‘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’.

... contd.