Raj Kapoor centenary: How the greatest showman, an Everyman tramp, imagined a nation

Raj Kapoor in 'Shree 420' (1955).

This day that year, a century ago, a star was born: Raj Kapoor (1924-88), the Greatest Showman India has seen. To commemorate his birth centenary, a retrospective of his iconic films is being shown across India (40 cities and 135 cinemas at PVR-Inox and Cinepolis) from December 13-15. Titled ‘Raj Kapoor 100: Celebrating the Centenary of the Greatest Showman’, it is presented by R.K. Films, Film Heritage Foundation, and NFDC-National Film Archive of India.

Himansu Rai’s Bombay Talkies was among the largest pre-World War II sound studios in India and introduced some of the major stars and directors of post-independence Hindi cinema, including Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor, Ashok Kumar and Dilip Kumar. The shift from studio style of production to companies owned by individual directors/actors/producers (like Raj Kapoor) is imperative in the way they were pushed myriad styles of narration, eventually establishing what we understand as the mainstream Bombay cinema or mainstream Hindi films.

Prithviraj Kapoor, the doyen of Bollywood's first family, which traces its roots to Faisalabad in Punjab in pre-Partition British India (now in Pakistan), was a pioneer of Indian theatre and the founding member of Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA). His eldest son, Raj Kapoor, will go on to become an influential actor, director and producer, all at a very young age. If Prithviraj was the epitome of classical hero, Raj brought a new-age rakish flair to his acting style.

Raj Kapoor.

While it is said that Raj Kapoor brought boisterousness and loudness of Punjabi culture with music becoming an integral part of his cinema, social cinema was the foundation stone on which R.K. Films banner and Raj Kapoor’s cinema soared. His later films Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai and Sangam also showed that music could be used to sell a film in an effective way. Along with Guru Dutt, Mehboob Khan and Bimal Roy, Raj Kapoor completed the quartet of prominent filmmakers of post-colonial, newly independent India, responsible for making meaningful as well as commercially successful cinema.

The decades of 1950s and 1960s saw various social issues being depicted in films so as to produce a socially relevant cinema. V Shantaram pioneered this kind of cinema, first in Marathi language and then in Hindi. The quartet Khan, Kapoor, Roy and Dutt carried forward this tradition and various postcolony social issues like unemployment, poverty, issues concerning women, migration, displacement, issues concerning farming community and mine workers, class division and struggle, communal disharmony, problem of those marginalised in society, decay in social values, child versus labour, tradition versus modernity, hypocrisy and crisis of conscience in society, etc., got depicted on celluloid. Their cinema addressed the immediate concerns of the common man in a free nation, capturing the chaos and confusion. With its rooted to the soil, the nature of movies made in this decade etched itself in the annals of cinema history as the golden age of Indian cinema.

In his early films, Raj Kapoor, along with his cinematographer Radhu Karmakar, deployed visual tools of Italian neorealism, of natural setting (not studio cinema) and conversational speech (not classical performance/speech of his father Prithviraj Kapoor's era), and noir-ish lighting and obtuse shadows (a bit Expressionistic, too), to bring alive his themes.

Raj Kapoor with Pran (left) in 'Chhalia' (1960).

In the essay ‘Bollywood, Mobility and Partition Politics: Representation of Displaced Muslims on Indo-Pak Partition’, Sony Jalaranjan and Rohini Sreekumar write: “The Partition narratives of Bollywood cinema inadvertently follow a pattern of recreating the ethnoreligious tensions of the Hindu and Muslim communities set against the background of the political debates that shaped the modern India. What these films accentuate is the historically imposed image of the Hindu-Muslim conflict as a discernible characteristic of the displacement of individuals, families and communities, with an emphasis on the theme of estrangement. Early films like Chhalia (1960) and Dharmputra (1961) try to exemplify the hostility of Partition by using it as a narrative background for the development of the generic Bollywood spectacle where melodramatic romantic tales and the mysticism of the mythical ideal are normalised. Manmohan Desai’s Chhalia follows the eponymous protagonist’s (Raj Kapoor) attempts to reconcile the estranged relationship of Shanthi (Nutan) and her husband Kewal (Rehman). Set in the background of Indo-Pak Partition, the film depicts the displacement of Shanthi from her husband and the resulting dubious existence of their son Anwar. The illegitimacy of Anwar’s existence as a Muslim and the disowning of Shanthi’s virtuous self for her association with a man named Abdul Rehman (Pran) constitute the body of the film as it tends to reveal the dislocated Muslim selves in the context of Partition. Although Chhalia’s allusions to the epic Ramayana – where the metaphor of Shanthi, whose name literally translates as peace and sanctity in the Indian mythological context, is a misinterpreted figure in the Partition discourse – are explicitly evident, they make infinitesimally less momentous attempts for reparation. The superfluous climax of the film reiterates the reunion of the characters in harmony but leaving the questions about the historical necessities unanswered and the dislocated Muslim identities intact.’ Later, Yash Chopra’s Dharmputra, which had Raj’s younger brother Shashi Kapoor play the lead, is considered as ‘the first major film to deal with the monstrosity of religious fundamentalism that peaked at the time of Partition where families were divided on the basis of their collective religious ideals and separated from their former positions of universality and brotherhood.’

In the chapter “Popular Narratives: Awaara (The Vagabond, 1951, Dir. Raj Kapoor)” in the book Studying Indian Cinema, Omar Ahmed, writes about the most dynamic of all national cinemas to have come alive when, in 1951, the melodrama Awara (Raj Kapoor) was seen by more people on the globe than any other film last century. Its superstar, Raj Kapoor, replaced Charlie Chaplin (on whom he modelled himself) as the most recognisable actor/director anywhere. In Awara, when a young Raj (played by Shashi Kapoor) tries to earn his bread honestly by polishing shoes (boot polish would become the titular subject of a later film that Raj Kapoor would produce in 1954, a comedy that zoomed into the underbelly of the begging industry; Awara and Boot Polish were both nominated for Palme D’Or at Cannes Film Festival), to feed his ailing and mentally spiralling mother (Leela Chitnis), he is thrown out of school, and the adult Raj (Raj Kapoor) is fired from his job because of his criminal past as a thief. At this point, Raj asks a pertinent question: if the criminal is not given a fair chance to work, how will they ever change? Thus, bringing into question the vicious cycle of poverty that compels innocents into criminality. The film asks an important question, too: can only a noble/virtuous/highborn person’s progeny be virtuous/noble and a criminal’s child turn only into a criminal?

In hits such as Shree 420 (1955), his character, an itinerant, impoverished dreamer, bumbles his way to Bombay, comes face to face with corruption and greed, playing to the anxieties of displacement that come up in film after film. His Indianised tramp that Raj Kapoor remodelled and reinvented (from Chaplin’s The Great Dictator), is an Everyman who mirrored the anxieties and disillusionment of the postcolony and its directionless free citizens.

While the aforementioned quartet was making socially relevant cinema in Hindi mainstream, India’s parallel cinema, working in explicit opposition to Bombay entertainment, followed suit, too. In 1955, with Pather Panchali, Sajyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy (1955-59) chronicled the painful uprooting of the rural poor and transition to urban slums. The trauma and tragedy of migration and being a refugee (if Raj Kapoor’s family came from West Pakistan for Bombay, Ritwik Ghatak was forced to leave East Pakistan [now Bangladesh] for Calcutta) reflected the most in the radical films of Ghatak and his Brechtian acerbic melodramas. Every filmmaker then, across language and religion, dealt in their own way with the dilemmas in the big city.

The first film that established Raj Kapoor as a major international film star, and which also became one of the most popular Hindi films overseas (mainly in Asia and the former USSR) and was remade in many other national cinemas, was Awara (1951), in which one finds the the potcolonial origins of the Hindi law drama genre. It was also the first film Raj Kapoor made in his own studios [R.K. Films, founded in 1948] and with his own team, from his stars (himself and Nargis) to his musicians (Shankar-Jaikishan) and singers (Lata Mangeshkar and Mukesh), with writer KA Abbas.

It also marked the beginning of Raj Kapoor’s tramp characterisation, drawn from Charlie Chaplin. Unlike the usual Indian vagrant, Raj Kapoor is dressed as an American tramp, with Chaplineque oversized suits that appear to belong to someone else, thus undermining the suit’s respectability and recalling, perhaps, the circus clown, a character that will come to fruition in Raj Kapoor’s Mera Naam Joker (1970).

Raj Kapoor in 'Mera Naam Joker' (1970).

In her paper, “Popular Myth, Popular Literature: the myth of Nation State, Recast in Indian Cinema”, Shyamali Banerjee observes that the much-acclaimed film Awara (1951), Raj Kapoor’s directorial debut that gave prominence to his trademark Chaplinesque characterisation, Raj alias Raju, the hapless eponymous vagabond is on trial for the attempted murder of a pillar of society, Judge Raghunath (played by his real-life father Prithviraj Kapoor). “There are unquestionable strengths to Awara. Raj Kapoor and Nargis turn in subtle and emotional performances. And Nargis’s character Rita is a rare treat – a young woman who also happens to be a lawyer. She is cautioned against allowing her emotions (presumably a feminine weakness) to interfere with her rationality, but her introduction of compassion into the cold calculus of criminal justice is presented by the film as an unambiguous asset and the key to both Raj’s and Raghunath’s redemption. This is possibly Awara’s most radical idea, the notion that criminals should be treated as redeemable individuals with the potential to rehabilitate, rather than as the mechanical sum of their breeding and past bad actions,” Banerjee writes.

Raj Kapoor in a song sequence in 'Shree 420' (1955).

“Like Shree 420 (1955), the well-crafted Awara explores a wide range of social themes. Dominated by ruminations on the question of nature versus nurture, it also addresses classism, injustice toward women, and other weighty issues. But where Shree 420 clothes its missive to post-partition India in a truly entertaining package, watching Awara it is difficult to shake the feeling of being educated. Everything, and everyone, is deadly serious. The tone is set by Prithviraj’s clenched jaw and furrowed brow and carried through Raj’s dour sarcasm, a bitterness that sours even the film’s tender moments,” Banerjee adds.

Director Mehboob Khan’s Roti (1942) is considered to be a benchmark of the socialist frames he created. The film is a sharp critique of capitalism, and opens with shots of people suffering in hunger, scrambling for bread, in garbage bins, fighting with dogs, begging, dying, juxtaposed with a didactic voiceover, that ironically cries “mar jaa, mar jaa/ die, die”. The compositions of the opening sequence remind of Soviet iconography as well as Expressionism (perhaps, a bit of early Hollywood, too), and it clearly influenced early films of Raj Kapoor and others.

Raj Kapoor with Nargis and Dilip Kumar (right) in a still from 'Andaz' (1949).

Mehboob Khan’s style is layered and complex. Andaz (1949), which stars Raj Kapoor, is also about the new nation, the conflicts and contestations, albeit narrated through the woman’s question. Kishore Valicha writing on Andaz (as quoted in Paul Willemen’s essay), suggests that Andaz represented a particular idea of being modern, being sophisticated, or urbane, rather becoming “new” India. Such shifts are portrayed through characterisation, practices, and situations. The female protagonist, played by Nargis, for example, rides horses, plays the piano, and appears to be somewhat “frivolous”, since she befriends men, and speaks to them freely. This itself is the crux of the problem in the film. However, Willemen points out that the film presents a larger crisis, that is, the weakening of the feudal order, and the rise of a new class, portrayed through Dilip (Dilip Kumar). So even when it appears to be a love triangle between some of the powerful stars of the period, namely Nargis, Raj Kapoor, and Dilip Kumar, the film in reality deals with the question of social change. It tackles India’s multiple processes of modernisation, and the function of women. Hence, Raj Kapoor plays the aristocrat, while Dilip Kumar characterises the new capitalist. Dilip for example, says he hails from Africa, a place where many Indians immigrated for employment and rehabilitation. Seemingly he appears to arrive from ‘nowhere’, and represents the bourgeoisie who are rising or a person without any aristocratic background entering into this field of capitalist growth. In short, Andaz, presents a new emergent world, and the ushering in of the capitalist promise. However, the complexities are played out through personal issues, in which the modern girl (in pants) bears the burden of social change. Andaz, however, ends in a troublesome way.

Unlike his peers Dilip Kumar (was selective and did one film a year) and Dev Anand (worked under his home banner Navketan Films), Raj Kapoor went on to become a director-producer early in his career. When a film flopped – Aah (1953), for example – it was Raj Kapoor who had to work double time, starring in films of dubious merit such as Kanhaiya (1959), Do Ustad (1959) and Chhaliya (1960) to make up for the losses. It is this double burden – acting and being a producer and studio owner – which characterise Raj Kapoor’s output as an actor.

Raj Kapoor is best known for his Chaplinesque Raju, a character he created who became a sort of everyman’s orphan/tramp. From early beginnings in Awara (1951), where the character is not yet fully defined, he explored the Indianisation of Chaplin. By the time he made Shree 420 (1955), Raju was fully fledged. He then made Jis Desh Men Ganga Behti Hain (1960), in which Raju was a well-known image, and Mera Naam Joker a decade later, which finally was the disastrous apotheosis of Raju. Somewhere in between was Jagte Raho (1956) where Sambhu Mira built on the ingredients of Raju, but made him a lonely, almost tragic, figure. Shot in dark lens, in Jagte Raho, the tramp (a poor villager who comes to the city and a night in his life) is the eternal migrant, who, like a whole nation, is awaiting for a new dawn. Two years later, Raj Kapoor would be seen in Phir Subah Hogi. If Kapoor's rustic character is alienated from the cityfolks in the former film, in the latter, his character's guilt would alienate him from his own.

Raj Kapoor in the song 'Mera joota hai Japani...'

Almost all of Raj Kapoor’s films can be closely read from the viewpoint of the nation and the state. A simple song lyric, “Mera joota hain Japani, ye patloon Englishtani, sir pe laal topi Roosi, phir bhi dil hain Hindustani”, speaks volumes about Kapoor’s ideals and his love for the country, so much so that he went on to construct an imagined nation. In her book, The Cinematic ImagiNation, Jyotika Virdi writes, “To say that Hindi cinema is a national cinema at once begs several questions: What is a nation? What are the criteria by which we designate a cinema “national”? We also need to ask what the basis is for designating Hindi cinema a national cinema, or the “national-popular.” And in a multilingual nation like India, film raises questions about the role of language in the nation’s formation. The popularity of Hindi cinema has to do with its unique regime of narrative and theme, tradition of spectacle, and its aesthetics and stylistic conventions. It is a cinematic apparatus that draws upon the literary and the nonliterary creative imagination, both contemporary and historical. This imagination is also intrinsically tied to – in fact constructs – the nation, a political formation that arrived in India at about the same time as film technology.”

This, combined with his portrayal of women, most of whom were made the driving force of his movies as Jis Desh Men Ganga Behti Hai, Bobby, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Ram Teri Ganga Maili (RTGM), and Henna, reflected his imagined nation on the cusp of modernity, embracing the modern but still at odds with the traditional. His Prem Rog (on widow remarriage) and RTGM (critique of the commodification of women) called a patriarchal society into question, in particular the social (especially upper caste/Brahmanical) customs that were oppressive towards women and widows. In Mera Naam Joker, Raju falls in love with Marina (Kseniya Ryabinkina), a trapeze artist from Russia. In doing so, he brings together pathos that separates and unites the two countries. This idea of the imagined nation coupled with romance is, perhaps, best witnessed in Kapoor’s final film, Henna, which is among the first popular films to openly acknowledge the birth of two nations from one. Henna harks back to the primary moment of the Indian nation, arbitrarily divided by and contained within imaginary “boundary” lines. In lieu of veiled references to the “enemy” across the border, the film candidly refers to the twin nation, Pakistan. Henna was, as mentioned, Raj Kapoor’s grand finale, completed by his son Randhir Kapoor after his father’s sudden death. The film, pointing to a fault line in the imagined nation, is an appeal for unity and Hindu-Muslim amity within the nation and, also ostensibly, an anti-war film, calling for peace between India and Pakistan.

Hindi cinema, like the nation, has come a long way since. Socialism has given way to capitalism – and the greed and corruption of capitalism is what Raj Kapoor fought against in and with his early cinema. The crisis in Bollywood or Hindi cinema today reflects the bigger crisis in the Indian society today. The questions of today have answers in our past, in our cinema of the past. We just need to look back. Into the golden age of cinema. Bollywood should take a leaf from Raj Kapoor’s cinema and understand what national cinema truly means — to not leave behind the invisibilised, marginalised, disenfranchised and the unaccounted for, in our nation's growth narrative. And to show an alternative than what our social realities can afford us with.

Experience make memories. Memories make stories. Storytelling is a historical act. Raj Kapoor, the Greatest Showman, has shown how cinema about the nation can be made, by amping up the polyphony in the postcolony and upholding the provincial man, and through his films he lived the Aristotelian maxim: “hope is the dream of a waking man”.