Jan 17, 2006

History...Itihaas...


History always repeats itself. Because we never learn from our mistakes. Bollywood specially believes very much in repeating history. New directors coming with remakes of old classics is a simple example of the same.
But did we ever make any good movies on historical events? Forget that, did we ever make any good period film? I say NO. We never had the guts and courage to do such an experiment. Moreover History and Religion are two things, our filmmakers try never to touch. Our political and social system never allows that. History is always written according to wish of powerfuls. Cries of mass always goes unheard against songs of glory by power-brokers.And Religion is the nerve of mass. So forget about playing with it, you better stay away from it. Films on Godhra could not see the face of regular theatres. Ayodhya and others never had any movies made (or released) over them.
Consider history on other hand. Mangal Pande had to face so many opposition. Even national award winner Sardar had to face so many oppositions. TajMahal could not survive the high hopes of its own director. Only good movies I can remember will be Mugal-e-Azam and Gandhi. But Gandhi was not made by bollywood. We never believed in importance of such movies. We never wanted to provied such resources.
One more aspect of Indian History is that we always tried to avoid discussing The Partition and The Emergency Period. No History book in syllabus gives an idea about both of them properly. Netaji could never gain the grand status he should have got, because he chose a path different from the Congres and Gandhi. Still we are trying to find the real reason of his death. So we never wrote our history properly. When History is incomplete, fiction and Lok-Sahitya will try to fill the missing parts. It is said that RSS made Mangal Pande a national figure. Why not, that portion of history was never written by any Indian. Whatever we ever read is account by some English Historian or some foreign person. History is always perespective.
So create your own history. Nobody else will write it for you.

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