The evolution of the Bollywood villain

Bollywood villains have a way with words, making even the most pedestrian comic book movie dialogue sound like Shakespeare.

“Yahan teri izzat bachane koi nahi ayega!”

“Yahan teri cheekh sunne walah koi nahin!”

“Bula tere bhagwan ko – dekhta hoon kaun ata hai?”

“Kis maai ke laal mein itni himmat hai jo mujhse takrayega?”

The villain is supreme. His terror is omnipresent and everyone is his victim. That’s when one of them  rises and challenges him. We call him the hero. And the story begins. 

The fulcrum of any good story is its villain. He represents the evils of his time. If you were to pick up iconic and game-changer villains of each decade and study them, you don’t have to read the modern history of India. 

In the early 40’s and almost until the time we got independence, the villain used to be the landlord - the zameendar or jaagirdar. Most of the country lived in villages and the populace depended on land for farming. They were mostly unaware and cut-off from rest of the world and therefore, the landlord was a powerful person who could dictate his personal laws. He was the one who would pick up a young virgin girl and rape her because the system and law wasn’t sensitive to women. He would charge tax (lagaan) as per his whims and fancies. His kothi represented the exploitation of the farmer. The victimised, young boys grew up with angst. And it was this angst that made the villain larger than life. The mystery around him, his moustache, his pagdi, his chamchas and his lathi made him an icon of terror. He was filled with joy when a farmer placed his pagdi, the symbolic ijjat, at his feet. He loved the sound of a hunter on the bones of a skinny, starving farmer. He could do all this because he was the owner of the land. And that’s the only commodity that God doesn’t make any more. He was God. If you understand this man, you would know why we Indians have such a fascination for land and gold. We are willing to stop eating fruits, buy new clothes and even look for a cheaper doctor in order to save for that 'Do Beegha Zameen’. 

Then India got independence. A free India needed manufacturing more than farming. The same zameendar now moved to the cities. He owned factories and mills. On the other hand, Nehru brought in a socialist vision. He brought in huge dams and public sectors’ heavy industries. The intermediate beneficiaries were these new factory owners who became hand in glove with corrupt officers and manoeuvred tenders in their favour. The foundations of unprecedented corruption that we see today, were laid in Nehru’s economics. It was his economics that gave birth to corrupt middlemen. This new, rich Indian was called the 'Seth', 'Rai Bahadur', 'Dewan Sahab' or 'Raja Saheb'. The only hurdle to this villain was Nehru-inspired, middle-class, idealistic, socialist and educated youth who were seeking social justice. 

In the 60’s as Indira Gandhi’s new vision gave impetus to urbanisation, we saw a large level migration from villages to cities. As a result, the demand for essential consumer goods increased manifold whereas supplies were scarce. More so due to the government’s license-raj. Social justice took a backseat and unemployment, hoarding, black market and corruption became real issues. A typical young man found himself in a situation where his honest father was dying and he had no money for the surgery. That’s when the chemist sold him drugs at a premium. Behind this black-marketing were the crime lords of the city. The traders, sahukars, middlemen etc. They manipulated this young man and made him do illegal stuff until he rose and destroyed the evil. 

In the middle of the 70’s, Emergency was declared. This was the time when two phenomenon occurred. The big-city-crime-lord gradually moved on to become a smuggler, a gangster or a mafia leader. He had such strong political clout that even ministers and police commissioners were scared of him. Secondly, freedom-born kids became adults. With their own set of ambitions and rebellion, this new generation aspired to be rich. His direct competition was with the gangster. The gangster who illegally annexed properties, who collected haftas, who would kill for a price, who ran satta, matka, gambling and prostitution rackets. He also funded political parties, big politicians, ministers and Bollywood personalities attended his parties. This was also the period when we saw a lot of ‘bade baap ke bete’. Which is why the hero had to face not one, but two villains. The gangster and the gangster’s son. Politics and crime had collaborated. The 'bade baap ka beta’ became the middleman. It was a lethal combination of a father’s power and a son’s ambition. 

While this crime-lord was ruling cities, his counterpart lived in villages and was called 'Daaku' – the dacoit. He became a system by himself. Gabbar Singh wasn’t just a work of fiction. He was real. When two thugs pinned him down, millions cheered with joy. If you see closely, the thakur (zameendar) in the 70's remained just an honorary status. In fact, thakur didn't even have hands, they were taken away by this Daaku. This metaphor wasn’t just a coincidence. Soon, this Daaku would reform as a politician of the 80s.

In the 80’s, a very unique thing happened. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi made a public announcement that only 10% of government funding reached the poor. The balance 90% was siphoned off by government officers and politicians. So the Politician-Police-Babu nexus became the new villain. We saw the advent of a new middle class that had learnt that honesty wouldn’t bear fruits. So it joined corruption. Bofors and numerous other scams and the law’s inability to deal with them gave an exorbitant rise to corruption. It was a conflict between deserving vs undeserving. Talent and merit had no value. It was a period of liberalisation. Joint families were on the verge of breaking up. Nuclear families were on the rise. Money started speaking. People started travelling. Hundreds of channels started beaming. Ghayal and Tezaab are the best examples of how deserving youth had to fight the corrupt for justice. It was meritocracy vs mediocrity. The new villain was incompetent himself. He was a parasite feeding on the corrupt system.  

Judicial processes were in shambles. It was a general belief that one could get away with murder. The new villain was your Lotiya Pathan, Kancha Cheena, Bakhtawar etc. Above law and justice.This gave birth to an unparalleled formula in the history of cinema - personal justice. The hero will eventually walk into assembly and shoot all MLAs. Amitabh Bachchan told me once that the reason he connected with the audience in that period was because almost everyone wanted to kill the politician-police combine and he, as the hero, did exactly that. 

The early 90’s witnessed the advent of regional and caste-based politics. Babri Masjid and the Bombay bomb blasts happened. The villain for a short period was the communal guy - the terrorist. Religion was at the centre. He was from a superior caste, and believed that his caste gave him the reason to be superior to anyone who was not a Thakur. We are talking of a world surrounded with illiteracy and where the rich Thakurs are not only the law, but are above the law. 

Then came Y2K and it changed the fortunes of Indians. It killed the traditional villain. The new emerging villain of the late 90’s and early 2000 wasn’t someone from outside. He was either the hero himself, the girl’s father or old Indian values. He was a plain psychopath of Baazigar or a stalker of Darr. An era represented by SRK, Yash Raj and redefined by Karan Johar and Farhan Akhtar. The hero of this era roamed freely without any social responsibilities. He wasn’t a common man born in Indian reality. He was born in Breach Candy and was foreign-educated. He had a macroscopic idea about India. Cut off from real India, he could fly anywhere to sing a song without the opposition of a villain. There was no Mogambo, Gabbar, Dang, Rai Bahadur, Anna, Bakhtawar or Sher Khan to stop him. They were dead. Because the new ‘Shining India’ aspired to be the next superpower, flooded with credit cards, foreign cars, EMI’s, Gurgaons, malls, flyovers, GAPs & DKNY’s, Louis Vuittons, slut marches, candle vigils, Facebook and Twitter, nightlife, cruises, fashion shows, Page 3 gossips and pop-corn entertainment, art and pulp-fiction. Society accepted corrupt and corruption. Money and success became supreme. The ambitions of the Indian middle class became the new villain. 

Of late, a unique trend is emerging. The pressure of building infrastructure is forcing the government to acquire land from farmers/land owners. This nouveau-riche landowner has no land but he has BMWs, Mercs and a burning desire to have a lifestyle which he couldn’t afford earlier, despite thousands of hectares of land. He has cash now. He is the one who is buying cinema tickets. I have a feeling he is going to determine who the new villain is. He may go to a multiplex, but he would want to see himself as a hero and not some NRI dancing in the Alps. Despite his desire to move up in social hierarchy, he wants to relate to his local problems. No wonder the rehash of south films, or Bhojpuri formulas have suddenly found success. Dabangg, Singham are not flukes. The re-emergence of Salman Khan and Ajay Devgan is no coincidence. Films are going back to local issues. The local villain. The corrupt, exploitative, bhrasht, rich man.The ‘land-owner’. We are back to square one. The old villain is emerging again. Beware!

Vivek Agnihotri is a film-maker, writer and travel junkie. He tweets at @vivekagnihotri