How ‘Chhaava’ erases historical past and leaves no room for complexity

After watching the newest Bollywood blockbuster Chhaava, a viewer in Gujarat tore the cinema display screen angered by the torture inflicted by Aurangzeb on Sambhaji. A number of movies of viewers, together with kids, crying and shouting slogans, after watching the movie, have been circulating on social media. Any movie that devotes the ultimate 40 of a complete 136 minutes, to a brutal depiction of torture is already suspect with its sense of aesthetics.

Chhaava does have the laudable aim of setting the historic document straight about Sambhaji as an important warrior and administrator towards biased accounts. Nevertheless it turns into dangerous national-level propaganda when it’s fixated on the great Hindu versus the unhealthy Muslim binary, skips some incontrovertible info, and is in full sync with the ruling celebration’s ideology. Thus, it joins the cohort of over 20 blatant propaganda movies made lately resembling The Kashmir Recordsdata, The Kerala Story, The Vaccine Battle, Article 370, Bastar – The Naxal Story, Swatantrya Veer Savarkar, JNU: Jahangir Nationwide College, The Sabarmati Report and Samrat Prithviraj. And Chhaava, like some others, was endorsed by the Prime Minister and different Ministers, and made tax-free in sure BJP-ruled States.

Hindu vs Muslim binary

Chhaava’s world is one through which the relentless quest to reveal the evilness of the Muslim Aurangzeb makes it omit that he got here to energy on the idea of assist from the Rajputs; that his administration had the very best proportion of Hindu Mansabdars in Mughal historical past (33%); that it additionally had Hindus within the posts of the Dewan and as heads of two essential provinces; and that the emperor who imposed the Jizya (however exempted it for Brahmins, Rajputs, ladies, the aged, and so on.) protected some temples simply as he demolished others, in accordance with some historians.

This, in fact, doesn’t make Aurangzeb tolerant, solely that his orthodoxy needed to accommodate political pragmatism. Whereas secularist historians emphasise this political pragmatism, Samira Sheikh reveals how Aurangzeb’s Sunni bigotry arguably persecuted Shia and different Islamic millenarian teams such because the Mahdavis, Dawoodi Bohras and Sufis greater than the Hindus. This persecution had an financial aspect too — the rising prosperity of those “heretic” teams drew the ire of Aurangzeb’s Sunni clerics who had enterprise motives as effectively.

After all, these complexities/debates can’t be part of Chhaava’s world through which the search for Maratha “Swaraj” underneath Sambhaji is suffused with Hindu imagery and is introduced as liberating India from “overseas rule.” Truly, the Mughals had already lived in India for over 150 years then. Historian Stewart Gordon argues that Chhatrapati Shivaji, who championed tolerance and syncretism, and who had beseeched Aurangzeb to observe Akbar’s tolerance, was not advocating nationalism or the reason for a “common Hindu rule.” Shivaji, too, had a considerable variety of Muslims in his administration, together with prime navy commanders.

No room for nuance

Chhaava’s world of Hindus versus Muslims/Indians versus foreigners is way from the actual seventeenth century through which there have been a number of states and rising European powers, with varied cross-cutting alliances and rivalries between them. A powerful coastal energy was the Sidis of Janjira, who have been African Muslims, whereas the Peshwa of the Ahmadnagar Sultanate for 26 years was the legendary navy basic Malik Ambar, an Ethiopian slave. Shivaji (and his father) have been part of the Adil Shahi rule of Bijapur. Even when he rebelled and carved out his personal kingdom, he allied with them, the Qutb Shahis of Golconda and even the Mughals, and typically towards Hindu kingdoms just like the Nayaks of the Karnatic. Equally, Sambhaji, too, allied with Muslim Sultanates towards Hindu kings like Chikka Devaraja of Mysore.

Chhaava’s central narrative of Aurangzeb’s evilness can be diluted of its shock worth if the movie confirmed that Sambhaji himself had rebelled towards his father Shivaji and had briefly joined the identical evil Aurangzeb! Whereas Chhaava, in contrast to different propaganda movies, does present aberrations within the ‘good Hindus’ narrative by exhibiting some Hindu traitors, together with in his circle of relatives, all of the kohl-lined Muslims are universally unhealthy.

In positing Aurangzeb’s torture as distinctive, what Chhaava’s world elides is the brutal nature of the medieval world with each day wars. States, together with the Marathas, have been constructed by way of consolidation, in addition to by way of the violent subjugation of Hindu (and Muslim) landed nobles (deshmukhs, jagirdars, and so on.) who have been consistently shifting allegiances between states for higher materials/symbolic advantages. Internecine battle between members of the family, identical to among the many Mughals, was rife: Shivaji battled his half-brother Ekoji, and so did Sambhaji’s son with different contenders. When the movie reveals the failed plot to poison Sambhaji on behalf of his half-brother Rajaram, the place 20 key Maratha ministers and elites are executed, it solely hints on the violence by the trampling of elephants. When Sambhaji’s Marathas assault Goa, a Portuguese account (cited by historian Jadunath Sarkar) says, “to this point nowhere else in India has such barbarity been seen…” Whereas such narratives need to be handled fastidiously, what it reveals was that violence was pervasive, even when levels assorted.

Ignoring caste

Critically, Chhaava’s Hindu-Muslim binary glosses over caste. It was the bottom castes and the poor who confronted the worst types of oppression throughout Hindu and Muslim states. Within the 1818 Battle of Koregaon, the East India Firm forces, with the Dalit Mahars in it, defeated the Peshwa-led Maratha confederacy. It turned an emblem of caste resistance for Ambedkar and the Dalits. The movie can also be ironical contemplating that the Maharashtra non-Brahman motion had contended for lengthy that the demonisation of Sambhaji as weak, incompetent and morally poor was perpetuated by Brahmin narratives. This was additionally repeated by Hindutva ideologues like Savarkar and Golwalkar. The movie has led to new Maratha versus Brahmin sentiments.

The world of Chhaava, like many different propaganda historical past movies, is ruled by present-day predilections through which a majoritarian nationalism is rampant, with the nationwide viewers additional reinforcing it. When historical past in cinema turns into merely a instrument to evoke anger, disgust and hatred, it robs us from understanding historical past in all its complexity. When historical past textbooks are being rewritten, and when folks learn historical past largely by way of WhatsApp forwards, movies like Chhaava with their erasures portend a harmful tendency.

Nissim Mannathukkaren is with Dalhousie College, Canada and is on X @nmannathukkaren.