Ram Madhvani on the hidden conspiracies behind the Jallianwala Bagh massacre

Anyone who has worked with filmmaker Ram Madhvani says that his way of working is different from other filmmakers From workshops to shooting 360 degreestyle from no lighting to no makeup itrsquos all an experience say his actors With The Waking of a Nation the National Awardwinning director tells the story of the Hunter Commission which investigated the Jallianwala Bagh massacre that claimed the lives of many and left over a 1000 injured The black day in the history of Indiarsquos independence is marked with several conspiracies In conversation with midday Madhvani breaks down creating the sixepisode series exploring themes of racism and colonialism and the research involved in making the period dramaEdited excerpts from the interviewWhat made you pick the subject of the Hunter CommissionIrsquom interested in what happened to us over the last 250 years particularly preindependence and how India became India during the British Raj Irsquom interested in that part of our lives when we got culturally colonised from our language to clothing to food habits The Hunter Commission is the investigation into the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and the fact that the investigation is a conspiracy It was preplanned We were interested in why it was preplanned Why did they do this to us Everybody thinks that General Dyer Colonel Reginald Edward Harry Dyer was responsible for the massacre But our series says there was a bigger master plan So itrsquos really about colonialism racism prejudice and the colour of your skinRam MadhvaniHas there been an extensive discussion on the Hunter CommissionIf you search on YouTube or Google there is a lot of information on it There are 500 pages of the Punjab Disorders Committee which is also known as the Hunter Commission People should Google a man called Hans Raj who was part of the conspiracy If people can look up for it before they see the show they will begin to learn more as to what happenedDo you feel history is somehow distorted for the larger audience who rely on whatrsquos taught to them in schools and collegesWinston Churchill said that history is written by the people who won Therefore a lot of it is following a certain narrative So we are sometimes fed a narrative that has been chosen to be fed In this case there was a narrative where General Dyer became the fall guy Of course he went out there and did what he did but it was not just himRight Bhawsheel Singh as Hari Singh AulakhWhat did your research entailWersquove researched everything that is in the public domain We looked at archival footage material at various archives in London Amritsar and Mumbai My cowriters Shantanu Shivastava and Shatrujeet Nath and researcher Meghna Talwar were involved in the decisionmaking Everything has been thoroughly documented We have taken the liberties to include the story of four friends that is the fictional part of the show Of course there are some characters based on truth like General Dyer and Michael OrsquoDwyerWhat was the idea behind telling the tale of four friends in a larger story of independenceIt was to showcase the youth caught up in the circumstances of their time and to see what really happened to those who were barely 25 or 28 years old including soldiers whorsquove just come back from World War I it was then called the Great World War We had so many of our people fighting on Britainrsquos behalf Wersquove told a lot of personal stories because eventually thatrsquos what people are interested in It was to give it that emotional and soulful connectionSahil Mehta as Ali AllahbakshDo you think telling stories of the youth makes it more relatable to the current generationClearly I want to reach out to the youth Whatever the characters are going through in terms of their problems conversations and circumstances itrsquos all relatable Irsquom commenting on what happened in 1919 on the empire and on colonialism Thatrsquos what the show is about If The Waking of a Nation is a success Irsquod like for it to continue to explore how India became India I had also made a short film on the partition itrsquos something Irsquom emotionally moved by I hope there is a next chapter so that I can continue speaking about what happened to usDid you face any restrictions when you were making thisThe problems were the same that you would face normally on a shoot It always rains on my shoots If there is a place in Rajasthan that has not had rain just send me there with a film crew and it will rain laughs We were shooting in the town hall production designer Meghna Gandhi and our EPs put mud and dust everywhere for the twoday shoot and of course it rained We had to delay the shoot by a day In terms of research wersquove tried to get our period correct with the costumes Wersquove tried to be accurate with locationsHow did you find your characters in Taaruk Raina and Nikita DuttaI do a lot of auditioning Abhimanyu Ray is our casting director I wanted people who are of the right age and who were hungry to work with me as per my system I do long takes I tested Taaruk who has been incredible Sahil Mehta Nikita and Bhawsheel Singh Sahni just gave themselves to the story Their camaraderie fit the roles well We must have tested about 100 to 200 people before we got down to these fourWhat was the brief for Taarukrsquos characterTaarukrsquos character was very clear to me He is a man who goes from a suit to a dhoti from being innocent to mature He goes from being somebody who thinks that the British are fair to understanding what is happening to us So he becomes rooted and Indian