Political video’? The slugfest over Vivek Agnihotri’s The Bengal Files
First came The Kashmir Files. And now we have The Bengal Files.
The makers have already called it the “boldest film ever” and a “cinematic masterpiece” in the trailer with the tagline, “If Kashmir hurt you, Bengal will haunt you.” The provocation is apparent as history turns into hysteria.
Vivek Agnihotri’s upcoming film came laced with controversies even before its trailer was publicly released on August 16.
The filmmaker took to social media a day before, on August 15, claiming that the trailer launch event scheduled for the next day was cancelled due to “political the trailer launch event scheduled for the next day was cancelled due to “political pressure”. He said that the theatre chain wanted to avoid a “turmoil”.
Vivek promised in the video that the trailer would still be launched in the capital city. The event was later shifted to a hotel in Kolkata, and its screening was stopped midway by cops. The filmmaker was seen arguing with them as he told reporters that his “voice is being suppressed in the land of Satyajit Ray”.
Taking to social media, Vivek said that the trailer was “illegally stopped” from getting screened. “First theatres, now even a private hotel. First theatres, now even a private hotel. Who fears the truth of Hindu genocide?” he wrote.
Battle over the depiction of Gopal Mukherjee ‘Patha’
The Bengal Files tells the story of the communal riots that took place during the Direct Action Day in 1946, when the All-India Muslim League announced general strikes as their demand for a separate homeland turned incessantly violent.
Beginning on August 16, the clashes continued for weeks, and the film dramatises these events with gory, hyper-violent visuals and attempts to sensationalise reality. This is seen in the brief appearance of a local leader, Gopal Mukherjee ‘Patha’, whose portrayal in the trailer has irked his family members, with his grandson, Santanu Mukherjee, filing a complaint, calling the depiction “baseless”.
In the trailer, Gopal is shown inciting a crowd with a communal dialogue, ‘Bharat hinduon ka Rashtra hai aur is yudh me Hindu haar rahe hai. Jeet kaun rahan hai? Jinnah. Ham sab nashe me chur hai aur is nashe ka naam hai Gandhi ki ahimsa (India is a country of Hindus and Hindus are losing this battle. Who iWho is winning it? Jinnah. We are all intoxicated, and the name of this intoxication is Gandhi’s non-violence).”’
He is later shown killing people with a knife as saffron-coloured flags are flapping in the background.
In a recent interview, Gopal’s family has expressed their strong disagreement with Vivek’s portrayal of Gopal as “a rabble-rousing, Muslim-hating butcher”. Santanu also said that his grandfather saved Muslim families in the neighbourhood during the communal riots of 1946 and made it clear to his followers not to kill the innocent.These nefarious activities of Vivek Agnihotri are wilfully, wantonly and maliciously besmirching the reputation of grandfather, stereotyping him as a communal thug and is aimed at flaring up communal tensions based on baseless depictions of my late grandfather’s historic actions,” wrote Santanu in his legal notice to the filmmaker while demanding an apology for the alleged distortion in the film.
Meanwhile, Vivek spoke to the media in Delhi, saying that the film presents Gopal Mukherjee as a hero.
“I have taken a small bit from his interview with the BBC, and taken what he said verbatim,” said Vivek, while adding that Gopal’s grandsons work with the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and have a compulsion to respond in this way.
“They have done it legally. We are giving a legal answerThis is not the first time Vivek’s films have been spurring controversy.The film was eventually declared “tax-free” in some Indian states as it continued to mint money at the box office. The Kashmir Files also won the National Award for Best Film on National Integration in 2023, a decision which lead many to question the sanctity of the prestigious honour.
More so, considering the polarising storytelling devices used by the film to demonise a community. This was reflected in the multiple videos that came out from theatres post-release, where the crowd erupted in a hate-filled frenzy.
His 2022 film, The Kashmir Files, which told the story of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in the early 1990s, was criticised for its black-and-white depiction of events and a weaponisation of history to create a hateful narrative for the present. Nadav Lapid, an Israeli filmmaker and the jury head of the International Film Festival of India in 2022, didn’t mince words as he went on to call it a “piece of propaganda”.