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By:

Rajeev Puri

24 October 2024 at 5:11:37 am

Before Sholay, there was Mera Gaon Mera Desh

When the comedian and television host Kapil Sharma recently welcomed the veteran screenwriter Salim Khan onto his show, he made a striking claim. India, he joked, has a national bird and a national animal; it ought also to have a national film. That film, he suggested, would surely be Sholay. Few would quarrel with the sentiment. Released in 1975 and directed by Ramesh Sippy,  Sholay  has long been treated as the Everest of Hindi popular cinema -quoted endlessly, revisited by generations and...

Before Sholay, there was Mera Gaon Mera Desh

When the comedian and television host Kapil Sharma recently welcomed the veteran screenwriter Salim Khan onto his show, he made a striking claim. India, he joked, has a national bird and a national animal; it ought also to have a national film. That film, he suggested, would surely be Sholay. Few would quarrel with the sentiment. Released in 1975 and directed by Ramesh Sippy,  Sholay  has long been treated as the Everest of Hindi popular cinema -quoted endlessly, revisited by generations and dissected by critics. In 2025, the film marked its 50th anniversary, and the release of a digitally restored, uncut version introduced the classic to a new generation of viewers who discovered that its mixture of revenge drama, western pastiche and buddy comedy remains curiously durable. The film’s influences have been debated almost as much as its dialogues – from scenes taken by the Spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, particularly ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (1968) or to the narrative architecture of ‘Seven Samurai’ (1954) by Akira Kurosawa. Others note echoes of earlier Hindi films about bandits and frontier justice, such as ‘Khotey Sikke’ (1973) starring Feroz Khan. Yet, rewatching ‘Mera Gaon Mera Desh,’ directed by Raj Khosla, one cannot help noticing how many of the narrative bones of  Sholay  appear to have been assembled there first. Released in 1971,  Mera Gaon Mera Desh  was a major hit at the box office, notable for holding its own in a year dominated by the near-hysterical popularity of Rajesh Khanna. The thematic framework of the two films is strikingly similar. In  Sholay , the retired policeman Thakur Baldev Singh recruits two petty criminals - Jai and Veeru - to help him avenge the terror inflicted upon his village by the bandit Gabbar Singh. In  Mera Gaon Mera Desh , the set-up is not very different. A retired soldier, Jaswant Singh, seeks to protect his village from a ruthless dacoit and enlists the help of a small-time crook named Ajit. Even the villain’s name seems to echo across the two films. In Khosla’s drama, the marauding bandit played by Vinod Khanna is scene-stealing performance is called Jabbar Singh. In  Sholay , the outlaw who would become one of Indian cinema’s most memorable antagonists was Gabbar Singh. There is an additional irony in the casting. In  Mera Gaon Mera Desh , the retired soldier Jaswant Singh is played by Jayant - the real-life father of Amjad Khan, who would later immortalise Gabbar Singh in  Sholay . The connective tissue between the two films becomes even clearer in the presence of Dharmendra. In Khosla’s film he plays Ajit, a charming rogue who gradually redeems himself while defending the village. Four years later, Dharmendra returned in  Sholay  as Veeru, a similarly exuberant petty criminal whose courage and irrepressible humour make him one half of Hindi cinema’s most beloved buddy duo alongside Amitabh Bachchan as Jai. Certain visual motifs also appear to have travelled intact. In Khosla’s film, Ajit finds himself bound in ropes in the bandit’s den during a dramatic musical sequence. A similar image appears in  Sholay , where Veeru is tied up before Gabbar Singh while Basanti performs the now famous song ‘Jab Tak Hai Jaan.’ Other echoes are subtler but just as suggestive. Ajit’s pursuit of the village belle Anju, played by Asha Parekh, anticipates Veeru’s boisterous attempts to woo Basanti, portrayed by Hema Malini. Scenes in which Ajit teaches Anju to shoot recall the flirtatious gun-training sequence between Veeru and Basanti that became one of  Sholay ’s most cherished moments. Even the famous coin motif has a precedent. Ajit frequently tosses a coin to make decisions - a flourish that would later appear in  Sholay , where Jai’s coin toss becomes a running gag. Perhaps most intriguingly, the endings of the two films converge in their original form. In  Mera Gaon Mera Desh , the villain is ultimately killed by the hero. The uncut version of  Sholay  reportedly ended in a similar fashion, with Gabbar Singh meeting his death at the hands of Thakur Baldev Singh. However, censors altered the climax before the film’s 1975 release, requiring that Gabbar be handed over to the police instead. All this does not diminish  Sholay . Rather, it highlights the alchemy through which cinema evolves. The scriptwriting duo Salim–Javed took familiar ingredients and expanded them into a grander narrative populated by unforgettable characters and stylised action. On the 55 th  anniversary of  Mera Gaon Mera Desh , Raj Khosla’s rugged western deserves a renewed glance as the sturdy foundation on which a legend called  Sholay  was built. (The author is a political commentator and a global affairs observer. Views personal.)

Arctic Delusions

By treating Greenland as a piece of real estate, America risks turning the high north into its next geopolitical wound.

Greenland, the world’s largest island and one of its smallest political communities, has spent most of its modern history trying to escape being someone else’s chessboard. That is why Jens-Frederik Nielsen’s blunt declaration in Copenhagen - that if forced to choose between Washington and Copenhagen, Greenland would choose Denmark - matters far beyond the 57,000 souls who inhabit that vast, ice-locked land. It is a rebuke not just to US President Donald Trump’s latest imperial fantasy, but to a centuries-old habit among great powers of mistaking geography for entitlement.


Trump’s renewed threats to annex Greenland by “economic means” or more chillingly, by force are downright dangerous. They cut directly against the principles of self-determination, territorial integrity and the rule of law that America once claimed to embody. Greenland is a self-governing society with its own parliament, language and political memory. To speak of “taking control” of it is to revert to a 19th-century worldview that even the most cynical imperialists have mostly abandoned.


The irony is that Greenland’s strategic value is real, and has been for a century. During the Second World War, the United States, fearing Nazi encroachment, took on responsibility for the island’s defence and built airfields that became vital stepping stones between North America and Europe. In the Cold War, Thule Air Base (now Pituffik Space Base) formed a crucial part of America’s early-warning system against Soviet missiles arcing over the pole. Today, as melting ice opens new shipping lanes and exposes mineral riches, Greenland again sits at the hinge of global power politics.


Yet history also teaches a different lesson: Greenlanders have repeatedly been the losers when outsiders play geopolitics on their soil. Denmark ruled the island as a colony until 1953, often with a paternalism that left deep scars. Forced relocations to make way for American bases, cultural erosion and economic dependency bred a quiet, stubborn nationalism. The home-rule agreement of 1979 and the self-government act of 2009 were meant to put Greenland on a gradual path to full sovereignty, not to swap one patron for another.


That is why the island’s voters have consistently favoured caution over rupture. Independence is a cherished aspiration, but also a daunting one for a society reliant on Danish subsidies and vulnerable to the brutal economics of the Arctic. In last year’s elections, three-quarters backed parties advocating a slow, negotiated transition. Nielsen’s declaration that now is the time to “stand together” within the Danish realm is not a retreat from nationhood.

Trump’s bluster has driven Greenland and Denmark closer together and jolted Europe into rediscovering its Arctic flank. Berlin and London’s talk of a European military presence in Greenland may sound theatrical, but it reflects a hard truth. The North Atlantic and the Arctic are becoming arenas of rivalry between America, Russia and, increasingly, China. Moscow is reviving Soviet-era bases along its polar coast; Beijing styles itself a “near-Arctic state” and covets Greenland’s rare earths. Against that backdrop, Europe cannot afford a vacuum or a unilateral American land-grab.


The American administration’s defenders might argue that Washington merely wants to secure vital territory before its rivals do. But that logic collapses under scrutiny. The United States already has extensive defence rights in Greenland under existing treaties with Denmark. Its forces operate there freely. Worse, Trump’s threats hand propaganda victories to America’s adversaries. When China bullies Taiwan or the Philippines, it invokes international law. To then float the idea of seizing Greenland is to shred that moral authority and invite every strongman to do the same.


Greenland’s quiet, icy landscapes have long concealed their global importance.


But they are no blank slate on which a superpower can scribble its ambitions. Nielsen’s choice of Denmark over America is less an endorsement of the old colonial tie than a defence of the right of small peoples to decide their own fate. If Washington cannot respect that in the Arctic, it will find that the cold winds there blow back.

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