Raj Kapoor, one of India’s finest motion picture directors, depicted many social issues in his career thorough cinema. In his late career, as his time was running out, he worked on some of never talked issues in Indian movie industry like clown life in Mera Naam Jokar, body versus soul beauty in Satyam Shivam Sundaram, widow rights in Prem Rog, river pollution in Ram Teri Ganga Maili - his last directed venture, and India-Pakistan issues in Heena - his dream project.
At age 15, the striking comparison of holy river Ganga and Mountain girl Ganga and their journeys through the same path have changed my perception forever towards environment problems we are facing at Ganga Ghats from Gangotri to Culcutta. I was studying in school that how much Ganga is important for us. She is our Nile and lifeline of northern India. She makes UP, Bihar, and Bengal fruitful with her irrigation systems and so on. RK's RTGM enlightens us about horror truth about what we have done to Ganga. He makes you angry on our system and look for millions of answers out there to stop ever-increasing pollution or possibly try to help cleaning efforts undertaken since then.
Story
Narendra Sahai (Rajiv Kapoor), an ideologist is the son of industrialist (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) lives in so-called high society and politically corrupted world of Calcutta. To escape the madness of his father's world, He decides to visit Gangotri, a small town at the foothills of Himalayas with his college group. In Gangotri, Narendra meets Ganga (Mandakini). This girl from the Himalayas symbolizes beauty, innocence, purity, love, and simplicity, and Narendra falls in love with her and finds his soul mate. They marry according to their mountain customs and he returns to Calcutta with a promise to return.
In his absence, his family has already fixed his marriage to his childhood friend Radha (Divya Rana), daughter of a corrupt ambitious politician friend of his father, Bhagwat Chaudhary (Raza Murad). In the mean time, Ganga becomes pregnant while waiting for Narendra. She decides to give birth of Narendra's son and visit Culcutta so; she can give him name and status in society. Thus begins her struggle to win the battle against all odds for the sake of love.
Will she have same innocence and purity of Gangotri when she finally meets Narendra at morally, socially, and politically corrupted Culcutta?
Analysis
Critics of this movie always says its one of over-hyped motion picture – It has often repeated melodramatic love story, faulty screenplay, poorly acted performances, and inferior to other RK movies. I do agree with them. So, what makes this movie important where other similar projects failed? I believe there are four main reasons.
Lets talk about first three. First, undercurrent theme - Ganga and its water pollution and second, striking similarity of characters and what happens to them in their respective environments. It seems like RK had deep concern about water pollution of Ganga and he started writing story of girl and what happens to her if she follow same path as river Ganga. He was successful sending out great message by comparing nature and humanity corruption in the movie and shows us how pure she was in Gangotri, how people pollute her in UP and Bihar, and how she try to reclaim her purity in Culcutta. RK shows us pure water, clean air, beautiful mountains, meadows and valleys and naive villagers, simple mountain girl in Gangotri. As Ganga runs through UP and Bihar plains, she gets polluted either with sewage, chemicals, religious ceremonies or in brothels surrounded by morally and politically corrupted world of Banaras. But, Ganga still hopes to either merge with ocean to clean her pollution or meet her husband to reclaim her respect and social image. Third, if you take this one step further, I do believe RTGM is RK’s homage to woman in our society. He compared woman with River. Doesn’t matter how much mud you throw into them, you cannot blemish their purity a bit.
Raj Kapoor himself is my fourth reason. He puts his showman stamps everywhere – grand vision of central message – SAVE GANGA, robust direction, writer of horror saga of Ganga, smooth style of narrating screenplay, and flawless editing. They say he had asthma while shooting in Himalayas and he can’t go beyond some heights. He was so stubborn to include beautiful Himalayan peaks and scenery to show purity of his title character in the movie that he did location search by carrying through Palakhis. The reward is once you watch movie, you will notice how breathtaking Himalayan locals are filmed. That’s what you call - serious moviemaker, who knows their subject value very well.
I have some very special fond memories of RTGM music album. I was 13-14 year old studying in 8th or 9th standard. I still remember Navratri celebrations in our village in the nights of 1985. We used to have big decorated goddess stage with the musical lights. Every evening around 5.00 PM, local organizer used to turn on music for building up crowd for Garbas. He used to play RTGM music for first hour. I still remember how I used to wait for 5.00 PM after school and immersed into that music. As a kid, it was simply priceless gift for me.
Ravindra Jain well known for his Ramanand Sagar’s TV Series Ramayana’s religious numbers, an average music director, good lyrist came up with biggest commercial hit album of his life. He never produced better music than this one in his career. Even his and RK’s another venture Heena is way inferior to RTGM. His all music numbers - Sun Sahiba Sun, Yaara O Yaara, Husn Hai Paharon Ka, Ek Dukhiyari Kahe, Ek Radha Ek Meera, and Main Hi Main Hoon are very reach in https://lyrics. Even though it contains fairly simple music, Yaara O Yaara, Husn Hai Paharon Ka, Ek Dukhiyari Kahe sung by Lata are melodious. My personal favorite songs are - Sun Sahiba Sun, and Ek Radha Ek Meera. Both songs are well written, beautifully composed and artistically choreographed.
RK films are known for introducing new lead actresses while working with family members as lead actors. Even though Mandakini and Rajeev Kapoor are not great actors, if you look at closely their career graph, this is one of their best-performed movies. Mandakini as Ganga is pure, simple, and innocent as you can imagine. Rajeev Kappor as Narendra is idealistic and obedient as you can imagine. RK’s regular Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Raza Murad are as corrupted and evil as you can imagine. Once you done watching this movie, you will remember Narendra’s Kunj Mausa played by Saeed Jaffery. He is simply suburb in this role.
Conclusion
This movie is one of rare example of what cinema can do. Sometimes movies are remembered for their direction, music, acting, story, dialogues and sometimes it remember for its social messages. It talks about lot of environment, woman, political, and social issues directly or indirectly we are currently facing in India. If I would you, I would at least watch it once to know what great RK was trying to tell us about India’s greatest boon delivered by God – GANGA RIVER.
Note: Story is taken from DVD text available in YashRaj DVD
