History is prime time news now. Uncertainty is not over future but history and people watching period drama do so to learn and interpret history. The mimetic nature of identity especially collective identity allows for mass propaganda. The Indian film industry has picked the cue. Latest in the series is the movie Chhava based on the life and death of sambhaji in the backdrop of Mughal Maratha struggle. The movie spins a hagiography of a martyr of Hindu pride who was tortured to death by a cruel Muslim tyrant. The complexity of history goes for a toss and Aurangzeb the most powerful emperor of his time in the world ruling for 5 decades, even 18 years after Sambhaji’s death, is straitjacketed as a fanatical psychopath. By 1680 Shivaji was dead and the Maratha kingdom back under Mughal control. Sambhaji and his son Sahuji were both captured 9 years later. For the next 25 years guerilla warfare continued and it wasn’t until the peshwas took over that the Maratha empire gained foothold. However for an ideology in want of heroes such movies are a great reinforcement. But collective consciousness and self in a nation state as huge and diverse as India needs to be forged on a common imagination of future and not a common memory of historical suffering.
