The Revolutionaries

The Revolutionaries is a vivid document of the lesser-known armed resistance of India’s independence movement. Set in the early 20th century, it tells the stories of young, fearless freedom fighters, including Rash Behari Bose, Sachindranath Sanyal, and Bagha Jatin, as they risk everything to challenge the might of the British Empire. The series brings together several exciting talents that have made use of OTT as a talent showcase, including Bhuvan Bam, Rohit Saraf, Pratibha Ranta and Gurfateh Pirzada. Yet, they seem overwhelmed by the prospect of carrying the density of the theme. Bhuvan, Rohit and Pratibha get to shine in flashes, though nothing consistent enough to make it a poignant performance. Jason Shah, as General Dyer, is hardly intimidating.

“Hum se pehle bhi kranti, hamare baad bhi kranti…” Yet many of us are not fully clued into the tale of armed resistance and revolutionaries who fought for the freedom of our country, not always successfully, but never in vain. Creator-writer Nikkhil Advani, who floored us with ‘Freedom At Midnight’, recounting the years that led to India’s freedom struggle in many sterling ways, is back again. This time, he digs further back into history — early 20th century. The heroes of his earlier series — Gandhi, Nehru, Patel — are household names. But Rash Behari Bose, Jatindranath Mukherjee aka Bagha Jatin and Sachindranath Sanyal urf Sachin are at best names which ring a bell, but only a few among us fully know or understand their tales of valour.

The idea of The Revolutionaries came about with filmmaker Nikkhil Advani’s desire to bring a young generation’s underground movement to focus. Though committed to India’s fight for freedom, these headstrong men and women employed methods in complete contrast to Mahatma Gandhi’s pacifist philosophy. Expressing disappointment at the latter’s criticism of their ways, it’s the armed side of India’s independence struggle, inspiring the likes of Bhagat Singh and Udham Singh in the future, that finds favour in the eight-part series. Series like Freedom at Midnight and Rocket Boys render Advani a perfect fit to adapt Sanjeev Sanyal’s Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom. The filmmaker proved himself to be solid at the long format, period drama gig but there are just too many things going on and going wrong to invest in the events leading to its goals of Ghadar. Set in the 1910s, The Revolutionaries picks its key figures in Rash Behari Bose (Bhuvan Shome), Sachindra Nath Sanyal (Rohit Saraf), Bagha Jatin (Gurfateh Pirzad) and Pratibha Lahiri (Pratibha Ranta) as the plot skims to and fro between Benares, Dehradun, Delhi and Kolkata.

In theory, The Revolutionaries has a lot going for it. The sprawling historical drama tells the lesser-known story of the armed revolutionaries of India’s Independence movement: the underground rebels who fought the British with bullets and bombs before Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent crusades, and the freedom-fighting ‘ancestors’ who set the stage for future folk-heroes like Bhagat Singh, Udham Singh and Chandra Shekhar Azad. Its primary antagonist is Lieutenant Colonel Dyer, before he became the world’s most hated Englishman for his role in the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre. It’s the natural companion piece to the two seasons of Freedom At Midnight, also created and directed by Nikkhil Advani, who’s one of the more accomplished long-form filmmakers going around; he knows a thing or two about scale and period pieces. And it has a young cast, the kind that draws a ready-made Gen-Z fanbase to a ‘serious’ chapter.