Swatantrya Veer Savarkar (2024)

 




Swatantrya Veer Savarkar (2024)

Director: Randeep Hooda

Producers: Randeep Hooda, Sam Khan, Anand Pandit, Yogesh Rahar, Sandeep Singh

Cast: Randeep Hooda (Vinayak Damodar Savarkar), Santosh Ojha (Lokmanya Tilak), Anjali Hooda (Bhikaji Cama), Rajesh Khera (Gandhi), Mrinal Dutt (Madanlal Dhingra), Russell Geoffrey Banks (David Barry)

A thrilling, chilling, and inspiring movie about one of India’s greatest revolutionaries and freedom fighters and a stellar performance by Randeep Hooda!

The year is 1896. In Maharashtra (then part of the Bombay Presidency), the bubonic plague has spread through the local populace, and Damodar Savarkar succumbs to it. His eldest son, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, shoulders the responsibility of his family.

Over the years, Savarkar notices the brutality, and cruelty of British colonials in India, and becomes deeply influenced by the revolutionaries of the world. In 1903, he and his elder brother Ganesh Savarkar start the Mitra Mela, later the Abhinav [SB1] Bharat Society, a revolutionary secret society.

Savarkar believed that understanding British law was integral to the revolution of removing British rule, entered the prestigious Fergusson College in Pune, where he studied law and quickly became the top student. He continued his revolutionary activities there, and expanded the Abhinav Bharat Society. Later, he went to London for his law studies, courtesy of a scholarship               obtained with the help of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak.

In London, he lived at the India House, which was generally considered to be just a hostel for Indian students in London, but was a place for Indian revolutionaries like Savarkar, Madanlal Dhingra, Senapati Bapat, VVS Aiyar, Bhikaji Cama, and many others. Promptly, Savarkar recruited them all into the Abhinav Bharat Society.

Savarkar, now a lawyer, went on to give speeches, write books, and educate people for and about the overthrow of British rule in India. He influenced many of his fellow students at India House to assassinate major British leaders, using guns and bombs supplied by Vladimir Lenin. [SB2] One of them, Madanlal Dhingra, assassinated Curzon Wyllie and was sentenced to hanging at the age of 24.

In 1910, Savarkar was charged with the conspiracy to overthrow the British government and bomb the Parliament and sedition. Hoping to evade arrest, Savarkar went to Bhikaji Cama’s house in Paris, but against advice from his friends and compatriots of India House, he returned to London, on the grounds that he will be given a trial in a court in Britain and be given a maximum of 3 years in prison.

Unfortunately, Savarkar was arrested immediately and sent on a ship to India to be given an unjust trial there. While in the Mediterranean on the way to the Suez Canal, Savarkar makes a daring escape through the lavatory window of the ship carrying him, and swam to the French coast, as British police officers will be unable to arrest him in France. The British police drag him to the ship again, and take him to India.

He is sentenced to 2 life sentences in the Kalapani jail in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Over there, Savarkar sustained numerous heinous forms of torture, including regular whippings, being forced to press oil in place of a bull, slave labor, and many, many rounds of solitary confinement. The jailer, David Barry, paid special attention to Savarkar, considered him his most dangerous prisoner, and consistently abused and tortured him more than everybody else. Want to know more? Watch the movie!

This movie was great! With a different take on history than usual, highlighting the revolutionary aspect of the Indian freedom movement, more so than the nonviolent. It is true that it played a major role in the freedom of India, but the revolutionary aspect was also enormous. I also loved the thing that it also depicted Savarkar’s life after the independence of India. It was epic! As many people have earlier, I must commend Randeep Hooda’s stellar, and legendary performance as Savarkar.

The main complaint I have with this movie is the ENDING SONG. All this tension built up with the movie and the ending ‘rap’ just ruins it all. Savarkar was a great poet as well as a revolutionary, and there’s so many songs that he wrote. One such was ‘Anadi Mi Ananta Mi Avadhya Mi’, which is far more fitting.

I wholeheartedly recommend this movie [SB3] because:

1.      Excellent acting.

2.      Epic screenplay.

3.      The revelation of forgotten history.

4.      Overall, this movie is excellent!

 


 [SB1]Tense across the write up is haywire

 

Some times

Present tense

Past tense

Continuous tense

 [SB2]Not factual

 [SB3]Old style. Needs to be prepared in a written manner and not though a listicle

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