SOCIAL CHANGE THROUGH HINDI

CINEMA SPECIAL REFERENCE

RAJKUMAR HIRANI

Ph.D thesis in Mass Communication

School of Journalism & Mass Communication

Devi Ahilya Vishvavidyalaya, Indore

Guide Researcher

Dr. Sonalee Nargunde Aparna Singh

 SOCIAL CHANGE THROUGH HINDI
CINEMA SPECIAL REFERENCE
RAJKUMAR HIRANI

Ph.D thesis in Mass Communication

School of Journalism & Mass Communication

Devi Ahilya Vishvavidyalaya, Indore

Guide Researcher

Dr. Sonalee Nargunde Aparna Singh

Head

Prof. M.S.Parmar
Certificate
Declaration
 Acknowledgement

I owe my qualities to my mother and father. The strength to hold my ground

is bestowed on to me by brother Amitabh I look upto my bhabi like an
affectionate and caring friend, Abhijeet my younger brother how streamlined
my regular stuff in an easy orderly way. My little babies Ayan and Samar
their smiles brighten my life.

I cannot afford to forget…

My friend Lakhan who genuine sharing and discussion a right from start to
end has widened my thought.

My brother Sahil who help me to wound up my things in an organized and

skillful styles. Ashwin Upadhyay sir who gave his precious time to type all
stuff.

My Husband Capt. Dharmendra Singh who presence always motivated me to

crack the hardest nuts with ease and patience.

At last to my guide Dr. Sonalee Nargunde

She taught how to frame a thought…

Answered bulk of queries…

Helped to blow of the cob webs…

Wherever I lacked and felt low she hold me to show suggest and to tell the
difference between the right and wrong

to step forward and focused till the Goal achieved

My love and gratitude to all.

 INDEX
CHAPTER I

1. Introduction

2. Research Objective

3. Research Area

4. Hypothesis

5. Research Methodology

CHAPTER II

1. Communication

CHAPTER II

1. Indian cinema

CHAPTER IV

Social change

Social change through cinema

CHAPTER V

Raju Hirani movies

CHAPTER VI

Data Anaylsis

Conclusion

Reference
INTRODUCTION

Movies are the mirror of society

It would be an interesting research if made over the pattern,

overtime, that Bollywood movies have illustrated individuality and
portrayed the relation of individual and society. Obviously, just like any
other form of art, the movies also depicts the appropriate nature and
situation of the society of that era but some art forms not only depicts
the current situation of society, but also succeeds in providing a new
trend a new idea for the society to be leaded and made practical, and
such movies becomes the masterpiece.

Art is a careful re-creation of reality according to an artist’s

metaphysical value-judgements. Obviously, that selective re-creation is
not meant to depict the things as they are, as Aristotle said that fiction is
of greater philosophical importance than history, because “history
represents things as they are, while fiction represents them as they might
be and ought to be.” Movies, being the indisputably strongest medium of
art, if meant to show the things, situations, people and individuals as
they ought to be, then they become the leading force of change in
society and strengthens the values of individuality.
Recent trend in Bollywood

With the liberalization of Indian economy, the civil liberalization is also

gaining strengthen and bollywood flicks are portraying the essence and
importance of liberty quite well. Ashutosh Gowariker and Amir Khan
portrayed the inhuman nature of taxation in the movie Lagaan while
Mani Ratnam portrayed Abhishek Bachchan as “Guru” struggling for
economic freedom against socialistic governmental odds. The
contemporary artistic subjects were merged with the colours of popular
cinema and very odd individualistic tales like Tare Zameen Par and
Black gained huge success. Such flicks obviously provide a sense of
liberty in the individual to seek for his own freedom, his strengths, and
his right for living with honour of independence.

One can say that bollywood is providing artistic masterpieces

depicting the importance of individual liberty and issue of individualism
and in the same league, the two big movies of 2009, “Rocket Singh the
salesman of the year” and the hugely successful “3 Idiots” confirmed
that now Indian society is ready to appraise the libertarian attitude and
the Indian youth is daring enough to raise the issues of collectivistic
problems and is ready to denounce them, to fight against them. Even
“Rang De Basanti” portrayed the current depleted morality of society
and the struggle of youth against the social political tyrants, yet it was
full of anger, violence, frustration and exhaustion. One may not group
“Rang De Basanti” with the other Bollywood films of libertarian
approach.

Rocket Singh, while struggling to maintain his honest behaviour and

ethical strength, manages to portray the basic factual difference between
the corrupt corporatism and honest capitalism. So meaningfully and with
such an ease, the movie establishes the golden rule of free market,
“consumer rules and honest producer wins”. The movie also clarifies
that to win over the evil, one does not need to pick up the violent means,
nor one need to be evil by himself, Rocket Singh and his band of rebels
tells us that ultimately honesty and hard work is a sound business
decision. The movie suggests that irrespective of corporative and
governmental corruption, if market is allowed to be a free space for the
mutually beneficial dealings and agreements between people, producers,
service providers and the consumers, than the most honest, prompt,
hardworking and innovative one will gain maximum success, that is, a
free market ultimately provides the required moral environment where
honesty pays and dishonesty causes suffering and losses. While the boss
of Rocket Singh robs him of his own company based on free market
principle, consumers forces the villainous boss to learn the better way
and accept the path of honesty and hard-work and ultimately, he goes
back to Rocket Singh to accept the defeat of evil, wrong and immoral.
 3 Idiots is yet again a masterpiece of Amir Khan. The movie is said
to be based on the novel Five Point Someone yet, after watching one
may thought of a laughing, rollicking Howard Roark represented as
Rancho and a babbling, confused Peter Keating represented by Chatur
Ramlingam (Silencer) . It is an exquisite story of a man from nowhere,
who wanted to learn and create, who wanted to produce and who loved
himself and his work. It is a lovely story depicting the win of a morally
strong character who wanted to live for himself according to his own
standards, who needed nobody’s sanctions and who inspired others too
to live by their own standards. Rancho as Phunsukh Wangdu seems no
less than a Roark who won over all odds to be what he wanted to be and
to do what he wanted to do in exactly the same free rational and honest
way he needed to be.

For some, these movies may seem like fairytales or impractical, yet
they show the heights of individual freedom and its importance that
Indian youth needs and the success of the current trend of movies
confirms that Indian society is passing through a huge change in the
mindset where the individual will seek for liberty and will fight for it
intelligently and peacefully, to gain the freedom of his soul to establish
his existence at his own standards, confirming that I, the Individual
needs no sanctions, that “I need no warrant for being, and no word of
sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.”
Collectivism is not the criterion, individualism is, Individual is.

Another movie “Wake up Sid” depicts the quest of person

searching for his existence, rationales, aims, setting his goals and
winning over them. Movies are the mirror of society and more than that,
movies are a strong way of propagating the right rational idea. With the
current libertarian approach of Indian movies and arts where the art
forms with their fictional attributes are depicting the things as they might
be and ought to be, one may say that Indian society is progressively
improving and is set to accept and evolve as a free society looking for
further establishing Individual freedom, his quest for his existence,
happiness and letting him win his way against all odds of collectivism.
Research Objective

• To identify the social acceptance of feel good factor or non trendy movies.
• Market and Social movies like Munna Bhai MBBS, Lage Raho Munna Bhai,
3-idiots etc.
• Social values through simple dialogs and simple dialect.

Research Area

• The students of DAVV, Indore.

Hypothesis

Films of every genre has influence the audience in some or the other kind. Every
film has its own importance and impression on its audience and it depicts the
thoughts and style of its director, there are various films which inspired, motivated,
and even changed the social mentality. The film Mother India, Do Begha Zameen
where created in the age when the Indian Cinema was in its preliminary stage but
these had impact not only in Indian but Internationally. The Showman Raj Kapoor
with his own unique style has created social awareness with his long lasting list of
films like Aag, Jagte Raho etc. Similarly, Manoj Kumar with his films like
Shaeede, Poorabh Aur Paschim, Upkar, Kranti…. prevailed the waves of
patriotism, the Films like Anand (70’s) has struck the audience in the mid 70’s
when disease like Cancer has feared the society for its incurability, Anand has
prevailed the message to like life at its fullest, Prem Rog (80’s) was having the
vibrant issue of ‘widow remarriage’, which was the eye opener had carried a
society, film Jane Bhi Do Yaaron (80’s) though with the light comic content had
carried a satire on the deep rooted corruption of India, Film Boarder which was the
JP Datta’s effort to realize the 1971 Indo-Pak war with full drama and emotion,
which was the blockbuster, Rajkumar Santoshi’s Lajja in the beginning of first
decade of 21st century has raised the issues of men domination in India society with
mythological touch. Various fils in this decade like Lagaan, Nayak, Pinjar, Rang
De Basanti, Lakshya, Yuva, Iqbal, Chak De India!, Tare Zameen Par etc. Apart
from all these films Rajkumar Hirani with his films Munna Bhai MBBS, Lage
Raho Munna Bhai and 3-idiots, spread the message of humanity and love with new
flavor and innovative style.

Thus the young directors should come out with relevant issues in their films as
such type of cinema has created and will definitely create values in society.
METHDOLOGY

Tools

(a) Interview
(b) Schedule
(c) Questionnaire

Method

(a) Content Research

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Review of related literature

Literature review is considered to be the most important stage of the research process as it allows
to earn from (and eventually add to) previous researches and also saves time, efforts and money.
Therefore, the researcher reviewed all the relevant literature available on internet and in various
libraries of universities. As the main focus of the study was the social change through hindi films
in context of films of Raju Hirani. Literature review revealed that media exposure among youth
is increasing as there is the technical revolution in the forms of mass communication. Moreover,
films added a good deal to the concept of media modernization and media democracy.
The following section presents a review of the results of relevant studies conducted in various
countries and exposes that there has not been any similar research conducted in country and
international areas.
The Chicago International Social Change Festival (September 27th-29th, 2013) created for
filmmakers to showcase films that heighten public consciousness and provide a film forum for
their productions to be screened on an international level. In addition, the festival is dedicated to
the art of filmmaking and the filmmakers who make each and every work possible.
This is a Chicago film festival with a specific focus on the issues facing society and how social
change can make an incredible impact. Every day, society is in search of sustainable and
innovative solutions that are designed to reshape the way the world views cultural differences
and the many issues facing it today. Through this film forum, filmmakers are able to use their
feature-length, short, documentary, or student films to fuel a movement. It is through this that
true and inspiring social development can take place. History has shown that social change starts
with ideas both large and small and film has been a major player in relaying new ideas to the
world. Without ideas, society would be without the great strides that have been taken in recent
decades to solve many of the world’s problems. Through this Chicago festival, filmmakers are
able to translate their ideas onto the big screen and expose themselves and those ideas to the
thousands of nonprofit and NGO organizations all over the world. This is an international film
festival experience that people are hungering for on a global level. Overall, this is the chance for
activist filmmakers to use their independent films to share information and it is also a skill-
building opportunity for the filmmaker while producing a powerful, unforgettable, and
transformative piece of work. We screen films that are unique and are made with the goal to
benefit society by encouraging social change.

The Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, organized Gleitsman Social
Change Film Forum in april 2013. They featured screenings of two documentaries from this
year’s Sundance Film Festival. “Countdown to Zero” examines the risk of nuclear proliferation,
nuclear terrorism, and accidental nuclear exchanges. “A Small Act” describes how an
anonymous gift to help educate a boy in Kenya created a ripple effect, with one act of kindness
leading to another and then another, in a widening circle of impact.

In The Fledgling Fund Sheila Leddy says I am sitting here this morning thinking about the
proposals I will review over the next few weeks, most of which include a documentary film.
Once again, I am struck by the power of film to inform, inspire, and hopefully ignite social
change. Many of us in philanthropy are focused on trying to solve entrenched and complex
problems within our local communities and beyond – from education reform to environmental
justice from health care to homelessness. We are faced with complex issues that require
multifaceted solutions that range from changes in individual behavior to changes to national or
even international policy and everything in between. We spend time thinking about the issues
and analyzing data and then try our best to identify a strategy that will lead to solutions. We want
to change in some way the status quo. Often the road to change involves engaging others in
action. But, how can we move people to action and inspire a commitment to work for change?

At The Fledgling Fund, we believe that storytelling through film can be a powerful tool to
engage audiences. A film, and the story it tells, can create a greater awareness of complex
problems, and just as importantly it can highlight possible solutions. It connects viewers to its
characters and can inspire those viewers to become involved in, or reconnected with, social
change efforts. We begin to understand how an issue plays out in the lives of individuals,
families and communities. When these films and stories are coupled with a strategy or campaign
that provides clear opportunities for audiences to get involved, we see results.

(Sheila Leddy is Executive Director at The Fledgling Fund, a private foundation that works at
the intersection of film and social change. In 2008, she co-authored the white paper, Assessing
Creative Media’s Social Impact)

On his blog shekhar kapoor wrote Cinema as a tool of social change ?

I think all art can be a tool of social change. Before Cinema became so popular poetry was a
great tool for the mobilization of emotion and sentiment. And passionate writings before that
have caused revolutions. Some of the best Art is born out of rebellion. Out of repression. Unless
it is born out of yearning, Spiritual or otherwise. However Cinema can question, but is unlikely
to give effective answers. It would be arrogant to do so, because then it just becomes a
stereotype. Propaganda. It can suggest ways to change through the film makers own conscience
and the moral choices he/she makes in telling the story. My own favorite film of mine is Bandit
Queen. It was born out of an anger I felt not only against what I saw, but also against myself
because of not having seen it before. And I believe it caused people to pause and question. By
making them angry Often the anger is expressed against the artist, but thats OK. I do wish more
film were films of the artist’s conscience. But it’s a big ask in an art form which is so expensive.
And of course it is possible to shoot a film in 2 months. Masoom, Bandit Queen and Elizabeth
were all shot in that time period. It is not the filming but the writing and the editing that takes a
long time.

On Eye TV India Bureau news flash about Describing cinema as India’s soft power, President
Pratibha Patil on October 21, 2009 said that more needed to be done to create social change
through films. Speaking at the 55th National Film Awards for 2007, Patil said cinema should not
only be a source of popular entertainment for families and individuals, but also a vehicle of
social change.

By Kunal Arora: Raising the entertainment level is one part and bringing change in mentality,
lifestyle and behavior is another and that part has been untouched from the starting to the
completion of hundred years. Though we all are glad of the positive side but on another note, it’s
sad to say the change it might have brought in these years is still at a minimal level. The viewers
have been taught by cinema to accept all the changes on the screen while watching and forgetting
all when they step out of the theater. We can accept girls flirting with boys, getting naughty, used
as an aphrodisiac, as a philanderer, as a bold and strong part of society and homosexual couples
only on the screens, but it has not brought any change in the thought process of the viewers. The
reason being that cinema has only worked for itself, in this world of selfishness, cinema has
played the role of biggest self centered creature; the stars being the part of it, running for their
own success, ladies getting mad for the apparels and makeup, endorsements being the most
attractive part in terms of money and fame. Realistic movies like Chandani bar, Dunno why, The
pink mirror, Cheeni Kum and others have been produced but with the motive of earning and
entertaining, introducing the money factor in it. There have been some real film makers in
cinema but they lost interest after they found their competitors making more money by
entertaining more. In this way, cinema has reached its real motive of only & only entertainment
without striving to bring about social change. What fixes Indian Cinema has to bring now is
keeping the cultural, regional, spiritual and human values on top mixing it with the entertainment
doses to make it a perfect blend for the viewers to see, learn and act.

Cinema and social change in Latin America

Julianne Burton

University of Texas Press, 28-Jun-2010

Since the late 1960s, films from Latin America have won widening audiences in North America
and Europe. Until now, no single book has offered an introduction to the diverse personalities
and practices that make up this important regional film movement. He presents twenty interviews
with key figures of Latin American cinema,

Movies can be a powerful medium to catalyze social change. That at least is the underlying
belief of Participant Media, a movie production company founded by Jeff Skoll. Participant
Media was the production house that backed movies like The Inconvenient Truth, Charlie
Wilson’s War and many other socially relevant and yet commercially successful movies and
documentaries. Now, a new venture fund called Cause Entertainment Fund (CEF) wants to do
that same in India [via Economic Times] Two former investment bankers, Vicky Dhir and
Aditya Mehta, have launched a “Cause Entertainment Fund” (CEF) which will invest in socially
conscious yet commercially viable films. Though a new concept in India, venture capital funds
catering specifically to social causes are common in developed countries. The CEF founders
believe in using cinema as an instrument of social change. It is really encouraging to see a
‘double bottom-line’ production house in India. Movies are a really powerful medium in India
and it is a commendable step by CEF to explicitly leverage its power to induce social change.

Asian cinema Social Change through Diffusion of Innovation in Indian Popular Cinema: An Analytical
Study of Lage Raho Munna Bhai and Stalin// C.S.H.N. Murthy And Reetamoni Das /
Film production started in India in 1896. The earliest films produced in India mostly focused on the
religious and folk themes. These films have been used as tools for effective communication for social
change by the directors to send out specific messages to the audiences. A newly formed independent India
was fighting against a number of evils/social maladies, such as untouchability, corruption, illiteracy, and
poor medical care and educational infrastructure, which were more effectively being portrayed in cinema
than in print. Early cinema’s success lay in the capacity to combine technological innovation with an
ability to respond to the new social forms of metropolitan life. Cinema progressed to explore other
themes, such as urban centric luxuries/illusions that attracted the rural masses’ migration to the urban
centers. In this article Murthy and Das carry out case studies on two films: Lage Raho Munna Bhai and
Stalin, with the aim of showing how innovation driven social change has been communicated, to trace the
flow of diffusion of innovation in the form of humane messages resulting in social change, and to show
how Indian cinema blends entertainment and education into melodrama, distinct from the Western
patterns of the same innovation diffusion.

Interview of ajay saklani documentary maker by Samarpita Mukherjee Sharma

When it comes to documentary filmmaking on social issues in India, it is definitely not a stream that
someone would want to go in for, as it is neither popular or lucrative. But, sometimes this becomes a
reason enough for someone like Ajay Saklani to make real cinema for real people, work from the scratch
and take his work for the masses. Being an Independent filmmaker, Ajay strives to make developmental
content for television that will in turn help in the upliftment of the society. As he says, “Documentary and
Art cinema helps in development of people and nation and I want to play a crucial role in that. Also, the
documentary cinema helps me in connecting with the people of different cultures and gives me a chance
to learn more about them. I want to do something for all those who are either ignored or deprived from
basic amenities. I wish my films will help all these people to live a good and respectful life”. And, he is
doing everything possible to make his and everyone’s dream a reality.
Film and Social Change:
Plus The Top 101 Films that Inspire Social Change
In the world of cinema the words ‘film’ and ‘movies’ are synonymous. A movie usually refers to
a motion picture for the masses whereas a film is something with more artistic and or educational
appeal. The primary purpose of a movie (or feature film) is entertainment and for the studios that
make them, profit. The purpose of a film (typically documentaries) is to build awareness.
However, the two are not mutually exclusive. Auteur theory holds that, ‘a director’s films reflect
that director’s personal creative vision, as if he/she were the primary “Auteur”’, meaning author.
From the earliest silent films to contemporary times motion pictures have crossed over and both
entertained and educated the viewing audience.

Films use allegory through symbolic representation to convey a meaning other than the literal. In
Charlie Chaplin films, the literal is the story of a tramp and the comedy arising from everyday
events. The allegorical is the reflection on the times from the effects of automation to the class
difference between rich and poor in films like Modern Times. Filmmakers are one of the social
conduits reflecting and commenting about society and the times. Motion pictures can highlight
social issues from economic and environmental justice, women’s health, violence against
women, worker rights, homelessness, discrimination and poverty to all forms of human rights
abuses. Good films can raise awareness and be a start to addressing local and global issues. They
can educate about cultures, and give a broader political, religious, or social context. They can
dispel long-held misconceptions as well as be a catalyst for social change.

Summary from the Program

(http://www.gilesorr.com/India/schedule/cinema.html)
Hindi cinema produced in Bombay, now superficially well known as Bollywood is
essentially a generic cinema that pervades India. But of late the products of
Mollywood (Madras) have quite markedly influenced its aesthetic strategies while
Tollywood (Tollygunge, Calcutta) has been constructing its popular idiom following
Bollywood. Hindi cinema is also considered as an "all-India formula film" [critic
Chidananda Das Gupta]. However, one has to be cautious not to generalize Hindi
cinema as such.

As it is well known India produces a massive number of feature films in many

different languages, including several dialects. In 1999, the total number of films
produced, in as many as 35 official languages and dialects, was 601 - up to October
but one could add about 30 - 40 feature films to this number up to end December,
1999. The production figure has been steadily declining since 1990 when India
produced little less than a thousand films a year. The debate, however, keeps going
whether it's cinema that influences society or vice versa.
Most of the dominant formula films get their narrative base, in one way or another,
from the two Indian epics Mahabharata and Ramayana. The dream merchants seem to
be knowing this fact well to extract an impact as wide as possible for a box-office
success. This holds true of the generic Bollywood, including television.

The reality that obtains in southern India (especially in Tamilnadu and Andhra
Pradesh) is substantially different from that in northern India. The cinema politics
nexus in Tamilnadu, for instance, is quite interesting. All five chief ministers who
have governed Tamilnadu since 1967 have been associated with cinema. "The
immense popularity of film as an entertainment form and its emergence in Tamilnadu
as a major cultural preoccupation underscores the significance of the role of audio-
visual communication in Tamil society." [S. Theodore Baskaran] Superstars MGR
and NTR - doyens of Tamil and Telugu cinema respectively - were quite active in
regional and national politics.

The social impact of the cinema in India is also seen in the nationwide popularity of
film-based programs on various television channels. It's mostly the young generation
that has been caught up by the film-song programs. Popular film song has gone very
deep into the Indian collective memory and conscience.

In a nutshell, my presentation will take up some concrete examples of what impact the
cinema has on Indian society by and large - including how the classical villain
eventually turned into a hero or how social values underwent a certain change.
Popular films have even been changing people's dress and hair styles; in Bombay, I
remember even shoes would be branded after a box-office hit film. The cinema's
social impact is reflected in the way censorship operates in India. In colonial India, the
local, police controlled, film censorship, was mainly political in nature, but in post-
colonial India it has acquired moralistic overtones; I'll touch upon some recent
examples in this realm. I think it's the state that constantly finds itself insecure vis-a-
vis society at large and artists in particular. All said and done, the cinema hasn't yet
shed its mystical hallow in India.

My Notes

Indian Cinema - Amrit Gangar

- in Gujarat cinemas are Ministry of Finance (usually culture)

- audiences "interact" with films, tell characters on screen what to do

http://www.culturewars.org.uk/index.php/site/article/film_and_social_change/
In India, the Indian New Wave, also know as Art or Parallel Cinema set the stage for films that
made social commentary. Satyajit Ray and Shyam Benegal are two of the many famous directors
that helped set the stage for the new wave. Many of these films won major prizes at the film
festivals at Cannes, Venice and Berlin including Bimal Roy’s Two Acres of Land (1953) and
Ray’s Apu Trilogy consisting of Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956) and The World of
Apu (1959).

Movies are the mirror of society

It would be an interesting research if made over the pattern, overtime, that Bollywood
movies have illustrated individuality and portrayed the relation of individual and
society. Obviously, just like any other form of art, the movies also depicts the
appropriate nature and situation of the society of that era but some art forms not only
depicts the current situation of society, but also succeeds in providing a new trend a
new idea for the society to be leaded and made practical, and such movies becomes
the masterpiece. Objectively speaking, Art is a careful re-creation of reality according
to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgements. Obviously, that selective re-creation is
not meant to depict the things as they are, as Aristotle said that fiction is of greater
philosophical importance than history, because “history represents things as they are,
while fiction represents them as they might be and ought to be.”

Movies, being the indisputably strongest medium of art, if meant to show the things,
situations, people and individuals as they ought to be, then they become the leading
force of change in society and strengthens the values of individuality.

Current trend of Bollywood movies

With the liberalization of Indian economy, the civil liberalization is also gaining
strengthen and bollywood flicks are portraying the essence and importance of liberty
quite well. Ashutosh Gowariker and Amir Khan portrayed the inhuman nature of
taxation in the movie Lagaan while Mani Ratnam portrayed Abhishek Bachchan as
“Guru” struggling for economic freedom against socialistic governmental odds. The
contemporary artistic subjects were merged with the colours of popular cinema and
very odd individualistic tales like Tare Zameen Par and Black gained huge success.
Such flicks obviously provide a sense of liberty in the individual to seek for his own
freedom, his strengths, and his right for living with honour of independence. One can
say that bollywood is providing artistic masterpieces depicting the importance of
individual liberty and issue of individualism and in the same league, the two big
movies of 2009, “Rocket Singh the salesman of the year” and the hugely successful “3
Idiots” confirmed that now Indian society is ready to appraise the libertarian attitude
and the Indian youth is daring enough to raise the issues of collectivistic problems and
is ready to denounce them, to fight against them. Even “Rang De Basanti” portrayed
the current depleted morality of society and the struggle of youth against the social
political tyrants, yet it was full of anger, violence, frustration and exhaustion. One
may not group “Rang De Basanti” with the other Bollywood films of libertarian
approach.

Rocket Singh, while struggling to maintain his honest behaviour and ethical strength,
manages to portray the basic factual difference between the corrupt corporatism and
honest capitalism. So meaningfully and with such an ease, the movie establishes the
golden rule of free market, “consumer rules and honest producer wins”. The movie
also clarifies that to win over the evil, one does not need to pick up the violent means,
nor one need to be evil by himself, Rocket Singh and his band of rebels tells us that
ultimately honesty and hard work is a sound business decision. The movie suggests
that irrespective of corporative and governmental corruption, if market is allowed to
be a free space for the mutually beneficial dealings and agreements between people,
producers, service providers and the consumers, than the most honest, prompt,
hardworking and innovative one will gain maximum success, that is, a free market
ultimately provides the required moral environment where honesty pays and
dishonesty causes suffering and losses. While the boss of Rocket Singh robs him of
his own company based on free market principle, consumers forces the villainous boss
to learn the better way and accept the path of honesty and hard-work and ultimately,
he goes back to Rocket Singh to accept the defeat of evil, wrong and immoral.
3 Idiots is yet again a masterpiece of Amir Khan. The movie is said to be based on the
novel Five Point Someone yet, after watching one may thought of a laughing,
rollicking Howard Roark represented as Rancho and a babbling, confused Peter
Keating represented by Chatur Ramlingam (Silencer)1 . It is an exquisite story of a
man from nowhere, who wanted to learn and create, who wanted to produce and who
loved himself and his work. It is a lovely story depicting the win of a morally strong
character who wanted to live for himself according to his own standards, who needed
nobody’s sanctions and who inspired others too to live by their own standards.
Rancho as Phunsukh Wangdu seems no less than a Roark who won over all odds to be
what he wanted to be and to do what he wanted to do in exactly the same free rational
and honest way he needed to be.

For some, these movies may seem like fairytales or impractical, yet they show the
heights of individual freedom and its importance that Indian youth needs and the
success of the current trend of movies confirms that Indian society is passing through
a huge change in the mindset where the individual will seek for liberty and will fight
for it intelligently and peacefully, to gain the freedom of his soul to establish his
existence at his own standards, confirming that I, the Individual needs no sanctions,
that “I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the
warrant and the sanction.”
On the same libertarian trend, Shahrukh Khan and Kajol’s latest flick My Name is
Khan also portrays a simple libertarian fact that collectivism is evil and collectivizing
individuals is greater evil, as SRK said in one of his interviews for promoting the
movie—

We are only trying to say that there are only good people and bad people. There are no
good Hindus, bad Hindus, good Christians, bad Christians. Either you are a good
person or a bad person. Religion is not the criterion, humanity is.” SRK

Collectivism is not the criterion, individualism is, Individual is.

Another movie “Wake up Sid” depicts the quest of person searching for his existence,
rationales, aims, setting his goals and winning over them.
Movies are the mirror of society and more than that, movies are a strong way of
propagating the right rational idea. With the current libertarian approach of Indian
movies and arts where the art forms with their fictional attributes are depicting the
things as they might be and ought to be, one may say that Indian society is
progressively improving and is set to accept and evolve as a free society looking for
further establishing Individual freedom, his quest for his existence, happiness and
letting him win his way against all odds of collectivism.

Responses to “Movies are the Mirror of Society”

1. Manjul dube Says:

April 5th, 2010 at 4:02 am

I feel you are absolutely right Movies are the mirror of society and they do have lots of
responsibility to lead changes in society. And our current Cinema tend to full fil their
duties, we can see glimps of that in our latest movies.. And I would like to mention a very
simple electronics fact here message delivery is possible between at least a sender and a
receiver .. our leaders are providing us various options .. message of Education for ALL
and individual liberty is broadcasted by sender now its we who has to respond at
receiving End..

Till as human we are not going to respect individual liberty our society is not going to
progress .. at individual level we all have to take stand to make our society crime free …
And Certainly We will make it …

2. Gaurav Says:
 April 6th, 2010 at 7:12 am

I would like to add something Bharatendu Harishchandra , A hindi Literateur said,

“Sahitya Samaj ka Darpan Hota Hain” ( Literature is reflection of society, i hope the
translation is correct ) way back, And we need to understand Movies were always a work
of literature because it’s story tehy always want to say ( yeah there are few which don’t

want to ) , There is one cliche which needs to broken , mOvies were never way to
promote rational idea, It was always right that a Individual deserves in a true libertarian
society , and yes expression can be sometime irrational which a rational society is
expected to refute.

3. Bala Says:
April 9th, 2010 at 7:43 pm

I hope you are right and the movies you cite do indeed mirror the changes in society.
However, seeing RTE being enacted and the Food Security Bill being seriously debated
makes me very pessimistic. We (as a society) seem to be heading down a steep slippery
slope.

4. Unpretentious Diva Says:

April 11th, 2010 at 6:07 pm

well Bala, RTE, or food security bill is governmental prank.

The change is, there are you, and many more, who knows that it is wrong.

5. Illiterate boy Says:

August 9th, 2010 at 6:35 pm

Seriously dude watch some world cinema

6. Unpretentious Diva Says:
August 10th, 2010 at 10:53 pm

It wasn’t about world cinema that is why I wasn’t talking about jason bourne or Will
Smith.
It was about Indian cinema. Western countries are experiencing Libertarian/Indiviualistic
movements since very long, the movies out there represent’s their society. Indian society
 is still very much under collectivist approach, here the movies shows the current state of
Indian societies.
That is what about the post is “Movies are the Mirror of Society”.

Communication

Communication is interaction with ourselves, with others and with our external and
internal environments. The focus of our communication is sometimes undefined and
vague. Similarly not all times we are conscious of our purpose of communication or the
effects that our messages will have on the targeted receivers. Our communication may
not be comprehensible all time and for everyone. But communicate we must and we must
express ourselves. It is necessary and important human activity to survive and grow.

Communication is defined as the process of passing information and understanding from

the person to another. The word communication finds its origin in a Latin word
communis meaning common. It includes transmission and interacting of ideas, facts,
opinions, feelings or attitudes.

Lelan Brown defines communication as the transmission and interchange of facts, ideas,
feelings or course of action. As per Mc Ovail communication is the process which
increases commonality and also requires elements of commonality for it to occur at all.
The factors which bring about commonality are shared culture common interest shared
symbolic environment and a social relationship among the participants. Thus the
communication is an ability to render the message in such a manner that the addressee
can easily understand and accept it.

As Ashley Montagu and Floyd Matson state that communication is the ground of meeting
and the foundation of the community-thus the essential human connection. Dhama and
Bhatnagar (1987) see communication as a process of social interaction. Lastly Chester
Barnard in explaining theory of organization states that communication occupies a central
place because the structure extensiveness and scope of organizations are almost entirely
determined by communication techniques.

Communication is the activity of conveying information through the exchange of

thoughts, messages, or information, as by speech, visuals, signals, writing, or behavior. It
is the meaningful exchange of information between two or a group of people.

One definition of communication is “any act by which one person gives to or receives
from another person information about that person's needs, desires, perceptions,
knowledge, or affective states. Communication may be intentional or unintentional, may
involve conventional or unconventional signals, may take linguistic or nonlinguistic
forms, and may occur through spoken or other modes.”

Communication requires a sender, a message, and a recipient, although the receiver

doesn't have to be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of
communication; thus communication can occur across vast distances in time and space.
Communication requires that the communicating parties share an area of communicative
commonality. The communication process is complete once the receiver has understood
the message of the sender.

Definition of Communication

Communication has been imposed by different people sociologist, psychologist,

educationist and communications; according to their own disciplines.

1 Oxford dictionary: It mean imparting, commuting, exchanging ideas and knowledge

by speech and writing symbols.

2 Columbia and Ethiopia: Communication is transfer of thoughts and sound by means

of signs and symbols.

3 Paul Leagans: Communication is process by which two or more people exchange

ideas, facts, feeling or impression in such a way that each gains a common understanding
of message.

4 Hauland: It is a process by which and individual transmit usually verbal symbols to

modify the behaviour of other individual

5 Uma Narula (1991) : communication has been subjected to very diverse

conceptualizing and defined differently by different people. As per Uma Narula, key
features of all definitions are:

1 Communication is the process of transmission of ideas, thoughts, feelings and a

behaviour from one person to another.

2 It is persuasive and seeks to obtain duarable response to what is being transmitted.

3 It is a multi way, two way process.

6 Zeuschner (1994) : It is a process of people interacting through use if messages.

History of Communication:
 The Phoenicians develop an alphabet.
3500 BC
The Sumerians develop cuneiform writing - pictographs of accounts
to 2900
written on clay tablets.
BC
The Egyptians develop hieroglyphic writing.

1775 BC Greeks use a phonetic alphabet written from left to right.

1400 BC Oldest record of writing in China on bones.

1270 BC The first encyclopedia is written in Syria.

900 BC The very first postal service - for government use in China.

First recorded use of homing pigeons used to send message - the winner of
776 BC
the Olympic Games to the Athenians.

530 BC The Greeks start the very first library.

500 BC Papyrus rolls and early parchments made of dried reeds - first portable and
to 170 BC light writing surfaces.

Human messengers on foot or horseback common in Egypt and China

200 BC with messenger relay stations built.
to 100 BC Sometimes fire messages used from relay station to station instead of
humans.

14 Romans establish postal services.

37 Heliographs - first recorded use of mirrors to send messages by Roman Emperor Tiberius.

100 First bound books

105
Tsai Lun of China invents paper as we know it.
BC

305 First wooden printing presses invented in China - symbols carved on a wooden block.

1049 First movable type invented - clay - invented in China by Pi Sheng.

1450 Newspapers appear in Europe.

1455 Johannes Gutenberg invents a printing press with metal movable type.

1560 Camera Obscura invented - primitive image making.

1650 First daily newspaper - Leipzig.

1714 Englishmen, Henry Mill receives the first patent for a typewriter.

1793 Claude Chappe invents the first long-distance semaphore (visual or optical) telegraph line.

1814 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce achieves the first photographic image.

1821 Charles Wheatstone reproduces sound in a primitive sound box - the first microphone.

1831 Joseph Henry invents the first electric telegraph.

1835 Samuel Morse invents Morse code.

Samuel Morse invents the first long distance electric telegraph line.
1843
Alexander Bain patents the first fax machine.

United States starts the Pony Express for mail delivery.

1861 Coleman Sellers invents the Kinematoscope - a machine that flashed a series of still photographs
onto a screen.

1867 American, Sholes the first successful and modern typewriter.

Thomas Edison patents the mimeograph - an office copying machine.

1876 Alexander Graham Bell patents the electric telephone.
Melvyl Dewey writes the Dewey Decimal System for ordering library books.

Thomas Edison patents the phonograph - with a wax cylinder as recording medium.
1877 Eadweard Muybridge invents high speed photography - creating first moving pictures that
captured motion.

Emile Berliner invents the gramophone - a system of recording which could be used over and
1887
over again.
1888 George Eastman patents Kodak roll film camera.

1889 Almon Strowger patents the direct dial telephone or automatic telephone exchange.

1894 Guglielmo Marconi improves wireless telegraphy.

1898 First telephone answering machines.

Valdemar Poulsen invents the first magnetic recordings - using magnetized steel tape as
recording medium - the foundation for both mass data storage on disk and tape and the music
1899
recording industry.
Loudspeakers invented.

Guglielmo Marconi transmits radio signals from Cornwall to Newfoundland - the first radio
1902
signal across the Atlantic Ocean.

1904 First regular comic books.

Lee Deforest invents the electronic amplifying tube or triode - this allowed all electronic signals
1906
to be amplified improving all electronic communications i.e. telephones and radios.

1910 Thomas Edison demonstrated the first talking motion picture.

1914 First cross continental telephone call made.

1916 First radios with tuners - different stations.

The television or iconoscope (cathode-ray tube) invented by Vladimir Kosma Zworykin - first
1923
television camera.

1925 John Logie Baird transmits the first experimental television signal.

Warner Brothers Studios invented a way to record sound separately from the film on large disks
1926 and synchronized the sound and motion picture tracks upon playback - an improvement on
Thomas Edison's work.

NBC starts two radio networks.

CBS founded.
1927
First television broadcasts in England.
Warner Brothers releases "The Jazz Singer" the first successful talking motion picture.
 Radio popularity spreads with the "Golden Age" of radio.
1930 First television broadcasts in the United States.
Movietone system of recording film sound on an audio track right on the film invented.

1934 Joseph Begun invents the first tape recorder for broadcasting - first magnetic recording.

1938 Television broadcasts able to be taped and edited - rather than only live.

1939 Scheduled television broadcasts begin.

Computers like Harvard's Mark I put into public service - government owned - the age of
1944
Information Science begins.

Long playing record invented - vinyl and played at 33 rpm.

1948
Transistor invented - enabling the miniaturization of electronic devices.

Network television starts in U.S.

1949
45 rpm record invented.

1951 Computers are first sold commercially.

Chester Carlson invents the photocopier or Xerox machine.

1958 Integrated Circuit invented - enabling the further miniaturization of electronic devices and
computers.

1963 Zip codes invented in the United States.

1966 Xerox invents the Telecopier - the first successful fax machine.

1969 ARPANET - the first Internet started.

The computer floppy disc invented.

1971
The microprocessor invented - considered a computer on a chip.

1972 HBO invents pay-TV service for cable.

Apple I home computer invented.

1976
First nationwide programming - via satellite and implemented by Ted Turner.

1979 First cellular phone communication network started in Japan..

1980 Sony Walkman invented.

IBM PC first sold.

1981 First laptop computers sold to public.
Computer mouse becomes regular part of computer.

Time magazines names the computer as "Man of the Year."

1983
First cellular phone network started in the United States.

Apple Macintosh released.

1984
IBM PC AT released.

Cellular telephones in cars become wide-spread.

1985
CD-ROMs in computers.

American government releases control of internet and WWW is born - making communication at
1994
lightspeed.

History of Communication Study

The historical roots of the study of communication are often traced to classical Greece,
where such philosophers as Aristotle articulated principles of rhetoric and effective
persuasive discourse. The social-scientific study of communication, the focus of the
program, emerged during the early decades of the 20th century. At that time,
communication research was not conducted within a single institutional entity; rather,
researchers from the then-emerging disciplines of sociology, psychology, political
science, marketing and advertising sought to understand the role print, film and radio
might play in producing a variety of effects in their audiences. During this period, the
journalist Walter Lippman wrote extensively about media, public opinion and democracy,
and the Chicago school of sociology initiated a number of media effects studies,
including the ways in which newly arrived immigrants used the press to orient
themselves in American society. The voluminous Payne Fund Study of the late 1920s and
early 1930s examined the effects of movie attendance on youth. The political scientist
Harold Lasswell’s extensive work on propaganda during this period was also influential
in shaping the development of communication research.

During World War II, several social scientists with interests in communication worked in
government agencies conducting research in areas related to morale and propaganda. In
addition, beyond the war effort, research aimed at understanding the impact of political
information disseminated by the mass media during election campaigns on voting
behavior was initiated in 1940 by the influential sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld. Inspired by
psychologist Kurt Lewin’s innovative studies of group decision making during World
War II, researchers began to study face-to-face communication in groups under the rubric
of group dynamics. Researchers came to realize that face-to-face interaction serves an
important function in altering the effects of media-disseminated messages, thus
suggesting the importance of understanding social influence processes in groups.
Although several communication researchers of this period explicitly embraced the idea
that communication theory could be bootstrapped out of their applied research projects,
little theory was actually generated.

At the end of World War II, many communication researchers who had worked in the
government returned to academic institutions and established communication research
programs. Carl Hovland initiated a highly productive research program devoted to the
study of communication and persuasion at Yale University. Institutes for the study of
communication were established at the University of Illinois and Stanford University, and
the Annenberg School for Communication was instituted at the University of
Pennsylvania. At the same time, the social-scientific study of communication began to
find an institutional home in existing journalism, broadcasting and speech departments,
which, had been concerned mainly with communication skills instruction.

Although the great bulk of communication research published during and before World
War II was applied, focused on mass media effects, and animated by commercial and
social concerns, commencing in the 1960s communication research became increasingly
motivated by theory and expanded beyond the media effects domain. Inspired by the
meta-theoretical perspectives afforded by Shannon and Weaver’s Mathematical Theory
of Communication, Wiener and Ashby’s writing on cybernetics and control theory and
von Bertalanffy’s general system theory, theory development became a central activity in
the discipline. Beginning in the early 1970s, social interaction researchers also expanded
their research purview well beyond that represented by the communication and
persuasion paradigm prevalent in the 1950s and 60s.

Today, in addition to studying social influence processes, social interaction researchers

examine the role verbal and nonverbal face-to-face interaction plays in the development
and maintenance of relationships, deceptive communication, interpersonal conflict and
negotiation. Research specialties devoted to studying social interaction both within
formal organizations and across cultures have become quite large and highly active, and
both social interaction and media effects researchers have established growing area
specializations in health, political and instructional communication. Advances in
communication technologies that enable mediated social interaction (computer-mediated
communication, Internet, mobile telephones, computer games) have spawned increasing
interest in the social and psychological effects these technologies have on their users as
well as how attributes of the technologies shape communication praxis.

The Department of Communication at UC Davis has shown a similar pattern of evolution

over the past 40 years. Established as the Department of Rhetoric in 1966, its primary
focus was on humanistic approaches to communication study in the tradition of classical
rhetorical scholarship. The Department established a master’s program in 1971. With the
addition of faculty trained in the social sciences, the Department’s name was changed to
Department of Rhetoric and Communication in 1987. The advent of a divisional structure
in the College of Letters and Science in 1995 led the Department to become part of the
Division of Social Sciences. In 1998 the Department became the Department of
Communication, housing a faculty exclusively concerned with quantitative, social
scientific approaches to the study of communication. Current faculty members’ research
interests in the social interaction and the technological mediation of communication
mirror major research areas that have developed in the field at large.

Development of communication

Printing Press: The oldest printed book known is a Chinese religious book, The
Diamond Sutra. Other books like this were printed with wood blocks, usually made from
Mulberry wood. Johann Gutenburg invented an actual printing press in 1450; it was a
screw press that worked very much like a wine press. He discovered how to make a good
ink that would print with metal type. Gutenburg was the first to use a press to print the
Bible, it is the oldest full length volume printed. From Gutenburg's press in Mainz,
Germany, printing spread all over Europe.

Rome developed a printing press in 1465, but, because the rulers of many countries felt
that the printed word encouraged people to rebel against their authority, they strictly
controlled the amount of material that printers were allowed to produce. Printing did not
really grow again until the 18th century.

The mechanics of printing changed little between 1450 and the 1800s, when the power
press was introduced. By the 1600's the art of printing was used in business. Printed
news sheets, called corantos, which were somewhat like newspapers of today.

n 1728 Ben Franklin opened his own printing office in Philadelphia, he had learned
about the business of printing while working, since age 12 with his brother James.
He was a fully skilled printer by the age of 17. Ben Franklin printed newspaper he
called The Pennsylvania Gazette and the Poor Richard's Almanac.
He had a lot of new ideas for printing, more books and newspapers, he began
printing cartoons and illustrated news stories, which he became famous for. He
encouraged communication by introducing letters to the editor, and believed in the
power of the press. He used his printing press to bring the news to the people. He
was an strong supporter of reading and was the founder of the first Public Library in
1731. He wanted to use the printing press to help all people to understand the word
around them.
Today we use modern versions of these printing presses to print books, magazines,
and newspapers.

Telegraph: The idea for the electric telegraph was not thought up in a scientific
laboratory, but on the deck of a sailing ship called the Scully, in the middle of the
Atlantic Ocean. The inventor was Samuel Finley Breese Morse, and in 1832, he was on
of the most famous artists in the United States. Morse and ship passengers were talking
about the invention of the electromagnet, which looked like a horseshoe with wire
wrapped around it. They talked about how electricity traveled through the wire. Morse
thought if electricity would travel a short distance through wire, it could travel long
distances through wire also.

Morse's idea was to string a wire between two points, maybe miles apart. A key at one
end is pressed and it closes the electrical curcuit which sends a pulse of electricity
through the wire. When the key is let go very fast, the pulse of electricity sent through
the wire is a dot. if the key is held down 3 times longer, the pulse is a dash. Dashes and
dots mixed together form different letters of the alphabet and when sent from a person at
one end of the wire to another person at the other end of the wire, these dashes and dots
would spell out words.

In 1837, he developed his telegraph idea enough to test it. Morse strung seventeen
hundred feet of wire around his room at New York University, where he taught. It
worked; his signals traveled from one end of the wire to the other.

He showed his invention to members of Congress in the Capital by stringing 10 miles of

wire around the room, and it worked. Congress didn't think the telegraph would work for
long distances, so Morse put several miles of wire through underground pipes. The
insulation around the wire wouldn't let the electricity travel very well, so Morse decided
to string the wire from poles instead.

These were the first of thousands of poles that would go across the United States.

On May 24, 1844, Morse stretched wires from Washington D.C. to Baltimore, New York
and sent the message, "What hath God wrought!" through the telegraph machine. The
telegraph was a success, In 1874, engineer and inventor Thomas Edison invented
quadruplex telegraphy, where two messages could be sent in each direction at one
time. In 1915, the multiplex telegraphy let eight or more messages be sent at one
time. Because of this and the invention of the teleprinting machines during the mid-
1920s the Morse Code telegraph system wasn't needed anymore.
Radio: Radio is indebted to two other discoveries for its birth- telephone and telegraph.
These three technologies are very closely related. Radio started as wireless telegraphy.
And it all began with invention of radio waves, which have capacity to send out speech,
music, picture and all other data through air. A range of devices like radio, cordless
phones, microwave TV broadcasts work with the help of electromagnetic waves.

During 1860s, James Maxwell, a Scottish physicist forecasted presence of radio waves.
And in year 1886, Heinrich Hertz showcased projection of swift variation of the electric
current into space in form of radio waves.

Twenty years after invention of telephone, music was set down on telephone line and
Guglielmo Marconi was responsible for the radio signals. This Italian discoverer
demonstrated radio communication’s feasibility. Fascinated by Hertz’s discovery of the
radio waves, he realized that it could be used for receiving and sending the telegraph
messages, referring to it as wireless telegraphs.

His earliest radio transmissions, the coded signals transmitted to only a mile far in 1896.
Marconi then recognized its high potential and offered the discovery to Italian
Government that had turned it down. He then realized a patent and experimented further
after moving to England. In 1898, he flashed the results of Kingstown Regatta to Dublin
Newspaper’s office, making first ever public broadcast of sports event. The following
year, he opened his radio factory in Essex, thus establishing link between France and
Britain. He then established link with USA in year 1901. And Marconi shared Nobel
Prize in Physics for wireless telegraph in year 1909.

But his wireless telegraph only transmitted signals. Voice in radio came in the 1921.
Soon after, in 1922, he introduced short wave transmissions. Marconi however was not
the first one to invent radio. Nikola Tesla who moved to US in 1884, launched radio’s
theoretical model prior to Marconi. In 1915, Tesla tried to acquire court’s injunction
against Marconi. And in year 1943, Supreme Court US reviewed decision. And due to
this Tesla was acknowledged as inventor of radio even when he did ever build working
radio.
J.C. Bose was another claimant to throne of radio inventors. He showcased radio
transmission to British Governor General in 1896 at Calcutta. The transmission was for a
distance of around 3 miles. His instruments, Mercury Coherer attached to telephone
detector, are still showcased Calcutta University’s Science College.

Bose had taken care of Hertz’s problem of not being able to penetrate through water,
mountains or walls. Marconi’s Coherer is known to be exact copy of Bose’s Coherer.
Initially, Bose was reluctant in applying for patent because he believed in free flow of
inventions in the field of science. But eventually due to persuasion by his American
friends he had applied for patent in 1901. US patent was awarded to him in year 1904.

There has been tremendous growth of the radio over the years. Transmitters earlier were
known as spark gap machines. It was established for ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore
communication. The communication was just confined to two points then and was not
public broadcasting as it is today. Wireless signals demonstrated effective
communication for the purpose of rescue in case of sea disasters. Range of ocean liners
installed the wireless equipments and in 1899, US Army established the wireless
communication. Just after two years, Navy adopted wireless system and it was relief as
Navy had been using homing pigeons and visual signaling for communication.

Radiotelegraph services were instituted in Hawaiian Islands in 1901. Marconi station

situated in Massachusetts carried greetings between King Edward VII and Theodore
Roosevelt. In year 1905, Port Arthur’s naval battle was also reported over wireless and
US weather department tried radiotelegraphy for speeding notice weather condition.

Eventually radio transmitters were improved. Overseas radiotelegraph services were

slowly developed, basically because early transmitter discharged the electricity between
electrodes and within circuit causing high interference. DeForest and Alexanderson
alternator took care of many such technical issues.

Lee Deforest was inventor of space telegraphy, Audion and triode amplifier. In early
1990s, delicate and effective detector of the electromagnetic radiation was needed for
developing the radio further. And Lee Deforest discovered the detector. He was the first
person to use term ‘radio’. His work resulted in discovery of AM radio that capably
broadcasted various radio stations which early gap transmitters did not allow.
Since that time, there has been no looking back. Radio has now become a popular
medium of portable entertainment. In 21stcentury, technological advancements have
given birth to internet radio. Satellite radio is also recent development in the field. One
can listen to various international radio stations without any hassles. Besides all these
latest editions, Ham radio would be next big thing. This technology is gearing up to hit
the market soon. Radio lovers have a reason to rejoice as there is a lot in store for them.

Television: The television is one of the most prominent inventions of the 20th Century.

It has become one of the most common ways people view the larger world beyond them,
as well as being one of the best ways for people to escape from the world.

In the 1880s a German inventor created simplistic moving images using a filtered light
viewed through a spinning disk, laying the foundations for the modern television. During
the 1920s a number of scientist began experimenting with sending still images using
radio waves. However, it was in 1928 that General Electric first combined the idea of a
device that could show moving images with the technology to wirelessly broadcast them.

During the 30s and 40s the technology was gradually improved upon. In America the first
regular broadcasts began in 1939 though it was not until after the Second World War that
the television as a standard home appliance began to really take off. After 1945 television
sales in America skyrocketed. The first colour broadcast was made in 1954.

Throughout the rest of the world, television came years later, and it wasn’t until the late
1960s that a television was commonplace in houses throughout the West. By the 1970s,
television had become the dominant media force it is today, with 24 hour programming,
mass advertising and syndicated shows.
In the 1980s satellite television shrunk the world, making live feeds from other countries
and time zones possible. The new millennium brought the advent of digital television,
which is the future of television.
The Communication Model

Communicator Message Channels Audience

1 Communicator- The sender or source of the message.

2 Message- The set of meanings being sent and or received by the audience.

3 Channels- the ways in which messages can be carried or delivered to audience.

4 Audience- The receiver or destination of the massage.

The importance of starting with the audience in any communication planning was noted
by Aristotle over two hundred years ago.

Types of Communication

Communication can be classified into these variety of ways

Verbal and Non verbal

The mediated and the non mediated

The participatory and the non participatory

Size of the Group (a) intrapersonal Communication

(b) Interpersonal communication

Intrapersonal Communication

Intrapersonal communication is more abstract as it involves individual reflections

contemplation and meditation. The word, transpersonal is used when one converses with
the divine, the spirits and the ancestors.

Interpersonal Communication

Face to face communication between two individual is termed as interpersonal

communication. It is more personal, direct, intimate and flexible, there is no use of any
machine, telephone but words and gestures warmth are used along with five senses. It is
based on reciprocal patterns of behaviour stemming from role demands generated by
formal and informal groups and whole perceptions peculiar to the individual e.g. the
relationship between a company executive and a client. Barriers in the relationship when
the territory of privacy is crossed. These barriers are not confined to human society. If we
take the opinion of Konrad Lovery and Demond Morris, the ethnologists, animals and
birds too turn aggressive when their territories are invaded by outsiders. Every living
being values its living space. This is termed as territorial imperative-the obsession about
protecting one’s breathing space. If we look at Buddhist culture they focus on these four
social emotions.

(a) Metta (loving kindness)

(b) Karuna (compassion)
(c) Murdita (sympathic joy)
(d) Upekkha ( equanimity)

Group Communication

It is characterized by group or an individual speaker to a group of people. As compared to

interpersonal communication it is less direct personal and intimate. In the course of the
day executives may meet pentagon officials a visiting customer inspection team, a
Japanese trade mission, a set of the angry buyers and so on. Personal interchange will
take place between one or more company executives and the visiting group. In addition
other company executives will be arranging for non personal communication directed in
various groups through print or broadcast media.

The group approach can be through demonstrations training the leaders, meeting group
discussions, conference, lecture meeting, panel discussion, symposium, forum, group
interview, public workshop, tours. Etc. Acting is a form of group at weekly market bazaar
etc. then there is the village well or the banayan tree where people collect during free
time and talk. They are the gossip groups. The micro groups confine themselves to
within. These are based on social status and the nature of relationship. Effective public
speaker is a boon of this communication.

Differences between Interpersonal communication and Group Communication

Interpersonal communication Group Communication

Simple with direct clear Complex, participation and
understanding. understanding indirect.
Misunderstanding easy to sort out Misunderstanding takes time to sort
immediately. out at times it remains.
The communication feedback Feedback is difficult to calculate.
response is unmediated. Feedback is a time consuming
activity.
Communication more persuasive and Depends on the type of group
influential. communication technique employed.
Warmth of human closeness Deception and pretence cannot be
experience. detected immediately
Message can be highly tailored to the It will make a critical difference in the
individual. choice of message and channels.

Mass Communication

It is characterized by communication between a simple or a group of people and large

size audience. To a great extent ts is indirect and impersonal. It could be through radio,
T.V., newspaper etc. This is also called public communication. The messages are kept
simple enough to be understood by the average person. Daniel Lerner uses the term
mobility multipliers for mass media and Wilbur Schramm coins the word magic
multipliers for them.

Focused and Unfocused interactions

Focused Unfocused
Actual encounters between two Most interpersonal communication of
persons. this type e.g. people in train, lifts and
public places.
Aware about consumer’s People watching without being aware.
communication
Verbal and non verbal communication
We made inference on dress, physical
looks, gestures, body language.
May or may not be aware of each Turing away of eye contact body
other. language effect on show of disinterest.

Types of communication based on the communication channels used are:

1. Verbal Communication
2. Nonverbal Communication

1. Verbal Communication
Verbal communication refers to the the form of communication in which message
is transmitted verbally; communication is done by word of mouth and a piece of
writing. Objective of every communication is to have people understand what we
are trying to convey. In verbal communication remember the acronym
KISS(keep it short and simple).

When we talk to others, we assume that others understand what we are saying
because we know what we are saying. But this is not the case. usually people bring
their own attitude, perception, emotions and thoughts about the topic and hence
creates barrier in delivering the right meaning.

So in order to deliver the right message, you must put yourself on the other side of
the table and think from your receiver’s point of view. Would he understand the
message? how it would sound on the other side of the table?

Verbal Communication is further divided into:

o Oral Communication
o Written Communication

Oral Communication

In oral communication, Spoken words are used. It includes face-to-face

conversations, speech, telephonic conversation, video, radio, television,
voice over internet. In oral communication, communication is influence
by pitch, volume, speed and clarity of speaking.

Advantages of Oral communication are:

It brings quick feedback.
In a face-to-face conversation, by reading facial expression and body
language one can guess whether he/she should trust what’s being said or
not.

Disadvantage of oral communication

In face-to-face discussion, user is unable to deeply think about what he is
delivering, so this can be counted as a

Written Communication

In written communication, written signs or symbols are used to

communicate. A written message may be printed or hand written. In written
communication message can be transmitted via email, letter, report, memo
 etc. Message, in written communication, is influenced by the vocabulary &
grammar used, writing style, precision and clarity of the language used.

Written Communication is most common form of communication

being used in business. So, it is considered core among business skills.

Memos, reports, bulletins, job descriptions, employee manuals, and

electronic mail are the types of written communication used for internal
communication. For communicating with external environment in writing,
electronic mail, Internet Web sites, letters, proposals, telegrams, faxes,
postcards, contracts, advertisements, brochures, and news releases are used.

Advantages of written communication includes:

Messages can be edited and revised many time before it is actually sent.
Written communication provide record for every message sent and can be
saved for later study.
A written message enables receiver to fully understand it and send
appropriate feedback.

Disadvantages of written communication includes:

Unlike oral communication, Written communication doesn’t bring instant
feedback.
It take more time in composing a written message as compared to word-of-
mouth. and number of people struggles for writing ability.

2. Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal communication is the sending or receiving of wordless messages. We

can say that communication other than oral and written, such as gesture, body
language, posture, tone of voice or facial expressions, is called nonverbal
communication. Nonverbal communication is all about the body language of
speaker.

Nonverbal communication helps receiver in interpreting the message received.

Often, nonverbal signals reflects the situation more accurately than verbal
messages. Sometimes nonverbal response contradicts verbal communication
and hence affect the effectiveness of message.

Nonverbal communication have the following three elements:

Appearance
Speaker: clothing, hairstyle, neatness, use of cosmetics
Surrounding: room size, lighting, decorations, furnishings
 Body Language
facial expressions, gestures, postures

Sounds
Voice Tone, Volume, Speech rate

Types of Communication Based on Purpose and Style

Based on style and purpose, there are two main categories of communication and they
both bears their own characteristics. Communication types based on style and purpose
are:

1. Formal Communication
2. Informal Communication

1. Formal Communication

In formal communication, certain rules, conventions and principles are followed

while communicating message. Formal communication occurs in formal and
official style. Usually professional settings, corporate meetings, conferences
undergoes in formal pattern.

In formal communication, use of slang and foul language is avoided and

correct pronunciation is required. Authority lines are needed to be followed in
formal communication.

2. Informal Communication

Informal communication is done using channels that are in contrast with formal
communication channels. It’s just a casual talk. It is established for societal
affiliations of members in an organization and face-to-face discussions. It happens
among friends and family. In informal communication use of slang words, foul
language is not restricted. Usually. informal communication is done orally and
using gestures.

Informal communication, Unlike formal communication, doesn’t follow

authority lines. In an organization, it helps in finding out staff grievances as
people express more when talking informally. Informal communication helps in
building relationships.

Types of communication based on direction of flow

 (a) Downward communication : The flow of information from higher levels
of management to subordinate individuals working within an organization.
(b) Upward communication : Upward Communication is the process of
information flowing from the lower levels of a hierarchy to the upper
levels. This type of communication is becoming more and more popular in
organizations as traditional forms of communication are becoming less
popular.
(c) Horizontal communication: In organizations and organisms, lateral
communication works in contrast to traditional top-down, bottom-up or
hierarchic communication and involves the spreading of messages from
individuals across the base of a pyramid.

Functions of Communication

Information

2 Evaluation: communication is a tool to appraise the individual his contribution to the

organization. Evaluating one’s own inputs or another’s outputs or some ideological
scheme demands an adequate and effective communication process.

3 Directing functions: those who are hierarchically superior in the family, society or
organization often initiate communication either for the purpose of informing their
subordinates or for the purpose of telling them what to do, how to do and when to do etc.
directing others or being directed or instructed cannot take place without complete
communication process. Directing others may be communicated either orally or in
writing. It could be a command or a request.

4 Influencing functions: motivational forces in an individual are to be provided and then

stimulated through communication.

5. Incidental neutral function: communication sometimes may contribute indirectly to

the organizational objectives and directly to the satisfaction of individual needs that are
compatible with organizational goals.

6.Teaching function: this communication helps workers to advert accidents, risks etc.
and avoids cost, procedures etc.

7. Image projecting function: It is the communication with its multimedia approach to

project the image of the firm in the society through effective external communication
system. An enterprise has to inform the society about its real activities, progress and
social responsibilities.
8. Orientation function: communication helps to make people acquainted with the co-
employees, superiors and with the policies, objectives, rules and regulations of the
organization.

9 Interview function: It is through interviewing people, interviewer selects qualified and

worthy people for the enterprise. Recruitment process implies face to face or oral
communication.

10 Other function: effective decision making is possible when required and adequate
information is supplied to the decision maker. Communication either oral (verbal) or
written helps the process of decision making.

Essentials of Good Communication

Communication is a reciprocal two ways and continuous social process. For effective
communication the following should be kept in mind.

1 Clarity: the clarity of ideas, facts and opinion should be there in the mind of the
communicator prior to communication.

2 Information: It is different from communication. The sender first collects and keeps
before him relevant information concerning to a particular group of people. Principles of
effective communication are to have information and communication in symbolic form.

3 Completeness: the subject matter to be communicated must be adequate and complete.

It should help the receiver to understand the central theme or idea of the message.

4 Attention: An effective communication changes the behavior of the receiver. The

process is not complete just by transmitting ideas, facts or opinions.

5 Consistency: Consistency is achieved if the communicator keeps in his mind the broad
objectives, policies and programme of the enterprise. One communication should not
conflict with previous communication.

6 Two way communication: i.e. vertical-upward and downward.

7 To know the receiver: The sender must use such language that may easily be
understood by the receiver.

8 Time: Messages sent before and after time may not serve the purpose of
communication.

9 Simplicity: The language used should be simple and easy.

10 Use of Media: While selecting media the objectives need and the audience should be
considered.

Models of Communication

Models of communication refers to the conceptual model used to explain the human
communication process. The first major model for communication came in 1949 by
Claude Elwood Shannon and Warren Weaver for Bell Laboratories Following the basic
concept, communication is the process of sending and receiving messages or transferring
information from one part (sender) to another (receiver).

Three models of communication:

Linear Model
The linear model views communication as a one-way or linear process in which the
speaker speaks and the listener listens.
Laswell’s (1948) model was based on the five questions below, which effectively
describe how communication works:

Shannon and Weaver’s (1949) model includes noise or interference that distorts
understanding between the speaker and the listener.
Interactive Model

The main flaw in the linear model is that it depicts communication as a one-way process
where speakers only speak and never listen. It also implies that listeners listen and never
speak or send messages.

Schramm (1955) in Wood (2009) came out with a more interactive model that saw the
receiver or listener providing feedback to the sender or speaker. The speaker or sender of
the message also listens to the feedback given by the receiver or listener. Both the
speaker and the listener take turns to speak and listen to each other. Feedback is given
either verbally or non-verbally, or in both ways.

This model also indicates that the speaker and listener communicate better if they have
common fields of experience, or fields which overlap.

Transactional Model

The main drawback in the interactive model is that it does not indicate that
communicators can both send and receive messages simultaneously. This model also fails
to show that communication is a dynamic process which changes over time.

The transactional model shows that the elements in communication are interdependent.
Each person in the communication act is both a speaker and a listener, and can be
simultaneously sending and receiving messages.

There are three implications in the transactional model:

i. “Transactional” means that communication is an ongoing and continuously

changing process. You are changing, the people with whom you
 arecommunicatingare changing, and your environment is also continually
changing as well.

ii. In any transactional process, each element exists in relation to all the other
elements. There is this interdependence where there can be no source without a
receiver and no message without a source.

iii. Each person in the communication process reacts depending on factors such as
their background, prior experiences, attitudes, cultural beliefs and self-esteem.

Figure 1.5 shows a transactional model of communication that takes into account “noise”
or interference in communication as well as the time factor. The outer lines of the model
indicate that communication happens within systems that both communicators share (e.g.,
a common campus, hometown, and culture) or personal systems (e.g., family, religion,
friends, etc). It also takes into account changes that happen in the communicators’ fields
of personal and common experiences. The model also labels each communicator as both
sender as well as receiver simultaneously.

Figure 1.5: A transactional model of communication

Communication noise. In any communication model, noise is interference with the

decoding of messages sent over a channel by an encoder. There are many examples of
noise: Environmental Noise: Noise that physically disrupts communication, such as
standing next to loud speakers at a party, or the noise from a construction site next to a
classroom making it difficult to hear the professor.
1. Physiological-Impairment Noise: Physical maladies that prevent effective
communication, such as actual deafness or blindness preventing messages from being
received as they were intended.

2. Semantic Noise: Different interpretations of the meanings of certain words. For

example, the word "weed" can be interpreted as an undesirable plant in a yard, or as a
euphemism for marijuana.
3. Syntactical Noise: Mistakes in grammar can disrupt communication, such as abrupt
changes in verb tense during a sentence.

4. Organizational Noise: Poorly structured communication can prevent the receiver from
accurate interpretation. For example, unclear and badly stated directions can make the
receiver even more lost.

5. Cultural Noise: Stereotypical assumptions can cause misunderstandings, such as

unintentionally offending a non-Christian person by wishing them a "Merry Christmas".

6. Psychological Noise: Certain attitudes can also make communication difficult. For
instance, great anger or sadness may cause someone to lose focus on the present moment.
Disorders such as Autism may also severely hamper effective communication.

History and Growth of Indian cinema

The birth off he cinema took place when the world's first film by Lumiere brothers was screened at Grand Cafe in
Indian Room Hall, Paris on 28 December 1895 in the presence of about thirty-five persons. Subsequently in the year
1896 the film made by George Melies was screened after a gap of about six months. The screening of Lumiere
brothers' films took place on 7 July 1896 in India. The first cinema show was held in a room at Watson’s Hotel that
later came to be known as Esplanade Mansion in Bombay. The Indian viewer took the new experience as something
already familiar to him. Only 200 persons attended the show after paying two rupees each. The films screened were
‘Entry of Cinematograph’, Arrival of a Train’, ‘The Sea Bath’ A Demolition’, ‘Workers Leaving the Factory’,
Ladies and Soldiers on Wheels’, etc. There were four shows from 6 p.m. onward.

The audience was held spellbound. They were thrilled when they saw a train coming upon them on the screen. The
visual effect of these ten minute duration films was great. There were two shows a day of twelve short films.
Fortunately, the still photographer Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatwadekar was also one of the spectators in the show
and was known as Soave Dada. Dada was keen on getting hold of the Lumiere cinematograph and vying it out him
rather than show the Lumiere films to a wider audience. The public reception -accorded to Wrangler Paranjpaye at
Chowpatty on his return from igland with the coveted distinction he got at Cambridge was veered by Bhatwadekar
in December 1901 and the first Indian social oractualify film was born.

In 1898, Bhatwadekar began shooting a wrestling match held in Bombay’s Hanging Gardens. He produced his
second film ongoing of circus monkeys and sent it to England for development. Also filmed the coronation
ceremony of Edward VII in India in 1903. Signor Colonello and Cornaglia (Italians) screened films successfully
during 1897 and 1898 in Bombay. During 1899 a British cameraman shot Indian events like 'Our Indian Regime',
‘Great Imombado of Lucknow' and Arrival of a Train' at Bombay Railway Station. Other enthusiasts like PB. Mehta
opened his cinema America-India and J.N.Tata installed a cinema apparatus for private screening of films at
different centers of Bombay.

In Calcutta, Hirala Sen photographed scenes from some of the plays at the Classic Theatre. Such films we shown as
added attractions after the stage performances were taken to distant venues, where the stage performers could not
reach. The possibility of reaching a large audience through recorded images projected several times through
mechanical gadgets caught the fancy of people in the performing arts and the stage and entertainment business. The
first decade of the 20th century saw live and recorded performances being clubbed together in the same programme.
J.F. Madan started the film business in 1902 in a tent called 'Bioscope' at Madan started the film business in 1902 in
a tent called 'Bioscope' at Calcutta and he enriched his business enormously by 1907. He was the first man to
establish the permanent theatre called Elphinstone Picture Palace at Calcutta in 1907 and was the man behind the
first feature film to come out from Bengal 'Nal Darnoyantil in 1921 in which leading roles were played by Patience
Cooper, K. Adjania and Italian film stars. The strong influence of its traditional arts, music, dance and popular
theatre on the cinema movement in India in its early days probably responsible for the characteristic enthusiasm for
inserting and dance sequences in Indian films which confinuesfill today.

Regular screening of films was started by M.D. Sethna in his touring cinema company in 1904 at Bombay. Mr Pathe
also thought it better to regularly in 1907 to boost the patronage of cinema-loving people. Pathe Cinema India
(Bombay) specialised in educational films and in industrial, travel, scientific, animal studies, growth of plants, deep-
sea inhabitant and bird life, etc. This gave impetus to many others to start screening of such films in different parts
of the country. Since it was the silent era, films originating from anywhere could be seen in India. By this time still
photography had been developed as an established business as well as art in India. By and large the English film
shows were held in cinema halls by the end of 1910 in major centres of the country.

Dhundiraj Govind Phalke (1860-1944), affectionately called Dadasaheb Phalke, a multifaceted and versatile
personality was born on 30 April 1870 at Trambkeshwar in Nasik in a Brahmin family. At the age of fourty four the
first time he saw a movie named 'Life of Christ' in a tent cinema in 1910 during Christmas at Bombay. He was
strongly taken in by the film. He could not sleep the whole night. Next day he saw the film with his wife and thought
as to how to make such films on the topics of early life of Lord Krishna, Kalia Mardan, Kans Vadh, etc. He read lots
of literature, books and journals on filmmaking and successfully experimented his knowledge by making a film 'The
Birth of a Pea Plant' in a pot. This encouraged him to go to London on 1 February 1912 to purchase a movie camera.
The editor of magazine Bioscope, Mr Kayborn, helped him in purchasing the machine and apparatus from London.
He also got him trained in different sections of filmmaking. Ultimately, Dada Phalke reached Bombay on 1 April
1912 with a Williamson camera, other film development apparatus, raw films, etc.

Phalke fixed up a studio in Dealer Main Road, wrote the scenario, erected the sets and started shooting for his first
venture 'Raja Harishchandra' in 1913. The first full-length story of Phalke was completed in 1912 and released at the
Coronation Cinema on 1 May 1913, for special invitees and members of the press. The film was widely acclaimed
by one and all and proved to be and twenty-seven days in the making. The hero of the film was a stage-actor Dabke
and the role of Taramati was performed by a man named Salunke while his son acted as Rohtash in the film. The
film was a milestone in the history of Indian cinema. The single print of the film proved to be a fortune-spinner,
suggesting the commercial viability of films, and providing an index of public response. Phalke is regarded as the
father of Indian cinema. Central to his career as a filmmaker was his fervent belief in the nationalistic philosophy of
swadeshi, which advocated that Indians should take charge of their own economy in the perspective of future
Independence.

House Full, No Intermission

In ancient and medieval times, India had been known as a land of legendary riches which, through the ages, attracted
hordes of invaders from the West. They came and they plundered its wealth. Even in the 18th century, India's gross
industrial product was higher than that of Europe. In a variety of metal wares, cotton manufacture, and silks, gems
and jeweler, to name only a few areas, its pre-eminence was beyond question. It is to this that the British dealt a
mortal blow.

By the time the cinema reached India in 1897, the country had been reduced to a supplier of raw materials and a
consumer of manufactured goods from Britain. No wonder then that the social movements of the 19th century—the
Indian National Congress, the Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj and others created an urge towards industrial
regeneration and modernisation, among other things.

The arrival of the cinema in fin de siede India was at first hailed as a new wonder of the industrial revolution.
Operatives of the Lumiere Brothers displayed their wares on screen at Watson's Hotel in Bombay (Mumbai) on July
7, 1896. From then till 1900, short films were mostly imported. Some of these had an eastern flavour, like Aladdin
and His Lamp and Alibaba and the Forty Thieves. These were brought in by foreign trading groups and individuals
and briefly exhibited during their stay. Next, we had foreign visitors coming not only to show films but to make
them on scenes of interest in India, like Coconut Fair and Oily Indian Empire among others. Soon foreign
companies started establishments in India and took over the business from casual visitors.

Early Works
However, India was quick to absorb the new technology; before long Indian entrepreneurs supplanted foreign
agencies. There was instant enthusiasm for putting an Indian content into the newly arrived technology from the
West. By 1899, the first Indian films had already been made by Harischandra Bhatvadckar, better known as Save
(pronounced Saavay) Dada. One was entitled, The Wrestlers, another was about the training of monkeys. Other
actuality films, included a record of Muharram in Delhi, the flight of the Dalai Lama from Tibet and, most notably,
the Delhi Durbar of Emperor George V in 1911. Thus the beginning was made with the documentary recording of
actualities. The Lumiere tradition of films reflecting reality was established early in the day and was to become one
of the significant strands of Indian film production.

The early years of the new century saw a spate of filmmaking by Indians. Save Dada continued working in Bombay.
F B Thanawala, also of Bombay, began shooting mid-1900, with Splendid Nell,, Views of Bombay and Taboot
Procession, the latter recording a Muslim religious pageant. In Calcutta (Kolkata), Hiralal Sen filmed local stage
plays and imported foreign films as well. In January 1903, he made Indian Lift and Scenes, a more ambitious project
that included scenes from Indian mythology. Bengal registered stercd its penchant for social activism in Jyotish
Sarkar's Great Bengal Partition Movement. Made in protest against Lord Curzon's decision to divide Bengal into
two provinces, it was financed by the biggest film producing company in India at the time J F Madan's Elphinstone
Bioscope Co., later to turn into the Madan Theatres empire. By 1920, the country was producing 20 films a year.

Meanwhile, George Melies, French magician turned filmmaker had made his triumphant arrival with Trip to the
Moon. The seeds of realism and myth-making had both been planted. When Save Dada resolved to make India's first
feature film, he chose the miracle-laden story of (God) Krishna's birth. But the death of his brother made him give
up the plan and yield his place to Dattatreya Govindrao Phalke, the Father of Indian Cinema, who was to make
India's first feature film, Raja Harischandra, in 1913.

The surviving fragments of Phalke's film show, a Melies-like interest in the magic aspects of the motion picture,
which lent themselves so well to the miracles performed by the gods of Hindu mythology. They became his lifelong
interest. He was the Hindu Melies determined to promote his religion through the special effects he kept inventing.
All of the 100 films he made were mythological, right up to 1937, when he made his second talkie, Gangavataran
(Descent of the Ganga, mythological tale of the bringing down of the river by cutting a path through the tangled hair
of Lord Shiva). The cinema's power, based on the principle of seeing is in 1921. This was quickly followed by
Madan's portrait of Parsi society in Tehmuras and Tehinlilii in 1925. Chandulal Shah in Bombay made Gunsundari,
a story of a modern wife's struggle against traditional male domination. This was followed by a similar yarn in
Typist Girl. Baburao Painter, one of the early icons of Indian cinema, who had filmed the historic session of the
Indian National Congress in 1918, made the classic, An Indian Shylock, (Savkari Pash, 1926), a tirade against the
moneylenders' exploitation of the poor. The box-office success of these films paved the way for the development of
the film of social criticism, an abiding strand of Indian cinema.

In 1925, Indian cinema was given an international dimension by Himanshu Rai in Bombay with Light of Asia, based
on the Edwin Arnold classic on the Buddha. Rai gave up a career in law in London and Journeyed to Munich with
the passionate vision of a film on the Buddha. He succeeded in persuading the Emelka Film Company of Munich to
participate in an international co-production, the first of any scale in India. The film was directed by the German
Franz Osten, with Himansu Rai acting as the Buddha. Rai followed this up with a number of films, among them,
Karma, which brought forth the talent of his wife, Devika Rani, the First Lady of the Indian screen. Rai went on to
establish Bombay Talkies, one of the earliest examples of successful studio production in India. Later, Himanshu
Rai's The Untouchable Girl (Achhut Kanya), was one of the earliest films to speak out against untouchability, the
scourge of traditional Hindu society. Thus Rai's efforts were directed at a modernity that revered tradition, but was
critical of superstition; they sought to promote pluralism and tolerance, and laid the foundations of the progressive,
rationalist and pluralist trend in Indian cinema.

By the time the talkies came with Ardeshir Irani's Light (if the World (Alam Ara), in 1933, India had several
studios, which had sprung up in Calcutta (Kolkata), Bombay, Kolhapur, Lahore, Madras (Chennai) and so on.
Studio production, modelled largely on Hollywood, became the order of the day, bringing out most of the 200-plus
full-length feature films per year. Two of these were in the state of Maharashtra, i.e. Prabhat Film Company and
Bombay Talkies; the others were New Theatres in Calcutta, United Players and later Pancholi Films in the Punjab
and several in Tamil Nadu. R Prakash of Madras trained himself in filmmaking in Germany, England and the United
States.

India's first talkie, Light of the World, had a plethora of songs and promptly set a model that the bulk of Indian
cinema has followed ever since. The mainstream (commercial) cinema put the film song at the very centre of
filmmaking. The song expressed the innermost aspirations of the characters in the story, even more than dialogue,
which was often too stereotyped to aid in either the logic of narrative or the unfolding of character.

The coming of the talkies also raised the spectre of linguistic differences among the many regions of the country.
The result was the fashioning of an all-India film couched in Hindi, the language of a large section of the
northwestern plains of the country, and understood in its simplest form in many other states. The outcome was the
growth of regional cinemas in a variety of languages, many of which, such as Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, etc.,
continue to proclaim the separate identity of the cultures centring round the language of each region. These two
branches of Indian cinema, the national and the regional, continue to exist, even flourish, to this day. They are
shown in tandem with the all-India film in Hindi, although the Hindi film is constantly inching forward to encroach
on the regional language territories. Whereas regional cinemas have sought to highlight cultural specificities, the
Hindi cinema's effort has been to produce a standardised cinematic experience. The ever-widening acceptability of
the Hindi film made in Bombay has depended largely upon the success of the lavishly mounted song and dance
numbers in communicating across the barriers of language.

The proliferation of the Indian film even before the advent of the talkies had caused enough unease to the British
rulers. In 1927, they had appointed a Film Enquiry Committee under the chairmanship of a judge. But to their
chagrin, the Rangachariar Committee, instead of giving a boost to film imports from England, recommended a rapid
increase in indigenous film production. Besides, British censorship had not quite succeeded in restraining the zeal
for social reform, political freedom and indigenous manufacture of goods. Nor was it unduly concerned with the
sexual morality of its subjects as shown on the screen. It was indulgent towards passionate kissing, which was later
to become anathema under the pressure of the Indian middle class. What the British were anxious to restrain was
political self-expression. Despite this, the number of films concerned with social and political freedoms continued to
grow through the 1920s and '30s, celebrating the modern woman in The Unexpected (Duniya Na Mane, 1937), and
The Celibate (Brahmacharl, 1937), directed by V Shantaram. Both films vigorously advocated women's liberation.
In the first, a woman given in marriage to a man old enough to be her father, refuses to consummate her marriage
and finally wins her point with the help of her stepdaughter, herself a political leader.

Cinematic Realism

The 1940s, were buffeted by the Second World War and its consequences. The period brought India's freedom
movement to a point of crisis the British were unable to solve. Successive waves of political non-cooperation and
revolt rocked the foundations of Britain's Indian empire, the jewel in the crown. In 191 - 3, the British war effort
visited a terrible man-made famine upon Bengal by taking away the grain to feed soldiers in the eastern sector.
About five million people perished. Then came the Japanese bombing of Calcutta, the Great Calcutta Killing, and
finally the Partition of India, which created East and West Pakistan.

Predictably, the cinema reacted to the events in a few socially sensitive films. A direct outcome of the thrust of the
IPTA (Indian Peoples Theatre Association, a part of the cultural front of the Communist Party) was Khwaja Ahmed
Abbas' Children of the Earth (Dharti ke Lal, 1946), based on a play on the Bengal famine of 1943, which had made
a great impression with the IPTA theatre production in Calcutta, and using some of the original cast. It had shades of
Eisenstein and bore the marks of its theatrical origins, yet constituted the first of the many attempts at cinematic
realism during the period. Another, in the same vein, was Chetan Anand's Lower Depths (Neecha Nagar, 1946),
with its rich-poor contrasts. Abbas' film was the first to be released in theatres in the USSR, while Anand's
participated in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1947. Both were worthy attempts somewhat flawed by a
penchant for operatic and theatrical stylisation, which prevented the cinematic realism their directors intended from
emerging fully. A third film that calls for mention in this context is Nemai Ghosh's The Uprooted (Chhinnamool,
1950), which was relatively free from theatricality and, in fact, had sequences of candid shooting of refugees
arriving at a Calcutta railway station. One of the actors in the film was Ritwik Ghatak, who was later to emerge as a
major filmmaker from an artistic point of view. However, The Uprooted seems to have failed to develop any unity
and remains interesting mainly in its fragments of realism. Abbas's film had a catalytic effect on Shantaram (whose
Kotnis was based on Abbas's book), and on Raj Kapoor, some of whose most successful films in the '50s were
written by Abbas.

A notable film was to celebrate India's growing new internationalism: The Journey of Dr Kotnis (Dr Kotnis Ki Amar
Kaham, 1946), by one of India's most celebrated filmmakers, V Shantaram, who had already made a mark with his
socially courageous reformist films and his innovative techniques before the war. Kotnis was based on the true story
of a young doctor, who went with an Indian medical team, sponsored by national
leader Jawaharlal Nehru, to work among the Chinese war victims, and died there. Shantaram himself played Kotnis
and shot the film in Hindi and English in the hope of finding a market for it in the United States. The story had Dr
Kotnis working with a young Chinese doctor, Chin-Lan. Dr Kotnis dies in China after experimenting with a new
drug on himself. Chin-Lan and their child come to India. All the parts were played by Indians, and China was
recreated in a Bombay studio in a markedly Hollywood style.

Another seminal film reflecting a resurgent India's new consciousness was the famous dancer Uday Shankar's
Imagination (Kalpana, 1948). It was an all-dance film with a thin storyline but techniques that showed a rare grasp
of cinematic form discarding all formulae then current in filmmaking in India. Shankar's emphasis was not on the
continuity of dance but on cinematic continuity and a fast pace ensured by a plethora of quick cuts and camera
movements. The dances were derived from classical forms, which had fallen into disrepute through their association
with courtesans and temple prostitutes. The film gave a fillip to the revival of the art of dance in a new context.

S S Vasan, a major producer in Madras, in whose studio the film was shot, was inspired enough to make a landmark
film himself, Chandralekha (1948), a spectacular presentation. Films from south India did not at that time gain entry
into the all-India circuit that was jealously guarded by Hindi filmmakers. Vasan dubbed his film, mounted an
enormous publicity campaign, bought up and hired theatres and stormed the Hindi citadel, paving the way for other
producers from the south to market their dubbed products. The film was made for an unheard of sum of US $
430,000 (for comparison, take one of India's least expensive films, The Song of the Road (Pather Panchali), made in
1955, for about $ 30,000). Vasan's next film was in an entirely different mould but it, too, made its mark. Avaiyyar
(1953), was about a Tamil woman saint-poet, so well played by the actress K V Sundarambal that she herself came
to be revered as a saint by the public. The south gradually expanded its film industry and soon overtook Bombay and
the other centres in the number of films it produced.

Historical films, which were to go into steep decline in later decades, had their heyday in the 1940s and '50s. A
memorable example thrown up by Prabhat Films of Poona (Pune) in the twilight of its glorious era was Gajanan
Jagirdar's Ram Shastri (1944). Jagirdar played the eponymous hero with Lalita Pawar as his leading lady, and the
film impressively evoked a period and a personality without recourse to melodrama. It was the first Indian film to be
shown at the Calcutta Film Society founded in 1947, by Satyajit Ray and others.

Period of Transition

In the post-Independence era, the endemic shortage of goods dating back to the Second World War saw an
unprecedented rise in profiteering. This black money or cash earnings circulated outside the banking systems and
beyond the reach of taxes. An immediate effect on the film industry was the breakdown of studio production and the
rise of the independents. Flush with funds, these newly-rich producers who had made their money in the black
market offered undreamt of fees to well-known film stars serving the studios on salaries, that had once been
more than adequate but now seemed paltry. India’s star system was like Hollywood’s in the 1930s; stars were
salaried and exclusive to individual studios, and box office results depended largely on the pull of their names on the
marquees. Once they had been weaned away by the lure of highly inflated fees, the studios were forced to reduce
and finally to close the production side of their work. This was the crisis that overtook Bombay Talkies in Bombay,
New Theatres in Calcutta, Pancholi Studios in the Punjab, and several others in the south. By distributing their risk
over a variety of products, the studios had been able to ensure a reasonable return on their capital, which banks
loaned them against their landed property and capital assets. The new producers employed their black money on hit-
or-miss one-production gambles.

The low cultural standards of the black-money-owning traders and the illiteracy of the audience combined to set the
scene for a rapid change in the style and content of the films, in the decades that followed. This trend has persisted.
Recent years have seen the disclosure of a massive link between anti-social forces and the film industry leading to
ransom threats and murders. The war period and the coming of Independence also saw a great expansion of the
working class without a corresponding increase in literacy. Migrant workers, often unemployed, rushed to the large
cities, becoming victims and often slaves of anti-social forces. The cinema audience was increasingly dominated by
the illiterate or the semi-literate.

The coming of sound in the early 1930s had already dealt the universal nature of the cinema experience a body
blow. Most of the regional cinemas in India arose at that time—Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, Marathi, Gujarati,
Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and so on. Many foreign-language-speaking Mous actresses disappeared
almost overnight. Independence gave a further fillip to the growth of regional identities in the cinema because
states were organised on a linguistic basis somewhat in the style of the Soviet Union. Although regional
characteristics locations, costumes, titles had marked the origin of films in most cases even before sound, the
coming of the talkies and the linguistic reorganisation of the states defined the regional-linguistic identities much
more sharply. Regional filmmaking centres took time to proliferate and films in all languages continued for decades
to be produced in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras with the exception of Poona (Pune), the birthplace of Indian
cinema, where Marathi films continued to be made as before.

In 1931, Hindi films accounted for 23 out of 27 films produced in the country; by 1947, the year of Independence, it
still dominated, with 185 out of 282; but by 1959, it had dropped to 116 out of 305, the difference being largely due
to the progress of south India, which has a Tamil language base, sharply different from the Sanskrit-based languages
like Hindi, Bengali and others of the north Indian plains.

The Golden Age of Indian Cinema: The 1950s

Certain pluralist and liberal trends co-existed with the rise of black money and the increasing illiteracy of the new
audiences. Altogether, the decade remained true to the spirit of the times and shared in the modernist progressive
outlook of a new India. The personalities it threw up were to carry this spirit forward in the afterglow of
Independence, when there was faith in the future and disillusion had not yet set in. This upbeat mood dominated the
1950s, as well as a part of the '60s, in the films of Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt and Mehboob, marking a
glorious chapter in Indian film history in which the divide between the commercial cinema and the art film had not
yet arrived. They gave expression, in their varied ways, to a passionate desire for justice, for the rehabilitation of the
neglected, the recognition of the worth of the individual. In 1951, Raj Kapoor's The Vagabond (Awara), burst upon
audiences in India as well as Eastern Europe, West Asia and Africa. Raj Kapoor in his charming operatic style, full
of warmth, glorified the common man in films, like The Vagabond and Mister 420 (Shri 420) in 1955, which were
big hits at home and abroad, especially Eastern Europe and Asia.

In many of these countries, the song Awara Hoon (I am a vagabond) echoed amongst the mass audience, so much so
that it became the signature tune of a frustrated generation across continents. The film's forceful rejection of elitism
struck a sympathetic chord in India's urban masses and in countries as disparate as Iraq and the USSR. Environment,
not heredity, the film said, determined the character of human beings. Since the environment is open to human
intervention, the message of the film was one of hope and of democratic right. His next film, Mister 420, was
similarly oriented towards the rights of the underprivileged. Its very name came from the section of the Indian Penal
Code under which conmen, robbers and similar criminals are prosecuted. Again, it glorified the honesty of the poor
and the wickedness of the rich in a kind of romantic proletarianism, derived from the ideology advocated by K A
Abbas, whose own films never attained the success his scripts for Raj Kapoor did.

The first film Raj Kapoor had directed was, Fire (Aag, 1948), which did not have the kind of success his later works
had but laid the foundation for them. The film was too wordy, overanxious to stress the autobiographical aspect, and
heavy in its symbolism. In films, like The Vagabond, or Mister 420, Kapoor was able to lighten this load to give his
works a freshness and a unique romantic-proletarian mix that the big audiences came to love. Raj Kapoor's father
Prithviraj Kapoor was primarily a man of the theatre although he acted in a number of films. Raj's early training had
been in a fairly uncompromising genre of theatre for those days and, although he diluted it a great deal to adapt it
and popularise it in the cinemas, it gave him a firm foundation in acting and in developing a sense of drama. In Keep
Awake Uagte Raho, 1956), which he produced and the famous theatre director Shambhu Mitra wrote and directed,
as well as in Boot Polish (1953), Raj Kapoor was influenced strongly, albeit temporarily, by the new European
cinema unveiled at India's first international film festival in 1952. But the abiding strand in his most famous films of
the '50s, The Vagabond and Mister 420, is a telling mix of Hollywood (including the seminal image of Charlie
Chaplin) and Soviet-style socialism. These he entwined skilfully with the tradition of song in Indian folk theatre. In
his later films, the need to follow the changing tastes of the audience and his own urges were to lead him away from
these romantic-proletarian fireworks.

Mehboob Khan, whose first film was, The Judgement of Allah (Al Hilal, 1935), was no communist but adopted the
hammer and the sickle as the insignia of his company, Mehboob Studios, one of the biggest and best in the country
at the time. There was a vague, general trend towards the socialistic, to borrow a term used by Jawaharlal Nehru to
express a leaning shared by large sections of the population in the early decades after Independence. Mehboob's
most famous film, Mother India (1958), was a remake of his earlier, Woman (Auras), arguably the better of the two.
But the remake was on a grander scale, had as its central character Nargis, and a title that identified the strong
village woman, who kills her own son for the crime of abducting a girl, with the country itself. The girl is abducted
in order to punish an oppressive landlord; but Mother does not approve of such evil means and punishes her son in
order to uphold the principles of justice. The use of English in the title cleverly avoided the Hindu Mother Goddess
associations earlier given to new India by a section of the movement for Independence. The film shared something
of the glory that Raj Kapoor's romantic proletarianism earned in Eastern Europe and the USSR; it got Nargis the
Best Actress Award at the 11th International Film Festival at Karlovy Vary. Like Kapoor's major early films, it
indicates an aspect of the 1950s vision of a just democratic Indian society defining its values after Independence.

Guru Dutt had the unique distinction of creating a very personal cinema within the parameters of the box-office.
Emotionally rich, laden with haunting melodies, films, like Eternal Thirst (Pyaasa, 1957), and Fourteenth Night of
the Waxing Moon (Chaudlivin Ka Chanel, 1960), fired the imagination of the public and have stood the test of time
as well. He brought the Bengali ethos with him but stood apart from this or any other trend of the times. He was a
loner, a poet, a filmmaker with an instinctive feeling as much for mood and atmosphere as for the rhythm and flow
of images despite his scant awareness of film history or contemporary cults like neo-realism. In films, like Eternal
Thirst, Paper Flowers (Kagan ke Phool, 1959) and even more specially in a film he did not sign as director, King.
Queen and Knave (Sahib, Bibi our Ghulam, 1960), he waged a struggle to communicate his sensibility to a wider
audience. Except in Eternal Thirst, he failed to do so; yet in the process he introduced something of a personal
cinema into the song-dance melodrama framework of commercial cinema. Eternal Thirst was able to communicate
the anguish of a poet despite the hyping inevitable to the conventions within which it worked.

But his box-office failure in other inventive and sensitive films, like Paper Flowers gave him the fear that his
signature was responsible for these failures. King, Queen and Knave, with its gentle rhythm and its fine visuals
pleased only a small section of the audience. His attempts to make a breakthrough in the West also ended in failure
largely because he was never totally able to shake off the conventions of the Bombay brand of commercial cinema;
what he achieved was mostly a mix of the personal and the cliche. But the success of Eternal Thirst within the
commercial format, both in carrying the large audience and communicating the personal agony of an unrecognised
poet, was itself unique enough to merit signal attention. Guru Dutt's story is thus a seminal illustration of the innate,
age-long, dilemma of the cinema in reconciling an expensive, collaborative medium with a personal, artistic
statement.

Among others who shared in this zeal for social reform to rehabilitate the traditionally downtrodden was Bimal Roy,
who had migrated from Calcutta during the declining year of New Theatres, the foremost studio of eastern India.
Roy brought a Bengali style of filmmaking to Bombay gentle, relatively slow, free of crudities, concentrating on
story development and other literary qualities without losing grip over film technique. Like Raj Kapoor's Boot
Polish (1954), Roy's Two Acres of Land (Do Bigha Zamin, 1953), was the outcome of his exposure to Italian neo-
realism at India's first International Film Festival in 1952. Under the threat of confiscation of his land for the non-
payment of a loan, a farmer goes to Calcutta to become a rickshaw-puller for the three months the court has granted
him to pay back the loan and retain his land. The realism of the film holds out till the end; the farmer is unable to
make the money, loses his land on which a factory is being built. In its absence of make-up and glamour and song-
and-dance formulas, the film broke many conventions and heralded the new language of cinema that Satyajit Ray
was to fashion from Pather Panchali (1955) onwards. In fact, it took these qualities somewhat further than Satyajit
Ray's work would, betraying Bimal Roy's impulsive reaction to the sudden exposure to Italian neo-realism rather
than lasting traits in his filmmaking. Thus Slijata, another of his landmark films, made in the same year (1959) as
Satyajit Ray's The World of Apu (Apur Sansar), found him backtracking into his more literary, Bengali style of mice
en scene developed out of New Theatres' aesthetic. The filmmaking was less inventive, less vigorous; it fell back on
a standard vocabulary. However, the inhumanity of the caste system in SuJata touched a chord in every heart and the
film was an instant success. It was fully in tune with the optimist-reformist mood of the '50s. Roy never quite gave
up this course, despite changes in the country's situation, and never played to the rising new gallery of the urban
lumpen.

The 1950s, also saw the consolidation of the film society movement, which was to have a far-reaching effect on the
emergence of a 'New Cinema', committed primarily to art and social reform. In the '30s and early '40s, films
societies had been established in Bombay, but the emergence of a movement had to await the coming of
Independence. In 1947, the Calcutta Film Society was founded by Satyajit Ray and others. This was soon followed
by the emergence of other such groups and the founding ng of the Federation of Film Societies of India in 1959. At
its peak in the late '60s and early '70s, the Federation had about 300 film societies affiliated to it. Many societies had
as many as 2,000 members. At one stage it was estimated that Bengal alone had a total membership of over 30,000.
The movement was recognised and supported by the government at the centre and by some state governments,
which allowed it exemption from entertainment tax and censorship. The movement helped to create new standards
in film criticism through its many publications, and to form an audience for the 'New Cinema' that came about in its
wake. This `New Cinema Movement' arose in Bengal in the late '50s, and early '60s and was to spread out all over
India. It coincided with the rapid rise of the educated middle class after Independence and resulted from the inner
drives of its intellectually most advanced segment. Throughout the country, regional language cinemas were
strongly influenced by this impulse and gave occasional glimpses of powerful talent. While the Hindi commercial
film continued and expanded its all-India empire, art in the regional cinemas stood up against the current much as
French or German or Italian cinema does against Hollywood. Hindi is the link language promoted by the
government and has considerable political clout. Yet, despite the obvious advantages of internalising it, regional
linguistic identities asserted their independence and the cinema formed an important means of voicing this protest.

In 1951, the central Government appointed a high-powered Film Enquiry Committee under the chairmanship of a
cabinet minister. As a result of their recommendations, which were accepted by Parliament, a wide range of
infrastructural steps were taken. Among the institutions founded were the Film Finance Corporation, which was to
reduce the influence of black money, the Film Institute of India to train film directors and technicians, the Film
Archive of India to build up collections of films and promote research, the President of India's Annual Awards for
excellence in filmmaking, and so on. The Government reorganised Films Division of India to produce and
compulsorily exhibit documentary films and newsreels; support for the film society movement was also
recommended. With a whole studio, a laboratory and large grounds at its disposal, the Film Institute of India (later
to become FTII, including training in Television) turned out to be one of the world's foremost film schools and
perhaps the only one in Asia. Its graduates have made their mark and its film directors and technicians have
transformed the standards of the popular film. Of late, the policy of maintaining this infrastructure has come into
question with popular film bosses and religious chauvinists coming together to undermine these centres of cultural
growth within the cinema.

In the more selective arena of the art film, there were efforts towards counter-strategies to interest the box-office in
its products. An example can be seen in Shyam Benegal's work on the Muslim woman in Mamino, Sardari Begum
and Zilbeida. In all three, Benegal is able to bring to bear his characteristic ability to invest social problems with
high dramatic interest even in an area rarely explored in Indian cinema.

India's 1st International Film Festival (which later became an annual event) was held in 1952. Outside the confines
of film clubs, this was the first large-scale exposure of Indian audiences to the best products of world cinema. Its
immediate effect was seen in Bimal Roy's Two Acres of Land mentioned earlier, Raj Kapoor's Boot Polish and
many other lesser attempts at creating an Indian equivalent to Italian neo-realism.

Ray, Ghatak

The decade was notable for the advent of Satyajit Ray. It would be no exaggeration to say that the phenomenal
success of The Song of the Road (Pather Panchali) in 1955 split Indian cinema into the two categories of art and
commerce, which persisted through the decades that followed. On the one hand, the marriage of art and box-office
considerations that Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, Mehboob and Bimal Ray achieved in their best work was hardly ever
repeated-, on the other, the art of film climbed new heights in the psychological development of character and event
with a conviction never before seen in Indian cinema.

In the mid-1950s, neo-realism was monumentalised in Satyajit Ray's small film, The Song of the Road. It not only
broke all the rules reigning in current Indian cinema but established a model, which numerous serious filmmakers
followed. Low budgets, absence of make-up, or/and of song and dance numbers, realistic lighting, the use of non-
professionals, the director's complete control of his work and similar new modes set up a credo of filmmaking,
which has remained generally unchanged in what is variously called 'Art Cinema' or 'Parallel Cinema' or 'Alternative
Cinema'. Numerically few, perhaps no more than five per cent of India's total production of these films have had an
impact disproportionate to their size as business. They caught the attention of the intelligentsia and the bureaucracy,
the ministries, the Parliament and so on. Generally speaking, they helped to make educated audiences aware of how
the other half of the population lives. Many of the films went to international film festivals abroad, won prizes and
were shown on small circuits and on television, creating a new recognition of Indian cinema on a scale that had
never been achieved, especially in Western countries. It is said that not a day passes when The Song of the Road is
not shown somewhere or the other in the world, nearly half a century after it was made.

The Song of the Road example had a phenomenal impact on filmmakers first in Bengal and later in Karnataka,
Kerala and Maharashtra. A whole new generation of filmmakers began making films they felt were both artistically
valid and socially relevant. In Bengal, Ritwik Ghatak made an immediate mark and was later to be regarded as an
author of seminal works sharply different from Ray's. In films, like Ray's The World of Apra (1959), formal
perfection and personal poetry joined hands to create a series of masterpieces of world cinema. His striking example
inspired generations of filmmakers, who built up a body of work of abiding value within a minority culture. Neo-
realism provided the starting point, but with The Mush- Room Ualsaghar, 1958), Ray, working in one of India's
most primitive studios, created a picture of aristocratic decadence and obsession with perfect artistry, departing from
neo-realism, like the Italian director Lucino Viscont's, Kanchenjilngha (1962), his first colour film, was shot in 28
days and captured the mercurial atmosphere of the background and the drama of a family in a hill resort with
deftness of touch and exquisite humour. Ray thus quickly showed his mettle in a number of directions, reaching
perfection in each. He set up an extraordinary model of low-budget filmmaking appropriate for the Third World
without losing the integrity of a personal vision. This model, marked by a complete control of all aspects of the
medium by the director, became the standard pattern for those who came in his wake.

Foremost among these was Ritwik Ghatak who, strangely, gave little inkling of his genius in his first film, The
Citizen (Nagarik, 1953), dealing with the frustrations of lower middle class Bengalis, which followed the standard
conventions of Bengali cinema for the most part. The release of The Song of the Road (Pather Panchali) in 1955,
appears to have triggered off the hidden springs of his unique talent and made him strike out on a path entirely his
own, in which he explored old myths in a new way and used melodrama with telling effect. In The Mechanical Man
(Ajantrik, 1958), a film on the relationship of man and machine, his handling of the medium touched rare heights
and in The Cloud-Capped Star (Meghe Dhake Tara, 1960), for the first and only time, he was able to communicate
with wider audiences with a bold and original treatment of the sufferings of a family of refugees from East Pakistan
(later to become Bangladesh).

The Growth of the Documentary

A governmental enterprise which lent some indirect support to the now minority culture in the cinema was the
documentary. The wartime Information Films of India was converted by independent India into the Films Division
of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in 1948. Curiously, the big impetus for a large-scale diffusion of
short educational and newsreel films came from the commercial cinema. In a resolution adopted by the Motion
Picture Society of India's convention, the government was urged to make the exhibition of such short films
compulsory for every film theatre in the country. The recommendation was promptly put into effect by government,
and overnight, there sprang up an audience of well over 10 million per day. Production was financed by the fee
compulsorily paid by the theatres. So every week some 10,000 theatres showed one documentary (of not more than
22 minutes) and one newsreel film in 15 languages before the main feature in every show.
The word 'documentary' was not entirely honestly employed, for the films were, for the most part, commissioned by
various ministries to publicise their achievements in specified fields. Nonetheless, a giant piece of machinery for the
production and distribution of documentaries unlike anything outside the Soviet bloc, had been created. The 22-
minute format and the haranguing style of commentary came to be the recognised features of documentary so much
so that anything else tended to be rejected outright. Within these constraints, however, a number of outstanding
films were also made, mostly by independent filmmakers commissioned by the Films Division to supplement its
somewhat dull departmental output. A signal role was played by the Company, Burmah Shell, which had its own
films department and made a number of documentaries of fairly high quality, under the leadership of James
Beveridge from the National Film Board of Canada. Paul Zils, a German national made a number of these films
(Martial Dancersof Malabar, for instance), and so did Harisadhan Dasgupta (Weavers ol-Alal'ndaryl. Petnchthiipi).
Despite the stiff loints of bureaucracy in the Films Division, the 1950s, on the whole seemed full of promise for the
documentary. A certain tradition of commitment to objecti%,c reality, outdoor shooting and realism was being
created and audiences exposed to these values, not without some effect on feature filmmaking, particularly in the
'New Cinema'.

A passageway was established for new filmmakers to graduate from the short film to the feature which some were to
traverse in the coming decades. Notable among them was Shyam Benegal, who served an apprenticeship in
advertising and documentary films before emerging as a major figure in feature cinema in the 1960s.

The Nehru Government's policy of reforming the film industry, however, continued with his dynasty, i.e. right up to
Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister. The Vice President of the Federation of Film Societies for many years was Mrs
Indira Gandhi, who become the Minister for Information & Broadcasting in 1965. Film society activists were
inducted into many government committees and had a great deal of influence over India's Third International Film
Festival in 1965 (the second having taken place in 1961, nine years after the first in 1952). The fourth festival came
in 1969 and, thereafter, under Mrs Gandhi's Prime Ministership, a Directorate of Film Festivals was established
under the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in 1974, to hold an annual international film festival as well as an
annual National Film Festival at which the President's Awards were distributed. The '60s, thus laid the foundation
for a government-supported serious cinema (or the art film) to develop throughout the '70s.

The New Hero: Law unto Himself

The popular product, on the other hand, was left to the tender mercies of the blackmarketeer, the smuggler and
others in need of a subterranean growth of their incomes outside the reach of the tax department, plus the glamorous
pursuit of a game of fortune in which the winner takes all and the loser disappears into the night.

India's ignominious defeat at the hands of the Chinese army in the North East lowered its image in the eyes of the
masses. With Jawaharlal Nehru's death in 1964, came the end of an era of political morality informed by the
idealism of a century-old anti-British struggle. At the beginning of the decade, as we have noted, the romanticism of
the 1950s, still lingered in Rai Kapoor's The Country Where the Ganga Flour Uls Desh Mein Ganga Bahti Hai,
1960), Guru Dutt's Fourteenth Night of the Waxing Moon (Chaudvin Ka Chanel, 1960), King, Queen and Knave
(Sahib, Bibi our Ghulam, 1962), and K A Asif's spectacular evocation of Mughal glory in Mughal-e-Azam,- but as
the decade wore on, a macho outlook began taking over the romantic, as surely as disillusionment was replacing
euphoria within the country.

Films about bandits made their appearance with considerable success at the box-office. Dharmendra with his macho
appearance, showed signs of becoming the next popular hero ready to fell his enemies by the dozen with his muscle
power. The decade saw a marked rise in the sex and violence content of films, which were to become the paramount
forces in the 1970s.

Throughout the 1960s, the popular film tried its hand at various things without being able to find the formula it was
seeking, uncertain of quite what the public had in mind. In this, it perhaps reflected the uncertainties and fear of the
post-Nehru era and had to contend with the enormous rise in the national and international prestige of the New,
Parallel, or Art cinema supported by the government, despite its financial failure and its miniscule production in
relation to the industry as a whole. A variety of romantic stars provided the lead in popular films Pradeep Kumar,
Rajendra Kumar, Sunil Dutt, Manol Kumar, Shammi Kapoor, Guru Dutt, Shashi Kapoor, all of whom were popular
but none of whom had the unique charisma that Amitabh Bachchan was to bring to the next decade. Perhaps the
reason was that the next decade was far more sure of what it wanted in life and in the cinema.

With the growing sense of the state's inability to bring about a just social order came the need to find a substitute for
its moral, even its legal, authority. In the 1970s, a mafia set of values came to replace the patriotic faith of the years
before and immediately after Independence. The family became the mainstay of the individual in a crisis, and the
mother the icon of togetherness under the umbrella of tradition. Underneath the enthusiasm for independence and
modernity, there has always been a certain unknown fear of what modernity would bring and the extent to which it
would destroy traditional institutions, which supply the sense of security required in by the individual and the
family. These fears now began to surface more clearly.

The decade began with a continuation of the romantic strand, which had existed alongside a new macho self-
assertion. In Eternal Love (Amar Prem, 1971), Rajesh Khanna, the embodiment of the gentle upper class hero made
for love, featured with Sharm I la Tagore in a very Bengali story of a pure-at-heart ex-prostitute. Besides Rajesh
Khanna, there was the in between figure of the more muscular Dharmendra, who fought for the hand of the woman
he loved and the well-being of his son in Gravestone (Samadhl, 1972).

By contrast, the emerging hero of the '70s, Amitabh Bachchan, showed with his first box-office hit, Chains,
(Zanjeer, 1973), that he represented a cynical age prepared for extremes of violence to achieve its aims. The fruits of
development had begun to appear in the form of a plethora of locally-made consumer goods, which the lumpen did
not have money to buy. The have-nots were getting ready to grab them by force and they needed a hero. They found
him in Bachchan.

The double role, beloved of the actors, now often took the form of two brothers, one good and the other bad. In The
Wall (Deewar) in 1975, various Amitabh Bachchan turns against the law but his brother (Shashi Kapoor) is an
honest police officer, a defender of the law. Both of them struggle for the possession of the mother. The new hero no
longer courts beautiful women, they are inexorably drawn to him. The main theme of the new films is revenge.
Somehow the family honour is sullied, and revenge is the only way justice can be visited upon the wrongdoer
without the law's delays. More often than not, the underdog fights the top dog, fells him, and takes his place to
become the new oppressor.

This syndrome and its carrier ruled the popular all-India film for nearly two decades and bequeathed many of its
characteristics to the big production chains of south India, and even regional cinemas, like the Bengali. The upshot
was that the popular regional film made poor imitations, given its modest means, of the multi-million rupee
productions from Bombay and, after some initial success, lost its traditional audience to the Hindi blockbuster, until
it became, by the end of the 1980s, difficult to release regional films for the lack of theatre chains, most of which
had been appropriated by the distributors of the Hindi film.

Cinema in Bengal

By the end of the 1960s, the government-owned Film Finance Corporation had realised that its funds were adequate
only for supporting offbeat, low budget films originally modelled on Italian neo-realism. In 1969, it gave its first
unsecured loan to Mrinal Sen for his Bhuvan Shome, a film about a bureaucrat out on a hunt, which achieved wide
acclaim and moderate financial success, giving a big thrust to the take-off of Mrinal Sen's career. Meanwhile,
Satyajit Ray was in the most remarkable phase of his work, climbing new heights of national and international
acclaim with his tryptich Three Daughters (Teen Kanya, 1961), The Big Cit), (Mahanagar, 1963), and Charalata
(1964). But Kanchenjungha (1962), his first feature film in colour, went largely unnoticed, although in retrospect it
seems part of the most fecund and pure phase of his creativity.

Ritwik Ghatak with his output of eight films in 20 years had the distinction of never winning a major award and
never travelling abroad. After his stint as Vice Principal of the Film Institute in Pune, he began to turn into a cult
figure, somewhat towards the end of his career and more so after his death. Of his eight films, only one, The Cloud-
Capped Star (Meghe Dhake Tara, 1960), was able to communicate with the wider public a fact that never ceased to
trouble his Marxist conscience even after his succes destime had been firmly established. In his last film, Reason,
Argument and A Story Uukti, Takko ar Gappo, 1974), he acted out an autobiographical role, warning the leftist
movement of its pitfalls with a stark honesty. Ray and Ghatak turned into the cult hero and anti-hero of Bengali
cinema of the 1960s and '70s.
Mrinal Sen, who stood somewhere between Ray and Ghatak, developed over the years, a highly distinguished
oeuvre more remarkable in its totality of inventions than in the rounded achievements of individuals' films.
However, some of them, like The Wedding Day (Baishe Sravan, 1960), Bhuvan Shome (1969), The Outsiders (Oke
Clone Katha, 1972), And Quiet Rolls The Day (Ek Din Pratidin, 1979), In Search of Famine (Akaler Sandhane,
1980), were already remarkable achievements. The films are marked by a freshness and originality rarely to be
found in contemporary Indian cinema.

The Nouvelle Vague, which emerged in France in 1959, had an enormous impact on Mrinal Sen and helped to give
his work a constant buoyancy unfazed by occasional excesses of what some described as gimmickry. His Marxism
was too well garnished with cinematic invention to fall into the Soviet tradition of hyped propaganda. He hardly
ever made films on the working class, which he did not know well enough, but stuck to the middle classes with
which he could identify. Sen was to move away gradually from Marxism towards a more individual exploration of
Bengali middle class mores. Like Ghatak, he never allowed political ideology to put a straitjacket on his creative
freedom.

Expanding Horizons

Ray had been the major inspiration behind the founding of the Calcutta Film Society in 1947, and remained the
fountainhead of the movement till his death in 1992. The success of his films and his kind of cinema provided
conviction to the film society movement, which grew from seven in 1961, to more than 250 by the end of the '60s.
Many of the societies published serious film magazines, some of which have survived. Discussion of both Indian
and foreign cinema in these periodicals led to the growth of critical influenced quality reviews influenced the
nature and quality of film reviews in the commercial press as well. In 1967, the Federation held an All-India Film
Societies Conference in Calcutta that consolidated its growth and earned it recognition as well as some financial
support from government. Despite strict censorship rules for films in general, the Federation was allowed to show
films without any cuts on the personal recommendation of its President, Satyajit Ray. Some of the films came from
the National Film Archive's small collection of prints for circulation, but the major source was constituted by the
various Embassies.

The 1960s, saw a further expansion of the output of the film industry, making India the producer of the largest
number of films in the world and the second biggest exporter after Hollywood. By the end of the decade, production
had climbed to 400 films per year. In the industrially developed countries, television had already taken away a large
chunk of the film industry's audience in the '50s, but not in India, where TV was to stay at an experimental stage
until 1975.

Colour started to take over in the '60s, largely due to the success of laboratories in Bombay and Madras in
overcoming technical problems in preparing high quality colour prints. The Savage One Uunglee, 1961), was
processed at Film Centre, Bombay, and became a landmark film in this regard. Black and white film continued to be
used for some time but only in low budget art productions and in films in regional languages. By the end of the
decade, 90 per cent of Hindi films were being made in colour.

Indian cinema's self-sufficiency, so marked from the very beginning, was, if anything, reinforced in the decades
after independence and manifested itself in a new direction in the '60s. As though tipping its hat at the Western-style
consumerism that began to raise its head during this period, a number of films were shot abroad. The titles gave
enough away, like An Evening in Parr, Night in London, Love in Tokyo, and so on. The films registered little
interaction with the countries in which they were shot; the exotic locations were just that. In actual fact, their
concerns were markedly inward-looking. An Evening in PariS, for example, featured twin sisters played by the same
actress, Sharmila Tagore (of The World of Apra and Devi), one of whom is highly Westernised and the other
demurely Indian. Which of the two is superior is made amply clear; it is the traditional Indian girl who gets the boy.
This double role, had been a favourite device of popular Indian cinema to stage a struggle between two sides within
the same person or two trends within the country the traditional and the modernist. In comparison to the 1950s, the
'60s showed a significant drop in the number of mythologicals (made unfashionable by urbanisation) and an increase
in action films, a genre in which the wrestler Data Singh turned out to be a leading light. In spite of the continuation
of the previous decade's romanticism in the work of Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt and Raj Kapoor, the swing towards
escapist cinema was unmistakable less accent on story and more on the delivery of new sensations. Subodh
Mukherjee's The Savage One was typical of this trend filled with the Yahoo cries and antics of a mindless Shammi
Kapoor, who featured in many such films.

Art and commerce begun to drift further and further apart. The national and international acclaim received by
Satyajit Ray began to develop a significant following amongst the educated middle class fora new kind of cinema,
more Western in form than the popular Indian film.

The major figures of the 1950s, discussed above, had been able to provide a meeting ground of personal creativity
with box-office success, with their romantic and basically upbeat films. Now that became well-nigh impossible
because maldistribution of the fruits of development began to disillusion the bulk of the audience in the cinemas.

zzzz

Colour started to take over in the '60s, largely due to the success of laboratories in Bombay and Madras in
overcoming technical problems in preparing high quality colour prints. The Savage One Uunglee, 1961), was
processed at Film Centre, Bombay, and became a landmark film in this regard. Black and white film continued to be
used for some time but only in low budget art productions and in films in regional languages. By the end of the
decade, 90 per cent of Hindi films were being made in colour.

Indian cinema's self-sufficiency, so marked from the very beginning, was, if anything, reinforced in the decades
after independence and manifested itself in a new direction in the '60s. As though tipping its hat at the Western-style
consumerism that began to raise its head during this period, a number of films were shot abroad. The titles gave
enough away, like An Evening in Parr, Night in London, Love in Tokyo, and so on. The films registered little
interaction with the countries in which they were shot; the exotic locations were just that. In actual fact, their
concerns were markedly inward-looking. An Evening in PariS, for example, featured twin sisters played by the same
actress, Sharmila Tagore (of The World of Apra and Devi), one of whom is highly Westernised and the other
demurely Indian. Which of the two is superior is made amply clear; it is the traditional Indian girl who gets the boy.
This double role, had been a favourite device of popular Indian cinema to stage a struggle between two sides within
the same person or two trends within the country the traditional and the modernist. In comparison to the 1950s, the
'60s showed a significant drop in the number of mythologicals (made unfashionable by urbanisation) and an increase
in action films, a genre in which the wrestler Data Singh turned out to be a leading light. In spite of the continuation
of the previous decade's romanticism in the work of Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt and Raj Kapoor, the swing towards
escapist cinema was unmistakable less accent on story and more on the delivery of new sensations. Subodh
Mukherjee's The Savage One was typical of this trend filled with the Yahoo cries and antics of a mindless Shammi
Kapoor, who featured in many such films.

Art and commerce begun to drift further and further apart. The national and international acclaim received by
Satyajit Ray began to develop a significant following amongst the educated middle class fora new kind of cinema,
more Western in form than the popular Indian film.

The major figures of the 1950s, discussed above, had been able to provide a meeting ground of personal creativity
with box-office success, with their romantic and basically upbeat films. Now that became well-nigh impossible
because maldistribution of the fruits of development began to disillusion the bulk of the audience in the cinemas.
The euphoria of Independence was fast disappearing and the feeling grew that the rich were getting richer and the
poor poorer. The change in the audience's perceptions began to affect the popular film, driving it towards
traditionalism and away from reformist agendas. It was to culminate in the nihilist cynicism of the '70s.

Cinema's Foray into Politics

The decade was also marked by what is probably the world's unique example of the political clout of cinema. In the
state of Tamil Nadu in south India, the political party in Opposition, after having made an elaborately planned
propagandist use of fictional cinema, came to power in the general elections in 1967. The Chief Minister, C N
Annadurai, was a scriptwriter in films. He wrote many screenplays to boost the party ideology and the image of M G
Ramachandran (MGR), the superstar, who was to inherit his mantle later. His first Dravida Munetra Kazagham
(MGR) Cabinet of ten ministers had nine members from the film industry. It was a case of the film industry taking
over the state. It was not a flash in the pan either; MGR stayed in power from 1972, till his death in 1987. Even his
ghost made its presence felt in the 1989 elections with two women, one of who was his wife and both of whom had
partnered him in his films, claiming his legacy. The fight was eventually lost by the rife to the other woman,
Jayalalitha, who became the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. In other words, the cinema continues to hold political
power in the state. One immediate outcome of this process was a tremendous increase in the number of films made
there, overtaking the production in Hindi, i.e. the all-India film. In the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh, the
matinee idol N T Rama Rao stormed the political fortress, and although he did not last very long, he remained the
leader of the Opposition. The cinema still exercises considerable power over the machinery of both states.

Perhaps this was symptomatic of the rise of regional parties ending the total unity between the central and state
governments that marked the Nehru era (Nehru died in 1964). What is remarkable is that in the two states of Tamil
Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, the cinema should have become the instrument for this change. It should be mentioned
here that these two states have nearly 50 per cent of India's cinema theatres and practically all of the country's
touring cinemas, i.e. impermanent, itinerant structures with an unusual reach into the remote areas of the
countryside. Significantly, the 'New Cinema' has made little headway in these two states.

The 1970s and the '80s

The extent to which Bachchan came to symbolise the thwarted aspirations of the plebian urban population became
evident when he was hospitalised after an accident. Millions of people all over the country prayed fervently for his
recovery. Thousands in Bombay thronged the gates of the hospital in which lie lay fighting for his life. Films, like
Amar Akbar Anthony, Flames (Sholay, 1975), The Victor One (Mukaddar Ka Sikandar, 1978), had inscribed his
name in the hearts of the audience in letters of gold. All of this was seminally portrayed in Trishul (Trident—a
symbol of Lord Shiva, 1975). In this film, Amitabh Bachchan's mother had been loved but rejected by his father
under pressure from his own mother to marry a rich industrialist's daughter in order to improve the family's
circumstances. At her deathbed, Bachchan's mother made him swear revenge on his father for having ill-treated her.
The son finds his father, earns his confidence but only to reduce him to a pauper. The hero's strength in repeatedly
defeating scores of hired thugs comes from the blessings of his mother in Heaven, from where, in fact, she speaks to
him and encourages him.

The philosophy of Bachchan's films during the period he rode the entertainment scene, like a colossus with an
unbroken series of blockbusters, was the exact opposite of the tenets of 'New Cinema'. These frequently
government- supported films contained enough exposure of social ills and protests against them; but their criticism
of government was for not implementing the Constitution of India; they were not for the overthrow of the
Constitution itself nor for urging people take the law into their own hands. Despite all their social criticism, they had
a firm underlay of faith in democracy.

In the 1970s, the FFC' s funding of Mrinal Sen's Bhuvan Shome, the making of Pattabhi Rama Reddy's Funeral
Rites (Samskara, 1970), in the state of Karnataka in south India, Adoor Gopalakri s hn an's Ones Own Choice
(Swayamvaram, 1972), in Kerala, and in Hindi in Bombay, Mani Kaul's A Day's Bread (Uski Roti, 1970), and Basu
Chatterjee's The Whole Sky (Sara Akash, 1971), M S Sathyu's Hot Win& (Garam Hawa, 1974), and Shyam
Benegal's The Seedling (Ankur, 1974), both in Bombay, all remarkable films in their various ways, opened the
floodgates for the `New Cinema'. State governments came to subsidise and award serious Cinema. Graduates of the
Film Institute spread out all over the country to make films in their own languages. From Assam and Manipur in the
north East to Kerala and Karnataka in the south, the 'New Cinema' proclaimed itself in a variety of interesting,
inventive works which made their mark at national and international film festivals.

Beginning with The Seedling (Ankur, Benegal), a typical product of the film society movement, developed into a
highly professional filmmaker after a number of films with a strong personal tinge, like The Churning (Manthan,
1976), and The Role (Bhumika, 1977), and broke away from the Satyajit Ray model of total singularity of creative
control, making wide use of the talent of others to turn out a series of successful films. Some of the films were even
financed by cooperatives the milkmen in The Churning, the weavers in The Essence (Susman, 1986). At the
opposite end was G Aravindan, who made films with a natural, earthy poetry as in Golden Sita (Kanchana Sita,
1977), and the delicately personal works that followed. But the overemphasis on production and the lack of new
exhibition facilities designed for this type of film were to dampen the spirits of filmmakers, who could not show
their films to the public. Eventually this was to inhibit their funding in the 1980s and '90s. The need of the hour was
a chain of small art houses, but these were conspicuous. Yet the '70s, showed no sign of an imminent decline of the
decade was full of hope and progress for this sector of cinema.

Two acolytes of Ritwik Ghatak, the cult figure of serious cinema especially in the 1980s, manifested their talent in a
series of films, beginning with Mani Kaul's A Dal's Bread (Uski Rot], 1970), and Kumar Shahani's Mirror of
Illusion (Mayadarpan, 1972). Gifted with a rare visual they both began with a non-narrative, somewhat inscrutable
intent but later drifted towards the purely aesthetic in which they continued to excel. The stunning beauty of their
images in these later works has an almost spiritual, contemplative purity. In their extreme distance from
commercially viable cinema for wider audiences, they represented the outer limits of what Indian governmental and
private production agencies were prepared to do in the service of pure cinema.

The premature demise of G Aravindan robbed not only Kerala but national and international film buffs of a poet of
the cinema. His films Golden Sita/Kanchan Sita, Stephan/Estappan, The Tent/Thampu), and others -arty the
unforgettable impress of a mind capable of exploring silence. Twilight (Pokkuveyil, 1981), slowly adds up to an
extraordinary portrayal of the subtle processes in the mind of a young man in an asylum for the mentally ill.
Aravinclan's films are imbued with a rare respect for the human being and for nature. His was not a conscious
exploration visible on the surface, it was an inner glow that lit up the films. He stood in some contrast to the other
giant of Kerala's cinema, its most remarkable intellectual who has made films of great strength and depth of political
and social meaning—Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Films, like Face To Face (Mukhamukham), often encased in stories of
absence, displayed great strength in the building of characters and moral situations, stated in tense, understated
drama, in which silence plays an important part. His films continue to intrigue one no matter how many times one
sees them. Gopalakrishnan has had few followers as such, but Aravindan's work found delicate echoes in Shaji N
Karun, whose The Birth (Piravi, 1989), remains one of the masterpieces of the period.

The bulk of Bengali cinema has for a long time continued to make somewhat uninteresting popular films, mostly
incompetent copies of Bollywood. But an interesting new feature, which has made itself felt is in serious cinema's
forays into the box-office in the films of Aparna Sen and Rituparno Ghosh. The former, best known for her 36
Choivrl'nghee Lane (1981), has directed a series of good films that have done extraordinarily well at the box-office.
From Paronia (1985) to House of Memories (Paromitar Ek Din, 1999), each of her works has attracted equal
attention from serious filmgoers and a large audience. So far, she has written all her films and acted in some of
them. Rituparno Ghosh writes his own scripts, if not all his stories, and has a somewhat similar style to Aparna Sens,
building the characters and relationships with care, brick by brick. From his first film, Nineteenth April (Unishe
April, 1994), to his recent, Festival (Utsav, 2000), his films are almost always concerned with the family and its
complex problems seen from a woman's point of view. Both filmmakers swear by Rabindrasangeet (songs
composed by Rabindranath Tagore) which have worked very well with all audiences.

Among Bengal's most important filmmakers are Goutam Ghose and Buddhadeb Dasgupta. Ghose seems to have
worked out his problems with Marxism through the medium of films. His first, The Motherland (Ma Bhoomi, 1980),
was close to a Soviet agit-prop exercise. From this he slowly but surely moved away, gradually bringing the
individual to the fore. In the process, his films, aiways cinematically interesting, tended to fall into two halves, the
Marxist and the individualistic, until in his most recent work, Perceptions (Dekha, 2000), he seemed to have finally
brought the two halves together in one individual in autobiographical fashion. Dasgupta followed a somewhat
similar course up to The Crossroad (Grihayuddha, 1982), in an increasingly individual style of fine precision and
poetry. His concern with vanishing folk arts and performances, environmental attitudes, folk utopias, nostalgias, in
films, like The Tiger Man (Bagh Bahadur, 1990), The Shelter of the Wings (Charachar, 1995), The Wrestlers
(Uttara, 1999), have found much favour with select audiences.

In the year of Flames (Sholay, 1975), India's best known Curry Western, which wowed the box-office and gave the
film industry a sense of euphoria, an event took place that was to herald the decline of the Indian film industry.
Television, government-owned, inbred and confined to a small, listless urban audience, suddenly exploded on the
mass market. Indira Gandhi freed it from governmental resource constraints and allowed programmes sponsored by
advertisers to be shown on a large scale. It led to a quantum jump in the quality of programmes and even put some
professional shine on the government's own productions. The import of television sets had already been liberalised
for the Asian Games held in Delhi in 1982. Now the production of TV sets multiplied and the number of sets in the
hands of the public increased rapidly to 10 million.

The enormous success of the pro-development soap opera, Hum Log, followed by a number of others showed that
popularity was possible even without the sex and violence ingredients claimed as essential by the film industry.
There is no doubt that the advent of TV was one of the main reasons for the decline of cinema.

What hit the cinema still harder was the arrival of the video. Both these media are per force mainly middle class
phenomena, since the unit cost is high in relation to the average income. The middle class began to star from the
cinema theatres, and this itself directed the filmmaking more than ever towards the semi-literate and the illiterate
urban I Mira the street urchins portrayed in Mira Nair’s Hello Bombay (Salaam Bombay).

Beginning of a New Period ?

Alongside the glorified subjugation of women in the bulk of mythologicals and other populist films, there was a
slender flow of works that protested against the ghatsubjugation of woman decreed by scriptures, such as the Laws
Manu. Slowly this movement gathered strength, particularly, after Independence and the emergence of a parallel
cinema committed to social reform, which made the liberation of woman central to its statements. Directors who
were and are part of this trend are Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, Girish Kasaravalli,
Ketan Mehta to name only a few. Their concern was to hold up a picture of the predicament of the woman in
traditional society, in which her sole value was her reproductive function and nurturing ability, denying her all
independence, right to love and care or the expression of her own sexuality. This was particularly marked in Bengal,
Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra. The articulation of the demand for the liberation of woman gained both
sharpness and momentum with the emergence of major women directors on the scene, such as Prema Karanth, Sal
Paranjpe, Vijaya Mehra, Aparna Sen, Kalpana Lajmi and others. Many films by these women are of a high calibre.

In the 1970s, motherhood came to be regarded as the sole destiny of women; the only free women were cabaret
artistes and traditional courtesans It was only in the '80s, that the climate changed into one of a superficial
acceptance of modernity and sexuality in woman. Sexual love began to dominate the screen in the 1980s and '90s.
Bachchan's revenge drama was increasingly replaced by this love play of handsome men and beautiful women
enacted with the witty elegance of Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan, Madhuri Dixit and, towards the end of the
century, by Hrithik Roshan.

An interesting anomaly exists between the new freedom in film and the absence of it in real life. Marriage is a
family affair in which money plays an important part in the form of dowry taken by the boy's parents and given by
the girl's. How widespread this practice is, is evident in the number of murders that take place with the aim of
extracting more and more from the bride's family, not only before but even after marriage. No wonder dowry death
is not the subject of many films, audiences in the theatre are, for the most part, takers and givers of dowry who do
not want to see their sins on screen. The love enacted between unmarried young men and women is thus fantasising
of freedom before marriage, so limited afterwards by familial pressures.

The 1990s, confirmed what had been a growing suspicion in the previous decade: The 'Art' cinema lost its high
moral ground and the popular, mainstream cinema crept in to nibble at the edges of the vacancy. With secularist
politics under attack, new configurations aligned themselves with forces undermining the art film's support base and
its moral validity. The process found its landmark in the destruction of the Babri Masjid in the state of Uttar
Pradesh, 1992. It has since then spread its tentacles into the cultural infrastructure that had upheld the art cinema's
social concerns as something worthy of support. Nevertheless, the new religious chauvinism was not acceptable to
the vast majority; pro and contra forces emerged especially in the popular cinema, always a battleground for new
and old social forces. There was a marked increase in films tackling social issues rather than just revenge
melodramas. What is more, they met with increasing box-office success.

What capped it all at the turn of the century were Tax (Lagaan, 2001), a period film of British colonialism which got
an Oscar nomination; and Chaos, A Stot), of Love (Gadar, 2001), depictiong the agony of India's Partition. These
films, which may be said to stand powerfully for two different tendencies, the secularist and the religious chauvinist,
that underlie Indian society's complex preoccupations. Both are great box-office hits, not merely in India but
even abroad, bringing new hope to the popular cinema in the dawn of the new century. They take Bollywood to new
heights from which Hollywood's world market could look like Indian love began to cinema's very own oyster. An
astonishing success greeted a simple film dealing with the process, and the decorative details, of a traditional Hindu
marriage: Who Am I to You (Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, 1994). The glorification of traditional marriage was thus a
concomitant of marriage as a family affair rather than a relationship between two individuals own free will. This
naturally shifted the emphasis to a mindless if joyous whirl of dances and near-kiss intimacies. No wonder they have
found audiences in some pockets of Japanese and American society in the post-modern period given to the
consumerist paradise without utopias. One purposeful voice in this cacophony has been that of Mani Ratnam, a rare
phenomenon who invests new meaning Among his remarkable films are Roja (1992), centred around patriotism in
Kashmir, and Bomba), (1994) around the rare and generally unwelcome subject of Hindu-Muslim marriage. In the
background of the Romeo-Juliet yarn is severe communal strife. Mani Ratnam's talent able matched by the unusual
music of A R Rahman.

Another recent example is of actor-director Kamal Hasan's Hey Ram! (2000), a film re-examining the role of
Gandhi in the context of strife round and the between Hindus and Muslims on the eve of the Partition of India, and
the creation of Pakistan. The new century may thus signal a change of values in at least an influential section of
mass entertainment in India-a country which is the largest producer of films in the world.

The Mighty Banyan Tree

Phalke may have been the first great director of the Indian cinema but the man lie invited to a preview of Raja
Harischandra can lay rightful claim to be India's first movie mogul, and his conversion to films was very similar to
that of Phalke. Phalke had been moved by The Life of Christ. janisetji Framji Madan was so besotted by Phalke's
film that he started the first dominant studio system in India and became the master of the Indian film world,
comparable in stature to ones in Hollywood. His emergence also set right what was an initial anomaly in the
development of the Indian film industry: the absence of major of Parsi figures.

As we have seen, less than a month after the arrival of the cinema in India, Vic Times of India had moaned that "our
Parsi friends" were not taking an interest. This was uncharacteristic of them. Almost everything of any significance
that happened in Indian life from the middle of the nineteenth century to the early years of the twentieth century had
enormous Parsi influence, from politics, through business, to entertainment. If the Parsis collaborated with the
British, then the early leaders of the Indian Congress which led the freedom movement against the British, were also
predominantly Parsis.They were the ultimate middle-men. Slow as the Parsis may have been to get off the mark in
the new medium, they were quick to catch up and were soon centre stage adding a third C, to their already
established dominance in the other two C's: Commerce and Cricket.

No one did this with more style and authority than Madan, who combined both the Parsi business acumen, which
had made them the first Indian bourgeoisie, with the well-known Parsi love for the theatre.
Long before Madan was born, Parsi theatre was well established in Bombay. In 1836, twenty years before Madan
was born, the Bombay Theatre, styled after London's Drury Lane, which showed plays to British soldiers and East
India Company officials, had been bought by the well-known Parsi businessman, Sir Jamshedjee Jeejeebhoy. In
1853, Dadabhai Naoroji had helped establish the Parsi Stage Players, which the Indian cinema historian, Bhagwan
Das Garga, says helped “determine the shape and structure of popular Indian theatre and later of the Talkie film.” A
decade before Madan's birth, the Grant Road Theatre was set up. While it was owned by a Hindu, the businessman,
Jaganath Shankarshet, the performers were mainly Parsi amateur troupes putting on plays in English, Marathi,
Gujerati and Hindi. When Madan was a year old, Jeejeebhoy started the J.J. School of Art in t857, the same year as
the Great Revolt very nearly brought an end to British rule in India. Madan was barely in his teens when Kaikushroo
Kabrail established Victoria, the first professional Parsi theatrical company. It was Kabarji who first staged
Ranchodbhjai Udayram's play Raja Harishchandra, which Phalke brought to the cinema and which, in turn, inspired
Madan to venture into films.

Madan brought to the films many of the traditions of the Parsi theatre. “The dominant theme of the Parsi theatre,”
write Ashish K, adhyaksha and Paul Willemen in The Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema, “were the historical, the
romantic melodrama, and the mythological, with a major influence being the seventeenth century Elizabethan
theatre, especially via translations, and adaptations of Shakespeare, a tradition that fed into film. The Anglophile
Parsi repertoire's classicism, comparable to academic naturalism in the visual arts, substantially determined the
transformation of classic and popular music into urban stage (and later recording) modes, as transition assimilated
into the early sound cinema.”

The traditions of this theatre had been drilled into Madan from a very early age. He had, himself, started as an actor
at the tender age of 17 when, in 1873, he performed in Nusserwanji Parek's Sulcniaiii Shamsher, along with his
brother Pestonji. Another brother, Khurshedji, was a partner in the original Victoria Theatrical Club. By the 189os,
Madan, who was a shrewd businessman, with interests that covered insurance, property, pharmaceuticals, the import
of food and drinks, and film and film equipment, bought the Elphinstone and the Khatau-Alfred, two of the most
prominent Bombay theatrical companies. Madan also bought their creative staff and the rights to their repertoire.
But his emergence as India's first movie mogul came in 1902, when he made the cross-continental journey to
Calcutta on the east coast. It was a bold move and showed the strategic sense of the man.

For a Parsi to leave Bombay for Calcutta in the early part of the twentieth century was an unusual move. Bombay
then was at the heart of Parsi commercial and cultural activity; such was their dominance of Bombay business that
they more than matched the British business houses of the city. Indeed they did much to lay the foundation of
modern Bombay. In contrast, there were very few prominent Parsis in Calcutta and British business reigned supreme
there. But Madan sensed that as the capital of British India it offered better prospects for this new medium and so it
proved.

Madan's rise in Calcutta generated many colourful stories suggesting it was a rags to riches effort. One of them was
that he had been a prop boy at Calcutta's Corinthian Hall, which he later owned, another that, in 1902, having
purchased film equipment from an agent of Path& Freres, he launched a bioscope show in a tent at Calcutta's
Maidan.

More credible is the theory that Madan was a fairly substantial businessman when he came to Calcutta, and only got
into film-making in 19os when he presented Jyotish Sarkar's documentaries, such as The Great Bengal Partition
Movement at the Elphinstone Picture Place, the first of many Madan-owned film theatres. Two years later he added
the Minerva and the Star to his collection and through the i9ios his expansion was so relentless that by the end of the
decade he had thirty-seven theatres.

Madan's, skills lay in shrewdly exploiting the particular Indian conditions he had to operate under. So, well aware of
the apartheid the Raj had imposed in Indian cities, he bought or eased cinemas in Calcutta's white town, what the
British called the European quarters of the city—the British in India always classified themselves as Europeans,
emphasising that they were a white ethnic group and their clubs, railway carriages, and other places that excluded
Indians, invariably did so under the banner ‘Europeans only’.

Madan appreciated that the cinemas in the European part of the town were often not only in better condition but
could charge higher ticket prices, catering to the British armed forces stationed in the city, as also other Europeans
and AngloIndians. Indians too were attracted to his cinemas, with Satyajit Ray happily going to a Madan theatre, but
not to a theatre in the Indian part of town.

Growing Under the Banyan Tree

The Madans were like a giant banyan tree; while it was dominant, under its shade, others could grow, and the story
of Dhiren Ganguly, also known as Dhirendranath Gangopadhyae, or D.G., shows how some of the early pioneers of
the Indian screen, first with silent movies, then talkies, developed.

Ganguly was born in 1893, it, Calcutta, in a house where Satvajit Ray's grandfather, Upendrakishore
ltowchowdhury, was also a tenant. He studied at Calcutta University and then went to Santiketan, the university
Tagore had set up in a rural idyll near Calcutta, to study arts. After qualification, Ganguly got a job in Hyderabad as
headmaster at the Nizam's art college. The Nizam of Hyderabad, who ruled a state larger than France, was
considered one of the richest men in the world, but with a reputation for being a miser and whose harem was a
subject of much rumour and legend. Ganguly had little contact with the remote autocratic ruler and his task could
not have been onerous for he found time for other projects and in 1915 published a book of photographs, Bliaber
Abhibaktae. In this he himself appeared in a number of roles as men and women of all ages, and all segments of
society. In some photographs he appeared in several guises. For example, in one he was an orator on a soap box, as
well as each of the four people listening. The book provided an outlet for his rich satirical sense and was immensely
popular. It also helped launch his film career and brought him to the notice of the Calcutta Police. They were very
impressed with the way Ganguly could don disguises and employed him to train detectives in the art of disguise.
Decades later, he was recalled to give similar advice to the police of independent India.

Ganguly followed this with Amar Desh, My Country and two other books. Ganguly sent his first two books to J. F
Madan and the two men met some time in 1918. Madan, as we have seen, at this time was at the height of his
powers and immediately showed his shrewdness as a businessman. When he learnt Ganguly had studied under
Tagore, and thus knew the great man well, he encouraged him to get Tagore's permission to make a film based on
his play, Sacr Tice. Ganguly had no problems getting the poet's consent.

However, Ganguly, while ,I very inventive inan, could not stick to a plan or icic-, for long and Sacrifice was
postponed as, attracted by a another offer, Ganguly i)o,,\ emer-col as a rival to Madan. A Calcutta businessman, P B.
DUtt, who had made substantial profits from the manufacture of wooden buckets, wanted to invest in films. He
suggested to Nitish Chandra Laharrie, who worked for Madan, to leave Madan and help butt form a new group.
Ganguly joined this new group which was called the Indo-British Film Company. It consisted of four partners: Dutt,
as financier, Laharrie, as General manager, C. Sircar, as cameraman, and Ganguly. as dramatic director, which also
included writing.

The story that Ganguly wrote, and which was soon being filmed, was quite remarkable. Belat Pherot, England
Returned, achieved the unlikely dual feat of satirising both the pretension, of Indians returning, home from England,
trying to behave like Brits with a stiff upper lip, and at the same time the conservatism of those Indians to whom
every new idea was all abomination. The Bombay Chronicle described it as the story of “a young Indian who return,
to his native land after a long, absence and is so mightily impressed with his foreign training that, at his parental
home, he startled everybody with his quixotic notions of love and matrimony. A still of the picture showed Ganguly
dressed as the archetypal Englishman of that time: button downed shirt, tie, the eye glass fixed to a chain, which
dangled down his neck, and a pipe in his hand, looking startled as he reacted to some remark of his Indian relations.
The film shrewdly balanced its digs at those Indians who were too foreign for India, with those who could not abide
anything foreign. Ganguly, who played the leading role, showed such comic ability that he was instantly hailed as
the Indian Charlie Chaplin. It is still considered, I masterpiece of the Indian cinema and six years later, in 1927 when
Laharrie gave evidence to a Government inquiry, he described it as “one of the most successful ever shown in
Bengal”.

SOCIAL CHANGES THROUGH FILMS

SOCIAL CHANGE IN INDIA

Change is the basic nature of society and change is universal.

Social change occupies a dominant place in the consciousness of
humanity. Man and society have evolved through the times immemorial.
In this course, both men and their social institutions have undergone
changes that generate contradictory feelings of hope as well as anxiety.
Even a casual student of history must admit that social change occupies
an important place in the human chronicle. Whether this can be proved
or not in the case of extinct societies is a matter for anthropological
research, but what is evident to the current observer is the reality of
change in all living societies. The subject of social change in modern
India is vast and complex, and an understanding of it will require the
collaboration of a number of scholars in such diverse fields as
economics, history, law, politics, religion, demography and sociology. It
will have to take into account also of regional, linguistic and other
differences.

MEANING OF SOCIAL CHANGE

Social change may be defined as the process which is discernible

in the alteration of the structure and functioning of a particular social
system1. It is a term used to describe variation in, modifications of, any
aspect of social processes, social patterns, social interaction within a
social organisation. Social changes and variations from the accepted
modes of life, whether due to geographical conditions, in cultural
equipment, composition of the population or ideologies and whether
brought about by diffusions or inventions within the group. By social
change is meant only such alterations as occur in social organisations,
that is, structure and functions of society.
Usually social change refers to a significant change in social behaviour
or a change in social system rather than minor changes within a small
group.

Social change means such alterations as they occur in social

organisation that is the structure of society. Any such ordered
arrangement of social phenomena gives a structure to society. When
alterations take place in the form of relationships and the pattern of
social action within such structure, it is known as social change. The
nature and pace of social change are not uniform in each age or period in
the same society. There is no inherent law in social change according to
which it assumes definite forms. It is difficult to make any prediction
about the exact forms of social change.

TYPES OF CHANGES.

Human society too experience changes in different domains from

time to time. However, all types of changes are not covered by the term
of social change which has a definite meaning in sociology. Social
change refers to change in social structure. Thus change in per capita
income, if not accompanied by changes in social relationships, is not a
part of social change. Sociologists have developed several concepts to
study social change in India: development, modernization,
Westernization, universalization, social development, great and little
traditions are some of them. For a long time sociologists and
anthropologists in India used the concepts of parochialization and
universalization, and great and little tradtions which were developed by
McKim Marriot and Robert Redfield in studies of Indian and Mexican
villages. Among such concepts Sanskritization and Westernization hold
special significance.

Ironically, despite our profession of socialistic pattern of society,

our policies in social and economic fields have been most detrimental to
the prosperity of the weaker sections of society, such as the dalits, the
women, the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and the minorities. It is
reflected also in the failure of our education policy. The mass illiteracy
in the forty percent of the population still persists. It is higher still in the
case of women. There is a vicious circular relationship between poverty,
susceptibility to fall a victim to exploitation, proneness to health
morbidity, high fertility rate and illiteracy. Education is a single most
effective factor which breaks this process of vicious cumulative
causation. We find that wherever educational achievements, whether
within a region or a social group are higher, the indicators of economic
growth as also of the quality of life are higher. Our failure in the field of
removal of illiteracy, and universalization of education is indeed at the
root of the most facets of our “crisis of failures”.

TYPES OF SOCIAL CHANGE

Social changes are of various types and can be explained by

different terms such as process, evolution, growth, progress,
development, revolution etc. Process is a change that takes place
continuously in a definite manner. It consists of a series of alterations in
an object from one moment to another. When a sense of direction is
added to continuity the change is expressed in terms of evolution.

Evolution is a process of progressive differentiation of organic

forms, their genetic capabilities and emergence of more complex organic
endowments from similar ones.

Here the change is merely concerned with the biological

modifications and progress of the organism. But social evolution
encompasses the gradual development of social norms and technology
and helps us in understanding social change. It further discusses the
evolution of culture and material life through the Palaeolithic,
Mesolithic, Neolithic and industrial ages. It also concerns itself with the
emergence of class, caste, religion, and other socio cultural
developments in the society.

Progress is a movement towards an injective, thought to be

desirable and the general group, for the visible future. When we speak of
progress we imply not merely direction but direction towards some goal
or destination. Revolution means any large scale change in the
leadership of a society or some fundamental part of institution of
society, such as political and a successful restructuring of those aspects
of society in a way deemed in the interest of the new ruling class.
Generally revolution signifies a sudden and violent change of
Government or a political constitution of a country.
 It also refers to any change in society that brings about basic
changes, even if they occur over a long period of history for example,
the industrial, the commercial and agricultural revolution. Several terms
are used to describe modes of change in human society. But they fail to
comprehend adequately varieties of change taking place in different
societies. As a result, the concept of social change has been a topic of
discussion and generally adopted to refer to all the historical variation in
human society.

FACTORS OF SOCIAL CHANGE

All societies are characterised both by continuity and change.

Continuity is maintained by social controls particularly by social norms
and education which transmit the accumulated social heritage to the new
generations. Social change occurs in all societies and in all periods of
time. But the rate of social change differs from society to society and as
its nature and pace. Some of the main factors of social change are
demographic, technological, economic, cultural, planning and legislation
and above all education.

The role of education is vital for all round growth of political,

social, economic, and cultural aspects in a society. Education is
considered to be one of the real factors to take the society and all its
other aspects from one stage to another stage. The role of education,
particularly the English education popularised by British needs to be
assessed in the present light to have a greater understanding of its impact
on the society and the change it brought about in the whole system of
colonial India.

Colonialism is an important part of the heritage of most third world

countries and in many instances still continues to influence relations
between these countries and Western nations not only in the sphere of
economic but also the domain of culture. Once the dominant powers had
established their military supremacy, a new order, a civil society, had to
be created and coercion had to be replaced or supplemented by
persuasion. It was necessarily for the rulers to create a class of
collaborators between them and those whom they governed. Since there
was a cultural gap between the rulers and the ruled, it was difficult to do
so unless the two developed a common language of communication.
There had to be a homogeneous cultural space over which persuasion
and coercion could operate. In the establishment of this hegemonic
power, education played a crucial role. Education was supposed to
reinforce culturally what colonial policies aimed at achieving
economically and politically.

However, most of what has been written earlier on education and

colonialism is written by apologists of colonial rule. But in the last two
decades there has been a tendency to attack all forms of colonialism
especially its impact on education.
Colonial educational systems have been accused of being little
more than tools used by capitalists to exploit the underdeveloped world
and to keep it in subjugation. At one end of the spectrum education is
considered to be most important ideological state apparatus devised by
the ruling classes to ensure that society largely conforms to their ideas
and interests. Gramsci is even more specific when he says, intellectuals
(the upper sections) of the products of the education system are officers
of the ruling class for the exercise of subordinate functions of social
hegemony and political government.

The nineteenth century was a period of transition. India witnessed

changes in its social structure, brought about by the British
administration, its economic policies, educational system and
introduction of modern means of communication had a far reaching
effect on Indian society and economy. The commercial capitalism which
took shape at the time resulted in the creation of a market suitable for
investment of British capital and converted India into a classic colony
for their finished machine goods.
 The introduction and impact of western education and ideas
stimulated growth of awareness in the society. The Indian society
inclined towards a social change through these new ideas and education
and the subsequent rise of a new urban based middle class came into
being. Those new classes were the pioneers of spreading and
propagating western ideas and arousing social and political awakening.
So the various socio-religious reform movements which took place in
India during this period of British rule were the expression of the rising
national consciousness and spread of liberal ideas of the West among the
Indian people. The study of education and social change has always
been interesting to evaluate the complementary role of the two concepts.
The importance of the study of education and social change arises from
the fact that the process and pattern of society of the present period owes
its origin to a considerable extent from the developments taken before.

Among one of the factors of social change, education has been in

the lime light at present limes to ascertain the nature and degree of its
efficacy as a harbinger of change. As has been the case in most of the
third world countries, the process of social change through education has
created a class of intelligentsia who are the champions of the society.
This necessitates a historical approach of study to the process of
education and social change.

In studying the history of education and social change, the various

determinant factors for societal regeneration could be explored. For
history of education is no longer regarded as a matter of "Acts and facts"
as the concept of education has been broadened considerably in recent
years- education being no longer considered just a matter of formal
schooling, but of all the many influences which go to shape the character
of the society. The history of education, is therefore concerned, not
merely with institutions such as schools, colleges, universities but with
social forces which have affected the quality of life and with the ideas
which have been put forward by theorists and practitioners of education
in the past. Briefly, therefore, the study of the history of education is
best considered as a part of the wider study of the history of the society -
social history broadly interpreted through the polity, the economics, and
the religion of society concerned. The writing of history in India was
started by the British in the initial years of their rule. Being mostly
interested in political and administrative systems, they ignored the social
history. Development of education and social changes were conspicuous
in their absence in the writing of history. In addition, they suffered from
the imperialistic bias and neglected regional history and concentrated on
all India aspects only.

Socio-economic changes brought about by the sweep of

globalization in India, and by the rapid spread of consumerism are
changing the face of commercial cinema in India. In the 1970s, the
producers and the audiences could greatly affect cinematic tastes and
presentation, but now ‘market forces’ of financiers are becoming more
important. The tastes of the diasporic audiences, with their nostalgic
views of Indianness and the differences in tastes of the urban audiences
in metropolitan areas when compared to rural viewers are producing
new kinds of commercial films. It remains to be seen whether Indian
cinema is veering away from rural tastes and leaving the rural, poor, and
lower-middle income group viewers behind. Previously untouchable
themes have surfaced in Indian cinema and have even passed censorship
to be shown in India. Diasporic Indian directors like Deepa Mehta from
Canada have made films like

Fire (1996) to show female homosexuality in India. The two

women, Radha and Sita, after experiencing bad marriages are caught in
each other’s embrace in bed by one’s husband. The women lovers are
not killed by a fire as in most early Hollywood movies, but happily
reunited. One fascinating outcome of globalization is the rise of regional
cinema to address issues of immigration, success or failure in cross-
cultural adjustment, disenchantment with new trends in society. Films
like Des Hoya Pardes (2004) in Punjabi, Bong Connection (2006) or
Ballygunge Court (2007) in Bengali are great films to fathom how
people adapt to changing streams of cultural and social undercurrents.
Though they might not appeal to the masses, they interpret cultural
differences to people who may not have direct access to the ‘other’
culture.

DIRECTOR WHO BROUGHT SOCIAL CHANGE

Film directors shape a film and the future depends on them. From
the beginning, Indian cinema in its glorious history of more than 100
years has produced some of the finest, rarest and exceptionally talented
directors who have made path breaking films and bringing social
changes through films.

Bimal Roy: Roy made his directorial debut with Udayer

Pathey(1944), a sensational success about an author's fight against
exploitation. It proved a benchmark in social realism in Indian cinema.
When the film was released in Hindi as Hamrahi, Roy was ardently
wooed by Mumbai. Roy came to Mumbai, apparently at Ashok Kumar's
behest, to direct Bombay Talkies's Maa(1952).

Bimal Roy had aflair to blend art and cinema in a realistic way. He
was legendary and contributed to films in a way perhaps no other film
maker did in his time. He won awards nationally and internationally and
his highly acclaimed ‘Do Bigha Zamin’ won the prestigious
International Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. But Bimal Roy’s films
were not only about bagging the big awards. They had strong content
that was backed by very good music and powerful actors. What
distinguished him from the others was his pure passion for cinema and
the capacity too woo audiences, even without the mirch masala seen in
films today. He was truly sui generis.

Do Bigha Zameen did not rely purely on dialogue, it also had a

rich cinematic vocabulary. Its richly textured black-and-white imagery is
justifiably famous, especially the last shot where the peasant family
return only to wretchedly gape at a factory standing on their Do Bigha
Zameen.

In Roy's Devdas (1955) too, with the aid of cinematographer

Kamal Bose, Roy achieved fascinating mood lighting which enhanced
its tight-lipped protagonist's (Dilip Kumar's) tormented emotional
oscillations. Devdas's last journey in a rattling cart, Paro's midnight offer
of elopement and the top shot of Chandramukhi swirling in a dance are
sequences which Roy pulled off with finesse.

One of the most awarded Indian directors, Roy was awarded the
first three Filmfare Awards for Best Director over three consecutive
years for Do Bigha Zameen, Parineeta and Biraj Bahu.

Roy's collaboration with Nutan resulted in two dramatic

classics. Sujata (1959), the first, charmingly and convincingly argued for
a more humanistic society where caste differences did not determine a
person's destiny.

Bandini (1963), arguably Nutan's most famous performance ever

and Roy's best realised work. Roy carefully chose his story from a work
of literature. Bandini was based on a novel by Jarasandha. Roy and
Nutan brought to startling life a remarkable woman whose binding love
for a revolutionary brings about her ruination as well as deliverance.
 Bimal Roy's Landmark Films
Year Film Cast
Do Bigha
1953 Balraj Sahni, Nirupa Roy
Zameen
1953 Parineeta Ashok Kumar, Meena Kumari
Kamini Kaushal, Abhi
1954 Biraj Bahu
Bhattacharya
Dilip Kumar,
1955 Devdas
Vyjayanthimala, Suchitra Sen

1958 Yahudi Dilip Kumar, Meena Kumari

1958 Madhumati Dilip Kumar, Vyjayanthimala

1959 Sujata Nutan, Sunil Dutt
1960 Parakh Motilal, Sadhana
 Kabuliwala
1961 [only Balraj Sahni
produced]
Ashok Kumar, Nutan,
1963 Bandini
Dharmendra

Hrishikesh Mukherjee: Hrishikesh Mukherjee's cinema could

make you cry. You sniffle when Sharmila Tagore's emotionally
withdrawn father surmounts his long-festering resentment towards his
daughter and comes to the railway station to secretly rejoice in her
eloping with her lover in Anupama or when Ashok Kumar opens his
heart, overcomes his distaste and makes his daughter-in-law's son, the
product of rape, light his son's pyre in Satyakam.

Mukherjee's movies could make you laugh. You chuckle in the

Wodehousian comedy of inconsequentialities, Chupke Chupke when
Amitabh, posing as a professor of botany, grapples with the word
'corolla' or in Golmaal when a truant moustache leads to many merry
muddles.

Hrishikesh Mukherjee (fondly called Hrishi-da) continues to

inspire film makers even today. Director David Dhawan openly
confesses to being inspired by his style of direction. And who wouldn’t
be? Films like Satyakam, Chupke Chupke, Anupama, Anand,
Abhimaan, Guddi, Gol Maal, Aashirwad, Bawarchi, and Namak Haraam
enthralled masses while solidly establishing the stars.

Sometimes, his films could make you laugh even while you were
blinking hard to part the film of tears covering your eyes. Like
in Anand, where Rajesh Khanna greets even death with a well-
turned bon mot. Anand's dying male protagonist was transformed into a
female cancer patient in Mili. Rekha's exuberant Khoobsurat persona
found a faint echo in Jhoothi.

His films were shorn of affectation so were his heroines.

Mukherjee established the girl-next-door look with Jaya in Guddi but his
heroines were archetypal even when he worked with glamour icons like
Sadhana (sari-wrapped and beguiling in Asli Naqli), and Sharmila
Tagore (no outlandish eyeliner in her Mukherjee films). Jaya continued
her look in subsequent Mukherjee films likeAbhimaan (1973), an astute
observation of the attendant ego hassles which rise when a married
couple is in the same profession.

Mukherjee's fame as a director loved by actors was confirmed with two

biographical classics in the early 1970s -- Anand andGuddi -- films
which boosted Rajesh Khanna and Jaya Bhaduri's careers tremendously.

His films were shorn of affectation so were his heroines. Mukherjee

established the girl-next-door look with Jaya in Guddi but his heroines
were archetypal even when he worked with glamour icons like Sadhana
(sari-wrapped and beguiling in Asli Naqli), and Sharmila Tagore (no
outlandish eyeliner in her Mukherjee films). Jaya continued her look in
subsequent Mukherjee films likeAbhimaan (1973), an astute observation
of the attendant ego hassles which rise when a married couple is in the
same profession.
Namak Haram, released in the same year, boasted of an explosive
performance from Amitabh as a man torn between his friendship with
blue-collared worker Rajesh Khanna and his capitalistic ideology.
Amitabh continued to work with Mukherjee over the next decade doing
seven films in all.
Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Landmark Films
Year Film Cast
1959 Anari Raj Kapoor, Nutan
1960 Anuradha Balraj Sahni, Leela Naidu
Dharmendra, Sharmila
1966 Anupama
Tagore
1968 Aashirwad Ashok Kumar
Dharmendra, Sharmila
1969 Satyakam
Tagore
Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh
1970 Anand
Bachchan
Jaya Bhaduri, Samit
1971 Guddi
Bhanja
Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya
1973 Abhimaan
Bhaduri
Namak Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh
1973
Haram Bachchan
Dharmendra, Sharmila
Chupke
1975 Tagore, Amitabh
Chupke
Bachchan, Jaya Bhaduri
Amol Palekar, Utpal Dutt,
1979 Golmaal
Bindiya Goswami
1980 Khubsoorat Rekha, Rakesh Roshan
Raj Kapoor: Raj Kapoor belonged to the first family of Hindi
cinema and was fondly nicknamed as the Showman of Bollywood. He
was multi talented and was known for his acting and direction. He was
also a producer. But Raj Kapoor outdid himself in every film and his
body of work became so exemplary that people continue to get inspired
by him. Raj Kapoor’s popularity went beyond India and he became a
huge success in Europe. Till today, in countries like Turkey and Russia,
people know him by his songs. He was truly a legendary performer and
showman.

This boy wonder started multi-tasking from the age of 24 when he

produced, directed and acted in Aag (1948).

He had the unique ability to marshal talents like writer K A Abbas,

lyricists Shailendra and Hasrat Jaipuri, music maestros Shanker-
Jaikishan, singer Mukesh and numerous actors and make them work at
their optimum.

Kapoor was only 25 when his directorial venture Barsaat won him
recognition as one who enjoyed a direct connection with the masses.
Moreover, the self-obsessive pain of Aag paved the way for a more
universal empathy evidenced in the way he captured mountain maid
Nimmi's anguish in Barsaat.

Kapoor's RK banner flew high with Shri 420 (1955), the story of a hobo
(Kapoor) caught between material aspirations (as represented by the
sharp Nadira) and the higher self (as represented by schoolteacher
Nargis). The tramp of Shri 420, who doffed his battered bowler hat to
Chaplin, touched a universal nerve.

The popularity of this tramp with a golden heart grew to gargantuan

dimensions after Kapoor portrayed almost saintly extensions
in Anadi (1959) and Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai (1960); and, later,
in Deewana (1967),Sapnon Ka Saudagar (1968) and Mera Naam
Joker(1970).

In the ambitious Mera Naam Joker, Kapoor seemed undecided about the
film's scope -- should the tale about a clown's tragic love story strive for
intimacy or restrict itself to spectacle or, maybe, strive for a bit of
both? The film failed to live up to the high expectations of the audience.

Even if one is not predisposed towards young love stories, one

enjoys Bobby for the sheer beauty of its visuals, the exuberance of youth
and Kapoor's ability to transcend the generation gap when
communicating to his audience.

Raj Kapoor's sensitivity towards his female protagonists found more

favour in Prem Rog (1982), a film about widow remarriage, and Ram
Teri Ganga Maili (1985), where he employed a woman as a metaphor
for a once pure, but now defiled, country.

Raj Kapoor's landmark films as director

Year Film Costars
1949 Barsaat Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Nimmi
1951 Awaara Raj Kapoor, Nargis
1955 Shri 420 Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Nadira
Raj Kapoor,
1964 Sangam Vyjayanthimala, Rajendra
Kumar
Rishi Kapoor, Dimple
1973 Bobby
Kapadia
Rishi Kapoor, Shammi
1982 Prem Rog Kapoor, Padmini Kolhapure,
Pran, Nanda
Ram Teri
1985 Rajiv Kapoor, Mandakini
Ganga Maili
Shyam Bengal: Shyam Benegal (born 14 December 1934) is an Indian
director and screenwriter. With his first four feature
films Ankur (1973), Nishant (1975), Manthan (1976)
and Bhumika (1977) he created a new genre, which has now come to be
called the "middle cinema" in India. He has expressed dislike of the
term, preferring his work to be called New or Alternate cinema.

Shyam Bengal is one of the rarest of rare directors. His films are topical,
hard hitting and he has the flair to bring out the best in his actors.
Benegal has been intrepid, daring to fiddle with themes that flouted
conventional forms of thinking. He’s also responsible for blurring the
line between commercial and parallel cinema. He is certainly one of the
finest film makers of the century.

The insurgency that began in Ankur comes full circle in Benegal's next,
the quietly powerful, Nishant (Night's End, 1975), in which the
subjugated revolt against zamindari (the feudal system) with the help of
a schoolteacher and a priest (symbols for education and free-thinking
religion), two middle-class members of the oppressed society. Social
change is again dealt with in Manthan (The Churning, 1976), which was
remarkably funded by 2 rupee contributions from each of the 500,000
members of the milk co-operatives of Gujarat. Here Benegal introduces
change in a rural society brought about through the campaigns of
educated strangers. Both Nishant andManthan end with the uprising
change being overpowered, mostly to do with the fear and uncertainty
among the oppressed themselves, but a revolution has nonetheless been
set in motion that they themselves will one day complete.

Benegal's early epic films are also stirring in different ways, and deal
with themes other than feudal oppression and the role of women in
Indian society. Junoon (The Obsession, 1978) is set during the chaotic
times when Indian freedom fighters fought against British invaders in
1857, but Benegal reduces these "important" events to the background
and explores the relationship between a cowardly Pathan noble and an
English girl and the film is subtly erotic, meticulously detailed and
without any trace of melodrama. Similarly, Kalyug (The Machine Age,
1980) is another that is successfully given the sensitive Benegal
treatment in its retelling of the Indian legend of the Mahabharatha to a
modern setting. While the Mahabharatha told the epic story of two
families fighting for the throne of the city Hastinapur, the film modifies
the struggle as one between two rival business families, while
maintaining its source's delineation of the shocking extent to which
people sink to in their pursuit of power. This is a brilliantly realised film
– cleverly written, unhurried in pace, and its spare but effective use of
classical Indian music (composed by Benegal's regular composer,
Vanraj Bhatia) making it a truly cultural experience. Kalyug also
confirmed that Benegal could work as well with an ensemble cast on an
epic scale as he could work with a smaller cast on a more intimate level.
A large portion of Benegal's filmography is taken by his feminist films,
and his earliest such film, Bhumika (The Role, 1977), remains among
his most complex and complete works. Bhumika assays so many
elements of the human condition that the total effect is dizzying and
quite unforgettable. Inspired by the memoirs of Marathi actress Hansa
Wadkar, the film is almost entirely plotless and is basically a collection
of flashbacks that establish the loneliness and depression of Usha, a
magnificently evocative performance by Smita Patil. Patil plays the
actress who has gained success at the cost of losing her "chastity" (in the
context of the traditional Indian woman, this refers to her sexual fidelity
to a single man) and thus, the respect among the women of her society
(embodied by her mother). This film is then a portrait of the internal
struggle within Usha to not yield to these overpowering external forces,
be it the male desire to possess her or the expectations of an entire
culture, and her consequent downward spiral into isolation. Govind
Nihalani's haunting cinematography (sepia-toned and black-and-white
for the flashbacks) creates a fluid, crackingly breathing yet morbid
atmosphere, thick with regret and loss and suppressed emotions. The
film is also interesting in its immaculate recreation of the popular Indian
cinema ambience of the 50s.
Benegal remains one of the most important filmmakers in modern Indian
cinema, not only for having pioneered the New Indian Cinema, a
movement which is still active mostly in other regional Indian languages
today, but also for having made films for three decades which are based
on recognisably Indian situations, yet dealing in the universal themes of
change and individual empowerment that anyone can relate to.
Distanced from all the razzle-dazzle of melodramatic Bollywood
musicals, the quiet moments of reflection offered by his films are among
the best that Indian cinema has to offer.

After 2000 another raju................................

social councious through Raju Hirani cinema

Raj Kumar Hirani three films Munna Bhai MBBS, Lage Raho Munna Bhai and Three
Idiots has defined the humans true and softer feeling of the heart. Through this three
charaters the director has explored a simple and affectionate way to attain the objective
against the harder principles which seldom gets the objective the way they are sought As
has been depicted by fist charater Munna Bhai who through was rouge and con but who
won every one’s heart through his affectionate and lovaible nature.

To full fill his fathers dream of him becoming a doctor resoted to foul means by getting
admission to a renowned medical college and here starts the amusing part of the story on
one hand even after being a medical students he remain aloof to all sorts of clinical
practices but due to his clean heart and humane nature he keep experiencing the patients
with unexplored enjoyments of life. He was able to establish the fact the patient require
human attachment rather than medication.

In the II part of the film Munnabhai he goes on to redefine the Ethos of Gandhi in a
modern way, here as well the same Munna who used to make people do his work by
intimidating them, some day come across the spirit of Gandhi he started to believe he is
being taught the morals and principles and eventually ends up having established the
same in him.

This way Munna again try to firm the principle of Gandhi at the grass root level of
society. Hirani’s 3rd films 3 Idiots again had a charter Rancho who try to get his friends to
right way who have gone astray. 3 Idiots was based on the Novel of Chetan Bhagat five
points some one. This film has totally change the scenario for the astrayed youth for them
to tread on a right path that suits terms now this film has touched on for a change in
education, employment and discipline to be chosen as per one’s choice has all been talk
about in serious but amusing way. Three friend’s who makes an entry in the same college
even after having varied interest of their they could not perform well in their academics
which eventually dawned on them that the decision was taken out of force rather than out
of their choice.

In this film Rancho was a charater of a sort who takes his studies in serious but enjoyfull
way as he belive in his overall development than to get a job while his friends got instant
jobs in companies Rancho become a scientist he gave the message that instead of getting
into hard principle and mental pressure one can gain one’s goal through simple an exiting
manner.

Hirani Munnabhai garner positive response from the viewer in the film has got a different
edge. He has successfully communicated a message in humorous way with a dash of
seriousness in it.

The viewers got used to catch words like “Jadu Ki Jhappi (Warm Hug)” become very
popular the same way 3 idiots “All is well” was aimed at speeding an optimistic among
the youths.

Gandhi giri has become a trend or a resort to get one’s work done in peaceful way as
cities like Bhopal, Jaipur and Indore resorted to Gandhi giri by offering roses to people
involved in dishonored means to make them fill samefull their foul deeds. The message
that was meant to spread that every thing can’t the answered “eye for an eye” rather in
peaceful way so the message of Gandhi that were being despised at have started to find a
prominence.

Hirani’s first film Munna Bhai MBBS contains entertainment besides emotion and was
with a message same way the other two has also some motivational message to be sprit to
society. Lage Raho Munna Bhai was not only praised by the opponots but was put in
practice by some groups. Hirani’s message conveying film have found a ground in those
times when the comedy film of Govinda, action of Akshay and the romonatic of the three
Khan’s were a rage. This films were not only able to retain its stand but also facilitated a
social message to the society.

Hirani’s films for sure were not popcoon film with a fleeting memory but that which get
etched on our mind for a prolong period. It tells that for a doctor a patient is not merely a
patient the same way a doctor is not only a doctor for patient but he likens him to god.
Vices cant be answered by vices rather than they can be win over by virtues. Same way
we don’t need to stereotyped to do what other are doing we can attain excellence in the
area of our interest and go high.

Jadu ki Jhappi

“Jadu Ki Jhappi” Munna Bhai MBBS has presented many question of medical services
doctors and patient in an integrated way. Making Munna’s character as a bridge Hirani
has presented an unheard and untalked relationship. This sort of relationship between a
doctor and patient has for sure not been discussed before. It was an expression which for
long time was unheard and not discussed, nobody was so vocal about it. It has wide
acclamation with mix of bouquets and brickbats.

Doctor Asthana was not only a doctor but also the dean of the college. He was as per his
profession and was stick more to his principles then emotional appeal. He keeps
appealing his students not to get swayed with emotion while tackling their patients but to
take them as patients only. It was than that Munna raises the questions whether to leave a
critical ill patients to fill the form or attain him immediately out of human cause.

The film is set against the backdrop of seen when a rich man was being chased by a Goon
was fired at the man was intercepted by Munna in between and was taken by car to his
house, there that men met with a third person who demanded money from the first one
who was being chased but he explained his part of this story of already paying his dues
before than Munna allow the first one to go and asked the other one to arrange one lakh
Rupees from his family to set him free for duping him deliberately this goes on to explain
us that even after being a goon he has a clean hart and also he can’t tolerate in justice. He
don’t want to harm any one rather one two help financial to those a need. Munna has
since long been into this profession of extortion but the problem arose when his father
informed him of his visit that led him to sat a first background of him as a doctor. The
very movement of him knowing about this father’s visit change his goom place into a
charitable hospital. The others around him assist him in his lie and they affect themselves
as patient. Munnas father’s became a elated knowing about him and he coincidently met
an old friend of his village Dr. Asthana whose daughter was also a doctor and was
unmarried and they both agreed to their children’s marriage and Munna has to reluctantly
agreed to his father wish but doctor Asthana any how came to know of Munnas trick and
he cornered Munna by asking him what a doctor is ? and what’s his status is ? and he
demean his father as well Munnas father could not bear all these and thought of getting
back to his village out of anger. It was then that Munnas resolved to become a doctor by
hook or by crook, his bosom friend Circuit assist him in getting forged degrees and
managed to get a doctor to sit in Munnas palace for PMT exam by threatening him. The
doctor sit in his place to talk the test and Munna was seen seating with his father just to
make doctor feel apprehensive though Munna has no intension to harm him that goes
against his profession of a rogue. Morality is what has been passed on two him by his
parent’s. Munna managed to score the highest marks and get admission to one of the top
college their on the very first day him made a boy lying on a stretcher while his mother is
busy filling the form, the boy not being attained for the want of form enraged Munna and
he get beside him. With day’s to come he keep on experiencing some bitter incident,
which he try to sort out with his tender heart. He also challenge the Dr. Asthana to get his
degree done and also to marriage daughter while Asthana try every possible way to get
him out. One day his daughter met Munna and was moved by emotion. In between
Munna try to infuse will in Zahir who was on his last stage of cancer even after getting a
slap from him but Munna Hug him cordially and made him live his life fearlessly. Zahir
regrets for having afflicted by cancer even after having a restrain on liquor, Tobacco and
sex all through his life.

Munna also embrace a sweeper and thank him for keeping the premises clean then
Munna met one patient who was in a comatose state since past 15 years who was
addressed as a “subject” that annoyed Munna and he resolved to get him back to his
former state he than started to look after him on his own and there after he started to show
improvement. Munna also saw Dr. Rustams father as critically ill that get him too
anxious than Munna asked him to be patient as he knew what can cure his father and he
arrange caram game to motivate him to have his vitality back. All the above incidents
make people to liken him to god who can cure anything like a panacea eventually when
the story gets closer to a sordid note than Munna agreed of him resorting to foul means
this way Munna turns out to be a winner even after being a looser. This prove that
attention and love requires more than medicine. The basic idea around which the whole
story revolve is in love and care. Love of one person to the other is a sign of progress in a
society that is what is being shown in different Munna though not being a doctor can cure
some incurable diseases with his medicine of love and care besides this there are other
instances that goes on to strengthen this logical quite strongly.

Main gunda nahi social worker hu- Munna Bhai

Munna though is a goon by profession but he took over the same to fulfill the wants of
the needy and his not into any sort of vices associated with his profession, he can not see
any one in trouble and is always on his toes to lend a helping hand in what ever way
possible. It is only his dialect and attire that presents his figure as a rogue and not his acts
he respects his parents and is moved by the pain of others and try to soften their agony
and pen. Anand who was the subject when regained his senses gave Munna immense
pleasure. So, his character surely has some out of the box suggestion that does have a
prolong effect to change society as whole.

Doctor ka satuts kya hota hai aur uski izzat kya hoti hai?- Dr. Ashthana

Every profession has a special role in the society but doctors profession has been given
an edge above others so some takes this role as a genuine respect while other mistaken it
as something to take pride in and the same happen with doctor Asthana who looked down
upon any one who is not a doctor. The doctors respect is because of his skilled in saving
some one life, but even that can’t be above any ones self respects. As has been shown by
Munna when he was disrespected at for not being a doctor and that got him to take to
some foul means as a revenge.

sirf doctor ki izzat hoti hai apun ki koi izzat nahi hai-Munna Bhai

Munna work for the uplifment of society even after being a goon that does fill him with
pride and that does make him stand out among those who hardly give a damn to social
cause. It was only after being looked down upon for not being a doctor that spurred him
to become a doctor as he has to show others that respect is not of doctor only but also for
having felling. He rue the fact that social cause associated with a doctor profession is
waning and is being over powered by money and rank that is actually diminishing its true
position. So, parents should first emphasis on moral education than aspiring of them to
become doctors.

Kisi patient ka dard mehsoos nahi kia, sirf uska ilaj kia : - Dr. Asthana

Dr. Asthana while addressing the first year students asked one of them as to why she
wants to become a Dr. ? To which she replied as I can feel the pain and wants to cure it.
Asthana retorted by saying that has the only job to cure and to feel the pain. As pain
somewhere weakens a Doctor. But the truth is that the one who can feel the pain can cure
it well. Though Munna hasn’t gone through the practices seriously but as he can feel the
pain his own who make it feel has rather than unnecessarily extenuate it as has been
practiced by many doctors to state a cuuable disease as incurable an extort money.

Uo har bar koi causalty mei raha to har baar farm bharna Zaruri Hai Kya : -
Munna Bhai

Even today when a person gets injured on attempting a suicide the hospital admin first
ask him to fulfill documents when sourings someone’s life should be the priority. Munna
was also taken a back by this strange practice, and ask to clearify the same for which he
was shown the door by Asthana. So this film does raise this critical issue as to what
should be the priority and how long can we just go on to practice this archaic practice
blindly and leave the patients to die at the altar of following this trivial things.

6 mahine ke pyar ke lie marne chala tha saala, teri maa ko tere ko bachpan se pyar
karti hai uske lie jee nahi sakta :– Munna Bhai

This film gives an important message to the youth who at the spur of the moment things
to end their life when their love ends on a bad note. Some incident occurred in the film as
well to which Munna replied that the mother who has raised you form the child hood and
who looked after y ou becomes strange just at the turning of a bad event in year life,
which Munna explains with his own love story that has gone sour and ended sordid note
but he remained resilient.

Carem Ram vanu, juice pevanu ….. majjani life. Rustam’s father was an ace in carem
game and some where out of in attention and indifference of his son is what has led him
to have more of an interest in carem and some where carem and particularly winning the
queen becomes the sole motive of his life out of loneliness and some thing that enthuse
him with motivation into some or other acts like eating so directory wants to appeal far
not leaving the elderly people alone and be with their company as possible. Even after
being equipped with the state of the art technology in hospitals every ailment has primary
medication in the form of human attachment and love.

Life me jab time kam rehta hai naa … double jeena ka … double :– Circuit

This line stresses on Zahir who is afflicted with cancer and is on his death bed and he rue
that his temperance has availed to nothing but to a deathly disease to which circuit replied
him far living a fearless life ad enjoy it to the fullest extent passible. His message points
that we busy ourselves in fulfilling our present and future responsibilities and burden it so
much that we hardly finds any time sharing some good moments. So his message goes on
to explain that live your life as it is and not to dull it with the anxieties of what future will
have I store for us. And in the process we embraces death before it actually occur to us so
throw your anxieties and apprehensions to the wind when Zahir shares his desire to meet
his mother, Munna finds himself quite helpless at doing so out of his incapability as time
was running out and that really moved everyone to the core.

Agar do logon me connection ho na, feelings ho na to dil ki owaz dil se sun sakte
hain :– Munna Bhai

The character Anand who was addressed only as a subject, who was left to live a life of
solitude out of his unconscious state has some where find prominence in Munna’s eye
out of his feeling and emotions and has some where been able to do his job with
dexterity. And he was firm in reinstating Anand to his former life. He shares everything
with Anand and also make him do so. Even though they don’t talk share common
feelings. When you shares each others feelings you can talk to each other quietly and
Munna’s pursuant eventually turned out positive when Anand started to wink as a sign of
his communication. So he has done something which from the very beginning sounds
impossible and ridiculous.

Munna’s gesture of extending embrace to anyone he come across turned magical when he
did the some to seeper in the hospital who keeps complaining about people walking over
the places being mopped. Munna having understood his sentiments gave him a warm hug
and extending his thanks for cleaning the rubbish which though is mean job but goes on
to make the hospital clean and Munna’s realization of the some broke him down that very
moment and from then his warm hug has got propagated among every one. So over all
the film has facilitated not only on the importance of life but also the important aspects
which are necessary to lead a good life. As we go on progressing in life we are losing out
on a proper way to lead over life as over priorities have changed. This film over all has
touched on varied aspects of life. Be it about living a stressed free life, about leading
one’s life for the cause of others, about living as much as possible in a short span of time.
Everyone must have self respect and none must be made to lose his respect without any
reason. Hirani’s film does has an optimism associated besides entertainment to take his
message din a positive way and that has proved the film as a big success and also goes on
to make its sequel rather a more big hit.

Lage Raho Munna Bhai ..........................

Lage Raho Munna Bhai

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lage Raho Munna Bhai

Theatrical release poster

Directed by Rajkumar Hirani

Produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra

Screenplay by Rajkumar Hirani

Abhijat Joshi

Story by Rajkumar Hirani

 Vidhu Vinod Chopra

Starring Sanjay Dutt

Arshad Warsi
Vidya Balan
Boman Irani
Dilip Prabhavalkar
Dia Mirza
Jimmy Shergill
Kulbhushan Kharbanda
Saurabh Shukla

Music by Shantanu Moitra

Cinematography C. K. Muraleedharan

Editing by Rajkumar Hirani

Distributed by Vinod Chopra Productions

1 September 2006
Release dates
[1]

Running time 144 minutes

Country India

Language Hindi

Budget 120 million(US$2.0 million)[2]

Box office 1.19 billion(US$20 million)[3]

Lage Raho Munna Bhai is a sequal to Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. and is a step ahead in
spreading social message compared to the first part. “Majbori ka naam Mahatma Gandhi”
– by saying this we have weakened oversleves and has taken Gandhian teachings as
something forced on us. On the contrary Hirani has proved that Gandhi’s teachings
doesn’t weaken us but his principles of truth and non-violence has rather strengthened
our will against existing vices. After watching the more audience will definitely say
‘Bande me tha dum .. Vande Matram …’

It’s a challenge for a director that after many years of independence where Gandhi’s
teachings are merely books and impractical things to people especially for youth; he has
presented the subject with such an ease and simplicity that people accept his lesson and
practically apply it.

Hirani has accepted the challenge and undoubtedly he has given best to this difficult
subject, where Gandhiji’s teaching, lessons and reviles are so easily conveyed to mass.

Central thought of the film can be seen as if a notorious goon of Mumbai city who’s
every by work is to break bones and hurt people can change bones and hurt people can
change himself so drastically after following Mahatma’s path so we common man can
easily inculcate good values in overselves and can spread love, truth and nonviolence in
society. Munna bhai who can easily takes some one’s has changed to such an extent that
he has ready to turn the person who at the spar of the moment take resort to arms can
send followers as a good gesture. So why can we use this gestures of love and affection.
Talking about social message through films Lage Raho Munna Bhai in no doubt a step
ahead to M.B. M.B.B.S. and 3 idiots. This film has message to almost all vides of life,
children, youth, old age people all gets good message through the scenes dialogues good
books and literature is available on M.K. Gandhi but comparatively readers are very few
and also remainder as readers only.

They dint apply their teachings films has shown that many professors are their to delivery
lecture on Gandhiad but first time profession has been seen who did and spread Gandhi
giri in true aspect. Also we can say that the true and actual principles of Gandhi has first
time projected and presented through big screen. So for and presented through big screen.
So far it was can fined to universities and libraries only.
This film has established that how so ever big the problem may be sorted out by resorting
the way of truth and non-violence. A change of heart can be brought about even of the
most hardest criminal. The impact fields of society boils as the women of many societies
were seen offering roses to the contractor of liquor as a protest and to invoke guilt in
them besides a reply against corruption and non-violence was also conveyed through this.

The film starts with circuit abducting one person and taking him forcefully to lucky who
is a real estate agent and wants to build a multy storey building by buying the land of the
man who was kidnapped ,the man brought there was an intermediary who use to help
lucky in buying new property .in the film munna fancy a RJ jhanvy and his wish to meet
her comes out true when she arranges one quiz on Gandhi on the occasion of Gandhi
jayanti ,munna as usual resorted to foul means to win the quiz and roped in some experts
to answer the question as instantly as possible as he don’t want to let go off the
opportunity to meet her now having won the competition as he sets on to meet her he
realized his lack of knowledge of Gandhi which so far was seen only on the notes and
statues .so he thought of delving deeper into it and gets into a library it was there that he
gets so much engrossed in his studies that he start to believe meeting him in person and
talking to him even after being oblivious to his principles munna start to like him for his
strange ways of protest which was in a total contrast to what he used to do now having
brushed up his knowledge he went to jhanvis II inning house which was an abode of
elders left alone by their children to deliver a speech on Gandhi ,having passed on
himself as a professor does cost him dearly as reading his books is no mean job and
definitely not his cup of tea but his determination gets to him to such an extent that he
start to feel himself talking to Gandhi and convince him to be with him but only he will
do what he ask him to do.

at jhanvis house one of them asked that a boy once tried to disfigure his statue so how
should he be taught to which Munna replied that all his statues be brought down, take his
name off all the roads if you does want give him a place in your heart .munna who so far
was trying to passed on himself as a good fellow has finally to face its brunt when he was
about to propose jhanvi a call to her stunned Munna as it was about there house being
vacated by the very goons of Munna only having realized his mistake he requested lucky
not to go on with it and take anything else in return to which he dint budge and instead
threaten to call his bluff to jhanvi, now
Gandhi ji advised him to follow the path of truth and also assured him of his win in doing
so. Her starts it with asking him to first apologize to circuit by stating that forgiveness is
the job of the fearless and strong person while to punish is that of a coward. He ask him
to take recourse to ‘satyagrah’ by arranging a sit in around Lucky’s house to which lucky
ask police to get them away and put them behind the bar but Jhanvi set him free. Then
they both took to radio to propogate Bapu’s message among the masses by starting to
answer people’s problem through Gandhi’s way. They request everone to offer roses as a
welcome gesture but that could hardly bring any change in his atitutde. An intresting turn
comes when marriage of Lucky’s daughter was arranged but soon get spoiled there only
when it was disclosed that the girl is manglik that is ill fated.

To which lucky tricked by changing her date of birth his lie any how covered the facts. In
between Gandhi asked Munna to be fearless and admit his fault to have told a lie and not
led anyone else to get it disclosed as that will warsen the situation more. Munna than try
to convince her by writing a letter while Jhanvi went on a ‘Satyagrah’ Lucky than try to
discourage Munna’s belief of having talked Gandhi and arranged a press conference and
professed everyone that Munna can see Gandhi in person. A psychologist asked him 10
questions about Gandhi to which Munna could answer the first two while the rest
remained unanswered to which he answered that Munna can answer only those questions
that facts of which are known to him while he was oblivious to rest. All this than
shattered him. He than thought of getting back to the village after paying a last visit to
Jhanvi. There he receives Dsuza call who was thinking about attempting sucide and also
Simran’s call of having ditched by her father to which Munna replied that whatever her
father has done its for her sake only so she should not take such extreme step of forsaking
her father. So Simran gets back to her in-laws and confesses of having told lie about her
date of birth that enraged her in-laws who want to part with her. But Munna convinced
them that they should not let superstition come in the way of trust and faith that there
daughter in-law has exhibited. So in the end Hirani conveyed his message with quite and
ease and perfection.
Shehar Ki daud me daud kar karna kya hai … agar yahi jeena hai to marna kya hai
…. Jhanvi

In the present time people have no time to live as all are busy running after money so this
greed of money has taken away their art of living so here Jhanvi who is a radio jockey, a
girl of free thought who dosen’t espouse the idea of running after money but living a
stress free life without any inhibitions and opprehensions.

Vinamr ke saath Baput ne bade-bade kaam kiye hain – Circuit

Circuit mistook politeness as Gandhi’s companion like him of Munna who carry out his
job. He hardly know that it’s a quality of getting things done peacefully. Presently we
hardly see people being kind to anyone and there bad attitude begets the same and this
lead to estrangement and hated. So he propagates for being soft and kind to get one’s
work done and this should only be confined to books but to put in practice.

Gyan baatna chahiye, tu kya apne pas rakh ke sada rela hai – Circuit

The society has got divided in parts like rich-poor, small-big, religion etc. and this
devision has only devided us. Like this, there’s a devision of knowledge as well – literate
and illiterate. Those who have knowledge wants to restrict it to themselves and don’t
went to spread it so circuit wants professor to spread his knowledge among all and to ruin
it. Though he many have sounded funny, actually the backward class needs to be brought
in forward with the assistance so this gulf of ignorance can be bridged only through the
imparting of knowledge by the learned.

Chanta marna aasan hai … mafi mangne ke lie himmat chahiye hoti hai – Gandhi

‘To practice is better than a precept’ Munna out of his agents slap circuit but felt bad
about the later but being goon he couldn’t muster courage to apologize but agreed to do
the same, when Gandhi tell him and later he also makes Circuit to apologize when he
gave a blow to the watchman as to step is the job of a coward but forgiveness needs
courage and is not an act of cowardice. Violence and stooping to blows are not answer to
any problem. They rather aggravate it then to smoothen them out.

Tera baap tera liye ritne B’day banaya hoga … aadhe ghante ke lie aaja … Happy
B’day bol ke nikal ja :- Munna

Hari who have come to drop his father to second inning house is a business man and is
reluctant to keep his father with him. To which his father rue the fact even after having
raised his children he don’t have a single house where he can stay with them. He wish to
celebrate his B’day with his son but his couldn’t find some moments to spend with him.
So Munna having understand everything first tried to convince him politely. But his
repeated dinials made him to threaten Hari. The changing life style has demean our
values for the elder people as we are not left with any concern ad love and just want to
leave them alone considering them as burden Institutions like old age home have sprung
out of our epathy and in difference for the elderly.

Tere ko khad ke bhavishya ka …..

Sunny’s father Khurana has strong belief in Astrology so he added one more K to
Khurana. According to Astrologer Simran will die with in a year of her marriage as she is
manglik. Here its important to know that Hirani tried to show all ill practices and
superstions present in society. Astro gets annoyed when Munna ask him to predict what’s
gain to happen in next two mints. Sunny’s father walk away but Sunny’s father walks
away but Sunny marry Simran and they two happily even after. Many ill practices and
superstations prevail in society which indirectly give rise to murder, rapes and such ricks.
Film teaches to avoid all such practices and carry on with gour pursuant.

Dushman tumko gali de to usko smile dene ka … isse uske dil me apke liye nafrat
kam hogi our izzat badhegi – Gandhi Ji

“An eye far an eye will make the whole world blind” It’s an old adage that hatred can be
won over by love but we took to eye for an eye as a trend. As it is considered to be easy
to reply back but the eventual consequences of which are never furit full. As imprudence
does in walk guilt and repentance among those who make mistakes.

Aadmi ko parakhna ho to yeh dekho ki apne se neeche ke logon se vah kaisa bartav
karta hai – Gandhi ji

Usually its difficult to judge strangers. We can’t count on their qualities just by their
outer looks or appearance. In todays materialistic world people carry dual personality and
they are black sheep, so how to judge a person ? This question is asked by a girl to
Munna whom a boy was to come to see her, to which Munna answered that a person can
be judged by as to how he behaves with the people of the lwer rank. As his disrespect
towards them goes an to explain that he will stoop to the some behavior with us as well.
As a person who can’t respect some one’s self respect can never be a nice one.

Apun ne ek so pandrah ghar phalli karvaya, 52 kidnapping kiela, kam se kam 250
haddi todela … pan kabhi andar nahi gaya … first time … first time kisi ko sorry
bola … direct andar - Circuit

The path of truth does have various stumbling blogs but it provides us peace and has a
sure victory with it. As Munna get behind the bars after getting slapped by watchman to
which he thought as a paradox. But eventually he understood that even Gandhi has went
through this all but managed to unroot the British empire single handedly without using
any violence and arms on the contrary he faced travails to attend the same but he
persevere in his strives.

Bole to Gandhigiri Zinda Baad – Munna

The writer and the director both aimed at propagating the same message as they want to
spread Gandhigiri with entertainment. Things can be doe out of force by stooping to
bullying some way by Gandhigiri we can do so through non-violence and peaceful
means. When Gandhi can bring done and established empire of spanning 200 years, so by
the some means why can’t the prevailing vices be uprooted as they have long been
seeped into the system. So, these values can be handy for the present society as well if
used in the right context.

Bahti hawa sa tha wo.....................

3 idiots was also an inspiring film, this time as well Hirani has come out with something
very exciting but worthy to ponder at .unlike the munnabhai series that has its foray to all
and sundry and quite vast 3 idiots was focused towards youth only be it the problem of
unemployment ,higher education, family conditions etc has all been voiced at and has an
inclusion in the film. The issues that has been taken a jibe at were the existing education
system, parents dreams being forced on their children’s and prominence of bookish
knowledge have all been taken in a funny way, every student at least once does think
about the importance of knowledge being imparted to him , he has to mug up the yester
year facts for the sake of having to score good marks that will yield him a good job. He
has to embrace an archaic system by constraining his freedom of free will of thoughts so
Hirani gave vent to his thoughts by aspiring for the same by a dash of amusement and has
not ended up being a preceptor but the one who put it in practice.

Farhan who desires to become a photographer forsook his dream as he was destined to
be an engineer the moment he was born while raju is hard pressed for money and believes
in superstition though being a science student and rancho is an altogether different
personality who don’t give damn to marks, grades and bookish knowledge he likes things
being delivered in an easy way ,he do what his heart please him to and not being forced
on him, he explains the difference between ones achievement and capability .Ranchos
ideals were above anyone’s comprehension as their principal teach them that it’s a rat
race that students are being prepared for and this clash of ideals got them logger heads
and has its exhibition in varied way .

The film starts with farhan and raju having come to know of rancho whose whereabouts
were known to chatur only who took them to college to refresh there memory about
accepting there challenge of who will grab the job first after having finished of with there
studies , chatur become a businessmen while farhan and raju opted the field of there
choice.

rancho a different personality espouse the idea of seeking knowledge from whichever
source possible he doesn’t crab the definitions like others but go over the facts with
interest ,he believe in simplified things which are easy to understand and learn which
does invites dissents from many and unlike the others who think his thoughts can only
render you as a weakling and makes you vulnerable among the competitors but his values
does prove as an eye opener for others to emulate him and takes a leaf out of his books
and carry on with their own pursuant.

1“All is well”---- The present youth is getting disturbed by trivial problem or pressure
and that lead them to their own disaster, news blocks are filled with suicide, dacoity and
burglary perpetrated by youths .rancho want to make them aware of how to make light of
your burden and to carry on with ur dreams without having to get bogged down with the
expectations as nothing is as worth as your life just use your brain in the face of
difficulty and its done.

2 “carry on with a work you have talent in “------Farhan wants to pursue engineering out
of the fear of his father and cut a sorry figure to which rancho explains that he love
wildlife but espousing machines so he should take to the one he has talent in to succeed
.parents burden their children with their dream of having to see them as doctors and
engineer and they seldom think about about their own dream as they forget that a person
can perform best in the area of their interest and not with something being forced on
them.

3Its good to rely on god but its no prudence to think as if only prayer can bring about
your success as can by a character raju who divot more time into following rituals than
devoting to studies and wear rings to ward of the evils to which rancho advise to dump
them as they inhibit him in living his life freely and also curtail his opportunities as fear
of losing doesn’t let him live freely.

4 Virus was teaching his students that life is a race if u are left at the back you will be
trampled by others ,he promise to offer a pen to whomsoever comes first that left the
rancho to wonder as he doesn’t like the idea to mug up the things without having an
understanding of the same .hirani also want to convey the message that instead of theory
more emphasis should be given to practical, a subject must be read with interest as well
as thinking must also get developed with it.

5 On the overall the objective of the film is focused not only on craving for achievement
but also on ones capability to be made perfect as can be seen from the rancho who is
always shown the door for his out of the box idea which hardly goes down well to his
professors but he stand first in the class out of his practical knowledge and goes on to
become a scientist as well ,so a mundane subject in the film does prove as an eye opener
and turned out to be one of the highest grossing film something really worthy for the
youth to emulate for a long time.

conclusion :Through the presentation of the contrasting personality like munna who is
laid back and boman irani who acted as the disciplinarian what has actually been
conveyed is the fact there are many aspects of life which can be taken in a simplified
way as shown by munna unlike the harder and draconian lifestyle as has been adopted by
the later,principles and values are important to the extent that they can prove of some
help in alleviating our burden not that they bogged us down and make it harder to live.

All his films have left a positive effect with various sorts of teachings be it about forging
a relationship,positivity,capability,free state of mind,and has something to learn for the
people of all walks of life and in the end it depends on individual whether to take to
something in what sort of way as ones teachings can also be used to fulfill ones vested
interest and also for some benevolence.

lets end it with a finishing note –“That some achieve great success,is proof to all that
others can achieve it as well”

GRAPHS
1.

To what level/extent does Indian cinema

influence the minds of viewers?
subconscious
17%

will power
22%

conscious
30%
action
33%

17% responds for Subconscious, 22% responds for will power, 30%
responds for conscious and 33% responds for for action.
 What kind of social change has been seen
the most through films?
improvement in
education system
19%
change in thinking
level
32%

improvement in life
style
34%

betterment in the/
at consumption
level
16%
2.
16% responds for betterment in the/ at consumption level, 18%
responds for improvement in education system, 32% responds for
change in thinking level and 34% responds for improvement in life
style.

For social change a film should give main

focus on ….

script
23%

message
47%
selection of
actor/actress
15%

production of film/
film making
17%
 15% responds for selection of actor/actress, 17% responds for
production of film/film making, 23% responds for script and 47%
responds for message.

5.

At present, who is producing films which

helps in social change?

rajkumar hirani
prakash jha 30%
41%

govend shyam benegal

nihlani 16%
13%

13% responds for govend nihlani, 16% responds for shyam benegal,
30% responds for Rajukar Hirani and 41% responds for Prakash Jha.
6. Write in order, what/ which are the present change a film brings?
Q. NO. 5- ORDER BY %
1. A, B, C, D, E- 13%
2. A, E, B, C, D- 6%
3. C, D, E, A, B- 43%
4. B, C, D, E, A-15%
5. B, A, C, D, E- 9%
6. E, D, C, B, A- 14%

7.
Munna bhai MBBS and 3 idots kinds of
movies shows what kind of reality in the
pattern of education system?
in equality in
monopoly of
education system
particular class
16%
in education
16%

lack of proper
teaching in subject
matter
differences in 23%
theoretical
teaching and
practical knowing
46%

16% responds for monopoly of particular class in education, 16%

responds for in equality in education system, 23% responds for
Lack of proper teaching in subject matterand 46% responds for
differences in theoretical teaching and practical knowing.

8.
 Munna bhai’s jadu ki jappi has proved
to be a real miracle to what level?
abolition of class
system
19%
acceptance of
love
27%
medically proved
21%
closeness in
relationship
33%

19% responds for abolition of class system, 21% responds for medically
proved, 27% responds for acceptance of love and 33% responds for
closeness in relationship.

9.
 Viewers compare themselves to the actor in
the film Munna Bhai by :
following the
language pattern
22%

change in attitude
34%
following the style
and feshion
21%
change in behavior
25%

21% responds for following the style amd feshion, 22% responds for
following the language pattern, 25% responds for change in behavior
and 34% responds for change in attitude.
10.
 Which departerts has changed it’s working
pattern after large Lage Raho Munna Bhai?

administrative style
corporate 33%
18%

banks
16%

law and
order/court
34%

16% responds for banks, 18% responds for corporate, 33% responds for
administrative style and 34% responds for law and order/court.

11.
 Tha Gandhigiri in Lage Raho Munna Bhai has
influenced the young generation by :

honesty
12% humanity
discipline 34%
23%

soft heartedness
32%

12% responds for homesty, 23% responds for discipline, 32% responds
for soft heartedness and 34% responds for humanity.
12.

3 Idots /Lage Raho Munna Bhai film has

positive effects on :

local touch
social cordility 23%
37%

new jobs
non belief in 23%
superstitions
18%

18% responds for non belief in supersttions, 23% responds for new jobs,
23% responds for local touch and 37% responds for social cordiality.

13.

3 Idots inspires the parents in

personality
development selection of
17% subject
24%

career making
upbringign
37%
23%

17% responds for personality development, 23% responds for

upbringing, 24% responds for selection of subject and 33% responds for
career making.
14.
 In what way Rancho's character in 3 Idiots
inspires us----------

objectivity
12% selection of goal
integral 21%
18%

work interest
51%

12% responds for objectivity, 18% responds for integral, 21% responds
for selection of goal and 51% responds for work interest.

15.
 What are the effects do we see due to the
results oriented persons like VIRUS ?
resulted oriented
activity
competitive 13%
atmosphere
30%

mental stress
40%

partial behavior
with student
17%

13% responds for resulted oriented acitivyt, 17% responds for partial
behavior with student, 30% responds for competitive atmosphere and
40% responds for mental stress.
16.
 How does Raj Kumar Hirani has successfully
shown the reality?

emotionaly entertainment
16% 18%

artistic
intresting way
32%
34%

16% responds for emotinally, 18% responds for entertainment, 32%

responds for artistic and 34% responds for intresting way.

17.
 His direction should be placed in what kind
of category?

research
oriented original
19% 25%

artistic
24%
creative
33%

19% responds for research oriented, 24% responds for artistic, 25%
responds for original and 33% responds for creative.

18. As per your choice, write in order the different aspects of films------
------.

Q. NO- 17 BY %
1. A, B, C, D- 17%
2. B, A, C, D- 53%
3. D, A, B, C- 18%
4. C, B, D, A- 12%
18.

What effect do we see in relationship by the

influence of materialistic people.

self gulit
gap in relationship 13%
27%
class difference
25%

meterialistic
thinking
36%

13% responds for self gulit, 25% responds for class difference, 27%
responds for gap in relationship and 36% responds for materialistic
thinking.
19.
 1. With whom you would like to watch a
film?

with with
spouse relatives
18% 19%

with teachers
16%

with friends
47%

16% responds for with teachers, 18% responds for with spouse, 19%
responds for with relatives and 47% responds for with friends.

20.
 In a day, how many movies can you watch?

20% 16%

30%

35%

16% responds for zero time, 20% responds for one time, 30% responds
for two time and 35% responds for three times.
21.

Which thing in a film inspires you the most-

acting
20%
cinematography
20%

direction
17%

script
44%
17% responds for direction, 20% responds for acting, 20% responds for
cinematography and 44% responds for script.

22.

Where do you prefer to watch a film-

at home theatre

44%

56%

44% responds for at home, 56% responds for in theatre.

23.
 What you get through a film-
social behavior
13% knowledge/educati
on
24%

entertainment
38% information
27%

13% responds for social behavior, 24% responds for

knowledge/education, 28% responds for information and 38% responds
for entertainment.
Conclusion:
No doubt films are responsible for social change. We can notice it change in
many ways. It has its positive as well as negative impact in society. Every film has
a message at the end which surely gives society a reason to think in some or the
other way. 'Victory of good on evil' this message is continued since years. Many
times society and its people neglects the central theme or the good message by
films. Films inspires all walks of life. All religion, class and people are affected by
big screen. Serious mode or entertainment-films has its own language which
speech and communicate. Through this research we came to know that viewers are
not only interested in the kind of entertainment but are also interested to know
about the kind of script i.e. what's the story ? Some low budget films gives good
business even in the absence of popular actors. The reason is a good message in the
film. Research tells that if film carries a good message it definitely appeals
audience. Many times film has such a strong message that it can be used in society
as a treatment and people are benefitted to it like Do Aankhe Barah Hath by V.
Shantaram, Manthan by Shyam Benegal and Lage Raho Muna bhai By Raj Kumar
Hirani. After Do Aankhe Barah Hath open Jail system was experimented. Milk
prodction by coopration was initiated in Gujrat after the success of Manthan. This
gave self dependency to women and also increased milk production in that reason.
Amul Brand is its result. After watching Lage Raho Munna Bhai, people started
talking and behaving in a polite way. They started following the path of truth and
non-violence. People are much inspired by cinema as compared to any other means
and no doubt a film with good messaged affects society and people to a large
extent.
Films has its impact on society :-
Research has majority of respondents who gave importance to script and
message. Also viewers have agreed that every person is some where inspired by
cinema. Films motivate a person and encourage him in a good and positive way.
People have great impact and change in their life style because of films. Viewers
wants to be like their favourite stars. Dilip Kumar, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh were
known for their styles and people madly follow them. Even today youngsters are
crazy to know about the looks and styles their favourite actors carries like in Tere
Naam and Gajani, Hair style got popular. Bikes got stylish after Dhoom. Earlier
people liked to live simple and to have simple life style but films made events and
days special like B'days, Valentine days, Anniversary etc. Research tells that films
has great impact on people, their language, mind set and their life style.
Director, Society and Films :-
Every decades there are many good, creative and versatile director who tried
to made good films with a social message as a contribution through their creation.
Their stories have some social message at the end. Research says that viewers
consider Prakash Jhaa as the best director to produce films related to social issues.
Then Rajkumar Hirani, Shyam Benegal and Govind Nehlani. Prakash Jhaa has
produced and directed many good films like – Damul, Mritu Dand, Ganga Jal,
Rajneeti, Aarakshan etc. Every film has some social issue with it. Prakash Jhaa's
films carriage sensitive messages for the society.
Social messages in Rajkumar Hirani's Films :-
We conduct this research to know what message society gets after watching
Rajkumar Hirani's 3 films – Munna Bhai MBBS, Lage Raho Munna Bhai and 3
Idiots. Respondents told that a message – 'Jadu ki Jhappi, Spread love and
affection. Lessen in difference and hatred. 33% agrees that a hug give affection and
good feeling. 27% takes it as a sign and gesture of acceptance of love. 21%
students agree that patient gets healed soon by using Jadoo ki Jhappi, 19% says
that it removes caste barriers and differences. Youth accept that their is a great
change in their behaviour and thinking after watching Munna Bhai MBBS. They
started feeling love for people.
Same way Lage Raho Munna Bhai has great social message for the society.
Viewers feel and response, they have positive change after this film, 32% responds
this. Legal lobby are much more affected by film their percentage is 34 i.e.
surprising. 33% impact on administrative lobby, 18 and 16% impact respectively
on corporate and banking sectors. After 3 idiots 51% youth says that it inspires
them to work as per their choice and interest. 37% youth are benefited to take
crucial decision in their career, 40% people writes that Veeru Sahastrabuddhe is a
symbol of mental stress and torture in the film.
Hirani in the eyes of viewers :-
Research also tells how people consider Rajkumar Hirani as a Director, 34%
says Hirani deals with message in the story in a very creative and interesting way.
Viewers consider his films very entertaining and interesting. His film not only
gives good entertainment but also a good social message.
All the above facts and response tells us that film has great impact on
society. Films are affected by society and society cannot remained untouched by
films, surely Hirani's movies has positive contribution to society and has given
values which was some where lacking and hidden. It limelight Gandhiji teaching
and philosophy by Gandhigiri. It shows direction to youth to select their carrier by
their choice to be self dependent and to know their caliber. It tells the power and
strength of love and politeness. Films tells to be good to strangers, juniors,
companions, elders and to spread love and happiness to all.
These films are important for all class of society. As it has something good
and positive for every one.

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