There is a fascinating story buried inside The Revolutionaries, and that may be the most frustrating thing about the series. Nikkhil Advani’s eight-part historical drama attempts to bring a lesser-known chapter of India’s freedom struggle into the mainstream, tracing revolutionary networks from the 1912 assassination attempt on Viceroy Lord Hardinge to the Ghadar movement, the Komagata Maru episode and the planned uprising of 1915. Based on Sanjeev Sanyal’s book Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom, it has history, espionage, betrayal, sacrifice and enough real-life characters to make several gripping dramas.
Unfortunately, The Revolutionaries rarely trusts the material to do the heavy lifting. Advani approaches this history like a Bollywood spy thriller, complete with dramatic entrances, elaborate disguises, swelling music, choreographed dances which look straight out of a Bhansali film, stylised action like a Rohit Shetty vehicle and characters seemingly designed to announce their importance before they have earned it. The treatment is so glossy and theatrical that it often works against the gravity of the subject. These were men and women risking everything for an idea of freedom. Their lives were filled with fear, uncertainty and extraordinary courage. The series, however, frequently turns that reality into spectacle.
At the centre are four young revolutionaries: Bhuvan Bam as Rash Behari Bose, Rohit Saraf as Sachindranath Sanyal, Pratibha Ranta as Pratibha Lahiri and Gurfateh Pirzada as Bagha Jatin. The casting is one of the show’s biggest problems. Both Bam and Saraf feel miscast, particularly in roles that demand an understanding of the historical weight these men carried. Bam, in particular, seems trapped between a performance and a makeover. Rash Behari Bose is repeatedly reduced to facial expressions and a succession of get-ups, as though changing his appearance is enough to convey the many identities and dangers of his underground life.
The series also has an oddly simplistic understanding of characterisation. Its treatment of Lt Colonel Dyer is particularly curious. The man who would later become infamous for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre is shown here as a stuttering, multilingual officer and is given a surprisingly human dimension. He is allowed moments of charm and decency, almost as though the series is determined to remind us that the man behind the uniform was capable of being personable. There is nothing inherently wrong with giving a historical antagonist shades of grey, but here the choice feels strangely indulgent. At a time when the series should be examining the machinery and mindset of colonial oppression, the attempt to make Dyer appear human feels less like complexity and more like an unnecessary softening of the villain. Dyer ends up being the most important piece of the puzzle, a surprising fact indeed.
Paoli Dam is perhaps the only actor who seems to have received the memo about the kind of series this should have been. She brings a restraint and seriousness that sit comfortably within the period and the material. Her performance does not constantly demand attention, and that is precisely why it works.
Pratibha Ranta, meanwhile, is saddled with the stock voice of feminism. The series deserves credit for bringing a woman revolutionary into the centre of this story, particularly because women’s participation in the freedom struggle is so often pushed to the margins. But Pratibha is written less as a fully formed individual than as a vessel for contemporary feminist declarations. The intention is admirable; the characterisation is considerably less so. And her romantic angle with Saraf is plain irritating, to say the least.
The Revolutionaries does succeed in one important respect. It introduces audiences to figures and movements that deserve greater attention. Rash Behari Bose, Sachindranath Sanyal, Bagha Jatin and Kartar Singh Sarabha are not merely footnotes, and the series reminds us that India’s freedom struggle was far more fractured, international and dangerous than the simplified version many of us grew up with. There were secret networks, armed resistance, foreign alliances and countless people prepared to pay the ultimate price.
But historical significance cannot compensate for dramatic superficiality. The Revolutionaries seems determined to make these revolutionaries look heroic when what they needed was to make us understand them. Therein lies the difference. The former requires grand poses; the latter requires patience, contradiction and emotional detail.
For a story about people who lived in the shadows, The Revolutionaries is surprisingly fond of the spotlight. Its greatest achievement is also its biggest missed opportunity: it opens the door to a fascinating, complicated history, only to give us a version polished for the Bollywood stage. The series is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Also Read: Exclusive: ‘It Cannot Be Dictated to You’- Nikkhil Advani on Patriotism
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