Goodness! Having read what's wrong with Lagaan, in the March issue of Himal, I was certainly left feeling extremely small for having thoroughly enjoyed a Hindi film after so many years. That is till, I sat back and analysed what exactly it was that had left such a pleasant feeling in my heart.
I am in no way familiar with Bollywood-speak, but I feel fairly certain that the producer and director of Lagaan did not have any aspirations of doing an Ambedkar or Gandhi on the audience and merely meant to provide commercially viable 'entertainment'. And, on my part I would not be completely honest if I did not add, entertainment at its refreshing best. For an industry remarkable for the brashness with which it reduces stalwarts of history like Asoka into obnoxious sex symbols and mutates the magical vyahritis of the Gayatri Mantra into meaningless chants of 'the bold and the beautiful', Lagaan is a seminal piece of work.
Anand, no doubt, has painstakingly researched his rhetoric against Lagaan, but such nitpicking seems more appropriate for the esoteric and academic running down of some 'Theory of Social Reforms' rather than a critical appreciation of art; and that too of one of the most simplistic of genres. Secondly, I too have at times felt dismayed at the 'games' played on the 'backstages' of the world of cricket, but it would be unfair to accuse Khan and Gowriker of trying not just to promote such practices but also of attempting any overt PR of the game. Furthermore, though Anand wants to extend the current trend of debate on historicity to cover its accuracy or inaccuracy in Lagaan, and even though most of Anand's indictments of political incorrectness will hold in the 'court of law', I feel Lagaan like any other work of 'art' deserves the creative license that has been the hallmark of Indian artistic criticism for centuries.
For what after all is the substance of 'art'? Indian thought maintains, it is –