ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the Brahmanical impulses in the 2020 Bollywood historical Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior and reads the film as symptomatic of Bollywood's larger violent project of appropriating Bahujan heroes. Reading the narrative strategies and aesthetic choices of the film, the chapter argues that the film is an attempt by Bollywood to slot a popular figure like Tanhaji Malusare into the space of an “alternate archive”. Released after the electoral victory of the Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra, it attempts to appeal to the imaginary, unified “Maratha” sentiment by mobilising its right-wing, revisionist, Islamophobic currents and framing Tanaji Malusare as the ultimate “Hindu” warrior. Consonant with the long effort of the Dwijas to appropriate the figure of Shivaji, the film is a manifestation of how the dominant Brahmanical modes of historiographies constitute the “cinematic past”.
