Hesitating to act because the whole vision might not be achieved, or because others do not yet share it, is an attitude that only hinders progress.

Mahatma Gandhi citation that serves as Gowarikar's motto for Swades

Bachelor Mohan Bhargava (Shah Rukh Khan), like so many other successful non-resident Indians (NRI), does not feel entirely ‘at home’ in the United States. Despite a major milestone today in his career as a NASA project manager and just receiving news that his application for US citizenship has been granted, he is deeply troubled by creeping guilt at having forsaken the old foster-mother of his childhood memories. Before resuming work on phase two of his satellite-launch project, he returns to Delhi on extended two-weeks leave with the sole intention of bringing Kaveriamma back to share his newfound security and creature comforts. But when he traces her to an old folks home, he learns there that she has been already taken by some unknown woman to Charanpur, a remote UP village. His vain attempts to locate the village on a map while minding the counter at his friend’s Pathfinder bookstore are suddenly interrupted by an angry female voice self-righteously scolding another customer for stomping over her fallen books. His inquisitive eyes follow this beautiful and mysterious young woman (Gayatri Joshi) as she approaches carrying her large pile of books, only to cower with embarrassment, as she turns to the counter, before her coolly piercing gaze. She has the intimidating mental ability to crunch numbers faster than he can input the textbook prices into his pocket calculator, and also an extensive general knowledge, including of geography. Taking back his good-humored offer of a discount for her help with the totaling, he introduces himself by name as a foreign visitor. Despite visible consternation, she readily volunteers the directions to Charanpur, but slips away unnoticed before he is able to return her change, leaving him both intrigued and perplexed. He heads off in a caravan for his destination only to end up completely lost at a rural fork, where he encounters an eccentric but knowing Baul, who offers to guide him part of the way. The fellow travelers open up to each other in a sparkling duet of song that celebrates the spontaneity of nature as the reflection of a carefree (sahaja) heart, the need to lose oneself to find one’s true way in life, and the affirmation that there is someone of significance awaiting at the end of the road.

Arriving at Kaveriamma's door, he playfully blindfolds her from behind and reveals his identity only by repeating long-familiar words that identify him as the 'charmer' (mohana) Krishna to her Yashoda. His moving reunion with the overwhelmed foster-mother, who had never lost faith in him, is set to the sweet strains on the haunting flute of this dreamy lullaby with which she used to put him to sleep. For Kaveriamma had been emotionally more of a mother to him than she who gave him birth. He learns that her modest home belongs to the orphaned Gîtâ, his forgotten childhood playmate, who has now assumed her mother’s vocation of educating the village children. She had been brought here from the old folks home to bring up the two children when their mother had become chronically ill. Her kid brother Chikku takes Mohan on a tour of the elementary school, where to his surprise he discovers that his sister is the same haughty beauty, who could not wait for her change. Mohan invites the gratified Kaveriamma to return with him to the USA, but she is less enthusiastic and defers coming to a decision till the end of his stay. Though Gîtâ is polite and hospitable, she limits their interaction to the minimum amidst the compromising circumstances repeatedly created by her kid brother, who is taken in by the indulgent Mohan. This aloofness is expressed aesthetically by her reluctance to engage in any eye-contact forced upon her, even to the point of unwilling connivance, by any seemingly justifiable pretext. Mohan is introduced to the village council (pañcâyat) the very next morning, and learns from their deliberations of the dire power shortage with ever-interrupted electricity, and that Gîtâ’s school risks being relocated to insignificance if she cannot sign up more pupils within three months. His newfound family then takes him on a tour of the village, the highlight being the small scenic riverside temple that enshrines the bare footprints (caran) of Sîtâ-Râma to which the township (pûr) owes its name. Mohan discovers the next day that Kaveriamma is desperately trying to find a suitable match for Gîtâ, only to witness for himself how tradition-minded suitors are being turned away by her independence and insistence on continuing to work after marriage. He comes to a secret understanding with Kaveriamma to help find the required student quota to save her school, secure her teaching profession, and thereby brighten and hasten her matrimonial prospects. Though increasingly attracted to Gîtâ’s free spirit, high ideals, and devotion to learning, he realizes that this would be the only way to free Kaveriamma of her obligations and take her back with him  to the USA.

Overlaid on this emotional triangle is the evolution of Mohan’s painful (self-) discovery, through his involuntary engagement with this village microcosm, of the grave socio-developmental ills besetting India: dowry, untouchability, poverty, hunger, self-imposed illiteracy, caste prejudices, bureaucratic inefficiency, overpopulation, and other apparently insurmountable odds. All these issues come to the fore, after the departure of the suitor family, in his heated debate over the postmortem lunch with the now recomposed Gîtâ. The two women take him to task for unwittingly addressing them as "you Indians!" and he is obliged to acknowledge his own roots by the very act of apologizing. The 'over-educated' Gîtâ, despite being the solitary reform-minded victim of these Indian traditions and their associated prejudices, defends their ultimate value and indispensability to organic continuity. In his efforts to enlist more school children, he is personally challenged by the manifestations of these ills in scenarios that range from condescending bemusement, through uncomprehending indifference, to outright hostility. He is aided by the low-caste Mela Ram, motivated primarily by the desire of migrating with Mohan’s sponsorship to open an Indian fast-food joint along an American highway, and the college-educated 'brahmin' (kâyastha) postmaster, more open to the outside world and fascinated by the Internet, who responds to the NRI’s appeals to his enlightened conscience. These contradictions come to a head during the rare Bollywood movie watched with rapt attention from both sides of a giant cloth screen by the whole village still segregated by caste and seated by hierarchy, much along the same principles that had governed the spectators of the classical Sanskrit theater. At the crucial moment of the romantic plot, as the heroine is singing the title song, the electricity fails and there is no telling when the generators might kick in. The NASA scientist leaps onto center stage to keep the children occupied by showing them how to recognize The Plough and other constellations in the brilliant night sky. He bursts into a starry song on the significance, virtue, and transformative power of seeing things, including one’s community, as a meaningful whole. The whole village, including the elders, is quickly drawn into this musical spirit of oneness and the dissolution of barriers is facilitated and signified almost naturally by the dropping of the screen separating the high from the low.

Gîtâ is both fascinated and unnerved by this seductive stranger, who is steadily worming his way into the hearts of the village, particularly her own. Though visibly irritated at his suggestive personal jokes about the movie title “union (wedding procession) of memories” (yâdoñ kî bârât), she cannot help glancing expectantly at him when the heroine’s love song invokes the meeting of the eyes. Deeply appreciative of his unrelenting efforts on behalf of her school, she is nevertheless appalled to witness their foster-mother relishing this improvised performance of the apple of her eye. More than jealousy fueled by her own inadmissible attraction is the terror of abandonment, of a second orphaning, if Mohan succeeds in luring Kaveriamma away with him. Her conflicted emotions raised to an unbearable pitch, she gets up and leaves in a huff but keeps turning back to gaze back hypnotized by the show still unfolding. When Mohan returns late in the night to the caravan, the now vulnerable maiden is already awaiting in the shadows to confront his sympathetic mien with her hitherto hidden fears and hopes. After confessing that she had recognized him immediately at the bookshop and willfully offered false directions to keep him away, she now tearfully accuses him of wanting, after all these years of inexplicable absence, to take back Kaveriamma as a household servant.  Recognizing the reality and legitimacy of the mutual maternal bond between them and admitting her own selfishness, she passionately beseeches him to leave their idyllic existence in peace. Untrue to his character, it is now the ‘charmer’ Mohan who shows himself heard-hearted by accusing Gîtâ of having brought Kaveriamma to the village as a domestic chore. He (re-) affirms coldly in the face of her uncontrollable sobbing that Kaveriamma will surely come to the USA. The curtain of intermission (entr’acte) falls upon a pensive Kaveriamma standing in the troubled shadows before her home, unbeknown to the protagonists, eavesdropping on this stormy opening of otherwise still unrelenting hearts.

The second act introduces a recomposed Gîtâ putting forth the obstinate front of wanting to remain a lifelong spinster, that is, exerting emotional blackmail on Kaveriamma to remain with her. Mohan quickly catches on to her act by agreeing that only some crazy suitor, tacitly and possibly himself, would put up with such a picky and hard to please idealist even if one not lacking in beauty. Since Mohan’s charm continues to work upon her dear ones, starting with her cute kid brother, we are treated to a series of confrontations, where the earlier taciturn Gîtâ now behaves like an irritable shrew picking quarrels for the least reason. While Mohan is shivering through his open air bath beside the courtyard well, she literally assaults him with hay for having tried to brainwash Chikku with the American Dream instead of wanting to learn more about his true homeland. When he protests his sincere affection and respect before inviting her to take a vacation with him to the US, she loses her temper at his cheekiness and kicks the bucket over such that the soapy-eyed charmer has to cry out for Kaveriamma to come to his rescue. The old woman, who does not have to read Amaru’s Sanskrit love-poems to intuit the unspeakable sentiments behind such quarrels, overhears their altercations and registers the indignation on the Amazon’s face with barely suppressed delight. Despite her growing susceptibility, Gîtâ still has a stereotyped view, shared by many stay-behind Indians, of the typical NRI as having somehow betrayed his motherland. Mohan, dutifully taking up her challenge to be a diligent and filial student, sneaks uninvited to the back of her geography class only get the elementary answers to her improvised quiz on key Indian symbols all wrong, much to the amusement of the class. Only after allowing Gîtâ to gleefully relish her ultimate moment of triumph before the students and turn away scornfully to wipe the blackboard does the ‘retarded’ Mohan walk up to disclose his intimate knowledge of India. He suddenly grabs and spins around the deflated Gîtâ, reduced to speechless perplexity, to confess his love, when they are interrupted by the voice of her elderly teaching colleague, Dadaji. In panic, she strikes out with the duster and injures his forehead.

With his enrollment efforts producing promising results and having exceeded his two-week vacation, Mohan pressures Kaveriamma to take a decision. Instead, the wise and scheming old woman sends him on an overnight errand by train, boat, and on foot into the madding Indian crowd to collect the long overdue rent from a tenant farmer on Gîtâ’s land in the remote countryside. There he is not only fed on the meager hospitality of a weaver family on the verge of starvation, but learns of the stifling caste-prejudices bearing down like a yoke on the Indian poor, making it impossible even for the hardworking to earn an honest living. He gives away all his pocket money to his protesting host, and returns empty handed to Charanpur poorer than when he left. Mohan’s status and self-perception as a susceptible ‘foreign tourist’ had been emphasized throughout by his drinking only bottled water. One of the most poignant clips, amply displayed and commented upon on YouTube, is hence of Mela Ram handing a quarter to Shah Rukh Khan, whose eyes well with tears as he sips from a precious earthen cup, only to pay the plaintive hawker boy outside the coach desperate to sell his water. This intended face-to-face immersion in the warmth and misery of the downtrodden signals his self-conscious transformation from benevolent outsider into pained participant. Matters come to a head during the auspicious Dusshehra celebrations when, after the resounding success of cross-caste participation in the school admission ceremony, the now dhoti-clad Mohan is questioned about life in America by the curious villagers. This inevitably leads to one-sided comparisons with and reaffirmations of the superiority of Indian traditions, which prompt the cornered NRI to vent his simmering grievances and storm out of the assembly. The gulf between their credulous veneration of the mythical past and inability to appropriate its timeless relevance to face present realities, becomes glaringly apparent during the following reenactment of the annual Ram Lila festival. We abruptly find ourselves behind the foliage through which we have a monkey’s eye view of a forlorn Gîtâ seated below at the foot of the tree. She picks up, recognizes and displays a ring, before bursting into her plaintive song begging to be relieved of the weight of exile (pal pal hai bhârî). So sudden is the transition that it does not immediately register that the heroine, who was just clad in a pure white sari while seated demurely beside Mohan at the Dushehra assembly, is now the ochre-robed ascetic Sîtâ pining for the promised reunion with her savior Râma. The chosen episode is that of Râvana, striding menacingly onto and across the stage to haughtily mock her adamant faith and discredit her hero for tarrying so long in coming to her rescue. The heroine’s prayer reaffirming Râma as the life of her life and beseeching Râvana to repent, in time, is unexpectedly interrupted by Mohan, who endorses and generalizes her sentiment by declaring that Râma lives in the heart of all those who expel Râvana, the darkness of ignorance, from their hearts. Sîtâ quickly resumes her song and is rewarded with the vision of her rescuer leading the divine host over the horizon to do battle with the demons, before felling the oppressor of the earth with his unerring arrow. Aesthetically, the episode marks the merging of romantic love into selfless devotion: Gîtâ had greeted Mohan’s intervention with the same adoring gaze that Sîtâ had been reserving for the now approaching god.

Morally, the treatment of this episode effectuates an inversion of perspective whereby the jubilant populace is shown to be unwittingly celebrating the reign of ignorance even while imagining themselves to be doing the opposite. The elders continue chanting the praises of Lord Râma under the village tree and how much more splendid the burning effigy of Râvana looks now that the electricity has again failed and their world is plunged in darkness. They had just been mesmerized by the enthusiastic tribe of monkey-children piling up huge rocks to form the giant causeway to Lanka for Râma and Lakshmana to cross and rescue Sîtâ, the prehistoric feat of engineering that is the stock example for the aesthetic sentiments of ‘heroism’ (vîra-rasa) and ‘wonder’ (adbhuta) based on energetic enterprise (utsâha) and astonishment (vismaya) respectively. Mohan therefore seizes the initiative and requests a hundred able-bodied hands to build the stone barrage for an uphill reservoir so that the village may generate its own energy instead of depending on a distant and unpredictable government administration. Dadaji immediately assents and, as he has already won their confidence and goodwill through his school efforts, the other elders go along with what might well be a harebrained scheme. Everyone, including the women, pitch in and succeed, after some suspenseful moments of doubt, in illuminating the darkness of their lives. The collective celebration of the mythical past exploits of Râma has metamorphosed, with this temporary return from exile, into a successful experiment in contemporary ‘self-rule’ (sva-râjya). The centrality of this socio-developmental theme has been emphasized at the expense of nostalgic patriotism, and rightly so in view of foreign audiences, through the English title of the movie "We, the people." Swades indeed draws its inspiration from and generalizes the personal saga of an NRI couple, the real swadesis ('Indians' = patriots), who likewise returned to light their bulb in a tribal village (Bhilgaon), a successful collective enterprise that has been adopted as a model by the Maharashtran state government. The Gandhian legacy is embodied in Swades by the 'grandfatherly' personage of the frail Dadaji, whose experience and wise counsel everyone respects but who has long since been relegated to the background. Though unable to speak up as forcefully as the reform-minded Gîtâ on the value of education nor collaborate actively with Mohan in the field, he remains a constant presence offering moral support. When Mohan first visited the school upon his arrival in Charanpur, he passes and eavesdrops upon Dadaji's civics lesson even before reaching Gîtâ's Hindi grammar class. The freedom fighter was recounting, with self-depreciating humor, the national struggle for political independence through personal anecdotes of the injuries he had sustained practicing nonviolent 'clinging  to truth' (satyâgraha). His health seriously failing throughout the ongoing power-generation enterprise, he breathes his last gratified by the news that the bulbs have alighted. The distraught Gîtâ at his bedside, his parting words to Mohan is that he had recognized something special in the NRI from the very start and can finally leave in peace now that the latter is here (to assume the mantle). His demise, especially the following cremation ritual, marks the end of the romantic courtship, or rather its elevation into a form of devotion to serve the world. Gîtâ now affirms her willingness to marry her hero but refuses categorically to accompany him back to America, unable to understand how he could turn his back on all that he has accomplished here. Unable to delay his return any further and having fulfilled his end of the bargain, Mohan presses Kaveriamma who likewise simply declares that she, as an aged Indian, would feel out of place in a foreign land. The whole village, except for Gîtâ, shows up to bid Mohan goodbye, unanimously claiming him as their own. To the NRI’s surprise, his underprivileged but steadfast assistant Mela Ram, who had already acquired a passport and bought a dapper suit, has been so convinced by his own example as to wake up to the new possibilities and simply shrug off the American Dream.

In Swades, the aesthetics of the gaze (nazar), enshrined in Sanskrit poetics and so central to the Indian sensibility, is also the portal to a more profound alchemy of love that dissolves the self-centered private life and opens it up emotionally to the world. At the Delhi bookshop, Gîtâ’s riveting stare was as intimidating as her intelligence and even its momentary flicker of good humor was but a sarcastic condescension. Forced into close proximity in the village home, her withdrawn eyes, if not glaring hostilely as when intruded upon in the classroom, remained averted with the minimal engagement required by polite hospitality. A brief but entire night scene is devoted to Mohan gazing with curious wonder through his caravan window upon the languid Gîtâ working unawares at her desk. Instead of acknowledging his friendly nod, she looks back coldly and switches off the light abruptly. When the family drops in the next morning to take him to the village assembly (pañcâyat), Mohan’s insistent eye language forces Gîtâ to notice and hide his cigarette pack from Kaveriamma, but the accomplice responds in kind with obvious displeasure and complies only to immediately look away with a huff. When she emerges in modest finery to greet her suitors, she turns to Mohan more with embarrassment, compounded with hopelessness as they leave empty handed. When the Bollywood movie-song begins to work its magic, her furtive almost involuntary glances at the handsome stranger seated beside her are immediately withdrawn and only serve to inflame her resentment at his uninvited intrusion into her 'idyllic' life. Once remorse at undeservedly punishing him with the duster has dissolved her inner resistance, her eyes can no longer hide her sentiments despite the distance maintained by modesty and pride. Three of the discarded scenes in the bonus DVD confirm how the dueling gaze has taken on the psychological brunt of mediating the delicate balance between privacy and intimacy, self and other. Mohan is sleeping in the central courtyard (instead of the caravan) and follows the dream-like nymph (apsaras) intently with secret eyes as she waters the plants, humming after her morning bath. The second is of both of them singing Kaveriamma to sleep, in unison, to the same lullaby with which she used to put them as infants to bed; and the third of the remorseful Gîtâ nursing the wounded forehead of a still teasing Mohan. Though tasteful in and of themselves these (over-) intimate scenes would have marred  the rasa-development and cheated us of the final reward. So when she watches from a distance Mohan setting off on her rent-collecting errand, he walks up to her at the doorway and tells her not to miss him too much. When she coolly mocks his presumption, he reveals that her eyes are betraying all despite her conscious reserve. Cheekily forced to acknowledge her feelings, she bursts out into solitary but exuberant song (Sâwariyan), interspersed with picturesque images of the by now distant traveler, that celebrates the preciousness of the gaze. Though still tongue tied after Mohan's return, she has no longer any qualms, while tying the NRI's dhoti for the Dusshera festival, about blatantly feasting her eyes upon her now discomfited charmer. Aesthetically, the culmination of their and our romantic interest is when she intrudes upon Mohan in his caravan, while he is engrossed in working out the equations for his engineering feat. She announces her unexpected presence by interrupting to resolve his verbal calculations, as she had at their first meeting, but only this time she continues by playfully pretending to be stumped so as to belie his indulgent skepticism with her delayed correct answer. Her accompanying full-moon smile is ample recompense for all the indignities that we have had to endure on behalf of the much maligned hero, and the two are now united in the fulfilling duet of an ode to love.

Their courtship thereafter is depicted only through idyllic scenes, especially at the temple ghats, spliced into the progress of the great collective undertaking spearheaded by our natural leader with this Kasturibai at his side. Tormented on the day of his departure and fearful of revealing the depth of her feelings in public, the conspicuously absent Gîtâ awaits his caravan alone on the bridge at the boundary of the village, as if she were the tutelary goddess of the local territory (grâma-devatâ). She reaffirms to Mohan, who is overwhelmed with guilt and self-recrimination at having taken advantage of her sentiments, her understanding of his predicament and her impossible love. Presenting him a small chest whose compartments are filled with simple tokens—pebbles, herbs, flowers, spices, etc.—of their land, she expresses the fervent hope that they would for ever remind him of his true home. As the caravan rolls away reluctantly, with the driver looking back intently through the rearview mirror, the despairing modern-day Sîtâ prays inwardly for him to turn back, as if she were repeating a mantra, but reopens her eyes only to see him already gone. Though Swades is not a religious film overtly promoting Râma-bhakti, much less the ritual worship of his temple image, it is a profound exploration of the manner in which romantic love is transformed, through a universally attested form of spontaneous idolatry, into selfless devotion. It was Gîtâ's newfound fascination with her reflection in the otherwise familiar mirror that had called forth the joyous abandonment of self in her first love song (Sâwariyân), for the loveliness she begins to recognize therein is her enhanced portrait in the eyes of her beloved Mohan. As Gîtâ idolizes Mohan as the flesh-and-blood hero of her most cherished dreams, the latter willy-nilly transforms himself into the very idol he sees in the eyes of his worshipper. Having ridiculed her for high-flown ideals that would scare off any realistic suitor, he finds himself repeating her very words to persuade others to acquiesce in their own uplifting ("are a woman's hands good only for ornamenting with henna?" etc.). In this win-win resolution, Mohan has fallen in love not just with Gîtâ but with his own pre-figuration in the heartfelt prayers of this abandoned Sîtâ, and Gîtâ not just with Mohan but with the (self-) fulfillment of her aspirations of service (sevâ) through the agency of this long-exiled contemporary Râma. The lovers begin to realize that they never knew who they 'really' were and could be until mutual love compels them to recognize the self in the other. Despite their initial estrangement, our quarrelling lovers are artfully identified with a contemporary reinterpretation of the idealized couple. The psychological process of assimilating the god's divine qualities through practicing regular ‘visions’ (darshan) of and by his idol is here naturally induced through the reciprocating gaze of the beloved. Gîtâ's rapt attention, while praying to Sîtâ-Râma on Mohan's presentation to the temple, was already distracted to his revelatory musings on the meaning of Charanpur. Gîtâ's self-confession to her Sâwariyan streams forth on these very ghats of their riverfront temple, and the plaintive song—pal pal hai bhârî (“each moment weighs oh so heavily”)—that she later sings, as Sîtâ pining under the Ashoka tree, is already rendered hauntingly on the wordless flute during this first visit.  During the Ram-Lila, even as this despairing Sîtâ clings to her praises of Râma before a menacingly skeptical Râvana, Mohan answers her call by interrupting Gîtâ to usurp the epic role here and now. Bhakti amounts, in Abhinavagupta’s non-dual ‘doctrine of recognition’ (pratyabhijñâ), to projecting and enjoying one's own Self through the external form of an idol. This abstruse metaphysical principle, beyond the ken of so many Hindu champions obsessed with the 'historical' Râma, has been intuitively felt in other climes by every Romeo-and-Juliet.

Back at NASA, 'home-sickness' gnaws ever deeper into the heart of the project manager, even as the team celebrates the triumphant success of their satellite launch. He is haunted by the two women left behind, his now intimately personal images of rural India, and the beckoning of even greater projects back home. Whereas his Indian coworker and best friend attributes his confusion of priorities to infatuation, Mohan has by now realized that filial devotion and romantic commitment have merged into a sense of debt and duty towards uplifting his homeland. The newfound calling is best expressed through the soul-stirring vocal rendition, by AR Rahman in person, of “This is your land that’s calling out to you” (yah jo desh hai terâ). The infectious nostalgia of this primal cry has so captivated even foreign audiences as to inspire creative audio or video remixes on YouTube to express longing for their own homelands or separation (viraha) from one's beloved. At the stellar height of his American career, Mohan turns down the temptation of fast-track promotion to instead “go light your bulb” in his motherland. Our joyous flight home, to the same heart-thumping rhythm of 'he's come' (âyo re)--borne to a higher crescendo--that accompanied his initial arrival in Charanpur, descends to a seamless landing upon the riverside temple ghat where Mohan is already wrestling with the village champion, the postmaster. The Hindu narrative framework—in myth, ritual, fiction, and especially through the classical theater—typically equates the personal fulfillment of the (royal) hero’s romantic love with the (acquisition and) establishment of his moral sovereignty over the territory and its people. It unites these two, otherwise disparate, goals by embodying them in the single auspicious figure of the earth-goddess (Shrî-Draupadî in the Mahâbhârata). This archetypal figure has been split in Swades into the neglected foster-mother (Kaveriamma) and the scornful bride-to-be (Gîtâ). By remaining faithful to and actively seeking out the former, the NRI hero has not only won over the latter but undergone a profound inner transformation that has sacrificed his self-centered pursuit of material gains (artha) for a romantic love that has become indistinguishable from disinterested service to a larger whole. This culturally sanctioned formula facilitates the reconciliation and harmonious balance of the three legitimate aims of worldly life (purushârtha): sexual fulfillment (kâma), material acquisition (artha), and socio-religious obligations (dharma). Their interwoven pursuit evokes the aesthetic sentiments (rasa) of eros (shrngâra), aggression (raudra), and enthusiasm (vîra) when enacted before a receptive audience. The prototype of such union is that of Râma and Sîtâ in the national epic as reenacted even today in the Râm-Lîlâ festivals that annually reinstate the moral order after its rape by the powers of darkness. Underpinning this cultural order, however, is the ideal of renunciation that is embedded within the narrative as the recurring theme of exile, of the ascetic Râma in the forest and the abducted Sîtâ pining alone in distant Lankâ. As we have seen, Ashutosh Gowarikar’s movie Swades (‘Homeland’) is best appreciated as a creative retelling of the Râmâyana that makes it relevant to modern sensibilities and the collective task of ushering in a new order that preserves the spirit of the timeless epic. More than a mere 'play within a play' emblematic of the dying mythology of the bygone past, best left to the revivalist passions of Hindu fundamentalists raging against the demonized Other, the Râm-Lîlâ is to be enjoyed as the moral and aesthetic heart of Swades.

"Mohan's simple quest becomes the journey that every one of us goes through in search of that metaphysical and elusive place called home" (last sentence of Swades DVD plot synopsis). Nostalgia is an increasingly frequent and appealing theme in contemporary fiction and cinema. So many in this globalizing world are obliged to make their living abroad and end up feeling cut off from their roots, unable to outgrow nor re-appropriate them. Spiritual exile here is obviously that of the American NRI, whose pursuit of material success has estranged him from his motherland, culture, and traditions. Already at the beginning, on the anniversary of the death of his parents, as Mohan ruminates aloud over Kaveriamma, we hear the hesitant strains, mournfully rendered, of the long-buried lullaby. Beneath the nationalist themes overlaid on Mohan’s childhood nostalgia is the deeper and universal quest of the alienated soul for its true self. It is at the Pathfinder bookshop that Mohan (-das Karamchand Gandhi?) first encounters (the Bhagavad-?) Gîtâ, who deliberately gives him 'false' directions. The 'traditional' India that the 'foreign' traveler first encounters is an 'eccentric' spirituality which, instead of reclaiming his identity in the name of some hoary (reinvented) past, questions it even further and at the most fundamental level. This crazy Baul hitchhiker, who appears at the crucial fork from which both routes lead nowhere, sings that he will find the true path only by losing the calculated way of the map, only by heeding the hidden promptings of his own heart, as reflected in the immediate call of the world around him. The only thing that Mohan knows, or rather feels, for sure is that there is someone who has been long awaiting him at the end of the road: eventually not Kaveriamma, nor even the playmate 'Gitlee' whom he later "remembers" as if "from a previous life" (to quote Dushyanta on his own Shakuntala), but, through them all, following the footsteps of Râma, himself. The expatriate vacationer returning to the carefree innocence of his childhood is indeed taking an anamnestic dip in Mother Gangâ, for he arrives at his new home just when his 'midwife' foster-mother is 'delivering' a baby. Not only do the scenes of courtship at Charanpur revolve around the temple in which are enshrined the footprints of Sîtâ-Râma, the human couple too are repeatedly seen setting foot together into the cool waters of the adjacent river, with Gîtâ leading the way for a hesitant Mohan. Such embryonic notations, which assimilate the island of Lanka to the (sacrificial) womb, have always been integral to esoteric readings of the Râmâyana, not just among Hindus but also among (even Tantric Theravada) Buddhists, etc., in places as far away as Indo-China. Nor has this national epic that underpins Gandhi's Râm-Rajya lent itself too readily to the dualistic schema of Good (Hindus) versus Evil (Foreigners), when the brahmin Râvana is himself elaborately portrayed as a consummate musician and master of the four Vedas (such that Râma has subsequently to expiate his brahmanicide with a horse-sacrifice). Director Gowarikar may not have been fully aware of all these resonances when he drew upon these symbolic resources offered by tradition as conventional metaphors to deliver a socio-political message in aesthetic garb to his compatriots. He has, perhaps unwittingly, revivified these hidden significations and lent them a greater intrinsic coherence than he might have originally intended. The enlightened postmaster, the champion wrestler who plays this 'thankless' role of Râvana before Gîtâ-Sîtâ in the village Râmlîlâ, is Mohan’s key accomplice in effectuating a permanent change in the village mentality. He had invited the NRI to a friendly match early on, immediately after extending his moral and material support, and bemoaned the latter having to leave before fulfilling his pledge. Little wonder, then, that the born-again Mohan’s return from exile, and the movie itself, ends abruptly with his purifying bath at the temple ghat where the village keeps cheering this contemporary Râma who had just hurled to the ground a most appreciative Râvana.

More than an either-or conflict between two national allegiances, Indian versus American, the creative tension between Gîtâ and Mohan is between past and future, tradition and renewal, constricted selfhood (sankoca) and universalizing (vikâsa, in Abhinava's parlance) aspirations. The United States had been attracting immigrants from every country, including Europe, not only because of the incomparable opportunities offered to 'entrepreneurs' at every level, but also because its multicultural society long represented to the global imagination the future of the world, the far western frontier upon which the sun of (Obama's) 'hope' is only now beginning to set. Many never really left their homes entirely behind and continue to send money back to their kith and kin, at least until the latter too are 'naturalized', often lobbying for the cause of and causes within their homeland: such split allegiance is exemplified by the endorsement of dual nationality. The American vocation, for the idealistic immigrant, is to seek one's own fortune while and, if possible, by serving the welfare of the world. Bachelor Mohan's ascetic lifestyle was wholly 'addicted' (nashâ = pot :-) to his NASA mission of global precipitation management, and he retorts to a skeptical questioner during the press conference (which launches the movie) by asking what the real costs to humanity would be if the mammoth project were scaled down. It is because the rest of us have seen America as "the world" that we have put up for so long with the flag-waving 'nationalism'--with its incessant foreign (covert) interventions and genocidal wars--and endorsed its 'exceptionalism' along with its much coveted technological and cultural exports. The powerful strains of yah jo desh hai terâ intrude just as the orbit of the satellite awaiting launch is charted over the subcontinent, and the NRI hopes to continue working with NASA from India. The successful scaling down of the dual-citizen's scientific knowhow to the urgent needs of the Indian village was an even greater experiment in social (re-) engineering. Mohan's nostalgia does not aim to restore an imagined national past, it is a pained reflection on the best course for fulfilling the same universal aspirations that had kept him in America in the first place. The intense yearning that YouTube audiences have unfailingly registered and tearfully resonated to in AR Rahman's nostalgic song--to the point of rendering his Hindi words superfluous and even without knowing that it has been pirated from a movie--is not for the nation as such but for one's buried roots, which necessarily implies a voluntary regression through the tantalizing scenes of one's 'repressed' childhood. Thus a Hispanic enthusiast was inspired to replace the poignant recollections of Swades with a slideshow of his own picturesque hometown of Lagos de Morena, much to the acclaim of his Mexican compatriots, some of whom regret his inability to find an equally moving song in their own idiom. One of the most popular videos (with close to a million views so far) is an eclectic and inclusive remix of simple everyday images--religious and secular, rural and urban, traditional and contemporary--that has won the heart of foreigners (including Pakistani Muslims, Chinese, Latinos, Europeans, Americans, Jews, etc.) emphatically affirming India as their spiritual home to be equated with, or elevated above, their own nations. A nameless viewer aptly comments: "What the world doesn't realize is that there is a bigger world within India than the world itself. It is not about missing India... it's about missing the world!" [1 year ago]. When ordinary Uzbeks, etc., greeted surprised deshis abroad with the spontaneous refrain  "mera dil hai Hindustani" (Raj Kapoor in Shri 420), it was this perennial "festival of India" that their hearts were already celebrating. That our 'national' epic, now so neglected and even disparaged in its homeland, is still treasured across 'Greater India' is the vestige not of Râma's 'superpower' ambitions, but likewise of its universal appeal to foreigners who embraced it so readily, along with the rest of Sanskritic culture, as a mould of their own personal identity. It is the (untold) story of this Râmâyana that Ashutosh Gowarikar is so successfully (re-) telling in Swades, whose continuing echoes, beyond the lackluster box office and across the world wide web, are making 'Indians' of us all.

NRI fans of the 'India' video-remix of Rahman’s 'swansong’ on YouTube effusively identify the promised land with the mother, declare their eternal love, readiness to sacrifice their lives, and their desire to be reborn repeatedly from her womb. In contrast to other religious nationalisms that exalt the (imperial) fatherland, such a filial attitude to the maternal earth-goddess is sanctified by Hindu tradition. The themes of regressing to early infancy and being reborn from the (amniotic) waters are explicit, sustained, and pervasive in Swades. In the Râmâyana, Hanuman traversing the straits assumes cosmic proportions before being swallowed up in diminutive form and regurgitated by a likewise inflatable demoness. Only then does the devoted monkey set foot in the island-womb of Lanka to toss Râma’s token, the ring of recognition, onto the lap of Sîtâ-Gîtâ, who displays it before breaking out into the impatient lament for her promised hero. Nostalgia in and for Swades is the resurgence of the ‘oceanic feeling’ of oneness with the world, the paradise lost as we matured into ego-centered adults now confined within the apparent autonomy of our individual selves and intent on extracting the maximum from others and the environment. In Indian tradition, where the enveloping symbolic universe sustained continued immersion at the unconscious level, the incipient desire for this lost wholeness took the form of ‘world-weariness’ (nirveda), the emotional basis for the rasa of tranquility (shânta), culminating in the decision to renounce. Instead of negating the ego-function, Abhinava’s metaphysics of ‘recognition’ hinges on the universalization (vishvâtmatâ) of self-consciousness to embrace the totality, an initiatic process the ritual framework for which was already provided by the embryonic regression induced by the Vedic sacrifice. Among NRIs, whose sense of self is more fragile because the split ego finds itself in an (emotionally) inhospitable alien environment, this lack of wholeness readily assumes the form of nostalgia for the homeland that may or may not be translated into the consciously assumed spiritual hunger that attracts so many foreigners to India. Mohan’s introspection as to where he belongs is ultimately a question of who he really is. For good-humored Rahul, who procures the caravan to shield his friend from the privations of rural life, Mohan is still “Mr. NRI.” For our homegrown Gîtâ, scornful of this 'American' ever carping at India's failings from the outside, the label translates into “Non-Returning Indian.” The NRI is tolerated, even humored, by the villagers only because he is an outsider. The landholder who is his sharpest critic chides this intruder for presuming to change their world, encouraging the visitor instead to just relax and enjoy his brief vacation. However, the disinterested foreigner is eventually able to bring everyone together precisely because he is not one of them, not caught up in their age-old divisions and petty squabbles. The stranger is able to conceive, visualize, and feel the village as an organic whole and reveal their underlying unity prefigured in the starry heaven precisely because he has acquired the necessary distance, much the same way that so many ethnically or religiously segregated NRIs become sufficiently aware of their Hindu, Indian, or South Asian identity only after living abroad long enough among foreigners, who do not share the same sensibilities. Mahatma Gandhi, the Gujarati bania, was able to become and be recognized as the quintessential Indian only after long and repeated overseas exile, which began with his attempting to become the perfect Englishman. He became embroiled in the centrifugal politics of the independence movement but managed to reshape its partisan squabbles from above—at least more so than any other statesman—by assuming the role, both outwardly and inwardly, of the renouncer (sannyâsin or fakir), the outsider par excellence. The NRI, goaded by filial devotion, returns to retrieve a vital element of his obsolete past and unwittingly ends up being reborn, recovering the wholeness of self through romantic love that blossoms into community service (sevâ): in this personal quest the 'homecoming' hero is still able to draw upon far greater moral, aesthetic, spiritual and symbolic resources than we, including 'native' Indians, might have suspected in Swades.

Gandhiji, it seems to me, would have not only enjoyed Swades but have recognized in its interwoven themes of exile, nostalgia, svarajya, and (self-) redemption the inner trajectory of his own autobiography.