugurate the dam, and her son is innocuously playing with a radio at the background.
Dacoit
Dams
History
Memory
Mother India
Nehru
Public Memory
Sacrifice
Suffering
The iconic classic of the fifties that established the everlasting theme of mother as nation and nation as mother which would be repeated in Ganga Jamuna, Deewar etc. This is the closing scene of the movie.
Nargis who went on to become a member of the Rajya Sabha plays Mother India, and she is said to have hated Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchani because it showed very bleak images of India and its poverty. When asked what more positive pictures of India may be, she replied that films should show more images of the dams that were being constructed in India.
This movie began with Nargis being asked by local leaders to inaugurate a dam in the village, and when she is garlanded it takes her through a flashback, into the memory of her struggle. In Mother India, we are shown how Nargis struggles after the death of her husband to raise her two children in the village. One of them becomes a rebel (against the feudal order). Her younger son, Birju has become a dacoit and has kidnapped the local landlord's daughter and is attempting to flee the village when his mother stops him, and when he refuses to give in, she shoots him and kills him, and his blood symbolically fertilizes the soil.
We are then brought to the sphere of the public memory, in which it is only through the suffering of people and the sacrifices, made by Mother India of her children that there can be any progress.
At this stage it would be interesting to quote Nehru, India's first prime minister who said that "Dams should be the temples of modern India". In 1948, speaking to the villagers who were about to be displaced by the Hirakud dam he also said that "if you are to suffer then you must suffer for the sake of the country" The two messages seem to ring a common tone and just as the private memory of Mother India is subsumed in her mythification. Similarly the narrative of the number of people who have been displaced by the large dams in India is subsumed under the twin trajectories of modernity and development of the nation state.
Sunil Dutt, who played the role of Birju went on to become a member of parliament with the Congress party.
Dacoit
Dams
History
Memory
Mother India
Nehru
Public Memory
Sacrifice
Suffering
Raj Kapoor on Nehru:
A clip from a films division documentary on Raj Kapoor, this sequence has Kapoor speaking about the influence that Nehru had on his films. He says that Nehru asked every Indian to do something for his nation, and the response of the film makers was to take up the challenge of articulating the idea of struggling for the nation within cinema.
Modernity
Nehru
Raj Kapoor
Shree 420
Bare Chested on the Rocks:
Dharmendra's passionate love song to the dam from the film Aadmi aur Insaan. The song is reminiscent of Manoj Kumar's Mere Desh ke Dharti form Upkaar, except that the figure of the citizen farmer is replaced by the citizen engineer. The landscape remains the same though, idyllic village belles and men working joyfully towards a new shining India.
Discovery of India
Nehru
Nehruvian modernity
dams
development
developmentalist state
journey
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