Gabbar Singh

The exaggerated malice and cruelty in the character of Gabbar Singh is almost unbelievable. What’s especially remarkable is that it’s left unexplained. There is no suggestion that Gabbar suffered a tortured childhood or some traumatic event that turned him evil, and though one might interpret his character as a sociopath—particularly after the Russian Roulette-type execution of his henchmen)—the filmmakers certainly don’t push the viewer in that direction. Instead, Gabbar is portrayed as an embodiment of pure evil, an aberration of some kind. His sense of retribution is highly imbalanced—he is arrested and responds by murdering the Thakur’s family in cold blood, including the young grandson. (Wikipedia says this scene was cut from the censored version, which is a shame, as it highlights the character’s complete lack of humanity). He is almost a force of nature, in his complete lack of empathy for beings, and yet in his predilection for sadism he is something much worse.

As an inhuman character, he transcends the regular role of movie villain. He is something completely different from the villains of Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven. He serves as a nemesis not to the heroes but to the Thakur, who is seemingly punished for his devotion to law and order. Unlike in the other films, the reason the heroes are hired is not because the bandits are bleeding the village within an inch of its life (although they are extorting goods from the villagers), but rather the Thakur’s vendetta against Gabbar. The villagers certainly seem glad to put a stop to the banditry, but when it gets dangerous they easily back down—like the villagers of The Magnificent Seven, they seem more inclined to pay off the bandits then to fight them. Even the heroes don’t seem particularly inspired by the story of the oppressed villagers—they are paid handsomely for their work and then decide to quit, only to be dissuaded by the Thakur telling them how Gabbar murdered his family. The impetus then, is not to protect the villagers, but to destroy Gabbar.

But even if the plot pits the heroes against Gabbar, it is just a distraction for the true battle, which must be fought by the Thakur. And this is where the story gets confusing, because it is unclear whether our heroes are actually heroes. Gabbar becomes an evil force that serves as the backdrop for different stories: the friendship of the Jai and Veeru the grief and retribution of the Thakur, and the two romances. More than a simple villain, his presence brings together different characters, but also sets them off in different directions: Jai to death, Veeru to marriage, Radha to the mourning of a second man, and the Thakur to perhaps some type of closure (if his tears mean anything).

Strange though, that Gabbar’s character is so magnetic, so popular to Bollywood filmgoers. Indeed, he has entered Indian popular culture as a bogeyman figure, something that mother’s scare their children with. The duality between his wickedness and charisma seems confused somehow. In the same way that Sholay might appear to be confused about its own genre to the viewer trained by Hollywood, Gabbar as a character is confused, which confuses the plot.