Ae Watan Mere Watan, a film recently released on the Prime Video OTT platform, has been making waves recently as the Sara Ali Khan starrer tells the story of an underground Radio Station run during the 1942 Quit India Movement. The film has Sara playing the lead character of Usha Mehta who, along with her friends, goes against the British government, her family, and the ideas that the world has for her
Usha sets up the Congress Radio Station which comes in handy in galvanizing the freedom movement together. One of the central characters in the film, who is as competitive as a freedom fighter, is a character called Fahad. The role is played by talented actor Sparsh Shrivastav and has left quite a mark on the viewers. Many people, however, are wondering if Fahad was a real person or a fictional character. We’ve got you covered as usual.
Fahad from Ae Watan Mere Watan: Real Story of Usha Mehta’s Friend
Fahad from Ae Watan Mere Watan is not based on one real person but is inspired by a few people who helped Usha Mehta in setting up the clandestine radio station. Apart from Usha, who was the face of the radio station, other freedom fighters like Vithalbhai Jhaveri, Chandrakant Jhaveri, and Babubhai Thakkar were associates in setting up the radio station. As per the information available about Usha Mehta and the radio station, the aforementioned people were then assisted by Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia and other associates such as Achyutrao Patwardhan and Purushottam Trikamdas.
The Radio Station ran for six months and was an important turning point in the freedom struggle. Many people would then be wondering why the real character names were not used and why the character was called Fahad. Well, that honestly is for the filmmaker Kannan Iyer to elaborate, but as observers of cinema and the most consummate (self-proclaimed) cinephiles, here is our humble interpretation.
There is an undercurrent in this film if you observe the film carefully. The film does give a subliminal message of religious unity. As Usha Mehta finds her way through her protagonist’s journey, she gets help from people of different communities. There is a Sikh person who dies protecting her. There is an engineer who has a Parsi name, and then there is Fahad, a Muslim who is as committed to the nation as anyone.
The biggest task of the Congress Radio was to unite the people of this country and convince them to fight together against the British Regime. Such representations are commonplace in today’s cinema and it sends out an important message. Movies are a medium of communication that lasts only for a couple of hours, and it is impossible for the filmmakers to cover all the stories in the film. So, these are elements that filmmakers use to complete the plot while saying what they are saying.
While the movie might have got mixed reviews, these elements in the film certainly made it a very interesting watch for us and we wanted to tell you what we thought of the film and particularly Fahad’s character.