On this 77th Republic Day, I choose to salute the nation through something deeply personal – my experience of growing up with Indian cinema, and watching it evolve from myth-making to meaning.
For many in my generation, cinema was not merely entertainment. It was an informal classroom. Long before we learnt to read history critically, we absorbed it from the screen – often unquestioningly.
Freedom, seen through borrowed eyes
One of my earliest and most enduring memories is Attenborough’s Gandhi. For years, that film shaped how I visualised the freedom struggle – dignified, moral, globally acceptable. It was powerful and sincere, yet in hindsight, it also felt like freedom filtered through an outsider’s gaze. It celebrated sacrifice, but softened rage. At the time, I did not know what was missing. I only knew I felt proud.
Closer home, patriotism spoke in a different register. Manoj Kumar’s Upkar, Purab Aur Paschim, Kranti and later Aamir Khan’s 2001 film Lagaan defined nationalism for an entire generation. These films were earnest and unambiguous. The nation was sacred, the soldier selfless, and the message clear.
Songs carried ideology, speeches did the explaining, and doubt rarely entered the frame. I respected that cinema, even as I gradually realised it told me what to feel, not what to question.
Songs that taught us who we were
Telugu cinema offered its own powerful schooling. Patriotic songs – ‘Nenu naa desam…’, ‘Telugu veera levara…’, ‘Janani janma bhoomishcha…’, ‘Punya bhoomi naa desam…’ and many others – were not background music; they were declarations of identity.
Films like Alluri Seetarama Raju turned resistance into collective memory. Patriotism was lyrical, emotional, and instinctive. You did not analyse it; you absorbed it.
From absorption to interrogation
As the decades passed, something began to change – quietly, but decisively. Filmmakers started trusting silence over slogans, and complexity over comfort. The Legend of Bhagat Singh was an early signal, restoring ideology and intellectual depth to a revolutionary often reduced to iconography.
Then came Sardar Udham, who refused spectacle altogether. It asked the viewer to sit with trauma, memory, and colonial brutality – without applause cues. Watching it, I realised how far Indian cinema had travelled from the tidy moral universe of my childhood.
When war films lowered their voice
War films, too, evolved. I grew up on Chetan Anand’s Haqeeqat, based on the events of the 1962 Sino-Indian War, and Border is a 1997 epic war film written, produced, and directed by J. P. Dutta, where bravery was loud, and sacrifice came with a soundtrack.
Today’s films – Uri, Shershaah, Major, The Ghazi Attack – speak a different language. They focus on planning rooms, restraint, intelligence, and consequence. Patriotism here is not volume; it is professionalism. That shift mirrors the nation itself.
Telugu cinema has undergone a similar transformation. Khadgam confronted internal fault lines head-on. Major resisted exaggeration. Even RRR, flamboyant and fictional, does something quietly radical – it reclaims indigenous resistance unapologetically, without seeking validation from colonial narratives. That confidence is not cinematic bravado; it is national maturity.
Audiences grow up, too
What heartens me most is the growing trust between filmmakers and audiences. Today’s cinema is no longer afraid of discomfort, because viewers are no longer passive. As ‘Candid’ Meena observed recently, ‘We are watching movies that we like, and patriotism and love for true art are returning.’
She is right. Indians have always known the difference between celebration and manipulation. We have embraced films across languages, regions, and genres – irrespective of who was behind or on the screen – when the intent was honest.
Equally, we have learnt to recognise when narratives turn divisive, or when a small but vocal cabal attempts to portray India and Hindus through a deliberately distorted lens. Audiences may forgive artistic liberty; they rarely forgive bad faith.
I have lived through Indian cinema’s journey from instructional patriotism to examined patriotism – from songs that told me to love my country, to stories that trust me to understand why that love must be questioned, renewed, and earned.
On this 77th Republic Day, that evolution feels symbolic. A Republic this old does not need constant reassurance. It needs honesty – sometimes lyrical, sometimes unsettling, always sincere. And for the first time in my lifetime, the cinema I grew up with seems ready to offer exactly that.
