EXCLUSIVE | Pallavi Joshi on The Bengal Files name change statement made by Saswata Chatterjee: ‘The name of the film was The Delhi Files: Bengal Chapter; it was never only The Delhi Files’

In an EXCLUSIVE interview with Firstpost’s Lachmi Deb Roy, Pallavi Joshi talks about ‘The Bengal Files’, the chatter around the name change and how the name of the film was never just ‘The Delhi Files’, but it was The Delhi Files: Bengal Chapter.

Edited excerpts from the second part of the interview:

How much research went behind ‘ The Bengal Files ’ and how much time did it take?

This time we had a brilliant research team who made a lot of work easy for us. Research took us 5-years and the process of our research is that we go after incidents and we find the incident from twenty different sources then we keep it aside as fact.

If it is from one source, then the obvious doubt is that it could be that person’s point of view and it could be a conspiracy theory then. And you cannot really portray it as fact because you read it in one book. Since I have always been a socially and politically aware person and I come from that background and has always been a keen reader, I read about a lot of things like the Direct Action Day and Noakhali . Only when the research started, I could connect the dots. I didn’t know that all these things were related. And everything was probably designed to create Pakistan.

More from Entertainment

'Jugnuma' Movie Review: Manoj Bajpayee-Deepak Dobriyal’s terrific performances stood out in this beautifully restrained way of storytelling 'Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale' Movie Review: The final goodbye of Julian Fellowes’s beloved British soap

The thing was to create so much terror that we get scared and give away a geographical part of our land. We interviewed a lot of people who lived through the Direct Action Day. Some lived in Tripura, Bangladesh boarder. We identified them and met them. And most of them were suffering from short term memory loss, though the older memories are still alive. Everything that Jinnah and Gandhi speak are taken from real transcripts. And also, the present-day Bengal that we have shown is taken from real incidents.

On present day Bengal

I was so rattled by what had happened was I didn’t even face this problem of trailer launch even in Kashmir. At the same time, I knew that there would be unrest, but something to this level I never expected. We have the right to expression and they started giving some lame excuses that we have not taken the permission from KMC.

Yet we had taken the permission from KMC, but they still wanted to stop showing the trailer of the film. They were just finding excuses to pick on us. Every preparation was done from two days prior to the event. Only when the event started, TMC people came in and created a big drama. The people who are going to come and watch our film are far greater in number than the people who are trying to pull us down.

Saswata Chatterjee mentioned that it was Delhi Files before and it was changed to _The Bengal Files_ … What do you have to say on that?

 First of all, the name of the film was The Delhi Files: Bengal Chapter. It was never only called Delhi Files_._ Obviously, when the character was explained to him, he liked the character and we did several meetings too. But even if he is scared, somebody of Saswata’s stature could have responded to it more responsibly and not just sound so scared as he did because it hurts. I will be very honest with you. I respect him a lot as a craftsman, but when such irresponsible statements are made by actors who have some standing in society; it hurts. I am not going to hide my emotions at all. I am not going to be saying, ‘Ha bachara shayad, bola hoga pressure main.’ Yes, he must have said it under pressure. But are we not under pressure. I being a woman, I am facing everything, so why can’t he?

WATCH the trailer of the The Bengal Files here: