Chak De India! Part exhortation, part exultation — it has just the right amount of zing and energy to work in a stadium, on the street or in a national singing contest. But it is more than a popular song, a motto or a rallying cry. In its form, its content, its multiple uses and its spreading appeal it captures the zeitgeist and holds up a mirror to change, allowing one to compare the past, in terms of concepts, attitudes and states of mind with the present.

We Indians are an emotional people. We are also a musical people, and it is easy to see why film songs, particularly the Hindi film song, the country’s unique contribution to the world, has such a special place in our social life. We use films songs for lullabies and picnic games, to mark festivals and weddings (in the year 2020 there will still probably be a nankhatai band playing ‘Meri pyaari beheniya banegi dulhania’). But above all we use them to express our patriotism, our love and our feelings for the country. From the anti-colonial fervour of the pre-Independence era, to the panegyric lyrics of the war years, to the celebratory songs about India’s natural riches and its spiritual superiority, Bollywood songs have conveyed an idea of the relationship Indians have with India.

‘Chak De India’ pleads for a complete recasting of this relationship. Gone are the melodrama of the past and the brooding Manoj Kumar style of patriotism. There is no anger in this new call, no fear. There is no glorification, nor is there any assertion of greatness. The country is not a goddess or a parent (‘dharti maa’); she is not an ancient land of epic proportions (‘Bharat’/ ‘Hindustan’), a soldier dying in the snow-capped Himalayas, a great heritage to be defended or, if one wants to bring in political slogans, a space for impossible expectations (‘Garibi Hatao’), or for gloating (‘India Shining’). No, the country is more like a buddy, a friend. Someone to urge and encourage, to smile with, to cheer. And it is this stripped-down quality of quiet assurance that seems to pervade the national consciousness — it was certainly in evidence on the field in Johannesburg on Monday night — at the moment.

But ‘Chak De India’ is not just about the things it is not (dread, awe, melodrama, hostility); it is also about the thing it is. ‘Chak de’, a phrase used to denote encouragement in Punjabi, is close in sound to words from other languages. To the English ‘chuck’ for instance (in the hockey fields of suburban Mumbai you can hear the cry, “Chuck it, chuck it, chuck it, men!”); it is also close to the Hindi verb (chakhna) for taste, both resemblances helping to give it a certain onomatopoeic resonance.

In form, its succinctness like the lean frames of today’s athletes evokes the world of sports and concepts such as teamwork, integrity and unity so well brought out in the eponymous film and common both to the sports field and to the building of nationhood. But it also evokes the world of advertising with its own associations of consumerism, cosmopolitanism (enhanced by the mixing of languages), global-ism and contemporariness. Whether it is the subliminal effect of the film’s message or the lyrics of the song (“kuch kariye/ kuch kariye/ nuss nuss meri khaule...”) there is nothing so much the slogan ‘Chak De’ brings to mind as Nike’s ‘just do it’.

A call to action. A farewell to the burdens of the past. Haven’t we been here before? The World Cup victory of 1983 was a prelude to Rajiv Gandhi’s election as prime minister and to the promised dawn of a modern, 21st century India. Rahul Gandhi’s formal elevation within the ranks of the Congress on the day of India’s exciting T20 win against the backdrop of India’s technological and economic advancement seems to be another such moment.

As we have seen before the country’s problems are too intractable for easy optimism. And the glamorous ferment of dance contests, cricketing events and soaring Sensex figures cannot obscure the deprivations of a large number of our people. Yet the fact that a youthful exuberance is muscling through the cobwebs of our tangled past and that the middle-class Indian youth is, according to a much reported study by the Swedish research and consulting firm Kairos Future, the happiest in the world is surely a cause for celebration. The challenge is to both boost and harness this new energy and focus it in a purposeful direction. For opportunities are known to dissipate as quickly as champagne bubbles.

Mumbai-based Shah is the author of ‘Hype, Hypocrisy and Television in Urban India’