Yearning for Sholay’s India

Re-release of the iconic movie reminds viewers of the country they have lost

Alok Tiwari

Movie re-runs used to be a thing. No longer. Internet, YouTube and OTTs have made sure that the days when viewers flocked to theatres to watch movies from another era are gone forever. Back in the day, you could see movies only in cinema halls. If you missed one at the time of initial release or want to savour it all over again you had to wait months, sometimes years, for its re-run. Then came the era of VCRs, the VCDs, and DVDs that brought movies home. Now, of course, practically every movie is available on-tap somewhere.

Now re-runs, even with substantial value additions, do not fetch crowds. People literally killed to watch Mughal-e-Azam when it was first released. Its colourised version had a tame run in theatres. Ditto with Hum Dono despite the Dev Anand’s charisma and songs to die for. It is little surprise then, the re-release of even the biggest blockbuster of them all, Sholay, was met with a whimper. The distributors kind of expected this, giving it limited shows in a handful of theatres. But then viewers were slow to warm up to it even when it first came, so there may be hope still.

Well, Sholay- The Final Cut is here, with not just its print but also the original ending restored. It has a few additional scenes too extending the already long movie to nearly three and a half hours. Yet, it is not heavy viewing. Those who come to watch it, meaning people of a certain age, already know every frame and every dialogue. This is hardly a problem. Author Arundhati Roy once wrote a great story needs no surprises. The viewers already know every turn of the plot. Epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata continue to draw us in, not because we want to know what happens next but because their message is eternal.

Sholay may not be an epic on the same scale, but it still stands out as a milestone of Indian filmmaking. Some of its original appeal is diminished because, thanks to more exposure and technology, we now know about different movies it drew “inspiration” from. It also does not appear as larger than life as before because we now watch every movie on super large screens.

It still is a monumental work. Its set is among the most detailed and realistic ever built. Its action sequences are as gripping today as they were then. The innovative camera angles and use of intense colours still impress. It was perhaps the first movie and certainly among only a handful to use landscape as a character, pretty much like the spaghetti westerns it is modelled on. The stony hillocks near Bengaluru may lack the expanse and grandeur of Andalusian desert but still provide a forbidding and unforgiving backdrop for the crime-revenge drama. It was a bold change from earlier dacoit movies that featured Chambal ravines, where the desperadoes actually lived.

Sholay also harks back to times that were, if not innocent, at least simpler. True, it gave us a ruthless killer in the form of Gabbar. But even he was just a killer, not a terrorist. The villains of the time had personal motivations—to make money, to survive. And if they stole or killed, it was towards these ends. They were not raging products of identity politics. Gabbar killed innocent people, but it was to exact revenge or to mark his domain.

Gabbar did not come with a political motivation to snatch a piece of territory, or to declare superiority of his religion, or to right a historical wrong. His men did not enter a village and picked people of only one faith to kill, nor did they kill anyone because they ate something he did not approve of. He was a villain everybody could hate. It is a catharsis for everyone when he is apprehended in the old version of the movie and dies in the new one. Nobody stands up to make excuses for what he did. Troll armies do not fight with each other over his end.

Friendship between Veeru and Jai was called just that, not bromance. Also, you hated or loved with passion. Loyalty and sacrifice counted as virtues. Sholay, like most movies of the time, had things sorted pretty much in black and white. No grey and complex characters there. You could say it played to the gallery but spare a thought for what the gallery of the time wanted. It pushed values we would like our children to grow up with. It wants you to believe criminals can be reformed and widows ought to have a life.

Sholay also promotes communal amity, a no-go area in new India. A K Hangal’s Imam lives with love and honour amid a largely Hindu population. And when in his grief he prods the village to continue fighting, it is taken as a message from a resilient father, not from a Muslim. Sholay reminds us of the time when popular culture prayed at a higher altar. Not that communal divide did not exist then or there was no clash between Hindus and Muslims. But unlike many agenda-driven propaganda movies of today, Sholay did not seek to fan the hatred and exploit that divide. Instead, it sought to bridge it. You do not come out of the theatre baying for someone’s blood. Instead, you come out cleansed from the inside.

Sholay was released when India suffered its first democratic setback in the form of Emergency. Yet, the censors of the time only demanded a less violent ending to the story. Even when being part of an oppressive regime, they did not cut the parts about need to resist the oppression. Their hearts remained in the right place. The India in which all this could happen is hard to find now. The second coming of Sholay reminds us of that.

This column appeared in Lokmat Times on Dec 18, 2025