Sholay Never Dies: Jai, Veeru And Their Bond With India

1975 remains a watershed moment in India’s political history. At the heart of it lies the Emergency, a post-independence political crisis in the country like no other. Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, had applied emergency powers across the country, trampling on democracy, curtailing civil liberties, and censoring the press completely. It was the twenty-eighth year of India’s independence, and the nation was already hit by unemployment, inflation and a deep and irrevocable trust deficit towards the system.

Away from the ‘political’, the Hindi film industry, recognised today as the ‘soft power of India’, was having its moment, marked by a diverse slate of films that would go on to influence the next decades of storytelling. Some of its memorable classics, including Deewar, Sholay and Aandhi were produced in 1975. Five decades later, Sholay, directed by Ramesh Sippy, holds a pedestalled position in India’s otherwise shrunken public memory. From its initial glum reception to the unprecedented frenzy that led to continuous screenings at Mumbai’s Minerva cinema for the next five years and at Delhi’s Plaza for the next two years, the film sparked a mania hitherto unseen. The only other instance of this level of popularity up until then had been the Ashok Kumar starrer Kismet (1943), which played close to four years at Kolkata’s Roxy cinema.

So, what has made Sholay infallible in the public imagination? What makes it tick even today? The most simplistic answer would be—Sholay reflected the then India, and traces of that linger today. The film’s 50th birthday is a perfect moment to break it down.

Sholay is the story of two petty crooks—Veeru and Jaidev aka Jai (Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan)—hired by a retired police officer and landed gentry, Thakur Baldev Singh (Sanjeev Kumar), who is on a mission to capture Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan), a ruthless bandit. Seemingly a bandit-police hide-and-seek story, there’s more to Sholay’s semiotics.

The film was released on August 15, 1975, in a ‘differently’ battered India. Earlier in January that year, Deewar too had been released. Together they form the leitmotif of the urban and rural (read ‘gaon’, village) microcosm of India. Sholay is by and large the tale of two strong-willed men at opposite ends of the patriarchal order—a zamindar and a bandit, Thakur and Gabbar respectively, who want to avenge each other.

The magic of Sholay lies in its clever induction of the ‘social’, but well within the bounds of popular cinema, resulting in an incredible script by the legendary Salim-Javed. As they ground their story, they also pepper the otherwise action-packed revenge drama with pertinent social messaging like jail reforms, women’s empowerment, gender role reversal and Hindu widow remarriage.

The Seed and the Tree Which Grew

Ramgarh, the fictional village in the film, is located in an infertile, rocky landscape, where everyone lives in ‘harmony’. There is no apparent caste hierarchy and or religious divide here. The village also has a mosque and a gentle, visually-impaired cleric. Ramgarh is home to Thakur Baldev Singh, whose family has been massacred by the notorious Gabbar Singh in lieu of his arrest by the former. Gabbar escapes from custody and slaughters Thakur’s family. Only his youngest daughter-in-law Radha is spared. The fateful incident leads to an encounter between the two and Thakur is dismembered by Gabbar. Ever since, Thakur has been planning to take revenge on Gabbar. After the attack, which left him disabled, Thakur’s affairs are managed by his loyal helper Ramlal (a Brahmin, only if one notices his sacred thread).

Thakur hires Jai and Veeru who are in jail as his henchmen. On being released, the duo takes up the job. Initially, they steal Thakur’s cash and other valuables, but are caught red-handed by Radha. They then decide to stay put and help Thakur achieve his life’s goal. Along the way, both men fall for women of the village. Veeru actively woos Basanti (Hema Malini), the lone buggy-driver of the village who is a bread-earner, while Jai is silently love with Radha (Jaya Bhaduri Bachchan). Their assignment becomes personal. Gabbar is captured by Veeru in the end; however, Jai dies during this final confrontation. As promised by Jai earlier, Veeru is compelled to hand over Gabbar unwillingly to Thakur. Thakur decides to kill Gabbar himself, but the police intervene, reminding Thakur of his former life as a responsible police officer. Justice is served and everyone follows the law of the land. Radha retires to solitude, while Basanti decides to join Veeru as they leave Ramgarh forever. The film ends on a tragic but open note.

Sholay’s central theme is definitely revenge. But it is fascinating to see how the storytelling employs revenge as its grounding element and then subverts it in more than one way; posing the questions: ‘Who is an outlaw?’ and ‘Who is a law-abider?’ The script does not subscribe to a water-tight definition. There is a fluidity to the interpretation of the questions all along.

The 70s saw the rise of revenge dramas as well as bandit films. In the three seminal works of Salim-Javed, Zanjeer (1973), Deewar and Sholay, revenge is a recurrent theme though these films are critical of the system and offer a backstory as a part of its protagonists becoming (read turning) into outlaws like Deewar’s Vijay Malhotra. But Sholay’s Gabbar is portrayed as absolute evil with no social history attached. No other prominent film of the 70s defines its anti-hero without sharing any clues about his biography. Ironically, this nil or liminal background (even for Jai and Veeru), makes Sholay’s characters iconographic.

In an India distant from Nehruvian utopia, Sholay tries to push its boundaries within the realms of commercial cinema. Onscreen, within the bounds of the story, everyone can coexist—Hindu, Muslim, Christian (the driver of the cargo train); the heroes can be vulnerable; they can be rogues (Veeru and Jai) and saviours all at once. The male protagonists are permitted to cry (Jai), make a fool of themselves (both men) and the women (Basanti and Radha) can be strong and independent.

In retrospect, Salim-Javed’s writing reflects the lost Nehruvian concept of a just, inclusive society, the beginning of which is an ideal village (Ramgarh). To that end, their marginals, either by class or by situation, must get a fair chance, else they may become outlaws, creating a parallel ‘social order’ (Vijay the smuggler’s world in Deewar and Thakur deciding to teach Gabbar a lesson). Sholay fits well into this casing. While the outer casing remains all about avenging, the deeper narrative juxtaposes reality. The entire track of widow marriage is a good example of how consistently elements of social realism work for the film, but sadly get aborted at the end. The message of reformation of prison inmates springs from the newer approach to penal systems that stems from a landmark move of 1957 (All India Jail Manual Committee, 1957-59). In real life, the formation of the Jail Manual Committee was a watershed moment in the history of jail reform in India. So, in the film, there is a self-confessed colonial jailor and a former police officer who believes in giving convicts another ‘chance’ and is pro-reform.

In the warp and weft of this storytelling, there is a fluidity, which could be called ‘dualism’. But for me, this ‘dualism’ signals broken fragments of what is humane and vulnerable in the film, the elements that are part of the society offscreen, the ones that have firmly enshrined Sholay in the public realm even after five decades of its release.

(Views expressed are personal)

Nilosree Biswas is an author, filmmaker and columnist who writes about Asian history, food, cinema and art