Remembering the real father of the nation….

Himanshu Rai‘s Bombay Talkies was the first and most famous of production houses when Hindi movies shifted from Kolkata to Mumbai. 

Established in the pre WW II years by Himanshu Rai and his wife, the actress (& diva of the period) Devika Rani.  Bombay Talkies was considered to be way ahead of its times in being an innovative and highly resourced movie studio. In line with international standards, the studios’ facilities included sound and echo-proof stages, modern laboratories, editing rooms and a preview theater. (Ashok Kumar started work in the laboratory when he ran away from a legal career)

Bombay Talkies set a very high technical and professional standard for film making in India bringing it to movie making and acting, way higher than  rival Indian film production companies. Apart from changing the aesthetics and technology traditionally associated with Indian films, it also dared to produce films on controversial topics such as those dealing with love between an untouchable lower caste girl and a high caste Hindu Brahmin boy (Achhut Kanya, Ashok Kumar’s first successful movie). With WWII beginning in 1939,  Himanshu Rai, suffered severe depression that led to his death the very next year.  Following the shock exit, control of the company passed on to Devika Rani who not only took control but also led well.

The movies made in this period include Kangan and Bandhan, both with Leela Chitnis and Ashok Kumar. The biggest movie the production house made came in 1943, Kismet created a record for the longest continual run for more than three and half years at  Roxy in Calcutta. It was the first true blockbuster which broke the then unimaginable barrier of 1 Crore at the box office. It made Ashok Kumar the first superstar of the country and for a number of years he couldn’t travel without risking getting mobbed, causing traffic jams and making cops intervene with lathi charges to disperse the crowds.

Kismet was written by Gyan Mukherjee with Aghajani Kashmeri, and directed by Gyan Mukherjee himself. It stars Ashok Kumar with Mumtaz Shanti. The film has several bold themes for the very first time in Indian cinema, including an anti-hero character with two roles and an unmarried girl getting pregnant. It was later remade in Tamizh as Prema Pasam, and Telugu as Bhale Ramudu.

It had one patriotic song which resonated very well with the ongoing freedom movement, and has a great role by Ashok Kumar, definitely one of his greatest if not the greatest.

The musical score by Anil Biswas introduced the “full chorus” for the first time in Hindi cinema.

This patriotic song, “Door hato O Duniya walon, Hindustan hamara hay”, by Kavi Pradeep, has a negative reference to Japan and Germany – “Tum na kisike aage jhunkna, German ho ya Japani” – which allowed it to get past the heavy British censorship of the time. But the hidden meaning got through to the people and backed by Anil Biswas‘s uplifting score, the song became an instant massive hit amidst the atmosphere of rising nationalistic fervour, almost becoming a battle cry for uniting the people. The British authorities soon realized their mistake, and wanted to ban the film. An arrest warrant was issued for the song’s lyricist Pradeep, who went missing and stayed underground for several months. https://youtu.be/EQ6HnCDRyJg

The song was a thinly veiled reference to the advancing Indian National Army, Netaji Subhashchandra Bose‘s creation which truly marked the beginning of the end and finally brought the curtain down on the brutal rule of the looters who destroyed every institution in India and reduced it’s contribution to the global GDP from about 37% to less than 2%, while stealing 45 trillion pounds from our country, doing the job of plunder and destruction far more successfully than the Islamic invaders could over the preceding 800 years. Today, 23rd January, happens to be Netaji’s birthday. High time the nation recognized the true worth of his contribution to our independence and called him the really worthy Father of the Nation, and not the man who owed everything including the fake title of Mahatma to the British.

Let us resolve to restore our true heroes to the place they truly deserve in the nation’s history and stop worshipping false gods. Better now than never.

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