Garam Hava or Scorching Winds is a 1973 Urdu drama film directed by M. S. Sathyu, with Balraj Sahni as the lead.The movie is based on an unpublished short story by noted Urdu writer Ismat Chughtai. The director S.M. Sathiyo has attempted to depict the socio-economic impact of the partition of India and Pakistan, on the minority of Muslims living in India and how the general masses of Indians made their lives hopeless.
Set in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, the film portrays the predicament of a North Indian Muslim businessman and his family, in the period post partition of India in 1947. In the dismal months, after the death of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, the film’s hero and patriarch of the family Salim Mirza, manages the problem of whether to move to Pakistan like a number of his relatives or remain back. The film details the slow breaking down of his family and is a standout amongst the most moving movies made on India’s parcel. It remains one of only a handful of serious movies depicting the post-Partition situation of Muslims in India.
The essential subject of the film is that of dedication and survival. In spite of Gandhi’s sacrifice, Muslim-Hindu relations in India deteriorate. Muslims gradually turn out to be increasingly minimized bringing about more waves of migration to Pakistan. Obviously, it ought to be noticed that one reason this process of marginalization was happening was because Muslims had turned out to be problematic as both employers and indebted individuals since huge numbers of them were relocating to Pakistan leaving both their work and their debts. This process of out-casting then led to significantly more Muslims to move to Pakistan and thus it started a sort of cycle of persecution and migration.
Another theme the movie explores is the feeling of desertion felt by a considerable lot of the Muslims still in India. They felt as they are individuals who can not or won’t move even though most of the leaders of the Muslim League had left for Pakistan. They were abandoned in a nation that they were being told was no longer theirs even though they had lived there their whole lives. A good number of Muslims declined to leave their homes and go to an obscure land until conditions forced them to. This is additionally stressed in the film when “Halim Mirza”, a leader in the Muslim League who vows to never leave India, leaves India. This sparks rumors and agitation inside the Muslim community and marks the start of the turmoil that keeps on escalating as the film goes on and the persecution increases.
The climax of the movie is in itself a major theme too. The theme of protest is highlighted where instead of fleeing the country, Salim Mirza decides to stay and fight the injustice. The whole movie develops to India getting to be noticeably unendurable for Salim Mirza constraining him to leave, which was the reason a large portion of the Muslims and Hindus living in India and Pakistan relocated. With this scene, the film is by all accounts recommending enduring the shameful acts and brutalities incurred by the nation and its kin basically in light of the fact that it is one’s “home”. It is by all accounts putting patriotism over survival.
Foundations of South Asian Histoty 