Revisiting 1988’s Bharat Ek Khoj that showcases India’s wealthy historical past in short

“It was difficult to get a grip on India’s soul though I could feel it intuitively.” The voice is thespian Roshan Seth’s and the present is Shyam Benegal’s Bharat Ek Khoj. But it is likely to be extra correct to say that the voice behind Seth’s voice is that of Jawaharlal Nehru’s, the putative writer of The Discovery of India on which Benegal based mostly his kaleidoscopic TV tome. First broadcast in 1988, this Doordarshan traditional was Indian satellite tv for pc TV viewers’ first introduction to Nehru’s scholarly items. The Nehruvians and the well-read elites might have devoured this doorstopper within the authentic however translating Nehru’s thought of India and its episodic investigation into our golden however wounded (to make use of a Naipaulian phrase) previous meant the entire nation might tune in to grasp free India’s first prime minister’s mind-set. Also, his hopes and aspirations vis-à-vis India’s leap into the twentieth century.
Ponderous historical past books have instructed us about Indian civilisation and its highs and lows. Bharat Ek Khoj treats that sacred historical past with due diligence and respect. For this TV expertise, Benegal racked up not simply the best actors — Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Shabana Azmi and the entire caboodle from the parallel cinema pantheon of which he was the patron saint — but in addition the very best researchers and historians for session.
Through 53 episodes, every lasting over 40 minutes, the present spans 5,000 years of Indian historical past. The thought, one can collect, was to discover the ‘Indian thought’ and clarify to the viewers how our civilisation began, the way it flourished, what was commerce and commerce like within the historical previous, the conquests and bloodshed in addition to our centuries-old heritage, social reforms, faith and lores of the land. From Ramayana, Mahabharata, Indus valley civilization and the Buddha to Kalidas, Maurya, Ashoka, Shivaji, Akbar and Mahatma Phule, Bharat Ek Khoj’s looking out eye conspires to piece collectively the religious puzzle that’s India. With 1000’s of years of cultural conflict set on such an expansive canvas, you’ll be able to think about that this is just too huge for even historical past buffs to make sense of, not to mention binge-watch it in a single sitting. The Discovery of India was written by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in simply 5 months’ time within the yr 1944 whereas he was incarcerated in Ahmednagar fort jail camp between 1942-1945 for his involvement within the Quit India motion. The present takes up the guide’s first-person narration framework, with Roshan Seth (taking part in Nehru) speaking to his viewers from jail. It is from right here, filling out his diary pages, that Seth guides you thru the varied phases and eras of Indian historical past. While admittedly a prolific author, Nehru wasn’t a historian. But regardless of no libraries or literature to seek the advice of, Nehru brings in an historian’s rigor. Much of this guide was written from reminiscence and partly with assist from his jail companions like Maulana Azad, Govind Ballabh Pant, Narendra Deva and M Asaf Ali. Benegal renders Om Puri’s voice as a counterpoint to steadiness Nehru’s views. And what a privilege it’s to hearken to Seth and Puri’s voiceovers, as they convey Nehru’s magnum opus alive.
A mini-India

There’s nobody protagonist right here as a result of there’s nobody story. It’s a tapestry of a plot with a full solid of characters. In telling the story, whether or not it’s the episode that includes Shivaji or Ramayana, Benegal makes use of folks singers and snippets from Ram-Leela to make the drama appear fascinating and relatable. While the title track is in Sanskrit, the script is equally peppered with Urdu, maybe underlining the type of range that Nehru believed in. At occasions, Bharat Ek Khoj’s set (a duplicate of mini-India, one imagines) might have appeared like an extension of Benegal’s spartan parallel cinema, which produced classics of the style equivalent to Ankur, Mandi, Manthan, Nishant and Bhumika. What additional heightens this sense is the participation of New Wave regulars like Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri and others. Put collectively, your complete solid of Bharat Ek Khoj can kind a village. One of the present’s ingenious portrayals embrace Naseeruddin Shah as Shivaji Maharaj. It’s uncommon to see Shah, in any other case offbeat cinema’s Mr Everyman, in a interval spectacle however there’s a proper precision in his efficiency that justifies his casting as a lot because it astonishes. As you begin watching the present and getting extra entrenched in its historic sway, you meet extra actors like Shah whose presence provides you a nice shock. There’s Sadashiv Amrapurkar as Mahatma Phule, who alongside along with his spouse Savitribai faces stiff social opposition from locals as he goes about his social reforms, significantly in direction of schooling and untouchability. Some may surprise what a fresh-faced Lucky Ali is doing on this present, till you realise he began out as an actor.
Along the way in which, you additionally see a uncooked Irrfan Khan showing as varied characters. Freshly out of NSD, Khan wasn’t an enormous title but and being part of a Shyam Benegal present along with his display heroes like Om Puri and Naseer will need to have meant an excellent deal to a younger actor like him. He’s dutifully pushed into smaller roles within the Chanakya, Akbar and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan chapters however the one wherein he actually comes into his personal is episode no. 51. Titled Separatism, the episode follows the emergence of Muslim separatism foreshadowing the occasions of 1947, when India and Pakistan lastly got here into existence as two seperate nations divided on the premise of non secular identities. Khan performs Salim, a younger Iqbal-quoting, Aligarh-educated Muslim idealist within the golden age of Muslim League. His spiel on Islam and nationalism is in some methods a gown rehearsal to lots of his nice future performances. Carrying the majority of the accountability, Roshan Seth and Om Puri couldn’t have requested for a greater function. Seth shortly turned typecast as display Nehru after taking part in him in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi. Bharat Ek Khoj deploys him primarily as a narrator, extra like an architect who doesn’t essentially must throw himself into motion. After Seth, if the present has any cornerstone, it’s Om Puri, an previous Shyam Benegal hand. He’s excellent as Ashoka and Duryodhana. Puri, who died in 2017, blends himself into the well-written content material so absolutely. He was certainly a uncommon beast: he had a commanding display presence and but, a extremely pure and adaptable type of appearing.

Benegal isn’t any stranger to the interval style. He gave us Junoon, based mostly on the 1857 rebellion, Kalyug, which was a modern-day iteration on Mahabharata, and Trikal, a retelling of Goan historical past as remembered by its prodigal son (performed by Naseeruddin Shah), returning to his ancestral residence. Later on in his profession, the filmmaker reevaluated Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s revolutionary life in a 2004 movie of the identical title. As showrunner, Bharat Ek Khoj stays one among his most bold tasks until date. The present’s authenticity is as a lot attributable to its writers and historians, together with the likes of Shama Zaidi, Sunil Shanbag, Vasant Dev, Irfan Habib, RS Sharma and so on, who served as advisers.
Prisoners of Our Age
In a 1980 foreword to The Discovery of India, Indira Gandhi famous that her father’s first three books which additionally contains Glimpses of World History and An Autobiography “have been my companions through life.” The father-daughter had a lifelong change of letters wherein Nehru’s intelligence, curiosity and empathy shines by way of. Glimpses of World History is a literary reward to “Indira Priyadarshani” on whom the daddy doted. He was naturally involved about her future but in addition needed to welcome her into the grownup world with Glimpses of World History. The correspondence between the 2 began as early as 1930, when Indira was barely in her early teenagers. The letters are deeply private in nature, as Nehru typically pours his coronary heart out. Later, Indira is alleged to have corrected the proofs for The Discovery of India. “Books fascinated Jawaharlal Nehru,” Indira wrote. “He sought out ideas. He was extraordinarily sensitive to literary beauty. In his writings, he aimed at describing his motives and appraisals as meticulously as possible.” Nehru determined to jot down The Discovery of India after travelling the size and breadth of India in the course of the freedom motion. At rallies, he met villagers who chanted “Bharat Mata ki jai” with out figuring out its correct implications. What is Bharat Mata, Nehru puzzled. “Mother India was essentially these millions of people, and victory to her meant victory to these people,” he concluded, an anecdote Benegal used within the first episode itself. Nehru was in awe of India, however there was one thing of an interior critic in him, too, which strove in direction of addressing the nation’s faultlines and frailties. As he conceded, “India with all her infinite charm and variety began to grow upon me more and more.” Yet, he failed to grasp what this huge nation embodied. So he launched into a literary voyage to seek out out.

Even although the person who led the unbiased nation into the fashionable world wrote that we’re “prisoners of our age,” he equally noticed India as an “ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie has been inscribed.” At one level, he makes one other essential remark: “A civilization decays much more from inner failure than from an external attack. It may fail because in a sense it has worked itself out and has nothing more to offer in a changing world, or because the people who represent it deteriorate in quality and can no longer support the burden worthily.” Besides such cautious assertions, Nehru’s guide concurrently celebrates and questions faith (usually, in addition to his personal atheist tendencies), metaphysics, philosophy, politics, society, colonialism, Marxism, the Upanishads, Greek versus Indian civilisation, China, the liberty wrestle, our epics and our lifestyle. Today, Nehru’s legacy is a political soccer boasting extra critics than admirers. Many within the Right take into account Nehru’s reign as India’s misplaced years, and are actually attempting their greatest to undo that previous. As India’s first prime minister, they really feel Nehru was provided with the once-in-a-lifetime probability for change within the nice nation’s life. In hindsight, they recommend that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel whose Statue of Unity has turn into one of many tallest symbols of nationwide politics in recent times was the very best prime minister India by no means had. Maybe, Patel would have been a lesser evil. Or possibly not. Let’s depart that to lecturers and politicians. While over the many years Nehru’s management has come to be seen as extra missed alternatives and a tragic failure of lofty ambitions, his writings present us a person who was delicate, refined and iconoclastic. He had spent a lot of his youth out and in of British prisons. As he himself joked in a while in life, he wasn’t in jail typically sufficient to jot down much more books!