Many years ago, Aamir Khan hinted that he was keen on making Mahabharat for the big screen. It wasn’t even an announcement but it prompted the trolls. The idea that a Muslim man wanted to make an epic that’s sacred for the Hindus was too much for the naysayers. On Tuesday morning, Aamir reiterated his thoughts and said that he would want to make multiple films on the epic as the story is so vast that it can’t be summarised in one film. 37 years ago, when BR Chopra made Mahabharat, he faced something similar because he hired a Muslim writer, Rahi Masoom Raza, to write the show.
BR Chopra was considered to be one of the pioneers of the Indian film industry. He started making movies in the 1950s and with films like Naya Daur, Waqt, Dhool Ka Phool among many others under his banner BR Films. It was in the 1980s that Doordarshan approached him to make either Ramayan or Mahabharat as a television show, and he chose to make Mahabharat. “Every producer dreams of making Mahabharat. I also wanted to make it but I knew that you can’t make it in a three hour film. If you want to make it, you have to make it in a long format, and the only option for that was television,” he shared in the ‘Making of Mahabharat’. Chopra believed that Mahabharat was a bigger challenge as compared to Ramayan as the latter was the story of what to do, and the former was the story of what not to do. Unlike Ramayan, which was seen as a collection of tales of morality, Mahabharat was perceived as a cautionary tale. This was a complex story that went on for generations and here, most characters weren’t heroes or villains, but had traits of both. So when BR decided to make Mahabharat, he knew that the key was in the writing.
For the show to work, it was extremely essential that a lay person understood the chronology of events and not lose themselves in the hundreds of characters within the story. After the audience understood the interpersonal relationships, and who could broadly be classified as the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ guys, the show needed something that could hold it all together and when BR found it with Rahi Masoom Raza, he knew this was the man for the job. In the ‘Making of Mahabharat’, as BR talked about every producer’s lifelong dream of making Mahabharat, he shared that they knew that they needed a narrator for every episode to set context for the events. After much back and forth, when Rahi came up with the now classic lines ‘Main samay hoon’, and announced that ‘Samay (Time)’ would be the narrator of every episode, BR said an instant yes. “All the restrictions that a Muslim man will write a Hindu story… People think of this as a Hindu story. We don’t think so but anyway… Everything just went out of the window. The way he wrote it, we signed him,” he said. Rahi knew that he could present this story in a “contemporary” way and get people to relate to it.
But, as one would have expected, there was strong opposition to Rahi’s inclusion in the writing team. When Doordarshan saw the plan of episodes submitted by BR Films, they were largely satisfied by what they were seeing but they were blunt enough to ask BR Chopra how a Muslim man would write the show. His daughter-in-law Renu, in an earlier appearance on Kapil Sharma’s show, recalled his conversation with Doordarshan and shared, “Dad said Mahabharat isn’t Hindu or Muslim, it is the story of every family. There is dispute in every family. Every house should have a Mahabharat so people know what they should not be doing. If Rahi saab is asked to leave, then I will walk out as well.”
In a 1990 interview with India Today, Rahi opened up about the threats he had received and expressed his shock wondering, “Am I not an Indian?” When asked if “Hindu fundamentalist groups” had threatened him, Rahi said, “I’m hurt and amazed at the furore created about a Muslim writing the script. Am I not an Indian? The Vishwa Hindu Parishad did write a letter, to which I replied. They later sent an apology. The threats don’t worry me.”
What Rahi Masoom Raza created with Mahabharat is still seen as a benchmark in storytelling. The visual effects, the costumes and the aesthetic of the Doordarshan show might be dated but the central storyline, which was simplified by the Rahi so it could be understood by the masses, continues to inspire many, including Aamir Khan. It is yet to be seen if Aamir actually gets down to making his Mahabharat because whenever he does so, his films will be compared to what BR Chopra made in 1988.
