The Legend of Bhagat Singh is a 2002 Indian biographical drama film directed by Rajkumar Santoshi. The film is based on Bhagat Singh, a revolutionary who fought for Indian independence along with fellow members of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. It features Ajay Devgn as the titular character along with Sushant Singh, Akhilendra Mishra and D. Santosh as the other lead characters. Raj Babbar, Farida Jalal and Amrita Rao play supporting roles. The film chronicles Singh's life from his childhood where he witnesses the Jallianwala Bagh massacre until the day he was hanged to death before the official trial dated 24 March 1931.
The film was produced by Kumar and Ramesh Taurani's Tips Industries on a budget of 200–250 million (about US$4.2–5.2 million in 2002). The story and dialogue were written by Santoshi and Piyush Mishra respectively, while Anjum Rajabali drafted the screenplay. K. V. Anand, V. N. Mayekar and Nitin Chandrakant Desai were in charge of the cinematography, editing and production design respectively. Principal photography took place in Agra, Manali, Mumbai and Pune from January to May 2002. The soundtrack and film score were composed by A. R. Rahman, with the songs "Mera Rang De Basanti" and "Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna" being well received in particular.
The Legend of Bhagat Singh was released on 7 June 2002 to generally positive reviews, with the direction, story, screenplay, technical aspects, and the performances of Devgan and Sushant receiving the most attention. However, the film underperformed at the box office, grossing only 129 million (US$2.7 million in 2002). It went on to win two National Film Awards – Best Feature Film in Hindi and Best Actor for Devgn – and three Filmfare Awards from eight nominations.
The film's release coincided with another film based on Bhagat Singh directed by Guddu Dhanoa and titled 23rd March 1931: Shaheed. Both films failed at the box office.
Plot
In 1907, Bhagat Singh is born in British India. From childhood, he witnesses numerous atrocities committed against Indians by the British colonial regime. Following the horrific aftermath of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Bhagat takes a solemn vow to dedicate his life to freeing India from British rule. He initially supports Mahatma Gandhi's Non-Cooperation Movement, but when Gandhi abruptly calls off the campaign in 1922 following the Chauri Chaura incident, a disillusioned Bhagat chooses the path of armed revolution. As an adult, he joins the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), which leads to his first imprisonment. To steer him toward a peaceful life, his father, Kishen, bails him out, establishes a dairy farm for him, and arranges his marriage with a woman named Mannewali. Rejecting a domestic life, Bhagat flees home, leaving a note stating that his country remains his ultimate love.
In 1928, nationalist leader Lala Lajpat Rai is beaten to death by police while leading a peaceful protest against the Simon Commission. In retaliation, Bhagat, alongside fellow revolutionaries Shivaram Rajguru, Sukhdev Thapar, and Chandra Shekhar Azad, assassinates Assistant Superintendent of Police John Saunders. In 1929, to protest the oppressive Trade Disputes and Public Safety Bills, Bhagat and Batukeshwar Dutt orchestrate a bombing inside the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi. They deliberately target empty benches to avoid casualties, using the subsequent public trial as a platform to propagate their revolutionary ideals and counter British propaganda that branded them as mere terrorists. Bhagat's popularity surges nationwide, rivalling Gandhi's influence among the youth, laborers, and farmers.
While incarcerated at Lahore Central Jail, Bhagat, Sukhdev, Rajguru, and their fellow inmates undertake a grueling 63-day hunger strike to demand equal rights and humane conditions for Indian political prisoners, resisting violent forced-feedings and canings by the authorities. Meanwhile, on February 27, 1931, the British police corner Azad at Alfred Park in Allahabad. Following a fierce shootout and refusing to be captured alive, Azad commits suicide with the final bullet in his pistol.
Fearing the revolutionary momentum sweeping the nation, Viceroy Lord Irwin orders the reopening of the Saunders murder case, resulting in death sentences for Bhagat, Sukhdev, and Rajguru. The Indian public hopes Gandhi will leverage the Gandhi-Irwin Pact to secure their release, but Irwin refuses. Gandhi ultimately signs the pact, which explicitly excludes prisoners convicted of violence from amnesty. On March 23, 1931, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar, and Shivaram Rajguru are executed by hanging in absolute secrecy.
Cast
Production Development In 1998, the film director Rajkumar Santoshi read several books on the socialist revolutionary, Bhagat Singh, and felt that a biopic would help revive interest in him. Although S. Ram Sharma made a film about Bhagat in 1965, titled Shaheed, Santoshi felt that despite being "a great source of inspiration on the lyrics and music front", it did not "dwell on Bhagat Singh's ideology and vision". In August 2000, the screenwriter Anjum Rajabali mentioned to Santoshi about his work on Har Dayal, whose revolutionary activities inspired Udham Singh (on whom a Punjabi film too had been released earlier that year). Santoshi then persuaded Rajabali to draft a script based on Bhagat's life as he was inspired by Udham Singh.
Santoshi gave Rajabali a copy of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Kuldeep Khullar's biography of the revolutionary. Rajabali said that reading the book "created an intense curiosity in me about the mind of this man. I definitely wanted to know more about him." His interest in Bhagat intensified after he read The Martyr: Bhagat Singh's Experiments in Revolution (2000) by journalist Kuldip Nayar. The following month, Rajabali formally began his research on Bhagat while admitting to Santoshi that it was "a difficult task". Gurpal Singh, a Film and Television Institute of India graduate, and internet blogger Sagar Pandya assisted him. Santoshi received input from Kultar Singh, Bhagat's younger brother, who told the director he would have his full co-operation if the film accurately depicted Bhagat's ideologies.
Rajabali wanted to "recreate the world that Bhagat Singh lived in", and his research required him to "not only understand the man, but also the influences on him, the politics of that era". In an interview with Sharmila Taliculam of Rediff.com in the year 2000, Rajabali said that the film would "deal with Bhagat Singh, the man, rather than the freedom fighter". Many aspects of Bhagat's life, including his relationship with fiancée Mannewali, were derived from Piyush Mishra's 1994 play Gagan Damama Bajyo; Mishra was subsequently credited with writing the film's dialogues.
A. G. Noorani's 1996 book, The Trial of Bhagat Singh: Politics of Justice, provided the basis for the trial sequences. Gurpal obtained additional information from 750 newspaper clippings of The Tribune dated from September 1928 to March 1931, and from Bhagat's prison notebooks. These gave Rajabali "an idea of what had appealed to the man, the literary and intellectual influences that impacted him in that period". By the end of the year 2000, Santoshi and Rajabali completed work on the script and showed it to Kumar and Ramesh Taurani of Tips Industries; both were impressed by it. The Taurani brothers agreed to produce the film under their banner and commence filming after Santoshi had finished his work on Lajja (2001).
Casting Sunny Deol was initially cast as Bhagat Singh, but he left the project owing to schedule conflicts and differences with Santoshi. Santoshi then preferred to cast new faces instead of established actors but was not pleased with the performers who auditioned. Aamir Khan was also offered the role, but he declined, saying he wasn't young enough for the part. Ajay Devgn (then known as Ajay Devgan) was finally chosen for the lead character because Santoshi felt he had "the eyes of a revolutionary. His introvert nature conveys loud and clear signals that there is a volcano inside him ready to burst." After Devgn performed a screen test dressed as Bhagat, Santoshi was "pleasantly surprised" to see Devgn's face closely resemble Singh's and cast him in the part. The Legend of Bhagat Singh marked Devgn's second collaboration with Santoshi after Lajja. Devgn called the film "the most challenging assignment" in his career. He had not watched Shaheed before signing up for the project. To prepare for the role, Devgn studied all the references Santoshi and Rajabali had procured to develop the film's script. He also lost weight to more closely resemble Bhagat.
Santoshi chose Akhilendra Mishra to play Azad as he also resembled his character. In addition to reading Shiv Verma's Sansmritiyan, Mishra read Bhagwan Das Mahore's and Sadashiv Rao Malkapurkar's accounts of the revolutionary. Because of his astrological beliefs, he even obtained Azad's horoscope to determine his personality. In an interview with Rediff.com's Lata Khubchandani, Mishra mentioned that while informing his father about his role of Azad, he revealed to him that they originally hailed from Kanpur, the same place where Azad's ancestors were from. This piece of information encouraged Mishra to play Azad.
Sushant Singh and D. Santosh (in his cinematic debut) were cast as Bhagat's friends and fellow members of the Hindustan Republican Association, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru. Santoshi believed their faces resembled those of the two revolutionaries. To learn about their characters, Sushant, like Mishra, read Sansmritiyan while Santosh visited Rajguru's family members. The actors were also chosen according to their characters' backgrounds. This was true in the case of Santosh and also Amitabh Bhattacharjee, who played Jatin Das, the man who devised the bomb for Bhagat and Batukeshwar Dutt. Santosh and Bhattacharjee were from Maharashtra and West Bengal like Rajguru and Das. Raj Babbar and Farida Jalal were cast as Bhagat's parents, Kishen Singh and Vidyawati Kaur, while Amrita Rao played Mannewali, Bhagat's fiancée.
Filming Principal photography began in January 2002 and was completed in May. The first schedule of filming took place in Agra and Manali following which the unit moved to the Film City studio in Mumbai. According to the film's cinematographer, K. V. Anand, around 85 sets were constructed at Film City by Nitin Chandrakant Desai who was in charge of the production design, and "99 percent of the background" featured in the film was sets. Desai used sepia tint throughout the film to create a period feel.
Additional scenes depicting the massacre of 1919 were filmed at a set constructed to look like the Bagh as it was 83 years ago; some of them were shot between 9 pm and 6 am. The scenes at the Bagh set and other surrounding locations of Amritsar at the beginning of the film feature Nakshdeep Singh as the younger Bhagat. Santoshi selected Nakshdeep after receiving photographs of the boy from his father, Komal Singh, who played Mannewali's father.
Kultar stayed with the production unit for seven days during the outdoor location shooting in Pune. Both Santoshi and Devgn appreciated the interactions they had with Kultar, noting that he provided "deep insights into his brother's life". Kultar was pleased with the sincerity of the cast and crew and shared private letters written by Bhagat with them. The song "Pagdi Sambhal Jatta" was the last part to be filmed. A sequence in the song featuring Devgn appearing between two factions of backup Bhangra dancers took three takes to be completed. The Legend of Bhagat Singh was made on a budget of 200 – 250 million (about US$4.15 – 5.18 million in 2002).
Music