How ‘Chhaava’ erases history and leaves no room for complexity

After watching the latest Bollywood blockbuster Chhaava, a viewer in Gujarat tore the cinema screen, angered by the torture inflicted by Aurangzeb on Sambhaji. Hindu vs Muslim binary Chhaava’s world is one in which the relentless quest to expose the evilness of the Muslim Aurangzeb makes it omit that he came to power on the basis of support from the Rajputs; that his administration had the highest percentage of Hindu Mansabdars in Mughal history ; that it also had Hindus in the posts of the Dewan and as heads of two important provinces; and that the emperor who imposed the Jizya protected some temples just as he demolished others, according to some historians. Of course, these complexities/debates cannot be a part of Chhaava’s world in which the quest for Maratha “Swaraj” under Sambhaji is suffused with Hindu imagery and is presented as liberating India from “foreign rule.” Actually, the Mughals had already lived in India for over 150 years then. Historian Stewart Gordon argues that Chhatrapati Shivaji, who championed tolerance and syncretism, and who had beseeched Aurangzeb to follow Akbar’s tolerance, was not advocating nationalism or the cause of a “universal Hindu rule.” Shivaji, too, had a substantial number of Muslims in his administration, including top military commanders. While Chhaava, unlike other propaganda films, does show aberrations in the ‘good Hindus’ narrative by showing some Hindu traitors, including in his own family, all the kohl-lined Muslims are universally bad.