Indian cinema has not ventured much into biopics. Even if we did, it was pre-dominantly confined to films on freedom fighters. Thanks to the success of Hindi films like Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, The Dirty Picture and Paan Singh Tomar, we have actually begun our quest to look beyond famous personalities and started celebrating forgotten heroes of the Indian soil. The commercial success of these films has ignited a renaissance of sorts and paved way for aspiring story-tellers who love to recreate the life-stories of unsung heroes on screen. A number of biopics are currently underway on diverse personalities including the Kargil war hero Som Bahadur, boxer Mary Kom, Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh and the legendary singer Kishore Kumar.
It was only after the year 2000, biopics on revolutionary freedom fighters surfaced in Bollywood, spearheaded by Rajkumar Santhoshi’s The Legend of Bhagat Singh. What followed was a spate of films on freedom fighters over the next few years including The Mangal Pandey: The Rising and Bose: The Forgottten Hero.
Turn the clock back to 1997. A visionary, multi-faceted legend in the name of Kamal Haasan was mulling over making a biopic. Despite his self-confessed love for Gandhi and Subash Chandra Bose, two widely polarising personalities in the freedom struggle, he chose to make a film on an unsung hero called Mohammed Yusuf Khan aka Marudhanayagam, one of the greatest warriors in the modern history of India. Such was his vision and foresight. If Marudhanayagam was made then, it would have provided the much-needed impetus for other film-makers to take the plunge. Nevertheless, the biopic revolution was started by Ulaganayagan seventeen years back when he decided to immortalize an unrecognized warrior on screen.
Though the wait continues for a large number of fans, here is our earnest attempt to revive the memories of the film with a series of original posters designed by Akilan Nagarajan, the Founder of the highly popular ReviewPuram page on Facebook and a series of articles and interesting snippets compiled by Surendhar MK on the film and the life history of Marudhanayagam. If you love Kamal Haasan and are one among the million fans who gravely wish to see the film on the big screen, you wouldn’t want to miss this series.
