[Dara Singh's birth anniversary today. A little tribute in my latest Mint Lounge column]
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For the longest time, I didn’t know – or care – what his face looked like. All I saw was a pair of eyes rolling theatrically above a monkey snout.
And this despite the fact that I had long heard stories about Dara Singh from my grandmother and her friends: about his legendary prowess as a wrestler, about how handsome, rugged and yet gentlemanly he was when encountered outside a film studio or at the racecourse in 1960s Bombay.
But I was growing up in the mid-1980s, watching Ramanand Sagar’s TV Ramayana, in which Singh, close to sixty at the time, played Hanuman. So all-pervasive was that show’s influence in the single-channel era, as a child one couldn’t picture its actors outside a mythological context. I had watched Subhash Ghai’s Karma and Manmohan Desai’s Mard around the same time – films in which Singh, wearing his own face, had decent-sized parts – but if I ever thought of him, it was as Hanuman; my mind refused to create an image of his real visage.
I am thinking of Dara Singh now for two immediate reasons: one, it’s his birth anniversary this Saturday; and two, I just read a new book about him, Seema Sonik Alimchand’s Deedara a.k.a. Dara Singh! . But there’s another, broader reason too, involving the growing nationalistic discourse we see around us today, and how that discourse has become closely tied to a Hindutva revival. Today the very name “Dara Singh” raises conflicting feelings in me. On one hand, I picture the gentle giant in likable supporting parts in films like Mera Naam Joker and Anand. On the other, there is the link with hardline religiosity – via the unquestioning devotion of Hanuman the ultimate bhakt, precursor of some of today’s tweeting hordes, tearing his chest asunder to reveal an image of his God residing in his heart.
There are also associations with a certain sort of Jat machismo, which I became wary of early in my life, having seen a number of hearty Punjabi relatives: sweetly boisterous people in most everyday contexts but containing a capacity for anger and violence that came to the surface when, for instance, the subject of Partition arose and there were dark murmurings about “the Mohammedans”; or a wave of pride sweeping across a room when an ancient uncle boasted that in 1947 he had helped load three trains with Muslim corpses and send them to Pakistan.
How could one not feel ambivalent about Dara Singh, given that it is from these same admiring relatives that I used to hear stories about this “invincible” man and his undefeated record. One thinks then about the subtexts of those wrestling bouts of the 50s and 60s. In a wonderful fanboy piece about Singh, first published in the Hindustan Times Brunch, Vir Sanghvi noted that the wrestling matches he watched as a boy weren’t real sport so much as carefully scripted morality plays, “a sort of Ram Leela in swimming trunks” – and that Singh was the Indian superhero who was called on to defeat the evil, racist gora. It goes some way towards explaining the roles he would later play, first in B-movies as our Steve Reeves, then in mythologicals.
But this is also why reading the new book was a revelation in some ways. I don’t want to over-stress the merits of Deedara a.k.a. Dara Singh! – it is hagiographical in places; it was written not just with the cooperation and approval of Dara Singh’s family but draws strongly on his memoir Meri Aatmakatha; you don’t want to take everything in it at face value. For instance, the author is tactfully compliant and unquestioning when it comes to such subjects as the validity of Singh’s status as “world champion” in a sport that was never really regulated; she simply gushes on about his many victories over famous opponents like King Kong.
But there are interesting things in the book – among them, a sense of personal growth, which comes through best in the passages that don’t present Singh in the best light. A story about how a young Dara, finding himself in tough straits, tries his hand at petty theft, and even gets a sense of power and fulfilment from it, but repents after one of his victims gets into trouble. The long journey of a man who was once a benevolent paternalist, telling his new bride who wanted to continue her education, “No wife of mine will work”, but who decades later watched with a mix of pride and bemusement as his eldest daughter began working as a flight attendant with an American airline.
Here is the actor who specialized in playing mythological characters, symbols of pride and inspiration for a religion; and yet – I was startled to learn this – Singh was, according to his family, an agnostic who recognized the important role played by religion in Indian society but himself believed that “you have to do things yourself. There is no God up there who will do it for you”. I have a feeling he wouldn’t be pleased about some of the jingoism that passes in the name of religion these days.
Those of us who are proud of having a liberal or progressive sensibility are sometimes too quick to congratulate ourselves: we overlook the ways in which our upbringing and circumstances were conducive to the early seeding of these qualities; and we undervalue the struggles of people who were born in more restrictive, conservative settings, and who had to feel their way around – make mistakes, then introspect – before grasping the real meaning of concepts like equality and freedom of expression. The Dara Singh story is about a man who grew to contain multitudes, which is more inspirational than any narrative about a beefy pehelwan proving Indian superiority by strong-arming international opponents in rigged matches.
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For the longest time, I didn’t know – or care – what his face looked like. All I saw was a pair of eyes rolling theatrically above a monkey snout.
And this despite the fact that I had long heard stories about Dara Singh from my grandmother and her friends: about his legendary prowess as a wrestler, about how handsome, rugged and yet gentlemanly he was when encountered outside a film studio or at the racecourse in 1960s Bombay.
But I was growing up in the mid-1980s, watching Ramanand Sagar’s TV Ramayana, in which Singh, close to sixty at the time, played Hanuman. So all-pervasive was that show’s influence in the single-channel era, as a child one couldn’t picture its actors outside a mythological context. I had watched Subhash Ghai’s Karma and Manmohan Desai’s Mard around the same time – films in which Singh, wearing his own face, had decent-sized parts – but if I ever thought of him, it was as Hanuman; my mind refused to create an image of his real visage.
I am thinking of Dara Singh now for two immediate reasons: one, it’s his birth anniversary this Saturday; and two, I just read a new book about him, Seema Sonik Alimchand’s Deedara a.k.a. Dara Singh! . But there’s another, broader reason too, involving the growing nationalistic discourse we see around us today, and how that discourse has become closely tied to a Hindutva revival. Today the very name “Dara Singh” raises conflicting feelings in me. On one hand, I picture the gentle giant in likable supporting parts in films like Mera Naam Joker and Anand. On the other, there is the link with hardline religiosity – via the unquestioning devotion of Hanuman the ultimate bhakt, precursor of some of today’s tweeting hordes, tearing his chest asunder to reveal an image of his God residing in his heart. There are also associations with a certain sort of Jat machismo, which I became wary of early in my life, having seen a number of hearty Punjabi relatives: sweetly boisterous people in most everyday contexts but containing a capacity for anger and violence that came to the surface when, for instance, the subject of Partition arose and there were dark murmurings about “the Mohammedans”; or a wave of pride sweeping across a room when an ancient uncle boasted that in 1947 he had helped load three trains with Muslim corpses and send them to Pakistan.
How could one not feel ambivalent about Dara Singh, given that it is from these same admiring relatives that I used to hear stories about this “invincible” man and his undefeated record. One thinks then about the subtexts of those wrestling bouts of the 50s and 60s. In a wonderful fanboy piece about Singh, first published in the Hindustan Times Brunch, Vir Sanghvi noted that the wrestling matches he watched as a boy weren’t real sport so much as carefully scripted morality plays, “a sort of Ram Leela in swimming trunks” – and that Singh was the Indian superhero who was called on to defeat the evil, racist gora. It goes some way towards explaining the roles he would later play, first in B-movies as our Steve Reeves, then in mythologicals.
But this is also why reading the new book was a revelation in some ways. I don’t want to over-stress the merits of Deedara a.k.a. Dara Singh! – it is hagiographical in places; it was written not just with the cooperation and approval of Dara Singh’s family but draws strongly on his memoir Meri Aatmakatha; you don’t want to take everything in it at face value. For instance, the author is tactfully compliant and unquestioning when it comes to such subjects as the validity of Singh’s status as “world champion” in a sport that was never really regulated; she simply gushes on about his many victories over famous opponents like King Kong.
But there are interesting things in the book – among them, a sense of personal growth, which comes through best in the passages that don’t present Singh in the best light. A story about how a young Dara, finding himself in tough straits, tries his hand at petty theft, and even gets a sense of power and fulfilment from it, but repents after one of his victims gets into trouble. The long journey of a man who was once a benevolent paternalist, telling his new bride who wanted to continue her education, “No wife of mine will work”, but who decades later watched with a mix of pride and bemusement as his eldest daughter began working as a flight attendant with an American airline.
Here is the actor who specialized in playing mythological characters, symbols of pride and inspiration for a religion; and yet – I was startled to learn this – Singh was, according to his family, an agnostic who recognized the important role played by religion in Indian society but himself believed that “you have to do things yourself. There is no God up there who will do it for you”. I have a feeling he wouldn’t be pleased about some of the jingoism that passes in the name of religion these days. Those of us who are proud of having a liberal or progressive sensibility are sometimes too quick to congratulate ourselves: we overlook the ways in which our upbringing and circumstances were conducive to the early seeding of these qualities; and we undervalue the struggles of people who were born in more restrictive, conservative settings, and who had to feel their way around – make mistakes, then introspect – before grasping the real meaning of concepts like equality and freedom of expression. The Dara Singh story is about a man who grew to contain multitudes, which is more inspirational than any narrative about a beefy pehelwan proving Indian superiority by strong-arming international opponents in rigged matches.
"Those of us who are proud of having a liberal or progressive sensibility are sometimes too quick to congratulate ourselves: we overlook the ways in which our upbringing and circumstances were conducive to the early seeding of these qualities; and we undervalue the struggles of people who were born in more restrictive, conservative settings, and who had to feel their way around – make mistakes, then introspect – before grasping the real meaning of concepts like equality and freedom of expression"
ReplyDeleteTo me, this is the reason why often our debates head nowhere. The implicit assumption in this statement is that the "liberal", "progressive" way is the "right" way. If others have strayed, it is their error. They need to discover the "true" path. We need to empathize with them. Poor chaps. Hope they discover the creed soon!
To me this attitude has implicit conceit built into it, despite the attempt to be kind to people of a different persuasion. What is required is a more genuine appreciation of the fact that there are indeed different ways of looking at the world, different prisms that can be used to interpret things and the "liberal, progressive" prism is but one prism.
Take for instance the buzzword "Equality".
ReplyDeleteThe liberal, progressive view accepts this as an unconditional good. But hang on. There may be perfectly reasonable people who don't accept equality as an unconditionally good thing. They may have very fundamental issues with the notion of equality itself. That's a perfectly valid viewpoint too. Not evil. But just a different take on this "buzzword" - which we are not obliged to regard as sacrosanct.
here may be perfectly reasonable people who don't accept equality as an unconditionally good thing. They may have very fundamental issues with the notion of equality itself.
DeleteOh yes. And *coincidentally* most of these people just happen to be those who have led reasonably privileged lives themselves (in the context of the subject under discussion) and would stand to lose some of those privileges in a more idealistic-utopian world.
Had a feeling you might comment on this thread, Shrikanth. All I'll say is this: on a previous thread, you very matter-of-factly (and, one has to admit, honestly) admitted that you don't have any empathy with the feminist struggle for gender equality. (I may be simplifying your position slightly, but not very much.) Once something like that has been said, I feel it's pointless trying to carry this particular discussion - and other equality-related discussions - forward. We'd be barking at each other from entirely different dimensions.
(And again, as I hope you know, I'm often very wary of the frequent Left-liberal tendency to speak and behave as if the world has already reached some state of utopian perfection - or that it's just around the corner if we try hard enough. But that doesn't preclude being able to see the very real and problematic effects of inequality and injustice.)
DeleteI never said that. I said the feminist prism ignores the several other prisms which explain the difference in gender roles over centuries. The prism of economics. The prism of biology. Sure the prism of "Equality" is a VALID prism. I accept that.
DeleteBut as I said, there are multiple prisms. Each is valid. The feminist prism is valid too. I just gave counterpoints using other prisms in those threads.
And yes, I completely agree that different people value these different prisms differently. Which is why we have something called "Politics".
DeleteAnd I am good with that provided both sides accept and acknowledge that multiple prisms exist though they may find some prisms more attractive than others. I have made the same point while arguing even with conservative friends with whom I often disagree vehemently.
Arnold Kling, the economist, has an interesting theory on this. He believes there are three prisms used in public discourse-
Liberals / Progressives look at every issue using the axis of "Oppressor - Oppressed"
Conservatives look at every issue using the axis of "Civilization - Barbarism"
Libertarians look at every issue using the axis of "Freedom - Coercion".
So on a given issue (let's take abortion or gun control or gay marriage), each of these three parties can make perfectly sound arguments using these three different dimensions. And they may sound totally alien to each other. As they are talking along different dimensions!
"Singh was, according to his family, an agnostic who recognized the important role played by religion in Indian society but himself believed that “you have to do things yourself. There is no God up there who will do it for you”
ReplyDeleteAgain I am not sure if this line can be used to argue he is an agnostic. "You have to do things yourself" is a maxim that is very much a part of most great religions.
The doctrine of "Free Will" is central to Pauline Christianity. THe doctrine of "Karma" determining "Phala" (fruit) is central to most creeds in orthodox Hinduism. It's there in the Gita. It's there in the Upanishadic interpretations be it that of Advaita, Dwaita or Vishishtadwaita.
In fact the different theological schools of Southern India have had very involved debates on this. The role of Free Will is something that became the bone of contention causing the split between Thenkalai and Vadakalai sects within the Sri-Vaishnava tradition in Tamil Nadu in the medieval period.
And yes. All these debates happened within the Vedantic fold. Within an extremely theistic society
In fact in a western context I would argue that "Free Will" was sidelined and not given sufficient importance in the pre-Christian pagan Roman world - a world with no organized religion and yet ridden with superstition and astrological tyranny - a world that downplayed the role of Free will.
ReplyDeleteChristianity was central to the promotion of the idea of Free Will in the West. Without CHristianity I doubt if you'd have had either the Renaissance or for that matter the 18th century Enlightenment.