At final curtain, it is Bhagat Singh’s valour that’s clearly etched

‘‘Singh and his comrades were victims of a travesty of judiciary that amounted to judicial murder,’’ says A.G. Noorani in his book The Trial of Bhagat Singh.

In the first film released in 1965 with Manoj Kumar in the lead role, Shaheed, the director shies away from baring the brutality of the act. In fact, the film ends with the martyrs shouting Inquilaab Zindabad and kissing the noose before being hung.

But in 2002, the trend is towards presenting a realistic account rather than a story which is more myth than fact. What do the makers of the latest versions say about the depiction of such an event?

Shaheed-e-Azam (The Greatest Martyr) was the title awarded to Bhagat Singh by the people of United Punjab of the 1920s. It also happens to be the name of Iqbal Dhillon’s biopic on the HSRA leader. ‘‘It is the hard-hitting fact of reality. Moreover, it brings out the unjust treatment meted out by the British clearly,’’ says Shaheed-e-Azam’s director Sukumar Nair, who is dwelling at length upon the final moments of Singh’s life, and the macabre manner in which his remains were disposed of.

‘‘It was an unethical and unlawful thing to do,’’ says Nair. According to him, Singh’s trials and tribulations drew so much attention it made the English see red. ‘‘They wanted to finish the Bhagat Singh episode as soon as possible,’’ he adds.

As March 24 drew closer, the debate on the nature of the trial had captured world attention and made Bhagat Singh a national hero. The British apprehended problems in executing him. ‘‘So much so that they couldn’t risk the fallout of a scheduled hanging,’’ says Nair.

When appeals made by the Congress members at the time failed to secure Singh’s release, people in large numbers started to gather around the jail a day in advance. ‘‘One more day’s wait could have turned events. This drove the Raj to terminate the trio five hours earlier,’ says Nair.

Director of 23rd March 1931: Shaheed Guddu Dhanoa talks more about the sad end to Singh’s life and he doesn’t drag the legal or political aspect of the matter into his narration. It is the spirit of nationalism that matters to him.

‘‘My film is about Bhagat Singh’s personal sacrifice in our freedom movement…It will fill you with a lot of josh,’’ he says. And the role of public opinion is presented in a dramatic way. In Dhanoa’s film, British officers fail to light the pyre as people rush in and drive them away. They then take the embers in their hands and give their beloved revolutionaries a decent funeral.

Producer of The Legend of Bhagat Singh Ramesh Taurani prefers to traverse the ‘middle’ road between ‘ideological-correctness’ and the ‘story of valour’.

‘‘That brutality was a hard-core reality with the British Raj and almost synonymous with their laws and injustice delivered to Indians. We have got this brutality factor. It builds the base for the preponement of the hanging,’’ says Taurani.

Regarding the controversy of the depiction of events on the day of the hanging, Taurani says: ‘‘History needs to be represented in the most honest manner, and we have done just that. It is thousand per cent justified to show this fact of brutality.’’

Will it hurt viewers? ‘‘Well, not anymore. A lot of time has passed between what happened then and now. In any case, it was a different time then and people thought in a different manner. Imperialistic rulers would brutally treat Indians in the most oppressive manner.’’