Stolen Valour

THE OPENING SCENE of Aashish Mall’s Shatak: Sangh Ke 100 Varsh, which released in cinemas on 20 February, shows the founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, KB Hedgewar, enter a first-class coach in a train, sometime during the colonial era. The only other occupants are a British couple, who are aghast that an Indian has been allowed in. They ask the conductor to throw him out. The scene mirrors the infamous 1893 episode in which MK Gandhi was forced out of a first-class coach in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Hedgewar, however, is no Gandhi. He not only refuses to get off the train but invites all the other Indians waiting on the platform to join him. The conductor is overwhelmed and unable to stop them.

This incident never happened. The disclaimer at the beginning of the film says that “various creative liberties have been taken for its making” and that it “does not purport to present a complete or universally accepted account of history.” Such legalese sits at odds with the stated vision behind making Shatak. Kabir Sadanand, a television actor who was one of its associate producers, told me that the film was the brainchild of the businessman Anil Dhanpat Agarwal. “He always felt that it’s time to talk about actual history, talk about the contribution of the RSS towards nation-building, its hundred years,” Sadanand said, adding that they wanted to “serve our nation by giving them the actual truth—and we have.”

I was speaking to Sadanand, on 14 February, along with the film’s producer, Vir Kapur, and its co-producer, Aashish Tiwari. All of them were open about being members of the RSS. Tiwari’s father, Ghanshyam, is a Rajya Sabha MP from the Bharatiya Janata Party. Kapur, who had previously been involved with the distribution of the 2015 thriller Lucknow Times—the film’s director, Sudipto Sen, would go on to direct The Kerala Files—told me that he has known Tiwari for decades and that they had been thinking of a project like this “ever since we’ve been associated with the Sangh.” Unlike them, Sadanand did not have a local RSS shakha—branch—as a child, since his father, an Indian Air Force officer, kept relocating. I asked when he joined the Sangh, and he replied, “The heart, the mind, never connects. It is born like this.” Kapur said that Agarwal also comes from an old Sangh family. “His family, our family is the same.”

Unlike other recent films peddling Hindutva propaganda, Shatak appears to be an in-house RSS project. The music for the film was launched, on 11 January, by Mohan Bhagwat, the current sarsanghchalak—supreme leader—at Keshav Kunj, the Sangh’s headquarters in Delhi. Nitin Gadkari, an RSS veteran who is currently the union minister for road transport, released a video urging people to watch the film. “I invite you to come closer, explore its ideology and understand the spirit of sacrifice, dedication and patriotism,” he said.