Lack of research does Bhaag Milkha Bhaag in

I am not sure if it was predestined that I return to blogosphere with a critique of Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s biopic on legendary Olympian Milkha Singh—Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (BMB); but this is how it is and preordained or not, I am compelled to put my thoughts on paper about a cinematic endeavour that has been written about much, praised to the skies, and draped with all trappings of glory that one would associate with cinema and its offering to the masses, which is often not discerning enough to question the alarmingly jingoistic, reactionary, and one-sided yet commercially viable representation to which filmmakers often resort. Fact of the matter is that BMB is completely off the mark, both historically and politically. And here I do not mean the various romantic interludes that Mr Singh had with several women, but the manner in which the trauma of Partition is imagined and depicted in this monolith of a film, which could have done with crisp editing as well as good and correct research. Let us first go over and understand the major historical inaccuracy that inflicts the script right from the opening sequence, which begins with Milkha Singh leading the 400 metre race at the Rome Olympics, a race he loses and falls to fourth place because of a split-second mistake he makes—he turns to look back. And what exactly is he looking at? Well, the viewer is made to believe that Mr Singh had a quasi-spiritual experience on the race track and presumably in his mind’s eye witnesses the bloody murder of his father in course of the violence that rocked the subcontinent in 1947. In that instance, he imagines himself running through the fields of his village from what the audience views is a horseman. Mehra wants his audience to believe that the turbaned horseman who looks like a medieval invader, invariably Muslim, is a Pakistani. It is actually hard not to mention that the sequence, which should have probably elicited strong reactions from its viewers is pretty laughable. The depiction remains grossly shrouded in mystery since neither the attire or the circumstance seem to be accurate. First, the horseman or horsemen, I should say, who looks and behaves like a medieval savage, does not have a face. It seems, therefore, that the filmmaker intended to create a temporal distance between the visage of the sword-wielding “Pakistani” and the victimised “Indian”, where the audience becomes one with the bloodied victim and his kith and kin. This distance is further enhanced as more of these horsemen come into view as the film moves along. All of them seem to be attired in curious black robes as if the raid by the Pakistani’s on the village was colour coordinated and choreographed by an ace. It is hard to believe that the research team that worked on the film did not delve deeper. It should not have been too difficult to find references for the correct attire that the newly created “Pakistanis” wore in 1947. Any in-depth account on the history of Pakistan chronicles the changes in overall attire that came about through the years after Partition, during which the common folk in undivided Punjab wore lungis, dhotis, turbans (of course, but not the kind depicted in the film), and shalwaar-kameez; this was true across community boundaries. It is only in the mid-1980s that the shalwaar kameez began to emerge as something of a national dress to coincide with the pro-mujahideen stance of the then President, General Zia-Ul-Haq. I tried to reason in my mind that perhaps the director wants to categorise the Pakistani swordsmen as soldiers of the Pakistani army or the police, in which case they should have been attired in khaki trousers and shirts! Then again, if the swordsmen were intended to be represented as tribal invaders—ostensibly the Pathans who invaded the Kashmir Valley, the depiction is historically flawed. Second, Partition violence was participatory. Therefore, the manner in which it is exaggerated shrouds it with an uncanny yet incendiary intention to fuel, create, and percolate an extremely untruthful image of the “other”. There have been remarkable, sensitive cinematic instances, which depicted the violence and not too long ago in the history of Indian cinema—1947-Earth, Pinjar, Train to Pakistan, Maachis are some examples. All the research team of BMB had to do was to take a look at the Partition sequences filmed by the respective filmmakers, although a few of the films listed were criticised for being diabolically jingoistic. On the contrary, lack of research and perspective has really led to the acquisition of an unflattering epithet for the film, which I guess Rakeysh Mehra envisaged as his magnum opus—that of a film with the most inaccurate depiction of Partition violence in recent times. The script attempts to insinuate a diversion from the act of forgetting for a generation that has moved on from the horrors of the Partition, on both sides of the border. It creates an imagery of the “other” that not only permeates the imagination of the Muslim on the other side of the barbed wire, but also in not a very subtle fashion leads to an imagination of the Indian Muslim as a medieval savage, a murderer of Hindu and Sikh men, and despoiler of Hindu and Sikh women. One would think a man who created magic on the silver screen with Rang De Basanti could do better!