'I want King Charles to watch the film.'
Rediff's Mayur Sanap, Hitesh Harisinghani and Afsar Dayatar report the dramatic events at the Kesari 2 trailer launch.
After launching the trailer in Delhi last week, Team Kesari: Chapter 2 got together for a media interaction in Mumbai ahead of the film's Good Friday release.
The historical drama which promises 'an untold story' of the events following the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre sees Akshay Kumar playing the real-life figure Chetty Sankaran Nair, the lawyer who took on the British Raj to seek justice for the Jallianwalla Bagh victims.
At the event, Akshay said he wants King Charles III of the United Kingdom to watch Kesari 2 to see what the British Raj inflicted on Indians 106 years ago.
"I am not here with a begging board for them to say sorry. But I want them to at least watch this movie and realise the mistake. The apology is bound to happen. I just want the British government and King Charles to watch the film. They should see what happened," Akshay said.
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Karan Johar was addressing a recent video of General Dyer's granddaughter in which she called the victims of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre 'looters'. Dyer was, of course, the military officer who ordered his troops to fire on the Indians who had gathered at Jallianwala Bagh on April 13, 1919.
Ananya Panday who plays a lawyer in her first period outing, said she had read about the Jallianwala Bagh massacre as a student but after being a part of Kesari: Chapter 2, she has finally "understood" a lot of things.
"I don't think I am the same person after being a part of this film," Ananya said
"As the younger generation, we take our freedom very lightly. But something changed within me when I became a part of this story. People who sacrificed themselves for the freedom we have today, I really felt the weight of that. I really understood all that."
WATCH: Karan Johar apologises to Ananya Panday
Kesari 2 is the screen adaptation of the Sahitya Sparsh Awards-winning book The Case That Shook the Empire, authored by Sankaran Nair's great-grandson Raghu Palat and his wife Pushpa Palat.
The film marks the directorial debut of Karan Singh Tyagi, a Harvard-graduate lawyer.
Karan, Akshay said, gave up his profession because he wanted to be a director. Karan Tyagi added that he always wanted the Jallianwala Bagh massacre as the subject for his first film.
"General Dyer fired upon innocent people. But what did the government, the Crown, the Empire, do? They tried to protect him. They labelled the people as terrorists. So it was at the government level that everyone wanted to protect him. Errors are made, but the government can never label innocent people as terrorists. That needs to be rectified with their apology," Tyagi said.
"This story has a very special meaning to me," Akshay says.
"My father was from Amritsar. He had heard a lot of stories from my grandfather, who saw the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. My father passed on those stories to me. When Karan Tyagi came to me with his story, I immediately decided that I want to do this film," he says.
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