Tag: Sardar Udham Singh

Revenge Of A Revolutionary

By Amit Sengupta

Blood like water spilt in the dust… And, with the first light of morning, he saw the truth… He took a handful of blood-soaked earth in his hand, heavy and black, and rubbed it against his forehead… and he swore a terrible vow… No matter how long it took, no matter how it took him… he would track down the dogs who did this to his people and he would kill them…
– The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and The Raj by Anita Anand (Simon and Schuster, UK, 2019)

Filmmaker Shoojit Sircar makes deeply meaningful films, which break the blurred lines between the parallel and mainstream cinema. He has made significant films like Vicky Donor, Gulabo Sitabo, October and Pink. His latest is an epic on a difficult and fascinating subject – Sardar Udham. The film is being premiered on October 16.

In the words of Sircar, ‘‘He was definitely an adventurer, and he was focussed. The film zooms into Udham’s mind. We have tried to understand what he was keeping to himself, that mysterious thing he was carrying; what was his belief system, his ideology; how did he travel, because there was a lookout notice on him and he could not take the sea route…Yet he did. He was a member of the Ghadar Party in America. He was a small-time actor, a mechanic. But he was not known at all till the news of the assassination broke out in 1940. There are many missing links. I have presented as much as I know, but I also don’t know everything.’’

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre was systematically executed on April 13, 1919, as thousands of peaceful protesters gathered in this sprawling and dusty walled space in Amritsar. No one could imagine or anticipate what would follow on that fateful and tragic day. The armed troops moved into the narrow lanes, took positions and started firing almost immediately, one round after another.

People fell soaked with blood. People ran and fell, dead and half-dead. People were buried under the dead, some still alive and bleeding. No one was spared, not even children. This was perhaps one of the most cold-blooded massacre to ever happen in the history of the colonised world.

The firing was executed with single-minded motivation by Brigadier General Reginald ‘Rex’ Dyer. He was following the orders of Lieutenant Governor Michael O’Dwyer, who had by then established himself as one of the most ruthless and racist administrators in British Punjab. Both expressed no regrets for this mass murder ever in their life.

The massacre led to outrage across India. It created waves of protests. Revolutionaries moved across the landscape spreading the idea of revolution. There were intelligence reports of entire Punjab being up in flames and spontaneous violence against the British was being anticipated.

In retaliation one village was bombed. Soldiers shot dead farmers returning from the fields and inside their homes from an aircraft. Youngsters were flogged in public places in Amritsar for no rhyme or reason. Others were compelled to lie flat on the ground on their chest and crawl for long distances, while being whipped and kicked. There was no time for mourning and shared grief. One wave of vengeance and violence followed another wave under the brutish regime of Michael ‘O Dwyer.

This is where the true and mythical story of Udham Singh begins, as depicted with great historical detail in a classically lucid and wonderfully penned book on his life and times by Anita Anand. Her grandfather was present in Jallianwala Bagh moments before the killings began. Her book is a painstakingly researched narrative across several countries, including from the nooks and corners of Punjab.

The new film would therefore be a great leap of imagination, with cinematic possibilities. This is simply because so little is known about the many fascinating layers which makes the character of Udham Singh. It would be an epical task to measure and map the kaleidoscopic spectrum of the life of this colourful, brilliant, non-conformist and totally unconventional revolutionary who worked for years with the underground Ghadar Party, literally, across the world.

Udham Singh was born as Sher Singh in a poor family in a village in British Punjab. His mother died very young. His starving and hardworking father too died on the way while walking on a long trek with his little sons, Sher and Sadhu Singh, to Amritsar. According to Anita Anand, some priests who were passing by picked up the children and handed him over to a distant relative, who, then, put them up in an orphanage in Amritsar run by a kind and generous Sikh.

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No one really knows for sure the whereabouts of Udham Singh when the Jallianwala Bagh massacre happened. Among the many narratives bordering on mythology involving his life, it is said that he was on the spot when the massacre was executed by the ‘butcher of Jallianwala Bagh’. And he survived.

He thereby picked up a fistful of blood-soaked earth from the ground, and vowed to kill the man responsible for the massacre. And then he waited, schemed and planned. From a poor and homeless orphan, and a jobless, starving youth, his life is truly a classic epic of struggle, resilience and flight of imagination.

From a lowly worker in the Ugandan Railway Company to Basra and Baghdad, from Mexico to the United States of America, crossing illegally across the border, from travelling across the length and breadth of American states to land up in New York, and then travelling across Europe, and, finally, to London, it was an eventful journey for Udham Singh. He changed his name and identity several times, even while working overground and underground as a Ghadarite, transporting revolutionaries across borders, funding armed networks, procuring arms and ammunition, distributing incendiary literature against the British. In between he was arrested in Amritsar with guns and ammunition in his possession. He was brutally beaten up and kept in solitary confinement because he would campaign among the prisoners against the British. Then he was transported to Mianwali Jail (now in Pakistan’s Punjab).

This is where he met and came to know another legend and intellectual: Bhagat Singh. Clearly, when Bhagat Singh was hanged, it shocked Udham Singh to the core of his heart. Himself an illiterate, henceforth, he called Bhagat Singh, many years younger to him, as his Guru.

Despite this incredible full-time revolutionary work, interspersed with a marriage with perhaps a Mexican woman in America and a regular family life for a short spell, he finally fulfilled his pledge to himself, to the murdered people in Jallianwala Bagh, and to his country’s freedom. It was a long wait.

In a meeting organised by the East India Association in London, Udham Singh pumped several bullets inside the body of Michael ‘O Dwyer at the dias on March 13, 1940. He had taken his revenge after 21 years. During interrogation, he said his name was Mohammad Singh Azad – a secular pluralist revolutionary celebrating the freedom of his country from the yoke of colonialism.

The murder of ‘O Dwyer created waves of celebration across India and among Ghadarites, revolutionaries and freedom fighters. To stop the message to spread through a public trial, the British acted swiftly. Udham Singh was hanged on July 31, 1940, at Bradbury, England. His remains have been preserved at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar.

Biopics – Real Life Stories Retold

By Mahendra Ved

Indians are looking for their heroes, past or present. Even villains are okay, if they are and do things larger than life. Ready subjects with potential for profits have encouraged a trend in the shape of biographical films – biopics for short.

As film-goers hunger for more, film-makers braving the Covid-19 pandemic, find it necessary to work indoors on research and writing before venturing out.

It is not new. Film analyst Gautam Kaul says this genre came from Hollywood like much else over the last century. Audiences look for stories that inspire and inform. Stories of success and fortitude are appealing. Biopics are dramatized for mass acceptance and visual appeal. Literary/cinematic licence is taken, with approval of the subject, if alive. Call it a sponsored exercise, but none complains, save some film critics, if the end-product is entertaining and has the right message.

If a biopic is re-living the past, step aside for a quick review, both global and Indian.

The world’s first recorded biopic was in 1900, expectedly from the French and predictably, on Joan of Arc. She was repeated almost a century later in 1999. The world’s most filmed individuals are Jesus Christ, Vladimir Lenin, Adolf Hitler and the Kennedys. Hollywood’s Genghiz Khan, the Mongol warrior, was played by John Wayne and later, Omar Sharif. Che Guevara was another repeated hero.

India’s oldest biopic was on Shivaji. A film on Dr Kotnis, who died during a medical mission to China, was made within months, with international flavour. Southern Indian cinema dipped into northern India’s history to make Chanakya And Chandragupta, in 1977. The two characters were played by Telugu stalwarts Akineni Nageswara Rao (ANR) and N T Ramarao (NTR). Bengali actor Sarvadaman Banerjee portrayed two persons who lived a millennium apart — eighth century Adi Shankaracharya (1983) and 19th century Swami Vivekananda (1994).

The first internationally mounted biopic on an Indian was Gandhi (1982). Made by Richard Attenborough, it won multiple Oscars, including one for British-Indian actor Ben Kingsley who played Gandhi and another for Bhanu Athaiya, who dressed up the characters. Strongly author-backed biopics have done well. Bandit Queen was on Phoolan Devi, Rangrasiya about painter Raja Ravi Varma.

Sports, science, crime – everything sells on the celluloid. Many recent biopics like Dangal (on Phogat family’s girl wrestlers), Mary Kom (the boxer-lawmaker who remains an Olympics hopeful) and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (on sprinter Milkha Singh, the “flying Sikh”) have won critical and box office acclaim. Shah Rukh Khan led a women’s hockey team to victory and also redeemed his own honour in Chak De India, Akshay Kumar played a men’s hockey coach that brought India its first Olympics victory. It it is now Ajay Devgn’s turn to play football coach, Syed Abdul Hakim, in Maidaan.

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Badminton star Saina Nehwal is being portrayed by Parineeti Chopra. Shabash Mithu is on one of the great woman cricketers, Mithali Raj. She will be brought alive by Tapsee Pannu who, along with Bhumi Pednekar, had played Haryana housewives turning champion shooters in Sandh Ki Ankh.

The list cannot be complete without a mention of 83, the year India won its first World Cup under Kapil Dev’s captaincy. Indeed, cricket has more than its share. Lives of M S Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar and Mohammed Azharuddin have transformed on the cinema.

Of science-related events, India’s Mars Mission received a filmy leg with Mission Mangal and so did the nuclear tests of 1998 in Pokhran. The Nambi Effect is about rocket scientist Nambi Narayanan, charged and punished, but eventually exonerated.

Years after Shabana Azmi portrayed a woman mafia chief in Godmother, Aaliya Bhatt is playing Gangubai Kathiawadi, a brothel keeper in Mumbai’s Kamathipura, the red light zone.

Freedom fighters and faujis are natural heroes. Vicky Kaushal is busy portraying freedom fighter, Sardar Udham Singh and also Field Marshal SHFJ Manekshaw, the army chief during Bangladesh liberation. Pippa is the title of another hero of that war, Brigadier Balram Singh Mehta. The role is being enacted by Ishan Khatter.

Elections in Tamil Nadu add froth to the talk of forthcoming biopic, Thalaivi, the leader in Tamil, on Jayalalithaa. The role is being enacted by Kangana Ranaut who played Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi with great aplomb. So popular is the Jayalalithaa cult that Anushka Shetty is playing it in series on the digital media.

But there are problems of comparisons and contrasts, since ‘Amma’ died just four years back. Many of the biopics listed here have earned controversy and complaints before courts. It may be genuine grouse of some family member, or just seeking five minutes of fame. These days, it is very easy for ‘sentiments’ being ‘hurt’ and interested quarters taking to agitation and violence.

Does transition from cinema to politics qualify for a biopic? Rajinikant remains elusive, while Kamal Haasan has followed the footsteps of M G Ramachandran (MGR) and other Tamil and Telugu film stars. Besides Jayalalithaa, biopic has been made in Mollywood (M for Madras, Chennai) only on NTR. This is because the Telugu cinema legend founded a political party and became Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. His role is performed by one of his look-like sons.

From the pages of history, Prithviraj Chauhan is being resurrected by Ajay Devgn. His portrayal of Tanhaji, Shivaji’s lieutenant, was a big hit last year.

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There is no dearth of subjects for biopics, if only directors with imagination can get financiers. People, both real and what are literary creations, have been filmed. Anarkali, the courtesan in Mughal Emperor Akbar’s court, the lady love of Prince Salim was the central figure in Mughal-e-Azam, considered the greatest film made in India. Originally, hers was a character in a play written in the last century. But try telling this to anyone in South Asia.  Why, even the Ramayan and Mahabharat TV serials, that can be termed collective biographies, were avidly watched by millions last year. The three-decade gap did not matter because characters from these epics are real in public mind.

Anarkali is also real in popular lore, like Padmavati or Rani Padmini, who probably never existed. Protestors who turned violent during the making and release of the film Padmavat did not heed when reminded that she was but medieval era poet Malik Jayasi’s creation. But then, ‘sentiments’ were ‘hurt’, turning reel-versus-reality debate rowdy.

Biopics on national leaders are few. There is none on Jawaharlal Nehru, although he figured in many films. Lal Bahadur Shastri was clubbed with Subhas Bose into a forgettable ‘thriller’ that sought to show the erstwhile Soviet Union conspiring to eliminate Indian leaders. Although a counter-point to Nehru, Sardar Patel received decent treatment from Ketan Mehta. Indira Gandhi remained fictionalized, portrayed by Suchitra Sen in Aandhi.

The trend now is of election-time political potboilers. Thackeray on Shiv Sena founder did well. But the release of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s biopic just before the 2019 general elections became controversial and was delayed. But no protest or compunction prevented Accidental Prime Minister, on his predecessor, Dr Manmohan Singh. If the former was an out-and-out glorification, the latter was bad caricaturing. Neither did well commercially.

Bollywood does not film its own greats. Marathi film Harishchandrachi Factory depicted pioneer Dadasaheb Phalke’s struggle in making of India’s first film, Raja Harishchandra in 1913. Shyam Benegal made Bhumika on Marathi actress Hansa Wadkar, based on her autobiography. Dev Anand has left his memoirs, and many veterans have begun to publish theirs. Prospects abound. Of those still in action, Sanjay Dutt figures in and as Sanju that shows him, warts and all, yet a lovable person.

Expertise to make biopics is ready for export. Shyam Benegal is making Bangabandhu on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, whose founding a nation, ruling it, but being killed by his own men makes for a tragedy with Shakespearean touches.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com