 We're back. We're live. The movie show. Me and George Kasin here on Think Tech Hawaii. And we're going to talk about Jolly and Wallabag, which is a city in the Punjab area of India, to the northwest of India, where in April of 1919, there was a horrendous massacre under the command of General O'Dwyer. O'Dwyer caused his troops to fire upon thousands of unarmed Indian people who were celebrating some kind of festival that day. And he killed thousands of thousands of people in cold blood. And this movie is a true story about that and what followed that. George, how did you like the movie in general? I think it was a very good movie. It was, as you said, it was a real story. And it was, the acting was superb. Vick or Vicky Koshal, who's a Bollywood actor, he was excellent. And then his beautiful Indian girlfriend deaf-mute Reshma, what was her name, Benita Santu, she was good. She didn't have much in there, but it was, you show the feeling between them and we'll discuss what happened to her in the massacre. And then Amit Parashar, that was Bandhu Singh, that was the, he was the leader of the Indian, one of the Indian movements for independence. So yeah, it was a good movie. Like some of the other movies we have seen, it's broken up. It's not contiguous. It shows you earlier period, later period, it just bounces back and forth. And that makes it a strong movie. So you have to think. So a very good movie. We'll get into the particulars as you wish. Yeah, sure. Well, before I forget, the name of the movie is Sar Udham. And that is the name of the individual who is the hero of the movie. And the villain, at least according to the British, who later executed an assassination of General O'Dwyer and some of his lieutenants in London 20 years later. It's quite remarkable the story of how he held on to that, never let it go, dedicated his life to assassinating this man in a way that would have the most significant historical effect on people. 20 years he waited for the right moment. So what's interesting about the movie is that it's not a Bollywood movie at all. It is a serious film. And it is close to being a documentary in the sense that it portends to follow, pretends to follow what happened in those 20 years. What's I guess to me most remarkable about it is you know that at some point in the movie, they're going to have to show you the massacre. And when they do, it's like pre quarters away into the movie. When they do it is just as bad as you ever might imagine. It is a masterwork of film for them to show you what happened in this square. But let's talk about him. He's of course dedicated, comes from the lower class, is a revolutionary, his friends are revolutionaries. And in the 1919 period there, I guess it was after the First World War, where the Indians fought for the British and died by the many, many thousands for the British. Nevertheless, the British were very hard on them in India. We forget how brutal colonialization was, colonialism, and it was quite brutal in India. We forget because now everything is independent and India is a successful country, although it took a lot of hits in COVID. But we don't remember exactly how tough the British were. Tough is the wrong word, it's brutal. This was a complete and unadulterated atrocity, a major atrocity in world history that so many thousands of unarmed men, women and children should be shot down in their tracks. And when they fell, you know, dismembered by rifle bullets, the British troops went and shot him again. It was horrible. So what about Sardar Houdam? What motivated him? What was, you know, how did he spend that 20 years in reacting to the massacre and then ultimately planning and executing an assassination of the general who commanded the massacre? He was sleeping when this massacre occurred and one of his close friends came mortally wounded to where he was his residence and he saw him and he told him before he died what had happened, right? And immediately Sardar Houdam went to the site, which was the former garden that was where this massacre took place, right? And started to see all these dead bodies and people injured. So he started on this little cart, taking people to a hospital there to try to save their lives. And one after, there were only two or three people that were doing this, you know? But so and then he held onto this. Now he, as an aside, his mother had died young and he was with, he was raised in an orphanage with his brother, his parents, you know, had died young. So he had a tough life, right? But as I said, he had this girlfriend, you know, a beautiful Indian woman. I mean, she's played by a Welsh actress of Indian heritage. And so then at the massacre, I think she died too, but they don't really show you. I think they show her. Well, I think they make it clear enough that she died, right? She might have been still alive when he found her or but only barely. And that's the last time you see her in the movie. So it's reasonable assumption is that she died. Now what he did, the British authorities, because he was a revolutionary, they had a they had an eye on him, right? In India, right? They had him on a list or something. But he was able to escape through the Himalayas into Russia. They show all those snow scenes in Russia, where he finally gets himself to England, to London, right? Under an assumed name, he's got all these different passports of different five or six different names. So he was able to get him in and they've they lost him. They mean they didn't know where he was, right? And he started working in a in a as a welder. First, he started working as a salesman. He meets up with Michael O'Dwyer, who was who was the lieutenant governor of Punjab. The general was Dyer and Michael O'Dwyer. So so he he meets up with him and he becomes and say he's selling things. And he he he sort of spies on Michael O'Dwyer, you know, all the things he's doing. Well, he gets into his service. He works in his house. He helps him on everything. He's with him just feet away. And you say to yourself, why isn't he assassinating him now? And the answer is, George, because he's he's learning all about Michael O'Dwyer, what his insensitivity toward what he did. I mean, he he he ordered General Dyer to shoot these people. And just another aside, that part that place where it is, there was only one entrance and one exit. It used to be a park, but it was the greenery wasn't there. And you had 20,000 people. And they couldn't even get out because it was like there was only one entrance. And that's where the soldiers came. Well, they were locked in. They were locked in. They couldn't get out. There was no other exit. So the soldiers came to that only entrance and exit and started shooting from there and blocked it wouldn't let them out. Right. So they just came and then after they were dying, they shot them again. Now, so the thing is, he wanted to learn exactly the Sadat Wundum wanted to learn everything about. So he learns the whole thing about Michael O'Dwyer, who was the lieutenant governor of Punjab, but that ordered the massacre, right. And then he, you know, he's thinking he's got a gun. He's thinking of shooting him with that in there. But I think what he wanted, he wanted to do it in a public place with a lot of people around, right, similar to what happened, you know, with the massacre in Amitsar. So basically he holds off, he holds off, and then he takes a gun and he puts it in a book, right. He cuts the outline of the gun and puts it in a book. And he goes to this thing where Michael O'Dwyer is talking about white man's burden and how he had to put fear in the Indians. You know, they were all unarmed. It was giving a speech. Yeah, it was, it was, it was basically children and women and, you know, all backgrounds, I mean, Sikhs, Hindus, even Christians, you know, they're all there at this. Now, there were two Indian revolutionaries who had been arrested but hadn't really done anything. So they were also, this is why they had the rally, you know, to just give support. So basically, so he finally gets to London and he, he's working in, as you said, he ends up, he's a salesman, then he's working in a well shop, then he's working for Michael O'Dwyer as his servant. So he learns all about the Michael O'Dwyer and how horrible Michael O'Dwyer is and his racism and, you know, put, he wanted to put fear in these people. That's why he ordered it. So finally, yes, he goes to this public place where Michael O'Dwyer is talking and he shoots him, right. And then you see how the British authorities treat how brutal they treat him, you know. And at the end, you know, as it goes on, finally, the prosecutor or the detective wants to understand the whole thing. So he finally opens up, Michael O'Dwyer opens up and tells this detective the whole story about what happened, how he had to save these people on this cart. And, and, and, and he learned, he had learned from working for O'Dwyer, right, exactly where O'Dwyer was coming from, what was his modus operandi, put fear in these Indians, right, kill, kill to put fear in the whole country. And this was at Amisar in Punjab, right. And it was at this park that you mentioned. Yeah. So yeah, there's a picture of Punjab. It's near the border of Pakistan, up in the northwest corner of India. Punjab is, we've heard that name before. I mean, it's a significant location in India. And this took place in a small city within Punjab, called Jalyan, Jalyan Walabagh. Jalyan Walabagh. That's the park again. Yeah. Bog must be in the park. Is that, yeah, Jalyan Walabagh. This family who had previously been very wealthy in that, in that neighborhood, like hundreds of years ago, that had set up this park greenery, but there was no more greenery in 1919. It was just a, you know, barren, you know. But it was all, as I said, locked in. There was only one entrance and one exit. So, so that was a perfect place to, I mean, if you want to kill people, you can't let them out. There's no way out. No, that was intentional. It was not, you know, a mistake or anything. Dwyer, I guess, the general who stood there while his men, including some Indian men, were shooting rifles into these unarmed people and who were being, you know, maimed. I mean, dismembered because rifle bullets, these are military rifles and military rifle with these big cartridges, you know, wrecking. And the people who were wounded were badly wounded and it was, it was really striking how Sardar Udam took them in this little cart, stacking them one on top of the other when they were dying or dead, went to this hospital where they could receive very little help. And where most of them actually died, including his girlfriend. There was no antibiotics in 1919. So if you get an infection from those wounds, you did. Yeah. And it wasn't, you know, that clean. I mean, this is, this is a developing country at best at the time. But they were, don't you think, it gave us an insight into the Indian character, into his character. He was clearly a hero in trying to do the right thing all the way. And he felt that assassinating this guy was really important to even the score. But not just vengeance. It was to try to show the world how the Brits had not only massacred all these people, but they covered it up. There's a huge big cover up for 20 years. And he was going to make a point about it. So I felt that the Indians who participated as actors in the program and in the movie, and the people who you saw them conduct themselves, they were all, you know, elegant people. They were really quite civilized. And it was tragic for that reason. But the Brits didn't see them that way. The Brits saw them as underclass, subservient of no consequence. So therefore they could kill them, you know, without sanction, without thinking twice about it. And, you know, I had the impression that this was the biggest massacre that happened in that period of time, right after World War One, but there were others. And the Brits were doing that kind of thing through the Indians. That's the way they felt they could secure their colony. That's the way they felt, as you said, as O'Dwyer said to Sardar Udam and to the people at that gathering where O'Dwyer spoke, and he spoke about this in clear terms. And we have to subjugate them. We have to frighten them. That way we can hold on to our colony. It was a statement of British colonialism. And if you thought about it and you looked at the massacre you saw in this movie, you saw the blood and gore of the massacre for sure. It was really a piece of work. And, you know, what would you expect with those rifles and those big cartridges and all these unarmed people? They were torn apart. And the movie showed you that. And, you know, in the title of our little show here is the long shadow of that massacre. It's stuck with people. So if you want to do that to people you subjugate in a colony, you're going to lose the colony, not right away, but soon enough. And I think it wasn't only Sardar Udam who was a kind of revolutionary making the point, you can't do that to us. We will not tolerate that. I think there were incidents and other uprisings in India in those 20 years that made it clear to Britain there was no mileage in trying to hold on to this colony. Mahatma Gandhi, he believed in peaceful protest. And eventually he was able to get India freed from British rule. But it wasn't only the British. A lot of the other colonial powers were also doing horrible things. I mean, if you know the history of Haiti and how the slaves uprising and killed all the French overlords, because the French overlords were brutal. It was horrible what they were doing to the slaves and Haiti. So I mean, the French, the Dutch, this was pretty much typical colonial, as you mentioned, colonial way of operating, which was, so I mean, this movie really sort of hit home. The brutality was just unbelievable. And as you said, seeing all those bodies and seeing Sardar Udam trying to save these people, hysterically working with that cart. All night long, all night long, to the point of exhaustion, moving that cart back and forth through the alleys and small streets in that city to try to save just a few lives. It was thundering. It was remarkable. But it left a mark with him and it took him 20 years. And as we alluded to, he wanted to do this where there would be a lot of world news. So he did this in London, right? In front of maybe 200, 400 people. So it will be in the news. And then they tortured him, too. He was going on a hunger strike and they force fed him to open the tube down into his stomach to give him food because he wanted to have a, and then finally he was executed. He had a good lawyer, but he was finally executed. But the British, that was British justice. Just like the other movie we saw with Kate Goon. Yeah, no official secrets. Just the last time we had our show, we covered that. And I really wanted to make the comparison. And that was later. This happened in the late thirties, the assassination. By the way, in addition to killing this lieutenant governor, O'Dwyer, he wounded a number of others who were working for that guy, who were part of his coterie. So it wasn't limited to just O'Dwyer. But the point I make is that, to follow on your comment about how they, of course, he surrendered. He was right there. They grabbed him immediately and they took him to jail. And it was clear what he had done. And so the question is, how were they going to treat him? Well, there was no humanity there at all. They just tortured him for the sake of it because he was a revolutionary. Because he assassinated a public official, they were just going to torture him until he was a wreck. And they went on for months torturing him. Is that the mark of a civilized country? You thought that Britain, who was trying to save itself from Germany in World War I and World War II, would be a civilized country. This was not civilized, what they did to him. And by the way, you mentioned earlier, George, that in the 1919 period, they were following him. There was a lot of intelligence gathering going on. There were a lot of intelligence officers arresting people in the middle of the night, breaking their doors down in India. So the Brits, who were the colonial power in India, were awful right through that period between the two World Wars. They weren't nice at all. And it was war crimes, what they were doing. I mean, by the current definition, it's very ironic that they should be involved in Nuremberg after they themselves had been involved in these brutal massacres, unnecessary, without a good reason, and without any humanity whatsoever. And the connection between the British action in 1937 or thereabouts is really hard to actually connect it with what happened to Kate Gunn in official secrets. They arrested her. They try to throw her husband out of the country. And as I recall, he was Pakistani. He was not white. He was Kurd. He was Kurd. Okay, okay. He was not white. He was clearly a Middle Eastern person. They dumped on him. They held him in immigration in Netherland and then tried to deport him. It was only through her political efforts that she was able to save him from a deportation, which would have been awful. They were married. And he was either a permanent resident or citizen of Britain. They just treated him terribly. And they treated her terribly too. But nothing like him and nothing like the Indians. And what I get out of that, George, is that colonialism and what the British were doing through most of the 20th century was racist. Colonialism is racism. Get it? Yeah. And taking all the produce from India and selling it, like literally economically stripping the country of some of its resources and taking it to London and making money on it. So I couldn't agree. But bottom line is, here in America, our hands aren't clean. We've done similar things, maybe not going out and actually massacring people. But I mean, if you look here... Oh, we've done that too. Yeah. I mean... There are times in American history it's not hard to find where we did massacre and cause the death and suffering of whole groups of people usually on the basis of race. Native Americans. Yeah. There you go. And then Iraq, this whole thing. We talked about that with the other with the upper official secrets, that whole thing about Iraq or the Iraqis that died. So it's like similar racism. It's religious race, race, religious discrimination and looking down at people. And we're not... I mean, they're in Muslim countries that look down at Christians and Jews as being expendable too. So it's not... I mean, this is just... It's a superiority kind of thing. And the Brits, as you said, sitting at Nuremberg, what a joke. I'll leave it at that. Now, the Holocaust was certainly worse than... What is it? Chellianna bad. You get that right. Chellianna wallab bag. It's hard to make a comparison, but it's that cold-blooded killing of civilians, women, children, unarmed for the sake of the atrocity. What happened to my family in Turkey too, the same story. I mean, I don't want to do my personal thing, but that happened too in 1914. 600,000 to a million people getting just killed. Civilians, not revolutionaries, just civilians. So it's ubiquitous. It's any time you had a powerful empire that want to subjugate and then they create fear and they kill people. So it's like... It's not unique to the Brits. Let's put it that way. Yeah, but there's two things that followed Chellianna wallabag, two things. One is the Brits didn't talk about it. They covered it up and tried to disable, if you will, neutralize anyone who might reveal what they did. It's really important that we understand that because that seems to be the process. First you have a massacre, however that gets organized, and then you don't speak about it and cover it up. And then when somebody finds out what you did, ready? You deny it. That's right. And the United States is not unacquainted with this process. I mean, just a few days ago, after the United States, especially through the army, denied that civilians were killed in large numbers in Syria, the New York Times did its own investigation and found, oh yes, they were. The 70 or 80 of them were killed by American planes and bombs. There was one bomb that killed most of them. There was a second bomb that killed the rest of them. And we didn't know on either of those bombs. What is that? Is that stupidity or is it more? And then there was the cover up. And Trump got up there and made all these statements about how we had won against ISIS, won against the Syrian civilians. That's what we won against. So the problem is it's right here at home too. But the lesson, let me offer you a thought about the lesson, George. What saves us from being inhumane here? What saves us from the war crime aspect of this? Often it's not the government that conducted the massacre or the military organization that kept it a secret or the officials that denied it once it got to be a public issue. It's the press. It's the New York Times. It's that kind of institution that reveals this and makes us know about it. And if we know about it, I mean, it's not going to be a guarantee that it'll never happen again, but at least we know enough to know it was wrong and maybe it will affect things going forward. Maybe it will reduce the possibility of it happening again. What do you think about that? Yes. And definitely to have an independent press that is going to report this stuff and Sardar Udam, because where he assassinated O'Dwyer, he wanted it to be in the press. So we need those independent journalists to report this stuff. And that's the key here. Yeah. And what was your question again, Jay? You had a specific question. What was it again? Well, that was it. I just wanted to know what we take from this movie. Just one point on this movie. It is pretty much true. It's a true story of what happened. And you have to give credit to the Indian film industry for covering this. This is not Bollywood. This is not a romance. This is not a happy story about life at home and all the movies that we see. They make an enormous number of movies, thousands and thousands of movies every year. This is a new genre for India, I think. This is a genre which tells you a story the world needs to know about. For me, I did not know about this massacre. I did not know about Jolly and Wabar. I did not know about Sardar Udam. And this was a real eye-opener for me on multiple levels about colonialism, about the character, the nature of the Indian character, about revolutions in colonial subjugations like this, about Britain. It reinforces what we learned in the official secrets movie. So it's like an education we're getting, George. Don't you think? We ought to do more of these kinds of movies. It's troubling to know that there's not that many of them, but we can find them and we should review them. Don't you think? Oh, yeah, because especially things that people don't know about, like this massacre in Amitsar that happened. But the Brits did other things. There's other instances of brutality that we're really not aware of around the world because they said that the sun never sets on the British Empire and they had colonies all over the place. And so there were probably other possibilities with that. There was other brutalities as well. Well, there are atrocities happening right now. I mean, in a number of countries, for example, in Africa, think tech has been covering them like talking to the African people that are on the ground and in those countries or from those countries. And they will tell you that things in terms of the atrocities, the coup d'etat, making terrible experiences for the people are increasing now for reasons I don't fully understand. But one thing is the Atlantic published an article by Anne Appelbaum a couple of days ago. I don't know if you saw that it was somehow on this point. It was the story of how authoritarian governments these days are autocrats in various countries with different ideologies. Russia, China, their ideology is very different. And some in South America, Venezuela, they admire each other. And they learn from each other. And they have a kind of club network with each other. And they engage in atrocities. And that is increasing. And it's very troubling to know that they're kind of in a partnership to engage in atrocities and have a war against democracy wherever it is. We live in very difficult times. And those times are not limited to the United States, although the United States is an unhappy story right now. But they're global. These are global events. And that's why it's important for us to study these stories like Jelly and Wallabar. It's important for us to understand about violations of human rights and what right thinking people can do to limit Jelly and Wallabar. And then, you know, Donald Trump, I mean, he was he's an authoritarian. And he did things like he played, played footsie or whatever with Putin and then Erdogan, you know, to go into Syria and and kill kill those Kurds, you know. So he was an authoritarian. Then January 6 he was he's an authoritarian. And he was on good terms with all these autocrats, you know, around the world. I mean, those were his buddies. So we got to look at this issues going on right in our own country, right? And now Trump says he's going to run again, you know, and if he wins, he's never going to leave, you know, I mean, he'll probably find a way to stay in office for 12, 14 years or whatever. So we've got issues here. I mean, let's let's leave it at that. Yeah. And what's interesting, you know, to follow on that point just for a moment is that while he's friendly with Erdogan and Putin and some in some strange way with Xi Jinping and what's his name, Madura in South America, all these autocrats, he spent a lot of time and energy dumping on democracies, trying to undermine that all the democracies in Europe, for example. Exactly. So where is that going? You know, I mean, this is, this is really, it's worse than we thought. He wasn't just being ignorant and, you know, violating all the norms of foreign relations for this country, foreign affairs for this country. He was actually doing what Anne Applebaum has called him out for now. It's worth reading that article, George. It's in the Atlantic this week. I'll take a look at it. Yeah. Thank you for alluding to that. George Kasin, my movie reviewer person. I really enjoy these discussions with you, George. It's really valuable in more, much more than just reviewing the movie. It's reviewing the movie against other movies. It's reviewing the movie against our life in these times and these United States and in the world. It's getting a handle, you know, on the reality. Thank you so much, George. Thank you, Jay. Definitely totally agree with you that there's other issues that are coming to play. Yep. Thank you.