Why is it difficult to make Historicals in India? “You run the risk of offending people” Naseerudin shah on his latest release.
In the latest debut of actor ‘Naseerudin Shah’ in the Taj: Divided by blood, the actor will be portrayed as King Akbar in the ZEE5 original series, which seems to be a monumental tale taking people into the nostalgic succession of the Mughal empire. However, the Drama series scheduled to be released on 3rd March has been facing continuous backlash from some people claiming it to be in exact and wrongful depiction of the tales, we’ve all read in “ History books ”.
On which Naseerudin remarked “ There is nothing like objective history, which is why its depiction on screen or in the pages of history books will always be complicated-demanding far more nuances than people might be willing to give. Historicals have been a tricky genre in the country, as it has almost always led to protests and in some cases even violence as there is the fear that history will be tampered with in the guise of creative liberty.
Naseerudin Shah had a recent interview with a news channel where when he was asked if it is difficult to mount a historical project in today’s climate, he commented “ it is tricky and to make a project honest to the genre with with “nuance” it deserves.
“I suppose they are difficult because you have to take sides. There is no such thing as an objective history. History is written by the victors, and you have to read between the lines. I think it is difficult to make historicals with the kind of nuance that they deserve. It’s easy to make a grand spectacle with hundreds of elephants and horses and so on.
“But to understand these people as human beings, I think is more difficult. Yeah. And then you run the risk of offending people, but I don’t think Taj: Divided by Blood is going to offend anyone. It presents an original, non-Indian perception of this dynasty.”
Earlier Shah has also been seen making remarks such as “Knock down Taj Mahal, Red Fort, if everything Mughals did, was evil “ According to Shah, Mughals need not be glorified but shouldn’t be vilified either.
The series projects the beauty and the brutality of the Mughal Empire without a filter, their passion for arts, poetry, and architecture, along the lines of their incredibly intuitive yet cold-blooded decisions concerning their own family, in the quest for power. William Borthwick is the showrunner of this upcoming series.
Shah also gave the audience a glimpse into how his understanding of who Akbar was as an emperor and a person has evolved over the years, what disturbs him though is the constant misinformation and wrongful portrayal of Akbar and his empire in the Indian Historical Books. Especially nuances such as Akbar wanting to start his own religion are extremely misinterpreted.
“My understanding initially was that of any student who studied history in the 50s or the early 60s, just in the wake of independence when the influence of the British was still very strong. We had Irish teachers, English instructors. The picture drawn of Akbar was always that of a benevolent, kind-hearted, broad-minded, progressive ruler. The one fly in the ointment being his desire to start a new religion. We read about this in history books, which is absolute nonsense. He said.
“I have checked this with authoritative historians and Akbar never did attempt to start a new religion. This is a fact which was in our history books called the Din-e Elahi. But Akbar never used the word Din-e Elahi, ever. He called it Wahdat-e Elahi, which means oneness of the creator. That no matter who you worship, in what form you worship him, you’re worshipping the creator. You may worship a stone, you may worship a crucifix, you may bow your head to the Kaaba, you may worship the rising sun and do what you like, but you are worshipping one and the same thing. That was his belief. This is what I found out.”
Shah said he went to the root of the misinformation and found that the word Din-e Elahi came about because of historian Abul Fazal, “who didn’t like Akbar much.” He wrote about it, which was translated into English as the ‘divine faith’.
“The divine faith was then translated into Farsi as Din-e Elahi, it’s not a term Akbar ever used. It’s like those South Indian films which are remade in Hindi and then remade in the South! That was the big discovery about Akbar that I made, and I had to speak to the writers about it. Luckily, my objections were upheld.”
His perspective of Akbar further widened with TAJ: Divided by blood as he got aware of the side of Akbar that he wasn’t known of.
Shah adds “Akbar was not only a soft-hearted, vulnerable man, he was also a very passionate, sexually driven, ferocious, merciless warrior. And must have been a great lover. I mean, he had hundreds of concubines and to keep each of them happy must have been some job! I don’t know if all of them were happy though. But I played him, to find the human being within this grandeur,”
TAJ: Divided by Blood will stream on ZEE5 on 3rd march 2023.
