No Controlling a Mob!

Bengal Files (2025)
Written & Directed: Vivek Agnohotri

This is a continuation of a series of movies released by Vivek Agnohorti, and like with the titles ending with 'files' - Kashmir Files, Kerala Files and next Udaipur Files. This genre of film generally presents another point of view on Indian history, often different from the narratives of what they label 'leftist historians'. This leftist version is taught in history lessons and schools worldwide.

We know the Partition primarily affected the northwestern and northeastern regions of the subcontinent. We have also been frequently informed about the toll and intergenerational trauma it inflicted on the people of Punjab. The devastation it caused to Bengal is often overlooked at best.

The attempt to divide Bengal was made in 1905 by Lord Curzon, the then Viceroy of India. Bengal was to be split into the Muslim-majority East and the Hindu-majority West, citing administrative convenience as the reason. The real motive, however, was to weaken those opposing colonial rule. The backlash was so intense that the British abandoned the plan six years later. It is said to have sparked the Swadeshi movement, which called for a boycott of British goods.

Many things happened after that. The World War II era saw the entire Congress Party leadership behind bars. This gave the Muslim League Party all the opportunity to press the British to demand a separate country carved out of India for Muslims. By the time the war ended, Britain was in a dire state and unable to maintain its colonies. India was ready for independence, even at the expense of losing part of its land. There was a rush to claim as much territory as possible for the new country, which was called Pakistan for India's Muslims.

A year before India's independence, there was a significant clash between the Congress and the Muslim League over how the country's division should unfold. Who started the conflict depends on which side one asks. The Hindus of Bengal were adamant that Pakistan was attempting to take over the entire Bengal and had plans to swallow up the whole of Punjab, as well as inciting many princely states to join their side. They accused the Chief Minister of Bengal, Suhrawardy, whom they nicknamed 'The Butcher of Bengal', of instigating riots. He was allegedly announcing over the mosque to the Muslims to go forth and kill non-believers. To the Muslims, the Hindu resistance leader, Gopal Patha, was the butcher, a city-based meat-selling Brahmin from Calcutta. Neither party admits to starting the fire; they were merely reacting to hostility.

Calcutta - Direct Action Day
16th August 1946.

The movie reenacts a scenario quite similar to what happened during the Direct Action Day, on 16th August 1947, when there was allegedly a concerted effort by the Muslims to go on a killing spree and make the whole of Bengal part of Pakistan. In this story, a local elected member of the Legislative Assembly, a seemingly liberal chap, is using the power vested in him for his self-serving needs. He influenced the local mosque goers and the well-endowed section of society to start communal violence.

Watching the movie, my novice, untrained mind detected two boo-boos. It was 1946-47, and MK Gandhi was in conversation with Jinnah. Gandhi was coaxing Jinnah against the idea of Pakistan... "after all, the Hindus and the Muslims are of the same DNA?" Gandhi said. Really? People talking about DNA in 1947? For the record, Watson and Crick only proposed the idea of DNA in 1953 and received the Nobel Prize in 1962.

Another anachronistic moment was when the main character was finally apprehended by the mob. He is punished by having his upper limbs dismembered. His limbs are pulled apart by two motorcycles. At a glance, the vehicles look like they were Japanese-made, like those sold in the 1980s. For the record, India received its first shipment of Royal Enfields, imported from the UK for British officers' use. Motorcycles were bulky in that era. India's first locally produced motorcycle was the Royal Enfield Bullet 350 in 1955.

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/direct-action-day-and-the-story-of-a-bengal-butcher-gopal-patha-who-saved-calcutta-9114693

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A historical figure not often mentioned!

Swatantrya Veer Savarkar (Hindi, 2024)

Director: Randeep Hooda

It is funny how names like Savarkar, Bhagat Singh and Subash Chandra Bose escaped our consciousness when we were taught Indian history in school. We were only told of Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian Congress Party and their brand of civil disobedience. Gandhi's passive demeanour, recurrent fasting, and imprisonment eventually won India's Independence. Oh, right! Savarkar and the gang were branded as terrorists and troublemakers, destroying the order, culture and modernity the highly evolved superior race brought to the lost natives. 

Now, we are told of alternative narratives of events that may have happened during the 200 years of the Raj's rule in India. The victors control the narratives, but entertaining the other side of the story is worthwhile. Let us not forget that the immediate reason for the British's sudden exodus from Bharat was not just the bludgeoning British debt to India incurred during WW2 but the Indian Navy Mutiny that kicked out around the time of the trial of captured INA soldiers in 1946.

Savakar has always been and is still labelled a bad boy. He used the word 'Hindutva' way too often to make British and non-Hindus hot under their collar. Even in today's context, the mention of Hindutva brings forth the image of a saffron-donning warrior hoisting a flag with an image of a ferocious-looking Hanuman as a motif. In the eyes of those in opposition to the second-term ruling party BJB, this is a dog whistle for the battle for Hindu domination, a.k.a. Hindutva. 

Not in Savarkar's mind, however. He chose the path of aggression against the invaders. The secret society 'Abhinav Bharat' was his brainchild. It became a nidus for many young spirit men to take arms to assassinate British leaders who wronged Indians. Savarkar looked at Hindutva as a political, geographic, and cultural movement linked to the region from the Sindhu River to the ocean that is Bharat, as it is considered their ancestral land. He used the concept of Hindutva to reel the masses, Hindus and non-Hindus alike, to chase out the invaders. Unfortunately, in modern times, it has taken an oppressive meaning to mean to oppress the minority, the weak and the downtroddden in the fringe of society.

Even as a student at Ferguson College in Pune, he was a rabble-rouser. Being a brilliant student, he managed to secure a place to study law in London with the help of local sponsors who were also quiet revolutionaries. It was in London that he blossomed. He landed in India House in Highgate, the hub for Indian revolutionaries. Famous icons like Madam Cama (who brought India's plight to the Socialist Forum in Stuttgart in 1907 and unveiled India's 'Tricolour' with the word Bande Mataram and logos representing significant religions of India), Madan Lal Dhingra (who assassinated the officers of the Secretary of State for India, Curzon Wyllie) and many other rebels had met Savarkar there. 

Early Tricolour -1907

In 1907, Savarkar wrote 'The War of Independence' in response to Britain's celebrations of the quashing of the 1857 Indian Rebellion. This mutiny also called the Sepoy Mutiny, caused the British to introduce tight gun control and draconian measures to curb Indian resistance. Savakar's book has become the handbook for future Indian freedom fighters who opted for Independence through armed resistance. Savarkar looked at the 1857 mutiny as India's First War for Independence. 

In 1910, Savarkar was arrested for multiple charges, including starting a war against the Crown and was deported to India by sea. When the ship docked at Marseilles, he attempted a dash to freedom but was rearrested and returned to the British after much deliberation. In India, he was sentenced to fifty years at Kala Pani in Andaman Island. The world passed him by. His brother was also jailed on the same island, but they never met till much later. The state confiscated his family property, and his wife, mother, and sisters lived as paupers. Savarkar's degrees were withdrawn. 

By 1921, Savarkar, after writing many petitions after petitions, was transferred to Ratnagiri prison on the mainland. He obtained restricted release by 1924.

He was ideologically opposed to many of Gandhi's proposals. He felt Gandhi and the Congress Party were too appeasing to the British demands. It was no wonder why none of the Congress members were ever jailed in Kala Pani. Gandhi's Sathyagraha movement was oppositional to his violent approach to clinching Independence. Savarkar suggested that Indian youths should partake in British Army training and combats, in contrast to the Quit India movement and Congress's refusal to enlist for war. These exercises, he thought, would be helpful in the Indian War of Independence later. Savarkar was also inimical of the Khilafat movement.

As the head of the Hindu Mahasabha, he allied with the Muslim League to successfully compete in many provincial elections. 

Be careful with whom you pose in a photo.
Here, Savakar (centre) is seated beside Godse
(dark half-jacket)

Savarkar is reputed to have helped to erect the Patit Pavan Mandir when Orthodox Brahmins refused to let Dalits into their temples. It now runs an annual Ganesh festival, which all castes attend.

After Gandhi's assassination in 1948, Savarkar's name was dragged in again. The assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a member of the Hindu Mahasabha and RSS and had allegedly had a meeting just before the said killing. The Kapoor Commission was set up to ascertain his involvement, but the decision was left hanging. Only in 2018 Savarkar's name was erased as the co-conspirator of Gandhi's shooting.

Savarkar died in 1966, soon after his wife's death. He fasted himself to death, refusing food, water and medicines as he felt his work on Earth was done.

The irony of all is that the man of passive resistance, Gandhi, died a violent death. In contrast, Savarkar, who advocated violence as the means to win Independence, died in a relatively passive way without giving a fight.

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Learn to agree to disagree!

President Thomas Jefferson, left, and his predecessor,
President John Adams. (Feuding Fathers)
Getty Images

At this time of one's life (stepping into the seventh decade of existence), one often wonders about all the people who made their appearances all along my life. Some of theirs were short and sweet. Some left with a sour aftertaste. Some got lost in the annals of times. Occasionally, I had people who took everything wrongly and left anything but amicably. One did not like the sight of me and had nothing nice to say about me. Well, what can I say but that the feeling was mutual.

Recently, I read about the friendship between the two Founding Fathers of the United States of America. They were not really best friends. They had a big job to do for a greater cause. They looked at things from different perspectives; both felt compelled to defend their conviction until the end. Towards that end, they argued ferociously and wrote stinging letters to each other but all the time, acquiring brickbats and respect simultaneously.

After the British were sent packing from the 13 colonies of the New World, the new nation had to decide how to run its country. Would they want tight central control like the British had before Independence? They realised every colony had its own need, and to have one vision for the whole nation would be disastrous. It was like the British all over again. The other side was modelling a country with Republic principles after Rome.

The Independence Declaration was no divine decree. For a long time, the founding could not agree upon its execution. Adams believed in a strong central government, whereas Jefferson championed states' rights. They competed against each other for Presidentship after Washington refused to hold the post for a third term. Adams became the second President of the USA. He offered Jefferson the post of Vice President, but Jefferson declined. The subsequent election was won by Jefferson, leaving Adams bitter.

The duo refused to communicate with each other for 12 years till a fellow Declaration signer, Benjamin Rush, made them write to each other. They vehemently argued the merits of their convictions via more than the 185 letters that they wrote to each other. Each did not want the other to outdo them. Coincidentally, they died four hours apart on July 4th, Independence Day. A sweet end to two men who gave much of their lives to the foundation of America.

Closer to home, I recall another intense discussion panel that my friends and I used to attend. It was an adrenaline-rushing, temper-flaring, emotionally charging discussion on life and its meaning. We learned many things from each other that no teacher or school could teach. All that came to zilch because of some other unrelated miscommunication. Now, we are all left groping in the dark again, finding our own answers alone through our own follies.

Rashomon: The Truth Is Often Mutable And Ambivalent

We should learn that opinions vary. We should learn to agree to disagree. The truth is an elusive shadowplay. As Rashomon tells us, the truth has many forms. All can be right.

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Only in Japan?

Old enough! (Japanese, since 1991)
Reality Show

For a long time, people in Japan have been in stitches periodically, seeing toddlers who are barely able to walk going off on a journey to perform their first chore. Children between two (yes, as early as two) to five are assigned by their parents, as planned by the documentary makers, to go out of their houses, out in the street to run a list of errands. 

It is thunderous to see these easily distractable cuties wobbling around with bags strapped over their shoulders, out in the streets, looking at buildings around them, reminding themselves how to get to their destinations. The camera crew who accompany them are not allowed to help them out. They act out as mere passers-by. Invariably, the children will end up completing their tasks. Besides seeing the kid's antics, viewers will also have a picturesque panoramic view of the landscape of different small towns in Japan.

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig,

Home again, Home again, jiggety-jig.

The first thing that crosses a non-Japanese watching this show is that these things can only happen in Japan. Allowing a young child out in the street all alone to do stuff in the name of making them independent will only be done by the Japanese. Firstly, as I know, young kids do not learn academic things in the first years of their early education. Instead, they are taught skills. They learn about body hygiene, cleanliness, performing house chores, cleaning toilets, cutting vegetable etcetera.

Japan is a safe country. Children do not get kidnapped or harvested for body parts. The Japanese are world famous for their social courtesy, and their road manners are world envy. Their streets are well maintained, devoid of open manholes or potholes. There is ample space and clear demarcation for pedestrians to walk safely. Furthermore, their culture encourages independence. Elsewhere in the world, the police will zoom in, or their parents will be charged with child abandonment. 

(P.S. I had to go out to do shopping at the wet market when I was nine. I learnt the hard way, after an avalanche of earfuls, how to pick fresh fish at a bargain. I, however, never perfected the skill of getting a bargain. I found it too combative and was self-conscious to be mocked at my 'ridiculous' offers.)

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History is kind to Victors!

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 wheeling and dealing of talk of carving the country was in progress. In 1953, barely ten years after the ugly Partition, there was its leader chummy with their brutal colonial masters. Nehru says no offence in the interview when asked about the 18 years he spent behind bars fighting for India's independence. What the interviewer did not mention was the systematic philandering of India's wealth over 200 years, which saw India spiral down from a country which allegedly possessed over 20% of the world's GDP in mid 18th century to become the sixth poorest country in the world when the British left India.

No wonder the current generation of Indians want to re-evaluate and re-write their history, not from the viewpoint of the conquerors but the conquered. As the African proverb goes, "Until the lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter."

The events surrounding the systemic state-sponsored persecution and mass murder are constantly reminded to the world. The word 'Holocaust' is almost synonymous with the killing of six million Jews by Nazis during WW2. The world has not been fed about the repeated famine-related deaths that the Jewel in the Crown of the British Raj had to endure to enrich its colonial masters and his countrymen were well fed.

In 1950, Winston Churchill embarked on a journey to write the history of the perilous times of the 20th century. He wanted to ink his legacy of how he defended his tiny island nation and shouldered the burden of her mighty empire. His six-volume just conveniently forgot to mention Bengal's 1943 famine which engulfed nearly 700,000 lives by modest colonial estimates and up to 5 million, according to village scribes and academics.

It was a heartless inhumane strategy to sacrifice the perceived lesser human race to safeguard and feed the Europeans. When Churchill was repeatedly told about Bengal's humanitarian crises, he blamed the malady squarely on the Indians for breeding like rabbits. 

In reality, it was the British's elaborate plan to impoverish and weaken the Indians. It constituted part of its strategy to defeat the enemies of the Allied Forces. Just as there was the threat of the Japanese from India's eastern borders, the British scorched all the rice fields. The produce, however, was shipped off to feed the Allied soldiers. Then there was the subsequent smuggling, hoarding and spiralling of food prices. Farmers who fed the nation instead died of hunger. There was no plan whatsoever on the part of the British to rectify this. In fact, the efforts by the local British representatives were thwarted by Churchill. To Churchill, it was imperative to feed hungry Europeans than some brown people. In Churchill, rationing of food to the British was unthinkable. At no time during WW2 did the UK have any food shortage. Famine was endemic in India all through the British Raj rule. Approximately 15 million died from 1850 to 1899 in 24 major famines.

Mother Nature had not been to the Bengal region. Before this famine, there was a devastating monsoon. Then there was the heavy taxation. And the British scorched the fields to prevent the Japanese from getting their food supply. Shipments of food supply from the US, Canada and Australia scheduled to arrive in India never made it.

"I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits." -Winston Churchill

Churchill always tries to put the narrative that Hindus are an uncouth race. The enlightened followers of the Abrahamic faith stand to be oppressed in an Independent India if India was a free nation. With the increasing debt accumulated because of WW2 and lopsided trade practices that impoverished the Empire, Britain had let go of its colonies. The India that Britain encountered 200 years previously was submissive and easily conquerable. It was like that no more. Initially, Gandhi and his passive resistance to demanding self-rule worked just fine. It was India's death wish, and the British easily thumped their boots on the resisting freedom fighters. The coup de grâce came as a mutiny of the British Indian Navy after the trial of captured Indian National Army prisoners of war in Delhi.

Jinnah and his band of born-again Muslims decided to play their victim card that people of the Muslim-dominated areas in India would be treated as second-class citizens in an independent India. They started demanding a piece of land to be carved out of India to call their own, a new true blue Islamic country named Pakistan. The British thought it was a jolly good idea too. The rest is history.

This book results from years of meticulous research into many de-classified British documents. It concentrates mainly on Churchill's mishandling of the 1943 Bengal famine and eventual Partition. The author's point is that he intensely disliked the non-white race. His actions indicate that he was stuck in his Victorian mindset. He felt that the white race was superior and it was the white man's burden to civilise and govern over the rest. Churchill's handling of the famine can border on negligence or criminal by today's standard. Despite all these, the world puts Churchill on a pedestal, hailing him as a true statesman and a great leader.  

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Because of bad leftists' publicity?

The RSS: Roadmaps 21st Century
Sunil Ambekar

Imagine a time 20 years ago. We were all fed with a single narrative. The government-controlled media or media barons churned out cable news will tell us 'the truth'. There was no counter-narrative to argue this. The world accepted this one version. The fringe publishment that aired an alternative perspective of the event is labelled a rabble-rouser and scorned. Now with the availability of all the information at our disposal, we are still unsure of many things. For every piece of news churned, there is an immediate contradictory explanation just to shoot it down at its inception, making us none the wiser.

I have always been given the impression that RSS is terrible news. My brother-in-law, who spent much of his formative years in India, and his wife, an Indian citizen who gave up her citizenship for her newfound love and land, Malaysia, have no qualms that RSS is synonymous with bigotry and fanaticism. Any piece of news from RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh; National Volunteer Organisation) is immediately labelled propaganda and untrue. Yet another family member who has found employment in Malaysia has nothing nice to say about RSS. To him, the RSS management cherry-picked delinquents and academically weak students to do their dirty job in the name of religion.

My schoolmate, who probably had his long-lost ancestors coming from India, believes Muslims are selectively persecuted in India. He himself is a Muslim. He is convinced that RSS in India is what Mossad is to Israel, just like the symbiotic relationship between Sein Fenn and the IRA. He is cocksure that RSS is the militant wing of the BJP (like Al-Aqsa martyr Brigades and Fatah). 

But then alternative news tells me otherwise. In the aftermath of any calamity, volunteers of RSS are the first to be at the scene giving moral and humanitarian support. They are so well organised and are said to provide service without much fanfare. Being an NRI, I was naturally conflicted between what I read and what I had heard.

Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar

I thought this book gives a complete account of RSS' genesis, its earlier objectives, and how it evolved in a post-independent India. India was a restless country from the turn of the 19th century to the 20th. The rebel yell was heard from all four corners of Bharat. Every third person that one saw was a freedom fighter. Events like the Partition of Bengal in 1905 and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919 further ignited the fire for self-rule.

Against this background, with the shouts of 'Vande Matram' and Lokmanya Tilak's 1906 visit to Nagpur, Maharashtra, a young Keshav Baliram Hedgewar's national interest was piqued. Thilak was labelled 'the Father of Political Unrest'. He made a political life of agitating the British for self-rule. Nagpur, at that time, was a fertile ground for nationalistic activities steeped deep into the Hindu way of life. Keshav went on to read medicine in Calcutta in 1910. Dr Keshav Hedgewar returned to Nagpur in 1915 with a medical degree and a chest full of Indian nationalism after interacting with Bengali revolutionaries. 

RSS flag

His idea of disciplining the young mind was through physical activity, traditional martial arts and wrestling. Slowly his group started participating in satyagraha movements and campaigning against social ills. Somewhere around the 1920s, the British managed to introduce the idea of the 'Muslim-Hindu unity' concept. Gandhi, with his Congress Party, parted ways with Hedgewar over Gandhi's support of the Khalifat movement. Some within the Congress Party also opposed Hedgewar's so-called militant-natured activities. RSS was formed in 1925. Its objective at inception was to influence the mind and soul of the Nation to gain independence. Not wanting to fall into the British divide-and-rule trap, the RSS decided to dig deep into the Nation's civilisation to inculcate value readily present into the subcontinent before the invaders wrecked our knowledge and infused theirs. 

After independence, the RSS continues their service to the needy. It promotes the Hindu way of life, fights for social and caste justice, and tries to improve modern familial relationships. Contrary to what they are accused of, RSS is not a misogynistic organisation. They have many prominent female leaders. Even though detractors hurl abuses of religious bigotry, the RSS have many Christian, Muslim and Farsi members and leaders in their fold. 

They must be doing something right for being around for almost a century. The RSS must be relevant for drawing so many non-Hindu members into their fold. Something to ponder.

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Remembering Jallianwala Bagh massacre...

Sardar Udham (Hindi; 2021)
Director: Shoojit Sircar

One always wonders how a cult started by a group of semi-literate fishermen at the fringe of the Roman Empire by the Sea of Galilee could eventually grow up to impress the whole of the Empire, including its rulers. This rebel's rhetorics soon triggered justified wars and legitimised usurping of lands to claim their hegemony. The belief system garnered potential believers because it targeted the oppressed or the persecuted. The marginalised and the dying were given the dignity to exist with others on Earth. In return, the converts were willing to trade in their lives (or, in their words, sell their soul) for the religion. Yes, martyrdom played an essential role in recruiting more new members. 

As India goes on a spree to rewrite its national history, more and more heroes of yesteryears come to the fore. Sardar Udham Singh (@ Sher Singh @ Ram Mohammad Singh Azad) is one such example. He had been conferred the title Shaheed-i-Azam Sardar Udham Singh, the great martyr, after Indian Independence to honour him as one of the freedom fighters in India's war of Independence. He is credited for assassinating Michael O'Dwyer, the former Lt Governor of Punjab who gave orders to Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer to open fire on a crowd of 20,000 inside Jallianwala Bagh, an enclosed park, in 1919. These people congregated in an enclosed garden near the Golden Temple in Amritsar to celebrate Vaisakhi, at the same time, to express their protest against the British colonial masters for arresting Congress Party's satyagraha proponents, Satya Pal and Saifuddin Kitchlew. The congregants were accused of violating the law, which banned any assembly of more than four people.

Udham Singh

Udham Singh from an orphanage, himself a late teenager, was witness to the brutal assault at Jallianwala Bagh. Deeply traumatised by the whole event, he joined the movements of the masses to oust mighty Britain from their country. He, a member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Movement, made it his life mission to assassinate the perpetrators of the killings at Jallianwala Bagh. The army shot at the unarmed civilians not to warn them but on a mission to kill. They hit till their enormous cache of bullets ran out.

Udham Singh was running away from the British Imperial Police all his life. He crept out of India, through Germany and Russia and finally sneaked into England. His revolutionary activities were influenced by Bhagat Singh and the Gaddarites, the overseas Indians who supported India's quest for self-rule. 

21 years after the incident at Jallianwala Bagh, Udham Singh shot Michael O'Dwyer in cold blood after he delivered a lecture in London. This film gives a rundown account of this whole saga, spending a lot of time on the aftermath of the shooting and death at Jallianwala Bagh.

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