As Nikkhil Advani’s series is accused of ‘whitewashing’ Partition, the backlash reveals how historical dramas in India are no longer judged on the basis of craft or research, but on ideological alignment
A week after the second season of Freedom at Midnight, one of the best historical series directed by Nikkhil Advani, premiered on SonyLiv, it has been pulled into a polarised debate over historical accuracy. Filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri, of all people, has accused the show ‘whitewashes’ history. Agnihotri’s specific charge against the adaptation of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’ classic account is that it soft-pedals the religious violence of Partition, refusing to draw the moral lines he believes history demands. The insistence that filmmakers must clearly identify perpetrators and victims has an implication: any portrayal that resists assigning collective blame to a single community is read as evasion, even betrayal, by the right-wing ecosystem.
While we have enough reason to take what the likes of Agnihotri have to say with generous doses, and not just a pinch, of salt, let us take a look at what the series is all about. The seven-episode drama chronicles the final, volatile months of British rule in India and the immediate aftermath of Independence and Partition in 1947, charting the negotiations, miscalculations, and moral exhaustion that Lapierre and Collins captured so vividly in their book. First published in 1975, Freedom at Midnight occupies a rarefied place in the literature of decolonisation. Described by Le Monde as “irreplaceable” and hailed by Time magazine as the “Song of India,” the book renders history as a series of almost pageant-like scenes rather than a static chronicle.
The discomfort with history
The first season of the seven-episode series, which released on November 15, 2024, interweaves high-level political parleys and ideological clashes involving Mahatma Gandhi (Chirag Vohra), Jawaharlal Nehru (Sidhant Gupta), Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (Rajendra Chawla), Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Arif Zakaria), Lord Mountbatten (Luke McGibney), and Cyril Radcliffe (Richard Teverson) with the human cost of Partition: mass migration, communal violence, and moral collapse. Beginning with the hurried drawing of borders and culminating in Gandhi’s last fast and assassination, Season 1 traces the birth of India and Pakistan, the refugee exodus in Punjab, and the Kashmir conflict.
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Season 2, which released on January 9, picks up from where Season 1 ended, shifting focus from the struggle for independence to the immense pressure on newly empowered leaders to steer a nation mired in one crisis or another. It depicts deepening rifts between key figures such as Nehru and Patel, Gandhi’s efforts (including his fast) to quell violence, negotiations over princely states, and the adoption of a Constitution in 1949 and reflections on Gandhi’s assassination as part of the trauma of the era. The series, like the book, presents Independence not as a triumphant endpoint but as a tragic and consequential moment in modern South Asian history, with the days that preceded it filled with fear, foreboding, confusion and bloodshed.
When it comes to historical dramas, there is a contradiction that the current political dispensation appears content to live with. On one hand, there is an assertive, state-backed effort to rewrite history; revising textbooks and glorifying figures like Savarkar whose contribution to the freedom movement has been questioned by historians, and reducing freedom movement into a distorted majoritarian narrative. On the other, there is swift outrage whenever a filmmaker or novelist presents a version of history that does not toe the line. The language deployed is that of “accuracy” and “truth,” but the demand seems to be closer to conformity.
A regime comfortable rewriting history to suit its agenda reacts with alarm when artists exercise the interpretive freedom it has denied historians. Nikhil Advani’s response, on the other hand, has been measured. He has asked critics to watch the series before judging it, and pointed out that disagreement is inevitable when dealing with history. The show, he argues, is grounded in extensive research and credible sources. Even Advani’s cautious defence acknowledges an uncomfortable reality: in today’s India, no amount of archival diligence can insulate a historical drama from present-day politics. Partition, which cleaved hearts, is a foundational trauma, a myth of origin through which rival visions of the nation continue to define themselves.
In the court of politics
However, the BJP is not alone in its discomfort with recorded history and its creative interpretation in films or series. Congress is equally to be blamed. The recent Tamil film Parasakthi, directed by Sudha Kongara, offers a parallel case. Revisiting the 1965 anti-Hindi imposition agitations in Tamil Nadu, the film has provoked demands for a ban from the Tamil Nadu Youth Congress, which alleges distortion of facts and misrepresentation of Congress leaders, including Indira Gandhi. Specific scenes—Hindi forms allegedly being made compulsory, episodes of state violence—have been singled out as fabrications.
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The film, which stars Sivakarthikeyan, Ravi Mohan, Atharvaa and Sreeleela, is being seen by political actors as a validation of contemporary anxieties around linguistic identity and federal autonomy. Endorsing the film, Kamal Haasan has described it as a “huge election anthem”. Thus, what troubles one constituency as ‘distortion’ reassures another as ‘overdue recognition’. The Central Board of Film Certification has increasingly been drawn into these tussles, with accusations that certification and scrutiny are being used to ‘discipline’ dissenting filmmakers. Whether or not one accepts the charge of ‘weaponisation,’ it is undeniable that films dealing with Partition, caste, language, or political movements face levels of protest and legal threat that go far beyond routine certification concerns.
The truth is India is living through a moment when history has been nationalised as a political instrument and being increasingly seen through the ideological lens. In such a climate, no historical series can expect to be judged solely on artistic or scholarly merit. Filmmakers today have no choice but to proceed with the understanding that any engagement with history will be read as taking one side or the other. Perhaps the only viable path forward is to accept that historical drama interprets the past; it does not pass final judgment. As for Freedom at Midnight, it merely adapts on screen a book that’s based on extensive written material, narrating incidents, of which there is plenty of proof. As for the fiction part in the series, it’s the creative liberty no filmmaker should be denied. Until public discourse learns to separate narrativisation from falsification, creative history in India will continue to be tried in the court of politics.
