Hundred
years of Satyajit Ray, and his brand of visceral cinema that mirrored the
politics of Bengal across decades
Jawhar Sircar
(Firstpost, 2 May 2021)
It is quite uncanny
that the birth centenary of Satyajit Ray, 2 May, 2021, also happens to be the
very day on which the results of the bitterest and longest drawn elections in
Bengal’s history are being revealed. When one comes to think of it, this
coincidence is as poetic as the legendary filmmaker's cinema, because Bengal's
politics has always been inextricably linked to its cinema.
“Fish, football, and
films” may be said to capture the essence of Bengal, but without another term,
‘politics,' the description is hardly complete. While the Bengali fixation with
the first two above are rather well known, and ‘politics’ is embedded in the
DNA, a word on films may be in order.
The state that has slipped on many fronts in the past half a
century continues, however, to vigorously retain its remarkable lead in
producing quality and thought-provoking films. With 22 movies, Bengali films
have won the highest number of the nation’s best film awards, while the next
group, Hindi, has secured 14. Malayalam comes third with 12 such awards, while
most others are content with just one or two. One is astonished how the
restless Kolkatan waits so patiently in mile-long queues outside the different
venues of the city’s International Film Festival.
These four elements usually manifest themselves in pairs,
and the most impressive combo emerged when films combined with politics in
Bengal. We see how as early as 1938, Bengal rolled out patriotic movies like Desher Mati (My Country’s Soil), Sangram and Vande Mataram,
while it grappled with more complex issues in the cinematic version of
Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora.
Sarat Chandra Chatterjee’s banned patriotic novel Pather Dabi (Right of Way) also appeared in film form
even before the British had left.
It were, however, more radical films like Chhinnamul (The Uprooted, 1951) and Ritwik Ghatak’s Nagarik (1952) that gripped public attention,
focusing on the burning issues of refugees who were violently and mercilessly
uprooted from East Pakistan. This is where the Communists scored their first
goals, as the ruling Congress establishment floundered in handling the human
tide that swept into West Bengal, angry and hungry. The Communists did a great
service by campaigning to ensure that the communal virus did not infect the
furious millions, which was quite unlike what was happening in Punjab and
Delhi. But they organised themselves and other disaffected masses in their
endless series of violent movements that rocked the state over the next two
decades.
Soon, the ‘three masters’ of Bengali film made their
presence felt. While two, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen, were overtly
pro-communist and churned out strident films, the third, Satyajit Ray, was far
more nuanced. In 1955, Ray’s debut film Pather Panchali marked the grand entry of Bengali films
into world cinema, and was commended for its superb production, maturity of
handling, worldview, and de-theatricalised presentation. It was not
political, but dealt subtly with the universality of human struggle and the
message of survival.
This was the year when Bengal abolished its notoriously
inequitable, centuries-old zamindari system,
to free cultivable lands for the impoverished peasantry. While Ray added two
unforgettable films to what the legendary Apu trilogy,
Ghakak produced his disturbing trilogy, beginning with Meghe Dhaka Tara, in rapid succession in 1960, 1961, and 1962,
raging at the tragic consequences of the partition of Bengal. This was just
after the tumultuous Food Movement of 1959, which was brutally suppressed — the
Communist Party claimed that several scores of their protesters had been
bludgeoned to death by the police.
Bengal was on the boil, and the common man learnt to occupy
the street, through agitations that preceded it, like the violent one against
the increase of the fares of trams by one paisa (several
trams were set on fire), and when teachers left schools to protest and sit on
pavements, demanding a decent salary of just a hundred and fifty rupees.
Endless protest soon emerged as a leitmotif of the state, which would start
driving industry away from it. But it is rather strange, however, that there
are no inspired films centred on these political struggles, though they were
referred to or appear in the ‘background’ of later movies.
Politics in Bengal underwent a paradigm shift in 1967 when
Congress was dislodged from power, and left parties combined with ‘bourgeois’
groups to form a government. Its short life was ruptured when left-wing
extremism tore out of the ruling Communist Party (Marxist) to stage an armed
insurrection at Naxalbari. Mrinal Sen has chronicled so movingly the
excruciatingly painful phase that followed, as the ‘revolution,' drenched in
“the blood of beheaded class enemies," wrestled in a macabre battle with
brutal and vindictive state repression. That Sen’s sympathies lay unambiguously
with the oppressed and with the left movement is clear, though we are not sure
which brand of the left that was.
His ‘Calcutta Trilogy’ of Interview, Calcutta 71, and Padatik,
followed by Chorus,
captured the terrible frustration of the youth during the 1969-1975 period,
when hopeless joblessness stared in the face while the romanticised left
revolution went through its dramatic convulsions. He was critical of Ray’s lack
of direct involvement, but Ray’s films of this same phase, like Pratidwandi,
Seemabaddha, and Jana
Aranya, brought out quite
vividly and sympathetically the exasperation of the thinking, educated
middle-class youth.
Along with Kerala, Bengal was always a highly politicised
state but its population is almost three times that of Kerala’s, while its
human development indices are nowhere near. Filmmakers in both languages
operate within similar environments of class struggles and rights
consciousness, and in dissecting deep human cravings — which is difficult for
the film world in other states to understand. It is remarkable how Ray
articulated his social and political concerns so vividly and aesthetically,
without actually talking or preaching politics.
A lesser known fact is Ray’s close association with left
intellectuals of post-Independence Bengal, as evidenced from his regular visits
to the office of Kathashilpa Publishers, located very close to College Street’s
iconic Coffee House. It was the rendezvous of almost every radical intellectual
and artist of Calcutta, including those with extreme left sympathies. This red
bastion that Ray visited so regularly retained its political purity and
vitality for three decades, and is credited with encouraging some of finest
cultural personalities of the period.
Ray was conversant with subtle and intricate nuances of the
Marxist discourse. Though he may have been impressed by many an ideal or
aspiration, he could never come anywhere near any dogmatism. An uncompromising
rationalist and secular liberal, he was primarily an artist and a musician who
had extended his genius through the new form of articulation in celluloid. His
classic critique of authoritarianism, Hirak Rajar Deshe, demonstrates his sheer mastery and white anger,
as he narrates a rather simple children’s tale of an evil oppressive king. The
king’s repression and ‘brainwashing’ of the populace (Ray was considerably
advanced in perceiving the tactics of autocracy) backfires, and the
people revolt and dethrone him. Ray is remembered time and again in these
troubled times, and his verses are repeatedly quoted almost every day, as the
nation looks on aghast at mesmerised audiences who are unable to grasp the
devastation inflicted by the ruler.
On 2 May, 2021, the maverick filmmaker and one of Bengal’s
greatest sons would surely like to know whether his people have voted or not
for the lofty ideals for which he had lived and toiled all his life.
(Please Click Here to read the article on Firstpost’sWebsite)
