New Delhi: For filmmaker Nikkhil Advani, the biggest challenge while working on the second part of “Freedom at Midnight”, his ambitious 14-episode series chronicling the story of the final months before India’s independence and its immediate aftermath, was to shoot the scenes where Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel are not on talking terms.
The second and final part of the series, which premiered on Sony Liv on Friday, dives deep into the moments before India’s Partition, the making of the Radcliffe line and Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination through the eyes of key figures like Nehru, Patel, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Lord Mountbatten and others. The show is adapted from Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre’s famous book of the same name.
Advani said setting up the fifth, sixth and the last episode of the series, where he goes deep into the disagreements between Nehru and Patel, was tough.
“Those were the most difficult scenes to write as many did not know that Sardar Patel had given his resignation to Gandhi and it was on his desk when he went out and was shot. That is what Pyarelal (Nayyar, Gandhi’s personal secretary) goes and gives to Nehru who tears it up in the show.
“You are seeing two men who are opposing each other, but have so much respect for each other. And they are opposing points of view, but they have so much respect for each other’s point of view. That’s what leaders are about. That’s what giants are about. A powerful dissenting voice is very important,” Advani told PTI in an interview.
A history buff, who does not seem to be done with India’s contemporary history as he explores the freedom struggle once again in his next show “The Revolutionaries”, Advani said he went in like a student but still does not know whether he has done justice to the 1975 book.
“People will have very diverse opinions on whether I’ve been successful in bringing out what matters or not. But my job was not to judge. It’s easy to sit back and have the clarity of retrospect and say, ‘Why did they not take the decision?’ Because maybe they only had half the information. There was chaos, there was confusion, the British had ruled us for 200 years and then they just decided to pack up and leave.
“Radcliffe was dealing with diarrhoea, dysentery, heat waves and heat stroke. And suddenly Mountbatten turns around and says, ‘Hello, India is going to blow up and we better get out before it happens.’ So he pulled down the independence from 1948 to August 1947 in five weeks. So (the leaders) were solving one problem and two others were coming up. And there were egos. And they were great egos and there was politics.”
In the show, Nehru, played by Sidhant Gupta of “Jubilee” fame, keeps insisting that the new nation will follow the ideals of secularism, democracy and socialism, while Patel (Rajendra Chawla) pragmatically deals with the many problems surrounding them.
Advani said it was deliberate on his part to end the story, not with the assassination of Gandhi (played by Chirag Vohra), but with the moment when B R Ambedkar introduces the Constitution in the constituent assembly on November 25, 1949.
“I’m a firm believer in the Constitution of India. I think that it is what sets us apart as a towering nation,” said the filmmaker, also known for movies such as “Kal Ho Na Ho”, “D-Day” and “Vedaa”.
What kind of lessons Advani hopes people draw from the series?
“I’m not as informed as some of the academics who have dedicated years of their life to analysing, writing and documenting history. I just feel that it’s a fascinating story of a very disturbing time that is very difficult to forget. And a lot of people are not healed because of that and there is a need for healing,” he said, recalling how his own grandparents left Karachi and settled in Mumbai after the Partition.
Advani, who has always been interested in the stories of the Partition and contemporary history, also hopes people understand the sacrifice that went into nation building.
“One of my favourite books is ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ by William L. Shirer. And I love the way it starts, which is that – ‘Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.’ That’s probably why I wanted to make ‘Freedom at Midnight’ or ‘The Revolutionaries’. I just feel it’s important for us to understand and be informed about what other people sacrificed for us to get in the position that we are in today.”
While making the series, one of the rules that Advani adhered to was to not glorify the violence that took place during the Partition but still put viewers right in the middle of it. He also tried his best to “not bring personal biases” by telling the story from multiple perspectives.
“‘Tryst with Destiny’ (Nehru’s speech as the first Prime Minister), is an incredible piece and I had read somewhere that it was an extremely off the cuff kind of speech, but then we did a lot of research and he actually wrote draft after draft of the speech.
“I enjoyed the things that I did not know. I love the scenes where priests come up and say that August 15 is the worst date and Nehru says, ‘Ok, you know what, why don’t we have a compromise? We will do that at midnight.’ It is so interesting and cinematic,” he said.
In “The Revolutionaries”, his next series, Advani will focus on freedom fighters Rash Behari Bose, Sachindranath Sanyal and Kartar Singh Sarabha.
“The shooting is done. We are in post-production and it’s very different. But revolution is younger, more ‘josh’ (energy). I don’t have the burden of most people knowing or claiming to know Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and Gandhi. They are going to discover these revolutionaries as 17-18 year old boys. These revolutionaries didn’t know how to use a gun, but they decided that they would throw the British out.
“If ‘Freedom at Midnight’ is about dignity, sophistication and authenticity, ‘Revolutionaries’ is about audacity. You know, we had T-shirts for the unit with the line ‘Aur Aayenge’ written on them. This is what Bose said for future revolutionaries,” the director said.
Advani, who runs the production banner Emmay Entertainment with Monisha Advani and Madhu Bhojwani, also said that he hopes to return to feature filmmaking soon.
