'''Tiranga'''


aka Tirangaa
1992 168’ col/scope Hindi
d/p Mehul Kumar pc M.K. Pics s K.K. Singh
lyr Santosh Anand c Russi Bilimoria
m Laxmikant Pyarelal
lp Raaj Kumar, Nana Patekar, Varsha
Usgaonkar, Harish, Mamta Kulkarni, Suresh
Oberoi, Sonika Gill, Manohar Singh, Deepak
Shirke, Rakesh Bedi, Alok Nath


Of the many ‘nationalist’ films made since the
late 1980s (cf. Roja, 1992; 1942: A Love Story
and Sainyam, both 1994) this commercial
success is arguably the most bizarre. In order to
overthrow the dreaded anti-national terrorist
leader Pralaynath Gendalswamy (Shirke), the
government of India hires Brigadier Suryadev
Singh (Raaj Kumar), providing him with a
secret commando hideout, secret access to the
Prime Minister (Nath) and legal carte blanche
which includes a police massacre of innocent
people simply in order to enable Singh to
become a convict, a move apparently
necessary for his plans. Singh in turn hires the
renegade cop Shivajirao Wagle (Patekar) and,
after various skirmishes with the bad guys, the
two men invade the villain’s hideout and
scuttle his plan to destabilise the nation with
rocket attacks on Independence day. The
chillingly fascist arguments deployed in other
Patekar-Mehul Kumar collaborations (cf.
Krantiveer, 1994) are here partially undone
by the surreal comic strip quality of the film,
incarnated in Raaj Kumar’s flashy dress and
uniquely rhetorical dialogue style, but
extended into the plot by a plethora of smaller
characters and by the filmmaker’s fascination
with lethal gadgets with flashing lights (as in
campy sci-fi effects). The plot extends into
other areas as the villain’s equally bad son
Rasiknath impregnates Radha, daughter of the
evil Central Minister Jeevanlal Tandel (Singh),
who in turn accuses Sanjiv, son of the fearless
cop Rudrapratap Chouhan (Oberoi), of having
raped her, thus providing extra motivation for
the good guys, as if the filmmakers obscurely
realised that their brand of nationalism was not
by itself up to the task. At least some of the
comic strip effects appear to have been
intentional, such as the character of Khabrilal
(Bedi), a police informer who speaks like a
Doordarshan news reader and whose entry is
always accompanied by the signature tune of
Doordarshan’s news programme.

[[Film]]