Asian Education on Film, Episode Seven

Lagaan - Once Upon a Time in India (Ashutosh Gowariker, India, 2001)

In the previous episode, I discussed the baseball film Kano, based on the real story of a 1930s Taiwanese high school baseball team. That film reflects a fashionable nostalgia for Japanese colonial rule that helps reinforce the image of Taiwan today as a multicultural Asian society. This time, I want to look at another film that deals with the colonial origins of a massively popular Asian sport, and it’s one closely related to baseball: cricket. This is Lagaan, the 2001 Indian film starring Bollywood superstar, Amir Khan. In stark contrast to Kano, this makes no pretence at historical authenticity; it’s a rollicking fantasy about how the Indians came to learn cricket from the British and then beat them at their own game. Also unlike Kano, while Lagaan deals with themes of colonialism and of cultural and religious diversity, it is anything but nostalgic; on the contrary, it is all about anti-colonial defiance.

But is Lagaan about education? Why include it in this series looking at ‘Asian Education on Film’? Well, one reason is simply that I love this film: it's a gloriously over the top melodrama, in the all-singing, all-dancing Bollywood style. It’s also very funny: on one level, it’s a sort of parody of a nationalistic, anti-colonial propaganda film. It’s glorious entertainment, and was both enormously popular and critically acclaimed when it was first released.

Alongside its entertainment value, though, there’s also a more serious aspect to Lagaan which explains my decision to include it here. The film was released in 2001, in the midst of the Hindu nationalist BJP’s first spell in national power. Although that earlier BJP regime seems moderate by the standards of Narendra Modi’s government today, it sparked alarm in many quarters through its efforts to challenge or undermine the secular basis of India’s post-colonial constitutional settlement. It did that not least through reforms to the curricula and textbooks issued by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), based in Delhi. Those reforms sought to promote a Hindu nationalist narrative of the Indian past, ignoring or denigrating the historical role not just of the British, but also - and in particular - of Muslims and their contribution to Indian culture and society.

Lagaan can be seen in part as an attempt by Bollywood to defend or reassert the secular, inclusive vision of India that the BJP was attacking. Bollywood itself has always been a multi-faith, multicultural enterprise; many of its most prominent stars - including the star of this film, Amir Khan - have been Muslim. Besides Khan, this film involved Bollywood royalty: Amitabh Bachchan, perhaps Indian cinema’s biggest star, provided the voiceover or narrative. This, then, is Bollywood itself in educational mode, using the power of cinema to deliver a form of civic instruction to Indian audiences. And doing it brilliantly through a romantic fantasy of the origins of the game of cricket that, in truth, does unite Indians of all faiths and classes.

A simple summary of the rules of cricket is available here.

Lagaan can be viewed here:

Further reading:

Ramchandra Guha. 2016. A Corner of a Foreign Field: the Indian History of a British Sport. Gurgaon: Penguin India (second edition).

Chris England. 2002. Balham to Bollywood. London: Hodder and Stoughton