'Batwara 1947'—A Partition Saga That Tugs at Hubris Shielded by Lapse of Reason

The Aamir Khan and Aparna Purohit produced film, Batwara 1947 is set to release on 14 August later this week.

(Photo: Altered by Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

It is the season of irreverence. An unscripted rebellious surge is taking over the streets where the timbre of simmering whispers have now spiralled into a clamour across conversations in private and public spaces. An astronomical observatory built by a 18th century king in the nation’s capital for  over the past few weeks has come to symbolise resistance and democratic dissent as rivers of young blood converged and overflowed inundating the numb, cold corridors of power, leaving in its wake a colossus totally unprepared and intellectually ill-equipped.

Social media and its intrinsic data centres went into overdrive satiating the needs of over a combined 240 crore users furiously tapping in across the various platforms in India.

However, as anyone could take a blind guess prominent celebrities from the entertainment and the film industries across the country chose to take a guarded approach to all these happenings, expecting the proverbial mini storm in a tea cup. Except for a few notable voices, the usual suspects as we know them, the Hindi film industry too failed to wake up from its self-imposed slumber. 

It is against this remarkable, evolving backdrop that the Aamir Khan and Aparna Purohit produced film, Batwara 1947 is set to release on 14 August later this week.

'An Outright Oddity'

The film, which stars Shabana Azmi, Sunny Deol, Preity Zinta, Ali Fazal, Abhimanyu Singh, Karan Deol, is based on playwright and author Asghar Wajahat’s play titled, ‘Jis Lahore Ni Vekheya..O Jameya E Nai’ written in the 1980s. Wajahat has been for long associated with films and television, notably having worked with director Muzaffar Ali and being one of the writers for Aagaman (1982). With Santoshi too, he had co-written the dialogues for the film Gandhi Godse, Ek Yudh (2023) also adapted from one his own works. 

In the current milieu of Hindi films, Batwara 1947 ranks as an outright oddity of an enterprise. The soul of Wajahat’s play, a rendering based in the partition era, is one of religious tolerance and explores themes of compassion, humanity and universal brotherhood; everything that is antithetical to what is being churned out with unfailing regularity from Mumbai these days. 

The film arrives at a time when, for over years now, there is a disciplined effort from certain quarters within the Hindi film industry to craft narratives seeking to distort history, a grating pandering to majoritarian appeal while singing hallelujahs to those in the echelons of power. The upcoming Rajkumar Santoshi directorial attempts to thread the rusty needle through a different arc.

It valiantly sets itself to go against the grain of these huge studio backed ventures draped in over the top jingoism while bending over backwards to pare and prune both recent and historical events.

In the past year itself Hindi blockbusters went ahead and not only broke all existing box office milestones, they went on to break every record in the book, real or fictitious for rustling up (un) imaginative, almost reeking of a made-to-order stink like quality to them, aligning top drawer stars to sign up to mask the failures and misfires of the establishment, with the puerile aim to eulogise knotty personalities. 

Journey from 'Lahore' to 'Batwara': Better Safe Than Sorry

Interestingly, ever since the film project was formally announced in 2023 it continued to retain the Lahore 1947 title even during its extensive shoot, but actor, producer Aamir Khan, who is never new to controversies hounding him spotlit his business acumen over any artistic zeal he may have had and decided to go in for a change in the film’s title closer to its release. This was despite protestations to the contrary by Khan himself that the original title of Lahore 1947 would not be changed.

It definitely would have taken a lot of coaxing on Aamir Khan wearing his producer’s hat to get Rajkumar Santoshi and Asghar Wajahat to agree to the shift to Batwara 1947. Santoshi incidentally also doubles up as writer along with Wajahat for the film, both staunchly opposed the project’s title being played upon. 

From a commercial and the all-important box office point of view the reasons were obvious enough. What in the living daylights were the producers thinking after all, and that too a powerful celebrity like Aamir Khan, when aming a Hindi commercial period film, lavishly mounted, with an impeccable team behind the scenes and an A-list star cast after a city in Pakistan? In these present times? Aren’t you inviting controversies,  handing a free gate-pass to the brood of vipers to slay it online? Pray, where would the much desired metro and mass footfall come from? That too for a movie-going audience already being spoon-fed bizarre narratives overflowing with high-octane drama and action coupled with venom spewing hatred and hastily conceived plot lines to show how the country is the greatest of all time, so on and so forth.

Mysteriously enough, Aamir Khan himself was missing in action from promotional events for Batwara 1947 that has been continuing since the last week of July. Apart from the mandatory publicity and marketing tweets on X through the actor’s production house Aamir Khan Productions and posts on Instagram and Facebook, Khan himself is consciously keeping a distance from any in-person promotional activities for the film across the country. 

Shabana Azmi, the Dissident, Activist and the Actor

There is a defining image of Shabana Azmi, one of the usual suspects mentioned earlier, leaning across, clasping and kissing the palms of student activist Neha Bora as she lay along with other protestors at the site of the Jantar Mantar demonstrations last month.

One could reframe this scene a myriad number of ways and still see multiple versions of the activist in Shabana Azmi playing her part in real life demonstrations and rallies for the rights of citizens held over the decades in this country; similar to the many reel life roles she has played in  her films.

Never one to back off or bend to portals of power, Azmi famously read out a scathing rant from a protest handbill from the podium in front of a packed gathering at Siri Fort Auditorium, New Delhi during the 12th International Film Festival of India on 8 January 1989.

There, Azmi  went on to read, “..am reading from the stage to register the artists’ protest against the brutal killing of Safdar Hashmi, With the murder of Safdar Hashmi, freedom of expression in the year 1989 has begun on an ominous note.” The actor concluded with the words, “..with this tragic death the time has come for us to organise ourselves against these near-fascist forces of disruption so that we are no longer brittle, vulnerable and alone.”

She was referring to the mindless and savage manner in which playwright, author and street theatre artist and the convenor of Jan Natya Manch (JANAM) the amateur street theatre group, was beaten to death a few days back while staging his street play ‘Halla Bol’ (Raise Hell) in Delhi. Along with Hashmi, Ram Bahadur a migrant worker from Nepal, probably a casual walk over and a part of the impromptu audience that had assembled to see the play was also killed, victim to a random bullet fired by the attackers.

These fatal attacks more than singling out individuals, was the violent response to the idea and form of resistance, for the effort and the process of awakening in common people of this country their rights to question and to demand equality and justice. That this abominable act was perpetrated by local leader of the then ruling Congress party in Sahibabad was not lost on anyone, least of all Shabana Azmi.

The fact that Azmi was reading these lines out in front of a high profile gathering that included foreign guests, national and international dignitaries as well as the then Minister for Information and Broadcasting HKL Bhagat of the ruling Congress government perched in the front row, made this an extraordinary brave act in itself.

It mattered less to Shabana Azmi that the platform from where she spoke was originally planned for the official screening of her own film Madame Sousatzka directed by John Schlesinger. Her inner conscience at that moment prioritised herself to be intricately part of the broader coalition of public performers, artistes, actors, dramatists and entertainers with the sole aim of raising the issue of the state’s overreach and blatant trampling upon the arts and the existential threat it posed to the freedom of expression that Safdar Hashmi’s brutal killing came to symbolise. 

Fast forward to now, 37 years on and at the age of 75, Shabana Azmi continues to don the role of the  all-season dissident, a perennial activist with her presence at the protest site in the capital showing solidarity with the disgruntled students, standing for their cause. In the span of less than a week, the actor wearing a mask, carried the convulsions of an asthma attack and bouts of severe cough to the stage of her film Batwara 1947’s trailer release function held in Mumbai, the result of the singeing impact of the tear gas strikes, but more importantly for simply being an active participant in a peaceful demonstration.

Sunny Deol: Tara Singh Then, Sikandar Mirza Now

The team of Batwara 1947 not only have to contend with the dual real/reel life personality of one of their leading actors, but they also have to break through with another paradox on their hands, that of its leading hero, Sunny Deol. Deol known for his popular son of the soil, patriotic roles, especially as Tara Singh in the Gadar 2 was last seen in this year’s first big hit Border 2 playing the character of Fateh Singh Kaler, a Sikh Regiment officer.

This time around though the actor’s hallmark bombastic and roaring tirades as the normative son of the soil Hindustani would be surprisingly traded for a Muslim character, Sikandar Mirza, albeit still a Hindustani. Sunny Deol having put his dubious days of being a BJP politician behind, never wears politics on his sleeve.

The star has always been his late father Dharmendra’s son at heart, reticent, paparazzi-shy and much averse to any kind of publicity, and to his credit has kept away from any brazen kowtowing to the powers that be as opposed to other big ticket film stars in the industry.

For Deol, who recently completed 43 years in the industry how Batwara 1947 will be received both critically and commercially is going to be a litmus test for the star. The gumption to essay a Muslim character, going against every archetype in his recent filmography thus far is also a move that any other top league star would never greenlight in the current ebb and flow of the Hindi film industry.

Additionally, how will his loyal fanbase respond especially in his bastion of north India; given his tremendous box office pull in the Hindi heartland, where single cinema owners usually get a fresh lease of life when his films open, Deol according to the film trade is the undisputed king in these crucial mass territories.

Knowing the brawny superstar, the desi Punjab da puttar, and to many cine fans of Hindi films across the globe, its original and last action hero, he will absolutely hesitate to flaunt his 56 incher of a frame but the makers of Batwara 1947 will hope that his iconic dhai kilo ka haath on screen would comfortably deliver the goods in any situation. 

Raise Hell for Humanity, Compassion and Peace

Many months leading to 1947 and those after, dark shadows were gathering and as death’s nights prepared to catch a people unaware of the machinations of the colonial rulers and the political leaders history’s largest ever human displacement took place. It left in its wake innumerable tragedies, its scars visible even now, 80 years apart. 

As Master Fazal/Fazlu in Gulzar’s evocative novel on the partition, Two says:

“This arrogant, conceited history strides with her head in the clouds. And never looks down. She does not realise how she crushes millions of people under her feet. The common people…She doesn’t understand that one may cut a mountain in two, but people? It’s a hard task bhai to cut one people in two. They bleed.”

Asghar Wajahat’s play, ‘Jis Lahore Ni Vekheya..O Jameya E Nai’ has been performed over the past three decades in various cities across the globe to tremendous acclaim. In India it has been performed in various languages including Urdu, Marathi, Kannada and Punjabi apart from Hindi. Playwright and Indian theatre legend Habib Tanvir directed the play in 1989 for the stage and brought in his own inimitable style to its staging by including soulful couplets that blended with contemporary dialogues and even had the play staged in Chattisgarhi his native vernacular.

Tanvir and other directors went on to take the play to Lahore, Karachi, New York, Dubai among other cities. The name of Wajahat’s play is an idiom, a spin off on a Punjabi saying that alludes to the view that if a person who has not seen the city of Lahore is someone who has not yet been born. It highlights the majestic grandeur and historicity that the glorious city of Lahore was seeped in, both while it was part of undivided India and post its partition into Pakistan. 

The story revolves around a Muslim family forced to leave the city of Lucknow after partition, obtaining residence in a government allotted haveli in Lahore, Pakistan across the freshly carved border.

In Lahore, they encounter an elderly Hindu matriarch (Shabana Azmi) who unknown to them has still occupied one of the rooms but stubbornly refuses to vacate the premises, even leave the city, her city. Wajahat situates the story both at the personal level first as a site of conflict between families/individual and then at the same time takes flight providing an unimpeded view of the horrific impact of partition on the lives of ordinary people, primarily through their inter-personal interactions, responses and behaviour to one another in their newly altered circumstances. 

Director Santoshi and lead actor Sunny Deol were in consensus to bring to the screen Wajahat’s play as early as 2010 but the lack of any willing producers to bankroll the project forced the duo to leave it on the backburner. Moreover, with the change in the political and cultural context in the country since, reviving the project where one of the main protagonists essays a Muslim character was definitely taboo. However, with Deol’s box office fortunes changing after the stupendous success of Gadar 2 in 2023, both Santoshi and Sunny found in Aamir Khan an eager producer and more importantly a zealous artiste who thoroughly backed the core theme and essence of Wajahat’s play.  

Director Rajkumar Santoshi in his pre-release press bytes has said that Batwara 1947 is a much needed  film in the present context, in terms of where we are as a nation today. While it remains to be seen as to how faithfully he has been able to craft his film adaption, cinematic liberty and all. At the same time it is heartening indeed to note that at least a handful in the Hindi film industry are trying to veer off the beaten path.

After Imitiaz Ali’s Main Vaapas Aaunga and Netflix fronted, Oni Sen directed Operation Safed Sagar this year, probably Santoshi’s Batwara 1947 may hold hope for every quintessential Hindi film lover for more honest, timely and unadulterated stories.

(Anand Mathew is based in New Delhi and writes on films, entertainment and contemporary issues.)