Who killed Deen Dayal? A film on RSS ideologue’s ‘mysterious’ death
The mystery that surrounds Jan Sangh president and RSS ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya’s death will now be on celluloid. A Mumbai-based film-maker has reached out to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for its assent to a film tracing the last two days of Upadhyaya’s life.
Upadhyaya, who was elected president of Jan Sangh, the precursor to the BJP in 1967, was found dead on February 11, 1968, on railway tracks near Mughalsarai. He was travelling from Lucknow to Patna by the Sealdah Express.
The project is being carried out with no direct support from the RSS or the Deen Dayal Upadhaya Research Institute, an RSS-backed think tank. Its makers said the film was based on the information on Upadhyaya contained in a 15-volume work edited by former Rajya Sabha MP Mahesh Chandra Sharma and inputs from RSSBJP leaders who are an authority on his philosophy and exposition.
Tentatively titled ‘Who killed DD’, the film is being directed by Ujjwal Chatterjee, who has several films in Hindi and Bengali to his credit. Chatterjee said his film will focus on the mystery of Deen Dayal’s death, the “possibility of a foreign hand and complicity of local leaders”— issues that the Sangh cadre has long pursued to unravel.
This is not the first attempt to capture the RSS ideologue on film. Earlier, a film on the life and philosophy of Upadhyaya titled ‘Ekatm Bharat Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Ki Jeevan Yatra’ was produced by the ministry of culture in association with DRI, and released during his birth centenary celebrations in 2015.
A biopic on Upadhyaya that was planned by actor Arun Govil for Doordarshan, however, was shelved after Prasar Bharati slashed the production budget. “It was a period drama, that required a certain investment, but Prasar Bharati wanted me to cut my rates from Rs 3 lakh per episode to Rs 2.10 lakh, which was not tenable,” Govil said.
Another Jan Sangh leader and ideologue Shyama Prasad Mukherjee -- whose death in 1953 while lodged in a jail in Kashmir is also shrouded in mystery -- will be the protagonist of a soonto-be released film ‘1946 Calcutta Killings’.
The film which has former FTII chairperson Gajendra Chauhan playing Mukherjee was delayed by over a year after the Central Board of Film Certification refused to certify it. Chauhan told Hindustan Times the film was being readied for release after “several cuts”.
Commenting on the spurt in the number of films and documentaries on RSS ideologues, Chauhan said, “There is a certain ideology in power and it is natural for film-makers to make movies about it and their ideologues.”