The Tashkent Files – A Review
One of the sad narratives of modern India is that of a ‘disconnect’ – the disconnect between what most people know instinctively as reality and what is presented as part of a fabricated narrative in textbooks, public discussions, and other forums. This disconnect is visible at many levels in Indian discourse. One of them, undoubtedly, is history telling, and it is also one of the most glaring ones.
What we know as ‘common knowledge’ in history has been willfully omitted from historiography, and what is taught in history textbooks doesn’t really reconcile with what most common folks grow up knowing about those facts. Several scholars, authors, and public intellectuals, including Dr. Meenakshi Jain, Sanjeev Sanjyal, Rajiv Malhotra, and Arun Shourie, have publicly discussed this ‘disconnect’ in their scholarly works as well as in public discourse. Vivek Agnihotri’s recently released film, The Tashkent Files, attempts to bridge the very disconnect surrounding the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri through the popular art form of cinema, and does it really well.
India’s second Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, died on January 11, 1966, in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan in the Soviet Union. Riding high on his success against the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in the Indo-Pak war of 1965, Shastri was there in Tashkent to negotiate a peace settlement brokered by the Russians. After several days of bargaining and wrangling, Prime Minister Shastri and Pakistani President Ayub Khan signed the Tashkent Declaration on January 10, 1966. At 1:00 hrs. on January 11, Shastri died of a ‘heart attack’.
One of the unmistakable lacunae of this entire episode of Shastri’s death is the absence of a post-mortem report. While we have no record of a postmortem conducted by either India or the USSR, what we are left with is a mystery and many unanswered questions. Many, including Shastri’s family members, are not convinced about his ‘natural death’ theory, and they allege foul play. It may be a case of death due to some poisoning, they believe. Their belief receives some credence from Dr. Nirmalya Roy Chowdhury, a member of the American Board of Internal Medicine, who likens Shastri’s death to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s death. Arafat died suddenly in November 2004 due to some ‘mysterious illness’. Journalist and independent researcher Anuj Dhar, in his book “Your Prime Minister is Dead,” quotes Dr. Roy Chowdhury: “In 2012, with the permission of his widow Suha, Arafat’s body was exhumed by the Palestinian authorities. A thorough forensic investigation was done. Study results almost proved beyond reasonable doubt that he was poisoned with Polonium 210,”
Vivek Angihotri attempts to convey all the idiosyncrasies of this case in a gripping cinematic undertaking, and he succeeds. The story starts a bit slowly but picks up the pace along the way. The director is able to extract clutch performances from the entire crew. Shweta Basu Prasad, Pallavi Joshi, Naseerunddin Shah, etc. — they all put up a masterful performance. But Mithun Chakrobarty, who plays the role of the cunning politician Tripathi, steals the show on the screen. To me, it seemed like he was having the most fun with his role.
The film also delves into its own political narrative, a topic the Mumbai film industry seldom addresses. It makes important references to the Emergency and the subversion of the Indian Constitution by inserting ‘Socialist’ into it. It, however, skips over the other similar insertion, namely ‘Secular’. Being a child of the 70,s growing up in Patna, I had the front row seat to many of the incidents of the dark days of Emergency and the historic JP Movement when arrests, curfew, MISA, forced mass sterilization, etc., were the order of the day.
The movie also talks about ‘second colonization’ and makes overt reference to the Leftist takeover of the intellectual space in India. It does not take much to recognize this effect, but being a former student of JNU certainly helps understand this subversion. Within a few years of Shastri’s death, in 1969, the Indian National Congress, founded by A. O. Hume, Dadabhai Naoroji, Tilak, and Gandhiji, split due to internal power struggles and contradictions. Already, the Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, was 45 seats short of a majority in the Lok Sabha. She turned to the Communist Party of India (CPI) for support. The communists were too eager to oblige — but not without a price. Under this “support” plan, an openly Leftist historian and academic was made the Education Minister of India in 1971. Nurul Hasan’s policies ensured a Leftist stranglehold over the JNU faculty that it is yet to overcome. This same policy was executed in all educational institutions throughout the nation.
A reference to KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin is used to give an idea of Russian involvement in India, serving as a key component of the movie plot. But Agnigotri may have to make another movie to do justice to the Mitrokhin Files. However, the Metrokihn Files reference backs up many of the claims made by the former KGB spy Yuri Bezmenov. Bezmenov famously uses the word ‘useful idiots’ to describe the ‘intellectuals’ who were duped by the KGB without much pretense.
The movie also makes a brief reference to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. PM Shastri wanted to set up an inquiry to look into the disappearance of Netaji. A Congress functionary had informed the Khosala Commission of this. The Commission was set up to investigate the mysterious death of Netaji. Shastriji is said (by his son Sunil Shastri) to have met Netaji in Tashkent, and he wanted to ‘speak’ to the people of India upon his return. The very thought that the two most intriguing deaths of modern India may have some connection is a reason enough to give anyone Goosebumps.
The story of Shastri is more important for the millennials. Already, two generations of Indians have grown up without knowing much about leaders beyond the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty. Towering leaders like Tilak, Savarkar, Bose, Patel, Ambedkar, Shastri, Rajgopalachari, etc., have been relegated to virtual oblivion. As D.K, one of the moviegoers at the local cineplex in Chicago suburb of South Barrington told me: “Vivek Agnihotri does a remarkable job in bringing to the fore not just the death of a Prime Minister of a nascent Republic but also his memory and his life back in the consciousness of the Indian nation almost 53 years after his death.” His seldom-known role as an economic reformer (he discontinued the socialist policies of Nehru) and a catalyst to India’s Green Revolution finds mention in the film. Despite being killed twice, as the film rightly proclaims, Vivek’s new venture ensures that Shastri’s legacy lives on, notwithstanding the unresolved mystery of his death.