What does India's freedom struggle have to teach today's generation? And in a world where every story is scrutinised through a political lens, how much freedom do storytellers really have?
On this episode of Buzz by the Bay, Anushka Jagtiani is in conversation with acclaimed filmmaker Nikkhil Advani, the director behind Bollywood classics such as Kal Ho Naa Ho and the creative force behind historical dramas exploring India's freedom struggle, including Freedom at Midnight on SonyLIV and The Revolutionaries on Amazon Prime Video.
From revisiting the people and events that shaped India's independence to drawing parallels between the freedom movement and youth protests in India today, Nikkhil shares his perspectives on history, dissent, political perceptions and the power of storytelling to challenge the way we see the world.
Here are excerpts from the interview conducted by Anushka Jagtiani.
Interview
Q1. Thank you for making these shows that explore different periods of India's freedom struggle. How has your recent show, The Revolutionaries, on Amazon Prime Video, been received? It explores a more violent aspect of the freedom struggle.
Ans: It is following the trajectory that Amazon and I knew it would. The actors, Bhuvan Bam, Rohit Saraf, Pratibha Ranta and Gurfateh Pirzada, have such a vast fan base. So, the audience obviously took to it immediately, and they jumped at every single nuance, every single dialogue and every single moment. I think that's incredible.
Even talking to you right now is very gratifying and heartening because people are understanding that there was a parallel movement in our freedom struggle.
Q2. The Revolutionaries is very different from Freedom at Midnight, even though both are about the Indian independence movement. The latter deals with Partition, Gandhi's Satyagraha and the Mountbatten era.
Ans: I am such a big fan of Gandhi, Nehru and Patel and what they achieved. The criticism I received for Freedom at Midnight was: "Did you not know that there was also another aspect of the freedom movement that nobody ever talks about?"
My initial reaction was, "Yes, so there must have been. But I am a fan of Gandhi and Nehru's era." However, that criticism allowed me to go back and read about Rash Behari Bose and the revolutionaries.
Q3. The Revolutionaries is based on the life of Rash Behari Bose and is an adaptation of Sanjeev Sanyal's book, Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom. Why did you choose to tell this story?
Ans: We always think about the revolutionaries, or rather, the so-called nationalist extremists, in silos: Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose. When I read more, I realised that Rash Behari Bose had actually created a kind of movement, the Ghadar Movement, between 1912 and 1915, which is the period covered in the show. It was a very organised movement.
Q4. Why did you choose to make shows on the Indian freedom movement in the first place?
Ans: Mainly because I feel that we do not know enough about it. In the India we are living in today, people are passing judgements and making such broad generalisations. People say things like Gandhi was responsible for Partition and Sardar Patel did not get his due.
Gandhi always said that Nehru would lead the country and Sardar Patel would run the country.
If you think about it today, that's exactly what is happening. Narendra Modi is leading the country, and Amit Shah is literally running it.
I also love Freedom at Midnight as a book. I had read it as a child after my father gave it to me. The two people at Sony who were commissioning projects and stories were also big fans of Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapierre.
Q5. Is it a bit of a risk to make historical dramas like Freedom at Midnight, given that subjects such as Gandhi and Nehru are always controversial?
Ans: Is it a risk to make these kinds of historical shows? In the world we are living in today, just making anything is a risk. Everybody has become oversensitive and over-opinionated. There is very little space left for a storyteller to fly with a subject.
Q6. How was it working with the team at Sony on Freedom at Midnight? What decisions did you make at the outset?
Ans: We decided that we were not going to do anything to provoke anyone. We were going to be responsible about it. Honestly speaking, during my first interaction with the team at Sony, they asked me how I wanted to tell the story. I said, "I want to tell it like a thriller. I want to tell it like a ticking time bomb."
Q7. What kind of emotion were you trying to evoke in viewers through Freedom at Midnight?
Ans: It was very important to me that, when you watch the show, you get so drawn into it that you literally feel as if you are a fly on the wall in Nehru's office, Mountbatten's study or Jinnah's study, where you are seeing this narcissistic, megalomaniacal kind of person.
At the same time, you are seeing him wonder what happened, in the sense that he wanted to rule Pakistan from Malabar Hill in Bombay, where he lived.
