top of page

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.)

BJP sweeps Haryana civic polls, Congress faces crushing defeat

  • PTI
  • Mar 12, 2025
  • 2 min read

Updated: Mar 13, 2025

BJP wins seven mayoral posts, leads in two more, as Congress struggles to regain ground


Haryana


Chandigarh: The BJP's mayoral candidates registered emphatic victories in seven municipal corporations in Haryana on Wednesday while its nominees were leading in two other civic bodies in the recently held elections.


The Congress, which was looking to turn around its electoral fortunes after suffering a defeat in the 2024 Assembly polls, had to bite the dust.


Polls to elect mayors and ward members in seven municipal corporations -- Gurugram, Manesar, Faridabad, Hisar, Rohtak, Karnal and Yamunanagar -- were held on March 2. The bypolls for the mayoral posts in Ambala and Sonipat and the elections for presidents and ward members in 21 municipal committees were also held that day.


For the Panipat Municipal Corporation, polling was held on March 9 to elect the mayor and 26 councillors.


According to the results and trends available for the mayoral posts, BJP candidates registered emphatic wins in Ambala, Faridabad, Gurugram, Hisar, Karnal, Rohtak and Sonipat, defeating their nearest Congress rivals.


The ruling party's candidates were in a comfortable lead in Yamunanagar and Panipat.


In Manesar, where municipal elections were held for the first time, Independent candidate Inderjeet Yadav won. She defeated her nearest BJP rival Sunder Lal by a margin of 2,293 votes.


In the outgoing municipal corporations, BJP had its mayors in eight of the 10 civic bodies.


Nikhil Madaan was the Sonipat mayor and a Congress leader. Ahead of the 2024 Assembly polls, he joined the BJP and won the Sonipat Assembly seat. In Ambala municipal corporation, Shakti Rani Sharma was the mayor as a Haryana Janchetna Party leader. She too joined the BJP ahead of the assembly polls and won the Kalka Assembly seat. The other municipal corporations where polling was held had BJP mayors.


The mayoral candidates who registered victories with big margins included the BJP's Faridabad nominee Parveen Joshi who won by over 3 lakh votes and Raj Rani from Gurugram who won by over 1.79 lakh votes.


Other notable winners included senior BJP leader Rajiv Jain who won from Sonipat and Renu Bala Gupta from Karnal.


Extensive arrangements have been made by the Haryana State Election Commission in coordination with the district administrations concerned to ensure smooth conduct of the counting process, officials said.


The civic polls dealt a blow to the Congress which saw workers and leaders in districts switching over to the BJP ahead of the elections.


The party state unit has, in the past, been faced with infighting and factionalism unlike the BJP, which has a well-organised and strong organisational structure at the grassroots level.


Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini recently exuded confidence that the BJP would win the civic polls, saying that work would be done three times faster after the formation of a "triple-engine" government, a reference to the saffron party being in power at the Centre, the state and the civic bodies.

Comments

bottom of page