It’s official: superstar Hirthik Roshan’s Mohenjo Daro has flopped in the domestic market! With a whopping alleged budget of Rs1 billion out of which Rs160 million was spent on production, it has barely earned Rs550 million from the Indian market in the two weeks that it has been running. Although the TV satellite rights and the international market will help the producers recover most of their investment, a substantial profit still isn’t possible.

Directed by Ashutosh Gowariker, Mohenjo Daro was touted as a historical film based on an era which so far hasn’t been depicted in Hindi films. The Indus Valley civilization dates back to around 2500 BCE [more than 4,000 years old]. The archeological site of Mohenjo Daro is situated in Sindh, and was one the largest urbanised settlements of the Indus Valley civilization. It was discovered and excavated in the 1920s.

Ashutosh said he carried out three years of research before writing the story. One doubts his statement. The costumes, the giant sets, props and even the language used in Mohenjo Daro represent a different era from what historians have reported after carrying out excavations at the site. Even the terracotta artefacts tell a different tale of the people who once lived there.

In an episode of The Kapil Sharma Show, Ashutosh admitted that history was never his favourite subject in school. One wonders then what prompted the director to take on the subject. Previously, he has dabbled in history with Jodhaa Akbar (the Mughal period), Lagaan (the Colonial era) and Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey (the 1930 Chittagong Uprising against the British Raj).

Mohenjo Daro is yet another gross misinterpretation of history to grace the silver screen

But Ashutosh isn’t alone in depicting history as he perceives it. Most Indian film directors happily take on historical figures or incidents, labeling them as epics. While one can understand creative licenses, misrepresentation is an altogether different thing.

In the 100-year-old Indian film industry there are many such examples. For some reason, film-makers from the days of Alam Ara (1931) are obsessed with historical subjects and happily alter facts to suit their film-making needs. The most-loved screen character is that of Mughal Emperor Akbar (A.D.1542-1605). While many films have been made on him and his son Emperor Jahangir, Mughal-i-Azam is supposed to be an all-time favourite. There was Taj Mahal followed by Anarkali; Taj Mahal: the epic love story; and of course Jodhaa Akbar. They are eye-candy with gigantic and opulent sets, majestic costumes (copied by fashion designers for wedding outfits) and good-looking female actors such as Madhubala, Bina Rai, Sonya Jehan (granddaughter of Madam Noor Jehan), and of course Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan. A melodious soundtrack further added to the glamour of these productions. Had it not been for the titles and set design, any of these films could have easily been mistaken for a neurotic love story of a typical Bollywood masala film.

The other great emperor to be misrepresented on celluloid is Samrat Ashoka (268 to 232 BCE). Amrapali (starring Sunil Dutt, Vyjanthimala) and Asoka (Shah Rukh Khan, Kareen Kapoor) based on the emperor’s life, conquests and later his adoption of Buddhism have taken such creative liberty with the subject matter that historians have every right to cry foul.

In Bajirao Mastani by director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, the Kokanastha Brahmin community from Maharashtra to which Bajirao (A.D.1700-40) belonged, opposed the misrepresentation to such an extent that Bhansali had to carry a long disclaimer at the beginning of the film. Even the Rajputs of Rajasthan had objected to the presentation of Jodhaa in Jodhaa Akbar, which again led to the film having a disclaimer. Next in line was Ketan Mehta’s Mangal Pandey – The Rising starring Aamir Khan. It was factually opposed by the descendents of freedom fighter Mangal Pandey (1827-57).

In this context, both director Ashutosh Gowariker and Mohenjo Daro are lucky as no known descendants of the Indus Valley civilisation are around today to object to the gross misinterpretation of facts which run from form of governance to the reasons for Mohenjo Daro’s eventual demise and even the city’s name itself – Mohejo Daro (The Mound of the Dead) is a modern concoction, not the city’s name when it actually existed! A slightly better presentation would have taken the film a long way, as this is the first production to be based on that time period.

It’s not as though all historical films made in Bollywood misrepresent history. There are some excellent ones too. We won’t include Gandhi in the list as it was made by British director Richard Attenborough.

But there are others. Shatranj ke Khilari (1977) by Satyjit Ray dealt with the decadence of royalty of Central North India, which was exploited by the British to annex the Kingdom of Awadh in 1856. The film represented that era aptly but didn’t do too well. As it dealt with nawabs, Shatranj ke Khilari depicted regal ambience and majestic outfits. Opposed to this was Pather Panchali by the same director. It depicted poverty in the villages soon after the famous Bengal famine of 1943. Pather Panchali is a harsh but true and no-frills-attached film that won several national and international awards for its sheer artistic beauty, while depicting crippling poverty at that point in time​.

Director Deepa Mehta’s Earth (1988) gave valuable insight into Partition and the havoc it created with interpersonal relationships. Mehta’s second film, Water, was set in 1938 and dealt with the treatment meted out to widows in Varanasi. These were good films with sound research which made fictional figures appear quite realistic. There have been others as well such as Black Friday, Hey Ram, Parzania, Train to Pakistan, Firaaq, Bombay etc. Earlier, we also had Garam Hawa, Junoon, Sardar, Pinjar and others where the directors took an incident in history and stuck to as true a depiction as possible.

If film-makers can’t stay true to history, then they should at least use a different title for​ such films and not advertise them as ‘historical’. As in the case of Mohenjo Daro, even the mighty Hrithik Roshan could not get it the footfalls required to guarantee success.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, September 4th, 2016