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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.)

Bofors Scam: ‘Nobody believes 18.5 pc was not paid’

Updated: Mar 12, 2025


Bofors Scam

Journalist and author Chitra Subramaniam has asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to make public its discoveries from the "box of evidence" received from Switzerland on Bofors payoffs which, the former officers said, were used in the probe and submitted before the court as evidence in its charge sheet.


She questioned the official narrative regarding the alleged bribe in the Bofors case, suggesting the sum of Rs 64 crore may not reflect the full extent of the corruption."I don't believe, nobody believes that 18.5 per cent was not paid. We're going around saying 64 crore, 64 crore, 64 crore. What is the real percentage? Because Sten Lindstrom (former head of Swedish police) doesn't believe it was 3 per cent. Why would such a large democracy stand on its head for so little money?" she said.


The author of 'Boforsgate: A Journalist's Pursuit of Truth' said, "We should be told who opened the box, when it was opened, what was in the boxes." She also wondered if the commission in the deal was 18 per cent, as suggested by the evidence Swedish firm Bofors gave to the Indian government. "Secondly, why would George Fernandez, who was then the defence minister, tell me at the end of 1999 that he was told by Brijesh Mishra not to open the box?" Subramaniam, who has remained firm in her stance on the issue, said, "The CBI is saying what it has to say. I have to say what I have to say." Former Director General of Rajasthan Police, O P Galhotra, who played an important role in the Bofors case during his tenure with the CBI, said the agency filed a charge sheet based on documents received from Switzerland.


"It is crucial to understand that these documents were transferred from a Swiss court to an Indian court, with the boxes opened at the direction of the designated court," he said in a reply to questions from PTI. "The boxes were opened, and everything was examined. Indeed, the documents were crucial and critical that prompted the agency to file a supplementary charge sheet."


While declining to engage in discussions regarding the author of a recent book on the subject, the 1985-batch IPS officer, who served in the CBI from 1996 to 2004 and later from 2008 to 2015, affirmed that investigators are accountable to the courts. "A charge sheet is submitted in court and is considered a public document."


The Bofors documents were transferred to India by a three-member team, led by the ex-CBI Director Joginder Singh, and were submitted to Additional Sessions Judge Ajit Bharihoke at the Tis Hazari complex. The claims in Subramaniam's book have not been independently verified. Subramaniam said that the CBI planted stories about Hindi film actor Amitabh Bachchan to derail the investigation and launched a political vendetta against the Bachchans.


She recalled that Bachchan had come to her home and asked if she had seen his name. "They tried to derail the investigation in a massive way. And then we found out there was absolutely nothing on the Bachchans," Subramaniam said.


"He is a star by himself. He needs neither political patronage nor money. They were trying to bring him down. All governments were trying to bring him down, from Rajiv Gandhi to V P Singh. And you know, I think people are just jealous of this man. He doesn't need anyone," she said.


When asked about possible links between the Bofors scandal and the Gandhi family, Subramaniam said she was not sure about Rajiv Gandhi, but the money reached Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi.


"I know it reached Mr Quattrocchi. First, there was a bank in Zurich, the Nord Finance Bank, and then from there, it touched the money. And then it went to Geneva. And then his wife came into the account," she said.


Regarding the CBI's recent request for assistance from the United States, Subramaniam said, "And now I'm reading in some papers that there is a Letter of Rogatory (LR) that's going to the United States. Why not Sweden? After all, this is the biggest investigation. I find it strange that the Indian investigators don't want to connect with Swedish investigators. Why?" On Wednesday, officials said that the CBI had sent a judicial request to the US seeking information from private investigator Michael Hershman, who had expressed willingness to share with Indian agencies crucial details about the Rs 64-crore Bofors bribery scandal from the 1980s.


Hershman, head of the Fairfax Group, visited India in 2017 to attend a conference of private detectives. During his stay, he appeared on various platforms, alleging that the investigation into the scam had been derailed by the then Congress government and stated he was willing to share details with the CBI. He claimed in an interview that he was appointed by the Union Finance Ministry in 1986 for investigation of violation of currency control laws and money laundering by Indians abroad and tracking of such assets outside India, and some of them pertained to the Bofors deal.


The agency took note of Hershman's claims in several interviews and announced in 2017 that the matter would be investigated according to due process. The need for Letters Rogatory arose because letters and reminders to the US authorities on November 8, 2023, December 21, 2023, May 13, 2024, and August 14, 2024, did not yield any information. Subramaniam's book delves into the Bofors scandal, a major bribery case involving the Indian government and the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors in the 1980s. The scam pertains to allegations of a Rs 64-crore bribe in a Rs 1,437-crore deal with Bofors for the supply of 400 155mm field Howitzers, which played a significant role in India's victory during the Kargil war.


The CBI filed the charge sheets in 1999 and 2000. The Delhi High Court exonerated Rajiv Gandhi in 2004, nearly 13 years after he was assassinated by the LTTE in a suicide attack. In 2005, the Delhi High Court quashed all charges against the remaining accused, noting that the CBI failed to prove that the money transferred by Bofors to various agents by Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi was meant to be paid as a bribe to public servants in India.


The CBI appealed against the 2005 decision in the apex court in 2018, but it was dismissed on the grounds of delay. The Supreme Court, however, allowed it to raise all the points in an appeal filed by advocate Ajay Aggarwal in 2005.


PTI

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