There is yet another film claiming “real life” story and yet another instance of falsification of facts to suit a particular narrative with obvious intent to serve the interests of a political party. The way a section of the country’s film industry is sacrificing the art of film-making at the altar of politics and false propaganda is a cause of serious concern. More so because this is being done in the name of rewriting the country’s history which turns out to be nothing more than pseudo-history intended to vitiate the minds of the youth and those without clear ideas about what really happened in the past. The latest instance is the third in quick succession marked by gross distortion of truth. The audacity of such film-makers to pass off one-sided propaganda as authentic portrayal of history is astounding.
This time the making of a bio-pic on the controversial proponent of a blind, right-wing Hindutwa ideology, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, is still in progress when the process of falsification has started. The shooting of the film has not reportedly begun yet, though it is expected to be released later this year. Yet, its director and lead cast chose the birth anniversary of Savarkar, May 28, to release a teaser of the film that has been immediately slammed as a travesty of truth. The sheer opportunism for publicity and helping the cause of the ruling BJP to project its icon as “an unsung hero” of the freedom movement is evident as the teaser followed the inauguration of the new Parliament Building, which was itself made to coincide with Savarkar’s birth anniversary.
Whatever the intention, one might not have objected to the timing of the teaser but for the fact that Hooda’s promotional tweet made utterly false claims to glorify Savarkar. The teaser describes the protagonist of the film as “the most wanted Indian by the British, the inspiration behind revolutionaries like – Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Bhagat Singh & Khudiram Bose.” In the tweet he repeated those claims and wrote “Watch his true story unfold!”
Immediately thereafter a grandnephew of Netaji, Chandra Kumar Bose, sought to debunk the falsehood and said Netaji’s and Savarkar’s ideologies were poles apart. He charged the film is an attempt to distort history and expressed concern that it will pass on wrong facts to the present generation. “How did the censor board allow this? This is causing serious harm (to India’s history) by disseminating wrong information,” he said.
Chandra Bose further explained that Subhash Chandra Bose, in his unfinished autobiography, The Indian Struggle, had clearly mentioned that “nothing can be expected from Mr Savarkar and Md. Ali Jinnah”. On another instance, Netaji wrote : “Nothing can be expected from Hindu Mahasabha or Muslim League”. Netaji might have met Savarkar once, but that does not prove his support towards Savarkar’s ideology, his nephew said. In fact, the two people who truly inspired Netaji were Swami Vivekananda and Deshbandhu Chittaranjan. “Swami Vivekananda was his spiritual guru while Chittaranjan was his political mentor,” Bose stated.
Likewise the claims made in the teaser that Savarkar had inspired Bhagat Singh and Khudiram Bose were preposterous and far from the truth. Khudiram was martyred at the age of 18 in 1908, whereas Savarkar was in London from 1906 to 1911. It is also a fact that Savarkar had not uttered a word on Bhagat Singh’s hanging and there is no evidence that he had inspired Bhagat Singh or had ever met him.
The question is why such falsification of history is being repeatedly tried by film-makers for the past few months starting with The Kashmir Files, followed by The Kerala Story. In both the films Moslems were demonised and a one-sided false pro-Hindoo narrative dished out. That the whole purpose was to help the BJP’s cause became clear after top BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, lauded and promoted those earlier movies. It could also be that the BJP election think tanks are drying up in terms of new ideas to keep the Hindutva narrative alive and kicking.