Many Shades of Identity

My nine-year-old daughter often asks me whether she is British or Indian. Being born in the UK and growing up here, her national identity centres around this country, but often she is reminded about her Indian/ Bengali roots, as was done on 26 January - India's Republic Day. To arrive at an argumentative equilibrium my daughter is told that she is British of Indian origin.

Going by the diplomatic jargon, I too hold the same status so does my wife. But when it comes to description we define ourselves as Indians.

I was born in India and spent three decades of my life there before moving to the UK. So technicalities apart, I consider myself only as an Indian and nothing else. Lord Norman Tebbit, famed or ill famed for Tebbit Test, might not be pleased but that is the reality.

But when my daughter comes up with the same argument, we settle only after attaching an adage i.e. British Indian and not only British.

The moot question though is whether a national identity is important in a globalised set up.

For the sake of argument, we often say that the current phase of globalisation, which is more technological, has produced a global village and being world citizens do we really need a national identity.

Sociological analysts see the ideological demise of nation state with the advent of globalisation. Keynesianism which was the hallmark of nation state in the post war era, has taken a back seat and despite a flurry of  crises caused by the selfish behaviour of the proponents of Neoliberalism, the state has taken a supplementary role, through quantitative easing etc., rather than positioning itself as the leader as was the case during the post-war reconstruction.

When statism was the dominant discourse one could understand the rationale behind the significance of national identities. However, when state as an intellectual idea has taken a back seat and the market force has taken over, even then national identities are quite predominant. Imagine the rise of the Neo-Nazis in Germany or the British National Party in the UK.

Technology they say is a great leveler and it has often obscured national boundaries and geographical contours and yet it couldn't get away with national, ethnic and other identities. When it comes to 15 August or 26 January, I am a proud Indian. I keep on telling my daughter how freedom fighters made India free from the clutches of the British. Similarly, during Durga Puja my Bengaliness takes precedence. Undoubtedly, they all are part of my identity.

Do these forms of identity come into conflict with one another or do they co-exist?

Or is identity too complex a phenomenon and it is not easy to decipher all its shades!

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant. 
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com 
All comments are personal.

Suchitra Sen redefined stardom

In a school exam we were once asked to write an essay on our favourite movie. I had written about Satyajit Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’. I hadn’t seen Ray’s landmark movie then, nor did I have a chance to read the epic novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. The essay book at hand bailed me out then.

Many years later, I had to write the same essay again. This time, however, I was in the look-out for a job. By that time I had watched ‘Sat Paake Bandha’  - a film on a dignified lady’s love for a modest earning professor against the wishes of her ambitious mother - several times. Each time I watched the movie, I wished the marriage between Archana (the role played by Suchitra Sen) and Sukhendu (Soumitra Chatterjee) had survived.

Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’ may have ushered in a new era in the history of Indian films, yet I, as a middle class semi-urban Bengali, couldn’t relate to it. On the other hand, Suchitra Sen’s ‘Sat Pake Bandha’, which fetched her the award of the best actress at the Moscow Film Festival – first by an Indian actress in any foreign film fest, portrayed the emotions and aspirations of the middle class. What made Suchitra Sen unique in the film was the multi-shaded dilemma between the emotions she had for her husband and the aspirations of her mother. And it is this uniqueness which won the hearts and minds of thousands of cine-goers and made her an epitome of romanticism.

It is a well-known fact that Ray wanted to direct ‘Devi Chaudhurani’ – a novel by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee where a charismatic lady led the struggle against the oppression of the British – with Suchitra Sen in the lead role. However, it didn’t materialise as Suchitra Sen didn’t have dates which matched Ray’s schedule. Ray also wanted Suchitra Sen to act exclusively for him (i.e. she wouldn’t act in any other film till the shooting of Devi Chaudhurani’ was over). Suchitra Sen, however, refused the offer, stating that she couldn’t overlook those directors who made her the star that she was.  This only proves that her path to stardom was not guided by intellectual fame alone, and she knew how to pull the right chord to sway popular imagination.

Such was her glamorous screen presence and influence on people’s mind that every young male lover in the 1960s and 1970s desired to see Suchitra Sen in their fiancée. Obviously, the socio-historic context was important. India was a young nation, mired with numerous problems, including poverty, unemployment and the toiling middle class looked at her as a respite in the midst of the struggle that they had to undergo.  Her fans thronged the matinee shows in large numbers only for a rendezvous with their favourite screen idol. 

With Uttam Kumar, Suchitra Sen formed one of the formidable on-screen pairs in the history of Indian cinema. Their on screen presence was epitomised by films like ‘Sare Chuattor’, ‘Harano Sur’ ‘Pathe Holo Deri’ and ‘Saptopadi’, only to name a few of the 30 films they acted together. Yet some believe that Suchitra Sen performed even better in those movies where she wasn’t opposite the thespian. 

Apart from ‘Sat Pake Bandha’, ‘Uttar Falguni’, where she acted in a double role of a courtesan mother and a lawyer daughter, ‘Dwep Jele Jai’, where she played the role of a  nurse hired by a psychiatrist to develop personal relationships with male patients, ‘Bhagaban Shree Krishna Chaitanya’ are some of the films where Suchitra Sen was sophistication and dignity personified. And this sophistication and dignity were also her off-screen hallmarks. In a way, Suchitra Sen changed the way the female actors were seen in the cinema industry, especially in Bengal.

Bharati Devi, Chaya Devi, Kanan Devi, Sandhya Rani, Sumitra Devi - veterans to Suchitra Sen in the film industry, were undoubtedly gifted actors. However, they were submissive in their personalities and their on screen presence was subdued by playing second fiddle to the heroes. This male domination was in a way challenged by Suchitra Sen, when she shared the screen with Uttam Kumar as equal partners. 

In some of the films which she did with Uttam Kumar, her name got precedence in the title cards, posters and banners. And in films like ‘Uttar Falguni’ and ‘Dwip Jele Jai’ it was Suchitra Sen who led the show. It was the same with Gulzar’s ‘Aandhi’, where Suchitra Sen was cast in a character, believed to be profoundly influenced by the persona of Indira Gandhi.

‘Aandhi’ was banned during the emergency, later on when the ban was lifted and the film was screened at Kolkata’s Nandan, we were college students. I remember many of us had thronged to watch ‘Aandhi’, not expecting anything else but only to watch Suchitra Sen on the silver screen. 

Her Hindi accent in the film was pathetic to say the least and that she was aging when the film was shot was evident, yet people thronged to have a feel as to how Suchitra Sen looked like. By that time she had already retired into recluse, which made the cine-goers all the more curious.  

Her feminine charm and emotive force definitely strengthened the idea of feminism, but such was her grace that Suchitra Sen never had to shout out loud to make herself heard. She challenged the patriarchy by her on and off screen presence but probably never defied it. Even after separating from her husband Dibanath Sen, Suchitra Sen took up the responsibility of bringing the body to Kolkata and carrying out his last rites after he died abroad. 

No one knows why she retired into recluse after her last film in 1978, yet it is widely believed that she took to spiritualism. While her illusive retirement retained her image as a star in the hearts and minds of thousands of cine-lovers, it also redefined the idea of stardom and demonstrated that it was not only confined to the screen. 

(A version of this write up was first published in DNA)

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant. 
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com 

All comments are personal.