- published: 01 Jun 2011
- views: 620056
Border (Hindi: बॉर्डर) is a 1997 blockbuster Bollywood Anti-war film based on the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. J. P. Dutta directed and produced this war epic which stars Sunny Deol, Sunil Shetty, Akshaye Khanna, Jackie Shroff, Tabu, Pooja Bhatt, Puneet Issar, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Raakhee and Sharbani Mukherjee.
The movie is an adaptation from real life events that happened at the Battle of Longewala fought in Rajasthan (Western Theatre) during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 and Bangladesh Liberation War. It is about how a band of 120 soldiers of the Punjab regiment of the Indian Army headed by Major Kuldip Singh Chandpuri successfully defended their post all night against a whole Tank regiment of the Pakistani Army, until assistance came from the Indian Air Force the next morning. The film was a critical and commercial hit in India.
The film opens before the actual declaration of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 as army Major Kuldip Singh Chandpuri and airforce Wing Commander Anand 'Andy' Bajwa meet on a courier flight and speak about the possibility of opening of the Western front in light of the East Pakistan conflict. Kuldip takes up command of a Coy of the 23rd Punjab Regiment, arguing the light defense being assigned to the military post of Longewala. He meets his second in command Lt Dharamvir Bhan (who happens to be the son of a 1965 Indo-Pakistani-War veteran who was killed during that war) and the Coy NCO Subedar Mathura Das. The company moves to the remote outpost in the deserts of Rajasthan and begins to expand the rudimentary BSF post and does a recce of the area up to the international border with Pakistan. They meet the post's BSF commandant Bhairon Singh, a deeply patriotic man who expresses his love for the desert.
I'm paying a heavy debt
Tell me what is the most fertile sin
The one that despite all could keep me still alive
The one that could shake my improductive torpor
Give me a tough and humiliating discipline that can shake my nerves,
That can break my bones.
Make a severe move that could make my useless existance tremble.
Leave those like me at the end of this road.
Leave those like me on the edge of this blade.
Elegant men like you have created a great road to march on
And a father like you inflicted it on a son without values
Make it weigh strongly on my pale body
Force me to feel the cruel crime of remorse
And the obsessive nausea of ideals
Faith will not save me from myself
Nor will your words make me a saint
Leave those like me at the end of this road.