Patriot Forever

Kesari Chapter 2: The Untold Story of Jallianwala Bagh | Director: Karan Singh Tyagi | Cast: Akshay Kumar, R Madhavan

BY ALL ACCOUNTS, at least 1,600 people died on April 13, 1919, in Amritsar’s Jallianwala Bagh, in an incident that is etched in every Indian’s soul. It is a wound that has not found its salve as yet, with no apology forthcoming from England for it. There have been many heroes who emerged from it, from BG Horniman who reported on it, to Sankaran Nair, who refused to back down from blaming Governor Michael O’Dwyer for it in a well publicised trial. The latter is dramatic enough to be recreated as a movie. So it is baf­fling to find Nair’s case being completely ficitonalised in the interests of drama. The result is a stirring if absolutely false case being presented to us as some version of history—Nair suing General Dyer for genocide in Jallianwala Bagh with a comic book villain in Dyer. Akshay Kumar as Nair gets his chest beating patriotic speech, of Indians not being ani­mals and the British being murderers, and there is no doubt that it is moving. But must history be twisted every time in the service of Kumar’s career as the New Bharat Kumar? Can the price to be paid be less excessive, and if nothing could at least the spelling of jury dissenter (and future tutor of Jawaharlal Nehru) Harold Laski be corrected?

Akshay Kumarfilm reviewJallianwala BaghKaran Singh TyagiKesari Chapter 2Simon Paisley Day