The Dev Debut:
As a tribute to Dev Anand on his birth centenary, a flashback to his very first film.
Although it is best known as the film in which Dev Anand made his debut as an actor, Hum Ek Hain had many other firsts to its credit—it was P.L. Santoshi’s first film as director; Rehman, Rehana and Kamala Kotnis were also introduced with this film.
The secular influence of Hum Ek Hain carried on through Bollywood over the years reaching its zenith with Manmohan Desai’s Amar Akbar Anthony (1977), and finding echoes in the recent The Great Indian Family (Vijay Krishna Acharya, 2023). Made just before India’s Independence, the film’s message of unity and communal harmony was somehow sneaked in under the watchful eyes of the British censors.
Hum Ek Hain was produced by the mighty Prabhat Film Company, started in 1929 by V. Shantaram, V.G. Damle, K.R. Dhaiber, S. Fattelal and S.B. Kulkarni in Kolhapur. With such minds working together, the company was bound to succeed. Prabhat’s logo with a woman playing the ‘tutari’ was iconic. In 1933, the company moved to Pune and established a huge studio, where over 45 films were made. V. Shantaram left the firm in 1942 over a disagreement with his partners after he got romantically involved with actress Jayashree. In 1945, Damle passed away and the company closed down in 1952. The Government of India bought the studio’s property in 1960 and the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) was set up there. During the time Hum Ek Hain was made, Prabhat was still making socially relevant films.
The film opens with scenes of calamity. There is a drought in a village, forcing farmers to mortgage or sell their lands to their zamindars. Amidst the greed and apathy of the time, the generosity of the woman everyone called Zamindarin Ma (Durga Khote) stands out. With the help of her kindly Muslim retainer, she distributes grain to the poor, takes dozens of starving children into her home and looks after them. She has a young son Shankar, who emulates his mother’s benevolence.
Zamindarin Ma ends up adopting three children, a Muslim boy called Yusuf, a Christian boy, John and a Dalit girl, Durga. With typical movie stereotyping the boys are distinguished by the headgear of their respective communities. They all grow up happily together, singing Husnalal-Bhagatram songs, written by Santoshi, and get into scrapes with the other zamindar’s spoilt son Chhote Babu. They trill “hum ek hain” so often that even the family parrot learns to squawk it.
When they grow up into Dev Anand (Shankar), Rehman (Yusuf) and RV Rane (John), they are paired off with girls of their own religion. (Even the story writing team on this film was inter-religious –S. Mohammad, Tony Lazarus and Pandit Santoshi!) The three weddings take place together, with the sister (Ranjitkumari) singing: Meri aayi hain teen bhabhiyan
The happy family’s problems start when Chhote Babu (Ram Singh) who wants to marry Vidya (Kamala Kotnis), is turned down because she loves Shankar. On the surface he stays friendly, but plots the downfall of the family, by the simplest British policy: Divide and Rule.
When Shankar goes to the city to visit his ailing father-in-law, Chhote Babu tells John, who is a doctor, that he needs to build a better hospital. He even offers a the services of a crooked engineer to build it. Shankar sends money for the project, but the engineer’s demands keep escalating, till he starts running short of funds due to a poor crop yield. Chhote Babu tells John that he will persuade Shankar to release more money, and then nudges Shankar to go to the village and stop work on the wasteful construction.
This causes a rift between the brothers which blows up further when Chhote Babu puts the idea of a batwaara (split) of family property into Shankar’s head. When he brings it up, a hurt Yusuf leaves home with his wife; then the other two leave home as well, and the poor mother falls ill with grief at the break up of her beloved family.
Sympathising with Zamindarin Ma and offering to help, Chhote Babu then orders the crops in her field be burnt. The catastrophe brings the brothers rushing to their mother’s aid; they finally realise what has happened and how they were all conned by Chhote Babu.
The film held up a mirror to an India that was in danger of being partitioned on communal lines. The songs and dialogue expressing unity captured the mood of the people without too much melodrama. There is even a delightful dance by Cuckoo, to the song Ho nadiya ke paar more saanwre; she was Hindi cinema’s original ‘item’ girl, and no film was complete without a dance number by her.
Interestingly, the choreographer of this film was a certain Guru Dutt, who befriended the hero of the film and each promised the other, that whoever got a big break first would help the other. When Dev Anand set up his own production company, Navketan, Guru Dutt got his first break as director with Baazi (1951), which had as its scriptwriter, the legendary Balraj Sahni. Of such little nuggets is the edifice of the movie industry made.
Dev Anand made his debut with Hum Ek Hain, but was still a couple of years away from stardom. Ashok Kumar spotted him at Filmistan Studio of which he was co-founder, and offered him a role in Ziddi (1948) opposite Kamini Kaushal. The film was a hit and Dev Anand went on to become of the biggest and most popular stars Bollywood has ever known, affectionately called the Evergreen star, till his death in 2011 at the age of 88.
Hum Ek Hain, with its timely message of national integration also created a template for family socials that is still emulated by films and TV serials today, in which an ‘outsider’ tries to create trouble within a close-knit clan but fails in the end, because familial love eventually triumphs and conquers all.
(This is an edited version of a chapter in my book Take 2-%0 Films That Deserve A New Audience, published by Hay House in 2015)