Ganga Ki Saugandh (1978): A Microcosm Representing Indian Society in a Nutshell

Bollywood movies are not true stories, but they are not false either, for fiction or human imagination always takes its roots from what exists and is often observed, unless of course it is in the realm of incredible fairy tales or science fiction. The microsm of Ganga Ki Saugandh, a 1978 Amitabh Rekha starrer, based on the story of how an innocent villager turns into a dreaded dacoit to seek his revenge is a good example of how fiction derives itself from existing truths.

Let us review this movie from the Bollywood Prism.

1978 was the year when the craze of Amitabh Bachchan reached its peak among his fans with Muqaddar Ka Sikandar and Don, the two biggest hits of this year. Compared to them, Ganga Ki Saugandh, was a smaller hit that got overshadowed and has been relegated to the pages of Bollywood history. One of the reasons why it garnered a lot of news back then was Amitabh’s pairing with Rekha, and an incident in Jaipur during the shooting of this movie, wherein Amitabh lost his cool rather uncharacteristically and beat a person in the crowd at the shooting site, who was continuing with his lewd remarks at Rekha in spite of repeated warnings. It was one of those rare occasions when the Angry Young Man on Screen openly lost his temper in real life, an incident that also been reported in Yasser Usman's Rekha - The Untold Story.

Plot

The movie begins with the rape of a girl (Farida Jalal) by the dictatorial landlord, Thakur Jaswant Singh (Amjad Khan). As the body of the girl, a daughter of one of Thakur’s employees (Nana Palsikar), is thrown into Ganga by Thakur's men, the story connects with the holy Indian river. The plot largely revolves around Jeeva (Amitabh Bachchan), a simple village dweller, who lives with his widowed mother, Ramvati (Achla Sachdev), and is fond of Dhaniya (Rekha), the daughter of Kalu Chamar (Pran), depicted as one of the wiser men of the village. Then there are those working with Thakur, Lala (Jeevan) who is a money lender and Pandit Kashinath (Satyendra Kapoor) who is the temple priest. In addition, there is Jayshree (Bindu), Jaswant’s sister who likes Jeeva, Rehmat Khan (Anwar Hussain) who is a trader sympathetic with Kalu, and Raani Ma (Sulochana Latkar) who is the mother of Jaswant and tries her best to stop him. The courtesan (Anju Mahendru) and Mathuradas (Jagdeep) complete the microcosm of the movie.

Jeeva comes in conflict with Thakur Jaswant, when he beats his mother Ramvati, who has gone to work in his house to earn some money to pay the interest of a loan she has taken from Lala, while keeping her Mangal Sutra as security. Thakur tries to molest Dhaniya, which aggrevates his conflict with Jeeva, who is then targeted by Pandit Kashinath on false charges of having killed his cow and exiled out of village. Thakur is in habit of wasting money on sensual pleasures, and tries to recover it by levying additional lagan (tax) against which villagers revolt, and are made to leave the village under the leadership of Kalu. They settle in a new land and develop is as their abode.

On the other hand, the exiled and badly hurt Jeeva is carried by his mother till they reach a small temple of Ganga, where fearing for Jeeva’s life, she prays that her life may be exchanged for his. Ramvati dies while Jeeva survives and turns to dacoity after taking a vow in Ganga of taking his mother’s revenge. Shortly he accumulates a force enough to challenge Thakur. When he attempts to help out Kalu and the villagers, they refuse to take the help from him, since he is now a criminal. In fact their dialogue, with a Statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the background shows how perennial this conflict between means and ends has been. It reminds one of the Krishna's tactics in Mahabharat and how this ironic dilemma still seems unresolved. The climax sees Jeeva getting his revenge.

Contemporary India

The fictitious character of Jeeva strikes chord with audiences because he lives in a milieu that is rather familiar to Indians. Traditionally, Indian villages were self governed and though they did pay their taxes to the King, for most purposes they were free to live in the way they liked. The strong social traditions that were followed by everyone in Indian society, with families treated by society as a unit, was how India largely governed itself in ancient times. After the advent of foreign rulers who captured power during the last millennium, these new rulers appointed their loyal cronies as landlords to collect taxes and be their administrators.

This institution of Zamindar became a really callous one with the advent of the East India Company, which planted them everywhere and treated them as the real owners of the land, with the objective of maximizing company's tax collections. A simultaneous institution of money-lender also gained roots, which has hitherto not existed since charging interest on money was considered a sin in ancient India. (In fact, William Durant, in the first volum of his 11 volume History of Civilization, has opined that Indian's abhorrence to charge of interest may have prevented capital accumulation and industrialization in India.) The new village moneylender further thrived on the miseries of the exploited villagers, who were losing their livelihood under the unfair regulations and restrictions of Company that reversed India’s massive trade surplus with Europe into a massive trade deficit and virtually destroyed the Indian economy.

The story of Jeeva, in 1978, is actually a legacy of what Indian villages had been facing for more than a hundred years by then. Most unfortunately, this exploitation only slowed down but did not cease even after 1947. As the population zoomed, and the economy stagnated, this exploitation became unbearable and there were several cases where those exploited took to arms and rebelled. Unfortunately, law only looks at the crime, and the mitigating circumstances that precipitate it are hardly given the weight that they deserve, as also happened with Jeeva, who inspite of being an innocent victim, ended up as a criminal in the eyes of law.

Some of the images of Thakur, Pandit and Lala have almost acquired stereotypic proportions. However, Raani Ma and her husband (Thakur Jaswant's father), are shown as different and sympathetic to villagers, thereby suggesting how the powerful in Indian villages used to be more compassionate earlier, but gradually lost compassion, turning extremely selfish and indulging in exploitation that brought them in conflict with the masses. On one hand, caste differences are clearly brought out by dialogues between Pandit and Kalu. At the same time, the acceptance of Kalu’s leadership by villagers shows the changing face of Indian society.

Epilogue

Ganga Ki Saugandh is not considered a great classic. Yet, the story of Jeeva has its reverberance across the Indian lives of the times. During the last forty years, many things have changed, including the mode of exploitation and the power balance. Things have also become far more complex. A lot of action has now shifted to the urban areas, where the new India and the young India largely lives, or aspires to live and prosper!