Yesterday evening the India International Centre hosted a musical performance of Tukaram’s abhangs followed by a screening of Sant Tukaram, a 1936 Marathi film. In 1937, this film became the first Indian film to win an award at the Venice Film Festival. It is a simple yet powerful depiction of the the life of the early seventeenth-century Marathi poet-saint Tukaram.
Dilip Chitre introduced the film by contextualizing it in terms of the social and political situation of 1930s India. This Tukaram is clearly modeled on Mahatma Gandhi. Tukaram has devoted himself to the praise of Pandurang, his chosen deity, even at the expense of his own well-being and the prosperity of his wife and children. Despite, or because of, his piety and simplicity, Tukaram finds himself beset by enemies. A powerful Brahmin in particular persecutes Tukaram and attempts to take credit for his compositions.
Tukaram does not resist persecution. Instead, he submits to the punishments imposed on him by the mighty. The schemes of the persecutors, however, all fail. The mighty, including the great Marathi leader Shivaji, are eventually conquered by Tukaram’s devotion to God, and Pandurang intervenes to protect his followers from harm. As in Gandhian thought, Truth and piety trump worldly power and deceit.
By modeling this Tukaram so clearly on Gandhi, the historical/literary figure of Tukaram comes to be seen as a precedent for Gandhi. Tukaram’s hagiography becomes indistinguishable from Gandhi’s. Hagiographical tropes are notoriously portable. Encounters with the powerful serve to demonstrate the superiority and humility of the saint and to illustrate the contingent nature of political dominance.
In the waning days of the Raj, such a message would have seemed particularly relevant.
Cross posted from 113th Street.
