Shyam Benegal: Film-maker of the Real India

Shyam Benegal: Film-maker of the Real India

Themes of gender oppression and emancipation of women play a prominent part in Shyam Benegal’s films. In his initial trilogy he shone a harsh light on how women inevitably were the victims of the worst kind of oppression in a patriarchal society. This now became a paramount concern in his later films where women are the primary characters. As a deliberate intellectual and artistic choice, it revealed his sense of social responsibility as well as the evolution of his craft. His intention in this early phase of his career was to use cinema as a mirror to reflect what he saw as the true face of his country. It was also a way to question and critique the ways in which India was shaping up as a nation. Bhumika and Mandi put the question of the role of women in this evolution of national identity in the forefront.

Benegal’s treatment of the subject suggests that the very idea of modernity and progress is at best incomplete and at worst shameful hypocrisy, if it does not take into account how women are systematically oppressed across all levels of Indian society. It was a question of equity, and through these films he questions the idea of equality enshrined in the Constitution in the light of how women were actually treated. Cinema for Benegal was a politically serious affair, and both Bhumika and Mandi are intellectual engagements with very relevant sociological issues. He remained true to his broader approach and placed these issues within the context of intersecting social, economic and political concerns. For Benegal, questions of oppression cannot be understood in a vacuum separated from everything else. It is a matter of how culture has evolved, and culture at any moment is made up of a great number of different factors. His treatment of gender is therefore within the framework of other related factors that make up a cultural background. That he believes this cultural framework as central to India’s identity is quite clear in his films. Whatever idea the audience might have about India and its progress post-Independence, it needed to be analysed and the truth had to be sifted from the lies. Benegal believed that it was his responsibility as an artist to expose what is false or hypocritical in these beliefs.

As a film-maker, Benegal starts a subtle shift away from the stark, realistic aesthetic that he used in his firstthree films. The technique was of minimal interference. The story would progress in a linear way. This would then create the illusion that a story is unfolding in front of us, as it would in real life. In Bhumika, we have repeated flashbacks, and the use of different colour palettes to signify different time frames. He is thus moving away from the realism of his trilogy into something more stylized. This is true for Mandi as well, which on the surface seems a return to a realistic approach in terms of setting, dialogue and a linear plot. However, the story is told in broad comic strokes that sometimes borders on the farcical. Mandi is a more literary work and owes a lot to theatrical comic genres. It wasn’t experimentation for its own sake, but finding out more effective ways to communicate his themes with greater intellectual honesty and insight.

Bhumika is superficially based on the autobiography of Maharashtrian actor, Hansa Wadkar, whose tell-all autobiography Sangtye Aika (loosely ‘You Ask, I tell’) created quite a stir when it was published in 1970. It was a tragic story of exploitation told by a woman who was forced to start working in films while still a child. It recounts with brutal honesty her affairs with multiple men and her determined efforts to have her way in a male dominated industry. It was a struggle that took its toll on her and drove her to alcoholism and an early death when she was only 50 years old. Benegal never meant Bhumika to be a biopic, and critics who lambasted him for deviating from the facts of Hansa Wadkar’s life were missing the point.

For Benegal, Wadkar’s life was a template through which he could explore issues related to the autonomy of women and their curtailed rights in society. He deliberately chose an actor working in the early years of the industry because he found it very interesting to capture the different phases of the first decades of Indian commercial cinema. At the time Benegal had his office in the same place where Jyoti Studios, the oldest studio in Bombay was located. The kind of films he shows in Bhumika were mostly shot there, and there were many of the old props and sets still lying around. It was too good an opportunity to let go. Furthermore, the nascent film industry, its treatment and representation of women, and the extortionate relationship between economics and female bodies were fertile grounds for Benegal to look at issues which were prevalent everywhere.

The protagonist of Bhumika is Usha, played by Smita Patil in her first major role in a Benegal film. In giving her a voice to tell her story, Benegal makes us see the events of the story from her point of view. The central point of the film is made early when we are first introduced to her as she is performing a typical songand- dance routine meant to titillate the audience. She is meant to be an object of desire, and everything from her movements, her clothes, and her expressions is meant to highlight that. Soon after, when one of the dancers hurts herself, the routine is revealed to be a scene being shot in a studio. Benegal points out that the manner in which women are presented in commercial cinema is a fake, constructed image, a role that she has to play according to what is expected of women. The contrast between the smiling, gyrating figure and the individual waiting for her car outside the studio is stark. She is dressed plainly, and looks impatient and irritable. One can see why the profession of acting is something that appealed to Benegal when it came to this subject. The roles women are meant to play in cinema parallel the roles they have to play in society. The title of the film takes on greater significance in this light. This struggle between subordinate roles and desire to assert oneself comprises the primary conflict of the film.

[Niyogi Books has given Fair Observer permission to publish this excerpt from Shyam Benegal: Film-maker of the Real India, Arjun Sengupta, Niyogi Books, 2024.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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