Truth or Lies?

Kesari Chapter 2: The Untold Story of Jallianwala Bagh released on Friday to mixed reviews. While it is playing across theatres in cities, the halls are not necessarily packed to capacity. Reviewers have praised Akshay Kumar’s performance as the lawyer from Kerala Sir C Sankaran Nair. But the purpose of this piece is to neither review the movie nor the actors. Instead, it is to ask where does fact end, and fiction start in the “dramatization of the life story of C Sankaran Nair, the lawyer who fought for the truth behind the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.”

The facts are these: CS Nair was appointed a Companion of the Indian Empire by the King-Emperor, and in 1912 he was knighted. He became a member of the Viceroy’s Council in 1915. Nair resigned from the Viceroy’s Council in the aftermath of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. In his book, Gandhi and Anarchy, Nair criticised Michael O’Dwyer (Lieutenant Governor of Punjab) for instigating the Jallianwala Bagh massacre through his repressive administration. A libel suit was filed in a London court, by O’Dwyer in which Nair defended himself. The case, O’Dwyer  vs Nair—one of the longest civil suits of the time, running for five weeks—drew a lot of press, including from the US. Nair’s purpose was to draw attention to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, which he did, even though the case was against him.

In the movie we see Nair fighting a case of genocide against British military officer Reginald Dyer. He is all fire and brimstone, liberally cussing and swearing in the king’s court. Many have been quick to point out the many historical inaccuracies of the film. At a time when so many “facts” seem under contestation, it is self-evident why those familiar with the period’s and Nair’s history would brand the movie—lies.

Even in these fraught times, when history is being used in the pursuit of an agenda rather than the truth, one shouldn’t miss the bigger picture. Nair is today known only to a select handful, though he was once even the president of the Indian National Congress. This amnesia perhaps arises for geographical reasons rather than malicious intent. Our history textbooks tell us much more about the North than South. This movie will help many ‘discover’ Nair for the first time. Which raises the question, is it better to have no knowledge than incomplete knowledge? Incomplete knowledge is truly a dangerous thing. But no knowledge can certainly not be the preferable option. Is it better to have never heard of Nair? Or is it preferable to know that Nair had something to do with holding the British accountable for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre?

The problem with so much of historical fiction (whether in literature or cinema) is that it omits inconvenient truths. It chooses a path (an ideology) and then cherry picks facts that suit it. It makes characters of history into black-and-white caricatures, overlooking the fact that humans dwell only in all shades of grey. Nair himself was a grey character. He was bold in his critiques of the British, he had many confrontations with them prior to Jallianwala Bagh. However, he also supported British systems—like British education. Initially he believed in the judicial system, but then his belief ruptured, as he realised White men would not mete out justice to the coloured. He was critical of Gandhi’s ways, and believed being a “critical insider” would help mend the system.

But greyness does not lend itself to box-office returns. For Akshay Kumar to bring Nair alive, he needed moments of rage and passion. He needed to have his face (literally) blackened. He needed to outrage in the courts and break down at home. There could hardly be a mainstream Hindi movie if Nair was shown simply signing files while blustering at the British.

There are incidents from Nair’s life, which do merit cinematic retelling. His wife Parvathi (a winsome Regina Cassandra in the film) died of carbon monoxide poisoning on the way to Badrinath. They were both asleep in a room on their way to the pilgrimage destination. Feeling uneasy, Nair stepped out of his room at night to get a whiff of the mountain air. By the time he rose in the morning, his wife had died because of the fumes of the angetti, which had been lit to keep them warm, in a room devoid of ventilation. Feeling betrayed by the gods, Nair returned home and never ascended to Badrinath.

In another incident, he was once walking deep in the jungles of the Western Ghats, where he encountered a leopard. He is said to have looked the leopard in the eyes and said in Malayalam, “Avide iri, patti (Sit there, dog).” Chastened, the leopard slunk away.

Are these facts or folklore? One can barely tell. Filmmakers and authors cannot be denied a certain ‘creative licence’. The onus finally lies with you—the reader or the watcher. Do you believe the leopard story? Or do you not?

To best understand the knotty and slippery relationship between fact, fiction, and history, I turn to Hilary Mantel, perhaps the greatest recent writer of historical fiction. In a speech on “Why I became a historical novelist,” she writes that she is often asked, “Is this story true?” Perhaps, that is the wrong question to ask. As she says, “Commemoration is an active process, and often a contentious one. When we memorialise the dead, we are sometimes desperate for the truth, and sometimes for a comforting illusion. We remember individually, out of grief and need. We remember as a society, with a political agenda—we reach into the past for foundation myths of our tribe, our nation, and found them on glory, or found them on grievance, but we seldom found them on cold facts.”

Kesari Chapter 2 is not found on cold facts. It is a wilful act of commemoration. The retelling tells us about the present nationalist need to identify heroes from the past, along the way it tells us about Nair. Its political agenda is to make us proud of the present, by glorifying men of the past. The movie provides us with the illusion that there are good men (and a good woman) and there are bad men; and that, against all odds, the good forever prevails.

Akshay KumarC Sankaran NairGandhi and AnarchyKesari Chapter 2: The Untold Story of Jallianwala BaghMichael O’Dwyermovie