Rang De Basanti () is a 2006 Indian Hindi-language historical drama film written, directed, and co-produced by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra. The film stars an ensemble cast of Aamir Khan, Siddharth (in his Hindi debut), Sharman Joshi, Kunal Kapoor, Atul Kulkarni, Soha Ali Khan, Alice Patten (in her Hindi debut),and R. Madhavan with Waheeda Rehman, Anupam Kher, Kirron Kher, and Om Puri appear in supporting roles.
It follows a British film student traveling to India to document the story of five freedom fighters of the Indian revolutionary movement. She befriends and casts five young men in the film, which inspires them to fight against the injustices of their present-day government.
Shot primarily in New Delhi, Rang De Basanti was released worldwide on 26 January 2006. Upon release, the film broke all opening box office records in India, becoming the country's highest-grossing film in its opening weekend and holding the highest opening-day collections for a Hindi film. It eventually became the seventh highest grossing Hindi film of 2006. It received critical acclaim, winning the National Film Award for Best Popular Film, and being nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2007 BAFTA Awards. The film was chosen as India's official entry for the Golden Globe Awards and the Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category, though it did not ultimately yield a nomination for either award. A. R. Rahman's soundtrack, which earned positive reviews, had two of its tracks considered for an Academy Award nomination.
Plot In London, film student Sue McKinley discovers the diary of her grandfather, James, who served as a British Army colonel in the 1930s. James oversaw the execution of Indian freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar, and Shivaram Rajguru at Lahore Jail, yet his diary reveals a secret, profound admiration for their revolutionary spirit. Inspired by their story, Sue travels to India to produce a documentary film about the revolutionaries. She enlists the help of her local friend Sonia, an international studies student at the University of Delhi. After a series of failed auditions, Sue encounters Sonia's circle of friends—Daljit "DJ" Singh, Karan Singhania, Sukhi Ram, and Aslam Khan. Recognizing their raw energy, Sue casts them in the film, assigning DJ as Chandra Shekhar Azad, Karan as Bhagat Singh, Aslam as Ashfaqulla Khan, and Sukhi as Rajguru.
The young men are carefree, disillusioned with their futures, and intensely cynical about India's political state, showing zero initial interest in a patriotic project. Friction develops when Sue casts their ideological rival, right-wing student activist Laxman Pandey, as Ram Prasad Bismil, though the group gradually bonds during rehearsals. As filming progresses, the boys begin to unconsciously internalize the idealism of the historical figures they portray, and Sue enters into a romantic relationship with DJ.
The group's apathy is shattered when Sonia's fiancé, Flight Lieutenant Ajay Singh Rathod, dies in a MiG-21 fighter jet crash. The government quickly covers up the tragedy by blaming pilot error, but Sonia and the boys know Ajay was a skilled pilot who sacrificed himself to steer the malfunctioning aircraft away from a densely populated residential zone. Their private investigation reveals that the Defence Minister, Shastri, accepted bribes from a corrupt industrialist to sanction the use of cheap, substandard spare parts for the aircraft. Karan is horrified to discover that his own wealthy father, Rajnath Singhania, was the middleman who orchestrated the lethal deal.
Channeling the revolutionary fervor of their film characters, the group coordinates a massive, peaceful candlelight vigil at India Gate. The government orders a brutal police crackdown to disperse the demonstrators, leaving Ajay's grieving mother, Aishwarya, severely beaten and in a vegetative coma. Witnessing his own political superiors justify the state-sponsored violence, a disillusioned Laxman abandons his party and aligns with DJ's group. Convinced that the legal system is entirely compromised, the five friends resolve to adopt the radical methods of the HRA. They assassinate Shastri to avenge Ajay, and Karan confronts and shoots his father dead.
The media and government spin the assassination, framing Shastri as a tragic martyr killed by terrorists. To counteract the state narrative, the boys launch a final, desperate mission to expose the truth. They infiltrate and occupy the All India Radio station, peacefully evacuating the civilian staff. Karan takes the microphone, broadcasting a nationwide confession that details the defense ministry's corruption and their motivations for the murders. The government dispatches heavily armed tactical units with explicit orders to eliminate the group. In the ensuing shootout, Sukhi is shot dead, while Aslam and Laxman are killed by a grenade blast. A critically wounded DJ drags himself into the recording studio to join Karan just as he concludes the broadcast, and the two friends are gunned down together.
The public broadcast of the boys' final moments triggers widespread national outrage, sparking massive anti-government protests across the country. Aishwarya subsequently awakens from her coma, finding that the corrupt regime has been shaken. The film concludes with Sue reflecting on the profound personal transformation she experienced through the boys, while the spirits of the deceased friends peacefully reunite with a young Bhagat Singh in his ancestral garden.
Cast
Aamir Khan in a dual role as Daljit "DJ" Singh Chandra Shekhar Azad Siddharth in a dual role as Karan Singhania Bhagat Singh Sharman Joshi in a dual role as Sukhi Ram Shivaram Rajguru Kunal Kapoor in a dual role as Aslam Khan Ashfaqulla Khan Soha Ali Khan in a dual role as Sonia Chaudhary Durgawati Devi Atul Kulkarni in a dual role as Lakshman Pandey Ram Prasad Bismil R. Madhavan as Flight Lt. Ajay Singh Rathod Alice Patten as Sue McKinley Waheeda Rehman as Mrs. Aishwarya Rathod, Ajay's mother Kirron Kher as Mitro Kaur, DJ's mother Om Puri as Amanullah Khan, Aslam's father Anupam Kher as Rajnath Singhania, Karan's father Mohan Agashe as Defence Minister V. K. Shastri Steven Mackintosh as James McKinley, Sue's grandfather Lekh Tandon as DJ's grandfather K. K. Raina as Raghuvir Mishra Chandan Roy Sanyal as Batukeshwar Dutt Cyrus Sahukar as Rahul, a radio jockey and Karan's friend Badrul Islam in a dual role as Ravi Sukhdev Thapar Tushar Pandey as an auditioner Abhishek Banerjee as an auditioner
Production Development Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra spent seven years researching and developing the story, including three to write the script. While some raised doubts about his morale following the failure of his last film, Aks, at the box-office, he retorted by saying that it would not affect him at all. He added that not only did his storytelling technique improve, but past mistakes had helped him improve his filmmaking abilities.
Rakeysh said the following in a scriptwriter's conference conducted by the Film Writers Association in the year 2008, "I was making a documentary called Mamooli Ram, on Amul, the milk revolution with Kamalesh Pandey. We were sitting in a small hotel room in Nanded, drinking. We started singing songs, and we both realized we liked similar songs. And so Rang De Basanti was born. He was angry with the system, I was helpless with the system. We wanted to do so much. But we really can't do anything and it was born out of anger. He wrote a story called Ahuti, meaning sacrifice. Ahuti was about the armed revolution in India, between 1919 and 1931. It started with Ashfaqullah Khan, Ramprasad Bismil, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, went on to Chandrashekhar Azad and so on. We had this amazing screenplay called Ahuti, which we had also termed as The Young Guns of India, which started with a train robbery, Azad on a horse and so on. I said, "let's do The Young Guns of India". We were going to go on the floor, and suddenly there were a couple of film on Bhagat Singh made. But they came and went. Not because they were good or bad films, not because they were written badly or not written so badly. I'm not being judgmental about them. And this is very important: because they did not reflect the sentiment of today's time. Nobody in the audience could identify with something which was past. It wasn't that there wasn't an idea of patriotism in us, but it was sleeping somewhere. And you had to kind of relate to it in today's world. So a couple of bottles of vodka again, and three days later, with a couple of vodkas down, Kamlesh Ji comes up with 'You know what, I think I've cracked it'."
Development of Rang De Basanti originated with several ideas Mehra came up with early on but later dropped or greatly evolved into new directions. One of these involved a group of youngsters who worked in an automobile repair shop, while another was about the life of Bhagat Singh, Indian freedom revolutionary. During this time, he personally conducted a survey with a group of youths in New Delhi and Mumbai about the Indian revolutionaries he was planning on depicting, which indicated that many of youngsters did not recognise the names of some of the most prominent revolutionaries. This led Mehra to believe that the sense of "patriotism had blurred" in the young generation. Because of this, he dropped his original plans in favour of a new idea in which a British documentary filmmaker on a visit to India realizes that the local "kids are more Western than her". This new story, which eventually formed the basis for Rang De Basanti'''s script, was influenced by Mehra's upbringing, youth and experiences over the years, including his desire to join the Indian Air Force while in school, as well as his recollections of listening to Independence Day speeches and watching patriotic films such as Mother India. Although Mehra denies that the film is autobiographical, he confessed that the character sketches were loosely inspired by himself and his friends.