Deewar Response

Deewar broaches several intriguing discussion topics related to poverty and the lower working class, like: Is social mobility possible? To what extent is poverty an outcome of the behavior of the upper class rather than the behavior of the lower class? How important is it to maintain morals despite one’s status in life and the injustices one faces? One question I thought was very interesting was regarding fate versus free will – were Vijay and Ravi able to make their own independent choices, or were their actions and behaviors simply a manifestation of things that were beyond their control?

Near the beginning of the movie, the mother is kicked out of the settlement and Vijay throws a brick at the master/owner of the laborers in retaliation. In response, the mother says to Vijay something along the lines of “Nothing will change with you throwing a stone. What is written in our fate cannot be erased,” basically implying that they were fated to struggle in life. So is the mother right?

It is definitely arguable that Vijay has no free will in the movie. His entire life is tainted by the events that transpired during his childhood, when his father was attacked by the community and left, and when he was maliciously tattooed. These events not only had a major emotional and mental impact on Vijay during the most formative years of his life, but also had a physical impact as well. As a result, we can interpret Vijay’s descent into violence and criminal activities as a product of his childhood and his resulting unavoidable compulsion to make up for his childhood. He is primarily motivated by two goals – to provide for his mother and to make something of himself and rise up the socioeconomic ladder.

Vijay’s decision to stand up to the mafia at the dock seems at first to be a defiant act of free will, but it is oddly reminiscent of his father protesting and advocating on behalf of his fellow union workers. It appears that Vijay is somewhat turning into his father, despite his efforts not to. The moment where Vijay decides to join the smugglers also seems like another free will moment, but once again he is compelled by things that happened to him during childhood – being in poverty, having to shine shoes, having to sacrifice his success for his brother’s. Once Vijay joins the Underworld, he is ordered around by the head smuggler and is pushed further and further into such activities until he cannot get out. When things come to a head between Vijay and Ravi, Vijay has been sent so far down the path he is on that he is unable to break free and make a new life for himself. Overall, everything that has happened to Vijay has been somewhat out of his control. Even his death, ironically, ends up helping Ravi achieve further success in his career, just as Vijay was trapped in his childhood working as a child laborer to ensure his brother’s education.

Ravi, unlike Vijay, was not exposed to as much suffering during his childhood and ends up on a very different path. So does Ravi have free will? I would argue that although Ravi takes a more upright path in life, most of his circumstances are caused by the society and institutions around him. In “’Fight Club’: Aesthetics, Hybridization, and the Construction of Rogue Masculinities in Sholay and Deewar,” Bannerjee discusses how “Ravi too is emblematic of civil disenchantment, albeit a strain produced within institutional settings…His poor employment prospects bely the broken promises of his education. More tragically they create the very conditions for fratricide when he is eventually assigned the task as the leading police officer in a particular investigation of ‘taking down’ his brother the master criminal” (171). Ravi’s failed job search was not due to his behavior or lack of qualifications, but rather due to the corruption and nepotism found in the society around him; Ravi even mentions how people are like drawers or train compartments, and poor people are stuck in the bottom drawer or third-class compartments and cannot get out. Once Ravi becomes a police officer, he is exposed to the injustice in the world that compels him to accept the task of neutralizing his brother. However, as Bannerjee mentions, it was the police institution that put Ravi in this situation in the first place. If Ravi had not been a police officer, or if the police had not given him this task, would he have killed his brother and consequently won an award?

If Vijay and Ravi are simply products of their environment, this sends a somewhat pessimistic message about the destiny of lower-class workers and in general people who are facing challenges in life. None of our main characters face particularly good endings – Vijay is dead, and Ravi and his mother do not seem to be happy. They seem to be haunted by their past and their involvement in killing Vijay and tearing apart their family and happiness. This message is perhaps a reflection of the mindset of workers at the time in real life, when they were facing unrest and class disparities and had become disenchanted with the idealism following India’s independence.