Pandurang Sitaram Talageri — A Tribute to My Pioneering Uncle

 

Pandurang Sitaram Talageri — A Tribute to My Pioneering Uncle

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

A few days ago, I wrote an article "Casteist Brahmin Supporters of the AIT on the Internet" in which I had occasion to refer to a distant uncle, Venkatarao Talageri, who won the National Award for Best Actor for the year 1971 for his character role in the Kannada film "Vamsha Vriksha". This suddenly made me conscious today that I am a writer of blogs which I am assuming can (theoretically at least) remain on the internet for posterity. And that while it is my duty to write on different topics (history, religion, politics, music, etc.) to disseminate information or to set the records straight, it is also my personal duty to my ancestors to see to it that I set the records straight in any case where I feel that an ancestor of mine has not been given his dues, regardless of how many people read it or even want to read about it.

So just for the record, I am writing on my eldest paternal uncle, Pandurang Sitaram Talageri, who was a pioneer in the Indian film industry. I was just going through a monumental work, "Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema" by Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen (British Film Institute, 1994; Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1998), and had noticed that it included entries on a very large number of people who played a role in the Indian Film Industry, when I thought of checking up whether it included the name of my uncle, who was an early pioneer in this industry. I found that it did not. So I decided it was my duty to write a note on his role in the early history of this industry.

 

Pandurang S. Talageri was an engineer by profession (like his father, i.e. my grandfather), but his real interests lay in the world of creative arts. From the very beginning of the full length feature film era inaugurated by Dadasaheb Phalke with his silent film, Raja Harishchandra, in 1913, he became associated with the Film Industry. In fact, his role as one of the early pioneers of the Silent Film Industry is recorded in many individual books written on the history of Indian Cinema such as Firoze Rangoonwala's books (Seventy-five Years of Indian Cinema and/or Indian Cinema Past and Present): unfortunately I could not locate the reference at the moment. However, his role is referred to by none other than the most celebrated star of Marathi literature, who was also a star of the Marathi Film Industry, P.L. Deshpande (popularly known as PuLa). In his book "Ek Śūnya Mī" (Mauj Prakashan, 2001), Deshpande refers on page 178 to the earliest pioneers of the silent film industry and names four of the earliest pioneers together (p.178): Dadasaheb Phalke, Dadasaheb Torane, Nanasaheb Sarpotdar and Pandurangrao Talageri.

While he worked with the other pioneers in the earlier days, his first full length silent feature film with himself as the sole director was Raktāçā Sūḍ in 1929, followed by Raktāçā Rājmukuṭ and Birth of Shivaji (both in 1930). After the era of talkies commenced in 1932, the first talkie solely directed by him was Marāṭhyācī Mulgī (1938) followed by Devayānī  (1940), both in Marathi.

Although he directed only three silent films and two Marathi talkies as the sole director (he was also associated with Hindi films, though I have not found the actual details of this work in Hindi: I am indebted for the above information on the Marathi films to the Compendium Volume Citrasampadā  published by the Government of Maharashtra and the Jāgatik Marāṭhī Pariṣad at the Nehru Center, Worli Mumbai, 14-20 August 1989,to celebrate 75 years of the Indian Film Industry), his close association with the Film Industry continued till his last days (1956, two years before I was born).

While his early pioneering contribution to (or at least role in) the Indian Film Industry is known to few, his reputation within our small community is established by the Konkani drama Citrāpur Vaibhav based on the dramatization of the story (first conceived by Annaji Surkund) of the establishment of the Chitrapur Math at Shirali (on the coast of Karnataka) in 1708 AD. This drama was written in 1949, and is regularly staged in our community on special occasions to this day. His other Konkani dramas which became very popular at the time (though they are not extant today) were Vachanmukta, Sa Varsaa Nantara, Pavitra Paapa, Pravaasaa Akheru,  (and a Marathi drama Naṭīçā Nakhrā).

 

His active association with films continued till the late forties at least. At the time, before Partition, Lahore was an important center of the Indian Film Industry, and, at the time the Partition of the country was announced, he was in Lahore in connection with some film activity. It was not certain till the last minute whether Lahore would be given to Pakistan, but when the possibility became almost a certainty, my father, Gangadhar S. Talageri, the Strong Man (body builder and sportsman) of the family, then only 21 years old, was immediately dispatched to Lahore to get his eldest brother back safely. As my father landed in chaos-struck Lahore and was on his way to the usual location of his brother in the city, he actually came across his brother on the way racing to the railway station along with a few other Hindu colleagues to escape the massacres which were already commencing in Lahore, and he received a sound firing from his elder brother for being so rash as to enter Lahore at a time when everyone was fleeing it. Fortunately, although they apparently witnessed many chilling sights and had a narrow escape or two, they managed to somehow reach back to Bombay in safety.

Unfortunately my uncle, PS Talageri, did not live long after this Great Escape. He contracted cancer a year or two later, and died in 1956 after many years of pain and suffering. Only Citrāpur Vaibhav remains as testimony to his memory as a great pioneering writer and film director.

 

[On this subject, my grandfather, Sitaram Keshav Talageri, was the honorary Architect-Engineer who supervised the entire construction of the Saraswat Cooperative Housing Society, Bombay, in 1915-16, the first CHS in the whole of Asia.

Another achievement of his, which was unknown to us, but was brought to my notice unexpectedly by two friends in our society (Sanjay and Rajesh Upponi) who discovered it on the internet, is that he was the architect who signed the agreement (with the Bombay Parsi Panchayat) on behalf of the Bombay Municipal Corporation in 1919 for the lease and development of the plot on Malabar Hill in South Mumbai  which is today one of the important tourist attractions in Mumbai, known as the "Hanging Gardens", or the Phirozeshah Mehta and the Kamla Nehru Udyans.

My father (1926-2002) was extremely proud of his father and his eldest brother, and I know he would have been happy to read this article].

 

Ghar-Wapasi (Reconversion to Hinduism) or Harakiri?

 

 

Ghar-Wapasi (Reconversion to Hinduism) or Harakiri?

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Hindu society has been at the brunt of Conversion or Proselytization since over 1400 years ago, with the first arrival of Islam on its borders and shores. Millions of people were converted to Islam forcibly during the course of the centuries. Christianity entered India more or less at the same time, with the arrival of Syrian Orthodox Christian refugees from West Asia, and actual Evangelistic Christianity came to India only with the Portuguese and the European colonial powers (though I stand open to correction about whether or not there were Evangelist attacks on Hindu society before the arrival of the Portuguese). Nevertheless the very ideology of Christianity which demands conversion of "heathens" was in the consciousness of many of the much earlier Christian refugees and made them naturally receptive to the preaching of the later Portuguese Evangelists, Crusaders and Inquisitionist elements. While large scale conversion to Islam became a trickle (to be replaced by the equally or more effective tactics of population-explosion and infiltration from neighboring countries), Christian Evangelist conversion in India has been shooting up since India became "independent": Take the upward changes in the comparative figures of the percentage of the Christian population in the northeastern states from 1951 (i.e. after the British left) to 2011 (some of the states were formed out of Assam at later dates, so the figures start from those dates):

 

STATE	1951	1961	1971	1981	2001	2011
Manipur	11.84	19.49	26.03	29.68	34.04	41.29
Nagaland	46.05	52.98	66.76	80.21	89.96	87.93
Mizoram	–	–	–	83.81	86.97	87.16
Meghalaya	–	35.21	46.98	52.62	70.25	74.59
Arunachal Pradesh	–	–	0.79	4.32	18.72	30.26

 

While the slower rate of childbirth among Christians as compared to other communities has effectively camouflaged the results in respect of the comparative all-India percentage in religious populations, the conversions have been going on at an accelerating pace, and the number of people of all castes and communities that can be seen everywhere (from urban footpaths to mofusil rural hamlets and remote jungles), sporting crosses around their necks and tattooed crucifixes on their bodies, tells the tale effectively. Since 1947, the problem has been escalating with every passing decade. The poison of collaboration with the missionaries, which was part and parcel of Nehruvian Secularism and Leftist anti-nationalism in India, is not over. It is functioning through a more sinister medium: the pseudo-Hindutva of the BJP Parivar which is financially dependent on the same foreign sources as the Evangelists and the Leftists, and which has the added advantage (which the Secularist forces never had) of being able to muffle, or snuff out, the voices of "Hindu" opposition to the conversion of Hindus — or worse, the power (which the Secularist forces never had) to convert "Hindu" opposition into "Hindu" apologism and support for anti-Hindu activities.

Recently, the BJP Parivar made this clear once more by setting up a Commission to decide whether SC (Scheduled Caste) converts to Christianity and Islam should get the same entitlement to reservations as SC (Scheduled Caste) Hindus. With this measure, the floodgates of conversion from Hinduism to Christianity and Islam will be opened wider to the members of the Scheduled Castes among Hindus and this will give an even greater fillip, if any were needed, to the accelerating drain-out from Hinduism. As the whole thing will be portrayed (if at all any explanations are called for by gullible Hindu voters) as a judiciary-imposed measure, the BJP Parivar has no need to fear repercussions from "Hindus".

 

In this context, some concerned Hindus (the emphasis is on the word some, since Hindu society is probably one of the most self-neglecting and self-destructive societies in the world and certainly within India, and most Hindus would prefer to ignore all such issues or to join with the bhakts in deemphasizing their magnitude and importance) have been wondering: "what is the answer to all this? How does Hindu society salvage its depleting numbers?" And one solution which seems to be doing the rounds is "Concentrate on ghar-wapasi or the reconversion of ex-Hindus"! I was asked by some people to make some comments on the subject of ghar-wapasi, and hence this article.

Before going into detail, let me first give my answer to the question in the briefest possible words: "I am a strong advocate of ghar-wapasi in respect of Christians, but not in respect of Muslims except where large sections of ex-Hindu Muslims inside heavily Hindu majority areas can quietly be brought back into the Hindu fold". If any individual ex-Hindu Muslim were to ask my advice on whether he/she should individually reconvert back to Hinduism, my advice would be "No! I respect you and love you for your desire to return back to Hinduism, but my sincere advice to you, born precisely out of that respect and love, is: do not commit harakiri. Hindu society is not worthy of this sacrifice".

Firstly, it has always been correctly pointed out by many people (from both, or all, sides) that a person who reconverts back to Hinduism will face all kinds of problems of community identity within a caste-bound Hindu society, as no-one will be able to point out which caste-group would be able to accept that person into its fold without internal repercussions. I will not however go into this point, strong though it is. It is possible (though I am not in a position to say how much of a possibility it would be) that, with the emergence of class identity as a strong competitor to caste identity in certain sections of modern metropolitan Indian society and the increasing incidence of inter-caste, inter-religious and even inter-racial and international marriages (among these classes), there would be certain classes where reconverted Hindus would be able to find acceptance.

More than acceptance, the problem to an ex-Hindu, or rather, I repeat, to an ex-Hindu Muslim, would be the very serious personal repercussions of reconversion on his/her life and liberty. I know that certain scholars, like Koenraad Elst, have been advocating ghar-wapasi as the only solution to the spiraling demographic problems threatening the future of Hindus. And, before I started devoting serious thought to the subject, I would have been in two minds on whether to agree or not, since there are both pros and cons to reconversion to Hinduism. But, as I said, after giving serious thought to the subject, my answer is "Ghar-wapasi of ex-Hindu Christians (to the extent feasible and possible), a very strong YES. Ghar-wapasi of ex-Hindu  Muslims, a very strong NO".

 

It would be very easy for me to fake a display of my love for Hinduism by advocating reconversion of ex-Hindu Muslims to Hinduism. It has, after all, often been noticed that the attitude of people faking love for Hinduism and concern for its future goes somewhat like this (as a Marathi expression puts it): "Shivaji janmālā  yāvā, paṇ śezaryācyā gharāt". That is: "Shivaji should be born (to fight for Hinduism and save it from its enemies), but in my neighbor's house, (not in mine: in my house let only a future doctor, computer engineer, Machiavellian politician, business tycoon, share market mogul, or green-card holder be born)".

When people like Koenraad Elst advocate ghar-wapasi, it is purely out of their genuine love and concern for Hinduism, which, in prevailing circumstances, seems to leave them with no other feasible solution in sight. If common non-politicized Hindus advocate it, it could be out of a similar love and concern, accompanied by general lack of deep thought on the possible repercussions of reconversion on the life and liberty of the said reconverted. When politicized "Hindus" advocate it, it is that age old syndrome encapsulated in the above Marathi expression: "Shivaji should be born (to fight for Hinduism and save it from its enemies), but in my neighbor's house, (not in mine: in my house let only a future doctor, computer engineer, Machiavellian politician, business tycoon, share market mogul, or green-card holder be born)" With another additional unspoken clause: "(Or even better, in the house of some ex-Hindu. They should reconvert and fight the battle for Hinduism; leaving us free to indulge in jingoistic statements and antics, and to vote our favorite 'Hindutvavadi' politicians to power, cheering them on as they play their cat-and-mouse games with these reconverts)".

Recently, we have had a very prominent example (definitely not the first and very definitely not the last) of the kind of treatment that even a heroic Hindu (Nupur Sharma) daring to show a pro-Hindu attitude gets from everyone, including and most pointedly the mercenary "Hindutvavadi" politicians. Even a Hindu daring to be pro-Hindu in non-electoral contexts gets thrown to the dogs. Can a Muslim who dares to reconvert to Hinduism, and arouse the violent anger and attacks of his ex-coreligionists, expect anything different?

 

No, this is not a hypothetical question. Recently we have had two cases where prominent Muslim individuals reconverted to Hinduism in December 2021:

One was the former chief of the Shia Waqf Board of U.P., Wasim Rizvi, who was reconverted to Hinduism by a Hindu sage Yati Narsinghanand Sarasvati (the priest of Dasna temple in Ghaziabad), and renamed Jitendra Narayan Singh Tyagi. He immediately became the object of death threats and slanderous news items. An article in the Times of India of 8th December by a Hindu, Kumar Shakti Shekhar, opined "No wonder, his polarizing comments have been met with extreme reactions and even threats to life". Not just Muslims, but Hindu Woke-Leftists and Secularists, and even the most powerful among the "Hindutvavadi" leaders and thinkers, find it perfectly natural, inevitable, understandable and excusable that "comments" against Islam by a Muslim who reconverts to Hinduism should make him eligible for "extreme reactions and even threats to life". A Hindu who converts to Islam or Christianity, and makes remarks against Hinduism, on the other hand, is cited approvingly and feted for his "comments", which moreover automatically become tangible evidence of the inherent bad features in Hinduism. Also, a flurry of corruption cases have apparently been foisted on him (I say "apparently" because the omnipotent Woke-leftist media is expectedly reticent on his current status, and there is a conspiracy of silence even on what is happening to him at the moment): when a corrupt politician joins the BJP, all corruption cases melt away into nothingness, when an ex-Hindu Muslim reconverts to Hinduism, he becomes one of the most disgustingly corrupt persons in India. 

The case of another Muslim, Ali Akbar, an eminent film director from Kerala, who reconverted to Hinduism, and took on the name Rama Simhan, is even more telling. Urged by many people, he directed a film "1921 Nadī Se Nadī Tak" depicting the large-scale killings of Hindus in Kerala a hundred years earlier, in 1921, in the events of August 1921 known as the "Moplah Riots" as part of the "Khilafat Movement" , based on the detailed reports of the riots as penned down by K Madhavan Nair and K Gopalan Nair. I wrote a review of the film on 8/8/2022 as soon as I was honored by the privilege of seeing a preview of the film in a private theatre in Mumbai:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-kerala-files-1921-nadi-se-nadi-tak.html

This film was not just a worthy successor to The Kashmir Files by Vivek Agnihotri,  but even (with due apologies to Vivek Agnihotri) surpassed it in many ways in presenting the true history of events in India. As expected, it evoked large-scale condemnation from all Woke-leftist and Secularist scribes in the media and social media, and from every section of the Breaking India Forces, but this time the negative tirade was muted and concealed: caution and strategy (and the experience of The Kashmir Files) dictated that it was unwise to give too much publicity — even negative publicity — to the film.

And it was not even necessary for the Breaking India Forces to trouble themselves: the same authorities who gave so much positive publicity to the The Kashmir Files have joined hands with their alleged critics in completely stonewalling and destroying this film. It is as if it never existed! The makers of some of the science fiction films and serials doing the rounds on Netflix and other such sites at the moment could take a lesson on the occurrence of strange psychic or metaphysical phenomena from these real events.

[One major difference between this film and The Kashmir Files is that this film only seriously depicted the blanked-out portions of India history of a hundred years ago: this film did not bring in a mention about how the present dispensation in India has resulted in a changed and more positive situation for Hindus. But while I would like to say that that is the reason for its abandonment by all and sundry, that would not be a complete answer. The entire political situation in India has changed for the worse for Hindus and Hindu issues, and the more that both the sides join hands in proclaiming that India is going Hindu, the more Hinduism stands in mortal danger. 

Incidentally, The Kashmir Files also gave us that classic apologism for the activities of the BJP Parivar (through the mouth of a Breaking India activist): "Sarkar unki hai to kya hua, System to apni hai"].

There will be an even more Orwellian cloud of silence when (I say when, and not if) the maker of this film gets assassinated. Today it is not only India but the major part of the world, and certainly of the western world, which is under the control of the Orwellian Deep States. Remember the wide range of reactions which shook the world when Ayatollah Khomeini passed the death sentence edict on Salman Rushdie in 1988. All the progressive forces in the world rose to his support. Today, when he has actually been attacked by an Islamic terrorist, it is a changed world. The whole world is now under the control of Woke-leftist ideology and his near-assassination has become non-news. There is effectively an absolute silence even on the subject of his current life status.

 

Without going further into all this, I will just conclude by repeating the advice that I gave earlier to Muslims thinking of reconverting to Hinduism: Your lives are too pure and precious to be committing harakiri for a Hindu society which simply does not care, and simply does not deserve to have noble people sacrificing themselves for it.