Kesari 2 director Karan Singh Tyagi: ‘The youth must know they can't take their freedom for granted'

Indian Express

11-05-2025

Writer and director of the recently-released Kesari Chapter 2: The Untold Story of Jallianwala Bagh, Karan Singh Tyagi drew on his days as a lawyer to script this period courtroom drama. He studied at Mumbai's Government Law College before getting his postgraduate degree in law from Harvard University. The 39-year-old, also a media columnist, has scripted Bandish Bandits Season 2 and been the showrunner on the web series Kaalkoot as well.
At the panel discussion on the topic 'Old Ghost, New Generation, Portrayal of Colonial History in Indian Cinema and its Relevance', hosted by the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES 2025) in collaboration with SCREEN, he spoke about Kesari Chapter 2, adapting it from a book on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and why young people should watch it.
Take us through your journey from being a lawyer to directing and co-writing a courtroom drama.
They say one can't outrun their destiny, and mine was sealed in 1985. In fact, even before I was born. My parents were movie buffs and my mother went to watch a film with my father when she was pregnant. That was Meri Jung, a courtroom drama directed by Subhash Ghai. Just as Mahabharata's Abhimanyu learned about warfare from his mother's womb, I learnt the intricacies of both court and movies from mine.
What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
The inspiration was movies. I grew up on the cinema of the '90s. I loved Rajkumar Santoshi's Ghayal, Ghatak, Damini, which were about societal injustice.
I come from a middle-class family where education is given priority. So my parents insisted that I finish my legal education and take up a job. But I knew that one day Bollywood would call me and I (finally) summoned the courage. I told my New York law firm partner that I wanted to take a sabbatical, travel to Mumbai and try my hand at filmmaking. When I came here, I was lucky to meet people like Amritpal Singh Bindra, founder of Leo Media Collective. He co-wrote the story with me and went on to produce the film along with Dharma Productions.
If a Harvard student could find time to watch masala films from the '90s, that speaks volumes of the soft power of Indian cinema.
My outlet during my law school days was Indian cinema. I remember walking for two kilometres in the snow to catch a show of My Name is Khan. And I, in fact, got my entire class to watch that movie.
But why were you drawn to this particular episode in Indian history — the Jallianwala Bagh massacre?
The trigger point was a book I read — The Case That Shook the Empire: One Man's Fight for the Truth about the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre (2019). We all know that General Dyer came and fired upon innocent people, but the book threw up some interesting insights. It said that everything was premeditated. Also the fact that a man called Sankaran Nair, who started out as a lawyer for the British Empire, fought a case to uncover the truth. When I read this, I knew that we had a story that needed to be told.
As a filmmaker, what is your primary concern when you are taking up such a project?
The concern was that the movie has to be engaging and entertaining. Which is why we compressed a courtroom trial that went on for months into a two-hour narrative. When we did that, we had to compress timelines, we had to create drama, we had to create interpersonal dynamics.
How do you balance fact with drama? Because it's not a documentary, it's a feature film.
So one of my screenwriting heroes, Aaron Sorkin, has said that movies on real-life events and real-life people need not be photographs. They can be paintings. Because a photograph is an accurate representation of that period but in a painting, one gets more freedom, more latitude to create drama. Our goal was that the country needed to know about Nair. And in order to do that, we also had the family's blessings with us because the book that we were adapting is written by Nair's great-grandson Raghu Palat. So we went on to create a transformational arc for the character by understanding insights from his life — where Nair goes from a point of being a British aristocrat, somebody who was knighted, to becoming the country's biggest patriot. At the same time, we were mindful that we were not deviating from the factual realities of Jallianwala Bagh. But what we did was that we transformed a defamation suit into a genocide trial because to counter defamation, you need to prove the truth of what happened. The movie essentially became about why what happened at Jallianwala Bagh was a conspiracy.
Also Read | Kesari Chapter 2 Movie Review: Akshay Kumar stars in a film of its time, for its time, with dollops of patriotic fervour
What I find fascinating is that you are telling us a story which happened a century ago, but your audience is fairly young. So did that play on your mind while writing and directing the film?
We wanted our film to appeal to a contemporary young audience as well. Which is why, we had the character of Dilreet Gill, who was a young lawyer of that time. We wanted the young people of the country to understand that they cannot take their freedom for granted; that the freedom that we are living in today is a result of sacrifices made by innumerable people. We wanted the film to appeal to a young audience. Even in our teaser, we have used a four-letter word and the idea behind that abuse was that we wanted it to be reflective of young India's mindset. A young India, which is aggressive and strong, and which does not hesitate to look the oppressor in the eye and hold them accountable. So yes, we were intentionally appealing to the young generation.
Would you make another historical period drama?
I would really like to. I want to tell human dramas and I'm drawn to history. There are numerous instances in the past that I feel should be documented. So given a chance, I would really love to make another historical drama.
Any specific episode from history?
I absolutely love reading about the 1857 revolt, which was the first war of independence. I feel that it is a fascinating portrait of our history, which can be documented on the screen beautifully. I'm also drawn to Dr BR Ambedkar and his inspiring story.
Also Read | Even as Akshay Kumar's Kesari Chapter 2 shows an imagined past, it ends up confronting the present
As a filmmaker, do you feel a certain responsibility when you are telling such a story?
In this case, we were documenting Jallianwala Bagh and we had to be sensitive and authentic to the people who lost their lives. An added responsibility was because we were documenting the life of Sankaran Nair, which is why we adapted a book written by his family. We had the family read the script. So that responsibility is always there when you are documenting history. But that has to be balanced with making the film engaging and making it appeal to a wide audience.