top of page

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.)

What if Joseph Stalin had become a priest?

Updated: Oct 21, 2024

What if Joseph Stalin had become a priest?

It is 1894. A short, intelligent adolescent with a pockmarked face (owing to a severe bout of smallpox) is kneeling in prayer in a dimly lit room of the Tiflis Theological Seminary in the distant country of Georgia. The air is thick with the scent of candle wax and the echoes of hymns sung in Georgian.

The boy’s name is Iosif Dzhugashvili, better known as ‘Joseph Stalin.’ Looking back at this point in time, it seems fantastic that Iosif, son of a cobbler, who would one day become one of the most ruthless dictators and change the course of world history, had once flirted with the idea of becoming a man of God.

The tantalizing question is what might the world have looked like had Stalin become a priest?

Yet, in a twist of fate that would alter the course of the 20th century, Stalin’s ambition took him down a different path—a path of revolution, bloodshed, and power.

The seminary, as his great biographer Stephen Kotkin suggests, was both a crucible and a battleground for young Stalin. It was here that he first learned the power of ideology (Marxist), the thrill of defiance, and the strength of iron discipline—traits that would later define his rule over the Soviet Union.

Had Stalin embraced the priesthood, his intellect and charisma could have propelled him to prominence within the church, perhaps even as a reformer or a nationalist leader rallying against the Tsarist regime.

Imagining a world where Stalin never left the seminary, one might envision a Russia where the Bolshevik Revolution still occurs, but without the brutal efficiency and paranoid purges that Stalin brought to the Soviet leadership.

Leon Trotsky, who Stalin would later exile and hunt down, might have steered the Soviet Union towards a different kind of socialism—one less steeped in the terror and cult of personality that Stalin cultivated. There would have been no Great Purge (1936-38) and no Gulags where millions of innocent Soviet citizens perished in the name of political consolidation.

On the international stage, Stalin’s absence could have dramatically altered the dynamics of World War II. A Soviet Union led by someone less ruthless than Stalin might have responded differently to Hitler’s advances.

Perhaps a less iron-fisted leader might have sought peace with Nazi Germany sooner, leading to a drastically different outcome in Europe.

The Cold War, too, might have unfolded with less intensity, devoid of Stalin’s paranoia-driven policies that shaped the Iron Curtain and defined the East-West divide.

The trajectory of global communism without Stalin’s iron grip would likely have been less monolithic and more fragmented. Stalin’s dogmatic imposition of Marxism-Leninism shaped not only Soviet policy but also the trajectories of countless communist movements worldwide.

His influence extended from Mao’s China to Castro’s Cuba, setting a template for authoritarian socialism that would not have taken root without him. Stalin’s spirit continues to influence authoritarian leaders in the world even today in the form of personages like Vladimir Putin.

The absence of Stalin’s personality cult could have allowed for a more pluralistic form of international communism.

Until his death at age 74 in 1953, Stalin pretty much dominated world history and his geopolitical policies continue to reverberate even today. Had he remained a priest in that Georgian seminary, the world would have been spared a dictator whose butcher’s bill exceeded that of Hitler’s or Mao’s.

Comments

bottom of page