Kissa Kursi Ka, Sarpatta, Yamagola: A look at movies that took on the Emergency

Birla’s address described the imposition of the Emergency by the Congress government, then led by Indira Gandhi, as a “black chapter” in Indian history, much to the indignation of the Congress leaders who shouted their protest from the Opposition benches. Birla quickly adjourned the proceedings for the day, and MPs from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stepped outside the Parliament to demand an apology from the Congress party for the Emergency.

That wasn't the first Emergency-related attack on the Congress last week. On June 25, Bollywood actor and brand-new BJP Lok Sabha MP, Kangana Ranaut addressed reporters outside the Parliament and said, “The black deeds of those who are raising the Constitution book in Parliament today and shouting and creating drama will be exposed on September 6.” This was not a veiled threat — on the same day, Ranaut shared a post on Instagram about her much-delayed second production, Emergency, now set to be released on September 6, in which she plays Gandhi.

“I had to suffer torture and face hardships to ensure that this film was not made. My film was stopped. I made this film by mortgaging my house and jewellery,” she added. Regardless of which side of history she is on, Ranaut is the latest in the line of filmmakers who have told stories set during the time of the Emergency or have been inspired by the event; and even those who bore the brunt of Gandhi’s wrath for creating characters that bore her likeness.

A few months before the Emergency was imposed, Gulzar’s Aandhi was released on February 14, and while he denied rumours that it was based on Gandhi’s life and career, the physical similarities to Gandhi could not be ignored. Suchitra Sen played Aarti Devi, a politician whose marriage could not withstand her political ambitions; as she aged, she sported a grey streak running through her dark hair, much like Gandhi.

The Opposition commented on the character who was shown smoking and drinking, and as the film gained more notoriety, the parallels to Gandhi only grew. Aandhi was banned within two weeks of the Emergency and was re-released and broadcast on Doordarshan after Gandhi and the Congress lost the general elections in 1977.

That year, another banned, and burned, film was given a new lease of life. Starring Shabana Azmi and Utpal Dutt, Amrit Nahata’s political satire Kissa Kursi Ka was ready for release in April 1975, and immediately found itself in big trouble thanks to its caricature of Sanjay Gandhi and other Congress politicians.

After the Emergency was declared, Sanjay acquired and burned the master print and all other prints of the film — an act that was noted by the Shah Commission in 1977, which looked into the political excess committed by the ruling government during the Emergency. Kissa Kursi Ka was re-shot and broadcast in the following year, along with I S Johar’s Nasbandi, a satire on the government’s compulsory sterilisation programs, which was banned when it was first released in 1977.

Dutt, who worked both in Hindi and Bengali cinema, featured in another important political film even though one could say that it was masquerading as a children’s film. In 1980, he played the Diamond King in Satyajit Ray’s Hirak Rajar Deshe, a sequel to the much-loved Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, a tale of two misfits who are given superpowers by the King of Ghosts so that they may do good. In this offering, Ray uses the duo to challenge the power of the Diamond King who has been using rhyme to brainwash his subjects and reprogram their thoughts.

The Emergency took a backseat after the Angry Young Man era of the early 1970s returned for regular programming and spilt over into the revenge saga offerings of the 1980s and early 1990s. In 2005, the Emergency years became the setting for one of Hindi cinema’s most critically acclaimed films, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi by Sudhir Mishra; it explored the ideological fault lines between intent and action to great effect. Ranaut’s film comes seven years after Indu Sarkar (2017) by Madhur Bhandarkar, who directed her in Fashion (2008). The plot revolves around Indu, a timid woman with a stammer, who finds her voice, both politically as well as literally, when she sets on a path to fight the injustices carried out by the government during the Emergency.

It would be erroneous to believe that the Emergency only had an impact on Hindi-language cinema; a number of films made in Telugu, Malayalam and Tamil have explored the event and its aftermath — some as recent as Pa Ranjith’s Sarpatta Parambarai or Sarpatta (2021), a period sports drama set in 1975, which explores the world of boxing in north Madras in the 1970s.

Before he formed the Telugu Desam Party in 1982, NT Rama Rao starred with Jaya Prada in Yamagola (1977), a fantasy comedy film that echoed many of the political excesses that took place during the Emergency with a touch of humour, making it popular among critics and viewers.

In the 1980s, two Malayalam films looked at the Emergency through a darker lens, one of the police brutalities and custody deaths that had become common occurrences in the period between 1975-77 — Balu Mahendra’s Yathra (1985) and Shaji N Karun’s Piravi (1989). Starring Mammootty and Shobana, Yathra plays out like a love story but digs deep into the violence that was meted out to prisoners during the Emergency years. The film was a critically acclaimed box office hit and received three Kerala State Film Awards. Piravi centres around a father’s desperate search for his son who has become a political prisoner, and his family’s suffering in the light of what they discover. It won a slew of national and international awards including the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in 1989, the Caméra d’Or – Mention d’honneur at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, and the Silver Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival that year.