Whether Freedom At Midnight 2 has a political agenda, a bias or two will be read into it, depending on the affiliation of who is watching, notes Deepa Gahlot.
The first season of Freedom At Midnight, based on the book by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, was about the backroom discussions and raging arguments by Indian leaders, for independence from British rule.
The season ended with the signing of the transfer of power, prepared by senior civil servant V P Menon (K C Shankar).
The second season, again directed by Nikkhil Advani, covers Partition and its horrific aftermath, the quelling of the rebellious stance of the various maharajas and nawabs, who see their privileges receding, the mass exodus of people following Partition, and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
Freedom was attained, at a very heavy cost.
In this part of the story, Mahatma Gandhi, who was opposed to the Partition of the country, is sidelined, while Jawaharlal Nehru (Sidhant Gupta) and Vallabhbhai Patel (Rajendra Chawla) lock horns with a recalcitrant Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Arif Zakaria).
The unlikely hero here is Lord Mountbatten (Like McGibney), who has to rein in the 'savages'.
He first gets a clueless Cyril Radcliffe (Richard Teverson), who protests that he is a lawyer with no knowledge of geography, to draw the border, and is then aghast at the bloodbath that results.
The scenes of killing and piling of bodies are difficult to watch on screen, even though the victims suffered worse brutality.
Jinnah is absolutely inflexible, whether it is over the naming of the two countries, or the post of governor general, which he refuses to concede to Mountbatten. He is in a hurry to get a Muslim slice (or slices, considering East Pakistan) because he has a terminal illness. He did, in fact, die in 1948, soon after Partition.
As violence breaks out in Punjab and Bengal, Nehru, Patel and Gandhi try to douse the flames of hatred, while Jinnah merely looks on, gimlet-eyed, puffing on his pipe, coughing, and rebuking Liaquat Ali (Rajesh Singh) as his machinations destroy lives and homes. His sister Fatima (Ira Dubey) hovers around tending to him.
The princely states eventually sign the accession letters, after a bitter tug-of-war over Muslim and Hindu dominated territories.
The most contentious is Kashmir, with a Hindu ruler, Hari Singh (Kaizaad Kotwal) and a Muslim majority population.
Pakistan sends its army disguised as tribals to encroach on Kashmiri land, and as Indian soldiers are massacred in inhospitable terrain and terrible weather conditions, even as they keep the invaders out, Nehru calls for the UN to intervene.
The consequences of the political action then, are being felt till today.
Some of the run time in the seven-part episodes -- using real footage interspersed in between -- are devoted to the suffering of the people.
Madal Pahwa (Anurag Thakur), who lost everything during Partition attempts an unsuccessful assassination of Gandhi, while another man in Bengal (Abhishek Banerjee), on a killing spree to avenge the brutal murder of his pregnant wife, throws down his arms before a frail Gandhi.
Seen from today's point of view, with various stories and theories floating around, Nehru is seen as an immature leader, prone to tantrums, while a pragmatic Patel does what it takes to keep India's interests in mind.
Jinnah has no redeeming features at all, while Gandhi is portrayed as naively idealistic, going on fasts unto the death to give Pakistanis their financial due ('so that they buy arms and attack us,' exclaims a fed-up Patel). His obduracy eventually forces various factions to sign, but the last fast is shown in excruciating detail.
Ashutosh Phatak's background score is relentless, as if the audience needed constant prodding to react correctly to historical gaffes and glories on display.
The production design is wonderful, the magnificent interiors a sight to behold, and so are the period costumes
Abhinandan Gupta's adaptation of the book, which has been scripted by a large team of writers, packs in a lot, yet seems long drawn, perhaps because some episodes are given more time and attention.
Chirag Vohra has worked hard to play Gandhi, despite the awkward prosthetics.
Nehru has a balding head, but the taut skin of a young man.
Only Arif Zakaria's hawkish Jinnah and Rajendra Chawla's plain-speaking Patel look right.
Whether the series has a political agenda, a bias or two will be read into it, depending on the affiliation of who is watching.
What it should, and does emphasise, however, is learning from past mistakes and not repeating them.
Early on in the series, a newly-designed Indian tricolour is unfurled, and it is clarified that the colours do not stand for various religions.
Freedom At Midnight 2 streams on SonyLIV.
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