Even after 50 years, Sholay remains a lasting reminder of unity, shared memories and the joy of cinema, notes Mohammad Asim Siddiqui.
I watched Sholay at the Kumar Talkies in Bareilly, a cinema hall more famous for its crisp and hot samosas than its seats, screen or ambience, when the film had already become a big hit and run for many weeks in Prabha Talkies, then the best cinema hall in the city.
However, even though the film had completed a silver jubilee, I could only get a seat in the first row from the front, uncomfortably close to the screen.
Thakur's nail-studded shoes hitting Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan) in the climax of the film almost appeared to hit the spectators in the front row who had to take an evasive action.
As a 12 year old, it was my first experience to see a film in a cinema hall all alone, only because my maternal uncle had bought the ticket, seated me in the hall and left to pick me up three hours later.
Engrossed in the film, I started repeating the dialogues of the film in the cinema hall before the person sitting beside me chided me to let him watch the film in peace if I had already watched the film.
I had not, but there was such a feel of familiarity about each scene of the film because I had already memorised each line of the film when its LP records played all the time in a town fare in Tilhar, a small town in Shahjahanpur, where I studied and rehearsed dialogues of the film with my classmates, most of them coming from different villages of the town.
Mughal-e Azam was the only other film whose dialogues were remembered by the audience of an earlier generation.
However, unlike Mughal-e Azam's chaste Urdu register and the film's literary dialogues, Sholay's use of everyday Hindustani, with a pleasing touch of Awadhi in Gabbar Singh's lines, made it easy for everyone to remember the lines of all its characters, major or minor.
It is difficult to imagine the present-day audience reciting Akbar's or Saleem's lines from Mughal-e Azam, but 'Kitne aadmi thay?' or 'Arrey O Saambha' still sounds familiar to any film buff of the present generation.
Sholay's dialogues have been used in songs, advertisements, memes and comedy and chat shows.
'Gabbar Singh ye kah kar gaya jo dar gaya vo mar gaya' is part of a song. 'Gabbar ki pasand' was used in an advertisement for biscuits.
'Wasn't Gabbar a good physician who prescribed a 'goli' (tablet) of blood pressure to Kalia for eating too much salt' became an interesting meme.
The film's memory has been kept alive by a commentary on the film which has appeared in serious books and in everyday situations by people with some eye for theatre, melodrama and comedy.
Sholay's lines have initiated new speech acts. 'Kitne aadmi thay?' is no longer a threatening question now but has become a self-indulgent utterance for one's entertainment.
'Itna sannata kyon hai Bhai' is no longer an expression of surprise; it can also function as a mockery of a situation.
A lot has changed in five decades since Sholay's first release on August 15, 1975.
The joy of watching films in single screen theatres and the festive mood associated with that has been replaced by multiplexes enforcing a disciplinary regimen on the audience.
The regular four shows of a film have been converted into as many as can be squeezed in 24 hours.
The immersion into the world of films is constantly jolted by the ringing of mobile phones and film spectators' irritating chats on their phones inside cinema halls.
The 'dialoguebaazi', a feature of a lot of 1970s films, often gives way to characters giving rest to their vocal cords.
There is probably less melodrama in today's films compared to the films of earlier decades.
However, a disturbing tendency in many films today is the use of the medium for a divisive ideology.
From The Kashmir Files, The Kerala Story to many films pretending to present history and truth, the medium of cinema has never been used so blatantly to parade a biased, one-sided and dangerous view of events, incidents and people.
When a significant part of the Indian population votes for a political party, 'it makes business sense for film producers', as film critic Anuj Kumar writes, 'to give their political thoughts and social fears a cultural context'.
In this respect Sholay stands out not only for providing wholesome entertainment to generations of cine-goers but also for displaying an inclusive vision of society.
Sholay appears to bind people of different classes and communities without making any conscious effort.
It shows a world of admirable communal harmony and shared values.
Ramgarh in Sholay is not simply a village but a microcosm of rural India in terms of its cultural and religious diversity.
The village mosque is respected by everyone in the village and the mellifluous azaan in the film, often referred to as 'Sholay wali azaan' by many, evokes a gesture of respect among the villagers.
Though for the major part of the film the villagers rally around Thakur Baldev Singh (Sanjeev Kumar) who owns a big haveli and is a former policeman, the most important moral authority in the film is vested in Imam Saheb (A K Hangal), a minor character in the film.
Imam Saheb may appear a caricature to some, but he has an important role in the film, a case of a minor character communicating an important message of the film despite his supposedly token presence in the film.
Despite being blind, frail and poor, his famous line 'An honourable death is preferable to a life of dishonour', uttered at a moment of his personal tragedy, galvanises the whole village in favour of Jai (Amitabh Bachchan) and Veeru (Dharmendra) when the villagers had almost handed them over to Gabbar Singh.
His moral courage turns him into a Gandhi-like figure in the film. In my recent book Muslim Identity in Hindi Cinema: Poetics and Politics of Genre and Representation (Routledge 2025) (external link), I have written that Imam Saheb is 'an example of a Muslim who is rooted in the soil of the land, a native of Ramgarh for generations'.
Sholay stays clear of 'son of the soil' rhetoric. The only outsiders in Ramgarh are the dacoits led by Gabbar Singh.
The village accepts the hierarchy of age, professional status and class, but not any division on the basis of religion.
This is an important message from Sholay fifty years later.
Mohammad Asim Siddiqui is Professor in the Department of English at Aligarh Muslim University. He is the author of Muslim Identity in Hindi Cinema: Poetics and Politics of Genre and Representation(Routledge 2025).
Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff
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