Life and Works of Satyajit Ray

Suman Sinha

Disclaimer: I am neither a film critic nor a student of film studies nor a student of history. This write up is an attempt to review the life and works of legendary Satyajit Ray in my humble way on his birth centenary after watching all most all of his movies and documentaries and reading a number of different types of articles on him. The present write up is inspired to a great extent by an address of Mr. Utpal Dutta, the veteran actor, director and playwright, on Satyajit Ray in a seminar organized by the Sahitya Akademi, Government of India after the untimely demise of Mr. Ray in 1992.

First of all, Satyajit Ray’s reputation is not limited to as a film director. That a man can be a film maker, designer, painter, writer of note, music composer, song writer, book illustrator and an acknowledged authority on the art and history of painting is inexplicable. Versatility falls short of to describe him. He was a man of conscience and throughout his life, he was always truthful to the society. Through each and every film, he conveyed the message of social responsibility, political consciousness and economical status of our country. His courage and ability to question the authority or to challenge the establishment was of paramount importance in his character. He was an epitome of institutional antithesis or anti-establishment. This question-the-authority nature was manifested in various forms in all of his films.

This began with his very first film ‘Pather Panchali’ (Song of the road, 1955) when he was 34 years old. The highest executive of the Government of India saw it in Calcutta, now Kolkata, and went red in face. Fuming, he asked Mr. Ray whether showing such poverty on celluloid would not bring India to disrepute in the eyes of the world. Mr. Ray’s answer was “if it is not disreputable for you to tolerate such poverty, why should it be disreputable of me to show it?” The answer, needless to say, was a solid slap on the face of power. This cry that films should not present the stark reality of Indian life but must whitewash it, has been heard again and again not only from the politicians and the bureaucrats but also from the capitalists and a section of frustrated film personalities. All these organs of big capital propagandized that Ray’s films do not entertain but make you worry about problems. So, avoid Ray’s films at all cost and watch the ‘mainstream cinema’ where the heroin gets soaking wet in the rain while singing and the hero single-handedly knocks 10 toughs out. Was that or is this real India where there is no inflation, no unemployment, no suffering? Obviously, it is inspired by the ideas of market economy of free capitalist growth which implies surrender of young filmmaker to the mercy of the big capitalists of cinema. Ray was always of the opinion that there can be no free market in the arts and the cultural world. Does a free competition between millionaires and paupers make any sense? This policy, being enforced on the cultural world, results in the forced exit of every serious filmmaker, thus leaving the field clear for an unending supply of trash and rubbish, which are ennobled by a sexy name ‘mainstream cinema’. And who does not know that trash always sells better than classics!

The Government of India was in a hibernation for a long time regarding Ray’s works. They woke up late as usual and discovered one fine morning that there is a genius in Kolkata! The bureaucrats in New Delhi suddenly hastened to confer a Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award of India, upon him, only because the Americans gave him the Oscar. Of course, by that time, Ray was showered with every prize the film world has to offer. But those were merely European prizes which do not count! Oxford University conferred a doctorate on him but again, one has to be a bit learned to realize the importance of Oxon. Even the ‘Legion of Honour’, the highest French order of Merit, was pinned on Ray’s Jacket by the President of Republic of France, the land of arts and cultures, long before the Oscar. But an American award smells sweeter! So, the game of singing Ray’s glory began in great haste in New Delhi when the man was in a state of coma in a Kolkata hospital. And man in coma cannot refuse an award!

It is ironical that USA is the only country that had not shown any of Ray’s important films commercially before his death. The message was very clear – we honour you but your creations are not wanted here. We do not want a trade rival in USA. Equally brazen was the Indian Government’s hypocrisy. It is a shameless bluff that while conferring its highest award on Ray, it has kept Ray’s film on Sikkim under a ban! The Indian Television, controlled mostly by corrupt coterie, showed some of his films after his death but after making arbitrary cuts and censoring dialogues. ‘Teen Kanya’ (Three Daughters, 1961) was reduced to Two Daughters, one story having been totally left out. They cut lines after lines of dialogues in ‘Ghare Baire’ (The Home and the World, 1984), ‘Sadgati’ (The Deliverence, 1981). Please note that ‘Sadgati’ is a film made specifically for the TV and therefore challenging its dialogues constitute an attack jointly on Ray and Munshi Premchand, the writer. What a way of showing respects! Personal adulation for the auteur but neglect for and even opposition to his films is all the Nation has gifted Ray during his lifetime. A golden handshake with the dying Ray will never exonerate it of its sins.

Ray’s films as well as films by various young experimenters need protection from the film mafia of big tycoons who control distribution, production and every other aspects of film making. Here lies the role of the Government. It should take initiative in educating its people rather than considering the film industry only as a source of endless taxation. Given the opportunity to watch serious films for some time, people would reject the gruesome, mindless sex and violence of the commercial ‘mainstream cinema’ and demand more and more socially conscious films.

Poverty, unemployment, lack of opportunity, superstitions, feudalism, religious dogmatism, political violence, proletarian movement, hypocrisy and pretensions of the so-called civilized elite, life of a child in the backdrop of his mother’s extramarital affairs, the pains and aspirations of a lonely wife who is interested in arts, literature and poetry and many such raging social and political issues constitute the oeuvre of Ray’s films.

In ‘Pather Panchali’ (Song of the Road, 1955), Ray’s protagonists suffer from poverty created by man. They are evicted from their home because of a system that condones exploitation, not that the Gods have willed it so. Or take ‘Devi’ (The Goddess, 1960) where a common house wife is shown as the reincarnation of a Goddess until the boy, she loves more than her life, is dying. The revolt against the concept of Gods, as it has been understood in the depths of the Indian country side, reaches fruition in ‘Devi’. ‘Devi’, which finely plots the religious dogmatism, is a revolutionary film in the Indian Context. Ray’s masterpiece ‘Jalshaghar’ (The Music Room, 1958) heralds the death of feudalism and the suicidal excesses of the aristocracy. The history of overturning social relations has been captured in the film. ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi’ (The Chess Players, 1977) is also a revolt against feudalism in a different way, where the Mughal feudals who are so devoid of love for country that they play chess while English imperialists imprison their masters and their country is enslaved. ‘Sadgati’ (The Deliverence, 1981) portrays the Indian proletarian movement perhaps for the first time in Indian cinema. We have been presented with the fact that the working class does not mean the slogan-shouting union man as we have been usually fed with. ‘Sadgati’ is the first Indian film to capture the real Indian worker who is doubly exploited – exploited as a worker and exploited as a lower caste. The Ray of ‘Sadgati’ is certainly a poet of the contemporary world, confronting the elements of class struggle. In his first Calcutta Trilogy ‘Pratidwandi’ (The Adversary, 1970), Ray addresses the burning political issue of unemployment and corruption and shows the audience how an educated middle-class man is caught up in the turmoil of social unrest of 1970s Bengal, leading to an end of his career aspirations and still he fails to compromise with his revolutionary political ideologies. In ‘Ganashatru’ (The Enemy of the People, 1989), Ray declares without any reservation that the individual is always right and the majority always wrong, being aware of the fact that the masses have advanced to a political role in the society. Or take ‘Shakha Prosakha’ (Branches of the Tree, 1990) where Ray flays the immorality of a middle class, wedded to the capitalist ideal of making money. In his last film ‘Agantuk’ (The Stranger, 1991) Ray has exposed the naked truth that religion, which divides the people only, is a by-product of civilization. Ray questions the so-called civilization that is able to wipe out a city by pressing a remote button and simultaneously showers contempt and hatred on the tribal who have not learnt the art of murder. Ray indicts civilization of illusion. Or consider ‘Hirak Rajar Deshe’ (Kingdom of diamonds, 1980) which was his response against Emergency decree declared in 1975. This film is a rebel against all forms of dictatorship, thought-control, illegal arrests and deportations – more relevant now of all times. The dialogues exchanged by the protagonists of the film are rhyming except the teacher, symbolising the fact that while the thoughts of everybody else are bound, the teacher is a free thinker.  The discussion on Ray’s films can thus be extended as each and every film of Ray is open to be viewed from many perspectives. In a recent interview, Sandip Ray, son of Satyajit Ray, stated that, had his father lived in these times, he would have remade the political satire ‘Hirak Rajar Deshe’.

Commemorating Satyajit Ray on his birth centenary by garlanding his bust or statue will remove the contemporaneity of Ray’s ideas from our sight only and relegate him to a museum of ancient statutory. Instead, a proper tribute to Mr. Ray would be to watch his films and make arrangements for his films to be shown all over the country at cheaper rates. The ideas and thoughts, expressed in his films, have never been more relevant than contemporary times.

Suman Sinha
05/05/2021