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Khan plays Salim, a young Iqbal-quoting, Aligarh-educated Muslim idealist in the golden age of Muslim League. Titled Separatism, the episode follows the emergence of Muslim separatism foreshadowing the events of 1947, when India and Pakistan finally came into existence as two seperate nations divided on the basis of religious identities. He’s dutifully pushed into smaller roles in the Chanakya, Akbar and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan chapters but the one in which he really comes into his own is episode no. Freshly out of NSD, Khan wasn’t a big name yet and being a part of a Shyam Benegal show with his screen heroes like Om Puri and Naseer must have meant a great deal to a young actor like him. Some might wonder what a fresh-faced Lucky Ali is doing in this show, until you realise he started out as an actor.Īlong the way, you also see a raw Irrfan Khan appearing as various characters. There’s Sadashiv Amrapurkar as Mahatma Phule, who along with his wife Savitribai faces stiff social opposition from locals as he goes about his social reforms, particularly towards education and untouchability. As you start watching the show and getting more entrenched in its historical sway, you meet more actors like Shah whose presence gives you a pleasant surprise. It’s unusual to see Shah, otherwise offbeat cinema’s Mr Everyman, in a period spectacle but there’s a formal precision in his performance that justifies his casting as much as it astonishes. One of the show’s ingenious portrayals include Naseeruddin Shah as Shivaji Maharaj. Put together, the entire cast of Bharat Ek Khoj can form a village. What further heightens this sense is the participation of New Wave regulars like Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri and others. At times, Bharat Ek Khoj’s set (a replica of mini-India, one imagines) may have seemed like an extension of Benegal’s spartan parallel cinema, which produced classics of the genre such as Ankur, Mandi, Manthan, Nishant and Bhumika. While the title song is in Sanskrit, the script is equally peppered with Urdu, perhaps underlining the form of diversity that Nehru believed in. In telling the tale, whether it is the episode featuring Shivaji or Ramayana, Benegal uses folk singers and snippets from Ram-Leela to make the drama seem interesting and relatable.
BHARAT EK KHOJ EPISODE 26 FULL
It’s a tapestry of a plot with a full cast of characters. There’s no one protagonist here because there’s no one story. And what a privilege it is to listen to Seth and Puri’s voiceovers, as they bring Nehru’s magnum opus alive.
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Benegal renders Om Puri’s voice as a counterpoint to balance Nehru’s views. Much of this book was written from memory and partly with help from his jail companions like Maulana Azad, Govind Ballabh Pant, Narendra Deva and M Asaf Ali. But despite no libraries or literature to consult, Nehru brings in an historian’s rigor. While admittedly a prolific writer, Nehru wasn’t a historian. It is from here, filling out his diary pages, that Seth guides you through the various phases and eras of Indian history. The show takes up the book’s first-person narration framework, with Roshan Seth (playing Nehru) talking to his audience from jail. The Discovery of India was written by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in just five months’ time in the year 1944 while he was incarcerated in Ahmednagar fort prison camp between 1942-1945 for his involvement in the Quit India movement. With thousands of years of cultural war set on such an expansive canvas, you can imagine that this is simply too vast for even history buffs to make sense of, let alone binge-watch it in a single sitting. From Ramayana, Mahabharata, Indus valley civilization and the Buddha to Kalidas, Maurya, Ashoka, Shivaji, Akbar and Mahatma Phule, Bharat Ek Khoj’s searching eye conspires to piece together the spiritual puzzle that is India. The idea, one can gather, was to explore the ‘Indian thought’ and explain to the audience how our civilisation started, how it flourished, what was trade and commerce like in the ancient past, the conquests and bloodshed as well as our centuries-old heritage, social reforms, religion and lores of the land. Through 53 episodes, each lasting over 40 minutes, the show spans 5,000 years of Indian history.
BHARAT EK KHOJ EPISODE 26 TV
For this TV experience, Benegal racked up not just the finest actors - Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Shabana Azmi and the whole caboodle from the parallel cinema pantheon of which he was the patron saint - but also the best researchers and historians for consultation. Bharat Ek Khoj treats that sacred history with due diligence and respect. Ponderous history books have told us about Indian civilisation and its highs and lows.