BOLLYWOOD film Khuda Gawah celebrates its 30th anniversary this week.
The story of a fearless Afghan tribal leader, who gets trapped in an Indian jail after trying to fulfil a promise to a rival female chief he has fallen for, starred Amitabh Bachchan, Sridevi, Danny Denzongpa, Kiran Kumar and Nagarjuna. The masala film filled with action, unforgettable music, romance, adventure, emotion, powerhouse performances and a spectacular showdown became an iconic classic.
Eastern Eye decided to mark three decades of the film released on May 7 1992, by presenting 30 fun facts about it.
1. The film was originally launched in 1988 with the title Qaidi No. 786. Bachchan’s character name Badshah Khan was also considered for the title.
2. His Badshah Khan looks were initially designed for Subhash Ghai’s shelved film Devaa and the director was reportedly upset on seeing them in Khuda Gawah. The look later inspired Amitabh Bachchan’s appearance in Thugs Of Hindostan (2018), in which he is interestingly called Khudabaksh and also makes his entry on horseback.
3. The Khuda Gawah title was taken from a shelved 1978 Manmohan Desai film of the same name, which was supposed to star Amitabh Bachchan in a double role, but with a completely different story. As a thank you, the film was dedicated to Desai.
4. In the original version, Bachchan was supposed to just do a guest appearance, but it was extended to a full-fledged role.
5. Khuda Gawah was the third big budget Bachchan film in a row Mukul S Anand directed after Agneepath (1990) and Hum (1991). For all three films, he also signed cast members Danny Denzongpa, Deepak Shirke and Shammi.
6. Dimple Kapadia was first choice to play the lead and Madhuri Dixit was also considered, before Sridevi was finalised for the double role.
7. Sridevi would become the first female to play a double role in an Amitabh Bachchan starrer. Both were earlier supposed to play double roles in Ramesh Sippy’s Ram Ki Seeta Shyam Ki Geeta, but that film had got shelved.
8. Dilip Kumar’s niece Shaheen was considered for the film, but ultimately not signed.
9. Sanjay Dutt was originally cast in the film but walked out after shooting some portions because of his disagreements with director Mukul S Anand.
10. Jackie Shroff was approached as Dutt’s replacement but didn’t have spare dates. Chunky Pandey and a young Ajay Devgn were also considered, but the role went to Nagarjuna after Sridevi recommended him.
11. According to reports at the time, an angry Ajay Devgn had accused Sridevi of getting him thrown off the film because he was a newcomer.
12. Actresses Neelam and Farah had been offered Shilpa Shirodkar’s role, but they declined.
13. Over a million people turned out to see Amitabh Bachchan when he arrived in Afghanistan to shoot.
14. Khuda Gawah was only the second major movie after Dharmatma (1975) to have been shot in Afghanistan. Interestingly, Danny Denzongpa played key supporting roles in both.
15. The then Afghan President Najibullah Ahmadzai was a die-hard Bollywood fan and provided full security for the film unit, including the country’s air force. He also honoured the lead stars with Order Of Afghanistan medals before they left.
16. For the indoor shoot, the production team hired 25 large air conditioning units to keep everyone wearing thick woollen costumes cool.
17. A song featuring Shilpa Shirodkar was shot, but later dropped from the final cut, owing to the film’s length.
18. Amitabh Bachchan was gifted a beautiful horse as a token of appreciation by a highly influential man in the Baghlan province. Sadly, he couldn’t take the horse to India.
19. An audio album featuring Amitabh Bachchan’s dialogues from the movie as Badshah Khan was also released.
20. The critically acclaimed drama was the third highest grossing Bollywood film of 1992.
21. It became the most popular Bollywood film ever released in Afghanistan and ran to packed houses in Kabul for 10 weeks.
22. The film was nominated in all the performance categories at the Filmfare Awards, including Best Actor (Amitabh Bachchan), Best Actress (Sridevi), Best Supporting Actress (Shilpa Shirodkar) and Best Villain (Kiran Kumar). The only one to win was Danny Denzongpa for Best Supporting Actor.
23. Further Filmfare award winners were Mukul Anand (Best Director), Bhagat Singh Rathod and Kuldeep Sood (Best Sound), and Tinnu Verma (Best Action).
24. Insaniyat had been shot earlier and released in 1994, but Khuda Gawah was the last film Bachchan had signed before he took a long sabbatical from Bollywood.
25. The movie had already released in Canada on video in May 1992, but due to high public demand premiered at the Robson Square Theatre, Vancouver, in November 1992, and screened every weekend until May 1993.
26. The film was dubbed in Telugu and later inspired a 2007 Pakistani drama series of the same name.
27. The producer Manoj Desai was once president of The Amitabh Bachchan Fan Club and even toyed with the idea of making a Khuda Gawah sequel many years later.
28. The film’s popular number Tu Mujhe Kabool was sampled by DJ Sanj for his song Dil Ki Baatein, which featured the singer Karamel.
29. The music played when Badshah Khan first sees Benazir was recreated for the dramatic scenes between Karthik and Nusrat in Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety.
30. Amitabh Bachchan’s presence in Afghanistan during the making of Khuda Gawah led to some peace and calmness in the troubled nation. This was perhaps a historical first. And today peace is needed more than ever, in Afghanistan as well as the world over.
A seated Jain enlightened teacherAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Ganesha from JavaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
A Chinese silk painting depicting the BuddhaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
ArdhanarishvaraAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Head of a grimacing yakshaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
NagaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
The Bimaran casketAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Hunia Chawla
A still from rehearsal
Them performing liveNajmuddin Saifuddin Qawwal Group
The cast of Marriage Material in key moments from the play, including Avita Jay, Kiran Landa, Omar Malik, Irfan Shamji and Anoushka Deshmukh
Sathnam Sanghera’s 'Marriage Material' adapted into bold new play on conformity
The play Marriage Material at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre is Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s adaptation of Sathnam Sanghera’s novel of the same name, which first came out in 2013.
She is lucky to have Iqbal Khan direct Marriage Material. The play, a co-production with the Birmingham Rep, is set in the late 1960s. Mr and Mrs Bains (played by Jaz Singh Deol and Avita Jay) run a corner shop in Wolverhampton. Their younger daughter, Surinder (Anoushka Deshmukh), is 16, her sister Kamaljit (Kiran Landa) is just a bit older.
They have a neighbour, Patwant Dhanda (Irfan Shamji), who, as we shall soon see, is not a very pleasant man. In fact, he comes across just as racist as Enoch Powell, who represented Wolverhampton South West for the Tories from 1950 to 1974.
It will be recalled this was a time when Sikhs working on the buses were told they couldn’t wear a turban. That was a hard-fought battle that had to be won.
The Bains, meanwhile, simply want to get their girls married off.
Nothing new here, I thought.
What makes the tale different is that the plot twists and turns down the generations. Mr Dhanda, who has the makings of a paedophile, makes a pitch for one of the girls when Mr Bains dies early in the play. “A life with no man in the house is no life,” he informs the newly widowed Mrs Bains.
Mr Dhanda has a wife but she has returned to India so he considers himself to be a free man.
Surinder’s English teacher from school, Miss Flanagan (Celeste Dodwell), who is also head of the fifth form, tells Mrs Bains about her daughter: “I don’t want to embarrass you, but she is bright. Ridiculously bright.”
She adds: “Mrs Bains, I think it would be a pity if Surinder didn’t stay on at school.” The initial response from Mrs Bains is not encouraging: “Too much education makes people’s brains get mixed up, they don’t sleep at night…”
But she is finally persuaded that Surinder should be allowed to stay on for a while longer before being married off.
Mr Bains was very old school. When Surinder confides she would one day like to be “a somebody”, he is amused that “my daughter wants to be a somebody”.
“Like you,” she tells her father.
Mr Bains consoles his daughter: “We will find a somebody for you to marry.”
At the point of a possible marriage, however, Surinder is sweet-talked by chocolate salesman Jim Wilson (Tommy Belshaw) into running away with him. They share a love of literature, and he calls her “Sue Bains”. But the relationship does not end well.
Once she has left, Surinder is written off as “dead” by her family. The story that is circulated is that she was only 16 when she was killed in a car crash. That’s better than to let on that she ran off with a white man.
By the time she is reconciled with her sister towards the end of the play, a great deal has changed. Kamaljit married Tanvir Banga (Omar Malik), a young man who helped out in the Bains’ corner shop. When the two sisters meet again, Tanvir has also died. But he and Kamaljit had a son, Arjan Banga (Jaz Singh Deol doubles up for this role after the death of Mr Bains). He has come home after his father’s death to help his mother who is still running the family corner shop.
Meanwhile, Mr Dhanda’s business has prospered. He now has a son, Ranjit Dhanda (the role is taken by Omar Malik after Tanvir’s death), and he is nearly as unpleasant as his father.
Arjan has an English fiancée, Claire (Celeste Dodwell). In London, Arjan worked as a creative director. But after deciding to stay in Wolverhampton to help his mother, he decides he cannot marry Claire because she is white. In other words, Asians are not free of racism, either. Happily, at the end, the couple are reconciled.
As for Surinder, she parted company with Jim Wilson after realising he was all talk, depended on her for money and had failed to earn a penny from his literary pretensions. She had prospered, though, as a hotel owner and had been transformed in time into a well-groomed businesswoman. After being tracked down by Arjan, she decides to return to her roots in Wolverhampton and help Kamaljit run the family corner shop. Perhaps 50 years had passed during the passage of the play.
Being subjected to racism turned some Asians into racists themselves. The word goreh (white person) is repeatedly spat out with venom. Maybe it is worth remembering the play’s audience isn’t exclusively Asian – white folk are watching as well. And maybe some of the toilet humour ridiculing white people, which always makes me cringe, could be cut out.
In Sanghera’s novel, there is a quote from Enoch Powell’s speech in November 1968: “The West Indian or Asian does not, by being born in England, become an Englishman. In law he becomes a United Kingdom citizen by birth; in fact, he is a west Indian or an Asian still... he will by the very nature of things have lost one country without gaining another, lost one nationality without acquiring a new one. Time is running out against us and them. With the lapse of a generation or so we shall at last have succeeded – to the benefit of nobody – in reproducing ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’ the haunting tragedy of the US.”
In Marriage Material, where the acting is marvellous (apart from Mr Dhanda’s Indian mannerisms and accent being overdone) we do travel across a couple of generations.
There is a scene when Tanvir rejects Mr Dhanda’s vision of creating a little Punjab in Wolverhampton.
Mr Dhanda wants to take over the Bains’ corner shop and is putting pressure on Tanvir to sign the papers. He says: “In this country, money is the path to freedom.”
“Sign, please,” he instructs Tanvir. “We must make sure our children learn to behave nicely, according to our rules.”
He insists: “We maintain our identity so we can be ourselves.”
Tanvir disagrees: “We can be us here. With the goreh.”
Dhanda warns him: “Then we will be inviting chaos.”
Tanvir’s comment is telling: “You sound like Enoch.”
Kamaljit, who is expecting a baby with her husband Tanvir, says: “I would like my child to grow up knowing the history of the Gurus and to read the Granth Sahib. And to love their culture.”
Tanvir tells his wife: “I would like my child to go to the finest schools, to cheer for England in the World Cup and eat Yorkshire pudding on a Sunday.”
Kamaljit sets out a dream that has perhaps come to pass with many third and fourth generation British Asians: “Maybe our child can do both.” Much, much later, in a throwback to the past, we learn of Surinder’s O-level results: “Biology A, Chemistry A, English Language A, English Literature A, French A, History B, Latin A, Mathematics A, Physics A…”
Kamaljit tells her younger sister: “Never mind about the B.”
And that is quintessentially Asian. Their acting is outstanding.
Marriage Material is at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre until June 21, and at the Birmingham Rep from June 25-July 5