The gay community has long seen the Yeh Dosti song from Sholay as being covertly gay. The song is certainly very physical, with Dharmendra climbing on Amitabh Bachchaan’s shoulders while singing marna jeena saath hain, khaana peena sath hain. In today’s parlance, the relationship depicted would be called a bromance. In that era, there were many passionate songs, like Chahoonga Main Tujhe (from Dosti), and the theme song from Yaarana, which were sung by men for men.
Delivering a talk on Queer Desire in Bollywood Cinema at the Alliance Francaise on Friday, Dr Sonali Pathak said that while homosexuality was never a theme in Hindi films of that period, it often found its way into song lyrics. “Song sequences have always tended to be separate from the actual film,” she says. “Sholay is not a gay film, but Yeh Dosti is a gay song.”
After 2000, mainstream Bollywood cinema began to depict homosexuality more openly, with films like Kal Ho Na Ho and Dostana, though gay producer-director Karan Johar took care to set these movies abroad rather than in India. “Many queer people found these films rather offensive and they may reflect Karan Johar’s own closet homophobia,” says Sonali. “But they featured big stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Sair Ali Khan, John Abrahan and Abhishek Bachchan and there’s no denying their impact.”
Featuring clips from Sholay, Dostana, Deepa Mehta’s Fire and the more recent Majaa Maa featuring Madhuri Dixit in a lesbian role, Sonali’s two-hour long lecture linked the depiction of sexuality in films to larger philosophical issues. Quoting French thinkers like Michel Foucault and Simone de Beauvoir, she put forth the idea that sexual identity and gender identity are actually the result of prosecution by heterosexual men. “People are not prosecuted because of their gay identity, but the other way round. The gay identity emerges because they are prosecuted,” she says.
