If you want to rewrite history, you must find court poets. The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi has been at the heart of that rewriting mission under the Narendra Modi era. So, it is natural for it to bring in Prasoon Joshi as a member of the newly reconstituted board of a museum that stores cardinal archives. Who better than a poet, whose lyrics most of India sings, to be the memory-maker of New India?
From “Thanda matlab Coca-Cola” to Modi-nama, Joshi has seamlessly transitioned from an ad-man and lyricist to a man who knows the power of his words in a nationalist India.
“I have worked with Prasoon Joshi for three films – Rang De Basanti, Delhi-6, and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. All three were different in nature. He is versatile and adapted to each with a fresh approach. That’s where his style lies –being true to the subject. I am glad that one could tap into the burning poet in him, which takes him beyond just writing lyrics for Bollywood,” Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra told ThePrint on Joshi’s new post.
Clearly, there are some who seek legitimacy from the establishment. There are others whom the establishment seeks for legitimacy.
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The preferred laureate
Padma Shri-awardee Prasoon Joshi is currently the pro-bono chairman of Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). “My legacy will be smoother machinery, which will have lesser glitches,” he said on what he wants to do in the CBFC. His tenure as chairman has seen very few controversies, especially if you measure it against his predecessor – Pahlaj Nihalani. Joshi has even said that the film industry has been unfair to women.
At the same time, Joshi, along with 60 other celebrities, also wrote to PM Modi against “selective outrage” of some of their compatriots on lynchings in India. “To us, the undersigned, this document of selective outrage comes across as an attempt to foist a FALSE NARRATIVE… to negatively portray Prime Minister Modi’s untiring efforts,” the letter said.
To many, Joshi’s shift from a man who can write the revolutionary Khoon Chala of Rang De Basanti to the tear-jerker Maa of Taare Zameen Par (2007) to a poem for Modi – Saugandh Mujhe Is Mitti Ki, Main Desh Nahin Mitne Dunga – has been jarring. But he has done it effortlessly.
He is as much part of the old regime, being part of the three-member creative committee for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2010 Commonwealth Games along with Javed Akhtar and Shyam Benegal, as he is a fixture in the new establishment, on call for any national poetic service. And that makes Prasoon Joshi the preferred laureate.
In a 2018 interview with Modi in London for Bharat Ki Baat Sabke Saath, Joshi uttered the now immortal and meme-worthy line – “Modi ji, ek fakiri hai aapke swabhav mein”. He is ever ready to market Uttar Pradesh to the world or to write lyrics to popularise Swachh Bharat in 2015.
And why wouldn’t the BJP call on him?
He’s after all the man who redefined advertising with its confident and assertive “Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola” in 2003, which was a step up from the 1998 aspirational Pepsi slogan “Dil Maange More, in that it claimed the world with a new, millennial, IT-empowered, insouciance new establishment.
As he said in an interview recently, “Khali shabd kuch nahin hota. If you don’t have the right emotion behind them, the words will be hollow. The right time, the right emotion, and right delivery is what makes it.”
He also signifies perennial positivity. As he said in an interview recently, “the critics’ shops need to shut down and we need positivity malls.”
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Advertising India
Joshi, who grew up in Almora, studied BSc and then did a masters in physics, only to move on to an MBA at the Institute of Management Technology in Ghaziabad before he discovered advertising. He understood that it was the place for a bilingual young man who was bringing with him the aura of small-town India and the understanding of its people. In an interview to India Today in 2004, he said small towns represented an India that was modernised but not Westernised. “We embrace western culture but put our own spin to it. And I don’t think there is anything downmarket about it,” he said.
As the world moved towards discovering diversity and authenticity, Joshi with his childhood steeped in literature and music, had suddenly become cool. Awards followed for his campaigns, whether it was the Coca-Cola campaign or the HappyDent commercial. His talent has seen him rise to the very top of his profession, wherein he is now CEO and CCO of McCann India.
He was at the forefront of crafting the BJP’s ad strategy for the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Joshi has his admirers. Senior journalist and author Vikas Jha calls him an outstanding lyricist, a poet par excellence and an intelligent adman. “Prasoon knows how to connect via emotions and the simple things in life. His works explore aspects of human relationships and the many unsaid things we forget to celebrate or recognise on a daily basis,” says Jha. He believes his sense of articulation – be it as a songwriter or as a public figure – makes it space among the masses as a form of a secure narrative, be it in Hindi or English. “That’s how cultures prosper and such figures become a tool to carry a movement that looks at a cross-cultural sentimental connect.”
This connect has taken Joshi all over the world, whether it is winning awards for his ads at Cannes or adapting Milkha Singh’s remarkable life for the film with Bhaaag Milkha Bhaag (2013). Mukesh Kaushik, deputy editor, Dainik Bhaskar, who has observed Joshi’s career over the years, says he knows how to dive down to pluck out hidden desires and touch the raw nerve of the masses. “He has an added advantage of cinematic experiences that give his poetry and his feelings a 70 mm canvas. His songs laced with patriotism are best suited to the contemporary nationalist environment of our times, which give fertile ground for his work. I think the blood group of his poetry is B+, which is always in demand in pro-establishment classes. He writes the story of India in polite words, a missing element in his fellow nationalist writers,” says Kaushik.
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Indeed, listen to this song from Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi:
“Desh se hai pyar toh har pal ye kehna chahiye
Main rahoon ya na rahoon Bharat ye rehna chahiye
Silsila ye baad mere yunhi chalna chahiye
Main rahoon ya na rahoon Bharat ye rehna chahiye.”
And compare it to Khoon Chala from Rang De Basanti:
“Badan se tapak kar
zameen se lipat kar
galiyon se raston se
ubhar kar umad kar
Naye rang bharne ko
khoon chala khoon chala.”
What a difference a decade makes.
The author is a senior journalist. Views are personal.
The article is loaded with snide remarks. Perhaps prasoon does believe in the government of the day. It’s ironical that senior journalists can’t overcome their prejudices and insist on seeing things only through their lens which they feel is the correct one. Judge him for what he does. Dont be presumptuous and tell us what his intentions are. One more thing- Modi is a politician just like Nehru was, interested ,consciously or unconsciously, in promoting his own legacy. It is in built in politics otherwise politicians would have been or would be be genuine activists or social workers.
Honest, majority of Indians could care less and give a rats ass who is who in the PM offie. In a one man army, the one man and only that man counts. You comply with as many of his photographs, relevant or not, in eve.ry page. Your Job done for the day.