Parvez Dewan
Every autumn, as the Navaratras approach, the thoughts of Jammu’s tourism fraternity, the people of Katra and devotional singers from all over India turn towards the annual All India Devotional Songs Contest held in Katra during those auspicious nine days.
This year, for the first time since its inception in 1999, the nine-day contest will be held without the man who ensured that the contest acquired its present all- India stature.
This man was Vikas Mohan (Sharma), a towering son of Jammu who founded and editedSuper Cinema, India’s premier and most influential film trade journal and was arguably the most powerful film trade journalist in the Hindi-Urdu film industry. And he used this influence to serve his mother state.
In the early and mid-1990s tourism tourist arrivals to Kashmir had dropped drastically. International tourists to Ladakh declined by almost one third.
Lt. Gen MA Zaki, as Advisor to the Governor, was the state’s Home Minister as well as Tourism Minister. I was the Tourism Secretary. He asked me to create awareness among tourists about the relatively unaffected parts of our state. To achieve this goal I conceived the now-famous Ladakh Festival, as well as the Jammu Festival, Mansar Festival and Sudh Mahadev Festival. The number of pilgrims coming to Katra was growing handsomely. However, the middle-classes and upper- classes were staying away, thinking that Katra, too, was disturbed. After researching this issue I conceived the idea of a daily singing contest at Katra. The winners of the eight daily competitions would participate in a grand contest on the ninth day, the Ninth Navaratra.
Pilgrim- tourists would get high quality, free, devotion-based entertainment for several hours, till well past midnight, every night for nine days. However, we had to come up with an attractive package to entice the best entertainers to perform at Katra.
The Tourism Department sanctioned a grand first prize of Rs.1 lakh, which was a big sum in those days, and other similarly handsome prizes. However, in order to attract the best talent in the country and to make Katra the headquarters of India’s most important devotional songs contest, we needed to make the top winners feel that winning the competition would boost their careers.
The founder of India’s biggest manufacturer of CDs had a very special relationship with Sri Mata Vaishno Devi Ji. To this day his company puts the image of Mata Rani on every CD that it produces. They even run a charitable langar near Katra. So I assumed that this company would gladly give a recording contract to our top winners.
However, by then the founder of this company had been brutally assassinated and his heirs probably did not have the same feelings for events based in Katra. I wrote to them but there was no response. I thought that my letter might have got lost within that huge company. So I sent SS Bhalla, the then Director, Tourism, Jammu, to meet them. He did and they told him that it was too late for the year 1997. He should contact them the next year.
I sent Mr Bhalla to Delhi again in 1998 to meet the officers of this company. Once again there was no confirmation from them. I was very disappointed because I was convinced of the soundness of my idea. Please remember, the idea of reality shows based on singing competitions had not been born anywhere in the world by then.American Idol, which is an extended version of our devotional songs contest, was launched only in 2002 and its Indian version, Indian Idol, only in 2004.
Maybe we were too many years ahead of our time. That was when I met Rakesh Wazir, who then was the Senior Vice President of the Hotel and Restaurant Association (HRA), Katra, in connection with the promotion of the Shiv Khori Shrine. I shared with him my vision, and how the company that claimed an association with Sri Mata Vaishno Devi Ji had cold-shouldered us.
Rakesh Wazir said that there was no problem. He knew someone who would make our dreams come true-a son of Jammu called Vikas Mohan.
Film producer and founder of India’s premier film trade journal till the 1990s Screen was the biggest selling trade journal in India. It was a black and white newspaper with news about forthcoming films, and other trade stories that even schoolboys and laymen enjoyed reading. Every alternate page of Screen would be a full-page advertisement of some forthcoming Hindi-Urdu film. Dhaba owners in Jammu, Katra and almost everywhere in North India would cut these full-page advertisements, especially the 2-page centrespreads, and paste them on the walls of their dhabas,which would give diners at those dhabas something interesting to look at and read while eating.
Screen is owned by the Indian Express group and also organizes and sponsors the annual Screen Awards for films in Hindi-Urdu.
In 1985 Vikas Mohan entered the same space as Screen by launching Complete Cinema.In November 1999 he converted his magazine to Super Cinema, under which name it has been going from strength to strength since then. Screen was a newspaper but Super Cinema is a glossy, stapled, colour magazine of almost the same size as Screen.
1999 was a very important year for Vikasji. Earlier that year, in March, Aarzoo, starring Akshay Kumar,Saif Ali Khan and the then No.1 Madhuri Dixit, and produced by Vikasji, had been released. Unfortunately, it did not do as well as its big budget warranted. 1999 was also the year when Vikasji helped us launch the All India Devotional Songs Contest. After the contest he visited the holy shrine of Sri Mata Vaishno Devi Ji and a few weeks later launched Super Cinema.
Before that, in 1988,Vikasji had produced Libaas.Directed by Gulzar and starring Shabana Azmi and Naseeruddin Shah this art film never got released because the censors found it too ‘bold.’ This, too, had been a financial setback for Vikasji. However, the songs of Libaas, composed by Rahul Dev Burman and written by Gulzar, were very popular among literate audiences. Vikas Mohan was born in Jammu in June 1951. However, by then his family had moved to Delhi. He graduated in science from Delhi University, before heading to Bombay to make a career in cinema.
Vikasji began his career in the films as Assistant Director to many famous directors, including the legendary Hrishikesh Mukherjee. His first independent film as producer was Adhura Aadmi (1982), starring Shatrughan Sinha, Vidya Sinha and Kalpana Iyer, directed by Amjad Khan, and with music by R D Burman. The appeal of this film, too, was limited to arthouse audiences.
Vikasji never produced a film after Aarzoo.
However, it was the highly successful Super Cinema that gave Vikasji a pivotal position in the Indian film industry, a position that he used to promote tourism in his native state.
On hearing my idea of an all-India devotional songs contest Rakesh Wazir got in touch with Vikas Mohan. Vikasji immediately contacted Mr Ganesh Jain.
Ganesh ji and his brothers own Venus Records & Tapes, one of India’s biggest manufacturers of CDs. In those days he was basking in the success of the superhit Baazigar, which had been produced by him. (Other major films produced by Ganesh ji include Khiladi, Main Khiladi Tu Anari, Yes Boss, Mela, Josh, Humraaz, Baadshah, Elaan, Garam Masala and Akele Hum Akele Tum.)
Thanks to Vikas Mohan’s efforts Ganesh ji agreed to give the winner of the first prize at our devotional songs contest a recording contract, which meant that the winner would cut a CD on which all the songs would be sung by him or her. Ganesh ji went further and said that there would be a second CD with nine tracks, one track sung by each finalist of our contest. Both CDs would carry the logo of Katra’s All India Devotional Songs Contest, which was additional free publicity for us.
Vikasji, on his part, gave us free publicity in the weeks leading to the contest as well as thereafter, by carrying free advertisements and pictures of the prize winnersand celebrity judges.
This was just the bait that we were looking for.
The All India Devotional Songs Contest held in Katra was a grand success from Year One. In 1999our judges included Mr Ganesh Jain, Mr Pahlaj Nihalani, Mr Harish Saugandh and Mr Vikas Mohan himself.
At the time Pahlaj Nihalani was the President of the All India Motion Pictures & TV Programme Producers, and we wanted the winners of our contest to get a break in cinema and television (and many of them did). By then Sh Nihalani had had a string of big-budget films behind him, including the super hit Aankhen. Today, of course, he is the Chairman of the Central Board of Film Certification (‘censor board’). Harish Saugandh, together with his brother Jhamu, had produced major films.
Between them Ganesh ji and Vikasji ensured that our judges were not retired film producers and directors but producers and directors whose films had just been released or were currently under production. For instance, Jhamu Saugandh’s Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam had been released only a few weeks before.
True to my original vision, the winners of our top prizes have been from all over India and belong to all religions. In the first year Ghulam Muhammad Dhansali won the top prize and was followed by Paramjeet Singh (who now sings on Canadian TV). Vikasji’s association with the holy pilgrimage continued.
He would sometimes accompany his filmmaker friends who had just completed a filmto the holy shrine of Sri Mata Vaishno Devi Ji to seek blessings for their new venture. After the darshan Vikasji and Rakesh Wazir would sometimes bring the film producers to my house in Jammu, where they would accept nothing more than a vegetarian meal.
When I went to Mumbai on a personal visit I got an idea of Vikasji’s influence and goodwill among film producers. They threw a dinner in my honour where not only producers who had been to my Jammu house but every single active film producer (but not directors) attended, some only for fifteen minutes, but each of them felt obliged to ‘mark attendance’ (haazirilagaana) with Ganesh ji and Vikasji.
The same was true of his son Amul Mohan’s wedding. Almost the entire film industry turned up. And, on a sad note, when Vikasji left us a few months ago tributes to him continued to pour in for months. No less a newspaper than The Hindu has created a record of many of these tributes to Vikasji on The Hindu’s own website.
Earlier this year, when for a few months I was Advisor to His Excellency the Governor, I received an emotional request from Vikasji. There was a marriage in his family and it meant a lot to him but he could not attend because he was not well.
I feel very awkward at functions where I do not know the hosts personally. But there was no question of refusing Vikasji.
At that stage I did not realise how seriously ill he was, or that we only had a few weeks of his company left with us. I am glad that I represented him at the Sharma- Khajuria wedding.
Now, as we celebrate the All India Devotional Songs Contest at Katra for the first time without Vikasji, we thank him for giving it its current stature.
Follow our WhatsApp channel
