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Pakistan’s role in Indian films
Highlights
The release of ‘Phantom’ is round the corner and I’m not sure why the director has called it that, though I will find out soon. However, I had this thought about how our fascination or hatred for this neighbouring nation has spawned memorable movies, dialogues, and of course actors.
Despite the Indo-Pak clashes, which we often hear of. Like it or not, it can be observed that Pakistan has a hand in successful Indian films
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The release of ‘Phantom’ is round the corner and I’m not sure why the director has called it that, though I will find out soon. However, I had this thought about how our fascination or hatred for this neighbouring nation has spawned memorable movies, dialogues, and of course actors.
Whatever genre the movies belonged to, Pakistan, has remained in the background. A daddy scene of ‘Gadar: Ek Prem Katha’-2001, where Tara Singh (Sunny Deol) unearths a hand-pump in sheer fury for the nation and to protect his family, and literally pummels Pakistan, into submission.
‘Gadar’s’ catcalls and balcony frenzy remained unparalleled, its record of highest number of eyeballs received by a movie from year 2000 onwards, was broken coincidentally by a movie, which had a different philosophy and treatment yet Pakistan, stayed in the background, yes you guessed it right the movie is still hot on ticket window – ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’.
Similarly, other movies like ‘Border’; ‘Veer Zaara’; ‘Hindustan ki Kasam’ and ‘Lakshya’, are those that come straight to the mind. ‘Lakshya’, probably is one of the most mature efforts on Indian Army in the last two decades, and I rate it even above Farhan’s ‘Dil Chahta Hai’.
Sunny Deol frankly became a superstar because of Pakistan. He delivered another rocking hit called ‘Indian’, which dealt with proxy war from Pakistan on Indian soil. This Punjab da puttar became India’s answer to Captain America thankfully because of the ISI and its tricks. If Captain America has his shield, apna Jatt has the hand-pump.
In fact one of India’s biggest and best thrillers came in this year. It surely did not create the numbers, which a ‘Baahubali’ or a ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’ have created but it drove exited viewers to theatres and in my book it still remains the best entertainer of 2015, despite being a song-less and almost a conventional heroine-less movie. I am talking about ‘Baby’.
At the cost of sounding unbelievable and overboard let me tell you this today, that two decades down the line, many will remember Akshay Kumar for this movie and not ‘Mohra’ or ‘Singh is King’ or bling or zhing. In fact, like Sunny, Akshay’s two biggest and best efforts are Pakistan-based, where his ‘Holiday’ dealt with sleeper cells and terrorism.
So in all fairness, it was not that all our makers always taught us the go bang-bang route at Pakistan. There were a few most noteworthy ones, being Yash Chopra, who tried pushing love and peace through the box office blazer called ‘Veer-Zaara’ and Kabir Khan with his ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’.
Let me mention a very sincere effort from Rishi Kapoor in a movie called ‘Aa Ab Laut Chalein’ – this third grade movie had an interesting subplot of an Indian and Pakistani living together in USA like brothers, played by Jaspal Bhatti and Kader Khan. The most memorable visual that I carried from that movie was the broken TV sets lying in their room, broken either by the Indian or the Pakistani, post a cricket defeat.
Another one from his elder brother Randhir Kapoor called ‘Henna’, was a very sincere effort on promoting brotherhood. It did not work though, because Zeba Bakhtiar could not act to save her life. Pakistan, though itself does not have a great economy to boast of, gave Indian cinema some huge money¬-minting movies. All the movies mentioned above were huge money spinners in India, some of them even in Pakistan.
Kabir Khan’s is the first of his kind in introducing movies on Pakistan; his ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’ and ‘Ek Tha Tiger’ have diametrically different themes, with ‘Phantom’ being from the same guy. The movie is said to have rattled Haafiz Syed. Deep down, Kabir Khan must be proud of this achievement.It is high time, that we acknowledge the contribution of Pakistan and, in a lighter vein, its terror elements to the money-minters of Bollywood.
By:Rahul Deo Bharadwaj
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