I don’t get to describe a premise like this too often, so let me enjoy writing this first paragraph. A prosperous Muslim family from Meerut — led by patriarch Sikandar Mirza (Sunny Deol) — is forced to flee for Lahore on a blood-soaked Partition night. Just like that, they have nothing. After months, they are allotted a house. But they move in to discover that it will never be their ‘home’; the displacement is permanent. An old Hindu lady (Shabana Azmi), the original owner, still lives upstairs. She waits for her own family to return, refusing to leave. Mirza, his wife (Preity Zinta) and his daughter overcome their biases and start to treat her like their mother; they celebrate her festivals and cook her food. This secularism draws the ire of the community; they’re a people still learning how to discriminate by faith and divide by appearances. The local troublemakers include an extremist goon (Abhimanyu Singh) and gang — they prey on the trauma of Mirza’s son, Javed (Karan Deol), and poison him. Tensions rise, and Mirza is threatened for harbouring the ‘enemy’. As a Deol, he resists.
It’s hard to imagine this mainstream Hindi storyline in 2026. But it does exist. With a big-screen hero (Sunny Deol), a big-screen masala director (Rajkumar Santoshi), and a big-screen producer (Aamir Khan). The choice to adapt Asghar Wajahat’s play Jis Lahore Nai Vekhya, O Jamya E Nai for the screen is a brave one. As with most Partition-era titles, the message is chaste: compassion over religion. And this is no subtle drama about grief and memory, it’s a violently blatant melodrama that almost unfolds in real time. The language is direct and commercial. Some of the lines are so pointed that they’re contemporary: “Don’t mix politics and religion, it destroys everything” or “nothing is more dangerous than the silence of good people”.
There’s an entire phase where Mirza cannot understand the sudden bigotry and complicity of his surroundings. He lectures them about the tenets of Islam, driving (or trucking) home the misunderstood teachings of the Quran. When all else fails, he yells that motherhood is the most universal religion. He is not wrong, but he’s more left than right. Just as the identities can be reversed — it could be based in Lucknow with a newly displaced Hindu family protecting a Muslim lady — even the time is interchangeable: it’s 1947 in the film, but the hatred is frightfully familiar. Mirza could be Mishra in the 2020s and he’d invite identical reactions. The partitions persist.
But the problems are familiar too. You know how most propaganda movies rely heavily on their craft to seduce audiences? Movies like Batwara 1947 rely on humanity, so they don’t need their craft as much. A plea for diversity in this environment is almost a cheat code of sorts. Unfortunately, this one pushes its license to the limit — not unlike social spectacles that substitute film-making for commentary. It’s called the heart-is-in-the-right-place syndrome. Incidentally, the last two times I mentioned this syndrome were in reviews of Sitaare Zameen Par and Ek Din (from the same producers). You want to believe the intent is enough, but there’s a difference between simplicity and simplistic storytelling. In other words, the courage of this film is more moving than the film itself. In a year where pacifist themes have had a resurgence — think Ikkis and Main Vaapas Aaunga — it’s hard to be satisfied with the message alone.
Again, one almost feels guilty to criticise it. But Batwara 1947 looks and sounds very much like a school play blessed with a Bollywood-sized budget. I get the old-fashioned treatment (or the ABCD film-making), but it reduces the medium to a footnote; the depth of the premise — of one subcontinental family having to occupy the reality and fictions of another — rarely registers. Except for Shabana Azmi’s Mai and Ali Fazal as a liberal poet, the performances are basic. The setting doesn’t try a lot. Lahore looks like a parody of Lahore. The good-Muslim-bad-Muslim trope means that the bad ones — especially the pantomime villain’s henchmen — sport fake moles, beards, lipstick and contact lenses.
Some scenes are written as if the characters are breaking the fourth wall: a little girl innocently asks her mother why India and Pakistan can’t co-exist in peace if their two families can live under one roof. The kohl-eyed baddie says the most cartoonishly evil things so that Mirza can either school or scold him. Flashbacks feature passionate characters who need little convincing: “Stop there! We will kill you! Oh, you need to meet your girlfriend in the hospital? Sure, let us guide you!”. The gravity of communal rioting and generational displacement is somewhat lost in these cracks.
It’s a Partition-for-dummies formula, of course, but the result is self-defeating. The film takes ages to arrive at a singularly powerful climax. Here’s where the pitch works wonders: Bollywood melodrama calibrated to milk the correct emotions. I won’t spoil it, but the bygone-era tone almost makes it worth the preachy climb. Almost. If you feel protective about humanist war sagas like Ikkis, you feel possessive about something like Batwara 1947 — you know it’s the annoying teacher’s pet, but you want it to trust in its own merit and spirit.
It’s worth noting the presence of Sunny Deol in the film. His Mirza is a mix of two personalities: the single-screen superstar who did Gadar, and the son of a superstar whose final film was Ikkis. Mirza always tries to reason with monologues and kindness first. When it doesn’t work, he often goes Full Sunny Deol: the 2.5-kilogram hand wreaks havoc, the vocal cord aims for new records, handpumps are in danger, tempers and bodies fly across frames. Forget the film being partitioned by his rage, both these personas stay at battle with each other. One of them wins; it’s part of the conceit. To Deol’s credit, he allows his trademark volume to be defeated by the hush of altruism. In the end, it says something that Mirza doesn’t need the violence. All he needs is love. If only the movie didn’t pummel this love into submission. It’s like a leader vowing to thrash up anyone who disrupts their peaceful protest. The irony is contemporary, too.