When your ancestors have been thugs, dacoits, rapists, warmongers and raiders, you are destined to face embarrassment from your friends, families and neighbours. How do you avoid that humiliation? The proper way is you taking a vow to not follow their path. However, if you have done enough barbarism, the victim tends to catch Stockholm syndrome. Stockholm syndrome is a psychological dysmorphia in which a victim falls in love with their abusers. Indian film industry love for Islamic looters, especially Mughals is the perfect manifestation of this syndrome. Right from Mughal-E-Azam to Jodha Akbar, Bollywood has been at the forefront of distorting history for the sake of glorifying Mughals. The latest one in that chronology is ‘THE EMPIRE’ glorifying Babur, an unofficial fugitive of his kingdom.
THE EMPIRE is a historical fiction based on the life of the first Indian Mughal tyrant, Babur. It is created by Nikhil Advani and directed by Mitakshra Kumar. The series features actors like Kunal Kapoor, Dino Morea and Rahul Dev and Shabana Azmi. It is based on the novel series Empire of the Mughal by Alex Rutherford. The notable fact is that Alex Rutherford is not a person, it’s a pen name for Diana Preston and Michael Preston. Puzzled? Well, that’s how Mughal fans are.
As soon as the movie was released on Hotstar, #UninstallHotstar started to trend on Twitter. People began exposing the film in a big way. Now is the time when the truth behind the glorified history of Mughals is slowly coming to the public consciousness. Many people were posting screenshots of uninstalling their Hotstar app. A user wrote– “Nowadays many films and also OTT platforms have been discriminating the Hindus. These Bollywood actors have no shame to do this. these are promoting love jihad, drugs. and now also in Hotstar, many films are against the rules. We demand the government to take animmediate.”
The film while glorifying Babur tries to whitewash his extremist legacy. Babur was an unstable ruler. Being a descendent of Islamist genocidal tyrants like Timur from his paternal and Genghis khan from his maternal lineage, he left no stone unturned in trying to copy them. Born in Fergana valley, Babur ascended the throne in his teenage years in 1494. He conquered Summerkhand and lost Fergana and, then he tried to conquer both, but was beaten black and blue by Muhammad Shaybani Khan. Babur then went to plunder Kabul, Turkistan only to lose both after few years. He then turned his evil attention towards India and conquered the already dilapidated Delhi Sultanate in 1526. In the Battle of Khanwa, Rana Sanga had almost sent him home, when Rana’s Commander Shiladitya betrayed him. Babur plundered, looted a lot of temples and is estimated to be the main reason behind the transformation of Sikhs from pacifist to self-defence focussed military units. THE EMPIRE easily ignores all these aspects of Babur’s life and confines his Indian barbarism into 1 episode.
With the movies like TANHAJI showing the reality of Mughals, and lyricists like Manoj Muntashir promoting historical truth, there are some people like Kabir Khan, who hail these temple destroyers Mughals as nation builders. THE EMPIRE is another one of those movies based on the fictional imagination of a person deeply in love with their abusers.
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Meanwhile, the reviews are out, and the public did not like the distorted history. After the trailer launch, THE EMPIRE was dubbed as ‘ GAME OF THRONES OF INDIA’. At the time of writing, it was rated as 3.1/10 on IMDB, while GOT got 9.2/10. Rohan Nahaar from Hindustan times wrote – ‘’The Empire is a bloated, bulbous mess.’‘.