Rebel without a cause inspiration?

I love both these films, but IMO even "loosely inspired" is a stretch. I see Rebel Without a Cause as depicting the generation gap (before it had a name)--an inability to communicate between high-school-age adolescents and their parents. Rang de Basanti, I think, is more concerned with college students who feel their country is hopelessly crippled by corruption and blindly clinging to tradition. It's true there is the parallel of a disaster which occurs in the middle of both films which causes fallout throughout the rest of each film, but that's a plot convention shared by thousands of other movies. Also, the characters of RWAC, though changed by their experience, don't really do a full 180-degree turn the way the students of RDB do. They go from wanting to leave their country behind to deciding to start a revolution to save it. If the makers of RDB took any inspiration from RWAC, it was probably a general inspiration when considering how radical RWAC was in 1950s America. But again, there are many others films of that period (and others) that were daring and free-thinking. I don't see any homage-type references that lead me specifically to Rebel as opposed to other films. I'm always happy to have someone point out something significant I may have missed, though.


"Tell you what . . . the truth is . . . sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it." --Jack Twist