Amborish Roychoudhury starts off his remarkable biography of Raj Khosla on a rather interesting note. When he first mentioned the project to his friends, only a few had any idea of the filmmaker. Sometime later, Amborish made a collage of songs from some of Khosla’s films only to have his inbox flooded with a number of messages, most of them expressing surprise that all these songs were brought to the screen by one director. That is in many ways the tragedy of Raj Khosla, a filmmaker who helped define commercial Hindi cinema in the 1950s through the early 1980s.
Despite his prolific output and several landmark films to his credit, Khosla has never quite received the widespread recognition that many of his contemporaries have. A versatile craftsman, he left an indelible impact across multiple genres, be it noir thrillers, romantic tragedies, courtroom dramas, musicals or melodramas. His cinema was marked by a refined visual style, evocative music, and a consistent engagement with the emotional and moral dilemmas of his characters. As one celebrates the filmmaker’s centenary, it’s probably time to reassess his legacy.
Introduced a New Idiom of Urban Noir
Khosla was initially trained as a singer and was drawn into the film industry under the mentorship of Guru Dutt and Dev Anand. His debut as director came with Milap (1955), but it was his second film C.I.D. (1956), produced by Dev Anand’s Navketan Films, that catapulted him into the limelight. A taut crime thriller with gripping narrative momentum, C.I.D. introduced audiences to a new idiom of urban noir. The film also featured the unforgettable debut of Waheeda Rehman and had music by OP Nayyar, setting the tone for Khosla’s lifelong collaboration with some of the finest music composers and lyricists in the industry.
C.I.D. established Khosla’s flair for suspense and style, qualities that would define his career even as he experimented with other genres. In the mid-1960s, Khosla crafted a trilogy of suspense thrillers that remain genre benchmarks in Hindi cinema: Woh Kaun Thi? (1964), Mera Saaya (1966) and Anita (1967). All three starred Sadhana and featured haunting music, in particular the first two composed by Madan Mohan. These films were atmospheric, moody and psychologically layered — infused with Gothic elements, mirror imagery, fog and rain, creating a uniquely Indian adaptation of Western noir and horror tropes.
Woh Kaun Thi?, with its iridescent track ‘Lag ja gale’, arguably one of the finest romantic songs of longing in Hindi films, wove a narrative of deception, mistaken identity and suppressed trauma. Mera Saaya delved deeper into questions of justice and memory, featuring a riveting courtroom drama at its core. These films demonstrated Khosla’s grasp over the technical elements of suspense — sound design, lighting, mise-en-scène — and his ability to combine it with intense emotional drama.
Mastery over Melodrama and the Joint Family Narrative
While noir gave Khosla critical acclaim, it was his romantic and melodramatic films that brought him widespread popularity. Kala Pani (1958), a Dev Anand-Madhubala-starrer, was a potent mix of romance and social message, tackling themes of injustice and wrongful incarceration. Incidentally, the film was a remake of the 1955 Uttam Kumar-starrer Sabar Uparey, which in turn was based on A.J. Cronin’s novel, Beyond This Place. Bambai Ka Babu (1960) pushed the envelope further, exploring taboo themes such as mistaken incest, handled with rare maturity and subtlety.
His mastery over melodrama reached a peak with Do Badan (1966), a film soaked in tragic romance and one of the definitive tearjerkers of its time. The film’s music — composed by Ravi and written by Shakeel Badayuni — remains iconic, with songs like ‘Bhari duniya mein aakhir dil ko’ and ‘Naseeb mein jiske jo likha tha’ expressing a melancholic fatalism that Hindi cinema embraced wholeheartedly in the ’60s.
In 1969, Khosla directed Do Raaste, a family drama that, though conventional in its storytelling, became a massive commercial success and reinforced the sanctity of the joint family narrative in Hindi cinema. Featuring Rajesh Khanna — then fresh from his breakout in Aradhana — the film tapped into the zeitgeist of a changing India. The film’s emphasis on sacrifice, sibling loyalty, and traditional values struck a chord with audiences, especially in the Hindi heartland. In fact, while Aradhana is justly credited for Rajesh Khanna’s superstardom, it is the success of Do Raaste that actually paved the way for the phenomenon that the star became. Interestingly, while Do Raaste was not ground-breaking stylistically, it demonstrated Khosla’s adaptability. He could modulate his aesthetic choices to suit the genre and audience expectations, without compromising emotional intensity.
Some debacles and some overlooked contributions
One of Khosla’s most significant and often overlooked contributions to Hindi cinema is Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971). Starring Dharmendra and a chilling Vinod Khanna as the dacoit Jabbar Singh, the film prefigured several elements later made iconic by Sholay (1975). From its rural setting, outlaw-vs-hero narrative, to the stylised violence and dramatic build-up to a village’s redemption, Mera Gaon Mera Desh laid the groundwork for the ‘dacoit Western’ genre in Hindi cinema. What made the film exceptional was Khosla’s handling of moral polarity and transformation. Dharmendra’s character arc from a petty thief to a protector of the weak had all the hallmarks of the classic hero’s journey storytelling. Laxmikant-Pyarelal’s music added further muscle to the film’s emotional core.
By the late 1970s and early ’80s, the Hindi film industry was transitioning into a new era of masala entertainers, action cinema and the ‘Angry Young Man’. Khosla went through a bad phase right through the decade with major debacles like Shareef Budmaash, Prem Kahani and Nehle Pe Dahla, which demonstrated the director’s inability to come to terms with a changing landscape. He bounced back briefly with Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki (1978), a melodrama rooted in familial sacrifice, mother-son bonds and themes of sin and redemption. Its success proved yet again Khosla’s command over emotional storytelling.
In what became his last major success, Dostana (1980), he directed Amitabh Bachchan and Shatrughan Sinha in a buddy cop drama infused with action and melodrama. For a film made in the 1980s, it dared to be daring, particularly one jaw-dropping (for its time) sequence where in exchange for helping his friend out at court, the character played by Shatrughan Sinha asks a woman to sleep with him, years before Robert Redford made his indecent proposal to Demi Moore. Shatrughan Sihna is mesmerising in the sequence in which he tells Sheetal (Zeenat Aman), the woman he loves and who in turn loves his friend, ‘Woh raat tumhe mere saath guzaarni hogi, Sheetal.’ Dostana showed that even in the age of Salim-Javed and high-octane drama, Khosla could hold his own.
The Khosla Touch: Music, Women, Emotion
A recurring thread across Raj Khosla’s films is the significance of music — not just as entertainment but as a narrative device. His collaborations with Madan Mohan, Ravi, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, and lyricists like Majrooh Sultapuri, Raja Mehdi Ali Khan and Shakeel Badayuni resulted in some of the most memorable Hindi film songs.
The songs of C.I.D. remain perennial favourites even 70 years later, with ‘Yeh hai Bombay meri jaan’ still very much the city’s anthem. Whether it’s ‘Hai apna dil to awara’ in Solva Saal, Sadhana beckoning a mystified Manoj Kumar with ‘Naina barse rimjhim’ in Woh Kaun Thi?, the rambunctious ‘Maar diya jaye’ in Mera Gaon Mera Desh, the item number ‘Jhumka gira re’ in Mera Saaya, or the come-hither ‘Bindiya chamkegi’, each one different in tone and nuance, Khosla used songs to express internal states, heighten drama, and punctuate emotional arcs.
Songs like ‘Hum bekhudi me tumko’ in Kala Paani, ‘Chal ri sajni’ in Bambai Ka Babu and ‘Jaane kya baat hai’ in one of his most thumping box-office disasters, Sunny, exemplify Khosla’s mastery in merging music with mood.
Another important facet of his cinema was the portrayal of women. While he worked within the limitations of mainstream expectations, Khosla’s female characters were often central to the narrative — mysterious, morally conflicted, or tragically romantic. From Waheeda Rehman’s vamp-turned-heroine in C.I.D. to Suchitra Sen’s quiet dignity in Bambai Ka Babu to Sadhana’s mysterious woman that he fashioned, his women were never merely ornamental. It’s only towards the end of his career that in a film like Dostana he showed uncharacteristic tastelessness in a sequence involving a skimpily-clad Zeenat Aman and her interactions with the police officer played by Amitabh Bachchan, leading to an equally offensive song.
A Director for All Seasons
What sets Khosla apart is his remarkable range. Unlike auteur directors who stuck to one kind of storytelling, Khosla moved seamlessly between genres, adjusting his style and technique accordingly. Yet, his films carried a signature, a mix of elegance, emotional honesty, and cinematic sophistication.
Though Khosla did not enjoy the cult following of Guru Dutt, the socio-political aura of Bimal Roy, or the mass charisma of Manmohan Desai, his contribution was equally vital. He made popular cinema with substance, gave thrillers a classical touch and never compromised on craft. His influence can be seen in the works of later directors like Subhash Ghai, Ramesh Sippy, and even the newer crop of stylised suspense films.
Raj Khosla deserves to be remembered not as a footnote in the history of Hindi cinema but as one of its primary architects. In an era of digital restorations and streaming rediscoveries, it is time for a serious reappraisal of his work. Film schools should teach his genre versatility; critics should celebrate his craft; and viewers should revisit his classics not just with nostalgia but with the recognition that they were ahead of their time.
(Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri is a film and music buff, editor, publisher, film critic and writer)