Filmmaker Ram Madhvani says he has dug deeper into one of the poignant historical events in India's freedom struggle, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in his upcoming series Waking of a Nation but in a “sensitive and honest” way.
Set during the colonial rule, the historical thriller series delves into the conspiracy and events leading up to Jallianwala Bagh Massacre and Hunter Commission's investigation into the tragedy.
In Waking of a Nation, co-written by Madhvani, Shantanu Srivastava, and Shatrujeet Nath, they are honouring the memories of those who lost their lives, he said.
“We've not shown the massacre, we just show the soldiers coming in. I didn't want to show it, and that was the most sensitive part about the way we approached it. Other filmmakers have shown the massacre. I felt it would be better, as we don't know if there were 400 or 2,000 people (killed), so it would be more dignified not to show it.
"We dedicated this to the people who have lost their lives during the massacre, and we wanted to treat that with the utmost respect and sensitivity,” Madhvani, best known for Aarya and Neerja, told PTI in an interview.
The filmmaker said he has also tried to stay away from the caricaturish portrayal of the British in Hindi cinema.
"Though they've done a villainous thing, they were thinking that they were doing their duty. They are shown as villains but not in a melodramatic way. The idea was to try and be fair, which is the wrong word to use when I'm talking about the white skin. But to try and be fair to the idea of duty and why people do what they do in the name of duty, there are so many things that you can do." In crafting Waking of a Nation, Madhvani said he drew inspiration from acclaimed films that handle historical narratives with nuance, including The Battle of Algiers, Oliver Stone's JFK, and Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit (2017) to evoke a similar sense of authenticity.
“These were the movies that we used as a reference point, but only more for a treatment and more for a documentary way of shooting because that's the way you can represent truth and honesty,” the Emmy Award-winning director said.
Madhvani has narrated the story of the massacre through the eyes of four friends: a lawyer, Kantilal Sahni (Taaruk Raina), a journalist named Ali Allahbaksh (Sahil Mehta), an ordinary man, Hari Singh (Bhawsheel Singh); and his wife, Poonam (Nikita Dutta).
The show also stars British actors Paul McEwan and Alex Reece, among others.
Madhvani said the show can be a thriller, a courtroom drama and it also has "conspiracy and crime".
"I'm not a political person. I'm looking at it from the British Raj perspective because I'm troubled by the idea that we are speaking in English and today we are dressed in Indian attire,” Madhvani, who hails from Barsi, a small town near Maharashtra's Solapur region, said.
"I'm troubled by the idea of cultural colonisation that has happened to us, so that's the lens from which I'm looking at it. Eventually, the reason it will reach out to people is because the soul of the story is four friends and their connection,” he added.
Madhvani credits his casting director, Abhimanyu Ray, for zeroing in on Raina, Dutta, Singh, and Mehta for the show.
"It's their talent that brought them here. It's because of the auditions and the re-auditions that we decided that they will be able to take the emotional burden of the roles that they are playing. I don't judge it on earlier work. I judge it on what they are capable of in the auditions that they do,” he said.
Produced by Ram Madhvani and his wife Madhvani, Waking of a Nation is set to premiere on March 7 on Sony LIV.
As the launch date draws near, the director is both excited and nervous.
“When you are taking on something which is this big in India, there are so many pressures about wanting to do justice to them, first of all to the audience, and my entire team, so I am still scared. There is a line in Neerja, ‘Fear gave her courage'. I don't think there is any harm in being scared as long as you are honest about your fears."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)