‘Main Atal Hoon’ and the Rewiring of Postcolonial Memory

A Soft-Touch Biopic in a Hard-Edged Narrative Age

A Historical Critique

Main Atal Hoon is not merely a biography of Vajpayee, but a study of the evolving Indian imagination

By Nandini Bhautoo

Last Wednesday, a screening of the film Main Atal Hoon was held at the newly opened Institute of Public Service and Innovation in Ebene. This event commemorated the 101st anniversary of the venerable political figure who gave his name to the Institute: Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The film comes at a moment when political and cultural narratives across the postcolonial world are undergoing a seismic reassessment. The heavy hand of colonisation did not merely redraw borders, it imposed interpretive frameworks, moral hierarchies, and “ready-made truths” that were internalised by local elites and broadcast as universal.

India, with its civilisational antiquity and scale, has always experienced this conflict more dramatically than most. The clash between Western-imposed narratives and the subterranean rumblings of a people reclaiming their own voice has taken decades to surface. The past ten years have, in many ways, marked a rupture.

Biopics of Nehru, Gandhi, and Indira Gandhi have long dominated cinematic storytelling, each reinforcing a single vision of moral authority –a triumvirate of liberal innocence, wisdom, and benevolent paternalism. Opponents of this narrative were rendered “right-wing”, “reactionary”, or worse, by a cosmopolitan class that monopolised cultural production. Yet, over time, archives have loosened, suppressed events have resurfaced, and public memory has begun to ask questions. Nehru’s mishandling of the Jammu & Kashmir question, the controversial nature of Gandhi’s public stance during the Moplah violence, the tragic violence and police firing during the 1966 Gau Raksha Andolan demonstration in New Delhi, the Emergency — these events no longer exist at the margins of historical consciousness. They have returned to the centre.

This shift has been accelerated by the rise of a political establishment that insists on placing India’s people, their aspirations, and their lived realities at the heart of policy. The “elite” who proclaimed themselves protectors of secularism now appear, in hindsight, to have protected their own privileges — monopolising foreign policy narratives, academic discourse, and international representation, while remaining emotionally and materially distant from the majority of Indians. The poor became statistics; the elite became spokespeople for “India”; the West applauded them for confirming its stereotypes.

In this context, Main Atal Hoon marks a distinctive moment — not merely in cinema, but in national self-narration. Screened at the new Atal Bihari Vajpayee College of Civil Service, which was inaugurated in March 2025, the film’s significance lies not only in its subject matter but in its timing, its tone, and its quiet counter-narrative.

The Soft-Touch Biopic: Aesthetic Strategy in a Noisy Age

Unlike many political films that turn into loud polemics, Main Atal Hoon adopts a soft-touch approach. It does not sermonise, litigate, or editorialise, instead, it suggests. It invites the viewer into the life of a sensitive young man from a small North Indian town — a poet, son of schoolteachers, and dreamer — whose early idealism gradually evolves into a mature statesmanship that would leave a lasting impact on India. The film does not indulge in hagiography, nor does it engage in the predictable tropes of the familiar Nehru – Gandhi biopic model. Instead of seeking to defeat a rival narrative, it proposes an alternative one –quietly, confidently, and with a surprising tenderness.

What the Film suggests, without Overstating: The film does not analyse ABV’s poetry. Instead, it allows it to hover around him like a gentle aura, punctuating moments of doubt, solitude, or political fatigue. This poetic consciousness — subtle, hesitant, humane — is the emotional backbone of the film.

Addressing the subject of Vajpayee’s long-standing relationship with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the film avoids the loud polarities typical of the genre, refraining from depicting the organisation as either heroic or monstrous. Main Atal Hoon avoids both extremes.

It depicts Vajpayee as rooted in its ethos, yet critical when he felt it necessary; emotionally connected, yet ideologically independent. This restrained representation is both honest and courageous. Vajpayee’s gift lay in bridging ideological divides. The film captures this not through speeches or dramatic confrontations, but through listening, silence, and temperament. His greatest political strength — his capacity to make opponents feel heard — is conveyed, not explained.

Foreign Policy Without Chest Thumping: Pokhran-II, Lahore, Kargil — events that could easily be turned into nationalist spectacle — are handled with a cool sobriety. The film acknowledges the geopolitical stakes without sensationalism. It gestures toward his diplomatic genius, rather than turning him into an action hero.

The Larger Narrative Conflict: A Postcolonial Correction

The film enters a cultural ecosystem still heavily influenced by Western lenses, where: “nationalism” is coded as dangerous, “secularism” is coded as virtuous and any articulation of indigenous pride is viewed with suspicion. This binary, inherited from colonial anthropology and sustained by postcolonial elites, has shaped Indian storytelling for 75 years. The irony, of course, is that Western “right wing/left wing” categories arose from industrial-era class struggles, not civilisations shaped by dharma, community ethics, or decentralised social structures. To apply these categories wholesale to India constitutes a fundamental category error.

The film implicitly challenges this. It shows the RSS not as an abstract ideology but as a social movement emerging during a period when the newly independent nation’s social fabric was frayed. Christophe Jaffrelot’s own research, which has helped shape the international academic discourse about the RSS, acknowledges the organisation’s grassroots efforts in rebuilding communities, organizing relief work, and offering young people a sense of structure and belonging in the absence of a functional welfare state.

However, Jaffrelot (and many Western scholars) often brand these rebuilding efforts, arising from a nation awakening from decades of cultural, political, and social destruction, as problematic right-wing nationalism. Despite the obvious context, they effectively reverse the logic:

What arises from resilience is branded reactionary; what arises from elite control is branded progressive.

The film quietly rejects this interpretive inversion.

From Suppressed Agency to People’s Agency

The film charts Vajpayee’s journey as one strand of a much larger arc — the long, slow reclamation of people’s agency from the hands of the postcolonial elite who inherited the apparatus of the colonial state. For decades, India’s international image was sculpted by those who lived abroad half the time, confirmed Western stereotypes, distanced themselves from “backward India”, benefited from access to institutions built by and for the British Raj. These were the “acceptable Indians” for the global liberal order. Vajpayee was not part of this class. He was of the soil — soft-spoken, self-effacing, modest, culturally rooted, and emotionally connected to ordinary people. The film captures this aspect beautifully.

The Internal Complexity: Not Just India v/s the West – The film also hints at India’s internal fractures, including: ideological rivalries with Pakistan, Bangladesh, and China; the cultivation of internal opposition through curriculum and media; the deep dissonance between elite and popular cultural worlds; and the persistent demonisation of the BJP-RSS ecosystem as inherently illegitimate. Through brief scenes, the film acknowledges that Vajpayee operated within a political environment where asserting the agency of the majority population was itself portrayed as extremist — a framing inherited from colonial anthropology and deeply entrenched in Western media, as discussed above.

The Atal Paradox: Inside Yet Outside – One of the film’s subtle achievements is its depiction of Vajpayee as inside the movement (emotionally, historically, culturally), yet outside it (intellectually, temperamentally, philosophically). He supported the Ayodhya movement’s cultural aspiration but remained deeply uncomfortable with the political excesses of later years. He understood coalition dharma, social sensitivity, and the need for restraint. His political journey thus mirrors the contradictions of India’s own postcolonial condition – aspiring toward unity while burdened by inherited fractures.

The Film’s Structural Weakness: Ambition v/s Space – If the film has a flaw, it is structural. The desire to be exhaustive— covering seven decades, numerous political arcs, domestic and foreign crises — forces the narrative to jump across time with little breathing room. Those familiar with Vajpayee’s life will understand the ellipses. New audiences may struggle. Yet, given the enormity of Vajpayee’s life, any two-hour treatment will feel rushed. The choice to use soft-touch minimalism rather than didactic exposition makes the pace more noticeable.

A New Kind of Political Cinema

Ultimately, Main Atal Hoon represents a quiet revolution. Its achievement lies in its refusal to imitate either the hyper-heroic nationalist biopic or the liberal-elite ideological morality play. Instead, it offers a reflective, humane portrait of a man whose life bridged two Indias: the India patronised by Westernised elites, and the India that built, dreamed, suffered, and created from below. In doing so, the film participates in a broader cultural realignment — one that seeks to reclaim historical memory from inherited colonial frameworks and re-anchor it in the experiences, aspirations, and cultural sensibilities of the Indian people themselves.

This is not merely a film about Atal Bihari Vajpayee. It is a film about the contours of a new Indian imagination.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 12 December 2025