Snehangshu Majumdar
This review approaches The Bengal Files from the perspective of a Hindu nationalist Bengali who refuses to indulge in either the selective amnesia of the left or the self-congratulatory complacency of saffron opportunists. For too long, Bengal’s history has been subjected to distortions: two decades ago, it was the leftist intellectuals who dismissed Hindu identity in the name of secularism; today, many of the same voices, now draped in saffron, dismiss Bengali identity in the pursuit of a homogenized Hindu utopia. Both tendencies are rooted in a disdain for the plural yet deeply Hindu civilizational fabric of Bengal.
A genuine nationalist critique, therefore, must neither parrot the propaganda of the left nor flatter the narratives of the right, but speak with integrity. The Bengal Files deserves neither uncritical celebration nor casual dismissal. It demands recognition for attempting to raise questions about historical injustices, but also honest confrontation with the fact that its failures are not incidental. The weaknesses of the film—its selective silences, its skewed framing, and its calculated distortions—are deliberate, and therein lies the danger.
Before engaging with the shortcomings of The Bengal Files, it is necessary to acknowledge the one aspect where the film succeeds with remarkable conviction: the characterization of Sri Gopal Chandra Mukhopadhyay, popularly known as ‘Gopal Pattha’ or ‘Gopal Patha’. History remembers him as the indomitable leader who, in the wake of the 1946 Calcutta carnage, organized Bengalis to resist and avenge the butchery unleashed upon them. The film does justice to this legacy. His fiery speeches, unwavering courage, and ability to rally the disheartened into an organized force are depicted with a raw intensity that resonates deeply with the history-conscious viewer.
The most iconic moment—the confrontation with Gandhi—achieves cinematic brilliance. When Mukherjee defiantly refuses the Mahatma’s appeal for disarmament, asserting that “Not even a needle shall I yield, if it has once served to avenge my people”, the audience is left with a portrayal that not only honors the historical memory but also vindicates the nationalist spirit of Bengal. This scene, perhaps alone, bridges the gap between history and art, capturing the essence of resistance rather than reducing it to spectacle. For the Hindu nationalist Bengali audience, it is a rare satisfaction to witness a figure too often relegated to footnotes brought to the forefront with dignity and fire.
Yet, almost immediately after the electrifying portrayal of Gopal Chandra Mukherjee, the film collapses into a whitewashing of Bengal’s historical truth. The narrative slyly reduces the resistance of 1946 to a near one-man show, suggesting that beyond Gopal Mukherjee, no Bengali Hindu truly stood in defense of Calcutta. Instead, the film projects the struggle as sustained largely by “outsiders” who came to Bengal’s aid. This distortion is not accidental but symptomatic of a deeper ideological agenda.
Such framing perpetuates a colonial trope—that Bengalis are incapable of fighting for themselves, that the Bhadralok is effete, and that Bengal must look northward for strength and salvation. By inserting a North Indian saviour narrative, the film simultaneously diminishes the agency of Bengali Hindus and imposes an artificial hierarchy of nationalist contribution. It transforms a people’s collective resistance into an imported rescue mission, thereby stripping Bengalis of their historical voice and valor.
The director, Vivek Agnihotri, has himself propagated this line beyond the screen. In a podcast, he openly claimed that “outsiders saved Calcutta,” a statement now mirrored in the film’s portrayal. Such assertions are not only historically inaccurate but also strategically manipulative, designed to guilt Bengalis into silence whenever they attempt to articulate their own nationalist identity. The implication is clear: Bengalis may resist culturally, but must never claim political agency without being reminded of their supposed dependency on others.
This is propaganda masquerading as history. By distorting the memory of the 1946 resistance, the film betrays its subject and undermines the very nationalist awakening it pretends to champion.
The Historical Reality: A Bengali-Led Resistance
Contrary to the narrative advanced by The Bengal Files, the 1946 resistance in Calcutta was not the handiwork of outsiders but a distinctly Bengali Hindu uprising, deeply rooted in Bengal’s revolutionary tradition. The portrayal of Bengalis as passive onlookers until saved by external forces is a gross misrepresentation that erases a vibrant, well-documented history of indigenous organization and valor.
The resistance was carried primarily by Bengali revolutionaries and akhada-trained fighters who had long been nurtured in Bengal’s militant nationalist culture. Organizations such as the Anushilan Samiti and Atmonnati Samiti supplied leadership and fighters, while the akhada of Bishnu Charan Ghosh produced the physical force of Bengali pahalwans. The disciples and sons of Sri Pulin Behari Das, legendary revolutionary of the earlier decades, carried forward this militant spirit. The planning of retaliatory strikes was led by figures such as Bipin Behari Gangopadhyay, ensuring that the resistance was neither spontaneous chaos nor externally imposed, but an organized, homegrown struggle.
The geographic spread of leadership across Calcutta underscores the Bengali character of the uprising. Gopal Mukherjee initiated the fight in Bowbazar, while Jugal Charan Ghosh led in Beleghata. In Kashipur, Shoto Ghosh and Prafulla Kanti Ghosh organized the defense; Ranjit Kumar Saha spearheaded retaliation in Shobhabazar; Sukumar Basu and Malay Sarkar held ground in Shyampukur; Sukhdeb Saha led Bagbazar; Nabajyoti Barman in Ultadanga; Kajal Chandra Mukherjee even in Maniktala, a non-Bengali dominated area; Gurupada Nandi in Bottala; Rishikesh Chowdhury in Jorabagan; Nepal Kumar Roy in Chitpur; and Kali Charan Mukherjee in Amherst Street. This was no isolated or outsider-driven resistance—it was a citywide assertion of Bengali agency.
The participation was not confined to political cadres alone. The cultural sphere also contributed: actors such as Uttam Kumar (Arun Kumar Chatterjee), Jawhar Ganguly, and Kamu Mukherjee lent their weight to the defense. Even military figures like Major Anil Chandra Chatterjee of the INA declared that “we shall make every Hindu house a fortress,” embodying the synthesis of revolutionary idealism and communal defense.
This collective mobilization demonstrates that the 1946 resistance was a Bengali-led people’s struggle, woven from the contributions of revolutionaries, athletes, intellectuals, and cultural icons alike. To erase this history and replace it with a North-Indian saviour narrative is not only inaccurate but also insulting to the memory of those who bled and fought for their homes and honor.
Humiliating Portrayal of the Made-up Character “Justice Banerjee”
The second major problem with The Bengal Files lies in the humiliating portrayal of a fabricated character—“Justice Banerjee.” Unlike Gopal Mukherjee, who is depicted with heroic intensity, Banerjee is consistently shown in degrading circumstances. In one of the most jarring sequences, League goons forcibly tie a Pakistani flag around his head, smear ink across his face, and kick him repeatedly while he lies prostrate. The cinematic gaze lingers on his humiliation, almost celebrating his degradation, as if to inscribe the idea that the Bengali male body is synonymous with weakness, emasculation, and helplessness.
This is not an innocent creative choice. The invention of such a character serves a calculated narrative purpose: to reinforce the stereotype that Bengali men—no matter their education, status, or refinement—are inherently feeble. It continues a colonial and pan-Indian stereotype that has long sought to deny the martial, revolutionary traditions of Bengal by branding its men as effete intellectuals incapable of physical courage. In effect, the character of Justice Banerjee is less a dramatic device and more a tool of cultural insult.
Even more telling is the casting choice. The role is played by Priyanshu Chatterjee, one of the most strikingly handsome actors to emerge from Bengal into Bollywood. Tall, fair, sharp-featured, and aristocratic in bearing, he embodies a type that directly challenges Bollywood’s dominant masculine archetype, which traditionally glorifies rugged, stocky, non-Bengali heroes. After his breakthrough in Tum Bin, Priyanshu’s career was deliberately stifled by the industry—a fate that many argue was orchestrated by a lobby unwilling to accommodate a Bengali actor who subverted their stereotype of Bengali men as weak or comical.
To then recast him in The Bengal Files in a role designed for humiliation is not accidental. It follows the logic captured so chillingly in the Joker’s taunt to Batman: “I took Gotham’s white knight, and I brought him down to our level.” By degrading Priyanshu Chatterjee’s character, the film symbolically degrades the very ideal of the Bengali man—suggesting that even the best, the noblest, and the most dignified can be reduced to ridicule and submission. The analogy is even more precise when we recall Batman’s anguished words to Harvey Dent: “Because you were the best of us! He wanted to prove that even someone as good as you could fall.”
This is exactly the psychological subtext of the film. By humiliating a character played by one of Bengal’s most iconic actors, the narrative delivers a subtle challenge to Bengalis: even your best will fall, even your strongest will be humiliated. This is cinema not as storytelling but as psychological warfare, embedding messages that only the most vigilant audience will discern.
The Manufactured Love Story and the Politics of Cultural Emasculation
Perhaps the most disturbing distortion in The Bengal Files is its insertion of a contrived love-story narrative between an outsider man and a native woman in 1940s Calcutta. On the surface, this subplot may appear to be an attempt at humanizing the historical backdrop. In reality, it is a glaring violation of historical truth.
The social fabric of Bengal in the 1930s and 1940s was profoundly orthodox. Women from respectable Hindu families rarely ventured outside the domestic sphere without male guardianship. Inter-ethnic marriages, even within Hindu society, were almost unthinkable. Crossing caste boundaries was regarded as scandalous, while interfaith unions were outright condemned. Whether one today supports or opposes restrictive marriage norms, a film that claims to depict history must remain faithful to the realities of its period. To imagine a Bengali woman in that era freely entering into a romantic relationship with an outsider is not merely inaccurate; it is a projection of contemporary ideological fantasies onto the past.
The intention behind this distortion is clear: to emasculate the image of Bengali men and to commodify Bengali women as trophies for outsiders. In this desired logic, the Bengali male should be projected as too weak to protect or inspire loyalty, while the Bengali female is reduced to a pliable object of conquest. Such narratives function as cultural propaganda, brainwashing audiences into accepting a falsified past where Bengali society lacked integrity, strength, and agency.
This distortion also intersects with a broader ideological battle. A decade ago, the so-called “saffron leftists”—those who once parroted Marxist secularism but now masquerade as nationalists—dismissed the very concept of “love jihad” as a fabrication. Yet the same forces today defend these cinematic portrayals, which normalize precisely the kind of ethnic and religious disbalances that undermine community cohesion. Their inconsistency exposes the opportunism at the heart of their politics.
We, Hindu nationalist Bengalis, stand opposed not only to the repeated Bollywood trope of Muslim men paired with Hindu women, but equally to these attempts to erase ethnic integrity by glorifying ahistorical romances between outsider men with our women. Nationalism cannot be selective. It cannot abandon the defense of Bengali identity while proclaiming a hollow Hindu unity. Real nationalism demands the protection of every strand of our identity—religious, ethnic, cultural, and historical. Anything less is the betrayal of a spine sold in the marketplace of utopian slogans.
The Noakhali Context: A Missed Opportunity and a Calculated Fetishization
Another domain where The Bengal Files falters is in its treatment of the Noakhali massacres. At first glance, the film appears to recognize the resistance of Zamindar Rajendra Lal Roychowdhury, whose undaunted bravery during those dark days remains etched in Bengali memory. For a moment, audiences hoped that this forgotten hero—who stood with gun in hand against the miya ka fauz of Golam Sarwar—would finally receive the cinematic acknowledgment he deserves.
Yet the execution is deeply disappointing. The character is neither cast convincingly nor given the kind of powerful staging that his defiance warrants. Historical accounts record far more scenes of Rajendra Lal Roychowdhury’s valor—where he fired upon League goons, forcing them to flee in retreat. These moments of courage, which could have elevated him into a true cinematic hero, are either missing or poorly staged. The film fails to capture the grit and determination that marked his real stand. Instead of dramatizing his leadership and sacrifice with the dignity it deserves, the narrative reduces him to a perfunctory sketch, drained of emotional and historical weight.
Even more problematic is the invention of wholly implausible details, such as showing his daughter standing beside him during combat. In reality, during times of violent conflict, women were safeguarded in secure spaces away from the battlefield. To depict a daughter in the middle of gunfire is not only historically false but a deliberate attempt to fetishize misery—using the spectacle of endangered femininity as a tool of cheap sensationalism.
The purpose behind such staging is transparent. Rather than celebrating Bengali valor, the film uses Bengali characters as vessels of suffering, humiliation, or implausible melodrama. The resistance of Rajendra Lal Roychowdhury is trivialized; his family is reduced to a backdrop of spectacle; and the audience is nudged to remember the violence not as a story of Bengali courage but as another tableau of Bengali helplessness.
Thus, apart from the isolated brilliance of the Gopal Mukherjee sequences, the entire portrayal of Noakhali—and indeed of Bengal’s resistance—descends into a deliberate act of distortion. What could have been a powerful cinematic tribute instead becomes yet another layer in the film’s project of humiliating Bengalis under the guise of nationalist storytelling.
As viewers, we have every right to demand the inclusion of figures whose roles were decisive during this turbulent period. Among them, Jogendra Nath Mandal stands out. Once hailed as a champion of Dalit upliftment, his political choices reveal a darker truth: he became a willing stooge of the Muslim League, remaining silent in the face of atrocities because his priority was not the unity of Bengalis but the cynical project of dividing them along caste lines. His complicity deserves honest cinematic confrontation, yet the film ignores him entirely.
Similarly, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, later celebrated as the founding father of Bangladesh, had in the 1940s aligned himself with Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, the mastermind behind the Direct Action Day riots. Mujib was not a detached witness; he was Suhrawardy’s right-hand man in political maneuvering. To acknowledge this would have revealed uncomfortable truths about the making of a leader often sanitized in mainstream narratives. Once again, the film sidesteps this reality.
Instead of engaging with these authentic but politically charged figures, The Bengal Files expends its energy on fabricating characters whose sole purpose is to humiliate Bengalis. Rather than showing how Bengal’s tragedy was compounded by the betrayal of its own elites and the manipulations of opportunistic politicians, the filmmakers retreat into easy stereotypes and manufactured humiliations. In doing so, they squander the chance to tell real history and instead peddle a spectacle designed to weaken Bengali self-respect.
Finally, a word to the so-called saffron communists who cannot stop barking, “Oh my god, we are blessed they made a movie… oh, we must lick their boots… oh, we are nothing before them.” To such voices, the answer is simple: shut up. We, Bengalis, brought this history into the light. We preserved its memory, we documented its heroes, and we passed it down through generations. It is our history, our property—not a propaganda toy to be twisted into someone else’s narrative.
The demand is not complicated. If you wish to make films on Bengal’s history, then make them with respect. Do the research. Show reality as it was. And reality means showing Bengalis as they were: valorous, militant, dominant, and unwilling to bow. It was Bengalis who fought, Bengalis who resisted, Bengalis who saved Calcutta when it burned. The fighting zeal runs in our veins—it is not something to be erased or outsourced in the name of artificial unity.
If filmmakers honor that truth, their movies will not just succeed; they will flood the box office. The halls will be filled with Bengalis proud to see their ancestors portrayed with dignity. But if you continue to depict us in a fabricated, emasculated way, do not be surprised when the film flops, when the seats remain empty, and when your “nationalist” spectacle is remembered only as another insult. That is not a failure of the audience—it is a failure of intent.
About the Author
Mr. Snehangshu Majumdar, M.Sc., is a military heritage enthusiast and political analyst with a focus on the intersections of history, identity, and contemporary geopolitics. He is the founder of Gaudiya Warriors, a historical research think tank dedicated to exploring Bengalee military traditions, cultural legacies, and the political undercurrents shaping the region today.
