Shyam Benegal’s hasty film on Bangladesh’s Mujib won’t help Sheikh Hasina win 2024 polls

Many biographies of Mujib have come out over the years, including a 10-part graphic novel targeting the country’s youth.

Founding figures are as important as holy cows in South Asia – profoundly venerated. You build monuments, write hagiographies, institute peace awards and sometimes make very bad movies in their memory. But what chance do you have of making a critical film on one such personality and not losing your citizenship? It is indeed an uphill task to attempt movies on MK Gandhi in India, Muhammad Ali Jinnah in Pakistan or Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in Bangladesh and call them art. Even foreigners have to tread with caution.

Take Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982). While some would argue that Gandhi was a film well-written and well-produced, it hardly examined some of the major failings of the man they call Mahatma. His experiments with celibacy, where by his own confession he often faltered, or the rather critical views that Bhimrao Ambedkar and even Subhas Chandra Bose held about him, were not shown; Gandhi was deified.

The same has happened to Mujib.

Another foreigner, Indian filmmaker Shyam Benegal, is set to release , a movie about Bangabandhu. India and Bangladesh are co-producing the film just before Bangladesh’s current prime minister and Mujib’s daughter Sheikh Hasina fights her next election in 2024. Benegal has been tasked with shooting an ‘election film’, even if he won’t admit it