We are about to choose a leader for our country, and what better guidance than to refer to the spirit that our founding fathers had marked us for governanceIJ Shyam Benegal’s Samvidhan aims us towards that direction, says ANANYA BORGOHAIN
An Indian national flag, reportedly the largest in the country, was hoisted at the centre of the Central Park at Connaught place (CP), New Delhi, last month. It weighs 35 kilograms and is hoisted on a 207-feet pole. Ascending over the heart of Delhi, its mammoth structure and grandeur overwhelm the least patriotic and most cynical souls. As one stands under it, one is both calmed and benumbed by an exceptional mix of nostalgia and pride in the otherwise gargantuan commotion of CP. This restoring of an Indian past, this feeling of being a part of a historic legacy, is effectively underlined in director Shyam Benegal’s Samvidhan (Constitution). The Indian Constitution, longest in the world, is one of the most broadly taught and studied Constitutions in universities all across the globe. Painters like Nandalal Bose decorated the original manuscript with works of art referring to the Vedas, Puranas, Itihasas and lok-kathas, while calligrapher Prem Behari Narain Raizada had handwritten it in an italic style. In the opening shot of the show, the Indian tricolour flies under a clear sky as the shots of the sculptures of our historic leaders follow while an instrumental version of Saare jahaan se achcha, Hindustan humara plays in the background. The narrator appears and further asks, “Humara samvidhan prateek hain humare mulk ka, par kabhi socha hain aapne ki yeh mulk aakhir hota kya hainIJ” (Our Constitution is a reflection of our nation, but have you ever pondered upon what a ‘nation’ isIJ)
Veterans of the Hindi film industry — Dalip Tahilramani (Jawaharlal Nehru), Tom Alter (Maulana Abul Kalam Azad), Ila Arun (Hansa Mehta), Divya Dutta (Purnima Banerjee), Rajeshwari Sachdev (Rajkumari Amrit Kaur), Rajit Kapur (Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer), Himani Shivpuri (Begum Aizaz Rasul), Sachin Khedekar (BR Ambedkar) and so on — come together to answer the question with a cast and crew of over a thousand people in this ten-part television series, co-written by Shama Zaidi and Atul Tiwari and commissioned by the Rajya Sabha. It airs every Sunday at 10 am (with frequent re-runs throughout the week) on Rajya Sabha TV. It documents the Constituent Assembly debates and the formation of the Indian Constitution. In fact, following its immensely positive responses from the viewers, the Rajya Sabha is contemplating its DVD release and to distribute it free of cost (or in a nominal fee) in Panchayats and schools across the country in 14 languages.
Benegal a member of the Rajya Sabha till 2012, was a witness to the frequent, undignified chair-throwing methods of putting a point across in the Parliament. Vice-president Hamid Ansari suggested that the country needed to be shown what our founding fathers had undergone to fetch us freedom, and reinstate the models of arguing with logical and analytical defences. The series, along with a prologue and an epilogue, is divided among a range of issues — Partition, Minority Rights, Women Rights, and so on. Research for the show has been done referring to Government archives, All India Radio, national libraries et al. The asset of the show is thereby its dramatisation of history to make it both educative and entertaining for the modern Indian masses.
“My 80 years old grandfather, after watching the first episode, called me on the phone and cried. I have been flooded with messages from people saying that they could not hold back their tears while watching it. When we talk of politics today, a sickening, negative image comes to our mind effortlessly, but this show re-introduces us to our founding fathers. They show us how the rights that we enjoy today were formed decades back after enormous struggles and debates.” says actor Swara Bhaskar, who plays the sutradhar, the narrator in the series.
“Without distorting reality, we have condensed the grand theme into 10 episodes on the basis of the documentary evidences that we have of the dramatic graph of our country. It is a theatrical substantiation of what had happened in real time. You see the founding members of the Indian Constitution legislate, discuss, debate and form the roots of independent India’s political history. It is important to be aware of our past. The series exhibits a model that our present leaders should adapt”, says Benegal.
One of the most striking features of the series is the idiosyncratic performances of the actors. Each character has a unique nuance and tone of delivering a dialogue. Given that visual recordings of some leaders were available while most were not, how were the actors prepared to emulate the real-life leadersIJ Atul Tiwari, the co-writer, answers, “We had a very pertinent and experienced team of researchers as well as actors who brought in their personal interpretations of the characters. Besides, we also chose actors to play characters that belonged to their respective States. Say, if someone was from South India, we assigned him or her a character who was also a South Indian. In other cases, an actor like Rajit Kapur, who is a Punjabi, effortlessly played the role of Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer, a Tamilian, because he is talented and would do it.”
Dayal Nihalani, the associate director of the project adds, “The speeches are documented and we have maintained them exactly onscreen. We did not add anything extraneous and our actors have delivered the words the way the leaders had in their time. The director’s understanding of economics from his advertising days helped in planning the budget.” The looks and costumes of the actors, and their gestures were very crucial to the content as well. Satyen K Bordoloi, researcher and assistant director of the series, says, “It took over two years of preparation. Particularly in the context of the lesser known leaders, much time was invested in locating their documents and photographs. For instance, KT Shah moved the maximum number of amendments in the debates. What we have in the Constitution today, we probably owe the most to him. He was a playwright as well as a professor of Gujarati, but it took me one year to find a single photograph of him! His granddaughter had an article written by him which was published along with his photograph. Shyambabu jokes that the actual Constitution was made in a period of over two years and we took the same amount of time in making a show on it too.”
He further adds, “Shyambabu was particular about the costumes. His daughter, Pia Benegal, who is also a BAFTA nominee for costumes, travelled across cities to arrange for the attires. We had turbans coming from Jaipur and Madhya Pradesh because sometimes we could not get a fold correct in Mumbai. To maintain the budget, we also recreated Parliament at Filmcity in Mumbai. These eminent actors have worked for almost nothing. Even an actor like Divya Dutta, who has such a restricted screen presence, did it just so she could be a part of Shyambabu’s project.” Benegal further adds, “We are not doing it for money or popularity; this caters to public money, the Rajya Sabha has commissioned it. What matters is the spirit of the show and that should be delivered to all.”
Yet, the series revolves around one of the grandest themes that could possibly be, and to condense it in 10 episodes must have been a Herculean challenge. Tiwari says, “Both Shama Zaidi and I do not identify ourselves with a specific political association. Hence we were objective in the treatment. There were endless machinations that went into our political history. Amazingly, people from all tribes and communities, and all sorts of ideological compositions participated in the debates, so we had access to multiple opinions. We chose what was appealing and interesting.” He adds an interesting metaphor, “While plaiting your hair, you make three separate strands of your hair and then meticulously intertwine them to complete the hairstyle. likewise, we too had to choose the major subjects and refine their projection.”
Is that where the inclusion of a sutradhar becomes helpful then, to substantiate the chronologyIJ Tiwari answers, “Yes. The narrator had to connect the past and our present times to make it compact and sensible. If we moved back and forth in the years without a narrator explaining it, it would have been a mess.”
It was also a time of rupture and bloodshed. By the end of the Second World War, the nationalist force succeeded in emancipating the country from the constricting British hegemony and was clearly going to establish an independent Indian society. The British rulers were victorious over Hitler, but faced defeat at the hands of the Indians back at home. The Congress withdrew its ministries and demanded that the British declare that India would be an independent state after the war. Counterposed to the nationalistic demands was the Muslim league, who had the power to veto any political settlement. And India could not have attained Independence without a Hindu-Muslim unity. Both the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim league ran the election campaign of 1937 on liberal communal lines but communalism soon became the political resort of colonialism as the British zeroed in on their ‘divide and rule’ policy. Ironically, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who was the Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity, a secular, liberal Dadabhai Naoroji-following nationalist, ended up stubbornly demanding a separate state for Muslims — Pakistan. Eventually, one of the most disastrous and macabre events of human history — the Partition — was to be witnessed before Independence.
Narendra Jha, who plays MA Jinnah in the series, says, “When your director is Shyam Benegal, half of the complications are cleared right there. As an actor, I tried to associate with the character of Jinnah emotionally. I adapted the ways in which he delivered his speeches, talked to the missionaries or had his pipe and tobacco ready all the time. Expressions like those, or for that matter, emotions of anger are universal and you do not have to know somebody personally to enact them. I did not read about Jinnah but preferred to watch a couple of his videos. Besides, the script was so clear that there was absolutely no room for doubts. When I was felicitated by the Prime Minister at its screening, it was an overwhelming feeling!”
This association with the character through emotions is also emphasised upon by actor Dalip Tahil, who plays Jinnah’s nemesis, Jawaharlal Nehru in the show. Although the characters are in striking contrast to each other, the actors’ methods of training are similar. “We did not have much time for rehearsals and workshops. But the advantage was that we had an ensemble cast who were full of experiences and talents, so that made things convenient. Personally, I look up to Nehru. I have read his books, his letters to his daughter, followed his foreign policies and have gone through his live footage. I see Nehru as an ideal statesman who went to the freedom struggle by choice. He was rich, educated, handsome and could have lived a luxurious life anywhere with his family. like a true idealist, he gave it all up for the country. That is remarkable and inspiring and brings me to be moved by the emotional content therein”, says Tahil while happily adding, “Besides, people point out that I effortlessly resemble Nehru in terms of looks!” The actor, whose real name is Dalip Tahilramani, also chose to use his complete name particularly for the show since he wanted his family and himself to be proud of being associated with this historical narration. He also shed a lot of weight to look like the character. Sure, when he delivers Nehru’s famous speech, “At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom”, one cannot help feeling one’s soul rouse within.
The institutionalising of the country was possibly positioned by the Government of India Act of 1935, where self-governance was partly envisioned. However, that became the bone of contention for the Hindu-Muslim unity in the nation. The Muslims believed that the rights they were receiving were much below their expectations. British Prime Minister Clement Atlee recommended to start work on a new Muslim nation (Pakistan) and in order to discuss the same and the issue of Independence, he sent three of his ministers to India. This came to be known as the Cabinet Mission. Matters concerning a new interim Government were also discussed by the historic leaders of the Congress, the Muslim league and the princely States in the British summer capital Simla. After a series of intense debates and exchanges of opinions, on January 26 1950, the Constitution of India was finally broadcasted. And in 1952, in the country’s first General Elections, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru led the Indian National Congress to a victory. But the route to the formation of the Constitution of the country was not an undemanding, hassle-free sojourn. It was one of the perennially crucial and difficult phases in Indian history. So how does the series maintain objectivity in its projection of the fierce and concentrated debates and what yardsticks decide which topics to accommodate in the 10 episodesIJ Benegal, who has lived through these events in real time, explains, “We prioritised our themes on the basis of the archived evidences and documents that we have access to. We need to study their rasas (aesthetics) and portray them.”
On the other hand, while Tahil had to lose weight to look like Nehru, Sachin Khedekar had to put on a lot of weight to bear resemblance with his character — BR Ambedkar. He says, “I have played Subhas Chandra Bose earlier in Shyam Benegal’s biopic on the hero and this time I am playing BR Ambedkar. For me, as an actor, the internal content precedes the essence of the external factors. I had Ambedkar’s audio-references, and went through a lot of research materials and books to understand him. I think I played him because I believed in him and his struggle.”
As it is evident, women’s roles were limited in the debates. In one of the scenes, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur and Hansa Mehta (played by Rajeshwari Sachdev and Ila Arun respectively) talk about how religious difference should not be a barrier between two individuals who want to marry each other and that it should be proposed to the leaders as an official amendment. The scene exhibits feminine domesticity as the ladies talk while cutting slices of a fruit. In the Parliament however, except for MR Masani, no other man supported their proposition and the amendment was never passed.
“We had women leaders like Sarojini Naidu but she did not participate in the debates. Hansa Mehta, on the other hand was associated with women’s rights. She was a writer, an activist, a delegate on the UN Human Rights Commission and her debate speeches were available as well. Shyam Benegal too was familiar with her since he had contributed to her as a poet himself so that helped. Personally, I knew of her as a theatre enthusiast, but I was not at all aware of her political leanings and contributions. I am a patriot. Today’s generation’s youths may cast their votes but they do not feel patriotism. This has been an immense learning experience”, says Ila Arun.
Speaking of the youth, Swara Bhaskar, who is the youngest member of team, says, “I feel proudly patriotic. Samvidhan is not jingoistic or nationalist. It is moving and inspiring. As a young person, what enamours me is also its tone and language. The poetry, pronunciation and sabhav are linguistically so enriching. It saves our language and glorious culture. I have begun to use, ‘baaki masayal doyam hain’ (other matters are subsidiary) in my everyday language now”, she jokes.
Private channels are also rooting for its satellite rights now and its DVDs will be released in 14 languages. Owing to popular demand, its reruns have been increased to eight times a week and its complete episodes are regularly uploaded on YouTube as well. The popular masses and the youth alike have responded well to it and the number of viewers have been multiplying. Shyam Benegal says that the show was initially slotted to start on Republic Day this year but since he was fighting bad health, its premiere was delayed till March. Well, this is still very much an apt time for its screening since the General Elections in Delhi would be held on April 10. With four days in hand, maybe it is time for us all to familiarise ourselves with who bestowed upon us the rights that we enjoy but take for granted, and understand how they did it, which will hopefully aim us towards the right direction while we cast our vote this Thursday.
Factfile
The writer can be contacted on ananyapioneer@gmail.com