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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.)

Savage Drift

The murder of Sharif Osman Hadi comprehensively exposes a Bangladesh that tolerates disorder, indulges radicals and misreads its neighbours.

Bangladesh is in accelerating disorder. Mob violence, attacks on minorities, and the vandalism of temples and historical sites are no longer exceptional events but recurring markers of a political order under strain.


The immediate trigger for the latest bout of frenzied violence was the killing of Sharif Osman Hadi, a key anti-India figure associated with last year’s July Uprising. Shot in the head by masked attackers in central Dhaka while launching his election bid, the 32-year-old died six days later in a Singapore hospital. His death has deepened instability as Bangladesh prepares for a consequential national election and grapples with strained ties with New Delhi.


In Dhaka, mobs vandalised and torched the offices of Prothom Alo and The Daily Star in the Karwan Bazar area. The ancestral home of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at Dhanmondi 32, a museum and symbol of the Liberation War, was ransacked and set ablaze. In Chattogram, protesters gathered near the Indian Assistant High Commission, turning diplomatic premises into targets of street politics.


Beyond the capital, the violence has been more intimate and more brutal. In Dubalia Para village in Bhaluka upazila of Mymensingh district, Dipu Chandra Das, a Hindu man, was beaten by a mob, tied to a tree and his body set on fire following allegations of blasphemy.


This sustained domestic turbulence coincides with an ideological assault on Bangladesh’s founding narrative. The 1971 Liberation War, which ended Pakistan’s campaign of mass murder, rape and repression against Bengalis has been softened, relativised and in some quarters actively rewritten ever since the Yunus regime was installed in Bangladesh following the ouster of the pro-India Sheikh Hasina.


Pakistan, once the oppressor, is cautiously rehabilitated in public discourse, while India, whose intervention ended the carnage, is increasingly portrayed as a hegemonic threat. The revisionism is not a scholarly debate; it is a deliberate effort to reshape identity, prioritising religious nationalism over civic pluralism.


The removal of Sheikh Hasina was far from an organic domestic transition. Observers across South Asia describe it as the result of persistent U.S. influence - an exercise of deep-state instruments, from diplomacy to NGO networks - that destabilised the political equilibrium and created the conditions for a rapid regime change. Whatever the exact mechanics, the effect has been a rupture in authority followed by a vacuum that radical Islamist forces were quick to occupy.


These forces, long constrained by Bangladesh’s secular constitution and the historical memory of 1971, have now surged with newfound confidence. Over the past few months, temples have been desecrated, minority homes attacked and mobs have executed atrocities with appalling impunity.


The US feted, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has been at the centre of this drift. His administration has oscillated between moral posturing abroad and indecision at home. His deliberately provocative remarks on India’s northeast ignited anti-India rhetoric that has now become commonplace on political platforms. In the wake of the attack on Osman Hadi, Yunus sought India’s assistance to arrest and hand over the shooters, even as extremist elements insinuated Indian involvement. India categorically rejected these allegations, describing them as a false narrative advanced by radicals.


It is regrettable that a person of Yunus’ stature fails to see that India remains Bangladesh’s principal neighbour, largest trading partner and unavoidable strategic interlocutor. His dangerous embrace of Pakistan since Hasina’s ouster offers neither substantive economic support nor security guarantee but foretells ominous days for Bangladesh.


After a Bangladeshi court sentenced Hasina to death in absentia, Dhaka’s subsequent calls for Hasina’s extradition have been met with studied restraint by Indian officials.


India has also rejected claims that Awami League leaders are directing political activity from Indian soil, reiterating that it does not permit its territory to be used for destabilising a neighbouring state. At the same time, New Delhi has made clear that elections which effectively exclude the Awami League would struggle to command credibility.


For New Delhi, a Bangladesh that criminalises its largest political force, tolerates Islamist mobilisation and rewrites the legacy of 1971 risks sliding into chronic instability - an outcome India neither seeks nor can ignore. History is not infinitely forgiving. A country that allows its past to be vandalised should not be surprised when its present is set alight.

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