"The Pain of Human Stupidity" | Ketan Anand on His Father

"Who was Chetan Anand — and why does his cinema still carry such a deep, emotional charge? In this clip, his son Ketan Anand introduces the filmmaker behind Haqeeqat (1964), a man who ""suffered in silence for a long time,"" and the learning he received from that pain, which poured into his films.

It was during this time that Kaifi Azmi wrote some of his most remarkable poems for him. The product of this collaboration was a war song that became part of India's collective memory. As Ketan Anand puts it, ""This is not a jingoistic song… this is the pain of human stupidity."" No chest-beating, but a meditation or rather a question on why we go on fighting and killing while talking of love and peace. Somewhere, it is out of this pain that one must evolve. And Anand's cinema did exactly that.

This video is an excerpt from the session with Ketan Anand, Ravikant, Pavan Jha and Neville Tuli, part of the series 'Deconstructing the Film Song: A Musical Glue for Nation-Building,' presented by the Tuli Research Centre for India Studies (TRIS) as part of the 7th Self-Discovery via Rediscovering India Festival."