There was a time in the early years of Independence when patriotism meant laying down your life for the country. Whether it was Dilip Kumar’s Shaheed or Chetan Anand’s Haqeeqat, patriotism began and ended on the battlefield.

According to Manoj Kumar, whose patriotic films Purab aur Pachhim and Kranti earned him the sobriquet ‘Bharat Kumar’, this change in depiction is due to change in society. “Earlier, our leaders were the root of society,” he says. “When they changed, the concept of patriotism also changed. Films hold a mirror to society. So the depiction of patriotism in films too changed.” Kumar adds, “What happens in India affects other countries too. When I made Purab aur Pachhim on brain drain, we were not widely aware of the problem.” He says the youth are no longer able to depend on today’s leaders for direction and this rebellious attitude is reflected in Rang De Basanti that became a hit.

Rensil D’Silva, who wrote RDB, says the aim behind the movie “was to make patriotism relevant to the new generation”. “Not many have a sense of history other than what they studied in school. We wanted to inspire the youth,” he says. He agrees that there has been a change in the format of our patriotic movies. “Earlier, it was bordering on jingoism and chest-thumping,” he says, adding that this will not work now anymore because it is no longer believable. “In movies like Shaheed, there was this belief that if we threw the British out, we could live a Utopian life. But that didn’t happen. The oppressor has changed. Now we have to fight problems like corruption from within.” Films, he says, should reflect society as only then will they connect with the audience.

“When I watched Haqeeqat as a child, the sacrifices made by our soldiers touched me,” says Jackie Shroff, who has acted in films like 1942: A Love Story, Border and Refugee. “I felt fantastic when I played an air-force officer in Border. Many later came up to me and said the film had inspired them to join the Indian Air Force.”

Jaideep Sahni, who wrote the widely acclaimed Chak De! India, too feels that there has been a change, especially in the way we Indians view foreigners. Earlier, they were viewed with suspicion and awe but now with a confidence that we can match up to them. Sahni says that while scripting Chak De!, “We deliberately took on the issues of gender, religion, region and language biases as we felt doing so was patriotic.” Ashutosh Gowariker took a similar approach in his Swades: We, the People, though he asserts that his was not a patriotic but a nationalistic film. “Patriotism is the desire to give your life for the country while nationalism is the desire to give your life for the uplift of the country,” he explains. “While we are naturally patriotic, the feeling of nationalism is dormant in us. It needs to be brought out and that was the thought behind scripting Swades,” he says.