Indu vs Indira

It’s hardly a surprise that filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar called actress Kirti Kulhari the very next day after he witnessed her compelling performance in last year’s acclaimed feminist-themed drama, Pink. He gave her a title role she couldn’t refuse: Indu Sarkar, a stammering housewife who takes on the powerful political family and the draconian laws they imposed during the Emergency. Also starring Anupam Kher, Neil Nitin Mukesh and Zakir Hussain, the film releases on July 28.

Kulhari, who was born in 1985, says she was stunned to learn the details of the events that unfolded in India from 1975 to ’77. “I had heard about the Emergency but wasn’t too aware of what it entailed,” she admits. “[During narration] At every point, I kept asking ‘Did this happen for real?’” To corroborate the facts and also get a better understanding of one of the darkest periods in Indian democracy, she watched Doordarshan’s five-part series, The Truth of Emergency, and read books such as Kuldip Nayar’s Emergency Retold and Coomi Kapoor’s The Emergency: A Personal History.

Calling Indu Sarkar one of her most challenging parts till date, Kulhari says her “character’s inability to express herself” because of her stammer is an apt metaphor for “how the voice of India was suppressed then”. The filmmakers are having their own battle with the Congress, which is wary of any unpleasant portrait of the late prime minister and her son Sanjay Gandhi in the film. Bhandarkar, to avoid legal hassles, hasn’t named the Gandhis, but it doesn’t take a wizard to figure who Neil Nitin Mukesh’s character is based on. “I don’t think people know what freedom of expression really means,” says Kulhari about the controversy. “They are just waiting to censor anything that goes against a particular organisation or political party. We are showing a part of history here.”