Karan Johar: We as a nation deserve an apology for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre

While talking about his upcoming production, Kesari Chapter 2, Karan Johar said that the nation deserves an apology from the British for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Karan was speaking at a press conference in Mumbai on Friday along with actors Akshay Kumar, Ananya Panday and director Karan Singh Tyagi.

The film is based on C Sankaran Nair’s court case against the British empire in the aftermath of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Karan said that ‘Nair brought down the reputation of the British crown to their knees’. “We knew about the massacre but none of us knew of the truth that behind the scenes, there was this brave battle fought by this courageous man. That story deeply resonated with me," He said

Karan added, "We still feel angry about the massacre and till date no one has apologised, neither the crown, nor the monarchy and the British government. We have come out of the tragedy valiantly as a country. But we as a nation deserve an apology and this film demands for that."

The massacre was carried out on the orders of General Dyer and his great-granddaughter’s video of speaking about him recently surfaced on the internet. In the video, Caroline Dyer is seen talking to Raj Kohli, whose great-grandfather survived the massacre and she goes on to call him a ‘looter’. Karan reacted strongly to the video and called her jibe ‘ridiculous’. “It makes me so angry that she says such things. How can she have such disdain for the biggest genocide in the history of the world? She is in a delusion of her own. My blood boiled when I watched the video. It makes me want to demand an apology even more,” Karan said during the press conference.

Also starring R Madhavan, Kesari Chapter 2 is adapted from the book The Case That Shook The Empire, written by Pushpa Palat and Raghu Palat. It is a spiritual successor to the 2019 film Kesari, which also starred Akshay in the lead and told the story of the Battle of Saragarhi, where 21 Sikh soldiers fought against an army of 10,000 troops.

Produced by Hiroo Yash Johar, Aruna Bhatia, Karan, Adar Poonawalla, Apoorva Mehta, Amritpal Singh Bindra and Anand Tiwari, the film will be released in theatres on April 18.