Batwara 1947, Main Vaapas Aaunga, Operation Safed Sagar remind India who she used to be

Partition revisited

In the trailer of Rajkumar Santoshi’s upcoming Partition drama Batwara 1947, Karan Deol’s character warns Pakistani fundamentalists that his father (also his real-life father Sunny Deol) pays no heed to any “sarhad” when it comes to protecting his own. “Seedha ghus ke maarenge,” he declares. The moment seems designed to welcome that section of the actor’s followers who have been lapping up him singlehandedly dismantling Pakistan in Anil Sharma’s 2023 blockbuster Gadar 2 or trembling the enemy state with a war cry in Anurag Sharma’s hit period war drama Border 2 earlier this year.

But not too many noticed the ache in his eyes when he can sense the loss of his son, also a soldier, in the 1965 Indo-Pak War, in Border 2. Similarly, many would choose to ignore the context within which his son mouths that familiar slogan. Sunny’s character in Batwara 1947 is no Tara Singh, as Santoshi tells SCREEN. “Tara Singh is fighting for his own right. But our character takes on a fight for someone else,” says the filmmaker. “He’s fighting what the mightiest of them fall prey to — fanaticism.”

Sunny Deol’s Batwara 1947 to release on August 14. (Photo: Aamir Khan Talkies/YouTube)

Batwara 1947, an adaptation of Asghar Wajahat’s popular play Jis Lahore Nai Dekhya O Jamyai Nai, revolves around a Muslim family in India, who are forced to flee to Pakistan during the Partition. Despite the traumatic event, they ensure protection to an elderly Hindu woman (Shabana Azmi) who refuses to leave her ancestral haweli in Lahore. “Mandir todna Islam nahi hai,” asserts Sunny’s character, when a Pakistani extremist (Abhimanyu Sharma) orders the lady’s temple within her home to be demolished.

Sure, Sunny here dials up the ‘Good Muslim’ stereotype perpetuated by the cinema of Manmohan Desai back in the 1970s. But it’s subverted by the smart casting — most of the Muslim characters are played by Hindu actors, while Shabana Azmi plays the Hindu woman. Aamir Khan, who has produced the film, could’ve easily opted to play the lead, but he lets Sunny do the heavy-lifting (literally) because when an actor with that screen image would speak, the audience would listen intently.

It also helps that Batwara 1947 revisits Partition through the lens of harmony just a week after Imtiaz Ali’s period romance Main Vaapas Aaunga dropped on Netflix India. That film uses a different approach, a less heavy-handed one, to convey the same message. Keenu (Vedang Raina) and his family are made to flee their hometown of Sargodha, Pakistan during Partition, forcing him to leave behind his love interest Afsana (Sharvari). Even over 75 years later, a 95-year-old Keenu (Naseeruddin Shah) insists on returning to his motherland to deal with some unfinished business.

Keenu pines for love on his deathbed in Main Vaapas Aaunga.

Of course, given Imtiaz Ali’s brand of cinema, one would expect the unfinished business has to do everything with the unfulfilled love. But the filmmaker takes the audience for a ride by flipping the definition of unfulfilled love on its head. Keenu’s last wish is indeed to reconcile — not with the girl he lost, but with the love he lost. Upon learning how Afsana’s ‘fellow’ Muslims raped, tortured, and killed the women of his family in their protection, he orders his younger brother — and in turn, himself — to never look back at what they’ve lost. While that leads to a live full of ambition and wealth in a rising, independent India, but one that’s not without seething bitterness. This vitriol stems not so much from the tragedy that transpired, but from how it almost irrevocably altered his DNA, his ability to love, and his faith in humanity itself.

The old passing on the India they knew

Whether it’s Batwara 1947, Main Vaapas Aaunga or Sriram Raghavan’s Ikkis, which was the first release of this year, each of these films on cross-border tension had an aged figure with undying optimism showing a new generation the direction India should be heading in. Shabana Azmi and Naseeruddin Shah, both of whom unequivocally supported the recent student protests in New Delhi, were only walking their talk. Whether it’s through their films or via actions in real life, the most enduring onscreen couple from India’s parallel cinema movement have demonstrated that they owe to a new generation reparation for what they’ve lost of our country over the years.

Shabana Azmi in Batwara 1947.

“The Partition of Indians and the cavalier manner in which the Radcliffe Line was drawn is one of the most traumatic events in our history,” Shabana Azmi tells SCREEN. “For a long time, a veil of silence covered any mention of it, which in some cases, made the wounds even deeper. For Partition, the historical irony may be that the veil of silence helped the first generation survive — but perhaps made it harder for later generations to understand and metabolize what actually happened,” she adds.

The veteran actor hails legendary South African President Nelson Mandela’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1995 as the watershed moment that “opened the doorway to revisiting past events so that the many stories of humanity that occurred were also recorded along with the tragic severing of brothers from brothers.”

Santoshi also echoes what Imtiaz and Naseeruddin Shah’s love letter to humanity acknowledges — “We’ve seen the highest of highs and the lowest of lows of humanity during such monumental events like the Partition. We’ve seen extraordinary stories of courage, and at the same time, witnessed humans stoop down to an unbelievably low level,” he says.

Dharmendra’s casting in the film was a masterstroke.

Perhaps this dying breed of actors — Shabana, Naseeruddin Shah, and Dharmendra — have witnessed Partition too closely through their loved ones to know better than hating the ‘enemy state’. Sunny told SCREEN that the consequences of Partition are in the DNA of both him and his late father, given his grandparents were first-hand witnesses, hailing from a joint family in Punjab. Which is why Dharmendra proudly headlined Ikkis on the verge of his demise — a story where he fondly visits his birthplace of Pakistan despite having lost his 21-year-old son in the 1971 Indo-Pak War. When he embraces a Pakistani man (Deepak Dobriyal) crippled by the war, you can feel it in your bones that he means every inch of it.

The rhetoric around war also finds a refreshingly restrained lens in Onir Sen’s Netflix India show Operation Safed Sagar, which released earlier this month. While it’s often India’s victory over Pakistan in the 1999 Kargil War that’s usually flashed in front of our eyes whenever we revisit that episode, the series also underlines the terms under which that victory was achieved — with restraint (India didn’t infiltrate the Line of Control, even after one of its pilots drifted into ‘enemy territory’), with honour (India buried Pakistani soldiers with Islamic rituals when the neighbouring country refused to accept the dead bodies), and most crucially, with a sense of repent and loss (the lives laid down during the war are not used as a fuel for revenge).

Also Read — Shabana Azmi on Batwara 1947, Awarapan 2 releasing on same day: ‘Last happened in 1983’

As depicted in season 2 of Nikkhil Advani’s period drama Freedom at Midnight on SonyLIV earlier this year, whether it’s Partition or the Kargil War, the hatred is initiated by the inflated ego of one individual (Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Pervez Musharraf respectively) instead of a political strategy or civilian sentiment. Politicians and mobs are reduced to pawns by mobilizing their deepest, darkest insecurities. There’s no doubt that history keeps repeating itself, and India keeps exercising restraint whenever needed, often bearing the brunt of her non-violence ideals. Which is why pop-patriotic dramas like Uri: The Surgical Strike and Dhurandhar offer momentary relief to the national ego. But when the eyes are always set on badla instead of badlav, the hands that massage the ego are never able to reach for the soul.