Latest news with #RajivGandhi
News18
3 days ago
- Politics
- News18
'My Mother's Tears...': Priyanka Gandhi Responds To Amit Shah's Sonia Gandhi Barb
Last Updated: Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi said her mother cried when terrorists killed her father, Rajiv Gandhi, and it is how she understands the pain of the Pahalgam terror attack victims Taking on Union Home Minister Amit Shah in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said he has talked about Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and even her mother's tears but did not answer 'why the war" against Pakistan was halted. In a fiery speech during the ongoing monsoon session of Parliament, Priyanka spoke about her 'mother's tears" as mentioned by Shah, who claimed that the former Congress president 'cried for the Batla House terrorists". Going into combative mode, she said her mother cried when terrorists killed her father, Rajiv Gandhi, and it is how she understands the pain of those who had lost loved ones in the Pahalgam terror attack. 'My mother's tears were talked about in the House, I want to answer this. My mother's tears fell when her husband was martyred by terrorists, when she was only 44-years-old. Today, I am standing in this House and talking about those 26 people (who were killed in Pahalgam) because I know their pain and feel it," Priyanka said responding to Shah's remarks earlier in the day when he cited then Union minister Salman Khurshid's remarks to make the claim about Sonia Gandhi. Speaking further during the debate on Operation Sindoor she launched a full-blown attack on the central government over 'lapses" that led to the Pahalgam attack. She took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying leadership is not just about taking credit but also taking responsibility. Participating in a special discussion in Lok Sabha on 'India's strong, successful and decisive Operation Sindoor in response to the terror attack in Pahalgam", Priyanka Gandhi said that if no aircraft had been downed during Operation Sindoor then what is the problem in stating this in Parliament. view comments First Published: Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Indian Express
3 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
July 29, 1985, Forty Years Ago: Punjab Elections
THE PUNJAB GOVERNOR, Arjun Singh, said elections in the state were in the offing. When asked whether the atmosphere was ripe for elections, after the widely hailed accord for Punjab, he said that the word 'atmosphere' was vague. The elections would depend on the 'totality of circumstances' in the state. AISSF Talks Almost all members of the All-India Sikh Students Federation who are not facing charges of violence or waging a war against the government may be released soon. The government is considering their cases. Following the agreement between Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Akali Dal chief Harchand Singh Longowal, the release of all such persons will help the Akali leadership in pacifying the youth and also in implementing the accord. Former CM Parkash Singh Badal and SGPC chief G S Tohra had objected to the accord on multiple grounds. Looting in Kampala The new military rulers of Uganda on Sunday suspended the constitution, dissolved Parliament, closed the borders and warned civilians to remain indoors as looting intensified in the capital. There was no estimate of the monetary loss. Several shops of Asians have also been affected. J&K CM Summoned A change of government in Jammu and Kashmir appears to be in the offing. The Chief Minister, G M Shah has been summoned to Delhi along with his wife, Khalida Shah, president of the NC(K). According to circles close to the ruling party, the Chief Minister has been summoned by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to apprise him about the views of Congress (I) MLAs who have been openly demanding withdrawal of support to Shah's government.
Indian Express
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Nagesh Kukunoor at Idea Exchange: ‘The climate has lent itself to many lawsuits, making it more terrifying for filmmakers'
Filmmaker Nagesh Kukunoor on his recent series The Hunt- The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case, keeping it apolitical and why we haven't cracked the true underdog sports story. The sesion was moderated by Alaka Sahani, Associate Editor, The Indian Express. Alaka Sahani: You have managed to keep your new web series — The Hunt- The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case — quite apolitical, given that it follows the investigation after former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was killed in a gruesome manner. How did you decide on its tone and treatment? I've always been clear about avoiding politics and religion. It's one of those areas where you're absolutely going to upset someone. It really doesn't matter how objective you try to be. What excited me about The Hunt was the investigation. I was around when the assassination happened and understood snatches of it. However, reading Anirudhya Mitra's book (Ninety Days: The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi's Assassins) and realising what had really happened in those 90 days were two completely different things. When I read it, my mind was blown. The hunt itself was so interesting for me that I kind of saw the path forward, to not touch upon any political angles. It starts with a political assassination and people assume that the rest of it is a political show, but it's mainly the assassination. After the show came out, I just kept my fingers crossed for the first two weeks. We're not out of the woods yet but hoping that everything will go smoothly. Alaka Sahani: You had your primary source material in the form of a book. But what kind of research and filtering process went into it? I co-wrote it with two other writers, and when you have a book that you base everything on — and this is also for legal purposes — you do whatever the requisite research is. You read the articles, some of the SIT members themselves have written books. There are multiple and differing viewpoints. So it became apparent after gathering all the material that we wanted to pick one and run with it. And that was the book. However, what's interesting, and this was also the reason that attracted me to the project, was that I have never adapted a book before. The most amazing sequences that play out on screen will sometimes be a single line in the book. To pick the events that actually tell the story, to make it cohesive, because when you undertake the largest manhunt in history, it's not as simple as what's shown in the show. People are telling me, 'oh, it's such a thriller'. That's because we made it like that. In reality, no investigation ever plays out like that. Sandeep Singh: Were you looking for a theme for a series or did you decide on it after you read the book? Anirudhya Mitra brought the material to Sameer Nair, who heads Applause Entertainment (production company). Sameer asked him to write a book so that we can adapt it. Once the book was written, that's when he pitched it to me. It was a series from the get-go. For the past seven years, I've just been almost entirely in the series space. Gone are the days when you would look at something and say, 'Oh God! This is so dense, how do I condense it in two hours?' And now that this stress is out of the window, the only question is monetary viability. Way before streaming came to India, I'd been trying to pitch myself as a series director in the US. I've been an HBO fan and long format was something I was just waiting for. Feature films are awesome, but up to this point, it has been gratifying to do stuff in the long format. Mohamed Thaver: Towards the end of the series, there are certain things which are not directly said, perhaps hinting at something. Does the book also leave things open-ended or have you made some changes? We have made a couple of changes because there are so many theories floating around. So, one had to kind of maybe suggest and kind of leave it open-ended. So, that's what we did. In the case of a true crime, the moment you take it from the page to a dramatic format, the kind of liberties you have to take… So every small thing, including the words that come out of the character's mouth, makes me think: are we doing right by them? It arguably was the most stressful thing. And I don't mean for being sued or creating a controversy. It's me as a writer and a filmmaker; I want to do right by whoever I'm portraying. In my world, there is seldom any black and white, it is all grey. Even when I deal with the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), it's dealt with so much humanity. There's never any finger pointing because as one of the characters says: 'One man's terrorist is another man's hero. Mihir Vasavda: Be it the LTTE side, the political side or the security establishment — how do you make a series without hurting any one of them? I don't know what that answer is but when we were writing it, more than anything else, we were absolutely paying attention to the fact that there would not be any misrepresentation. Taking liberties can be interpreted as misrepresentation. But it's trying to just do the best that you can. Since it's been out, that's been my only stress. It was arguably the most exciting project I've done. But just constantly hoping that you haven't upset anyone… You can say the most meaningful of things in ways that don't offend people, as opposed to doing it in a way that's in your face and getting your point across. And it's genuinely the way I view the world. It doesn't take effort for me to write lines a certain way. Mihir Vasavda: Is it tougher to make these kind of shows or movies now compared to 15 years ago? It is a hypersensitive world and people can come at you from any angle. When I made Hyderabad Blues (1998), the censor board gave me 91 cuts. It was one of the most torturous processes to get the film to the theatre. So, I'm not new to this kind of milieu. There the gatekeepers were defined. So I knew that when I was going up before the censor board, such and such thing would happen. The Anand Patwardhans of the world were also on a parallel track with me. He was doing his own stuff and I would constantly look and say: 'Man, I could never do that'. I still write within this space and this is how I do it. In today's times, everything is so amped up. So yes, you really don't know what's going to happen and how. The biggest threat to our existence is social media. In 2019, I just disconnected everything and went off the radar. Alaka Sahani: What was in your mind while shooting the Rajiv Gandhi assassination scene? How did you want to portray him? I wanted to show him the way we've seen him in rallies, but arguably that was the most disturbing part of the shoot because you knew that you're portraying a horrific, grizzly scene. So, I tried to handle it with the maximum sensitivity because the whole thing is told from the child's point of view and we don't see anything. And we see very little of the aftermath other than the shoe. I think that was the one scene when you're actually doing the nitty gritties. But at the back of my mind, that was weighing a little bit saying that this is how he went. Alok Deshpande: Could you elaborate on casting for The Hunt. Also, how has OTT changed the casting game? What we understand as casting has changed because of the OTT space. Prior to that, if I had to justify a cast like this to a platform and talk about what the marketability would be and who brings poster value — it would have been virtually impossible. But now, when I clearly sort of lay out my plan, no one baulks. Here, the guiding force was clearly the fact that we had to get people who at least looked like the characters they were portraying. Casting Bay handled this show. They dug around and absolutely found them. Zeeshan Shaikh: Based on the research you did, what is your analysis of the actual assassination? For an organisation that was so secretive, LTTE really went out of its way — they clicked those pictures which showed their involvement in the assassination. They didn't take credit. But the justification was that everything that they did, they documented as proof to show that they could pull off the most audacious things. For example, when they ran a trial run with VP Singh, they had a bunch of different people recording but they followed the same format. Dhanu had a garland and went all the way to VP Singh and garlanded him, which is what's shown there. They wanted to take it back to Prabhakaran and prove to him that they could get all the way to the top. It was brilliant in its conception. They did the same thing here (Gandhi's assassination). Physics played a small part in it otherwise they would have gotten away with the perfect crime. The photographer wanted a slightly better angle and he raises the camera and that's a little bit above the blast radius and the camera survives. Zeeshan Shaikh: At a time, when there are so many filmmakers and artists complaining about their freedom of expression being repressed, did you feel the pinch of what has been happening around you while making The Hunt? If I were to go to my previous shows and tell you the kind of minute changes that one has to make because someone else might be pissed off. Not related to any political space, but a community might take umbrage. So it's everywhere. It's political, it's religious, it's caste-based, everything is no no. You can make a sweet love story set in some small town and I guarantee someone can sue you even there. It's the times we live in. That's the reality of what we do. Alaka Sahani: What kind of vetting did The Hunt undergo? It went through the same that every show does. Every small line, every explanation. The vetting process had been going on for a very long time. It's not something that just happened. Because the climate has lent itself to a lot of lawsuits, it's far more terrifying for filmmakers. Sandeep Singh: We are living in tough times where we have to be careful of what we are seeing and depicting. What do you think has changed? Social media. That is the root of all evil. I don't need to know everyone's opinion, but everyone has an opinion. Let's say you are in an airport and someone recognises you. There are beautiful pluses to that and there are minuses to that. Why would you walk up to a filmmaker and say that the film you made was really bad. What do you hope to achieve with that and what do you think the filmmaker is going to say? You pour your heart and soul into it. The last thing you need is someone walking up to you and saying… it's like, if I walked up to you with your child and say, 'that's one ugly child'. Tell me which parent is going to be like 'you are right, this is a ugly child'. If you have something nice to say to someone who's made a film, say something nice. The last review I read was in 2006. So, I really don't care much for reviews either. With social media, the hate floats to the top and that's what sticks. I have no desire to constantly engage with that. None. Mihir Vasavda: Why haven't we cracked the true sports underdog stories in India? The problem is that in order to reach a larger audience, two things happen. First, you have to get a star. You've destroyed the story there. If you don't worry about the way the person looked and you brought a star, I understand what the filmmakers are doing. Then to justify that star, you need to make it bigger and bigger. Let's say you whittled it down and made it like a three-five crore film. You tell me who is going to see it. Where are you going to show it? Then you have to circle back around to the fact that you have to get at least a B-list star. Our movie universe setup is not equipped to deal with this. That's not going to change. Mohamed Thaver: What prompted you to write and direct to Iqbal? Someone wanted a bunch of us to write short stories to commemorate former President Abdul Kalam's second term in office. I wanted to tell an underdog story. So I had an idea about a deaf and non-speaking kid who excels in malkhamb. I started writing the short story and it was only supposed to be like 10 pages. Seven went in describing what malkhamb was. So then, when I flipped it to cricket, all you had to say was Iqbal wanted to play cricket and you're done. I wrote a short story. A lot of people thought it was a movie about cricket and it wasn't. It never was. The heart and soul was about someone with a disability and overcoming it. This is a classic underdog tale. Alaka Sahani: Is it possible to make more top grossers like Pushpa? If it weren't for the big films, half the industry would not function. The success keeps people employed. There is a certain level of excitement to walk into a theater and watch something on that scale. But that can't be the only thing on offer. With OTT, the world has just become a smaller place. I had written a sci-fi film in 2000 and people kind of laughed. Now I can pitch the same. They might still say, 'we're not going to give you Rs 500 crore to make it' but that is a different conversation. Zeeshan Shaikh: Your film Dor is an official remake of a Malayalam film. What is the creative freedom in recreating art that has already been created by someone? There's not just one way to tell a story, right? I was on a jury and I saw Perumazhakkalam (2004), a Malayalam film. Both this movie and Dor are based on the same original idea about a woman losing her husband. I loved the idea. But TA Razzaq, the story writer and producer, got there first. So I had to go and get the rights from him and then make it. But if you look at Perumazhakkalam and Dor, there is absolutely nothing in common. Not the lensing, not the way the story is told. Sometimes the core idea appeals to you and you say, 'I bet I could tell the story differently'. I did it once again with a movie in 2011 called Mod with Ayesha Takia and Rannvijay Singh. It was based on a Taiwanese film called The Moment in Time that I watched at a festival. Suanshu Khurana: With so many big budget films with big stars not working in recent times in Hindi cinema, how do you see the uncertainty in the film industry? Does it need a fresh perspective? Is that what's happening? There's always a need to put things in a larger context and try and make sense of it. You have some hits, you have some losses. If we look back at the cinema that happened 50 years ago, it was driven by whatever stories were told at that point. So I don't know if just Hindi films aren't working or if now there's a larger scope for other languages to dub and then occupy what is known as the Hindi cinema space. Even when we couldn't raise money for a single film, I had this pig-headed approach that if you try hard enough, someone will give you that money and then eventually the movies would get made. Maybe this is just the lower part of the cycle and again there'll be two or three hits and again it'll come back up again. Zeeshan Shaikh: Did you get a call from DR Karthikeyan (who headed the SIT) after The Hunt was released? He has an alternative version of how things unfold. Sivarasan (the mastermind of the operation) is an important character with an interesting backstory. Is he someone you'd want to flesh out in another version? The answer is no to both. But characters who have a lot to lose are always interesting to write. Given everything, it was great fun writing Sivarasan. Then getting someone like Shafeeq Mustafa for the role. Shafeeq does the first audition and what I remember most is, he takes a drag and holds the cigarette and his hand shakes. I just loved it. That was one of the ways I saw Sivarasan. I wanted that nervous energy. The way Shafeeq walks, that's Sivarasan. I didn't have to structure that walk. Again, these are all the joyous parts of fleshing things out. So no, I would not be interested in doing anything larger.
The Hindu
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Hindu
TNCC to recognise people who worked for marginalised people
TNCC president K. Selvaperunthagai on Saturday said that Tamil Nadu Congress Charitable trust will recognise people who have dedicated their lives for the upliftment of marginalised people, society and the country with a Lifetime Achievement Award. The ceremony will take place on former Congress president and Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi's birth anniversary on August 20. Making the announcement, he said that the awardees will be selected based on recommendation by a committee. 'The jury will be headed by former High Court Chief justice, Manikumar, and Dr. Sowmya Swaminathan and news anchor M. Gunasekaran will be part of the jury. 'To support their efforts, I will act as the president of the committee along with Congress leader, K. Krishnasamy, K.V. Thangkabalu, Thirunavukkarasar, former TNCC president, K.S. Alagiri, Sudarsana Nachiappan, Congress Legislative Party leader, Rajesh Kumar, will be deputy president of the committee. The awardees will be given a cash prize of Rs. 1 lakh,' said Mr. Selvaperunthagai. There will be a total of seven awards given in the name of tallest Indian leaders - Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, K. Kamaraj, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. 'We have planned to invite Congress president Mallikarjuna Kharge and Rahul Gandhi for the awards ceremony,' he said. Protest against PM Furthermore, Mr. Selvaperunthagai said that TNCC cadre will protest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi by showing black flags in every district he visits in Tamil Nadu. 'Prime Minister Narendra Modi is refusing to release the funds meant for the school education department. He is consistently acting in a way that goes against the welfare of the State. In protest, black flags will be shown in respective districts by district congress committees,' he said.
Time of India
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
From Rajiv Gandhi to MGR: How OTT platforms are uncovering India's lesser-known political and freedom narratives
In recent years, Indian storytelling has witnessed a seismic shift in how it approaches its political past. No longer confined to history books or state-approved documentaries, stories of the nation's struggle for freedom and democracy are now being retold with cinematic richness — and, more importantly, with complexity and nuance. Thanks to the rise of Over-the-Top (OTT) platforms, Indian filmmakers finally have the time, space, and creative freedom to delve into lesser-known or politically sensitive historical chapters. These include not just the independence movement or Partition, but also the lives of revolutionaries, assassinations of political leaders and regional evolution is redefining how Indians — especially younger generations — engage with history. The Hunt: Revisiting the Rajiv Gandhi Assassination One of the most compelling examples in this emerging genre is the recently released series The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case by Nagesh Kukunor . The show revisits one of the darkest and most controversial chapters in post-independence India: the 1991 assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by an LTTE suicide bomber. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Brother Donates Kidney To Save Sister's Life. One Year Later, He Says, I Wish I Never Did It, When This Happens Articles Vally Undo What sets The Hunt apart is its investigative thriller approach. It goes beyond just the moment of the attack to explore the tangled web of politics, insurgency, intelligence lapses, and international relations that led up to it. By focusing on the detailed investigation — including the hunt for the conspirators and the role of Indian agencies — the series sheds light on the broader geopolitical context of India's involvement in Sri Lanka's civil war, as well as the internal contradictions in Indian politics at the time. A Parallel Movement: Revolutionaries and Forgotten Fighters At the other end of the political-history spectrum is the upcoming series The Revolutionaries, based on Sanjeev Sanyal's acclaimed book Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom by NIkkhil Advani. The show resurrects a cohort of firebrand nationalists who fought colonial oppression not with nonviolence, but with radical activism and armed resistance. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Aurobindo Ghosh, Bagha Jatin, Rashbehari Bose, Sachindra Nath Sanyal, Chandrashekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, and Subhas Chandra Bose — their stories offer a dramatically different view of India's freedom struggle. The series, in development for an OTT platform, aims to balance the mainstream Gandhian narrative by spotlighting the ideological diversity within the independence movement. This marks a vital shift: instead of placing historical figures on pedestals, filmmakers now treat them as complex individuals with conflicting motivations, doubts, and flaws — which only makes their contributions more human and powerful. Political Cinema Gets Bold Similarly, Ram Madhvani's An Awakening of the Nation revisits the Jallianwala Bagh massacre through a dramatized lens, offering a deeply personal account of one of the most brutal acts of British repression. Partition, one of the most traumatic events in South Asian history, continues to echo in collective memory. Nikkhil Advani's Freedom at Midnight , adapted from the celebrated book by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, dramatizes the power politics and human stories behind India's independence and division. Mayasabha: The Politics of Performance in Tamil Nadu Not all political stories are rooted in Delhi or the freedom struggle. Mayasabha, an ambitious series inspired by the intertwined lives of M.G. Ramachandran , M. Karunanidhi, and J. Jayalalithaa, charts the unique overlap of cinema and politics in Tamil Nadu. These towering figures weren't just politicians — they were actors, scriptwriters, and cultural icons who used the screen to shape ideologies. The show explores how power, performance, and populism collided in a state where the line between reel and real was often deliberately blurred. Why OTT Works for Political History OTT platforms are rewriting the rules of engagement with Indian history. Unlike mainstream cinema, which often demands commercial compromise, streaming services offer a safer creative space. Long-form storytelling lets creators go beyond headlines, capturing the grey zones, ideological conflicts, and unspeakable horrors that defined India's political past. Conclusion: Streaming the Nation's Memory India's political history is no longer confined to museums and memorials. Thanks to a new generation of creators and streaming platforms willing to take risks, history is finally being dramatized with all its contradictions, horrors, and humanity intact. From The Hunt to The Revolutionaries to Mayasabha, to Freedom at Midnight OTT platforms are ensuring that stories long buried are finally being told. Not with reverence, but with realism. Not as myth, but as memory. And that may be the most revolutionary act of all.
