The one full feature film that the great Bengali director Satyajit Ray made in Urdu/English was “Shatranj Ke Khilari”. The movie is loosely inspired from a short satirical story by Premchand about the “Annexation of Awadh” in which 2 Awadhi Nawabs get so addicted to playing chess that they lose all interest in the affairs of the state and keep playing while the British complete the takeover of the state.
Although Ray is more known for the Bengali movies he made earlier in his career eg the Apu Trilogy, Charulata, Ghare-Baire, this particular movie remains the one which is easiest to appreciate for Non-Bengali people. Its also very different from the rest of Ray’s movies in terms of subject matter. His other work focuses narrowly, highlighting the individual and the emotional interplay between a few characters coming to terms with the changes around them. This one focuses more evenly on the actual changing world as well as the characters involved.
Most of the screenplay is in Urdu and was written by someone else but there are 2 parts which are in English and were written by Ray himself. These are the parts which in my opinion which really tower above the rest of the movie. Ray was an ambidextrous personality who in addition to making movies, wrote his own screenplays, composed his own original soundtracks, wrote delightful short stories and detective novels for children among other things.
Here is the first of these scenes in which General Outram (played by Richard Attenborough who later made the Oscar winning film Gandhi), the resident at Lucknow, has a conversation with his ADC about Nawab Wajid Ali Shah. The atmosphere, the sets, the dialogue and the acting are all so bloody realistic that one forgets one is watching a movie.The scene highlights the clash of cultures in extreme yet subtle contrast. The hard nosed, business-minded and professional British versus the soft, feminine, decadent yet culturally sophisticated Indians.
And here’s the second. Outram has a conversation with a British Doctor about the legal and practical challenges regarding the Company’s takeover of Awadh.
Start from the 2.05 minute mark.
why do you think there isn’t someone like Ray today? Were his films not viable commercially?
All of Ray’s films made good money.
Ray was possibly the last product of the great Bengali renaissance and came from a very cultured milieu. Even his father was well known in Bengal for running a children’s magazine. Infact for much of his early life Ray was known in Bangal as “his father’s son”.
Bollywood can never produce a Ray. Its full of uncultured, uncouth, lazy, idiotic, plagiarizing fools who are only out there to make quick bucks. And then the Indian media hypes their tired mediocrities so much that they start giving themselves big airs. Can this latest Shahrukh khan monstrosity really make to the US top 10? And if it somehow did, I suppose the non-Indian viewers must have been watching it as unintentional comdey rather than whatever it is supposed to be.
There have been extremely few Bollywood movies which don’t challege reason or threaten to short circuit the mind. I know what people will say. There was “Rang De Basanti”. Yeah right. Go wallow in shit and call it art.
“Shatranj Ke Khilari” is a beautiful movie and it is also a testament to the composite culture that existed in Awadh. As has also been pointed out in Qurratulain Hyder’s novels, there was very little “Hindu-Muslim” animosity in Awadh (at least among the elite classes) until the decade or so leading up to Partition. You just need to read “Aag Ka Dariya” (River of Fire) for this.
I recall in “Shatranj Ke Khilari” there’s a scene where Wajid Ali Shah is watching a dancer perform kathak and the song she is dancing to is “Kanha mai tosay wari jaoon”. Here’s a “Muslim” king listening to a song about Krishna and watching a dancing girl! Puts the lie to the BJP over-simplifaction about Muslims.
One of the saddest tragedies of Partition is the death of the composite culture. Though it survives to some extent in India, it is almost dead in Pakistan. It didn’t have to be this way….
It’s an interesting topic. Personally, I have never encountered this “composite” culture. So much the worse for me but I suspect not unusual for a Pakistan-raised person then thrown into the US. I do remember Omar correcting me when I said one would be hard-pressed to find a Muslim reciting certain lyrics when his own daughter was about to do so (!) so obviously some Pakistani-Americans have seen this composite culture. Cool, I guess? I seem to have learned a lot more about Greek, Jewish and Italian culture since I came to the US, but it’s a big country with lots of stories. . .
The composite high culture has probably begin to fracture into separate halves: Mughalophilia (as our proxy patriotism) and soft Hindutva (on the other side).
Sad really, Pakistan should really open it’s borders in every way since in a generation our Muhajir culture is probably going to anyway assimilate (their intermarriage rates are fairly high methinks).
Yes, from my limited exposure I think Muhajir culture is about one generation from extinction.
We should probably import more from India in that case. Or at least repatriate our stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh, almost a million of them but then again that would explode Karachi but millions of Afghans/Pathans flooding Karachi doesn’t matter. #pakiracism
Finally it’s incredibly to think how the Indian Muslim, who are the same people, have done so differently. The Muhajir Urdu speaker built and defined a national template that remains the core/heartland of Pakistan, and has achieved heights fairly unparalleled. The Indian Muslim who stayed back (it’s not as though the entire Indian Muslim elite decamped to Pakistan) are fairly unremarkable except for the underworld and Bollywood.
It reminds me of the Israeli/Diasporic Jew dichotomy where Israel “reinvigorated” the returning Jew into the new man (or something such). Maybe there’s something in the water, turns us all into Indus Man (LOL)
Sahar,
You would have encountered the “composite culture” if you studied Indian Classical Music (ICM), Indian classical dance or were intimately familiar with Urdu poetry. Those are pretty much the main places where the Hindu and Muslim cultures came together to create a new beautiful product. This is also called “Ganga Jamuni” culture.
Here is an example of the “composite” culture:
Ustad Neseeruddin Saami in Lahore singing in
Raga Adana, Lanka Charho Raam at
the National College of Arts for the Lahore Music Forum.
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“Finally it’s incredibly to think how the Indian Muslim, who are the same people, have done so differently. The Muhajir Urdu speaker built and defined a national template that remains the core/heartland of Pakistan, and has achieved heights fairly unparalleled. The Indian Muslim who stayed back (it’s not as though the entire Indian Muslim elite decamped to Pakistan) are fairly unremarkable except for the underworld and Bollywood.”
Seriously? Heights unparalleled for Muhajirs? In comparison to APJ Kalam, Aziz Premji, Tariq Ansari, MJ Akbar, Yusuf Hamied, Abdul Hameed, Lt Gen MA Zaki (to mention just a few “unremarkable” Indan Muslims?
Ah, good to see our “sleeper agents” prospering!
I know you are most probably joking but former APJ Abdul Kalam is a national hero for most of the Indians including IHs, ironically (or not) he is most criticized by sec-lib class and Muslim leadership (religious + political + intellectual)
Baba Allauddin Khan, Ustad Vilayat Khan, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan,
Ustad Bismillah Khan, Ustad Amir Khan, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, Ustad Rashid Khan, Ustad Sabri Khan… LOL
Not to forget Ustad Salman Rashdie, of course.
There is a saying in Tamizh: the cat closes its eyes and thinks the sun has set…
“Finally it’s incredibly to think how the Indian Muslim, who are the same people, have done so differently. The Muhajir Urdu speaker built and defined a national template that remains the core/heartland of Pakistan, and has achieved heights fairly unparalleled. The Indian Muslim who stayed back (it’s not as though the entire Indian Muslim elite decamped to Pakistan) are fairly unremarkable except for the underworld and Bollywood.”
——
There may well be some truth to all this ‘achieving heights fairly unparalleled’ business. However, we should also note the following point VERY carefully:
1) The leaders of our Muhajir community recently went to India to see if they could get asylum there in case they were attacked again by what they call our ‘Punjabi Army’. Readers should look this up to satisfy themselves. Search ” Muhajir Political Asylum India ” on the internet and check the source reports.
2) On the other side, the leaders of the Urdu-speakers ‘left behind’ in India have never come to our country and asked for asylum. We slammed the door on their faces in 1951 and it has stayed firmly closed since then. Apart from the recent special-asylum offer by Rehman Malik & Hafiz Saeed to Shahrukh Khan, the Urdu-speakers in India seem to be largely content trying to solve their problems within the boundaries of their own country.
Could it be, I ask myself, that our Muhajir community, having once “‘achieved heights fairly unparalleled” are now afraid of falling down from these ‘unparalleled’ heights? In other words, have they been the victims of their own success? Have the Native Pakistanis been just too good to the Muhajirs? Have the Muhajirs benefitted at the expense of Native Pakistanis? Readers can also look up ” Quotas Sindhi Rural Muhajir Urban ” to learn more about this issue.
Sorry to strike a IH note here but since I hail from Lucknow, Nawabs of Awadh were most probably exception than the norm, I guess this might be because they were Shias, “relatively” the relation between Shias and Hindus were better than Sunnis and Hindus.
Even then it should be noted that for most part this Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb was based on unequal relationship between Muslims as rulers class and Hindus as servile class, this most probably has something to do with the fact that Islam has a strong element of political supremacism, I seriously doubt for Muslim identity even of Indian sub continent variety can reconcile an equal relationship with the Hindu, as the example of Iqbal and Jinnah Saheb shows
Gaurav,
if you forget politicians for a moment–especially Post-1947 politics, you cannot deny that “Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb” led to the flowering of Hindustani Classical Music, Kathak dance, and Urdu poetry. If these things have any meaning for “Internet Hindus”, then you cannot downplay the positive impacts of the Muslims. If they don’t have any meaning for you, that’s a different matter.
“The hard nosed, business-minded and professional British versus the soft, feminine, decadent yet culturally sophisticated Indians.”
I agree to a certain extent, but note that the softness and the femininity of the King is the British person’s point of view. Even desis who grew up in places like UK and the US often tend to see a masculine vs. feminine divide between the two cultures, whereas Indians/Pakistanis/Bangladeshis themselves don’t see it that way.