Rating: 3 / 5Director Rajkumar Santoshi is one of the chief architects of Sunny Deol’s he-man image: he is the man behind Ghayal and Damini, the latter of which produced both of Deol’s most famous bits of dialogue-baazi: ‘taareekh par taareekh’ and ‘dhai kilo ka haath’. Over three decades later, the two have reunited for Batwara 1947, in which Deol is once again the all-powerful man of strength. 'Batwara 1947'—A Partition Saga That Tugs at Hubris Shielded by Lapse of ReasonSunny Deol, the HeroUnlike Bollywood heroes of successive generations, the Deol hero (here named Sikandar Mirza) has no cause to shed his shirt or flex his muscles; he doesn’t haunt clubs or woo women. All he has are his words and his hands—and both are equally eloquent. Always in the right place at the right time, Mirza battles men carrying swords and lathis with just his bare hands. He is a man of the soil, a pious Muslim, and he is never shown to carry, pick up or wield arms. Blows may be rained down on him, but they can never cow him.And he is given just as much time to use his words to silence his enemies (led by the vigilante Yaqoob, played with ferocious evil by Abhimanyu Singh). Written by Santoshi and Asghar Wajahat (on whose play the film is based), the dialogues simmer with old-fashioned secularism and piercing turns of phrase. ‘Badmaashon se zyaada khatarnaak shareef logon ki khaamoshi hai!’ Mirza declares at one point, decrying the bystanders who watch as violence is unleashed. In another scene, he avers, ‘Har insaan ka pehla mazhab maa hai.’ Every person’s first religion is their mother.The Mother FigureAnd of course, there is a mother figure here. Durgavati (Shabana Azmi, who is lovely), known to all as Maai, is the Hindu owner of a haveli in Lahore when India is partitioned in 1947. The Muslim Mirza and his family, forced by rabid Hindu mobs to flee across the new border from Meerut to Lahore, are allotted Durgavati’s haveli. On arrival there, they find Durgavati haunting the upper floor wraith-like, crying that she will not abandon her home until her son returns to her. Her son has been killed by rabid Muslim mobs, but she is unaware of this.Thus begins the battle in Batwara 1947—as the moderate Mirza family seeks to protect Durgavati, Yaqoob and his fundamentalist goons seek to either kill her or pack her off to India. Set almost entirely in Lahore, the film seeks to display a further nuance to the meaning of the title. Partition happened not simply between two countries but also within each religion. The bloodthirsty Muslims of Lahore are matched by the bloodthirsty Hindu and Sikhs of Meerut, some of whom kill Mirza’s extended family. And the moderate Muslims, such as Mirza and his family, are matched by moderate Hindus like Durgavati. Indeed, Durgavati is shown to overflow with kindness even in moments of confrontation and distress. When Mirza first finds her hiding in her upstairs bedroom and she refuses to leave, he declares that he will go back to the custodian office and demand that they remove Durgavati. The old woman tells him, since he is a newcomer to Lahore, to haggle with his tongawallah on his way there: he shouldn’t pay more than two annas for his ride.Meanwhile, the Mirzas begin to warm up to Durgavati as well. Mirza’s daughter Tanno (Khushi Hajare) calls her Dadima, which melts her heart, and eventually Mirza’s wife Hameeda (Preity Zinta) begins cooking vegetarian food in separate vessels for her. It is Mirza with whom Durgavati forms the strongest bond, though, since he comes to stand in for the son she has lost. In a late scene, Mirza even says, ‘Vo meri maa jaisi naheen hai, vo meri maa hai.’ She is his mother. ‘Main Vaapas Aaunga’ Review: Imtiaz Ali’s Flawed but Affecting Partition StoryA Predictable, Male-Dominated ScreenplayThe film’s intentions, of course, are honourable but things in Batwara 1947 move along predictable routes. Every conflict veers towards its foreseeable resolution. Mirza’s son Javed (a very callow Karan Deol), the only witness to the Hindu savagery that killed their extended family, aligns himself with the Muslim hardliners against his father and Durgavati. But in Yaqoob’s house, Javed befriends Yaqoob’s moderate sister, Nishaat (Kanikka Kapur), and of course you can tell where his track will end up.Every major decision is taken by men—Hameeda even makes a joking reference to this at one point: after all, this is how their society is. But as a result, the film itself sidelines its women or jostles them around. Durgavati’s resolve drives the film’s conflict, but ultimately her fate is down to whether she is dragged away by Yaqoob’s henchmen or lucky enough that Mirza materialises to save her. Meanwhile, Hameeda and Tanno are reduced to clutching each other and crying. Zinta makes a screen comeback after eight years and she gets a few good lines (such as when she both praises her son for his independence and condemns him for his outlook), but mostly she is wasted in a role that is little more than ornamental. We, The Partitioned: 'Main Vaapas Aaunga' and the Trauma We InheritedA Poet and MusicAli Fazal, in a special appearance as a poet named Habib Anwar, gets a role that is surprising. A moderate, literate Muslim, Habib functions as the Mirzas’ fairy godmother of sorts, arriving almost with the swish of a wand to allay their worries, impart lessons of communal harmony and smooth things over with a smile. He also gets the film’s best song, ‘Tabassum’.I must add, though, that one of Santoshi’s biggest crimes is shortchanging the team of AR Rahman and Javed Akhtar. This exalted pairing of composer and lyricist—the men behind soundtracks like Lagaan, Swades, Zubeidaa and Jodhaa Akbar—reunites after ten years, but their songs are not given major play. ‘Tabassum’ is cruelly cut short and only the plaintive aarti ‘Kahaan Chale Gaye Ho Ram’ is played in the foreground in full.Despite the absence of songs, though, the background score reliably props up the film’s proud melodrama. The emotions here are big, the characters are broad, the screams are loud—but they are never overblown or creaky. Led by two massively watchable performances from Shabana Azmi and Sunny Deol and coming from the house of producer Aamir Khan, an actor who has always trusted the marriage of old-school storytelling and contemporary politics (Lagaan, Rang De Basanti and even Laal Singh Chaddha are good examples), Batwara 1947has a sweet beating heart that tells a tale of communal harmony, found family, peace, brotherhood and love.‘Islam aman ka mazhab hai,’ Mirza pleads: Islam is a religion of peace. These gentle sentiments may not have much place in our movies anymore—and certainly not in our politics!—but they serve as a useful reminder today, around the Independence Days of both Pakistan and India.(Sahir Avik D'souza is a writer based in Mumbai. His work has been published by Film Companion, TimeOut, The Indian Express and EPW. He is an editorial assistant at Marg magazine.)