Neglected Rural India

With Peepli Live capturing the urban audience, Ranjan Das Gupta wonders why rural India has taken a backseat for both mainstream and offbeat filmmakers

Peepli Live depicts contemporary rural India in its true form

Finally, after a long time, a refreshing film has been made that celebrates as well as highlights rural India. Peepli Live came across as an uplifting film, far removed in content as well as making, from the usual Bollywood stuff. Its director Anusha Rizvi had the courage and conviction to depict contemporary rural India in its true form. It also showcased how the media had neglected and mocked its pathos and pains. This is a commendable effort in an era when rural India has ceased to be the subject or focus of both mainstream and offbeat filmmakers.

But why has rural India been so neglected in the context of present-day cinema?

Director Rahul Dholakia answers, "Most of our present generation writers and directors are urban-oriented, born and brought up in big cities. They may have never travelled to or stayed in rural India. Most of them may not even know what villages and small towns look like, what kind of problems the inhabitants face there and how people live in such conditions. Besides, the growth of multiplex culture and the fast-food generation in the past decade has also led to neglecting and ignoring rural India."

This neglect is quite astonishing because most Hindi films of the past projected rural India with dignity, sympathy as well as highlighted its problems. Films of the 1940s like Neecha Nagar and Dharti Ke Lal showcased pre-Independent rural India quite convincingly, and also its struggles and tragedies like famine.

Neecha Nagar, India’s first anti-imperialist film, which depicted a revolution by villagers against an autocratic mayor and how they fall prey to a disease spread by contaminated water, had even won a grand prix at the first ever Cannes Film Festival in 1946.

Films like Do Bigha Zameen, Mother India, Ganga Jamuna, Godaan and Teesri Kasam centred around villages and maintained aesthetic as well as artistic qualities intact.

Neo-wave cinema entered Hindi films with Bhuvan Shome in 1969. Other experiment films like Garm Hawa, Ankur, Manthan and Akrosh followed creating cinematic history. Says Shyam Benegal, "The films that were made during the 1970s and 1980s, gave a lot of importance to rural India. We tried our best to highlight the problems and struggles of the villagers and the underprivileged. With changing of times and audience tastes, we have been compelled to concentrate on a different kind of cinema, which, of course, cannot be termed classic. I, however, did focus on rural India in Welcome To Sajjanpur and Well Done Abba."

Whatever be the excuses offered the fact remains that the present-day fun loving, impatient and unconcerned urban audience cares two hoots for its rural counterpart. Most city-bred viewers think that viewers from villages or small towns are uneducated, illiterate and have no knowledge of globalisation and modern technology. So viewing films about this section of society is a waste of time. Also, urban India is grossly suffering from innumerable problems like water crisis, political unrest, rise in crime and those related to health, transport and education.

Says Aamir Khan, "I depicted rural India of the British era in a different manner in Lagaan. Of course, I want to shoot an out-and-out non-commercial film on rural India in the forthcoming days. I, definitely, do not agree with many of the present directors, who feel, films based on rural India, will not sell. The best of issues are still thriving in rural India."

According to Satyajit Ray, "I, being too city-oriented, have not been able to do full justice to rural India, which provides a magnificent backdrop for cinema."

But needless to say, what Ray highlighted about rural Bengal in his Apu trilogy (Pather Panchali, Aparajito and Apur Sansar), Teen Kanya and about feudal oppression in villages of northern India in his most fundamental film, Sadgati, are yet to be touched by any filmmaker of today.

Even Manoj Kumar, who took up cudgels for the rural India and the plight of the farmers with resounding success in Upkar, has complimented the veteran director, "Ray made poverty appear photogenic." Despite the success of Peepli Live, the ghost of rural India haunts our instant success-seeking filmmakers, who are too afraid to confront the truth.