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By:

Dr. V.L. Dharurkar

12 February 2025 at 2:53:17 pm

Myanmar Matters

If India seeks deeper integration with Southeast Asia, Myanmar is the gateway through which those ambitions must pass. For all the attention lavished on the Indo-Pacific, Myanmar remains curiously underappreciated in India’s strategic imagination. Nestled between South Asia and Southeast Asia, Myanmar occupies a position that geographers would call fortunate and strategists indispensable. If India seeks deeper integration with Southeast Asia, greater influence in the Bay of Bengal and a...

Myanmar Matters

If India seeks deeper integration with Southeast Asia, Myanmar is the gateway through which those ambitions must pass. For all the attention lavished on the Indo-Pacific, Myanmar remains curiously underappreciated in India’s strategic imagination. Nestled between South Asia and Southeast Asia, Myanmar occupies a position that geographers would call fortunate and strategists indispensable. If India seeks deeper integration with Southeast Asia, greater influence in the Bay of Bengal and a credible response to China’s expanding footprint, Myanmar is the gateway through which those ambitions must pass. Long before modern nation-states emerged, the territories that today constitute India and Myanmar were linked through commerce, migration, religion and culture. Buddhist monks, merchants and travellers moved freely across the region, carrying ideas that left an enduring imprint on both societies. The spread of Buddhism from India into Myanmar created a civilisational bond that continues to shape people-to-people ties even today. Strategic Value History, however, is only part of the story. Geography is what makes Myanmar strategically indispensable in the twenty-first century. Positioned between the Indian subcontinent and mainland Southeast Asia, Myanmar forms a natural land bridge connecting India to Thailand and beyond. It is the only Southeast Asian country that shares a land border with India. As New Delhi seeks to transform its ‘Act East’ policy from diplomatic rhetoric into economic reality, Myanmar becomes the crucial link in that chain. Roads, railways, energy corridors and trade routes connecting India to Southeast Asia must inevitably traverse Myanmar's territory. Recognising these realities, India has in recent years sought to deepen engagement with its eastern neighbour. High-level visits, infrastructure projects and expanding economic cooperation reflect an understanding that geography cannot be ignored. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent efforts to strengthen ties with Myanmar represent an attempt to revive historical connections while adapting them to contemporary strategic realities. The question of a country’s geographic advantage has acquired greater significance amid the intensifying competition between India and China. Myanmar occupies a pivotal position in the strategic contest for influence across the Indo-Pacific. For Beijing, the country offers a valuable outlet to the Indian Ocean. Chinese investments in ports, pipelines and transport corridors running through Myanmar help reduce China's dependence on the Strait of Malacca, one of the world's most congested maritime chokepoints. For India, the implications are equally profound. A Myanmar drawn excessively into China’s orbit would complicate New Delhi’s strategic calculations in the Bay of Bengal and India’s northeastern frontier. Conversely, a stable and cooperative Myanmar strengthens India's regional influence and provides greater strategic depth in a rapidly changing geopolitical environment. Myanmar’s importance extends beyond land connectivity. Its extensive coastline along the Bay of Bengal places it at the heart of maritime routes linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans. As the Indo-Pacific emerges as the principal theatre of global economic and strategic competition, countries like Myanmar situated along these maritime crossroads have acquired heightened significance. Natural Resources The country’s strategic value is reinforced by its abundant natural resources and favourable geography. The fertile Ayeyarwady River basin has long served as Myanmar’s economic heartland, while its energy reserves and access to sea lanes enhance its attractiveness to regional powers. These assets make Myanmar not merely a transit corridor but a consequential actor in its own right. Cultural diplomacy has played a notable role in this effort. Shared Buddhist heritage provides a foundation that few other bilateral relationships can claim. Such civilisational links create reservoirs of goodwill that complement economic and strategic cooperation. Yet sentiment alone cannot sustain a partnership of this importance. India’s engagement with Myanmar must be guided by clear strategic objectives. Connectivity projects need to be completed efficiently. Trade and investment must expand. Security cooperation, particularly in border regions, requires continued attention. Above all, India must recognise that influence in Southeast Asia begins not in distant capitals but at its own eastern doorstep. The broader stakes are considerable. Whether through regional connectivity initiatives, maritime cooperation in the Bay of Bengal or the pursuit of a free and open Indo-Pacific, Myanmar occupies a central position in India's regional vision. It is not merely a neighbouring state but a strategic hinge connecting South Asia to Southeast Asia. As great-power competition reshapes Asia, geography is once again asserting its influence over politics. In that geopolitical landscape, Myanmar's significance is unlikely to diminish. For India, the road to Southeast Asia runs through Myanmar, and the success of India’s eastern ambitions may well depend on how effectively it nurtures that relationship. (The writer is a foreign affairs expert. Views personal.)

Politics, Crime, and Cinema: The World of Deewar

Updated: Feb 12, 2025

Deewar

The Hindi word “Deewar” translates to “wall.” The name is symbolic, representing an invisible wall that gradually forms between brothers Vijay and Ravi. Unaware of it until too late, they find themselves on opposite sides of morality—Vijay as a criminal and Ravi as a police officer determined to make him surrender. When Vijay finally decides to turn himself in to reunite with his mother and build a life with Anita, the prostitute he loves, it is already too late.


Indiatime has ranked Deewaar amongst the Top 25 Must-See Bollywood Films. It was one of the three Hindi films featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, the others being Mother India (1957) and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995). At the 23rd Filmfare Awards in 1976, Deewaar won seven awards, including Best Film, Best Director (for Yash Chopra), and Best Supporting Actor (for Shashi Kapoor), becoming the most-awarded film that year. Interestingly, Amitabh Bachchan failed to bag the Best Actor Award, which went to Sanjeev Kumar for his performance in Aandhi.


Amitabh Bachchan recalls, “I remember while narrating the script, Salim-Javed stopped after five to ten minutes and said, Deewar would run at least for ten to fifteen weeks. After half an hour, they stopped again and said, it would run for at least twenty-five weeks. And after they completed the narration, they said that it would run at least fifty to seventy-five weeks...all in jest, of course.” For once, the duo was wrong. Deewar went on to run for one hundred and fifty weeks in many centres with daily showings even three years after its release.


The Political Backdrop

The film is set in the seventies when the ‘imagined community’ of the nation was being threatened by a repressive state. This crisis came to a head when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in 1975. Madhava Prasad describes this moment as one of ‘deep disaggregation’ of familiar structures resulting in the ‘de-legitimisation of the authority of the state’. Popular Hindi cinema’s response was thematised in the figure of the ‘angry man’ – an anti-state, if not anti-national figure, embodied in the brooding and angry screen persona of Amitabh Bachan, who became a symbol of urban working-class militancy. Rejecting the state and accumulating wealth via the underworld, Bachchan’s character (Vijay) in Deewaar is supposed to have been modeled on the real-life don, Haaji Mastan. Mastan’s meteoric rise from a humble dockyard worker to a key player in Bombay’s underworld parallels Vijay’s own career in the film.


The hope to unseat Indira Gandhi was lost when she resorted to strong-arm tactics, breaking the back of labour movements and adopting an authoritarian stance in national politics. All this led to the crackdown in 1975 when Indira Gandhi declared a "National Emergency" that suspended all fundamental rights of citizens. It was a nineteen-month period of vicious political persecution, reminiscent of British Rule, directed at anyone who dared to oppose the government, a short-sighted attempt by the Indira Gandhi government to stay in power.


The price of this reign of terror was steep. In the 1977 election after the Emergency was lifted, the Congress Party lost power for the first time in independent India's history, ending its thirty-year dominance after 75 years of political influence. The repression fueled many stories about the arrests of top leaders and powerful figures who had fallen out of favour with the ruling Congress. One such tale involved the legendary smuggler Haji Mastaan. Years later, Salim-Javed believed that after Deewar’s massive success, Mastaan rode on the film’s fame, though Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) bore little resemblance to his life as a coolie in the docks.


We glimpse a Bombay unlike that seen in other mainstream films of the time—one marked by educated youth facing unemployment, rising smuggling, drugs, mafia lords, and people living in shanties under railway bridges, on platforms, or in huts constantly at the mercy of the rains. Slum children are denied education and pushed into labour, while men endure exploitative, weekly contract work at the docks. Meanwhile, uneducated, poor migrant housewives toil under heavy loads at construction sites.


This offers a socio-political reading of the film, except for Anita, the prostitute Vijay meets in a bar. There is no backstory of a family falling on hard times, forcing a daughter into prostitution. Glamour exists only in posh hotels, lavish bars, and luxury apartments owned by underworld figures like Davar, Vijay’s sharply dressed boss and rival in gold smuggling, and Samant, played by Madan Puri. Romance is minimal, with a few songs between Ravi and his girlfriend, reluctantly included by Salim-Javed and Yash Chopra at the producer’s insistence. Fortunately, when the film was made, despite Indira Gandhi’s Emergency and press censorship, politics, crime, and movies remained separate—unlike today, where their nexus is well known.


(The author is a film scholar. Views personal)

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