Karan Singh Tyagi has his legal background to thank for his ability to craft a narrative. The Harvard Law School graduate's first foray into filmmaking - Kesari Chapter 2 - recently opened to rave reviews..The Akshay Kumar-starrer chronicles the story of how C Sankaran Nair, an Indian barrister in the colonial era, used the power of the law to uncover the truth behind the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919..Tyagi, the director of the film, graduated from Government Law College, Mumbai in 2009 and went on to do his LL.M. from Harvard Law School. He worked at international law firms in Paris and New York, where he also cleared the Bar.In 2015, he took a sabbatical to move back to India and get into the filmmaking business.In this interview with Bar & Bench's Pallavi Saluja, Tyagi talks about his decision to quit law and get into movies, his experience in the film industry, how his experience as a lawyer helped him in his journey, and more..[Watch Video].Pallavi Saluja (PS): After having a successful legal career, including a stint abroad, you left everything to come back to Bombay to get into movies. What prompted that decision?.Karan Singh Tyagi (KST): I was bitten by the “bug of Bollywood” at a very young age. Growing up, watching movies was a regular pattern in the household and I inculcated a love for movies from my father. During my legal career, education and stint at law firms, Bollywood never left me. I was always looking for the right time to come back to Bombay and try my hand at it. I remember telling my partner in New York that I want to go back to India, take a sabbatical and pursue a career in filmmaking and see where it goes. So happy that this sabbatical became something permanent.I didn't take any regular course in filmmaking. My filmmaking education was just watching movies. I used to watch every single movie that was released, and this practice continued even during my days in Harvard. I remember walking through the snow to go to the theatre and watch My Name is Khan..PS: You have been in the filmmaking space for almost a decade. How has it been, and which projects have you assisted with?.KST: I came back to India in 2015, and I was lucky to know Vishal Bhardwaj. I wrote to him, and he was very kind to let me assist him during the making of Rangoon. I was involved in the whole process of shooting that movie, which is where I saw first-hand how movies are made, what a director goes through, how a cinematographer lights up a frame. Rangoon was my education. From there, I realised that there are two ways to make your own movie in Bollywood. First, is to keep assisting a filmmaker, or second, is to start writing something of your own. I chose the latter, where I started writing my script. I was lucky that the script made me meet Amrit (Amritpal Singh Bindra), who is the producer and co-writer of Kesari Chapter II, and from there, one thing led to another, and today we are sitting with this movie..PS: Your directorial debut is a period drama that combines law and history. Did your law background have a role to play in picking this genre?.KST: I have always been surrounded by lawyers. My father was in the CBI and he was the Chief Investigating Officer in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case. So conversations always revolved around law. Law and movies have been enduring passions in my house. My wife is a practicing Partner at AZB & Partners; she’s a litigator. So again, conversations at home primarily deal with law. Growing up, I was obsessed with courtroom dramas. I remember watching Rajkumar Santoshi’s Damini a gazillion times. Similarly, I love A Few Good Men. Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict is one of my all-time favourites. When I came across this book (The Case That Shook The Empire by Raghu Palat and Pushpa Palat, on which Kesari Chapter II is based), it was a no-brainer; it had to be my first film..PS: How did Kesari Chapter II happen? How did you end up collaborating with Dharma Productions?.KST: A friend of mine sent me this book. I read it and found it very engaging. For me, it was a period film that spoke to the present. It opened up a new chapter of history. We all know about the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, but we don’t know the conspiracy behind it, we don’t know the lengths the British Empire went to suppress the news of the massacre, and we don’t know how every bit of the massacre was planned. Sankaran Nair fought a legendary courtroom battle to uncover the conspiracy. When I came across this material, I found it very appropriate for a movie adaptation. So I started writing the script with Amrit, and then we shared it with Karan Johar at Dharma. He instantly loved it and realised the potential that a story like this holds. From there, it was no looking back. We were lucky to get an actor on board - a massive superstar, Akshay Kumar, who really sank his teeth into the material..PS: How was it directing Akshay Kumar, given that he has prior experience portraying lawyers on screen?.KST: I was nervous when I met him for the first time, but he broke the ice in the first meeting. He has been the best collaborator that I could ask for. We had detailed sessions on the script where he imbibed the character beautifully. It was a dream. Given a chance, I would work with him again. I love the energy and passion he brought to this role. He delivered a remarkable performance which the audience will remember for a very long time. .PS: There is a particular dialogue by Akshay Kumar that stands out - he says it a couple of times - “Adalat mein har aur jeet ka faisla hota hein, sahi aur galat ka nahi...”, and then changes it towards the end. Did you have any role to play in the dialogues of the movie, specially the court scenes?.KST: So, the character believes in this at the beginning of the film. I wanted the character of Sankaran Nair to have a transformational arc in the film. He is somebody who starts off believing that courts are not about right or wrong, courts are about winners and losers. There’s only one truth that matters in a court of law - the one that can be created in the minds of the jury. I wanted the character to have an arc from that position to understand that courts should be about right or wrong, and not about a win or loss. That’s the journey that the character undertakes in the film. I see this all around us - lawyers get so obsessed with winning, they get so obsessed with proving themselves right, that they forget what they are eventually fighting for, and what is at stake. What is at stake is what is right or wrong. That is the kind of journey I wanted my character to have. What we ought to do in a court of law is not create an illusion of truth, but to let the judge adjudicate what is right and what is wrong..PS: How significant was Sankaran Nair's legal struggle in the grander scheme of the Indian freedom struggle?.KST: C Sankaran Nair is one of India’s forgotten heroes. He was a brilliant statesman. He was one of the only Indians on the Viceroy’s Executive Council. He was knighted. Once he got to know the extent of evil that the Empire perpetrated in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, he put his career on the line. He resigned from the Viceroy’s Council. He wrote a book called Gandhi and Anarchy, in which he painstakingly detailed what the Empire had done. After he wrote this book, Michael O’Dwyer sued him for defamation, and he had an easy way out - to apologise and let this go. But he took the Britishers on and fought a legendary courtroom case which brought to the world awareness about Jallianwala Bagh. That’s the case that we are highlighting in the film. To counter a defamation suit, you have to prove the truth, you have to prove what really happened. That forms the heart of the film. Sankaran Nair was instrumental in letting the world know what happened at Jallianwala Bagh. We are talking about a time when British censorship is at its peak. Right after the massacre, they burnt regional newspapers which were reporting the truth, they banned poems penned by survivors and they went into overdrive in pushing their own narrative. They spread a fake narrative that General Dyer was actually trying to save the Indian empire from terrorists. It took a man like Sankaran Nair to debunk that narrative, and let the world know the truth; which is why I feel he played a huge role in our freedom struggle. Mahatma Gandhi and Sankaran Nair had differences, but after the case, Gandhi went on record to say that Sankaran Nair has not only tried General Dyer, he tried the entire British Empire and they have been found wanting. I feel lucky to get this chance to bring his story to the screen, because Nair is genuinely one of India’s biggest heroes..PS: The story highlights the misinformation and mistruths spread by the Colonial empire. How important do you think such a subject is in today's post-truth era?.KST: It’s extremely important. One of the reasons why I wanted to make this film was because it was a story set in the 1920s, but it spoke to today’s times. If you see the first case in the film, it’s Sankaran Nair arguing to convict a poet for his seditious poetry, and that is something that happens around us all the time. Through that first case in the film, we wanted to highlight that just because poets are writing seditious poetry, doesn’t make them terrorists. We cannot hold them accountable just for their thoughts and words. The fake news narrative the British engaged in back in the day is bone-chilling. To first order a massacre, and then to call innocent children terrorists, and spread that narrative through their newspapers is something that is rampant even today. That is why a movie like this becomes pertinent in today’s climate. It’s incumbent upon us to talk about it. It makes Sankaran Nair’s story more legendary, because at that time, he demolished this entire narrative. .PS: Did you keep wearing the lawyer’s hat through the course of making this movie?.KST: I wrote the script of the movie. I had a fantastic writer, Sumit Saxena, who helped me with screenplay and dialogues. We wrote the dialogues together. My legal background certainly has helped me a lot, to get the court proceedings right, to get the mannerisms of lawyers right in the film. The two hats were interchangeable - I was a director sometimes, I was a lawyer sometimes. I think what legal education gives you is the ability to argue, the ability to analyse something from a very structured way. That ability to argue has helped me a lot during the making of this film. Eventually, filmmaking is about getting your vision across, and in order to do that, you have to communicate your vision. There, I feel, my legal education has really helped me..PS: Which is your favourite scene in the movie?.KST: It’s tough to pick a particular scene. If I have to pick a scene, it's the one where Nair comes to meet Pargat at his house because that forms the emotional core of the film. It’s Nair, a British aristocratic man who’s recently been knighted, telling a young Sardar boy that there’s nothing to be gained from a life of protests and revolution.A close second would be where Sankaran learns how Pargat is killed. We understand that the film is about passing the light of revolution. Kripal passed the light to his son Pargat, Pargat passed on the light to Nair, and Nair to the entire country.Those two scenes have been performed beautifully by my actors and I’m so proud of them..PS: Who are some of your filmmaking inspirations?.KST: Many of them, it’s tough to pinpoint. I loved Karan Johar’s My Name is Khan. It’s a beautiful movie and I keep revisiting it several times. I absolutely adore Vishal Bhardwaj. I love Sanjay Leela Bhansali and how he creates a canvas. I also really like Ridley Scott, Aaron Sorkin and the creator of The Wire, David Simon..PS: Any more legal dramas in the pipeline? What does the immediate future hold for Karan Singh Tyagi?.KST: I am currently still writing for my next film. It’s too early to talk about it. It is not a legal drama; I want to take a break from those for a while. It chronicles a chapter of our history. There are so many stories that happened in India in the past that deserve to be told.
