Pyar Hua Iqrar Hua
1 2018-05-31T14:18:28-07:00 Nilanjana Bhattacharjya f226c9c8cfb70027e5b98ae7a2041199d770e274 30568 1 from Shree 420 (dir. Raj Kapoor), starring Raj Kapoor and Nargis plain 2018-05-31T14:18:28-07:00 YouTube 2014-06-10T04:04:32.000Z Ak8Z7wTlKzY Khawar Ahmed Nilanjana Bhattacharjya f226c9c8cfb70027e5b98ae7a2041199d770e274This page is referenced by:
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Defining a New Nation in the 1950s: India and the West
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Reading
- Jacob Levich, “Freedom Songs: Rediscovering Bollywood's Golden Age,” Film Comment 38, no. 3 (2002): 48-51. (online)
- The first paragraph of Parama Roy, "Figuring Mother India," in Indian Traffic: Identities in Question in Colonial and Postcolonial India (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998). (online)
- Kenneth X. Robbins, "Jewish Women Were Indian Cinema's First Actresses," (Bangalore: The News Minute, 2016). (online)
Viewing
Watch the song sequence "Pyar Hua Iqrar Hua" starring Raj Kapoor and Nargis in Raj Kapoor's Shree 420 (1955).
Watch the song sequence "Mud Mud Ke Na Dekh" starring Nadira and Raj Kapoor in Raj Kapoor's Shree 420 (1955). You may follow along with the lyrics and their translation here.
In this film, the temptress Maya is played by the Baghdadi Jewish actress Nadira, and the simple schoolteacher Vidya by the Muslim actress Nargis, herself a daughter of a courtesan. The fact that both of their characters' names are associated with Sanskrit and Hindu philosophy suggests their identities as Hindus in the film, which in many ways conveys how films work to bring together people from diverse communities into the Indian nation—because as Hindus, their Indianness would never be questioned.
Throughout the film, we see a clear distinction between good and bad that corresponds to the distinction between India and the West. The film envisions an Indian modernity and future that respects the poor and isn't prey to the evils of Western capitalism. The two very different genres of music you hear in the clip also correspond to this dichotomy. In the second song, we hear everything from ballroom waltzes to jazz, Spanish guitar, and Latin-influenced dance rhythms—all signs of the decadent West.Writing Response Assignment
One of the challenges of the new nation was to bring together a nation that had only eight years earlier confronted the horror of Partition, during which millions of people were displaced and likely at least one million people killed after the British carved their South Asian colonial possessions into two independent countries in 1947—India and Pakistan. As you watch the two sequences, in a 350-500 word essay, consider how each sequence's lyrics, music, visuals, and/or choreography suggest how one should act in and relate to this new nation.