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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.)

Sands of Secession

A Saudi–Emirati rift, not Yemen’s civil war, is now shaping the fate of the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest state.

Yemen has never lacked for factions, but rarely have its internal quarrels so nakedly mirrored the rivalries of its foreign patrons. The latest drama in the south where forces loyal to Yemen’s internationally recognised government have pushed out the Southern Transitional Council (STC) from the vast provinces of Hadramout and al-Mahra seems like a routine reshuffling of power in a country accustomed to chaos on the surface. But in fact, it marks the open unravelling of the Saudi-Emirati condominium that has underwritten the war since 2015.


Rashad al-Alimi, head of Yemen’s Saudi-backed Presidential Leadership Council, declared that government forces had retaken the two eastern provinces and that all armed groups would now operate under the command of the Saudi-led coalition. That pronouncement was meant less for Yemenis than for foreign ears. Hadramout and al-Mahra account for nearly half of Yemen’s landmass and abut Saudi Arabia’s long, porous border. Control of them gives Riyadh a strategic glacis against Houthi infiltration and Iranian influence. Losing them to the STC - a militia-cum-political movement backed by the United Arab Emirates - had been a humiliation. Regaining them was send a message that Saudi Arabia, and not Abu Dhabi, calls the shots in Yemen’s east.


Yet in Aden, the STC’s bastion, thousands poured onto the streets waving the flag of the old People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, which existed as a Marxist state until unification in 1990. Their chants were aimed not at the Houthis, who still control the capital, Sanaa, but at Saudi Arabia and the government it sponsors. The STC’s demand is simple and combustible: the resurrection of an independent South Yemen. Its leaders have long argued that unification brought neglect and plunder by northern elites. Many southerners agree. What has changed is that this grievance has become entangled with a regional power struggle.


Saudi Arabia and the UAE went to war together to prevent the Houthis, an Iran-aligned movement, from dominating Yemen. But their visions for the country have diverged. Riyadh wants a pliant, nominally unified Yemen that secures its southern border. Abu Dhabi, more commercially minded, has built a network of proxy militias along Yemen’s coast and islands, from Aden to Socotra, securing shipping lanes and ports. The STC is the most prominent of these proxies. For the UAE, a friendly, semi-autonomous south offers leverage over trade routes in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. For Saudi Arabia, it threatens to fragment a neighbour it wants to stabilise.


The drama surrounding Aidarous al-Zubaidi, the STC’s elusive leader, underlines how poisonous this rivalry has become. Expelled from Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council and accused of treason, Mr Zubaidi failed to turn up for talks in Riyadh. Saudi officials allege that Emirati officers spirited him out, first by boat to Somalia and then by military aircraft to Abu Dhabi. The UAE denies wrongdoing.


The STC’s Riyadh-based delegation has since announced the group’s dissolution, citing internal rifts and regional pressure. Few believe that southern separatism has suddenly evaporated. But the announcement reveals how exposed the STC is without Emirati cover.


None of this brings Yemen any closer to peace. The Houthis remain entrenched in the north, buoyed by Iranian weapons and by Saudi Arabia’s desire to extricate itself from an expensive stalemate. Riyadh has been quietly negotiating with them, even as it cracks down on Emirati-backed secessionists in the south. The war that began as a bid to restore Yemen’s recognised government has become a juggling act: containing Iran, managing the UAE, and avoiding further disintegration.


For Yemenis, the country’s modern history is a cycle of unity and rupture. Unification in 1990 was followed by a southern secession attempt in 1994, crushed by the north. The Arab Spring toppled Ali Abdullah Saleh but unleashed forces that no coalition could control. Today, Yemen is effectively partitioned among the Houthis, the government, and a mosaic of militias.


The latest battles in Hadramout and al-Mahra do not change that fundamental fact. What they do change is the balance among Yemen’s foreign patrons. A Saudi-Emirati divorce would be more destabilising than any local uprising. Without a semblance of coordination between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, Yemen risks becoming not just a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but a theatre for Gulf rivalries as well.

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