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Infamous for his controversial movies and right-wing political stances, director Vivek Agnihotri has been running from pillar to post for the past few weeks promoting his latest film, The Bengal Files. Said to be based on the Direct Action Day and the Noakhali riots, the makers claimed in The Bengal Files’ posters that it is the “boldest film ever”. During the promotional interviews, Agnihotri went ballistic as usual and made several claims that have been publicised by certain political groups.
In one of his recent interviews, he claimed that, although India could create an ideal country based on our inherent consciousness after attaining Independence, this could not be achieved because the political leaders of that era and the general populace did not use the country’s civilisational principles and tapped into corruption instead to get their jobs done.
“Our leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru wanted to belong to the modern world, which was a good idea because India had to do trading and business. While keeping that on hand, we needed to move forward, keeping our civilisational principles on the other hand. But we did not do that. After attaining Independence, they should have told the people, ‘Look, we brought us till here, now you build this country. You are responsible for this. You have to be industrious.’ But what did we teach people instead? Topibaaz (deception),” he pointed out during a conversation with Prakhar Gupta.
“To survive, several people had been doing chamchagiri (sycophancy) during the Mughal and English rule. Even in those places where ‘dogs and Indians were not allowed’, some still were, because they knew how to do chamchagiri, by supplying liquor and women (to the powerful). Even going forward, we did not stop the habit of ensuring survival by giving bribes. Had the then-PM wanted to truly run this country, he would have said, ‘We brought you till here, now it’s your country. We, the people of Bharat, have to run it.’ But the voice of ‘We, the people of Bharat’ was suppressed, and a Western principle based on artificial secularism was brought in,” he alleged.
Claiming that the people thereafter had no channels to express the pain of the slavery they had endured until then, he also took a dig at the practice of naming places and individuals after historical figures perceived to be tyrants. “We have Aurangzeb Roads, a chief minister named Stalin (Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin), and we name children Taimur. I am not talking about celebrities alone (Bollywood actors Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor’s eldest son is named Taimur Ali Khan Pataudi), but there are so many people in Bengal and UP with that name. We do not even have the consciousness that these are the names of people who ruined us. At the very least, don’t use such names, considering the sensitivities of others. The successors of those murdered by Aurangzeb won’t feel good hearing it. That’s our problem. The idea of India that we adopted was an exported one, which we used by crushing the existing one,” he added.
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