‘Dogs and Indians not allowed!’

Director Nikkhil Advani and YouTuber and actor Bhuvan Bam opened up about creating Calcutta of 1912 in Madh Island, how the British had plundered Bengal, and more

Kabir Singh Bhandari

The Revolutionaries is a period action thriller directed by Nikkhil Advani, which released today on Prime Video. When asked about how the idea for the series came about, Advani told The Free Press Journal during an interview that he had actually resisted making it. “I didn’t want to do it because I had just finished Rocket Boys, and after that Freedom at Midnight.

That had taken four years of our lives. But then Amazon gave me the book, Revolutionaries: The Other Story Of How India Won Its Freedom by Sanjeev Sanyal, to read, to which they had the rights. Now, when making Freedom at Midnight, I realised a lot of people would turn around and say that I had only shown one side of the story. The other side of the story was the parallel movement that was going on, whether it was Udham Singh, Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad or, for that matter, even Subhas Chandra Bose.

Then there’s the Bombay Mutiny of 1946, again a movement that made the British feel that it was time to leave. But who had actually set that ball in motion? Rash Behari Bose, right? He was the individual who decided that on the most important day, when you are moving the capital from Calcutta to Delhi, December 23, 1912, he would just bomb the Viceroy,” Advani said.

Advani further elaborated on how the British had plundered us. “Dogs and Indians not allowed! That sign had been put up on all the government buildings of this country. The revolutionaries were those who had decided that we just need to throw them out, there isn’t any alternative to this thought. They’re invaders who have raped, plundered and pillaged us. Bengal was in tatters in the early 1900s,” Advani explained.

Creating Calcutta in Madh Island

YouTuber and actor Bam, who plays  Rash Behari Bose, mentioned the one similarity between him and Bose was that while he plays different characters for his videos, Bose would do it in real life to hoodwink the British, something which can have no retakes.

What is important to note is that when asked how much of the series is VFX and how much are actual sets, Advani mentioned that everything is sets, except the explosions where VFX was used. Even the Calcutta of that time was created in Madh Island. They had even built a ship, along with the plane that is actually flown in the series.