Can you spoil history?

You know they’ve faked history when the major problem they have is spoilers. I can’t imagine a single historical biopic where they’d need to make this appeal. Imagine a biopic on, say Gandhi or MLK Jr or Julius Caesar or Mandela or Kitchener or Hitler, or imagine a movie about the Titanic or the Hindenburg or the Spirit of St Louis or even the Battle of Leningrad or the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War or the WWII, or about the 1983 Cricket World Cup where the producers and actors are appealing to the audience to avoid spoilers.

Dear Akshay ‘Canada’ Kumarji, एक बात बताइये: किस बात के spoilers, भाई? Just because you did not read history in school does not mean no one did. Just because you can’t even do basic research on effing Wikipedia and be able to distinguish between hagiographies authored and inspirational songs sung by bards centuries after the fact and actual history does not mean we all are idiots too. The only ‘spoilers’ in this scenario are the makers and participants of and in this film. Spoil तो आपने किया है। History की ऐसी की तैसी कर दी।

By the way, Prithviraj Raso is, like Padmavat, a superbly narrated tale of valour and chivalry, of a handsome royal hero who elopes with the beautiful princess and dies fighting for a lost cause against overwhelming odds, of a generous king betrayed by not just his own vices, but by his own people. It has, to paraphrase Veeru in Sholay, drama, emotion, action, thrills, and entertainment; a perfect recipe. It is a story that has huge potential to be told well, and to entertain and inspire the audience. I think it is a brilliant subject to make a film on and I’d love to see it myself. After all, I saw Braveheart and enjoyed it. Ditto 300. Or Shakespeare in Love. Or Gladiator. Or The Legend of King Arthur. Or JFK. Or even Troy. But to pass it off as history, talk about how we have forgotten it and don’t teach it, to plead with the Ministry of Education to include it into school syllabi, and use the director’s chair and the superstar’s popularity to polarise society by calling your protagonist the ‘last Hindu emperor’ or some such bullshit, and of course, as seems de rigueur nowadays, subtly (or not) vilify Muslims, especially in times such as this, reeks of dishonourable intent and rank opportunism.

But then, the current Bollywood reminds me of an Akbar-Birbal story where the wise minister shortens a line without touching it, simply by drawing another, longer one next to it. So, we’ve had Padmavat, we’ve had Kashmir Files, and now, after Samrat Prithviraj, we’re already looking at ‘Veer’ Savarkar and Maharana Pratap (the 250kg-armour fame) that will further distort facts and history. And I am not even going to the next one in line from the future Bharat Ratna, Vivek Agnihotri, Delhi Files, which should be in a genre of its own. Each release seems to be more toxic and more fantastical than the previous, making earlier films, however poisonous, seem benign, but only in comparison.

मोटा-मोटा ऐसे है के भाई, इस country के future generations की तो वाट लग चुकी है. When, in the future, they spout the kind of Amar Chitra Katha nonsense history in international company, they’ll look like prize idiots. Like Pakistanis have looked till now when they spoke about their history.

But then, that’s been the objective all along anyway, right? To turn this nation that has stood resolutely against the two-nation theory, that somehow a religious belief can bind a nation-state into a united society which progresses, evolves, prospers, and moves with the Zeitgeist, that only a religious book can be the basis of law, that it is impossible to have unity in diversity, into a mirror image of everything that defined it at its birth; indeed to make it into the Pakistan it never was, nor wanted to be.

सारा future spoil कर दिया आनेवाली नस्लों का, और अब कहते हो spolier से बचें? इसे कहते है उल्टा चोर कोतवाल को डांटे। बात करते हैं!