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Let us continue our quest to explore the famous Hindi TV Serial Bharat Ek Khoj which is a dramatized representation of Discovery Of India, a book penned by Late Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of Indpendent India.
Let us discuss today about Episode #31 of the same which talks about Mughal emperor Akbar and Din-E-Ilahi, a religious order introduced by him.
Let us take a bird’s eye view of the episode content.
This Is Here In For You
Book Plot:
While this episode is intended to explore the life of Akbar, one of the widely appreciated Mughal rulers, it doesn’t start from the early phase in Akbar’s life. Possibly, the author’s intention is to talk about the significant incidents happened in Akbar’s life which affected the people and the land of Bharat (that is India).
Akbar, being a ruler, was not a typical one. Rather than just siting into the comforts of his palace and administering from there, he used to take active part in exploring the circumstances, the citizens are living in. One of his most celebrated way of doing so is, roaming in a disguise amongst people, to know what actually is happening in his kingdom. Whether his policies are actually helping people and leading them to the better way of living, or are they actually suffering.
Sometimes, the policies are made with good intentions but the implementation could go wrong, or execution might be done by wrong people, making rather adverse effects. And, he got to know many such things by getting first hand account and taking stock of situation on his own. He was often accompanied by Birbal, the wise man celebrated in the history of India.
Akbar’s interactions with Kshatriya rulers and his confidante, Raja ManSinh, Raja Todarmal and others are explored in this episode. In addition, Akbar’s quest about knowing each religion and it’s core concept is explored as well. And, we see the rise of Christianity and the quest of spreading the same as well.
One of the most important incidents explored in this episode are Akbar’s getting rid of the influence of the people who raised him and now trying to misuse of the power. For the greater good, you may need to overcome your emotions and even generosity.
Of course, the interaction between Maharana Pratap and Man Singh are a delight to watch and so does Akbar’s efforts to understand the core of various religions.
It is a well known fact that the content is the king for any media. The era of Akbar is remembered for many different elements. Mughals were invaders, but they eventually settled down in Bharat and considered it as their motherland. And people also accepted them. The influence of Bahadur Shah Zafar on the freedom struggle of 1857 is evident of the same.
Most of the details available for these mughal kings is through various books like Baburnama and similar biographies of his discernment. We cannot talk much about the content as the source of the same is a book and the makers cannot play much with it. And history is something which is seen from various perspectives but ultimately one has to go with the written stuff available.
The episode interestingly explores how various religious leaders used to expand their religion and try to influence people to follow the same by trying to convince them that it is the best one, or rather better than theirs.
In this episode we see fantastic performance from Kulbhushan Kharbanda as Akbar, Virendra Sexena as Birbal, Harish Patel as Todar Mai, Rajesh Vivek as Sheikh Mubarak, Pankaj Berry as Abul Fazai, Irfan Khan as Badayuni, Puneet Issar as Rana Pratap, S.P. Dubey as Abdul-Nabi, Surendra Pal as Man Singh, Arun Bakshi as Atga Khan, and Ayub Khan as Munim Khan and others. Amongst them Kulbhushan Kharbhanda, Surendra Pal, Harish Patel and Puneet Issar stands out.
The dialogs are simple yet effective. With the exploration of Tansen’s character the episode contains some scope for nice music. And the music here is quite authentic. Light moments are added to the episode via the incidents involving Birbal. The only complain one can have is Harish and Kulbhushan doesn’t seem to be ideal choices (in terms of persona, not acting) for the roles of Todarmal and Akbar respectively.
If you watch the episode with proper attention you can find a character saying, ‘ek minute’ at at 25.07 :). Definitely it must have been taken care of by the makers.
The way the wardrobe and other aspects are paid attention towards must be appreciated.
The episode is available to watch for free on the public domain of Youtube.
Summary:
Overall a nice episode which explores an important chapter from the history of India (that is Bharat).
External Links:
Over To You:
Did you watch this TV Serial? Are you going to buy it’s DVD Set? (It is available in two versions, economic edition and premium edition)? Do share your thoughts via comments below. And yes, if you like this article, don’t forget to share with your friends and loved ones on various social networks 🙂 And yes, watch out for next episode review for Bharat Ek Khoj.
»Reviews for all the episodes of this TV Serial
