| | 4 | 1964 184’ b&w Hindi d/s Chetan Anand pc Himalaya Films lyr Kaifi Azmi c Sadanand Sengupta m Madan Mohan lp Balraj Sahni, Dharmendra, Priya Rajvansh, Vijay Anand, Jayant, Indrani Mukherjee, Sanjay Khan, Chand Usmani, Achala Sachdev, Gulab, Sulochana, Sudhir Jagdev, Levy Aaron, Nasreen |
| | 7 | A propaganda film dedicated to Nehru and trading on the resurgence of nationalist sentiment in the wake of the India-China war of 1962 which provides the film’s setting. The war had led to a sobering awareness of India’s military capability and contributed to major schisms about Nehruite notions of non- alignment while accelerating the split in the CPI between Moscow- and Beijing-aligned groups. Made by former Marxists Anand, Sahni et al., the film’s main plot concerns a small platoon of Indian soldiers presumed dead but rescued by Kashmiri gypsies and by Capt. Bahadur Singh (Dharmendra) and his tribal girlfriend (Rajvansh) who die holding the Chinese at bay while their comrades retreat to safety. Rhetorical highlights including the platoon commander (Sahni) excoriating Mao’s Little Red Book which a soldier spears with a bayonet; the commanding officer (Jayant) denouncing the Chinese to documentary footage of Zhou En-Lai landing in Delhi and being given a guard of honour; Kaifi Azmi’s song Kar chale hum fida jaan-o-tan saathiyon (sung by Mohammed Rafi) cut to more documentary shots of Nehru addressing the troops and of the Republic Day parade. Shot on location on the Ladakh border, the film had one other song hit, the soldiers’ qawali Ho ke majboor mujhe usne bulaya hoga (sung by Mohammed Rafi, Bhupendra, Talat Mahmood, Manna Dey and a chorus). |