FilmIndia (1946)

October, 1946 Master Arun and Baby Hamida play Krishna and Meera respectively in 'Meerabai", a Shalimar picture. own palatial bungalows in Bombay. Jamnagar, Poona, and other place-; to maintain an expensive string of race horses; to afford nerve-shattering gambles on the share and the cotton markets; to maintain a fleet of cars and support an army of couriers. The silver-haired centurion bowed to their demands and put the men back into their jobs. The movie multi-millionaire was scared of that "unless". He didn't have the guts to play with the new explosive material though he has toyed with the inflammable celluloid for 20 years and made it yield gold — good old yellow gold. The conditions of employment in the studios have been inhumanly scandalous all these years. On a beggarly pittance, which could hardly keep the body and the soul together, workers were made to toil as much as 18 hours a day and very often 48 hours without a break. .Many a studio worker, who eats on the pavementand sleeps in the studio compound, does not evon know what the companionship of a woman is like, during 25 years of his ceaseless, inhuman toil. To one whose precarious bread is constantly salted with heavy beads of perspiration, a woman must always remain a stranger. There are hundreds of porkers in our film studio who have bottled up their youth for years and are today in the stage of premature senilitv. They never had a home because they just couldn't afford one. And during all these years the producers fattened themselves on the sweat of their workers and very soon the overflow of their ill-gotten gains was seen in rich motor cars, fashionable companions, expensive FILM IN houses, stock-exchange gambles and race horses. Even the stars, the aristocracy amongst the studiosweaters, became tiny capitalists and aped the producers in their extravagant habits. But during all this criminal orgy by the lucky ones, the average studio worker groaned under the relentless grinding of his daily toil without enough money or even appreciation. Hunger has to be absolute to revolt. Half-fed stomachs provide the best slavish backs for the lashes of capitalism. The workers of the Central Studios asked Theatre-magnate K. M. Modi to grand a dearness allowance immediately and he did so immediately. He didn't have the courage to refuse them seeing that his rickety theatres have been working like so many gold mines all these years and from the theatres have come out his Cinderella dream of palaces, motor cars and race horse-. These two victories have been significant triumphs for our studio workers. But they mustn't stop with these. They must get a share of the profits. Sweat must be paid for with money — good hardearned money. They must demand more and more till labour gets dignity and life becomes worth living. Every worker, no matter what bis status is. must get a decent living and as long as there remains a single man with a half-fed stomach, the producer must not be allowed to rest on his ill-gotten profits for, profits must be called ill-gotten if the sweat of several guarantees the luxury of one. So here is to our workers who are expected to lend a new dignity to our film labour and god-speed to our studio-sweaters, the glamourless army of this glamour trade. WITH EYES TOWARDS THE FUTURE! The communal riots have once again hit the film industry severely. In Bombay. Calcutta, Delhi. Dacca, Allahabad and Ahmedabad. to quote only a few principal cities, the picture houses have been unceremoniously closed under curfew restrictions. In Bombay and Calcutta the film studios also remained closed for days due to uncontrollable panic. If this is the price we have to pay for our nation in the agonizing labour of freedom, no one would object to the film industry's present colossal loss. But the Freedom-Baby must come out soon otherwise there will be no film-baby to record the birth of a nation. These riots, however, are not just so many pangs of freedom as criminal gambols of goondas harnessed for political designs. Our power-greedy politicians arc making such a mess of the country on one communal argument or another that Free India will soon inherit a nation of goondas armed with knives and sticks and trained in arson and pillage. To the general confusion and bloodshed of intercommunal politics, our Communist Comrades add their quota of well-engineered industrial and railway strikes and gradually cut down the distance between Delhi and Moscow to reach the final climax of a great bloody revolution. II