Folks, sharing some thoughts on the movie ‘Chhava’. I watched it about three weeks ago with my elder one. The Missus and the younger one had watched it a few days earlier. I normally stay away from films, however this one pulled me. Glad that it did.
Let me try & explain ..
Before moving ahead, just a gentle reminder that earlier this month was the 336th martyrdom anniversary of Sambhaji Maharaj. Here’s a tribute thread in his honour. May have a look : Dharmveer Sambhaji Maharaj
Coming back to Chhaava, I don’t intend to talk about the movie itself, except for exhorting you to go & watch it with your kids It is one part of our history that they will NEVER learn in their school textbooks unless GOI makes a concerted effort to do so.
Instead, I intend talking about the use of the popular medium of movies to subtly and at times, blatantly, peddle narratives and shape opinions. To that end, @vivekagnihotri hits the nail on the head here.
(Link to above tweet : https://x.com/vivekagnihotri/status/1902359513438810554 )
If you think the Indian film industry has NOT been used as a tool to peddle propagandas / narratives, then I have a white coloured building in Agra to sell to you!
Btw, if the movie poster in the above tweet looked to you like reinforcing my statement in the tweet, they you are perfectly right!
For those who missed it, let me introduce you to the film ‘Youngistan‘! (Wiki Link : Youngistaan)
Check out the film plot in the Wiki page.
Check out the release date – March 2014.
Now check out the hero.
Tell me if he doesn’t seem based on a Youth Leader who was leading a major national political party in the elections that were due shortly after the release of the film!
Of course, if you say I am reading too much into what is a matter of pure coincidence, I won’t blame you. In fact, I will share yet another piece of pure coincidence with you. It is popularly called ‘Chennai Express’! (wiki link : Chennai Express)
Release date : 09 August 2013.
Key Dialogue used widely in promotions : Never Underestimate the Power of a Common Man!
A wonderful dialogue indeed. Especially when later that year, the Common Man Party contested Delhi elections and came to power!
Of course, the above two examples can be dismissed as benign coincidence. I won’t contest you if you say so. I might even agree with you to some extent. But then, the element of doubt will always remain.
Now let us look at some movies based on nationalist / patriotic themes made some two decades ago, that came to be really popular. What immediately come to mind are Border, LoC Kargil, Lakshya and Gadar.
Of these, Lakshya was the last one, released in 2004. After that I don’t recollect any films on such themes that gained popularity till the time Uri and Kesari came about in 2019.
Check out the years mentioned in the above tweet and relate them with the political winds prevalent within the country in those times. I won’t say more on this because aim of this blog post is not to make any political statements, but instead, concentrate on the topic of narratives.
The thing is that the battle of narratives and counter-narratives is well and truly underway, with Bollywood being a major medium being utilised. Of course, commercial considerations will always be there due to the huge amounts of funds required for producing a film.
That a @vivekagnihotri could make films like Tashkent Files and Kashmir Files and make profit out of it as well, speaks volumes about the times that we currently live in .. times where talking about parts of our history hidden in plain sight are no longer taboo. On the contrary, I would even say that there is a huge, emerging demand for such stories to be told by popular media. And going by that, I am pretty sure there will be more movies such as Kashmir Files and Chhaava that will come by in the months and years ahead.
Along with that will also come the ‘outrage’ by those who will take it as a personal insult for movie makers daring to tell the truth without coating it in political correctness, just like Chhaava.
The ‘liberal’ ones will continue to beat their chests on every such occasion, while defending violence committed by the ground soldiers. @NAN_DINI_ Ji puts it in perfect context, so instead of writing more on this, I’ll just leave this tweet here.
(Link to above tweet)
As @NAN_DINI_ Ji says in her tweet above, ‘they’ don’t want our kids to know our unvarnished history. And they will go to any extent to make that happen. Talking about ‘them’, I just remembered this tweet of mine.
As per the biography of Ramanand Sagar Ji, Shri Bhaskar Ghose Ji wanted him to ‘reduce Hindu content in Ramayan and make it more secular’. Yes, that is what the son of Ramanand Sagar Ji writes in the book! Check out the screenshots in the tweet above!
In fact, telecast of Ramayan and Mahabharat in the late 80s spurred the political movement that ultimately resulted in current day leadership steering the Motherland today.
‘They’ know the power of narratives.
Hence they try to scuttle unfavourable narratives either thru bureaucratic means, or else by street-level violence, even if the ‘narratives’ are merely about people daring to tell the true history as it happened. Talking about the lengths ‘they’ will go to obfuscate truth, I’ll just leave this video here. ‘Yudhishthira got idea of renunciation From Ashoka’, says the ‘renowned historian’ Romila Thapar Ji.
No wonder they don’t want our children to know about the evil side of ‘Great’ Dynasties. And they will relegate truly great indigenous rulers who actually fought these ‘Great’ dynasties to barely a paragraph or mere footnotes in history books, if at all.
Heck, they don’t even teach our kids about the contemporary military history of our Motherland. Shared some thoughts on that as well some weeks back. Replugging that thread here all over again :
In fact, Battle of Saragarhi is taught in France of all places, as a story of exceptional valour while our own school textbooks remained (and continue to be) perfectly silent on it.
The movie Kesari that told the story all over again, but then, the coming generations will still have no idea about it. Unless we as a Nation make a conscious effort to tell these stories to our future generations, that is.
(Link to above tweet. MUST watch the video embedded in it)
I want my kids and my grandkids to know about Lachit Barphukan, Rani Tarabai, Ram Prasad Bismil, Banda Singh Bahadur, Rani Abbakka, Kakathiyas, Satavahanas and the countless other heroes and heroines who have fought fearlessly for the sake of our lands.
As I conclude this thread, I’ll plug this chain of thoughts here as well. Left to ‘them’, Shivaji will never be ‘The Great’ and instead be relegated to the nomenclature of ‘Mountain Rat’ in the textbooks our kids study from.
Coming back to the movie Chhaava, I made both my kids read this blog post of mine before going for the movie : Dharmveer Sambhaji Maharaj. The violence visited on the captive Sambhaji Maharaj was depicted in all its evil ‘glory’ by the director, yet it remained greatly underplayed in the movie. I take it that any more gore / violence and the movie might not have been cleared by the censors.
Yet, it depicted enough and importantly, unapologetically and without trying to colour it in secularism.
THAT is what seems to have riled the ‘ecosystem’ – this hard-hitting and unabashed telling of truth.
The movie is a MUST WATCH, if you haven’t seen it thus far.
As for my kids, the younger one was silent at the end of the movie (just as he was when he watched Kesari). From the theatre, my wife and he had already planned to go to a nearby Shiv Mandir and they did so. The elder one too was moved. Yet, being the young adult that he is, he merely said in his typical understated, ‘cool’ way – Ekdum Badhiya Movie Thi.
The entire theatre was dead silent towards the end of the movie, which says a lot about it.
With this I conclude this chain of thoughts. I hope it made some sense. If not, then .. well .. so be it!
Thanks for your patience.
Go watch the movie if not done already!
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