“Film review: The Bengal Files shatters the delicate and sophisticated image of a ‘peaceful society’ living under umbrella of secularism”, Opindia, September 8, 2025:
“When a premier ends and people clap for a very good film. Then, why does one sit in stunned silence, rather than join the audience? This question hit me after watching The Bengal Files. Because I was not just looking at the craft of the movie alone. The movie left me pondering about the real lives impacted by the violent partition of Bharat and a cruel episode in history that has been wiped clean by our Sarkari historians and from the collective psyche by the Bengali intellectual class.
Why did our leadership decide to suppress the horrible history of Partition? Why did Leftists and Secular historians try to whitewash this chapter? Does applying band-aid to a deep wound cure the wound or lets it fester and turn into a gangrene? This is essentially the question that the young officer asks his boss. He questions him, why every crime and problem is turned into Hindu-Muslim issue?
The Bengal Files has a better screenplay than The Kashmir File. The idea of bringing in the chief protagonist of this movie from The Kashmir Files is a brilliant idea. It gives the narrative a kind of continuity, and at the same time highlights the fact that day before yesterday it was the Partition of Bharat, yesterday it was Kashmir, and today it is Bengal. Ironically, facing the same situation it faced in 1946. The horrors of exclusivist religious extremism are a continuing thread, not isolated incidents…..”
Read the full article at Opindia.com
