I’m interested in The Rising now mostly out of the political engagement of Lagaan, a movie the first review of which I read took it to task for being startlingly anachronistic and ahistorical in terms of cricket. In my imagination, the anachronism of Lagaan serves to make a (heavy-handed) allegorical point about contemporary India/Pakistan and national unity. Perhaps The Rising will work similarly.

Quick. Name the person who was hanged along with Mangal Pandey.

quizman,
i don’t know the name, but the guy was the jemadar who refused to bring m. pandey to book.

Now why isn’t he famous? [Why aren't Sukhdev and Rajguru as famous as BS?] How do these things work?

I think it works in Lagaan much like it works in Sholay–the overriding theme is of unity against oppression, be it the British or bandits or whatever either signifies, perhaps separating forces, as in both movies are rather explicitly anti-chauvinist, after a fashion. I think even in Lagaan there is direct reference to a fist as being stronger when the fingers are united into one.

Only via imagination can I see the cultural backstory value of mangal pandey, but from what little I’ve read about him, nothing mentions anything about having an English soldier as a best friend (or however The Rising is going to make this work out). As a result, I imagine the politics might end up being very similar to Lagaan’s, even if that means revising the chauvinist story that’s already well-known.

But this is just my speculation.

now why wasn’t ishwari prasad famous?
maybe becuase the dude savarkar never wrote about him?
maybe because ishwari prasad is not as obviously a brahmin name as mangal pandey?
maybe becuase, as sepoy says, the moustache (always an important caste marker) didn’t curl upwards…

one of the coolest, in my estimation, rebels of 1857 was Bakht Khan, the soldier who wrested control of Delhi’s rebel forces away from the folhardy mughal princes by threatening to cut their ears off… but no one talks about him, do they?