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Amid a slew of historical drama films emerging from Bollywood, Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions is set to release Kesari Chapter 2, a movie based on a court case following the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, starring Akshay Kumar, Ananya Panday and R Madhavan.

The film is based on The Case that Shook the Empire: One Man’s Fight for the Truth about the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, a book by Raghu and Pushpa Palat that explores the defamation case filed against Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair by Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the former lieutenant governor of Punjab and the architect of the massacre. O’Dwyer’s defamation allegations came after Nair published a book about the atrocities committed by the British Raj in Punjab.

The trailer for Kesari Chapter 2 came out on Thursday and the film will release on April 18, three days after the anniversary of the massacre. Kumar will portray Nair, who is pitted against Madhavan who portrays a lawyer defending the British. Panday will play the role of another lawyer.

The graphic trailer showed Indians being shot at by the British Indian Army, with blood pouring from decapitated limbs and people jumping into a well to save themselves.

Kumar’s character dropped the F-bomb in an earlier teaser trailer and later addressed the moment in conversation with media personnel. According to the Hindustan Times, Kumar said he did use the word, however, he believed that the preceding dialogue, in which a British officer calls his character a “slave to the British Empire”, was a greater insult.

Last month, British Member of Parliament Bob Blackman asked the government to formally tender an apology to the people of India for the massacre.

“Today, I raised the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. I asked the govt to formally give an apology to the people of India ahead of the atrocities anniversary,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

Over a century ago, at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, British Brigadier General Reginald Dyer opened fire on unarmed, peaceful protestors who had gathered there to celebrate the Baisakhi festival. The crowd was also peacefully protesting against the Rowlatt Act, passed by the British government, which limited civil liberties and demanded the release of two nationalist leaders, Saifuddin Kitchlew and Satyapal.

As many as 1,650 rounds of ammunition were fired on unarmed Indians on Sunday, April 13, 1919 at Jallianwala Bagh, author Asif Noorani wrote for Dawn. The Bagh’s narrow entrance was blocked as 50 soldiers from the Baloch and Gurkha regiments rained bullets on the crowd gathered there. Curfew had already been imposed in the city, so even if any of the hundreds of wounded wanted to leave after the brutal act was over, they were just not able to move out of the premises from where blood was flowing uninterruptedly. Thus, many of those who could have been saved succumbed to their injuries.

The figures for the dead — belonging to all faiths practised in India — vary from 350 to 1,200; hundreds of injured remained unattended for long and died of their wounds. According to Dyer, his troops fired 1,650 rounds of live ammunition. It was a major tragedy and representative of the colonial violence perpetuated in British India and other colonies across continents, poet and essayist Harris Khalique wrote.

Bollywood’s historical films

Bollywood has seen an upward trend in the production of historical dramas. Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Heeramandi for Netflix showed the lives of courtesans in pre-Partition Indian Lahore’s red-light district. Nikhil Advani’s series Freedom at Midnight for SonyLIV recounted the partition of the subcontinent.

However, these tales have often diverged from historical facts to portray a more dramatised version of events, often skewing facts to show certain groups in a more negative light.

Most recently, Vicky Kaushal’s Chhaava, the historical action film based on the life of Sambhaji Maharaj, the second ruler of the Maratha Empire, found itself at the centre of a political and communal storm for its portrayal of Aurangzeb, the 17th-century Mughal emperor.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis linked the film to violence in Nagpur, saying it has sparked anger among people against the late emperor, causing tensions and violent clashes in Nagpur over his tomb.

The film faced backlash for allegedly fictionalising Hindu torture under Aurangzeb, with claims about it being historically inaccurate and exaggerated.

The Kashmir Files (2022) depicts the story of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir and the film’s producers were accused of not adhering to facts and for projecting a negative image of Muslims.

India’s Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of creating a “poisonous atmosphere” in the country by spreading “false propaganda” about the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the valley through The Kashmir Files, a film directed by Vivek Agnihotri, The Wire reported.

Pawar said while it is true that Kashmiri Pandits had to leave the valley, Muslims too were targeted in a similar manner.

Similarly, Padmaavat (2018) showed the lead characters Padmavati and Rattan Singh as symbolically virtuous figures, while the wicked, unprincipled antagonist, the Sultan of Delhi Alauddin Khilji, was given a more skewed character. The historical Khilji was like most medieval rulers of his time a tough, often cruel and ruthless man, but according to reports, was not a savage. According to historical records, he was a civilised man according to his time, a brave soldier and clever tactician who saved India from the Mongol hordes as many as six times.

The makers of Padmaavat played into the narratives of extremists, casting the Muslim Sultan of Delhi as a capricious barbarian who happily murders his way to power. Just in case anyone forgets he is a Muslim and a villain, the makers have given him lots of meat to eat, lots of green flags with crescents, his clothes are dark, he has strange scars and his palace is filled with gloom, Sadaf Haider wrote for Images.

Meanwhile, the Hindu Rajputs are constantly bathed in radiant white lights and have the good manners to be vegetarians, she detailed.

It’s not as if Bollywood has been historically progressive. Even many of its better products have been classic right-wing — pro-capital, pro-military, pro-‘tradition’, Tanul Thakar wrote in an earlier story. There has been no dearth of recent jingoistic and communal dramas, either, ranging from shocking (Bhuj) to shameful (Tanhaji).