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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.)

Coffee Diplomacy

Venezuela’s embattled strongman resurfaces amid rising American pressure as an old oil war returns in new form.

After several days of unexplained absence that had fuelled fevered speculation in Caracas and beyond, President Nicolás Maduro chose an unlikely venue to reappear: a specialty-coffee awards ceremony in eastern Caracas. Slipping back into public view by pinning medals on farmers and sipping espresso before cameras, he spoke not of warships or sanctions but of resilience, declaring Venezuela “indestructible, untouchable, unbeatable.” It was an effort at reassurance, both to his supporters and to wavering elites. Yet the symbolism was impossible to miss. Maduro surfaced just as pressure from the United States was intensifying sharply and moments after Donald Trump confirmed that the two leaders had spoken by phone.


The call, Trump said with studied ambiguity, went “neither well nor badly.” In the past few weeks, Washington has moved more than a dozen warships into the Caribbean, deployed roughly 15,000 troops across the region and expanded maritime strikes on vessels it claims are linked to drug trafficking. Caracas insists the campaign is merely the latest pretext for regime change.


At one level, this confrontation is being framed as law enforcement versus criminal enterprise. At a deeper level, it is a familiar struggle over sovereignty, influence and oil. Venezuela possesses some of the world’s largest proven petroleum reserves. For more than a century, its hydrocarbons have shaped its domestic politics and its relationship with the United States. Oil allowed the country to build one of Latin America’s most durable twentieth-century democracies and later funded Hugo Chávez’s break with it. When Chávez recast the state as a revolutionary petro-power in the early 2000s, he also recast Washington as his principal antagonist.


Maduro inherited not only that ideological conflict but also the fragile economic model beneath it. When global oil prices collapsed after 2014 and American sanctions tightened, the Bolivarian system began to fail catastrophically. Hyperinflation wiped out savings. Power cuts became routine. Public services imploded. More than seven million Venezuelans fled abroad in the largest migration in modern Latin American history. Sanctions, diplomatic isolation and the international recognition of an alternative presidency under Juan Guaidó were meant to force a transition. Instead, they entrenched a hardened security state.


For years Washington relied on economic strangulation and diplomatic pressure to dislodge Maduro. Neither worked. Today the strategy appears to be shifting from financial suffocation toward military intimidation.


Maduro, for his part, has chosen to internationalise the conflict. In a letter to the secretary general of OPEC, he accused the United States of seeking to seize Venezuelan oil reserves by force and of endangering global energy stability. The precedent is not flattering to Washington. From Iran in 1953 to Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011, energy security has repeatedly fused with interventionism.


Yet to portray Venezuela merely as a victim of imperial appetite is to ignore how thoroughly its own institutions have been hollowed out. Elections have been manipulated, opposition figures jailed or exiled, courts subordinated and the military bound ever tighter to the ruling party’s survival.


What makes the present moment especially combustible is the weakening of the external buffers that once protected Caracas. Russia, long a diplomatic shield and military supplier, is consumed by its war in Ukraine. China has quietly retreated from large-scale lending to Venezuela after years of unpaid debts and failed projects. Iran remains a tactical partner but lacks the capacity to absorb Venezuela’s economic collapse. Even Latin America, once ideologically divided over Chávez and his heirs, now responds with fatigue rather than solidarity.


That leaves Maduro dangerously exposed. His reappearance at a coffee ceremony was meant to project calm continuity and personal control. Instead, it underscored how narrow his room for manoeuvre has become. Washington hints at escalation without committing itself. Caracas shouts sovereignty while acknowledging civilian deaths.


Venezuela’s tragedy is that its fate is once more being shaped by forces far larger than its shattered economy and exhausted society. Oil, ideology and American power are converging again, just as they have at so many ruinous crossroads in the past. 


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