From Rajiv Gandhi to MGR: How OTT platforms are uncovering India's lesser-known political and freedom narratives

Time of India

3 days ago

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 strongmen-turned-icons.This 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.
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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.