RIFLE RANGE BOY

Boat(Tamil; 2024) Director: Chimbudeven This film drew little attention as a movie. Although the build-up initially seemed promising, it could have been more exciting. It is said to be based on Ernest Hemingway's 'The Old Man and the Sea', his Nobel Prize and Pulitzer-winning novel, and 'Ten Angry Men', a play written by Reginald Rose, which was later made into an Academy Award-winning movie.  The storyline follows 'The Old Man and the Sea' because much of it occurs within the confines of a boat. Just as in 'Twelve Angry Men', the occupants of the boat (ten of them) have to make the dreaded decision of who two of them should be sacrificed so that the boat does not capsize. Set in 1943 to coincide with the time Japanese fighter plans bombed areas around Madras, it tells a political story about India, its independence, British colonial rule, divisions among fellow Indians and many more.  As they see planes flying over the Madras skies and upon hearing ...

Churchill's Secret Wars (2010) (The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during WW2) Author: Madhusree Mukerjee In 1952, Nehru appeared on BBC TV in his first ever TV appearance. He was invited to the UK to partake in the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. As the head of a former colony of the Crown, Nehru was there, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Winston Churchill, gracing the event. By that time, Churchill had descended from his intense contempt for all races except whites. Churchill must have been brimming from ear to ear as India and many other former colonies had consented to stay under the umbrage of the Crown under the title of the Commonwealth. If two hundred years of looting of wealth from India was insufficient, now their subjects have agreed to make their wealth common!  It is ironic that Nehru and the bulk of the Congress leaders spent crouched in jail all through the most pivotal years before Indian independence, during World War 2. It was the time all the wheel...

Churchill's Secret War (2010) Author: Madhusree Mukerjee Besides participating in the Boer War and WW1 personally, as a Prime Minister, he spearheaded the Allied Forces in World War 2; Winston Churchill made it his life ambition to destroy India. His handling of the 1943 Bengal famine is equal to genocide. Instead of being responsible colonial masters taking care of their colonies that helped to propel their economies, he chose to blame the shortage solely as the natives' fault for choosing to breed like a rabbit. In his same tone of contempt, he verbalised, "Why isn't Gandhi dead yet?" At the heights of the Second World War, the British had its hands tied all over the place. It was trying to act as the biggest superpower. In reality, it was bleeding. India was supplying all its credit needs. In essence, on paper, the British bought India's produce with a promise to pay later. And later was after WW2 when Britain was in dire straits and had to let them go. Bri...