Blog| The Bengal Files: History Or Propaganda? Why Vivek Agnihotri Is Repeating His Old Playbook
When Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri announces a new film, it is rarely raw cinema; it’s an event wrapped in political controversy. His latest project, The Bengal Files, is no exception.
Marketed as an “untold story of genocide,” the film claims to uncover truths about the 1946 Calcutta riots and the Noakhali violence. But if we look at his track record, especially with The Kashmir Files, it’s hard to ignore the pattern: exaggeration, selective storytelling, and the use of communal pain as fuel for modern-day political messaging.
The Kashmir Files (2022) was promoted as a brave exposé of suppressed history. While the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits is a tragic reality that deserves remembrance, the film was criticised worldwide for being one-dimensional, manipulative, and designed to inflame hatred.
Even the jury at the International Film Festival of India called it “vulgar propaganda.” Instead of sparking meaningful debate, the movie became a rallying cry for political narratives, flattening history into a simplistic tale of victims and villains.
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With The Bengal Files, Agnihotri seems to be dusting off the same playbook: take a painful historical event, strip away its complexity, and repackage it as a partisan morality tale.
The Calcutta Killings of 1946: What Really Happened
The film centres on one of the darkest chapters of pre-independence India—the Calcutta Killings of August 1946, also known as Direct Action Day.
This was not a single-sided massacre but a massive communal riot triggered by political calls, poor administration, and spiralling retaliations. Estimates say over 4,000 people were killed in just a few days, with Hindus and Muslims both suffering devastating losses.
A few months later, in October 1946, Bengal witnessed another tragedy in Noakhali, where Hindu families faced violence, forced conversions, and displacement. Mahatma Gandhi himself walked through the villages of Noakhali, trying to bring peace to a land scarred by hatred.
The truth is: these events were not hidden or silenced. Historians have written extensively about them. The violence was real, but it was also complex—rooted in colonial divide-and-rule policies, party rivalries, and fear of partition. Reducing it to a black-and-white “genocide story” ignores the messy, tragic reality.
From the way it is being promoted, The Bengal Files is less about history and more about politics.
Just as he framed himself as a truth-teller “silenced” during The Kashmir Files, Agnihotri is already claiming censorship and political pressure in Bengal after police stopped some of his trailer events due to missing permissions. This isn’t censorship, it’s spin.
By focusing only on Hindu suffering in Calcutta and Noakhali, the film risks erasing Muslim victims from the same riots. Real history is shared pain, not a one-sided genocide script.
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The film is releasing in September 2025, just months before crucial state and national elections. The messaging fits neatly into today’s polarised politics, where communal wounds are weaponised for votes.
Instead of being promoted as cinema, the film is being sold as “a suppressed truth finally revealed.” That’s less about art and more about mobilisation.
There is no denying that 1946 Bengal witnessed unspeakable horror. But responsible storytelling would show the full complexity—the British role, the Muslim League’s calls for Direct Action, the Hindu Mahasabha’s retaliations, and the ordinary people who suffered on both sides.
Agnihotri’s films, however, thrive on simplification. By showing one community only as aggressors and another only as victims, the films harden today’s divides instead of teaching from yesterday’s mistakes. It’s not remembrance, it’s recruitment.
