Filmindia (1941)

ON THE COVER J Y O T I Proprietors : FILMINDIl PUBLICATIONS Lid. Sir Pheroishah Mehta H., Fort BOMBAY filmindia Editor: BABURAO PATEL VOL. 7 NO. 9 SEPTEMBER, 1941 V Elsewhere in this issue we publish an article exposing the methodical German exploitation of the motion picture film as a deadly instrument of propaganda. We are told, and by an eminent English writer who has chosen to remain unknown behind the pen name of "Criticus", that Herr Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister, spends over forty crores of rupees a year merely on overseas film propaganda. This huge expenditure sounds astronomical to the Indian mind, in a country, where the average income per head is hardly three annas a day. Till last year the Government did not realize, even distantly, the huge potentialities of the film for the purposes of propaganda. On the other hand they had enough money to waste on defence and maintenance of law and order as we find that in the single year of 1929, the Government spent Rs. 4210/ or more than 80% of the total expenditure of Rs. 5402/ per 1000 persons on defence and maintenance of law and order which are economically speaking, unproductive services. Strangely enough with all this top-heavy and unreasonable expenditure, India's defences are too poor in comparison with those of the smallest of the Dominions and the pretence of maintaining law and order stands exposed in the umpteen communal disturbances that regularly erupt all over the country proving beyond doubt the waste in money and the incapability to rule wisely. When the Government has so much money to sink in unproductive services year after year, one must deplore their lack of imagination in not realizing the vital importance of the potentialities of film propaganda which could have been easily harnessed earlier, not only for making the nation war-minded but for its uplift in educational, social and economic fields. Had they trained the nation in better citizenship through all these years, the policing expenditure could have been cut down by 80% and the money could have been used in a better way. The Indian film industry has been trying for years, through protests and deputations, to catch the eye of the Government and win over their support for visual education in schools and villages, for encoui'agement to the indigenous film industry and for relief in taxation on machinery and raw products for the use of the film industry. But the Government have all along turned a deaf ear to all appeals and with a self-complacency typical of modern democratic states had allowed matters to drift till last year, when t'hey learned from the enemy their first lesson in film propaganda. Hitler had to spend over 40 crores a year for yeai's for the self-complacent Englishman to wake up and take notice of the world around. And then the war came and the Englishman tried to make up for the lost time theoretically by talking a lot about a lot of intentions and practically doing nothing. Ten months after the Englishman woke up and hypnotized himself into believing that he was doing all the film propaganda that could be done in the whole world, Basil Wright, the famous critic, wrote in the "Spectator", a leading London paper, as follows: "After ten months of a total war the Films Division is still largely a waste of public's money. It has announced no coherent plan, within the framework of which its weekto-week film policy could be shaped and reshaped according to immediate needs. It has failed to mobilise the immense goodwill of the British film industry. It has even failed to make more than a handful of suitable films, and, if suitable films have been made it has delayed or bungled their presentation to the public." And even inspite of this epitaphic criticism, the Films Division continued with its merry career of bungle and blunder and the Englishman, conceding the critic the democratic privilege of criticism, smiled good humouredly and went to sleep again self -complacently while Hitler blared deep and loud from every corner of the world with or without ceremony. Once again the "Economist", another London Weekly, tried to wake up the Englishman in the following words: "So far, not one of the Ministry of Information's activities at home has won even qualified general approval, in official or unofficial circles; and the Select Committee's Report on the Films Division is another 3