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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.)

The Tinderbox of Nagpur



Nagpur, a city that sits at the geographical heart of India, is the seat of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological nerve-centre of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the political turf of Maharashtra’s Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. But despite these credentials, Nagpur has remained on the periphery of the state’s electoral battles for much of modern history at least until 2014 when it was largely a Congress bastion. Even when the BJP won here - securing seats for Fadnavis and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari - the city did not figure prominently in the political imagination. However, that has changed with the latest bout of communal unrest.


On the evening of March 17, an ordinary protest over a 17th-century tomb erupted into something far more volatile. Members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal, emboldened by a recent wave of Hindu nationalist fervour, gathered to demand the removal of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s tomb, which they claimed symbolized historical oppression. Protesters burned an effigy of the emperor, draping it in cloth before setting it ablaze. The event might have passed with little more than political posturing, had it not been for a doctored image that began circulating on social media shortly thereafter.


The post falsely claimed that a religious text had been desecrated during the protest. It spread rapidly through WhatsApp groups and local forums, stoking anger within the city’s Muslim community. By nightfall, hundreds had gathered in protest in the congested lanes of Mahal, chanting slogans and demanding action. The air was thick with suspicion and anger and then, as if on cue, violence erupted. By 7:30 PM, stone-pelting had turned Chitnis Park and Mahal into a battleground. Shops were ransacked, vehicles torched and the police, caught napping, struggled to contain the chaos. Baton charges gave way to tear gas, leaving over 30 police and 56 civilians injured before a curfew was imposed.


The state government moved quickly to contain the damage, physically and politically. The Maharashtra Police Cyber Cell launched an investigation into over a hundred social media accounts accused of spreading misinformation. Officials pleaded with the public to ignore rumours, emphasizing that no religious text had been desecrated. The incident, they insisted, was a consequence of viral falsehoods, not historical grievances.


The opposition saw an opportunity and seized it. Congress leader Nana Patole alleged that the BJP government had orchestrated the violence to deepen communal divisions. Leader of Opposition Vijay Wadettiwar questioned why the police response had been so delayed in a city that is the CM’s home constituency.


And then there is Faheem Khan. A local political figure with a growing profile, Khan had contested the 2024 Lok Sabha elections against Nitin Gadkari. Now he was in police custody, accused of instigating the mob. Was he a convenient scapegoat, or did he have a role in orchestrating the chaos? If the latter, to what end? Some BJP leaders were quick to suggest that the violence was a conspiracy to discredit Fadnavis in his own stronghold.


In many ways, Nagpur has not traditionally been a city of communal violence. Unlike Mumbai, Ahmedabad or Delhi, its history is not littered with riot after riot. Even the 1927 communal disturbances have largely faded from public memory. That is what makes this latest eruption so unsettling. Why here? Why now?


One theory is that the spark came from the recently released Bollywood film Chhaava, which dramatizes Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj’s struggle against Aurangzeb and his brutal execution at the hands of the Mughal. The movie, hailed by Hindu nationalist groups as a necessary corrective to ‘distorted’ historical narratives, apparently renewed demands to remove the Mughal ruler’s tomb. But films alone do not start riots. The deeper problem is the combustible mix of history, politics and modern misinformation.


Today, as Nagpur remains under curfew, the larger question lingers: was this an organic outburst, the result of unchecked communal tensions or was it something more carefully orchestrated?


For Devendra Fadnavis, the stakes are clear. The CM, already under scrutiny for his handling of Maharashtra’s law-and-order situation, he must convince both his constituents and his party leadership that Nagpur, his bastion, remains firmly under control. For the opposition, the unrest is proof that the BJP’s governance is allegedly neither stable nor secure. For Nagpur itself, this moment is a reminder that in modern India, history is not a relic but a weapon.


(The author is a political observer. Views personal.)

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