Sound-tracking India

It has become the new slogan of India. Cutting across boundaries of language, location and context, it has the force of a new national imperative. Actor Shah Rukh Khan in an interview to this paper in July had expressed the hope that it would become “like a sporting line”, an exuberant call to be used, in his words: “Whenever Sachin is playing. Or perhaps when Dhanraj Pillai is going with the ball... or get Sania Mirza to win the Wimbledon.” Khan appears to have got his wish. A high point of the Indian Idol’s season finale on Sunday night was the singer Sukhwinder belting it out on stage. The song played intermittently throughout the India-Pakistan Twenty20 final on Monday night and seemed to blare from every car stereo in the euphoric hours that followed that decisive last catch by Sreesanth.

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.

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