The Bengal Files review: A flawed attempt at rewriting history for an ideological spin!

Boasting of bringing facts to the screen, The Bengal Files ends up as Vivek Agnihotri’s historical fiction, grabbing a chapter from the past only to turn it into overblown rhetoric that can’t stick the landing!

These days, history as a subject is invoked so often that it has become imperative to ask the question: what is history really - a record of truth or simply a record of a dominant narrative? This feels even more relevant today, especially after the pandemic, as the entire world has shifted, where an air of fear looms large, where anxiety mingles with the fear of death or worse, of being silenced. In such times, it becomes inevitable to revisit our historical chapters, especially those that record mass communal violence or what we now call genocide if only to understand why it happened, and in the hope that it does not repeat itself today. The Bengal Files claims to do this, but at best, it becomes a tokenistic depiction of the burning of Bengal during partition, and at worst, a fiction that borrows selectively from fact to serve a predetermined narrative.

The film, based on true events, establishes its stance early on with a scene where a young CBI officer is told by his senior, “Don’t ask questions, just follow orders." which sounds likethe film’s own disclaimer. But to its credit, the film does attempt neutrality through its protagonist Shiva Pandit (Darshan Kumar), who is neither politically aligned nor ethically rooted in Bengal and is sent to Kolkata to calm tensions after a young female journalist goes missing, allegedly involving local MLA Sardar Husseini (Saswata Chatterjee), a popular Muslim minority leader. Yet this neutrality is undercut as Shiva Pandit is the same character from The Kashmir Files! Once a novice student, now a CBI officer, he is still carrying the trauma of genocide history of Kashmiri Pandit and that baggage makes him far from neutral.

This oscillation between a bird’s-eye view and a narrow-lane perspective is what defines the film. On the surface, it tries to pass off as an impartial depiction of what might have happened in Bengal, but beneath, it builds a singular narrative. We see decisions about partition being made in Delhi, but little of the nuance behind such flawed decision-making, something that Nikhil Advani’s Freedom at Midnight captured far better. Instead, the film relies on making history as a backdrop to draw parallels between past and present as Bengal’s violent history of partition is juxtaposed with today’s communal politics, suggesting nothing has changed. Because back then Hindu-Muslims debate led to a building of a separate nation, and that's the same even today, as majority-minorities debate through vote-bank politics and illegal immigration. The film even asks outright - Is Bengal the new Kashmir?

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As an idea, this perspective could have been debatable yet worthy of exploration. Unfortunately, the film descends into caricature and chaos, stitching together random events of the Great Calcutta Killings of August 1946 and the Noakhali riots of October-November 1946 into a forced “ultimate truth of Bengal.” For instance, the production design of 1940s Bengal is visually impressive but its execution feels tokenistic, with random glimpses of characters traveling in trams or playing ektaras while Bengali music is inserted anywhere. It all creates the illusion of research without much real cultural depth.Even Bharati Banerjee (Simratt Kaur Randhawa), meant to serve as a metaphor for Bharat Mata, goes from a young revolutionary to a silenced and forgetful old woman (Pallavi Joshi). Her arc tries to symbolize how India once fought external forces with non-violence only to later be divided internally by religion, stating that the face may have changed but the game of divide and conquer remains the same. But the execution is overbearing, blown out of proportion for the message to linger on for longer.

Instead, the screen is dominated by gruesome spectacles - violent riots with beheadings, killings, assaults, and starvation. On one side stands Ghulam, an orthodox hardliner pushing for Pakistan’s rule in Noakhali, on the other, Gopal Patha, a Hindu hardliner who believes killing is the only way to protect. What emerges is a cycle where violence begets violence, in a “new free India” where Gandhi’s (Anupam Kher) non-violence is pushed aside. But the loud emotions are so amplified that they take all the space, leaving no space for yours to come in. Amid chants of “Allahu Akbar” turned into irritating background noise and monologues masquerading as lessons in nationalism, the film reduces the nuanced debate of Hindu-Muslim to a simplistic question that if Hindus and Muslims have the same DNA, and Muslims are just converted Hindus, then do they find living in harmony impossible? It plays like nationalism for dummies that never venturing into the deep lanes of Bengal to capture the intellectual and ideological debates that Bengal sparked first and the rest of India only caught up with later.

Ironically, the film’s one surprising strength lies beyond its Bengal context. Viewed instead as commentary on the larger socio-political landscape, it does spotlight victims of communal violence as ordinary people (we the people) are denied basic rights to truth, justice, and life in the endless debate of whose religion is bigger. The film asks that you can tell a Hindu religious thread from a Muslim one on the bodies of riot victims but can you tell who is Indian and who is not? That could have been a powerful question only if the film had a deeper look from all sides, with perspectives woven together more thoughtfully. Then, moments like a woman giving up on her nation out of fear of assault, or a JCB digging up earth to conceal not just dead bodies but the selfish actions of a politician who looks like a god but is the devil’s own advocate, might have carried the weight they were meant to. Only if Muslims had been explored as more than just the other side of the divide or just as threats, could this film have become the commentary we actually needed. Instead, it gets stuck in the confusion of presenting a one-sided narrative with a token sprinkle of balance, which makes it fall short even of being the political spin that The Kashmir Files was. At least that film was clear about who the villain was. In the end, the only thorn in the tale of The Bengal Files seems to be its own maker, Vivek Agnihotri, who is trapped by the very idea he claims to champion of a nation terrified into silence!

The Bengal Files is playing in theatres near you!