Badnam Basti (1971)

Interesting facts

Badnam Basti is a 1971 Bollywood drama film directed by Prem Kapoor and adapted from an eponymous novel by Hindi novelist Kamleshwar. Starring Nitin Sethi, Amar Kakkad, and Nandita Thakur, it is often described as India's first gay film. The film was thought to have been lost for 40 years, but a print was found in 2019.

Production

The film is based on Ek Sadak Sattavan Galiyan (A Street with 57 Lanes), the debut novel of the Hindi writer Kamleshwar Prasad Saxena which was originally titled Badnam Basti and serialized in the Hindi journal Hans in 1956 and published as a novel in 1957.

Badnam Basti was produced by the Film Finance Corporation on a budget of ₹250,000. It was shot in a four-week period at Mainpuri. The theme of homosexual interest between the two male characters caused Kamaleshwar's novel to attract controversy; Prem Kapoor had to excise scenes from the novel and make their relationship only suggestive in order to receive clearance by the film censorship board.

Although it is labelled as India's first gay film, Badnam Basti neither explicitly depicts nor identifies the male characters as gay. They are bisexual rather than gay, and their relationship is secondary to their heterosexual relationships.

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