Monday, August 22, 2005

Man and Myth
The Rising may have left audiences cold and historians hot around their collars, but it has succeeded in sparking off debate on Mangal Pandey’s role in the historic events of 1857.
Shahid Amin, in his
review in the Outlook of Rudrangshu Mukherjee’s ‘Mangal Pandey: Brave Martyr or Accidental Hero?’ says: “It was 1857 that made Mangal Pandey, and not the other way round.”
In the same edition of the Outlook, Amaresh Mishra
writes: “Till Mangal’s act, the anti-British movement had no face—by loading his musket, shooting at British officers, he implanted a rallying banner.”
Mukherjee himself writes in his book:
“Mangal Pandey had no notion of patriotism or even India.... If love for his country drove him, he would not have become a sepoy in the first place.”
Mishra disagrees:
“The incident at Barrackpore, where Mangal pulled the trigger on a British officer, marked the culmination of his development from an angry young man to a politically conscious revolutionary.”
Two extremely divergent views, but one much overdue discourse.

Comments:
The moment humans invented farming things started getting complicated. People could now produce surplus food and thus earlier the same people who were hunting around trying to gather food were freed up. People now had to engaged themselves.

This over dissection of Rising and Mangal Pandey etc is now going a bit too far. It is typical of our time.. A time for the media, by the media, of the media... The film meanwhile is doing what is meant to do.. Make some money...
 
I agree with Kaushik...lets leave Mangal, Amir, Ketan etc and their Rising alone...whatever we might say, the film is making and will make loads of money...So who's smiling all the way to the bank!! BTW, since I read somewhere that Barsaat (AWWWW!!! NOT AGAIN!!!) was doing better than the Rising, gives bloggers another topic to discuss!!! Go for it!! Hail the rainy season!!
 
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