[Reader-list] Mere desh ki dharti...

[Navayana Publishing]

http://www.hindu.com/mag/2009/01/25/stories/2009012550020200.htm

(Imagi)nation without the subaltern

PRASHANT KADAM

This Republic Day the iconic song, Mere Desh ki Dharti, will be heard yet
again. But take a look at the unbalanced choice of icons the song celebrates
and the sweeping erasures it nonchalantly effects.

Mere Desh ki Dharti, an extremely popular patriotic song from the film
"Upkaar" (1967), is played on television, radio and at street corners to
celebrate Republic Day every year. We will hear it yet again this January
26. In this song, one sees Bharat, the son of the soil played by Manoj Kumar
(also the director of the film), praise the bounteous earth, its natural
resources and its leaders.

The third and last stanza goes: ye baag hain gautam naanak kaa, khilate hain
aman ke phool yahaan/gaandhee, subhaash, taigore, tilak ayese hain chaman ke
phool yahaan/rang haraa hari singh nalawe se, rang laal hain laal bahaadoor
se/rang banaa basantee bhagatasing rang aman kaa veer jawaahar se (In these
gardens of Buddha and Nanak, flowers of peace prosper/Gandhi, Subhash,
Tagore, Tilak – such are the flowers that blossom here/Colour green stands
for Hari Singh Nalava, and red for Lal Bahadur/Colour saffron is drawn from
Bhagat Singh, and white from brave Jawaharlal.)

Although the entire song needs close attention at various levels, I shall
focus only this verse and the elisions it smoothly makes. A few facts have
to be taken into consideration before engaging with the discourse of the
song. First, the filmmaker Manoj Kumar (born Harikishan Giri Goswami in
Abbottabad in Northwest Frontier Province) has Partition and displacement in
his family history and is a 'high-caste' Hindu. The lyric writer, Gulshan
Kumar Mehta, popularly known as Gulshan Bawra, shares a similar background.
The playback singer Mahendra Kapoor was a Punjabi from Amritsar. The point
in mentioning their regional identities is to suggest that while envisioning
the 'nation' and its political leaders, the filmmaker and his team were
selective: all males, mostly from Central and North India.

New colour

While the song begins by fleetingly mentioning the Buddha, it superimposes
the images of Mohandas Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose on the Buddha.
Ironically, Tilak, an 'extremist' nationalist leader, a Brahmin who openly
criticised Gandhi's views on non-violence and peaceful negotiations, also
finds a place in the same breath. What is surprising though is the invoking
of the colour red: rang haraa hari singh nalawe se, rang laal hain laal
bahaadoor se… (the colour green represents Hari Singh Nalava,a relatively
unknown Punjabi), the colour red (laal) stands for Lal Bahadur Shastri).
Nowhere on the flag of India does one see the colour red. The mention of Lal
Bahadur Shastri, India's third prime minister, owes to the fact that
"Upkaar" was made in 1967, and Shastri died in 1966. His inclusion perhaps
could be justified but who is Hari Singh Nalava and how has he been slipped
in here?

The song seeks to associate the key colours of the Indian tricolour with
"nationalist/political" leaders. But the invocation of the non-existent red
is, in a sense, yet another misrepresentation. While the song systematically
associates each of the colours — green, red, orange and white — with certain
leaders and their spirit, what is rendered invisible is the dark blue
coloured Dhamma Chakra right at the centre of the tricolour. Not only does
the song ambiguously undermine its symbolic colour blue but also the 24 arcs
of the wheel of Buddhist dhamma (not Hindu dharma) and its central place in
the flag. Although the song does mention the Buddha in passing, when it
comes to symbolically associating and emphasising upon the Dhamma Chakra's
significance, it suffers from selective amnesia. Of a piece with this
exclusionist logic, among all the 'national' leaders mentioned, Dr. B.R.
Ambedkar's name and image are conspicuous by their absence. The man who
framed the Indian Constitution gets excluded whereas a virtually unknown
Hari Nalava marks his 'green' presence, thanks to a poor pun on his name.

Ample liberties

Dr. Ambedkar's role in ensuring a place for the Dhamma Chakra in the flag
effectively resisted the effort to pass off the flag of the Indian National
Congress as the newly formed Republic's flag. Crucially, it has to be
understood that the colour blue and the Dhamma Chakra adopted from the
Ashoka Pillar in Sarnath, are not representative of communal or regional
identities. The 24 spokes in the wheel represent 24 virtues such as love,
courage, patience, empathy and humility. However, the "Upkaar" song takes
ample liberties in associating the national flag with an unbalanced choice
of political leaders, and in a sense communalises the flag.

Another major absence in this song of 'nationalism' is the absence of women
leaders. Even the 'usual suspects' are absent. This absence is symbolic and
itself points to the patriarchal nature and ideology of the song and its
creators. Although I do understand that the token representation of images
of 'women leaders' along with male political leaders may have limited
influence on the conditions of and on womenfolk in India, the inaudibility
and invisibility of women among the 'valorised' leaders in Mere Desh ki
Dharti is yet another symptom of brahminical patriarchal bias.

As we remember the formation of the Indian Republic this year, we must hear
and see this iconic song critically and be alive to its ambiguous erasures.

The writer is pursuing his Masters in Cinema and Media studies at York
University, Toronto. Email: explore at prashant.ca

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