The Legend of Bhagat Singh ---------------------------------------------- Watched: 26th April 2003, DVD at home.
"History is like the Dark house on the other side of the river. You might not be able to travel across the river to see what's inside it. All you can do is wait for someone to come from the house and tell you what the house is like".
----- Self, inspired from the God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy
I somehow couldn't help remembering GOST by Arundhati Roy, and Ammu's brother Chacko who had his ideas about history, when I watched the movie The Legend of Bhagat Singh. A RajKumar Santoshi film, an Ajay Devgan Starrer, and an A.R.Rahman's film for starters. (Just in case you are confused which Bhagat Singh movie I'm talking about, 't was one of the five released then).
It was a good movie. And I usually say that to all movies that I put three hours of time to watch. But I'm also saying this because I am forced to think, at the end of the movie, about myself, our nation and history on the whole. Have we betrayed ourselves, our nation, and our history? The movie concludes with a similar remark.
The fortunate or unfortunate thing about history is that, it's closed from us. Like the house on the other side of the river. We never know what murmurs and rumors and murders are going on in there. What survives, comes out to tell a story. And we are more or less crippled to judge the truth in it.
I do not know if someone from Bhagat Singh's time survived to tell us his story. But there are facts. There are happenings. And every story teller and historian will connect the facts using his logic, reason and imagination. It's his job, he cannot escape it. And it's upto us to buy it.
Was Gandhiji as weak as is portrayed in the movie? Did he feel insecure by Bhagat's militant patriotism? If we had opted the violent way to end the slavery, would we have achieved our freedom long long back? Would lesser people have lost lives that way? Would we have been a different country then, so that we wouldn't have to depend on making sure of our alien accent and false funds to look for greener pastures? The dam was broken.
At one point in the movie, Gandhiji takes back his non-co-operation movement because of the incident in Chouri Choura. And says later I think, that the nation isn't ready for freedom yet. I couldn't help wondering if we are free yet. Bhagat is angered at this, and decides to go on his own way to fight for freedom. The line between defense and violence is a very thin one. And more often than not, they are used interchangeably. A Lion that attacks you, has to be killed. No body has tamed a lion, without ever killing one before. That was Bhagat Singh's logic. May be Gandhiji worked with the logic that we are dealing with humans all the time and not lions. Can history tell us who was right? I donot know.
We depend on foreign channels, crave for foreign currency, gladly give up the citizenship, yet complain about the system, the corruption, and the insincerity of our people. And yet proclaim, "I hate hypocrites".
One point that I liked in the movie was that it asks you to think on your own. It asks you not to be passive. It asks you to go ahead with your ideals. It tells you that you can live by not eating for 50 days (I felt ashamed of myself when I ate a Pizza today afternoon). It tells you to live for ideals. It tells you to die for your ideals. It teaches you to endure everything for your ideals. Do we need to be a Bhagat Singh to do that? Need not be. But if all our freedom fighters, whether it was the militant one or the non-violent one, could endure so much for their country and countrymen, can't all of us rise against the petty cravings, to see our country grow and grow with it? That my friend is the real difference between America and India. Americans have stayed in the country for all the years after their independence to build a country they call their own. Let movies based on history be an inspiration for all of us to do just that.
