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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.)

Politics of Clemency

Benjamin Netanyahu’s bid for clemency tests Israel’s rule of law and entangles Gaza, Syria and Washington in a perilous political bargain.

Presidential pardons have long been a lubricant of American politics, applied with weary regularity at the end of administrations. In Israel, by contrast, clemency is rare, freighted with moral meaning and constitutional consequence. That is what makes Benjamin Netanyahu’s formal request for a pardon from President Isaac Herzog so seismic. It is not merely a legal manoeuvre but a bid to rewrite the story of a decade of polarising rule under the shadow of war.


For more than five years, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister has been defending himself in court against charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Even after the Hamas attacks and the devastating war that followed, Netanyahu continued to appear in court, sometimes three times a week. His letter to President Herzog marks a sharp turn. Though insisting on his personal innocence, he now argues that the country itself must “move on.”


For his supporters, the appeal is an act of national closure after years of institutional trench warfare between the executive and the judiciary. For his critics, it is a dark attempt by a wounded strongman to place himself above the law. The fact that he is seeking mercy rather than vindication sharpens the unease.


What lifts the drama from domestic scandal to geopolitical intrigue is Washington’s sudden proximity to the process. During a recent phone call with America’s president, Donald Trump, Netanyahu reportedly sought continued help in nudging Herzog towards clemency. Trump, who publicly called for a pardon during a Knesset address and followed it up with a letter to Israel’s president, now sounds more equivocal.


That ambiguity reflects a broader recalibration. The same call focused heavily on Gaza and Syria - arenas where Trump appears eager to dampen Israeli escalation. In Gaza, America’s president has pressed Netanyahu to soften his approach, even as Israel insists on Hamas’s disarmament as the price of any broader settlement. A recent Israeli proposal would have allowed Hamas operatives to emerge from tunnels on condition of surrender and imprisonment. They refused. The survivors are now thought to be starving underground, their operational freedom shrinking alongside their calories.


On Syria, the message from Washington was to take it easy. With a new Islamist-led leadership in Damascus seeking tenuous international legitimacy after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Trump has warned Israel against destabilising the transition. He has even floated the idea of a security pact between former enemies. Netanyahu, who until recently spoke in the language of deterrence and preventive strikes, has suddenly discovered the vocabulary of restraint. An agreement, he hinted, might be possible.


The coincidence of these shifts invites an uncomfortable question: is Netanyahu’s legal fate becoming entangled with Israel’s strategic posture? The suspicion, voiced quietly in Jerusalem’s legal and security circles, is that a pardon might become part of a larger transactional logic of de-escalation abroad in exchange for political salvation at home.


Granting the pardon would spare Israel months, perhaps years, of corrosive courtroom drama. But it would also confirm the darkest fears of the protesters who filled the streets long before the war that power ultimately shields itself. The precedent would be lethal.


Nor would the international consequences be trivial. A pardoned Netanyahu would emerge politically weakened but legally unbound. At a moment when Israel seeks to expand the circle of Arab normalisation after the Abraham Accords, the symbolism of forgiving a leader convicted, formally or informally, of corruption would sit awkwardly with the promise of institutional reform in the region.


There is also America’s role to consider. Trump’s advocacy places Washington uncomfortably close to Israel’s domestic legal machinery. The United States has long prided itself on non-interference in the internal judicial affairs of allies. A president lobbying for clemency for a leader with whom he enjoys ideological affinity blurs that boundary.


A pardon for Netanyahu might bring procedural closure. It would not bring moral peace. And if it is seen to have been brokered under the long shadow of Gaza and Syria, it may leave Israel’s institutions looking compromised.

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