Dear reader,
Brandy Ki Botal (The Bottle of Brandy) is a slapstick comedy released in 1939. Directed by Vinayak Damodar Karnataki, also known as Master Vinayak, the film follows a naive clerk tasked with finding brandy for his boss’s son. It is a hilarious portrayal of the confusion and problems caused by alcohol consumption. More intriguingly, though, Brandy Ki Botal holds a unique place in the history of Indian cinema, which many may not know today: it is a propaganda film that emerged from the country in the pre-Independence period. It is rumoured that the Indian National Congress sponsored it to promote Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals of prohibition, morality, and self-discipline. Clips available on YouTube show Congress rallies in the opening credits and at various points through the film. Despite Gandhi’s personal reservations about cinema, the Congress believed that the mass medium could effectively promote its ideology.
Brandy Ki Botal can be considered an ideal propaganda film for several reasons. Firstly, it was directed by a prominent filmmaker and a master storyteller. Master Vinayak, a relative of the legendary director V. Shantaram, is credited with introducing Lata Mangeshkar to films with his 1942 movie Pahili Mangalagaur. Secondly, the film uses symbols cleverly, plugging demonstrations against alcohol with symbols such as the Congress flag, charkha, nationalist slogans, and the teachings of Gandhi and Sardar Patel. Most notably, the film refers to Gandhiji as “Azadi ka Devta” (Angel or deity of freedom). And the catchy title undoubtedly grabbed attention, especially in that era.
This was an era when propaganda primarily conveyed positive messages. Filmmakers, writers, singers, and artists infused their works with ideals such as nationalism, national integration, secularism, the spirit of the working class, the cooperative movement, women’s empowerment, and patriotism. Open about their allegiances, their works reflected the social realities of the time and represented a secular, inclusive, idealistic, and predominantly socialist India.
But that era of simplistic propaganda in cinema underwent a transformation in the 1990s. With India embracing globalisation and with the rise of new capital, a shift occurred in cultural narratives. In this context, I would like to pick one film, a seemingly innocent one from Malayalam cinema, which, as cultural historians would later figure out, unwittingly heralded the era of right-wing propaganda films in Kerala in particular, and in India in general. Dhruvam was released in January 1993, just a few weeks after Babri Masjid was demolished on 6 December 1992, and in all likelihood the film’s makers did not deliberately other Muslims, but more of that later.
Dhruvam has a simple plot. More than the hero Narasimha Mannadiar, a feudal lord played by Mammooty, it was the film’s villain who made news. Hyder Marakkar, a notorious gangster with terrorist links, is a Muslim. He is sentenced to death but tries everything to escape execution. Marakkar is responsible for the killings of a DIG’s son and Mannadiar’s own brother. Mannadiar seeks revenge for his brother’s death and eventually hangs Marakkar himself.
Dhruvam was a blockbuster and broke records. It also became a trendsetter. Many such films followed. A few weeks later, on March 12, 1993, a series of 12 blasts, allegedly orchestrated by underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, would rock Bombay. Studies have come out on the impact of the blasts in further othering the Muslims in India and how popular culture would reflect all of it with brutal honesty in the years to come, triggering an era of films that would openly vilify minority communities, especially Muslims, and embolden a clutch of filmmakers to champion right-wing ideals, in Bollywood and elsewhere.
This was roughly when propagandist films stopped being naive and nationalist and went “patriotic” and jingoistic, a process that has gained much momentum since 2014 when the Modi government came to power at the Centre, empowering a train of filmmakers to unabashedly parrot the state and become its brand ambassadors onscreen and offscreen, ostensibly reaping rich dividends for their services. This brand of propaganda is very different from the days of Brandy Ki Botal’s positive, innocent propaganda, or even the loud, facile, and at times cringe nationalism of 1950s and 1960s cinema, or the very Freudian reactionary ways of 1990s cinema.
The current period, featuring The Kerala Story and its ilk, which one can loosely term the third era of propaganda films, marks a significant shift, and aligns more closely with Leni Riefenstahl and the Third Reich. We now see propaganda films, and especially their curiously crafted trailers, becoming what cultural critic Lawrence Liang calls the “unofficial manifestos” of our times. Several such films are being released in time with the general election, when high-voltage polarisation powered by social media has transformed politics and political debates into a hate speech war where truth is tweaked, tailored, and doctored.
How does propaganda work in popular culture, especially in cinema, the most potent mass medium of our times? In its latest issue, Frontline has brought together experts to examine this question. Read this, because we all love cinema and we have witnessed in umpteen ways its power to sway us. We welcome you to start with Liang’s piece here. And then you can read the others.
As always, write back with your comments on the films that you’ve watched recently, propaganda or not!
Wishing you a meaningful week ahead,
For Team Frontline,
Jinoy Jose P.
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