08-17-2005, 09:51 PM
Pioneer Op-Ed about the film The Rising.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Rising controversy
Kanchan Gupta
With a decrepit leadership and its ranks in total disarray, the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh, desperately seeking to latch on to a popular issue, has demanded an immediate ban on the Hindi film Mangal Pandey - The Rising.
The BJP, obviously, hopes to cash in on faux emotional outrage as claimed by some residents of Nagwa, believed to be the birthplace of Mangal Pandey, near Ballia, who claim that the film distorts history by not mentioning the name of the sepoy's village, apart from showing him as a man given to the pleasures of flesh and wine.
There is an element of competitive identity politics, too. With a Minister in Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav's Government promising that the film will be banned and a Samajwadi Party legislator setting up a 'Mangal Pandey Virodhi Manch', the BJP does not wish to be seen as a passive observer. Perhaps it senses a larger conspiracy by Mr Yadav to force a realignment of upper caste votes in his backyard and believes that by agitating for a ban on Mangal Pandey - The Rising it will prevent Brahmins from deserting the BJP.
The BJP's hopes, of course, are as absurd as the aspirations of Samad Iqbal, a waiter in Zadie Smith's novel White Teeth who dreams of a quick success story in a hostile environment. In this novel that celebrates marketplace multiculturalism, Samad is the great grandson of Mangal Pandey. A bit far-fetched, no doubt, but then so is the reel-life portrayal of the man whose name is now being bandied about by politicians whose knowledge of history is to be taken as seriously as their commitment to the cause they claim to champion.
Ironically, the BJP is not alone in protesting against alleged distortions of "historical facts" by Ketan Mehta, director of Mangal Pandey - The Rising. <b>Saul David, author of The Indian Mutiny: 1857, has bitterly complained </b>that the film reflects India's constant attempt to perpetuate the "belief (that) wicked British imperialists were trying to force their views and, of course, their religion on the poor Indians... The reality was that no greased cartridges were ever issued and if the mutiny was caused it was because the British were, if anything, too lenient rather than too severe towards their (Indian) soldiers..."
This view is not necessarily shared by everybody in Britain. The Guardian has lavished praise, and understandably so, on the film, its director and Aamir Khan - "as the heroic sepoy, Aamir Khan leaps around with an energy reminiscent of Errol Flynn in his heyday" - who spent months growing his hair and moustache for playing the role of Mangal Pandey. It is another matter that the on-screen Mangal Pandey bears little or no resemblance to the sepoys who feature in woodcut prints of the time.
Aamir Khan's oiled, flowing hair and moustache are as much a part of the myth-making as popular folklore that portrays Mangal Pandey as the first martyr of India's war of independence. That is, if at all his act of defiance and the subsequent upheaval in Meerut, Aligarh, Etawah, Mainpuri and Lucknow can be termed as the first war of independence.
<b>Professional historians, depending on their ideological persuasion, differ on the description of what the East India Company viewed - subscribed to by historians like Saul David - as a sepoy mutiny. Most, however, would agree that it was an uprising against British colonial rule then represented by East India Company.</b>
Rudrangshu Mukherjee, in his book Mangal Pandey: Brave Martyr or Accidental Hero, provides an interesting distraction from popular myth-making which is the mainstay of Ketan Mehta's film but whose perceived distortion is now feeding populist politics in Uttar Pradesh.
Could a sepoy wearing his regimental jacket with a dhoti, who created quite a stir at Barrackpore on Sunday, March 29, 1857, by single-handedly challenging the might of the British Army, have acted under the influence of bhang and other intoxicants? And is there any connection between the incident at Barrackpore and subsequent actions by mutinous sepoys in northern India?
While it is debatable whether nationalism inspired Mangal Pandey and later hundreds of sepoys, <b>what is irrefutable is that religion and caste concerns played a defining role in that year which saw British rule in north India collapsing "like a house made of cards". The greased paper cartridge for the newly introduced Enfield rifles threatened the religious and caste identities of Mangal Pandey and his fellow sepoys as never before.</b>
Folklore has it that a low caste khalasi at the ordnance factory in Dum Dum where the new kartoos were being manufactured had asked a Brahmin sepoy for water from his lota. The sepoy feared being defiled by such intimate contact, upon which the khalasi mocked him: "You will soon lose your caste, as ere long you will have to bite cartridges covered with the fat of pigs and cows."
Nothing could have threatened the Brahmin sepoys - of whom Mangal Pandey was a quintessential example - more than such forced loss of religious and caste identities that had been scrupulously ensured by their British employers till then. If the records of the court martial that tried Mangal Pandey and sentenced him to death are to be believed, he was sufficiently enraged to make a stirring speech, armed with a sword and a loaded musket, on the parade ground of Barrackpore on that Sunday afternoon:
"Come out, you b*********s, the Europeans are here! Why aren't you getting ready? It's for our religion! From biting these cartridges we shall become infidels. Get ready! Turn out, all of you! You have incited me to do this and now you b*********s, you will not follow me!"
<b>In the event, while the sepoys on guard duty refused to heed the orders of their British officers that Mangal Pandey be disarmed and arrested, others did not rush out from the barracks in droves; they chose to remain silent which must have added to his despair </b>so obvious in his statement at the court martial: "I did not know who I wounded and who I did not; what more shall I say? I have nothing more to say... I have no evidence."
The bulk of the evidence that was presented against him was in the form of eyewitness accounts of the three British officers whom Mangal Pandey had attacked with ferocious vigour. The rest of the evidence comprised the statement of Sheikh Paltu, a sepoy who broke ranks and pinned down Mangal Pandey, and was rewarded with a promotion even before the mutineer could be executed.
If the absence of widespread support among his fellow sepoys for his heroic act is tragic, no less hurtful is the fact that when the mass uprising occurred in the dusty plains of north India a month later, the mutineers did not talk of Mangal Pandey, nor did they recognise the incident at Barrackpore as the flashpoint.
But, then, as Rudrangshu Mukherjee points out, Mangal Pandey's act of defiance was not necessarily the first instance of sepoy anger over threatened loss of religious and caste identities. <b>In November 1824, sepoys at Barrackpore had mutinied with disastrous consequences: 200 sepoys were killed by the Royal Artillery on the parade ground and 12 more hanged.</b>
Why not begin the history of India's struggle against imperialism from that horrific incident?
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Is the claim that concern loss of identity is not nationalistic? It may be the fan that roused the fire that was smoldering since the end of the Mughal Empire. The new beginings of a republican India.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Rising controversy
Kanchan Gupta
With a decrepit leadership and its ranks in total disarray, the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh, desperately seeking to latch on to a popular issue, has demanded an immediate ban on the Hindi film Mangal Pandey - The Rising.
The BJP, obviously, hopes to cash in on faux emotional outrage as claimed by some residents of Nagwa, believed to be the birthplace of Mangal Pandey, near Ballia, who claim that the film distorts history by not mentioning the name of the sepoy's village, apart from showing him as a man given to the pleasures of flesh and wine.
There is an element of competitive identity politics, too. With a Minister in Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav's Government promising that the film will be banned and a Samajwadi Party legislator setting up a 'Mangal Pandey Virodhi Manch', the BJP does not wish to be seen as a passive observer. Perhaps it senses a larger conspiracy by Mr Yadav to force a realignment of upper caste votes in his backyard and believes that by agitating for a ban on Mangal Pandey - The Rising it will prevent Brahmins from deserting the BJP.
The BJP's hopes, of course, are as absurd as the aspirations of Samad Iqbal, a waiter in Zadie Smith's novel White Teeth who dreams of a quick success story in a hostile environment. In this novel that celebrates marketplace multiculturalism, Samad is the great grandson of Mangal Pandey. A bit far-fetched, no doubt, but then so is the reel-life portrayal of the man whose name is now being bandied about by politicians whose knowledge of history is to be taken as seriously as their commitment to the cause they claim to champion.
Ironically, the BJP is not alone in protesting against alleged distortions of "historical facts" by Ketan Mehta, director of Mangal Pandey - The Rising. <b>Saul David, author of The Indian Mutiny: 1857, has bitterly complained </b>that the film reflects India's constant attempt to perpetuate the "belief (that) wicked British imperialists were trying to force their views and, of course, their religion on the poor Indians... The reality was that no greased cartridges were ever issued and if the mutiny was caused it was because the British were, if anything, too lenient rather than too severe towards their (Indian) soldiers..."
This view is not necessarily shared by everybody in Britain. The Guardian has lavished praise, and understandably so, on the film, its director and Aamir Khan - "as the heroic sepoy, Aamir Khan leaps around with an energy reminiscent of Errol Flynn in his heyday" - who spent months growing his hair and moustache for playing the role of Mangal Pandey. It is another matter that the on-screen Mangal Pandey bears little or no resemblance to the sepoys who feature in woodcut prints of the time.
Aamir Khan's oiled, flowing hair and moustache are as much a part of the myth-making as popular folklore that portrays Mangal Pandey as the first martyr of India's war of independence. That is, if at all his act of defiance and the subsequent upheaval in Meerut, Aligarh, Etawah, Mainpuri and Lucknow can be termed as the first war of independence.
<b>Professional historians, depending on their ideological persuasion, differ on the description of what the East India Company viewed - subscribed to by historians like Saul David - as a sepoy mutiny. Most, however, would agree that it was an uprising against British colonial rule then represented by East India Company.</b>
Rudrangshu Mukherjee, in his book Mangal Pandey: Brave Martyr or Accidental Hero, provides an interesting distraction from popular myth-making which is the mainstay of Ketan Mehta's film but whose perceived distortion is now feeding populist politics in Uttar Pradesh.
Could a sepoy wearing his regimental jacket with a dhoti, who created quite a stir at Barrackpore on Sunday, March 29, 1857, by single-handedly challenging the might of the British Army, have acted under the influence of bhang and other intoxicants? And is there any connection between the incident at Barrackpore and subsequent actions by mutinous sepoys in northern India?
While it is debatable whether nationalism inspired Mangal Pandey and later hundreds of sepoys, <b>what is irrefutable is that religion and caste concerns played a defining role in that year which saw British rule in north India collapsing "like a house made of cards". The greased paper cartridge for the newly introduced Enfield rifles threatened the religious and caste identities of Mangal Pandey and his fellow sepoys as never before.</b>
Folklore has it that a low caste khalasi at the ordnance factory in Dum Dum where the new kartoos were being manufactured had asked a Brahmin sepoy for water from his lota. The sepoy feared being defiled by such intimate contact, upon which the khalasi mocked him: "You will soon lose your caste, as ere long you will have to bite cartridges covered with the fat of pigs and cows."
Nothing could have threatened the Brahmin sepoys - of whom Mangal Pandey was a quintessential example - more than such forced loss of religious and caste identities that had been scrupulously ensured by their British employers till then. If the records of the court martial that tried Mangal Pandey and sentenced him to death are to be believed, he was sufficiently enraged to make a stirring speech, armed with a sword and a loaded musket, on the parade ground of Barrackpore on that Sunday afternoon:
"Come out, you b*********s, the Europeans are here! Why aren't you getting ready? It's for our religion! From biting these cartridges we shall become infidels. Get ready! Turn out, all of you! You have incited me to do this and now you b*********s, you will not follow me!"
<b>In the event, while the sepoys on guard duty refused to heed the orders of their British officers that Mangal Pandey be disarmed and arrested, others did not rush out from the barracks in droves; they chose to remain silent which must have added to his despair </b>so obvious in his statement at the court martial: "I did not know who I wounded and who I did not; what more shall I say? I have nothing more to say... I have no evidence."
The bulk of the evidence that was presented against him was in the form of eyewitness accounts of the three British officers whom Mangal Pandey had attacked with ferocious vigour. The rest of the evidence comprised the statement of Sheikh Paltu, a sepoy who broke ranks and pinned down Mangal Pandey, and was rewarded with a promotion even before the mutineer could be executed.
If the absence of widespread support among his fellow sepoys for his heroic act is tragic, no less hurtful is the fact that when the mass uprising occurred in the dusty plains of north India a month later, the mutineers did not talk of Mangal Pandey, nor did they recognise the incident at Barrackpore as the flashpoint.
But, then, as Rudrangshu Mukherjee points out, Mangal Pandey's act of defiance was not necessarily the first instance of sepoy anger over threatened loss of religious and caste identities. <b>In November 1824, sepoys at Barrackpore had mutinied with disastrous consequences: 200 sepoys were killed by the Royal Artillery on the parade ground and 12 more hanged.</b>
Why not begin the history of India's struggle against imperialism from that horrific incident?
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Is the claim that concern loss of identity is not nationalistic? It may be the fan that roused the fire that was smoldering since the end of the Mughal Empire. The new beginings of a republican India.