Once upon a cinema: One of India's earliest feminist films, and it remains unmatched

Once Upon a Cinema is series which will illuminate the dark, unexplored crevices of Indian cinema. In it, the writer will showcase stories and faces long forgotten, share uncommon perspectives about stars and filmmakers, and recount tales that have never been told. 75 years before Kartik Aaryan ’s maddening “problem yeh hai ke woh ladki hai” rant, a woman delivered a captivating monologue about being a woman in a man’s world. The year is 1936 and the film is Amar Jyoti, an adventure on the high seas. Swashbuckling pirate Saudamani (Durga Khote) explains why she sets men’s ships alight, kills them and on occasion, imprisons them. Despite carrying a child in her womb for months, it was the brute father who was granted custody of the baby. The cruel Durjay (Chandramohan) and the evil queen had taken her son away, declaring that woman is subservient to man. After her fiery rant about how women are expected to be glorified rag dolls, Saudamani violently tugs at a massive iron chain, dragging into the scene the bearded and maimed Durjay who has been in her captivity. Amar Jyoti was directed by V. Shantaram, and Prabhat Film Company’s ninth “talkie”. It was a landmark film, but the very next year, they pushed the envelope even further. Shantaram had met Marathi novelist Narayan Hari Apte a few years ago while assisting his mentor Baburao Painter, veteran filmmaker and the founder of Maharashtra Film Company. Apte had, on Baburao’s insistence, worked on the screenplays for a number of films from his company, like Savkari Pash, Rana Hamir (both 1925) and so on. Most of these films were about prevailing social ills like the exploitation of the poor. Shantaram was greatly influenced by Apte’s literary work and had been reading them voraciously. Writes his daughter Madhura Pandit Jasraj in her book V. Shantaram - The Man Who Changed Indian Cinema: “…he was deeply moved by Apte’s social novel Na Patnari Goshta (meaning an unconvincing story), which was based on the life of a rebel woman. He also read Apte’s entire literary output. To widen his knowledge, he read essays by the erudite author Vishnu Shastri Chiplunkar. Shantaram had tried reading Na Patnari Gosht in his schooldays but it was too serious for him to understand at that age. Apte was also the co-editor of the magazine Kirloskar Khabar, which was studded with pithy maxims. He read them over and over and tried to digest and assimilate them. This invaluable imbibing of wholesome literature shaped the entire persona of a once-rustic Shantaram. Whenever he had free time, he discussed many topics with Apte. Once Shantaram argued with him, saying: ‘Your heroine of Na Patnari Gosht can’t be from India. It is your imagination.’ Apte replied, in his quiet soothing tone: “Well, Shantaram, this is the true-life story of a married woman. Shantaram, do you know something? Truth is a thousand times more powerful than fiction.”” Narayan aka Nanasaheb Apte was known for, among other things, his writings about conjugal life. Na Patnari Gosht was a cautionary tale about a young woman being married to a man her father’s age. The fiery woman raises her voice, and the story deals with the consequences of her actions. As indicated by Apte above, it might have been based on a real-life occurrence about a real woman. Many years later, when Shantaram had built the foundations of his own studio Prabhat Film Company and was looking for an idea for his next film, writer K. Narayan Kale suggested he take a look at Na Patnari Gosht. Shantaram thought it was a brilliant idea. Much like his guru Baburao Painter, V. Shantaram was making socially aware films but he took it a step further. If Rao was satisfied merely depicting the malaise, Shantaram asked the tough questions. Questions that were designed to make the audience stop in their tracks and ponder for a bit. And Apte’s book was just the material he had been looking for. The story had stayed with him for years, and now was the time to translate it to the language of cinema. The resultant film was the bilingual Kunku (Marathi) and Duniya Na Maane (Hindi). Nirmala (Shanta Apte) lives with her uncle and aunt. She is an orphan, raised by the old couple. They plan to get her married to Keshav (Keshavrao Date), a man old enough to be Nirmala’s father. She initially assumes the smart young man accompanying the party as her groom. On realising that the boy is to be his future stepson and it is his father who is marrying her, Nirmala fumes with rage. What’s worse, the man was paying her uncle “for the trouble”. Unwilling to take it lying down, she snaps at her uncle and aunt and gives them a piece of her mind. But eventually, she has to relent. Once at her in-law’s place, her mother-in-law tries to assert dominance by addressing her as “bahurani”. But she refuses to give in, saying that her name is Nirmala, and that’s how she would like to be addressed. [caption id=“attachment_10795671” align=“alignnone” width=“300”]  Durga Khote in Amar Jyoti[/caption] This was the late 1930s, a good 10 years before India’s independence. But even back then, the heroine of Duniya Na Maane/ Kunku refuses to be a glorified doormat and fights for her rights at every turn. In the dead of the night, Keshav tried to force his way into her room, ostensibly to sleep with his young bride. Nirmala doesn’t allow him anywhere near her, threatening to burn the house down with the gas lamp if he tried to force her. She doesn’t hesitate to discipline her wayward stepson when he tries to act fresh. She kept at it, fiercely defending herself and her rights not only as a woman but as a human being. Ultimately, her old husband had to admit his grave transgressions, and seek forgiveness, relieving her from being his wife. But realising that a regressive society would scarcely allow such a move, he hangs himself, leaving behind a suicide note which said that she should go ahead and remarry. Needless to say, Duniya Na Maane was remarkably progressive for its time. It was typical of Shantaram to make a film that aimed to provoke and poke fingers at the society in a vain attempt to awaken it from a long slumber. Very quickly, mainstream Indian cinema fell into the comfortable cliche of the sacrificing sati-savitri who was an eager recipient of all kinds of exploitation that scriptwriters could cook up. It’s been 85 years since Duniya Na Maane and 11 years since Pyar ka Punchnama. The jury is still out on how much we have “progressed”. Amborish is a National Film Award winning writer, biographer and film historian.

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