Kesari Chapter 2: A Film, A Forgotten Hero, And The Politics Of Who Gets Remembered

When it was announced sometime back that they were making a film on Chettur R Sankaran Nair, I was fascinated and happy. For, he, despite being a Malayali, belonged to the city that I live in. He and his family had important connections to Madras, to some of its cultural symbols and to its politics. I had also felt that he and his contributions in the pre-Independence era deserved to be heard in the mainstream and not be confined to the corners of obscure history books.

In the run up to the film's release, quite typically, most media houses woke up to the fact that there was a gent named Sankaran Nair and he had pulled off quite a few remarkable things in his remarkable career. There were many pieces that finally chronicled the great man's many exploits. This in itself was a minor victory of sorts, and Kesari Chapter 2 had accomplished what it needed to even before it actually made it to the cinema halls.  

Anyway, I went to Kesari Chapter 2, which is primarily focused on the courageous court battle that Sankaran Nair waged against the Britishers in the aftermath of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, with my expectations tempered as I am not truly convinced of Bollywood's ability to handle episodes from history with the rigour and heft they deserve.

Kesari Chapter 2, with Akshay Kumar in the lead, wasn't much different from what one may have expected after watching its trailer. It was indeed a bit over-the-top presentation of the case that Sankaran Nair had to fight, thanks to the libel proceedings brought against him by Michael O'Dwyer, the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab during the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

The case that brought world attention on British brutality

In 1922, Sankaran Nair had published a book titled Gandhi and Anarchy, in which he criticised Mahatma Gandhi's methods of non-violence and civil disobedience. More significantly, he accused Michael O'Dwyer of implementing policies that led to the massacre. O'Dwyer, feeling defamed by Nair's allegations, filed a lawsuit against him in England.

The defamation trial was held before the King's Bench in London and lasted for five and a half weeks, making it one of the longest-running civil cases of its time. The jury consisted of 12 members, all English, and the case was presided over by a judge who was perceived to favour O'Dwyer. 

Despite Sankaran Nair's compelling arguments, the jury ruled in favour of O'Dwyer, with an 11-1 decision. Sankaran Nair was ordered to pay £500 in damages and court costs. O'Dwyer offered Sankaran Nair the opportunity to avoid the penalty by issuing an apology, but the great man refused, standing firm in his convictions.

The film chooses to approach Sankaran Nair solely through the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and this case, even though the man was a creation of the ethos of down South, combining his native smarts of the Nair community and the intellectual ambience of the Madras legal fraternity of the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

With Akshay in the lead, the film’s approach is understandable

The film's creative choices are understandable considering that this is a Hindi film, and headlining it is a star. And to be fair, the film sticks largely to the book it is based on --- The Case That Shook The Empire by Raghu Palat and Pushpa Palat. 

It is imperative here to know why the book was written in the first place.

Raghu Palat is the great grandson of Sankaran Nair, and his wife, the authors, had visited Jallianwala Bagh Museum in Amritsar in December 2017, when Pushpa found a plaque that praised the work of Sankaran Nair. She drew the attention of Raghu and said that one of his ancestors was being spoken very highly of, and he himself knew little about it.

Yes, the family of Sankaran Nair was not all that clued in on what he had achieved. The reality that he had been ignorant of his own great granddad, his courage and seminal work, forced Raghu, who is otherwise a banker, and his wife Pushpa, a journalist, to attempt the book.

Of course, with Akshay in the lead, the tone of the proceedings in the court and the exchanges with R Madhavan, who plays the antagonistic advocate Neville McKinley, are decidedly cinematic and seem heavy-handed. The way Akshay lets out the F word in the court leaves no in any doubt, it is just to elicit claps and whistles in the theatres. 

But does the film strike the much-needed balance between mass appeal and realistic story telling?

Damn the critics

Allow us to digress and bring up in the context the Tamil films Jai Bhim (2021) and Viduthalai (1 and 2).

Now, Jai Bhim, in spirit, is similar to Kesari Chapter 2, as in both the story centres around court action following an atrocity. Both, based on real-life incidents, are about the spunk of an advocate against the might of the State. In tone and tenor, in highlighting the heroic work of the protagonist lawyer, both movies do not bother with subtlety. Jai Bhim too presented the advocate character as a larger than life persona and gave him a saviour complex.

It is instructive to realise that the same critics, who are panning Kesari Chapter 2 for lacking in nuance, were extremely gushing in their praise of Jai Bhim. (Interestingly, only one popular critic had the honesty to point out that Jai Bhim was cinematically poor and was no different from the many movies in service of a star hero. That critic was, needless to say, drowned out by many voices who accused him of not getting the politics in the spirit it should have been.) 

Viduthalai 1 and 2 (2023 and 2024) were fictional movies but based on a true life event ---- the Tamil Nadu government's crackdown on the dreaded naxal organisation Tamil Nadu Liberation Army.

The film, especially the first part, deals with the emotional and moral dilemmas of a lowly policeman in the face of no-nonsense crackdown on the naxals, who had carried out many bomb blasts including the one on the railway bridge at Marudayar near Tiruchi, which derailed the Rockfort Express killing 25 persons. 

The films focused on police excesses and departmental overreach while the Communist minds behind the extreme naxals were presented as warriors. Of course, these types of slices from history don't lend themselves to easy and binary-type analysis. Who was really wrong? Hard to tell. In that sense, Viduthalai’s larger reasoning cannot be questioned.

But in reality Viduthalai movies, very simplistically, painted the police as the sole aggressors while the naxals were presented as gullible bystanders forced to take up weapons due to the excesses around them. Viduthalai 2 was particularly glaring as it was less a movie more communist pamphleteering.  But again the critics wanted everyone to get to the nub of the larger issue and ignore the films' cinematic failings. 

If anything, both Viduthalai and Jai Bhim were also intellectually dishonest. The latter tried to play caste politics by misrepresenting some of the police involved in the case that the advocate takes up. Viduthalai even went to the extent of suggesting (and showing) the railway track blast that killed innocents was not what the naxals wanted. They planted the bomb only as a threat, but the authorities and State politics botched up the defusing action they wanted to carry out.

This is what the film wanted us to believe. The power of the ecosystem was that the Viduthalai movies were taken to popular international film festivals and plenty of pleasing adjectives used on it.

The importance of Kesari Chapter 2

The thing is, critics will overlook any failing in a film, as long a film speaks the cause they are partial to.

Most mainline film reviewers in India cannot get themselves to praise a film that speaks of nationalism, a word that has been made an anathema.

So, irrespective of how Kesari 2 was made, it was never going to win brownie points from them. But that is ironic considering the fact that Sankaran Nair was a different kind of patriot. He never went by labels. He challenged systemic oppression, a theme that continues to resonate globally. In an era marked by debates around historical justice and reparations, Kesari Chapter 2 actually adds a cinematic layer to these discussions.

The basic story of Kesari 2 is not just the massacre but also the systemic injustices that underpinned British colonialism. Such narratives are crucial in countering revisionist histories or attempts to dilute the realities of colonial exploitation. 

There is also a compelling need to reclamation of underrepresented narratives in India's history. It is a cultural priority. At a time when conversations around historical accountability and national identity dominate public discourse, a film like Kesari Chapter 2, irrespective of how it is made, carries significant relevance.

For years, much of India's cinematic focus had leaned toward certain dominant ideas, sometimes sidelining equally powerful stories of individual acts of courage and resistance from certain backgrounds. Whether this erasure was  deliberate or accidental is a debate for another day. But those untold stories deserve to be heard. It will not only educate the audience but also enrich India's understanding of its own complex history, serving as a counterpoint to more traditional accounts often shaped by colonial and Leftist frameworks.

In the end, the real question should not be how Akshay Kumar has played Sankaran Nair on screen. But it should be: what is wrong in the way we chronicle our history? If it had been done well, we would not be in a situation where we have to understand a personality like Sankaran Nair through Akshay Kumar playing him on screen.