GARAM HAVA (1974).
Director: MS Sathyu
Duration: 146mins.
Language: Hindustani
Garam Hava (1974) is one of those rare movies that gained the status of a classic very soon after its release. It received the National Film Award for the Best Feature Film on National Integration and gained international recognition. Its director, MS Sathyu, holds a place among other progressive filmmakers such as Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal, and Muzaffar Ali. The protagonist, Salim Mirza, played by Balraj Sahni, is now etched permanently in the history of parallel cinema. It has a galaxy of minds behind it— story by Ismat Chugtai, screenplay by Shama Zaidi and dialogue by Kaifi Azmi. It was restored and re-released a decade ago, making it accessible to new generations.
Garam Hava (scorching winds) is a story of the struggle faced by a Muslim family based in Agra due to the Partition of India. The year is 1947, and the film starts by showing Gandhi’s popularity among the masses. The protagonist, Salim Mirza (Balraj Sahni), is a pious man and trusts Mahatma Gandhi as the father of the nation. He shares a haveli with his brother and their mother. Both brothers stay with their wives and children together. But slowly, their relatives flee to Pakistan, fearing the Hindu majoritarianism in the Congress. This fear has been well documented by Abul Kalam Azad in his presidential address in Ramgarh in 1940 and in a famous report (1945) by Tej Bahadur Sapru.
The protagonist, Salim Mirza, is deeply religious and profoundly secular. He is attached to his home. He is the owner of a shoe-making factory and is helped by his elder son. Despite their best efforts, their business faces new challenges every day. They face discrimination in almost every aspect of life. The newly independent India is quite different. Increasing socio-economic hardships compel his elder son to leave India. The film is a story of a divided household, reminiscent of Rahi Masoom Raza’s Adha Gaon (1966).
Salim Mirza is very reluctant to leave his home. His deteriorating economic status causes tension with his wife. Salim Mirza has a doting young daughter, Amina (Gita Siddharth) and a younger son, Sikander (Farooq Shaikh). Jamila (Shaukat Azmi), wife of Salim Mirza, remains concerned about her daughter’s marriage and son’s employment. There was an atmosphere of hate all over Agra, and this, slowly, affects the family. ‘The scorching winds of communalism blow through Agra, threatening to char every green and growing life.’
One day, Salim Mirza’s elderly mother passed away after months of pining for the haveli where she had lived for decades. However, it was the suicide of his daughter (Amina) that broke down Salim Mirza. The final nail in the coffin came when one day, he realised that his erstwhile colleagues and friends avoided him due to his Muslim identity. It was that moment that Salim Mirza lost any hope in the newly Independent India. He decides to leave his homeland along with his wife and son. The film ends with the father and son changing their decision at the last moment. Instead of leaving, they join a protest demanding basic rights from the government. In this way MS Sathyu succeeds in showing that the struggle of Muslims in India is essentially a struggle for pluralism, or living together separately.
What I liked most in the movie is that the Partition is shown as a complex process. The hurried and chaotic process of Partition confused both political elites and common people. The plight of the Mirzas reminded me of the book Qasbas in Colonial Awadh (2004), where Mushirul Hasan shows how Muslim families were awestruck by the rapid political changes happening 1940s onwards. Indian society till the late 1920s, was plural, where Hindus and Muslims were living amicably. This well-established historical fact is still marginal in popular imagination. We are led to believe that Muslims were always separatists, despite historical evidence to the contrary (Joya Chatterji’s Bengal Divided, 1994).
One must remember that India had seen political unity between Hindus and Muslims through historic events like the Lucknow Pact, 1916 and the Bengal Pact, 1923. However, communal forces ultimately undermined the pluralist ideals advocated by the Congress as shown by Mushirul Hasan in his essay Muslim Mass Contacts Campaign (1993). Yet, many Muslims preferred India and stayed back. Garam Hava is the story of those Muslims who preferred India as a matter of choice, not fate.
Crucially, the film addresses how communal violence disproportionally affects women. The plight of Muslim women is shown with utmost sensitivity. The film portrays the struggle of Salim Mirza’s mother, wife and daughter in detail. His mother could never accept moving out of the haveli till her death. His wife had to accept her fate to live without her elder son and her only grandson. His daughter was shattered when her fiancé left for Pakistan due to socio-economic hardships. She eventually takes her own life.
To this day, the discrimination faced by Muslims, in general, and Muslim women, in particular, has not decreased even a bit, as we see from the works of Zoya Hasan (Politics of Inclusion, 2009) and Ghazala Jamil (Muslim Women Speak, 2018).
Today, Garam Hava (1974) enjoys a cult status– and rightly so. The depiction is lively, and Balraj Sahni is at his best. This film made him immortal. The qawwali sung by Aziz Ahmed Warsi on Salim Chisti, the famous Sufi saint of Agra, is a collector’s item. This film is considered a must-watch in the field of film studies and is referred to even in school textbooks.
Today, when the rage of communalism is blowing again, we need more of such films. We need more MS Sathyus who can bring millions of Salim Mirzas on the screen alive. We need filmmakers and artists attuned to the lived experiences of minorities. This is the only way to cure majoritarianism in a democratic society. BR Ambedkar foretold this in his Communal Deadlock and a Way to Solve It (1945). But till then,
aaj ki raat bahut garam hava chalti hai
aaj ki raat na footpath pe neend aayegi
