Film Heritage and History

Dilip Kumar’s Jugnu & the moral panic in newly independent india.

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While the masses loved it, the elite were riled up by Jugnu’s provocative framing of sexuality and depiction of college as a space for free intermingling of sexes. Several provincial governments banned the film, forcing the distributors to chop it drastically to rid it of ‘vulgarity’.

The singing star Noor Jehan’s depature for Pakistan with her husband Shaukat Hussein Rizvi, who was the producer-director of Jugnu, may have contributed to lack of sympathy for the film among decision makers in India.

ATIKH RASHID

Jugnu (Firefly, 1947) was an important film in many respects. It was the first box office success for Dilip Kumar, then a newbie in the industry, and the last film of singing star Noor Jehan before she permanently left Bombay for Karachi. Jugnu was peculiar in another regard. It was among a few films that were conceptualised and made in pre-independence India but were released in theatres after the dawn of Independence and the pain of Partition.

The response to Jugnu – the love it received from the masses, the ‘moral panic’ it evoked among the elite, and the punitive action it invited from the young government – was an outcome of the time of transition that the country was going through. It also set the tone for the censorship project that Independent India would embark on –aiming to protect the ‘fragile morality’ of the ‘gullible masses’ – and continues to obsess itself with even today.

The present-day audience would likely judge Jugnu as a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy (which like many latter films of Dilip Kumar ends in a tragedy) that ticks some boxes and misses a few. The film produced and directed by Shaukat Husain Rizvi, then-husband of Noor Jehan, has a simple story. Dilip Kumar’s Suraj and Noor Jehan’s Jugnu study in separate colleges located on the same campus and fall in love. Jugnu is an orphan and Suraj is the only son of an ostensibly rich raisaheb who has accumulated debt. The family has planned to marry Suraj to a girl from a wealthy family hoping to receive dowry that will end their financial troubles. The circumstances mean that the lovers can’t marry each other and must feign unfaithfulness. The mutual heartbreak, ultimately, leads the couple to their tragic ends.

Those against the film objected to, among other sequences, this scene in which Jugnu and Suraj indulge in a flirtatious chit chat hiding behind a sofa in the latter’s home.

Although a mixed bag in terms of performances, the film is salvaged by the comedic episodes in the first half and a couple of good songs in the latter.

While the newspaper advertisements from the time tell us that the film, branded as ‘The Song of the Youth’, was celebrating ‘Silver Jubilees’ in multiple cities, it was also evoking an adverse response from the elite for depicting ‘college’ as a place of the intermingling of the sexes, and its provocative framing of youthful sexuality. It portrayed Indian youngsters as carefree romantics for whom the only thing that mattered was the success and failure in love.

Another topic of contention, repeatedly raised by its critics, was its depiction of a romance between the ladies’ hostel matron, played by Ruby Myers, and a professor from the boys’ college. There were still others who blamed it for slandering India’s higher education institutions by not focussing at all on learning activities that, ideally, should go on in a college.

The song ‘Loot Jawani Phir Nahin Aani’ performed by Latika in the film as part of the college drama was a major point of criticism. Many objected to the lyrics as well as “vulgar”, “nude”, “courtesan-like” performance by Latika.

A peek into the archive tells us that popular periodicals like Filmindia were routinely receiving letters from its English speaking readers complaining about Jugnu. While some wondered how such a ‘vulgar film’ was cleared by the Censor Board. Others demanded that it should be re-examined. Readers would reproduce the lyrics of an entire song (Loot Jawani…) to prove their point of Jugnu’s indecency and its portrayal of college girls as ‘courtesans’. Even Indians residing in Singapore and Colombo wrote with angst that the film was spreading the “wrong impression about college life in India”.

“Believe me, Mr Patel. The whole audience was exasperated – barring a few perhaps – when they saw a college girl dancing with the full garb of vulgarity in a drama staged in the college… Patrons of Indian films here like good stories with melodious songs and not historical distortions and semi-nude dances,” wrote M T Piyaseela from Colombo, in a letter published in the October 1948 issue.

Shiv Das Singh, a student from Jodhpur, feared that Jugnu might affect his educational prospects. “What would be the effect on our parents’ minds seeing the film…Will our parents then be ready to allow us to continue our studies further?” he wondered.

After a successful north India run, Jugnu was released at Bombay’s Capitol Cinema on October 1, 1948 but was pulled off the theatre within four weeks “in the midst of its triumphant run” after Filmindia editor Baburao Patel wrote a scathing review headlined ‘Jugnu: A dirty, disgusting, vulgar picture!’.

“Jugnu…tells us that college life in India is nothing more than a long sex hunt in which boys chase girls, explore their hand bags, rob their tiffin boxes and sing suggestive love ditties while making vulgar gestures; while girls sigh about heavily, seduce boys to tea, pimp for their friends, puncture their cycle tyres and sing songs of frustrated love,” Patel wrote in the review, adding, “no decent exhibitor with any pride for his profession or any self-respect should exhibit it in his theatre.”

Interestingly, Patel was Noor Jehan’s neighbour in Oomer Park, Warden Road, Bombay.

In fact, Patel informs us in the review, that he had sent an ‘advanced copy’ of the write up to the then Bombay Home Minister Morarji Desai who watched the film on October 26 and issued a ban three days later under Section 21 of General Clauses Act of 1897. This led to a lot of protests from the film producers and distributors for the ‘arbitrary action’ by the Home Minister on a film already cleared by a ‘full board’ of the censors, but to no avail.

The romance between hostel matron played by Ruby Myers and a professor from boy’s college was a major cause of the films popularity among the youth. It, on the other hand, also added to Jugnu‘s trouble with the government.

After Bombay, several other provincial governments banned the film. The distributor – Bharat Pictures, Akola – was forced to re-submit the film for certification where it was chopped off significantly. Records show that when the film obtained its first Censor certificate from the Bombay Board of Film Certification on July 7, 1947, its total length was 14,093 feet. After revisions made following the ban, it was reduced to 11,559 feet. In terms of the run time, the film lost 28 minutes of its original duration of 156 minutes. The film returned to the screens after a few months in truncated form.

In many ways, the extent of criticism that Jugnu received seems disproportionate to the provocation contained in the film. This response can be understood in two contexts. Firstly, the elite discourse in the newly-Independent India was focused on ‘nation building’, a project that would require the energies and services of the youth. Jugnu’s celebration of youngsters as carefree lads inclined to shrug off responsibility in favour of romantic pursuits did not go well with the government and others with a say.

Secondly, the decision by the film’s female lead Noor Jehan and producer-director Rizvi to choose Pakistan over India left little sympathy for them and their product among the Indian elite. For example, in its review of Jugnu, Patel made a misplaced and far-fetched connection between director Shaukat Rizvi and Qasim Rizvi, the head of extremist, separatist Razakar movement in Hyderabad.

In the pages of Filmindia, which was the most powerful film magazine at the time, Muslim filmmakers who were travelling between India and Pakistan in the fog of the Partition (some of which decided to stay back in India) are repeatedly referred to as ‘fifth columnists’ who need to be watched to ensure that “they do not use the powerful medium of the films” for nefarious purposes.

“The censors must watch carefully such anti-social and anti-religious activities of these fanatic producers who live with us to stab us from day to day,” warns an editorial in the November 1948 issue of Filmindia.

Notwithstanding the legal and circumstantial impediments, Jugnu went on to become one of the biggest films of the time and launched Dilip Kumar’s career in the true sense. In fact, it was a large poster of Jugnu put up in Bandra that broke the news to Ghulam Sarwar ‘Agha’, the fruit seller from Peshawar, that his son Yusuf had entered the film business and had become a star.

(This story appeared on indianexpress.com as ‘How Dilip Kumar’s Jugnu lost 28 minutes to confused morality of a young India’ on July 17 2021)

Film Heritage and History, Long Reads

Why has IFFI failed to make a name for itself despite being the oldest film festival in Asia?

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Although it has been around for 67 years, the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) lacks an identity of its own. In the late 1970s, efforts were made to distinguish IFFI on the world map by establishing it as a forum for the cinema of the developing world, but the plan was soon abandoned.

ATIKH RASHID

Every year about 2000 film festivals are held across the globe. Also, every year, scores of new ones come onto the scene and same number, or more, disappear into oblivion. Considering this, marking 67 years of existence and celebrating 50 editions is not a mean feat for any film festival. Therefore, it is a cause of pride for India that the state-funded International Film Festival of India (IFFI) successfully held its golden jubilee edition in Goa which concluded on Thursday.

But this shouldn’t be a cause of contentment. Is it not bothersome that IFFI, born in 1952 when it was the first such event anywhere in the East, doesn’t hold a place of prestige on the global film festival map? In fact, within Asia it is not counted among the most important festivals, despite being the eldest in the room, and much younger festivals – such as Busan International Film Festival which started in 1996 – acquiring greater importance in the international circuit.

In recent decades, state patronage has not been an issue. The Union Government and State Government of Goa (since it was moved there in 2004) have been putting in big money into the annual event. For the last 4-5 years, as much as Rs 20 crore is being spent on each edition by the two governments. The prize money given to winners at IFFI is also big – much higher than those given at several most prestigious film festivals in the world. Despite all this, IFFI is failing to click globally.

The reason for this failing, it appears, could be that IFFI has failed to create an identity for itself which will help it stand apart from the rest. In the highly competitive world of film festivals, IFFI doesn’t hold a promise to provide to the foreign filmmakers, international press and cinephiles, something that they will find nowhere else.

Perhaps, this is the reason that apart from invited (and paid for) foreign guests, the international community has turned its back on the event. In recent years, there have been no efforts to work on this identity lacuna. The focus, instead, has been on pomp and show that has started to put-off even the local film lovers.

Efforts to give IFFI a third world identity

It’s not the case that the organisers of IFFI were always blissfully unaware of its ‘identity’ lacuna. In fact, in the late 1970s when IFFI was still holding its early editions, the then festival director took steps to help IFFI develop a distinct personality. IFFI walked on that path for a couple of years but strayed soon with changes in priorities of the parent ministry.

Raghunath Raina, a bureaucrat belonging to Indian Information Service (IIS), became the Director of Film Festivals (DFF) in August 1978 and took upon himself to create a place of prominence for IFFI on the global festival map. His belief was that IFFI will gain importance on the world stage only if it offered something unavailable elsewhere.

Former Director of Film Festivals (DFF) Raghunath Raina (third from the right) receives for foreign guests at Delhi airport during 7th IFFI held in January 1979. Credit: National Film Archive of India.

To achieve this goal, he planned to turn IFFI into a prominent forum for ‘third world’ cinema which would attract films and filmmakers from developing nations from across the world. As per him, if IFFI could hold such a promise, it would attract international delegates and the press by providing an opportunity to them to “keep abreast with trends in the cinemas of the people constituting 2/3rd of the world population”. He did make the efforts in that direction during 7th, 8th and 9th editions of the festivals held between 1979 and 1981 when he headed the DFF.

National Film Archive of India. Former Director of Film Festivals (DFF) Raghunath Raina (third from the right) receives for foreign guests at Delhi airport during 7th IFFI held in January 1979. Credit: National Film Archive of India.
“My concern was not only to organise a successful and interesting festival but also to imbue it with a distinctive character of its own,” Raina wrote in an essay ‘IFFI-An Introspective Study’ included in the book ’70 Years of Indian Cinema’ published in 1984. “There had often been talk of a third world bias (between 1979-81) but this was largely an expression of intent. I clearly saw that if the festival became a forum for the third world cinema, it would acquire a personality and importance of its own. As such, it would also fit in with the country’s role as a founder-member of the non-aligned movement and as a leading protagonist, of the aspirations of the developing nations,” he wrote.

As part of his plan, in 7th edition of IFFI held in 1979, he invited Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene to head the international jury – a first for an African filmmaker at IFFI and a deliberate attempt was made to include a record number of third world films in both competitive and documentary film sections. Also, a symposium on ‘Cinema of the Developing Countries’ was held during the festival where African filmmakers criticised India’s policy of exporting films to fellow developing countries without importing any from them. India, they alleged, thus was following a policy of cultural imperialism much like the USA.

Raina continued his attempt in this direction in the 1980 festival (Filmotsav) held in Bangalore and 1981 when it returned to Delhi as a competitive festival. In fact, he had proposed that the international competition at IFFI should be reserved only for films from developing countries. The government’s hesitance to do this shelved this plan. Soon after the government at the centre changed, and the responsibility of organising the next edition of IFFI was handed over to National Film Development Corporation (NFDC).

In the essay mentioned above, Raina laments that his aim of giving a special identity to the IFFI remained unrealised and the festival has suffered subsequently due to this.

“Many elements of the Nehru dream have withered away; others remain only in form. The Indian (film) festival is one of them. It will continue to be so unless it is given an identity and is organised by people with a commitment to the film promotion and a passion for cinema,” wrote Raina.

IFFI is losing its patrons

Data obtained by The Indian Express from Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG), which looks after the logistical part of the festival organisation, shows that IFFI hasn’t only failed to attract international crowd, but it has been losing even its local patrons in recent years.

As per the data pertaining to delegate registrations for IFFI between 2007 and 2018, the number of delegates coming for IFFI went up from 2007 to 2014 but has since seen a sharp decline until the recent edition where, perhaps due to the hype of 50th edition, the numbers have somewhat improved.

International Film Festival of India Golden jubilee edition of International Film Festival of India concluded in Goa on Thursday. Credit: International Film Festival of India.
IFFI’s 2007 edition had attracted 3,713 delegates -including those from Goa and outside – which increased with every passing year and reached 10,054 in 2014, highest in recent past. However, in 2015 only 6196 delegates attended the event and the number came further down in 2016 to 5261 and slid further to 5020 in 2017. In 2018, the number improved marginally to 5214. Although officials number for the 2019 edition – which concluded on Thursday – are not yet available, the organisers said that around 6300 paid delegate passes and 1000 free student passes were distributed. The number is considerably lower than the 2014 count of 10,054.

Officials with Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG), the Goa Government unit responsible for organising the festival along with DFF, are hoping that this number would go up with their efforts to add more venues and experiments with online ticketing. “With more convenience, the delegate count will increase in future editions,” said Subhash Phal Dessai, Vice Chairman, ESG.

Can appointing a ‘Creative Director’ help IFFI?

Raina, a bureaucrat himself, had blamed the lack of a ‘sustained vision’ and IFFI’s bureaucratic setup or the festival’s failure to develop a personality.

“…The absence of a sustained vision on the part of the authorities and the vagaries of a system that grants hegemony to transient, generalist bureaucrats over people with a commitment to and expertise in film promotion, never gave the IFFI a chance to develop a distinctive personality of its own,” he wrote.

Rain’s comment remains true even after 35 years. In its present organisational setup, the Festival Director is a bureaucrat who occupies the post of Director of Film Festivals (DFF) for a maximum period of three years. He/She may or may not have any background in cinema before he occupies this post. And more often than not, even if he gains some expertise on the subject– in case he’s genuinely invested in the festival’s future – he’s out of there. The steering committee of the festival, which has a mix of bureaucrats, filmmakers and politicians, is appointed afresh every year and hence can’t think beyond the upcoming edition. A look at the names of filmmakers on the committee makes it apparent that, in a majority of cases, their political views seem to have played a key role in the appointment process rather than their potential to contribute to the event and its future.

There has been a long-standing demand that IFFI should get a ‘Creative Director’, someone who would have real expertise in film festival organising, cinema and who could provide a sustained vision to the festival by holding the position for a longer duration. However, there has been no progress on that front. In fact, the issue was discussed this year too at the first meeting of the steering committee held by Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar. The minutes of the meeting, obtained by Express using Right To Information, show that the suggestion was turned down after a member pointed out that “DFF is competent enough to look into creative aspects and the idea of a Creative Director may not be necessary.”

It appears that the beneficiaries of the present setup do not want it to change although it is costing the festival dearly.

Long Reads

When india’s first film festival was suspected to be a ‘communist ploy’

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Held in 1952, when cold war anxieties were on a high, the film festival prompted the American government to send a delegation headed by Hollywood director Frank Capra to “uncover” the conspiracy and hinder its success. 

Hollywood director Frank Capra with Hindi film star Dev Anand in Mumbai during first International Film Festival of India (IFFI) held in 1952.

ATIKH RASHID

AN international film festival was still a novelty when India decided to hold one in 1952. In fact, the first International Film Festival of India (IFFI) held in January-February 1952 in four (now metro) cities was the first such event held anywhere in Asia. There were only eight international film festivals in the world at that time and all of them were in Europe, including the oldest in Venice.

So, when India, then a recently decolonised “third-world” country, announced its plans to host an international film festival, it led to varied reactions from within and outside the country. Among these, and most curious of them all, was the American response.

Apparently, the US authorities suspected the festival was a “communist shenanigan of some kind” and sent a delegation to “uncover” the conspiracy and hinder its success. Those were the initial years of the Cold War and both the USSR and the US were trying to influence the non-aligned countries in their favour to nullify any political or cultural influence exerted by their rival superpower. According to film historian Amrit Gangar, both the superpowers had an eye on newly independent India and IFFI 1952 provided a useful platform to somehow influence the India’s global-political stance. He says, “Only a few months prior to IFFI, an Indian film delegation was in the USSR where it had received a grand reception in the presence of the well-known Russian filmmaker Vsevolod Pudovkin. Soon after IFFI ended, Indian film personalities like Nargis and Raj Kapoor were invited to the US where President (Harry S.) Truman met them at the White House.” Significantly, among the 12 visiting delegations, Russia’s was the largest, with 13 members, headed by then deputy minister of cinematography N Semenov.

The responsibility to head the American delegation fell upon celebrated Hollywood director Frank Capra, known for films such as It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and It Happened One Night (1934). Capra biography The Name Above the Title (1971) gives us details of this “assignment” came to him and how he successfully completed it.

In December 1951, Capra writes, he received a call from an officer of the US state department informing him that the US ambassador in New Delhi needed Capra’s services and wanted him to travel to India for a few weeks.

“Frank, listen. Chester Bowles, our ambassador to India, is worried. He thinks he smells a rat in the International Film Festival of the motion pictures that Indians are holding in a week. Bowles thinks the festival is a communist shenanigan of some kind, but he doesn’t know what. Here’s where you come in,” Capra quotes the official as saying, adding that the ambassador had specifically asked for Capra as he wanted a “freewheeling guy” to take care of American interest on his own. “I want Capra. His name is big here (in India), and I have heard he is quick on his feet in an alley fight,” Bowles had apparently told the officer.

At this time, Capra was in the midst of a personal challenge as well. Only a few weeks ago, the US army had denied his security clearance to participate in a top-secret conference pertaining to warfare technologies, after finding some “derogatory information” on him. This essentially meant that the American establishment was questioning his loyalty to the country. This deeply hurt Capra, who got busy in trying to clear his name. When the proposal for the India tour came up, he proposed that he would only go to India if his name is cleared. His wish was met, and he embarked on the journey. He was to head the delegation, with Harry Stone of the Motion Picture Association of America and Floyd E Brooker, the audiovisual expert as members. All three were briefed by the US state department officials with instructions to Capra: “Just play it by ear, Frank, and report to Ambassador Bowles.”

Frank Capra (seated, first row, second from left) with Jawaharlal Nehru at the Delhi inauguration of IFFI 1952 at National Physical Laboratory


As Capra records, for several days after his arrival in Bombay, he groped in the dark about what he was expected to do and what “the communist conspiracy” was. Since Ambassador Bowles was on a trip to Nepal, Capra couldn’t discuss “the matter” with him to get clarity. When Capra approached other US officials based in India, he found that they were as clueless: “When you find out, tell us.”

On his fifth day in India, Capra met Baburao Patel, the boisterous and boastful editor of filmindia magazine, who said something about the festival which gave Capra a “hint of what was bugging Bowles”. Patel reportedly told him that IFFI was a plot by communists in the Indian film industry to open doors to Russian films which were being kept out of the country by censors as these films were “too political and inflammatory”. “So local film Reds hatched the festival idea to ensure showing of dozens of Russian and Chinese films” in four cities as an appeal to the people of India to “breach India’s film barrier using the festival as a Trojan horse”, Capra wrote in the diary, published in the autobiography.

What Capra did not know was that Patel himself was an anti-communist worried about an imminent “communist takeover” of India. “A blind man can see that our country is going to have a Red future unless the democratic forces and institutions in the country take active and aggressive steps,” Patel wrote in an editorial published in the April 1952 edition of filmindia. Patel was also mighty displeased with the idea of the festival. Throughout filmindia’s coverage of it, he called it “International Fools’ Festival”.

Having thus received a “confirmation” from Patel, Capra gave an ultimatum to the festival organisers that in case of any “pro-commie” speech at the festival, he will “leave, taking along all the American films and holding a press conference to explain (reasons) of my leaving”. Throughout his Bombay and Madras stay, he tried making speeches asking the filmmakers to guard themselves against “totalitarian system”.

He complained about the Russians to Indira Gandhi knowing fully well that “it would get to the Prime Minister”. Capra would meet Nehru when the latter inaugurated IFFI’s Delhi edition. “Charming, simple man. Could be the most important man alive today,” Capra noted in his diary.

Capra and other foreign delegates paying tribute to Mahatma Gandhi at Raj Ghat during first IFFI’s Delhi leg. They are accompanied by Gandhi’s grandchildren including Gopalkrishna Gandhi (extreme right) who as then 7.

This anxiety about the communist ploy, sometimes, took hilarious turns.

On one instance, when the guests were to visit Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial at Raj Ghat, the flower wreath that Capra and his colleagues had ordered turned out very thin. Capra was convinced that “the Reds had bought them all up”. According to his version, the American delegation then devised a plan to “outsmart” communists by taking along two of Gandhi’s grandchildren (through Capra’s recent acquaintance with Devdas Gandhi). The plan worked — the event got great publicity. That day he noted in his diary: “This should kill the Reds”.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi, one of the “grandchildren” who visited Raj Ghat with Capra, was seven then. “It seems incredible that anyone could be as naive as to think, say and do what Mr Capra sets down. It all seems like something out of Alice In Wonderland,” Gandhi told The Indian Express.

Capra though, wrote in his autobiography, when Ambassador Bowles returned, he was “pleased with his report”.

This article appeared in the print edition with the headline ‘A Plot to Unravel’ on November 17 2019. I can be accessed here.

 

Film Heritage and History

From reel to rail: How celluloid prints of Bollywood movies end up in Indian Railways’ lost property offices

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NFAI officials say celluloid prints were often dumped by producers and distributors after they lose all their financial value. After spending months, or years, in lost property offices of Indian Railways many of the prints end up at the National Film Archive of India.

Among the films that have made their way to Natinal Film Archive in this manner include national award winners such as Chandni Bar and even blockbusters such as Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and Munnabhai MBBS.

ATIKH RASHID

NOT all films have happy endings. A few have endings sadder than others. An RTI query by The Sunday Express shows that as many as 308 films contained in over 3,000 reels have made their way to the National Film Archives of India (NFAI) over the years, after spending long durations in the lost property offices of Indian Railways across the country.

NFAI officials say these are film reels that have been dumped by producers and distributors as these no longer hold any financial value for them. The films include national award winners such as Chandni Bar and even blockbusters such as Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and Munnabhai MBBS.

Although most of the reels the NFAI has received are of Hindi films, there are Malayalam, Marathi, English, Telugu, Kannada and Russian films as well. These are feature films and documentary films, and newsreels broadcast by Doordarshan in the 1980s.

Says NFAI Director Prakash Magdum, “They (the producers and distributors) book a parcel with the film reels to addresses that don’t exist, or no one comes to collect it at the office. These lie with the parcel office and then finally end up in the Lost Property Department of Railways, where they lie for weeks or months.”

In the old days, when films used to be shot on nitrate, filmmakers would sell the reels that were returned to them after their theatrical run was over to dealers, who would extract silver from them. From the 1990s, most of the films started getting shot in acetate and polyester, which don’t yield the producers any significant financial remuneration. At most the film can be melted and used in bangle manufacturing. Since 2011-2012, filmmaking and distribution has gone almost entirely digital, making physical prints redundant.

With space at a premium, the major reason producers want to get rid of the reels is that they don’t have place to store them.

R Y Joshi, the Deputy Chief Commercial Officer with Western Railway, from where a majority of the reels have come to the NFAI, says, “I remember years ago there was a circular from the Railway Board concerning the unclaimed film reels. It said that if that we have any unclaimed film reels, we should get in touch with the NFAI as they have some use for them. So we follow that instruction.”

The RTI reply shows that the NFAI has received reels from Mumbai (Western Railway), Visakhapatnam, Thiruvananthapuram, Bengaluru and Gaya. The NFAI preserves these films for archival purposes.

Director Magdum says that each and every film shot on celluloid is important to them from archival point of view. “Now, since the digital medium has taken over and almost 100 per cent industry output is digital, every film shot on celluloid needs to be rescued and each holds historical and cultural importance.” Just a few days ago, he was informed about “four-odd boxes” of reels lying with the lost property office in Mumbai, he says.

Some of the film’s whose reels have made it to the NFAI from lost property offices include Shyam Bengal’s Mammo (1994), Amitabh Bachchan’s debut film Saat Hindustani (1969), Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Aks (2001), Sudhir Mishra’s Chameli (2004), Mithun Chakraborty’s hit Disco Dancer (1982), Martin Scorcese’s Gangs of New York (2002), and Anant Balani’s Joggers’ Park, apart from Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995), Madhur Bhandarkar’s Chandni Bar (2001), and Rajkumar Hirani’s Munnabhai MBBS (2003).

Reels of 11 Russian films have come to the NFAI, including that of the 1990 comedies Deja Vu and Pasport.

Cinephilia, Film Heritage and History

Shyam Benegal’s Trikal (1985) and the ghosts of Portuguese occupation of Goa

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Stills from Feitiço do Império (1940), Saat Hindustani (1969) and Trikal (1985)

The story of the liberation of Goa, a former Portuguese colony, and its aftermath on the politics and culture of this coastal region occupies only a small corner of Indian history, almost difficult to spot, and is barely recognised in the collective Indian memory.

I recently watched the Portuguese film Feitiço do Império (1940), a propaganda feature made during the Salazar dictatorship to promote the Estado Novo regime’s imperial agenda. While watching the film, I kept anticipating the appearance of Goa as Luís Morais, the film’s protagonist, travels through Portugal’s colonies, crossing African landscapes, encountering big-game wildlife, and observing exoticised portrayals of native populations. Yet he never visits Goa, Damão, or Diu. It seems that, for the Portuguese state at the time, the larger African colonies were considered far more important than the smaller eastern enclaves, such as Goa, and therefore more worthy of inclusion in this propaganda film.

News reports of Indian ‘invasion’ of Goa, Damao and Diu in December 1961.

To find how the Portuguese state saw Goa and its forced severance by Indian state in 1961, I turned to Cinemateca Digital, the Portuguese cinematheque portal, but didn’t find much that would meet my interest. There were only cursory mentions to Goa in news bulletins on evolving military situation during late 1950s and early 1960s but of very little depth.

Finally, I turned eastwards and wondered: How has the prolific Indian cinema looked at this event?
I was surprised to find that Indian cinema, especially the dominant Mumbai-based Hindi commercial film industry, which is infamous for sidestepping political issues and staying far removed from contentious social and political developments—has engaged with the Goan story quite directly. Quantitatively, however, the attention it has received is minuscule.

Two feature films deal directly with the history of the former Portuguese colony, the anti-colonial struggle in this coastal enclave, and its final ‘liberation’ by the Indian army in 1961. The first is ‘Saat Hindustani‘ (Seven Indians) made by Khwaja Ahmed Abbas in 1969 and the other is Trikal (titled in English as ‘Past, Present and Future’) made by celebrated director of ‘Indian new wave’ Shyam Benegal in 1985.

A still from Saat Hindustani (1969)


The first, although produced independently, takes the form of a propaganda film and, curiously or coincidently, employs narrative techniques that are not very different than those used by Antonio Ribeiro: seven Indians coming from different regions, religions and political ideologies join hands to wage a covert war against Portuguese oppression in Goa in the midst of the anti-colonial movement in late 1950s. The characters and the regions from which they come represent struggles and tensions within the Indian union over religion, language, and ethnicities. The film tries to emphasise the cohesiveness of Indian union and the fight against Portuguese as a higher call against an outside enemy despite local differences. Like Ribeiro, Abbas also mixes documentary and fiction formats in the film.

The second film – Benegal’s Trikal – is breathtaking in the historic depth, empathy, and nuance with which it deals with the complex subject and the ideas of change, loss, trauma of the past, and the past’s ability to influence the present and the future.  The fiction film is set in the tumultuous year 1961, just a few months before the Indian takeover of Goa in December 1961.

The film’s central plot revolves around a feudal Goan-Catholic family – Souza-Soares – and the family head, Dona Maria, who is in denial of her husband’s death as well as the imminent Indian takeover of Goa. The family is desperate to marry Maria’s granddaughter Anna to a young doctor who has settled in Lisbon, but the young girl is in awe of another relative, Leon, who has joined the Goan liberation movement against the family’s wishes. With Dona Maria attached to the past and unwilling to let go of the traditions, the younger generation seems eager to violate her wishes to find life away from the family house as they grapple with their loyalties—whether to Portugal, an independent Goa, or India.

In the film, the family home—the Souza-Soares mansion— and its deceased patriarch Ernesto Souza Soares, serve as metaphors for the Portuguese Colonial state in Goa. As the house and its occupants lose relevance for the local community – both Hindu and Catholic Goans – who are increasingly swept up in nationalist fervour, its residents grow anxious, even fractured, facing the impending takeover by the Indian army. The mansion also becomes a site where suppressed histories resurface, including Portuguese brutality against local revolutionaries during the native struggle, as well as those committed during the prolonged Catholic inquisition. The house’s eventual decay (shown when Pereira visits it 25 years later) seems to be telling the audience that Goa’s Portuguese past interests only historians and archaeologists.

Ernesto’s widow –  Dona Maria – seems unwilling to acknowledge the death of her husband even after going through all the rituals of the transference of the souls from this world to the hereafter. The husband’s death seems to have incapacitated her, and she suspends all her familiar affairs, announcing a moratorium.

She takes the help of shaman practices – seances held through the help of Milagrenia (an illegitimate child of her husband employed as a housemaid in the mansion) as a medium – to contact her dead husband, which never succeeds. What’s important is that her efforts to contact the husband are mirrored with hope expressed by some of the characters in the film that the Portuguese government will intervene and will never allow the Indian state to ‘invade’ Goa. As it turns out, both of these expectations turn out to be futile.

Salazar orders the Goan government and citizens of Goa to fight until the last breath. The governor general Manuel António Vassalo e Silva, seeing the futility of resisting 40,000 Indian soldiers with 3,500 at his disposal, disregards the ‘orders’ and surrenders to the Indian army on December 19 1961.

The seances held by Dona Maria, however, have a result contrary to her expectations.

Director Benegal uses the séance episodes to deal with the problematics of memory and history and how different sides of a conflict remember and mythologise different and contradictory narratives.

The seances conjure the ghosts of Vijay Singh Rane and Kushtoba Rane (instead of her husband’s), the latter an anti-colonial bandit who was captured by the Portuguese authorities with the help of Dona Maria’s grandfather — a Portuguese loyalist –  forcing her to confront her family’s – and by association Portuguese state’s violent past. This unintended encounter reveals how suppressed histories resurface, disrupting colonial nostalgia.

Rane, painfully, recalls the cultural erasure caused by centuries of Catholic inquisition that snatched away his community’s traditions and ‘even names’. Dona Maria, perturbed by these uneasy accusations, shouts: Why are you telling me this? I know nothing about this.” – highlighting the history bubble that surrounds her. She eventually abandons the seances, perhaps, with her coming to terms with the complex history of her family’s legacy.

Dr Pereira (left) rubbishes the possibility of an ‘independent Goa’ like Switzerland.

After Ernesto’s funeral, the family doctor – Mr Pereira – who has been portrayed as someone who has resigned to the ‘new reality’ of Goa ( or is he an opportunist who has shifted his loyalties?) – raises a toast “not with Scotch, but with our native pheni”. He refers to Ernesto’s death as the departure of “the Goa that they knew until now” and that a new regime will soon take over. At a dinner later, he insists to others at the table that one’s culture is the culture where one is born and that Salazar doesn’t care about Goa because he sent all his army to rescue the African colonies.

By the end of the film, Dona Maria seems to have undergone some change in her attitude. In the beginning, she seems incapable of dealing with Ernesto’s loss (and hence by association the Portuguese Goa). “I feel that if I forget Ernesto’s face, I will forget mine. If he is gone, what will be left for me?” she wonders at his funeral. By the end, she seems to have – even if passively – accepted the change as she expresses her approval of her granddaughter’s decision to leave and make a life elsewhere.

Cinephilia, Film Heritage and History

Drawn reality? Truth and subjectivity in animated documentary Just A Guy (2020)

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Animated documentaries (clockwise), Waltz with Bashir (2008), Flee (2021), Just a Guy (2020), and Tower (2016).

ATIKH RASHID

“…Animation can show things that lie outside the reach of photography… This mode of filmmaking can bear vibrant witness to things that cameras might not, or could not, or perhaps should not, record on the spot”: David Bordwell

Documentary filmmaking has traditionally been associated with live-action images that capture and depict ‘reality’. The animated documentary challenges this assumption by combining factual narratives with animated representation, expanding the possibilities of how reality can be documented and communicated.

As David Bordwell suggests, animation enables filmmakers to bear witness to subjects that cameras cannot reach, whether because they belong to the past, exist only in memory, or involve spaces and experiences that cannot be visually recorded.

This subject has generated significant debate about the relationship between documentary truth and artistic reconstruction. While critics have questioned whether animation compromises the documentary’s claim to reality, supporters argue that it offers unique ways of representing subjective experiences and hidden histories. Films dealing with trauma, memory, incarceration, war, and personal testimony have particularly benefited from the medium’s ability to visualize the unseen and the unrecorded.

One of the films from this genre that I found quite interesting was Just A Guy (2020) by Shoko Hara. It’s a 14-minutes animated documentary exploring the relationship three young women had with the Richard Remirez, the notorious American serial killer known as the ‘Night Stalker’, when he was lodged in a prison on death row. They corresponded with him through letters, with one of them paying him several visits in the prison and also receiving a proposal from Remirez to marry him.

It’s also a personal story for the director Shoko Hara as she is one of three women whose relationship with Remirez is depicted in the film, though she never met him in person. The film employs a mix of animation styles, including stop-motion, claymation, collage and also uses mixed-media to achieve a raw and immersive aesthetic

A screengrab from Just A Guy (2020)

Shoko said in an interview that she chose to animate the memories of these girls using dirty pink clay and other materials that are available in prison, like plastic, paper or garbage to convey the idea of exploitative, toxic love which was at play in the Ramirez affair. She said that she decided to use animation for the film as one of the two other women wanted to remain anonymous. She used their facial features, especially eyes while making their animations because she felt that audience would want to know how they look or looked.

In the film, Shoko Hara says that she was introduced to Ramirez by one of her female friends who was in a ‘correspondence relation’ with the murderer.

Talking about the young girls who were fascinated by Remirez – often called ‘groupies’ in the popular culture – Shoko says, “I realised that their relationship with Remirez wasn’t very different than other real relationships. It was about jealousy, toxic but also nice”.

For me, however, the film also raises the question that critics of ‘animated documentary format’ have been raising (mentioned in David Bordwells post ‘Showing what can’t be filmed’). The critics doubt animation’s ability – given that it involves great amount of human intervention involved like in other arts such as painting or architecture – to capture the flow of real time and space like photography does (in Andre Bazin’s words).

You see a lot of choices made by the filmmaker in the depiction of visuals that go with the testimonies of the Remirez’s female admirers. This adds a great degree of subjectivity to the film that would be undesirable for a documentary’s claims to factuality.

For instance, as Eve, one of the girls, describes her first meeting with Remirez in the prison, she remarks that he looked much bigger in reality than he seemed in photos or on television. The visuals, however, exaggerate this impression considerably making the images too subjective to the point of seeming unreal.

The animated documentary’s depiction of Eve’s first meeting with Ramirez

The animation makes him look like a giant, which may put in question the faith in factual presentation that the audience would take for granted in a documentary. The audience, from henceforth, may shift the comprehension strategy to accommodate the subjectivity, which may harm the claims to authenticity desired in a ‘conventional’ documentary.

The sequence (screengrabs from 1 to 4 taken by the author) shows the limbs, torso, and head of the drawn woman getting dismembered without making it clear if the drawing comes from Remirez or is an effect made by the filmmaker.


In another sequence in the beginning of the film, a drawing of a semi-naked woman from one of the letters by Remirez is dismembered in a sequence images. Did Remirez draw the dismemberment or was it the filmmaker who dismembered the drawing to symbolically convey his violent past?


Similarly, in another sequence, Eve shares that during some of her visits to Remirez he had flashed his sexual organ to her. This accompanies the visual of a giant, serpent like phallus trying to violate the woman. This, most likely, is a latter interpretation of the visit as during her visits she was a consensual participant in the affair and may not have felt the encounter as grotesque or violating as shown in the animated sequence. This adding another layer of subjectivity to the visual narration.

A screengrab of a scene where Shoko Hara’s subjectivity takes over

However, it’s more than clear that the film was an impossibility to make in live-action format as two of the three girls were not comfortable with showing their faces as they have moved on and there’s no recording of the prison visits by the girls. Shoko has cited the need for a partial or full anonymity requested by the young women as the primary reason to choose animated format for the film.

Cinephilia, Film Heritage and History

Musings on ‘City symphony’ films

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Still from ‘Lisboa, Crónica Anedótica (1930), Dir: José Leitão de Barros

ATIKH RASHID

I like most city symphony films: Dziga Vertov’s eccentric, stylized, and self-aware The Man with the Movie Camera (1929), Walter Ruttman’s vibrant portrayal of the rhythm and energy of a single day in Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, and oris Ivens’s Rain (1929), a lyrical and atmospheric portrait of Amsterdam that transforms a passing rainstorm into a study of urban movement, texture, and light.


In this company, Leitão de Barros’s Lisbôa, Cronica Anedótica (1930), is a peculiar exception. It creates a poetic montage of the lives of various dwellers of Lisbon, like the other great city symphony films made elsewhere and before it. In addition, it incorporates staged visuals that set it apart from other symphony films.


I have often wondered what a city symphony film of an Indian city would look like. Each of the great cities of India in the second and third decades of the 20th century would have made great material for a symphony film: Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, and Madras. Full of activity and brimming with political excitement, they were just a decade or two shy of freedom from colonial rule.

Screengrab from Panorama of Calcutta, India, from the River Ganges (1899) often credited to John “Mad Jack” Benett-Stanford.


India did have a filmmaking practice since the beginning of the 20th century, but it’s true that most of the films that were made during this period were made by westerners: British, French, or American filmmakers who headed to India with a camera to shoot it as an exotic land or as the “crown jewel of the British Empire.”


Numerous actualité and travel films were produced by companies such as Pathé and Gaumont which presented India less as a lived social reality and more as a spectacle to be consumed by audiences in Europe and North America. As film historians have noted, these early films often privileged scenes of religious ritual, bustling bazaars, royal processions, and picturesque landscapes, framing the subcontinent through a colonial gaze that emphasized difference, wonder, and imperial possession rather than everyday life.


Although there are no city symphony films for any of the Indian cities, if one looks through the archives, one may find that there’s some proto-city-symphony material that was shot in India by visiting filmmakers, and some of that material survives.

For instance, one of the earliest films shot in India, called Panorama of Calcutta (1899), does have the ethos, at least visually, of a symphony film. However, as has been pointed out by scholars, the visuals that one sees are not even from Calcutta but from a town (Benaras) almost 700 km to the west.

As Robin Baker wonders, “Maybe the cameraman got confused about his travels, or perhaps the company thought a more familiar name might be more tempting for audiences?”

The absence of an Indian symphony film is partially resolved when British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri uses the ‘India on Film’ footage made available by the British Film Institute (BFI) in 2016 as part of the celebrations to mark the centenary of the Indian film industry to make Around India with a Movie Camera in 2018. She repurposes the visuals captured in India by British, French, and Indian cameramen to decolonise the gaze and create a symphony set to freshly composed Indian music of life in India before Independence.

Stills from Around India with a Movie Camera (2018) Dir: Sandhya Suri


A striking moments in Suri’s film is her use of footage from the Delhi Durbar of 1911, particularly the appearance of Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III of Baroda. Historical accounts confirm that Gaekwad caused controversy by allegedly offering only a perfunctory bow to King George V and Queen Mary and turning away hastily, an act that was widely interpreted by colonial authorities and the British press as a breach of imperial protocol.


By incorporating this footage into her film, Suri invites viewers to look beyond the spectacle of imperial grandeur and attend instead to the tensions, ambiguities, and acts of dissent embedded within the colonial archive. In her hands, images originally produced to celebrate imperial rule are recontextualised to reveal the unseen tensions that prevailed at this historic moment and highlight the fragility of authority and the presence of Indian agency within spaces designed to display colonial dominance.

Film Heritage and History

National Film Archive of India seeks donations for digitisation, restoration of films

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Donors will get recognition in the form of credit in the opening slate of the restored and digitised film. 

ATIKH RASHID

National Film Archive of India, which is now a part of the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), has sought funds in the form of sponsorships and donations for carrying out film digitisation and restoration projects.

Donors – who could be individuals, corporates, institutions or state governments – will be able to contribute towards digitisation of films which costs around Rs 2.55 lakh per film (120 minutes) as well as towards restoration which costs around Rs 27.40 lakh per film.

In return, donors will get recognition in the form of credit in the opening slate of the restored and digitised film. They will also get a memento for promoting the cause of film preservation and will also get their name in the ‘NFDC-NFAI platinum supporters’ list.

“The digitisation and restoration of films, that will happen through funds received through donations, will be in addition to the work being done under the National Film Heritage Mission (NFHM) which is currently under progress at the National Film Archive of India,” an NFDC official said.

Launched in January 2017, NFHM aims to carry out preventive conservation of 1.32 lakh film reels held by the film archive, undertake film condition assessment of the reels, digitisation of carefully prioritised 1,345 feature films and 2,768 short films as well as restoration of 1,145 feature and 1,108 short films.

Officials said that under the project, so far, 180 films are in the process of restoration while 3,700 films, including short films, are being digitised.

In March 2022, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) notified the merger of four media units — Films Division (FD), Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF), National Film Archives of India (NFAI) and Children’s Film Society, India (CFSI) with the NFDC.

The NFDC, a PSU working under the ministry, was given the mandate for the production of documentaries and short films, organisation of film festivals and preservation of celluloid heritage. The move, it was said, was undertaken to bring “convergence of activities and resources and better coordination, thereby ensuring synergy and efficiency in achieving the mandate of each media unit”.

Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Coverage

Homing in

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This is a brief review of the ground-reporting done by me in 2020 to gauge the progress of Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (Urban) in Maharashtra’s cities and towns.

I found that though the scheme, being implemented through the urban local bodies (ULB), was extremely popular, it’s execution was plagued with several issues which were further compounded by the challenges thrown in by the pandemic, with beneficiaries having to deal with bureaucratic red tape, loss of income as they struggled to build a new home.

ATIKH RASHID

Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) aims to change the urban residential landscape of Indian cities and towns by providing homes to the urban poor and by aiding others to buy their first home by subsidizing housing units.

The scheme is being implemented by the union government through urban civic bodies, namely Municipal Corporations, Municipal Councils, and Nagar Panchayats.

One of the flagship schemes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, PMAY(U) started in 2016 with a stated aim to provide ‘housing to all’ by 2022.

It is one of the biggest welfare schemes ever undertaken by the Government of India, in terms of the amount of the grant, number of intended beneficiaries, overall financial allocation (also the political goodwill it can potentially generate for a political regime that undertakes such a welfare project), and the interest it generated among the intended beneficiaries, especially among the urban poor.

Under its most popular vertical – the beneficiary-led construction or BLC – the beneficiary family receives a total of Rs 2.5 lakh in government subsidy – Rs 1.5 lakh from the union government and Rs 1 lakh from the state government – to build the house on an owned plot. In the metro cities, civic bodies undertake housing projects in partnership with private builders and make the homes available to the urban poor at discounted rates (Rs 8 -10 lakh/house). In the latter case, Rs 1.5 lakh/DU PMAYU subsidy is transferred to the builder.

I reviewed the scheme at both these levels) at the level of the municipal corporation (Pune) where PMAY’s Affordable Housing in Partnership (AHP) component was the most popular vertical, and b) at the municipal council level (in Pathri, Hingoli and Jintur towns of Marathwada) where beneficiary-led construction (BLC) vertical of PMAYU was the most prominent.

Travelling across several districts of Marathwada, I visited cities and towns to speak to the beneficiaries who were allotted homes under the scheme and civic officials who were supervising the scheme.

I found that most homes sanctioned under PMAYU’s biggest and most popular vertical (Beneficiary Led Construction) in which beneficiaries are responsible for constructing the house on their own using the subsidy amounts, remained incomplete due to delays in the release of promised subsidy funds – especially the central government component.

In fact, in many cities and towns of the state, unfinished homes had become a common sight. The delay in completion of the construction and the financial hardships caused by staying in rented accommodations imposed a big emotional cost on the beneficiaries which the state or the media has no way of calculating. The ongoing pandemic made things worse for the affected:

Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana subsidy delayed, thousands of beneficiaries forced to live in shanties or half-finished houses

APART from the legwork that I did for ground reporting, I also filed several Right To Information petitions with the local civic bodies, the state government, and the Union Urban Development Ministry to obtain data as well as to bring to the fore how the bureaucratic apathy and red-tape was affecting the effective implementation of the scheme.

The documents obtained through RTI showed that the state government and central agencies were in communication with each other for months over the issue of release of funds and were engaged in a blame-match while the beneficiaries continued to suffer:

Maharashtra: As PMAY (U) beneficiaries wait for funds, state, central agencies in a war of words

SOON after the publication of these news stories, the Hingoli Municipal Council received a pending central subsidy of Rs 3.33 crore (thus bringing reprieve to about 250 beneficiaries), Pathri Municipal Council received Rs 5 crore ending the wait for over 400 beneficiaries.

After the reports, MHADA, the agency implementing PMAY(U) in the state, also changed its fund distribution norms so that subsidy funds are not diverted by the beneficiaries for other purposes:

Show construction progress to avail PMAY funds: Maharashtra civic bodies

The situation in big cities – for instance, Pune – was not any different. It was found that the beneficiaries of the Affordable Housing in Partnership (AHP) vertical were facing a different but equally pressing conundrum.

In Pune, houses built for the urban poor (lower-income and middle-income groups) by Pune Municipal Corporation were found to be too small (350 square feet carpet area) which led to many beneficiaries who were initially enthusiastic about the scheme forgoing the allotment. In this case, the civic authorities and the union urban development ministry failed to notice a mismatch between the aspiration of the urban poor and the facilities being offered to them under the scheme. In many cases, the loss of employment during the pandemic curtailed their ability to pay for the allotted homes or obtain bank loans.

Financial troubles, tiny houses: Why many PMAY allottees rejected the offer

Even after a second round of allotment as many as 63 per cent of flats on offer remained unclaimed.

Pune: 62% PMAY homes remain unbooked after second round of allotment

The civic body later decided to allot the about 850 unsold flats to the staffers of Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML) which it partially controls.

Unable to sell flats to intended beneficiaries, PMC moves to allot PMAY(U) flats to PMPML staffers

Cinephilia, Film Heritage and History

When Colour Queen of India said ‘Hullo’

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Telephone appeared in movies as an instrument that provided a multitude of narrative possibilities and also benefitted, in the initial days, from the portrayal in cinema as a desirable, aspirational commodity.

filmindia19373803unse_0092

ATIKH RASHID

Both cinema and the telephone are modern inventions – the former about 45 years younger than the latter. During the early decades of the 20th century, the two tools interacted with and complemented each other as symbols of modernity.

Telephone appears in movies as an instrument that provides a multitude of narrative possibilities – as a herald of a plot twist, a conduit of the feeling of love, or as a device whose incessant ringing leads to tension-building.

Hindi films have had numerous songs featuring the phone as a tool connecting two lovelorn beings, crooning at each end (Recall: “Jalte hai jiske liye” from Sujata). In many crime thrillers of the 1950s, telephone lines unravel the tangled plots and help the film reach a happy ending.

The telephone, on the other hand, also benefited from such a portrayal in cinema – a mass medium with great influence –  as a desirable, aspirational commodity providing a plethora of possibilities.

Hence, it is no surprise that telephone companies were among the most prominent advertisers in film magazines of the late 1930s and 1940s. The Bombay Telephone Company, which was established in 1925, issued regular advertisements to filmindia, the most prominent film magazine of the time, in its attempt to expand its subscriber base in Bombay, Karachi and Ahmedabad.

These advertisements had stars and starlets of Hindi film industry seductively holding the receiver to their ears, anticipating a conversation from the other end.

Image 3 December 1937
An ad issued by Bombay Telephone Company, Ltd in December 1937 edition of filmindia.

“Have you a telephone in your home?” asks this advertisement issued by the Bombay Telephone Company in the December 1938 issue of filmindia magazine. “If not you are denying the pleasure of communicating with your FRIENDS and running the risk of being unable to call the DOCTOR or FIRE BRIGADE in the time of need,” it says. The young model, lazily lying on the sofa, is holding the receiver in one hand and a glamour magazine in the other. The target audience here, clearly,  is English-speaking, educated, urban and affluent Indians.

The context to this marketing strategy adopted by Bombay Telephone Company to prominently highlight the social use – the pleasure of communicating with friends – of the telephone along with the more obvious logistical function, is provided by a letter sent by Lord Willingdon in September 1934 to London. In this communication, Willingdon laments that a lack of demand for telephone service in India was slowing down the expansion of the service in the country, largely owing to high cost and inability of a large section of the society to bear it. Indians are making comparatively little ‘social use’ of the technology, says he.

BUT WHO IS THE GIRL?

The full-page advertisement, it appears, not only worked for the advantage of the telephone firm but for the young model too.

“Who is the girl whose photo we find in the advertisement of the Bombay Telephone Co.? Is she a film star?” asks a curious reader of filmindia R S Mudaliar, a Madurai resident, in the ‘Editor’s Mail’ section of the magazine two months later.

The response to Mr Mudaliar by filmindia editor Baburao Patel informs us that the girl is the new Wadia Movietone starlet Pramilla who was previously attached with Imperial Studio. Elsewhere, the magazine fills in that Pramilla is busy shooting for Wadia’s Jungle King, co-starring John Cavas and Maheru – the monkey. Pramilla, born Esther Victoria Abraham in a Baghdadi -Jewish family of Kolkata, would go on to bag the Miss India title when the inaugural pageant was held in 1947.

COLOUR QUEEN OF INDIA SAYS ‘HULLO’

IMAGE 4

Before starlet Pramilla, the telephone was being marketed – in similar full-page ads in filmindia – by Padmadevi, the silent film star. She had appeared in JBH Wadia’s stunt films, most notably Dilruba Daku (The Amazon, 1933) fighting with goons as a masked daredevil. Later on, in 1937, she was the heroine of the first indigenously produced colour film Kisan Kanya directed by Moti Gidwani and briefly earned the moniker of ‘Colour Queen of India’.

One of the advertisements featuring Padmadevi has an interesting warning: Never tap or touch the receiver rest. You will get a wrong number.

In the garb of the warning, it’s a tip – and an allure – to the prospective owners of the telephone, that taking home the device will afford them a hitherto unavailable possibility of making an unexpected contact with an unknown stranger – who could be as pretty as Padmadevi – whom the device may ‘accidentally’ connect you with.

While reliable statistics are not available on the number of telephone subscribers in India, as per a US Department of Commerce report, by March 1945, British India had 1,25,400 telephone lines, most of these operated by Indian Posts and Telegraphs Department, Government of India. In 1933, an international line between Bombay and London was also inaugurated, which was later suspended between 1939 and 1945, owing to security concerns during World War II.

(This write-up appeared on the indianexpress.com on June 10. Find it here.)

Long Reads, Social Psychology

Why sportspersons from minority communities receive disproportionate blame in defeats?

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Theories of social psychology tell us that in groups – such as sport teams – members of minority communities assume salience by virtue of their looks, language, or identifiers in their names. In cases of defeat they are prone to be saddled with burden of blame because their salience makes them seem more causal, more responsible.

Atikh Rashid

Following India’s defeat to Pakistan in the Super 4 match of Asia Cup on Saturday, Indian pacer Arshdeep Singh became the target of social media trolling for dropping a seemingly easy catch of Asif Ali at short third man in the 18th over. Trolls attacked the 23-year-old bowler with political slurs and insinuated that he dropped the catch deliberately, out of his disloyalty to the Indian nation.

Last October, in another high stake India-Pakistan match in T20 international World Cup, Mohammad Shami’s poor bowling performance led to social media trolls questioning his loyalty to the country. For an expensive over in the last lap that hastened Indian teams debacle, Shami’s identity as an Indian was questioned and slurs linking his religion with the rival team were liberally used.

We are living in times of free floating social media hatred that attaches to individuals at the slightest provocations.  Targeted trolling is may also not be spontaneous and could often be part of ‘social media cold wars’ among competing political groups. Still, they do cause hurt to the individual or group at the receiving end.

Any reasonable cricket fan will tell you that it’s excessive and irrational to blame a single act by one player for a team’s defeat and then use that to put his ability and attitude in the dock. But a human mind doesn’t use reason all the time. Many a times, instincts kick in which cloud the appeals to reason.

Mohammad Shami’s poor bowling performance in high stake India-Pakistan match in T20 international World Cup led to social media trolls questioning his loyalty to the country.

Human mind, psychologists tell us, wants to attribute significant incidents – victories, defeats, and such – to causes. The mind starts making inferences about the causes and stops the search when a sufficient cause is found. ‘The Attribution Theory’ is one of the best known theories in social psychology that deals with how people interpret behavior and attribute causations for their own or other people’s behavior. It was first proposed by Fritz Heider in 1958 in his book ‘The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations.

The mind makes a ‘dispositional attribution’ when it explains a person’s action by pointing to something about the person. On the other hand, it makes a ‘situational attribution’ when the behavior or action is said to have been influenced by external factors or by the situation. Observers often tend to make what psychologists call ‘The Fundamental Attribution Error’ in which they overestimate the dispositional influences (‘the catch was dropped because the player is bad at the game, or he is disloyal to the team’) and underestimating the situational influences (the ball slipped off because of the dew, the light glare, or pressure of the game).

While observers are prone to making dispositional attribution, the individual involved in the in the action with negative result often makes situational attribution – blaming factors external to him or her.

The salience of the minority members

The human mind makes sense of the world with the aid of categories. In social life, the social categories help the mind make easy and fast judgements. By definition, minority groups are ‘uncommon’ and the human cognitive system is tuned to spotting their presence.

Individuals from minority groups are salient in perception, memory, and visual awareness, hence performance of players like Arshdeep Singh or Mohammad Shami comes under greater scrutiny, especially during high stake games.

Increasing social discord and thickening of community lines – something that India has been seeing a lot lately – makes people more aware and observant about the behavior of people perceived as others.

Research by Taylor and Fiske (1978) shows that women are seen as more causal when they is only one woman in the group.

Research done by Shelly Taylor and Susan Fiske shows that in a group setting a member of a minority community is seen as more influential and causal when there’s only one minority member in the group, thus making the presence salient. When there is only one woman in a group, she is seen as disproportionately responsible for the group decisions. This impression declines as more women are added to the group.

In their 1978 study ‘Salience, Attention, and Attribution: The Top of the Head Phenomenon’, Taylor and Fiske discuss the ‘Salience Hypothesis’ which states that the more salient an actor seems, the more an observer will ascribe a causality to him or her while making a snap judgment.

When things turn out well (a match is won, an enemy is crushed) the effects of salience turn out to be good. In times of adversity (a team is defeated by an arch rival, a pandemic threatens the wellbeing of the world and shuts economic activity), then people who are salient because they look different or sound different  are at the risk of becoming scapegoated, being blamed as their salience makes them seem more responsible. 

Further Readings:

1)      Salience, Attention, and Attribution: Top of the Head Phenomena (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S006526010860009X)

2)      Minority salience and the overestimation of individuals from minority groups in perception and memory (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116884119#:~:text=In%20many%20contexts%2C%20minorities%20tend,creating%20an%20illusion%20of%20diversity)

3)      The process of causal attribution (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1973-24800-001)

4)      Salience https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/psychology/salience

5)      Attribution Theories (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Or-jq3G1g8

Long Reads, Social Psychology

Why a bronze medal winner often looks happier than a silver medallist at the Olympics

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In a 1995 research paper, psychologists studying ‘counterfactual thinking’ analysed video footage of the 1992 Barcelona Games to deduce that the knowledge of ‘almost winning a Gold medal’ ruined the moment for a silver medallist, while the bronze winner was contented by the thought: ‘I at least won a medal’.

Richard Carapaz of Ecuador, centre, who won the gold medal, fist pumps bronze medal winner Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia, as silver medal winner Wout van Aert of Belgium watches, after the men’s cycling road race at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Saturday, July 24, 2021, in Oyama, Japan. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

ATIKH RASHID

During a newspaper interview he gave almost 70 years after he clinched a silver medal at the Stockholm Olympics of 1912, mid-distance American runner Abel Kiviat described the race as a “nightmare”.

His silver medal had come after a photo-finish — a first in Olympic history — in which he had just got past fellow American Norman Taber in the 1500m race.

“That race was the biggest disappointment of my life. I never saw Jackson,” he said while referring to Great Britain’s Arnold Jackson who had secured by the slimmest margin of 0.1 seconds. “I wake up sometimes and say, ‘What the heck happened to me?” Kiviat said.

The final moment of 1500 m race in 1912 Games in which Great Britain’s Arnold Jackson beat USA’s Abel Kiviat (third from left) by 0.1 seconds.

Kiviat, who died in 1991, showed that the disappointment of losing out narrowly lingers, but he was no exception in this regard. Most silver medallists end up tormenting themselves by imagining the alternative possibility if they had pushed a little harder.

Ravi Kumar Dahiya, the Indian wrestler who secured a silver medal for India in 57 kg freestyle on Thursday in the ongoing Tokyo Olympics, voiced a similar disappointment.

“What’s the point of this?… I had come here with only one target, a gold medal. This (silver medal) is okay, but it’s not gold,” he told reporters.

A 1995 research paper published by psychologists Victoria Medvec, Thomas Gilovich (both from Cornell), and Scott F Madey (University of Toledo) has an answer to why silver medallists may be feeling the way they are.

They studied this phenomenon to conclude that on a happiness scale, silver medallists fair poorly owing to the human tendency to indulge in ‘counterfactual thinking’ — the propensity to think of alternative circumstances to real-life events, especially those with far-ranging consequences.

The study, “When Less Is More: Counterfactual Thinking and Satisfaction Among Olympic Medallists”, deduced that bronze medallists score much better on the happiness scale when compared to silver medallists who had outperformed them in the game.

Mean Happiness Ratings: Bronze medalists fared better on the happiness scale immediately after the event as well as at the medal stand compared to the silver medalists (Medevec et al, 1995)

Medvec and colleagues analysed visible expressions of the bronze and silver medal-winning athletes at the 1992 Summer Olympics immediately after the finish of the event when the winners stood at the medal stand.

The study aimed to determine how counterfactual thinking and the psychology of “coming close” affects the feeling of satisfaction and the degree of well-being. Medvec et al chose the domain of athletic competition outcomes to study the subject because it throws up results with an unusual precision with competitors finishing first, second, or third with a fractional difference and earning distinctly different rewards of gold, silver, and bronze medals.

“We were interested in whether the effects of different counterfactual comparisons are sufficiently strong to cause people who are objectively worse off to sometimes feel better than those in a superior state. Moreover, we were interested not just in documenting isolated episodes in which this might happen, but in identifying a specific situation in which it occurs with regularity and predictability. The domain we chose to investigate was athletic competition,” said Medvec and his colleagues in the paper published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Also Read |Tokyo 2020: When pocketing the silver medal was not the right thing to do

As part of the study, the researchers collated the video footage from the Barcelona Olympic Games held three years ago and edited them in three different master tapes. One showed the medallists’ reaction immediately after the results were announced, another showed them receiving the medals at the stand, and a third one comprised of the interviews they gave to media persons about their performance.

In the first study, the university students, who were blind to the results, were asked to judge the immediate reaction of 41 athletes on a 10-point ‘agony to ecstasy’ scale. After assessing athletes’ reactions, silver medallists received a mean rating of 4.8 while bronze medallists received a mean rating of 7.1 on the happiness scale. When examining the athletes’ reaction on the medal stand, participants assigned the bronze medallists a mean rating of 5.7 and a 4.3 for silver medallists.

In the second part of the same study, the participants reviewed television interviews of 22 silver and bronze medallists to see what was the predominant feeling expressed by each athlete: Was he/she happy with what was achieved, or was he/she preoccupied with a feeling of regret. The participants judged the expressed feelings on a 10-point scale which had “At least I…” on one end and “I almost…” on the other.

It was found that the silver medallists focused more on “I almost” than bronze medallists who expressed a feeling of achievement and satisfaction for getting a medal. Participants assigned silver medallists’ thoughts an average rating of 5.7 and bronze medallists’ an average rating of only 4.4 on the 10-point “At least I… ” to “I almost…” scale.

Explaining the findings, the researchers wrote, “To the silver medallist, the most vivid counterfactual thoughts are often focused on nearly winning the gold. Second place is only one step away from the cherished gold medal and all of its attendant social and financial rewards. Thus, whatever joy the silver medallist may feel is often tempered by tortuous thoughts of what might have been had she only lengthened her stride, adjusted her breathing, pointed her toes, and so on. For the bronze medallist, in contrast, the most compelling counterfactual alternative is often coming in fourth place and being in the showers instead of on the medal stand.”

Social psychologists have long held that an individual’s wellbeing in any given circumstance depends on how these circumstances compare with those with whom he tends to compare them.

Such counterfactual thinking also has a functional value as those who ruin their happiness by thinking about the missed opportunity often strive to improve their future performances.

“Downward comparisons (i.e., thinking about a worse outcome) are thought to provide comfort, whereas upward comparisons (i.e., thinking about a better outcome) are thought to improve future performance. Indeed, it has been shown that people who expect to perform again in the future are more likely to generate upward counterfactuals than those who expect to move on,” said the study.

(This article appeared on the indianexpress.com as Why a bronze medal winner often looks happier than a silver medallist at the Olympics on August 13, 2021)

Long Reads

Maharashtra: Death registration system in shambles, data reporting for 2020 still incomplete

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Slight rise in mortality in state in 2020; marked uptick in Pune, Mumbai hints at uncounted Covid deaths

ATIKH RASHID

As the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic subsides, the extent of loss of life caused by the virus remains contested. There have been claims – by politicians and infectious diseases experts – that the number of deaths caused by the pandemic could be many times higher than the officially reported numbers.

One important way to arrive at a more realistic death toll, as per the experts, is to gauge the ‘excess deaths’ recorded in pandemic year after comparing them to pre-pandemic years and factoring in the natural growth trend. For this, deaths registered by the Civil Registration System (CRS) of the state governments act as a reliable data source.

While some states have created dedicated portals for the distribution of certificates and real-time data collection, in Maharashtra the process remains cumbersome. Most agencies responsible for recording births and deaths– municipal bodies or panchayats –send the death registration data to the state authorities manually. This means that the state-level agency, State Bureau of Health Intelligence Vital Statistics, responsible for collecting the data and reporting to the Registrar General of India, completes data collection three months after a calendar year came to an end. It reports the same to the Registrar by end of July, every year.

The Indian Express spoke to officials at the Bureau to find out that, so far, agencies in only 25 districts have submitted the record about the birth and date that happened in the year 2020 in the respective jurisdiction. Data is awaited from 10 other distsricts.

Govardhan Gaikwad, Deputy Director, Health Services, and Deputy Chief Registrar of Birth and Death in the state, says that every year the birth and death reports are sent for publication by end of July. This year, since the receipt of data has slowed down from the agencies issuing the certificates, it may take a bit longer. This means that data pertaining to all-causes deaths registered in the state for 2020 may be available only after a few months, and that pertaining to mortality in the second wave during February-May 2021, can only be available halfway through the next year.

“Government offices of three different types are involved in recording the births and deaths happening in the respective jurisdiction. While some submit the data using online means, most still depend on the manual method. This delays the receipt of the data by us, and we have to process and send it further,” explained Gaikwad.

Although Maharashtra does not have a portal of its own -like Rajasthan’s Pehchan for this purpose – it could use the national portal crsorgi.gov.in.

“Many agencies don’t use the online medium for real-time reporting of the data because it’s not mandatory as per the extant law. Also, some offices may be discouraged by the connectivity issues,” added Gaikwad.

Out of 35 districts in the state, birth and death registration data for only 25 has been recieved by the state Bureau so far. (Picture: Arul Horizon for The Indian Express)

Slight rise in mortality in state in 2020; marked uptick in Pune, Mumbai hinting at uncounted Covid deaths

The data that has been so far compiled by the state CRS shows a slight uptick in the number of deaths in 2020, the year in which the first Covid-19 wave hit the country, when compared with the previous year. The CRS data is not yet available for the more devastating second wave which hit the state between February and May 2021.

However, significantly, cities like Mumbai and Pune, which were the worst affected by the pandemic, show significant ‘excess deaths’ in 2020 when compared with registered deaths in 2019 and 2018.

Data submitted by 25 out of 35 districts to the state CRS shows that 5,78,912 deaths were registered in these districts in 2020. In the previous year, ie 2019 (the pre-pandemic year), these 25 districts had registered 5,16,138 deaths from various causes. (Cumulative deaths in all 35 districts for this year were 6,93,800.)


In 2018, another pre-pandemic year, these 25 districts had recorded 4,88,599 deaths. (Cumulative deaths for all 35 districts for this year were 6,67,900.)


Thus, considering only 25 states for want of data for the entire state, the year 2020 saw 62,774 additional deaths compared to 2019 which, in turn, had seen 27,539 more registered deaths than in 2018.


As per the state health department, a total of 49,521 Covid deaths occurred in the state in 2020. Of these, 35,450 were reported from the 25 districts that we are considering.


Cities like Mumbai and Pune showed a marked increase in the registered deaths during 2020, hinting at the possibility of uncounted Covid-19 deaths.


Mumbai had recorded 88,852 and 91,223 deaths in 2018 and 2019 respectively. The number rose to 1,11,942 in 2020, thus recording a jump of 20,719 deaths over the previous year. As per the Health Department records, Mumbai saw 11,125 Covid deaths in 2020.


In Pune, which had recorded 61,824 and 63,630 deaths in 2018 and 2019 respectively, the CRS recorded 79,683 deaths in 2019. While the rise in recorded deaths was 16,053, the Health Department counted only 7767 Covid deaths in Pune in 2020.