Lagaan, the popular Bollywood film, produced by film star Aamir Khan and directed by Ashutosh

Gowarikar won the Audience Award at the 2001 Iocarno film festival and has also earned itself the

distinctive reputation of being nominated in the Best Foreign Film category for the 2001 Academy

The question of national identity has always been an important part of the thematic frame in

popular Hindi film, and throughout the course of major historical changes the conceptualized

representation of national identity and idealised ‘Indian-ness’ was constantly being re-thought and

re-considered.

The rise of Hindutva in the 1990s gave strong impetus to the fundamentalistic movements, the

most notorious of them the Ramjanambhoomi movement, resulting in the demolition of the Babri

Mosque in Ayodhya in 1992 and subsequent violence all across the country.

Lagaan despite dealing with contemporary social topics and exploring the concepts of nationalism

and patriotism, not only base its narratives on mythological structures, but also incorporate a

number of clearly pronounced religious symbols and motifs in the narrative as well.

Proceeding with an analysis of the films, first of all it is important to mention that both films by

Ashutosh Gowariker are related to the two main Indian epics. In the mytho-religious sphere they

implement the motifs of the Mahabharata (Lagaan) and the Ramayana (Swades), and both films

are structured according to some broader myth-related frameworks: the serpent and the thunder

god (Lagaan) and the hero’s journey (Swades).

Some of the primary manifestations of myths are clearly visible in the construction of time and

space in both films. The name of the film Lagaan has a certain mythological connotation since it

consists of two parts: Lagaan: Once upon a Time in India. The name directly suggests that there

will be two separate timelines in the film: a historical line, which is identified at the very beginning

of the film (the year 1893) and a mythological one, as implied in the name itself, since once upon a
time is generally found in fairytales and myths. The actual time frame in the films is also related to

mytho-religious festival practice; in Lagaan the narrative is centred around the Krishna Jayanti

festival (the festival of the birth of Krishna)

the villagers of Champaner have to pay a tax (lagaan) in grain for the local supervisor of the

province, Captain Russell. However, the country is impoverished by drought, and there is no sign

of rain and no hope for the harvest. The situation is made even worse by Russell’s whim to double

the tax. The young peasant boy Bhuvan, unable to stand this injustice, make a bet with captain

Russell; if his assembled team of Champaner villagers beats Captain Russell’s British team in the

cricket match, the entire province will be freed from the lagaan. At the end of the film, after

continuous struggle on the cricket pitch Bhuvan and the villagers defeat the British and an intense

rain spills from the sky, corresponding to the joy of Bhuvan’s team.

Vedic myth about the thunder god Indra and his battle with a demon (asura), the giant serpent

Vritra. There are many variations of this myth, but one of the most popular is that Vritra drinks all

the waters of the Earth, resulting in a terrible drought. The god Indra slays the serpent in battle and

releases the waters, which spill over the earth.

The identification of Bhuvan with Krishna is constantly re-established throughout the film. From

the very start when Captain Rassell shoots the deer, which Bhuvan tried to protect, we see the eyes

of Bhuvan filled with tears, allusions to the epics in which Krishna was shot by the hunter Jari. On

the day of the Krishna Jayanti festival, Bhuvan also performs Krishna’s role in the dance of

Krishna and Radha, playing the flute, the attribute of Krishna, and in the eyes of the spectator he is

represented as almost becoming an incarnation of Krishna himself.

In Lagaan the director used some symbols related to the Vedas and the Mahabharata in order to

draw parallels to colonial philosophy and to condemn colonialism as a chaotic state in India,

approving the anti-colonial discourse and India’s fight for independence. Myth in his film works as

a legitimizing and justifying tool of anti-colonial perspectives. Commented [abs1]:

Introducing the term of double temporality in his essay The Double Temporality of Lagaan, Grant

Farred argues that Lagaan functions as a critique of the anti-colonial past at the same time as it

operates as a critique of the postcolonial future of India (Farred 2004, 94).

Idealized national community,

If we take a closer look at the members of Bhuvan’s team, we can see that there are

representatives of both major social and major religious backgrounds: a multi-religious

conglomerate of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs—the main religions of India (even Elizabeth, being

an unofficial coach of the team, also suggests a link with the Christian community). At the start of

the cricket match, all the members of Bhuvan’s team get ready for it according to their own

religious identity—by chanting mantras from the Hindu manuscripts or Granth Sahib or Suras

from the Koran. In the presence of Hindu nationalism and post-Ayodhya communal religious

clashes all over India, it is the director’s vision of idealised India, driven forward by strong

community spirit without the slightest social or religious segregation.

Lagaan is not the lush romantic melodrama that has revived the industry in the mid- 1 990s after a

string of ever more brutal action movies in the 1 980s. It is not the typical Hindi movie as it breaks

with many of the established traditions of Bombay cinema. It maintains the blend of action,

comedy, melodrama, song-and-dance sequences, stereotypical pantomime villains and love

triangles, but very subtly the film is not doing everything as usual and is pushing the boundaries of

the tested formula of Hindi cinema. It is perhaps more in the tradition of 1950s Hindi cinema, of a

film like Mother India.

Chandrima Chakraborty argues that Lagaan is a Bollywood example of the “subaltern studies”

school.

Lagaan repeats the popular motif of Bollywood films - the defeat of British (colonial) rulers at the

hands of Indians, but situates the struggle for decolonisation on apparently mutually exclusive

domains - cricket, an 'elite' sport, and subaltern politics.

The male narrative voice at the end of Lagaan suggests that the film's project has been to recover

the experience, specific and distinctive historical practice of a subaltern group, which has been lost

or hidden by the processes elite historiography. It questions the 'universality' and 'authenticity' of

official versions of Indian national history.

Villagers identify the English officer as the real 'enemy,' rather than the king. It interesting to note

the parallels between this statement ("what can the raja do? His hands are tied") and Gandhi's

advice to the peasants in Awadh after the 1921 insur-rection, "You should bear a little if the

zamindar torments you. We do not want to fight with the zamindars. Zamindars are also slaves and

we do not want to trouble them."7 It is ironical that while noting 'parallels' between the advice of a

nationalist leader (Gandhi) and the peasant viewpoint in the film. villagers are intelligent enough

to recognise their oppressor of the moment "on their own, that is, independently of the elite.

The "other" that defines the subaltern's self-consciousness, both historically and in the film, is not

only the white outsider: it is equally the 'raja' (feudal lord); the comprador bourgeoisie (Ramnath,

the translator); marginalised groups lower or outside the caste hierarchy (untouchables); the

subordinate and discrimi-nated (disabled or mentally ill) and the other gender (women)

The detailed delineation of the processes of specific and complex negotiations involved in

creating a cricket team transcending class, caste and religious barriers reveal that Champaner's

condition at the time of (or before) the colonial contact was neither just nor homogenous. . The

hierarchy of social relations is evident from the depiction of the thakur, the village headman, the

economic disparity between peasant land-owners with varying amounts of farming land, Lakha's

uncertainty whether the Muslims would be included in the Champaner village. Kachra's double

marginalisation because of his caste and dis-ability, and finally the women, particularly Gauri, the

heroine, who is not considered to be a member of the cricket team due to her gender. The

marginality of the native males is translated into double margin-ality for the brown women in the

film.
The film portrays an anti-colonial subaltern struggle not a nationalist struggle for freedom from

foreign rule. There is no rebellion of the oppressed and no overt reference to the nation or

motherland.The emphasis is on land, freedom from oppression and hopes for prosperity. The

cricket 'nationalism' depicted in the film does not connote a notion of an "imagined community,"

as upheld by nationalist politicians in India. The organised cricket portrayed in the film is one

particular peasant community's response to colonial rule. Cricket nationalism is depicted as

different from nationalist politics and the two are kept separate.

Lagaan does not try to answer whether cricket originated in India or England, but raises the

twofold issue of postcolonial nations trying to resist western hegemonising gaze (and occasionally

reverting it) and subordinate classes appropriating elite dis-courses to voice their

suppressed/erased histories.

An analysis of the ambiguity of the white female character in Lagaan allows us to see how the

'other' gender ruptures colonial masculinity and disrupts the simple binary of the British versus the

'Indians. In Lagaan, Elizabeth, Captain Russell's sister, occupies a social category that is

inescapably racialised as well as gendered. She is not only a white woman, she is thought of as a

white woman, both by the whites and the non-whites. colonial women "expe-rienced the process of

colonialism very differently from colonial men. Elizabeth, like Gauri and other native women in

the colonies, is not considered an equal partner in sports. She is not a member of the cricket team,

only an engaged onlooker. However her appropriation of the role of the cricket coach and teaching

the peasants the intricacies of the game disrupts the masculine preserve of the game. It allows us to

locate the 'other' gender's challenge to rigid systems that maintain agency and 'culture' as western

male preserve. This can be seen as women's 'private' struggles and a pointer to the oppression of

women across racial boundaries.

Elizabeth's positioning in the film also problematically projects the white woman as the rescuer of

the 'other' race.

Robert cross sees Lagaan, a parable of a utopian ‘Gandhian’ post-Independence ‘India’.

First, Kachra possesses an extraordinary ability to play cricket, and there is no suggestion that

negative attitudes toward him would change if he did not have such skill. The village’s

inclusiveness is therefore an interested humanitarianism, motivated by sporting talent rather than a

moral belief in human equality. Second, Kachra’s skill with the ball exists not in spite of his

disability but rather because of it, with the obvious complexities this entails. Third, as Sirivayan

Anand has pointed out, Kachra—whose very name means “garbage”—is entirely passive.3

15 Park Avenue

This film is directed by aparna sen. It’s a 2006 movie

30-something Mitali aka Meethi (Konkona Sen Sharma) suffers from schizophrenia and is

taken care of by her older, divorced sister Anjali aka Anu (Shabana Azmi), who is a professor,

and their ageing mother (Waheeda Rehman). Although she was never married in real life, Meethi

has created her own alternate reality in her mind in which she got married to her ex-fiancé Joydeep

(Rahul Bose) and has five children. While Anu has dedicated her life to taking care of Meethi and

her mother, even putting her own relationship with a fellow professor (Kanwaljeet Singh) on

hold, in Meethi's imaginary world both the older women are holding her in the house and away

from her husband and children against her will. She imagines her family to be living at the non-

existent 15 Park Avenue in Kolkata.

After Meethi has a severe seizure, her case is taken up by a new doctor Kunal Barua (Dhritiman

Chatterjee). While discussing her sister's case with the new doctor, Anu reveals that though

Meethi had dormant schizophrenic traits since childhood, she led a very normal life till her early

20s, before a traumatic experience in the course of her job as a journalist made her withdraw from

the outer world. Her fiancé, unable to deal with the emotional upheaval caused by the incidence,

broke off the engagement. On the doctor's advice, Anu takes both women on a vacation to Bhutan,

where they are spotted by Joydeep, now married with two children. In her present state, Meethi
does not recognize Joydeep as the same man she is married to in her imagination, and befriends

him. When Joydeep learns of Meethi's worsened condition and her imaginary world, he offers to

help her locate the elusive family home - 15 Park Avenue

Back in Kolkata, Joydeep drives her down to the part of the city where she believes her house and

her family are. In a surrealistic climax, Meethi finally locates the house and finds her husband Jojo

(as she fondly calls him) and her five children waiting for her return. She walks into the house,

reunited with her 'real' family and is never seen again.

The perception of reality. It begins as a drama of a schizophrenic young woman from a middle

class family, her relationships with her ex fiance, her sister. Traumatized after an assignment as a

photo journalist where she was raped, she is considered as a nursing case. Even though I have read

in an interview that Aparna Sen was inspired by a case of schizophrenia among relatives, the films

turns soon into a surreal heavy dreamlike film.

One of the most remarkable seems at the beginning like a conventional parallel montage

suggesting the simultaneity of Anu giving a lecture about quantum mechanics and Mithi (mis-)

(treated by a kind of shaman at home.

But the soundtracks of Anus lecture and Mithis “treatment begin to mix and the rhythmic

exchange of the scenes with Mithi and Anu have nothing to do anymore with a parallel montage,

this moment looks like two moments taking place at the same time but are wedged into each

other, a montage which does n´t arrange but which is close in this moment to lead to chaos.

The most striking narrative parts which tell us about Mithi are from second hand sources, Anu´s

report about Mithis story told to the psychiatrist and Joydeeps memories and the story he finally

tells to his wife. Every story which is told about Mithi is as well interpreted according to their own

perceptions of reality.
The administration of ECT electro conclusive therapy is perhaps the most controversial among the

representations of mental distress in Indian films. the general public has several misconceptions

about ECT and that, if administered properly, it can produce faster recovery. Our doctor in the film

tends to agree with this and the scene that depicts Meethi being administered ECT is perhaps a first

in Indian cinema. We see Meethi being prepared for ECT and, as she undergoes the procedure,

Anu watches it with the sensitive Dr Kunal taking her through it step by step, explaining how it

works. The film does not make use of any of the usual cinematic techniques which are employed

to depict the horror of ECT or of madness – no screams, no convulsing body on the bed, no

heartless orderlies forcing the poor victim down. This is psychiatry at its best – understanding,

patient, and friendly.

“One of the basic themes in the film is the question of reality... the sick girl's reality and that of

others around her.

Meethi has no vice in the film.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Farred, Grant. ‘The Double Temporality of Lagaan: Cultural Struggle and Postcoloniality’,

Journal of Sport and Social Issues 28, 2 (2004): 93–114.