Bollywood, with its numerous genres and stories has always connected with the audience. It is one of the primary and the most preferred way of connecting with an audience, especially in passing a message. Bollywood has shown its sense of patriotism frequently. It has made several films based on India’s independence, its struggle and freedom fighters. On the eve of Independence Day here is the list of top 14 patriotic film of Indian Cinema.
1. Rang De Basanti:
This film is about a British documentary filmmaker who while being determined to make a documentary on Indian freedom fighters based on the diary written by her grandfather, who was in the same regiment in which Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hung, asks a group of five young men to act in her film. While acting in the documentary and due to unseen events like killing of their friend in a fighter jet and the consequences there afterwhen they take on against corruption that unfold in their life, the film shows the similarities between them and the freedom fighters they were playing. This movie never fails to make laugh and cry even after you watch them multiple times. This movie is a priceless jewel in the collection of patriotic movies.
2. Kranti:
This movie is about how a simple man, vexed up with the British rule, takes up arms and starts fighting against them.
3. Mother India:
The undoubted frontrunner for patriotic movies, Mother India depicts the struggle of a village woman through tough economic adversities in the pre-independence India as she raises two sons and strives to survive despite the problematic money-lender and how she has to kill one of her sons. The mother is a symbol of the strength of an Indian woman.
4. Border:
Border is unquestionably the best war film ever made in Bollywood, an adaptation of real life events that happened at the Battle of Longewala fought in Rajasthan during the Indo-Pak War of 1971. Although this movie is nowhere related to the pre-Independence Era, but it never fails to make us weep and raise those patriotic feelings while watching
5. A Wednesday:
Set between 2 pm to 6 pm on a Wednesday, the film depicts an about-to-retire police commissioner narrating a sequence of events that unfolded on a particular Wednesday. They do not exist in any written record, only in his mind and in those of several individuals who were involved, willingly and unwillingly, and how those events affected the lives of all the concerned people
6. Krantiveer:
A journalist inspires an aimless man to fight for the rights of the poor.
7. Shaheed:
Shaheed, released in 1965, narrated the struggles of the freedom fighter Bhagat Singh. The film bagged the award for Best Feature Film in Hindi at the 13th National Film Awards.
8. Mangal Pandey:
MangalPandey: The Rising is based on the life and times of MangalPandey, a soldier who is well-known for his role in the Indian Mutiny of 1857. This movie although didn’t do well at the box office, but it definitely is a must watch if you want to see the conditions of India, culture and various customs during that era, then you wouldn’t be disappointed. It beautifully captures the real pre-Independent India.
9. Lagaan:
This movie is depicts the struggles of the villagers and helplessness of the native Maharaj against the British rule who imposes high taxes on the locals even when they have suffered high losses with the on-going drought and how they decide the future of the tax based on the outcome of the cricket match.
10. The Legend of Bhagat Singh:
There have been many movies on Bhagat Singh, but this movie, in which Ajay Devgn played the role of Bhagat Singh is among the best of this lot. Bhagat Singh along with his group of friends becomes revolutionaries to free the countrie from the clutches of British.
11. Swades:
This movie takes a practical and mainstream view on how a NRI, working in NASA, comes to India to take his Nanny with him to US, but instead he develops the sensitivity and a sense of responsibility towards India and returns to improve the condition of his country.
12. Gandhi:
Ben Kingsley’s ‘Gandhi’ outlined the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi by talking about his journey from a young lawyer in South Africa to a freedom fighter in India and the role he played in getting India freedom.
13. Lakshya:
Lakshya is war drama film directed by FarhanAkhtar and stars HrithikRoshan, PreityZinta, AmitabhBachchan in leading roles. Hrithik plays the role of a careless youth who is completely aimless and how joining the army changes him into Lieutenant Karan Shergill, who leads his team to victory over the Pakistani troops.
14. Chittagong:
This film was set against the backdrop of 1930s British Colonial India (now Bangladesh) in which a group of courageous schoolboys and young women, led by a schoolteacher, Masterda Surya Sen (Manoj Bajpai) took courageously on the Empire. Chittagong primarily revolves around the life of Jhunku (DelzadHiwale), a 14-year-old boy.
By : Archa Dave
