They were not isolated hotheads with a gun; they were a generational chain. One cohort would rise, fail, and go to the gallows — and the next would simply pick up exactly where they left off.
This is the message that echoes loud and clear in The Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom, written by economist and the Prime Minister’s advisor, Sanjeev Sanyal. The book, first published in 2023, has now been adapted into a web-series, which will be streaming on Prime Video from September 11.
Sanyal, whose grand-uncle was the revolutionary Sachindra Nath Sanyal, has spoken about how he had felt that the history of India’s freedom struggle, as taught in textbooks, had been rather unidimensional, with many streams that actively contributed to the cause being sidelined.
It’s a sentiment echoed by filmmaker Nikkhil Advani, who brings the story to screen and reveals he had his own personal reasons for wanting to tell it.
The ‘unheard’ history
“When I did Freedom at Midnight (2024 web series), the criticism I faced was that I only told one part of the story. There is another part of the story. I love (Mahatma) Gandhi, (Jawaharlal) Nehru and Sardar (Vallabhbhai) Patel, but I also should be in a position to say ‘yes, we’ve not heard the other part of the story. So I want to tell the other part’. I wanted to try and make it the right way, which shows the science of politics,” explains Advani.
He adds: “I don’t think that (revolutionaries) Rash Behari Bose or Bagha Jatin (born Jatindranath Mukherjee) ever thought that they would be misappropriated by one group, or appropriated by another. There was no right or wrong way of thinking, other than the British and colonisation…. The 200 years of enslavement were wrong if you see it from any perspective, and these youngsters wanted to end it in ways they thought were right,” he says.
Also read: How Last Man In Tower continues Manoj Bajpayee’s journey of bringing the extraordinary to ordinary characters
That instinct to widen the frame is exactly what the series sets out to do. Set against the volatile backdrop of the Delhi-Lahore Conspiracy (1912), which aimed to assassinate the then viceroy of India, Lord Hardinge, through a bomb attack — an operation meticulously masterminded by Rash Behari Bose. Bose fled the scene undetected by the British Police after the assassination bid was foiled. The show captures the transition of the revolutionary freedom fighters from localised secret societies to the global networks of the Ghadar Movement (of expat Indians) during World War I, leading right up to the foundational years of the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) in the early 1920s, and the latter formation of the Indian National Army.
YouTuber Bhuvan Bam plays the astute master of disguises Rash Behari Bose.
Taking on these characters is a relatively young cast: internet sensation and YouTuber Bhuvan Bam plays the astute master of disguises Rash Behari Bose, while Sachindra Nath Sanyal is played by Rohit Saraf, the Gen-Z poster boy of slice-of-life and urban romantic narratives.
For both actors, what strikes them most is the sheer scale of what these revolutionaries pulled off at a time with no social media, and with channels of communication still rudimentary and raw — armed with nothing but grit and conviction, uniting the length of the country to their cause.
Bam, known for his viral YouTube channel BB Ki Vines, says he found an almost strange meta-connection with the iconic Rash Behari Bose, who took on the garb of several characters just to outsmart the British. “Though I may have made my career out of disguises (playing various characters as an actor), I have the ability to edit and cut and portray what I want and how I want. He had no options — there were no retakes. His life was do or die, and he chose that. For me, it’s an honour to step into his shoes. Also, it was a deep dive into our history and to see what they did and how little was spoken about”.
Sachindra Nath Sanyal is played by Rohit Saraf, the Gen-Z poster boy of slice-of-life and urban romantic narratives.
Popular as Rishi on the hit web-series Mismatched, Rohit Saraf says playing Sachindra Nath Sanyal was an intentional decision for him. “I was itching to do something I hadn’t done before, and I feel so lucky that Nikkhil sir thought I was capable of pulling this off — that belief became a source of motivation for me, whether it came to the physical transformation or learning different art forms, whether it’s kalaripayattu, mallakhamb, or kushti. An intensive training went on for about three months. I feel like it’s one of the most special characters I’ve got to play, because it’s one of those rare characters that has a very definite beginning, middle, and end. It has a beautiful arc that you get to experience.”
Then there were the women
If the men of this story have found their way into some retelling before, the women have received even less space on the pages of history.
Laapata Ladies actress Pratibha Ranta plays Pratibha Lahiri, a character inspired by Pritilata Waddedar, who led an armed raid on an all-whites club in Chittagong, and Kalpana Dutta, a prominent member of the armed resistance.
Laapata Ladies actress Pratibha Ranta plays Pratibha Lahiri, a character inspired by Pritilata Waddedar, who led an armed raid on an all-whites club in Chittagong, and Kalpana Dutta, a prominent member of the armed resistance.
“I was fascinated — I think she was in her early 20s. I was just wondering how these spirited and feisty young women, who were not older than 17 to their early 20s, especially in a society that had raised them in a particular way… chose to take on the colonisers, take up a gun and say, ‘dare you enslave my people’. There isn’t much information on how these women became part of the movement in this way, but it was arresting to see how progressive these girls /women were in their thoughts and cause. I also like the fact she is so free and totally in control”.
The gap — between how much these young revolutionaries risked and how little of it made it into the retelling — is what makes the present show that much more gripping. In many ways, one can almost see a reflection of the revolutionaries’ young energy and sincerity for their cause in the recent Gen-Z protests for reforms and accountability in education.
Also read: Uttam Kumar at 100: The man behind the ‘hero’ who put super in stardom for the Bengali audience
Agrees Gurfateh Pirzada, who plays Bagha Jatin, in the show. “There’s a famous saying which we all know — history repeats itself. So I guess every generation has its fair share of troubles that certain people choose to deal with, and sort of voice out, or there are revolutions about it.”
Returning to the subject of the revolutionaries’ contribution to India’s independence, Saraf says, “We’ve learned a certain kind of history of our nation, a certain kind of revolution that went into bringing independence to the nation. But before that, there was a whole other era that went into it. I feel the rest managed to run because these people showed them how to walk.”