When History Speaks in a Courtroom
Kesari Chapter 2: The Untold Story of Jallianwala Bagh isn’t one of those patriotic blockbusters with great battlefields and war cries. Instead, it has a war of words argued in a courtroom. It deals with one of the darkest periods of colonial Indian history, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and it takes a legal and moral rebellion of one man, Sir C. Sankaran Nair.
The story begins with the memories of that day in April 1919, when British General Dyer and some troops shot men, women and children. Instead of horrid events the narrative moves to what came after. Akshay Kumar, as Sankaran Nair, now portrays an empire in legal and moral challenge — an empire that doesn’t use weapons but the law and words of a conviction.
Deciding to resign from the Viceroy’s Council, Nair chooses to challenge the Empire in its own courts. The film captures the contradiction between duty and defiance, between truth and propaganda. Also joining him in this the young lawyer, Dilreet Gill (Ananya Panday) and R. Madhavan as Neville McKinley, who shows the cool cunning of the British legal machine.
The film’s courtroom scenes are not just about the historical moral implications of the arguments and the lines’ dialogue. The film is clear in its message, even if the verdict does not serve justice in the legal sense: history took note, and the victory was conscience.
Echoes Between Real Life and Reel Life
Akshay Kumar: The Patriot Beyond the Uniform
Is for Akshay Kumar, Kesari Chapter 2, is another installment in his long embrace of on-screen patriotism, although this time for gently intellectual, rather than militant, courage. Over the years, he has portrayed soldiers, martyrs and various unsung heroes, but he has replaced the uniform for a barrister’s robe, and as Sankaran Nair, he is resisting, not with action, but with intellect.
In his interviews, Akshay emphasized that this film was about “bringing forgotten history to people.” Indeed, it is also about him revisiting his own evolution as an artist. Having once been the personification of physical action, he has gradually taken on roles that explore moral strength — as in Airlift and Toilet: Ek Prem Katha. Nair was another character in which he had to restrain his trademark intensity and find power in stillness — in the kind of silence that precedes truth.
Off-screen, Akshay’s own life mirrors Nair’s sense of discipline and self-control. Akshay is disciplined and has a strong sense of national identity, and he has often shared about his immigrant experience, his Bollywood struggles, and his perfectionism. All of that discipline is evident in this portrayal — the poise of the man who stood before a colonial court, choosing dignity over fury.
R. Madhavan: The Idealist Who Understands the System
As the sharp British attorney Neville McKinley, R. Madhavan brings gravitas that stems from his own layered experiences. Before Madhavan earned the title of one of India’s finest actors, he trained as an NCC cadet and completed defense-related courses abroad. While he did not pursue a military career, that formative experience with hierarchy, loyalty, and discipline makes his portrayal of McKinley more nuanced.
Interestingly, Madhavan directed and starred in Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, a film concerning the injustice directed at a scientist betrayed by his own country. This empathy for misrepresented characters seems to fuel his performance in this film as well. While McKinley is labeled the “antagonist,” Madhavan doesn’t depict him as a villain. He presents him as a man safeguarding his empire’s version of the truth. This moral complexity, likely influenced by Madhavan’s own curiosity about real-world crises and the ethics that govern them, is what enriches and complicates his scenes.
Ananya Panday: Finding a Voice in the Shadow of History
Ananya Panday steps into a surprising yet welcome stretch as Dilreet Gill. From her glamorous, youth-centric roles, she moves to the gowns of a young lawyer combatting a colonial injustice — a marked difference from the younger image she is used to. For her, this role is not just about proving her versatility; it is about the coming generation of performers who want to speak for something and not just for the sake of speaking.
Dilreet Gill becomes the conscience of the generation that did not witness the oppression but fought to ensure that it was not forgotten. Ananya’s off-screen experiences, as a star kid marked with scrutiny and the struggle to be acknowledged, closely reflect her character’s struggle to be noticed in a world populated with older, more powerful voices. Her performance embodies the rage and the fragility of the world, representing the bridge between history and the young youth of today.
Behind the Scenes: Rebuilding a Forgotten India
Like the subject of the film, the production of Kesari Chapter 2 was ambitious, with the team replicating portions of Jallianwala Bagh on site and capturing every detail of the architecture. The team filmed in Kolkata, Amritsar, and some parts of the UK in heritage courts and old mansions to recreate the colonial-era ambience.
The film draws inspiration from The Case That Shook the Empire, a book authored by Nair’s descendants, Raghu and Pushpa Palat. This link to the family as historians provided a unique authenticity to the script, and for the director, Karan Singh Tyagi, who balanced the art of storytelling and history, whilst drawing from months spent analyzing archived letters, documents, and courtroom records.
Creative liberties were, of course, exercised, with the compression of timelines and the blending of secondary characters to cine-usable proportions. The emotional truth the film captures, however, is remarkable. Tyagi, for every main courtroom dialogue, as a matter of principle, rehearsed the scene as a genuine courtroom proceeding and the audience watches the history argue for its dignity, rather than the actors.
The Fire That Still Burns
India has yet to learn how to remember pain: not as bitterness, but as lessons pain teaches. Kesari Chapter 2 asks this question to a new generation. It does not only display the tragedy, but also attempts to demonstrate what extraordinary courage was required afterward.
The film’s emotional impact is due to both the timing of the release and the storytelling. It was released around the time of the hundred year anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and it inevitably revives discussions around moral power, accountability, and memory. Watching Sankaran Nair’s story unfold is like revisiting a wound that refuses to heal — and yet, that wound brings pride because it is evidence that people like him once existed.
When you see Akshay Kumar stand in that British courtroom, listen to Madhavan’s calm but perhaps the most cutting counterarguments, or watch Ananya Panday’s tempering young voice quaver with determination — it becomes impossible not to feel the collision of the past and the present. The fight for justice is never irrelevant, and it is never outdated. It simply changes its stage.
The Jallianwala Bagh chapter of the Kesari movie entails more as it reminds us that the freedom of our country was not won only through blood and war. Some of it took place in the silence of rooms, in the courage of paperwork, and in the resolve that some individuals possessed. In seeing it, even now, we are reminded that we are not just a product of history, but a product of history that is vibrantly alive as long as we are willing to speak.
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