FilmIndia (1946)

August 1946 Padma Eannerjee plays the hero's heroine in "Dharti", a Ranjit picture. boobies. This is an old quarrel \vc are ourselves fighting out with our film producers for years. This basic defect of the industry must rule out the insinuation that the producers of "Hamrahi" were trying to be clever. It is moreover not necessary to be a Hindu to run down the Muslims. It is enough to be a film producer to run down any community without knowing what is being done. Take the recent instance of "Nek Pervin" a Muslim social story, written by Wahid Qureshi, a Muslim and produced and directed by S. M. Yusuf, also a Muslim. Elsewhere in this issue we have published a full review of this picture. {Page 431 In this picture of Muslim social and cultural life, ihaukat, evidently a rich and cultured Muslim, gambles, employs goondas, drinks constantly, misleads good people, shoots men with revolvers merely to get a woman for his bed. And when the woman refuses, he attempts to kill her son and outrage her modesty. Is this the usual pattern of Muslim social life prevalent in the country? Between the two portrayals of Muslims in "Xek Pervin" and in "Hamrahi", which slanders the Muslims more? In "Zeenat" a very popular Muslim picture, again produced and directed by Muslims, the pregnant-Muslim heroine is chased out of the house in the dead of night by her husband's brother, another Muslim. How does this incident reflect on the humanity of the Muslims as a community? We can quote several instances like this in which either the Muslim producers or the Muslim directors FILMINDI A of the industry have introduced sequences into their stories — sequences which, measured by the 'Hamrahi' yard-stick, slander the Muslims terrifically and show them up as a community which indulges in riot, rape, arson, murder and what not. What have the Calcutta guardians of the fair name of the Muslims to say about these incidents? If a Hindu producer cannot show some doubtfully dressed character without hurting the susceptibilities of the Muslims, how can the Muslims, themselves, slander their community wholesale by portrayals as in "Nek Pervin" and "Zeenat"? The Muslim producers, who are expected to present their community in good colours, become thus its greatest traducers. It has become necessary to quote the other side of the coin here because the Calcutta paper seeks to find a politically-prompted communal reason for the "goondas" in "Hamrahi". Actually, motion picture producers, be they Hindus or Muslims, cannot avoid some of the incidents they show if a motion picture is to be a realistic story of our every day life and behaviour. Sometimes when some producer oversteps the limits of reasonable exaggeration, as in the case of "Xek Pervin", "filmindia" quickly administers a rebuke and for some time things go on smoothly again. But these lapses, whether on the part of the Hindu producers or the Muslim ones, are hardly to be considered as so much more food for communal and political agitations and conflicts. And it is no business of the political stooges of any party to make capital out of them to promote their own party propaganda. The Indian film industry is on the brink of a crisis today, mainly due to its own lack of enterprise and partly because of the fast-multiplying foreign competition. With its present stupid constituents our film industry has little chance of surviving in the future world of highly organized trades and industries, unless it receives official protection and unstinted public patronage. If this diseased industry is also destined to go through the additional spasms of communal conflicts, then its end must, indeed, be very near. This is a very important aspect of our industrial life which all politicians, whatever their shades and complexions, must seriously consider. We welcome all the guidance of our several politicians to build up this industry on indigenous lines so that some day we, as a nation, can compete with the best product in the world But we strongly object to our film industry being made a victim of party bitterness on flimsy grounds. "Filmindia" is essentially a film magazine and does not bother about politics and this article is not therefore an argument on behalf of any political party or community. It is only a plea on behalf of a struggling film industry which is gasping for breath between its own misadventure and the menace of foreign competition. 7