What awakens the nation? The figure of the revolutionary in Inquilaab, Krantiveer and Rang de Basanti

What is it about?

The enduring popularity of Bhagat Singh and his comrades of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association reveals an overriding fascination with the figure of the nationalist revolutionary in India. This abiding interest finds expression not only in the Hindi novels of the post-Premchand era but also in the mainstream representations of Bollywood cinema. This article analyses the representation of the nationalist revolutionary in three films, namely Inquilaab (1984), Krantiveer (1994) and Rang de Basanti (2006). It demonstrates how the theme of corruption, in these films, facilitates a reformist rhetoric which can nevertheless only be possible through an inaugural act of violence. The profound sense of disillusionment and scepticism vis-à-vis the post-Nehruvian state that one finds in a novel such as Raag Darbari (1968) is given an alternative orientation in these films in order to accommodate the figure of the nationalist revolutionary – a patriotic persona whose recourse to violence is invariably represented as a product of a Hobson’s choice. In the altered political landscape of post-independence India, the possibilities of revolution may have already been exhausted for the Hindi novel, but the presence of the nationalist revolutionary in Hindi cinema is constantly posited as a necessary and desirable corrective to the rampant venality of the postcolonial state and the political stupor of the masses.

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