Ballad hits the wrong notes

The Rising may be largely in English, but at heart it is a big Bollywood musical with many of that genre's traditional faults, especially a tendency for characters to burst into song and dance at bizarre moments. It has a much bigger fault, however, and that is lying about the past.

At a time when some Muslims are wrongly convinced that the entire Western world is against them, how foolish it is to release such a historically bogus and inflammatory account of the 1857 Mutiny in India. And how stupid of the powers that be to spend £150,000 of Lottery money on a project that will help to endanger everyone in Britain, whatever their religion.

The hero of the film is Mangal Pandey (Aamir Khan), who in real life was a long-serving soldier who never rebelled against the British until he became dangerously addicted to opium and bhang.Writer Farrukh Dhondy chooses to keep this highly relevant information from us.

The Pandey depicted here is merely an intense young man, much given to spouting anachronistic aphorisms about the need to combat economic globalisation. The film makes very serious accusations against Britain's East India Company, including that it massacred innocent civilians when they refused to set aside land for opium production, and that it turned vulnerable native women into sex-slaves.

Such claims are historically unfounded and, frankly, racist. Even the central contention of the film - that the mutiny was sparked by the company's insistence that Muslim and Hindus use bullet casings covered in beef and pork fat - is misleading.

It is true, as the film suggests, that many who took part in the uprising assumed that they were being asked to use casings that contravened their religious beliefs. What the film neglects to point out is that they were wrong.

The company withdrew the cartridges in the light of those religious concerns and did not issue them to a single soldier. In The Rising, not only are we shown the bullets being issued to Hindus and Muslims; a British officer even threatens to blow them up with a cannon unless they agree to use them.

Regrettably, it isn't hard to see why British money has gone into this fanatically anti-British film. It fits in very well with the anti-capitalist, anti-globalisation preoccupations of the British Left, who dominate such quangos as the UK Film Council.

I couldn't help but smile when some hapless spokesman for that body said recently that it was quality, not politics, that drove their determination to fund The Rising. If you believe that, you'll believe anything.

The Rising - Ballad Of Mangal Pandey
Cert: 12A