The Forgotten Army
On: Amazon Prime
Director: Kabir Khan
Cast: Sunny Kaushal, Sharvari
Rating: 

Besides the anecdotal story-telling, which is riveting enough on its own, what strikes you about The Forgotten Army — a five-part Amazon Prime mini-series on Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army (INA) — is one of the main conflicts at the centre of this script. Which is? The fact that the INA soldiers (in real-life, as in the series) belonged to the British Indian Army. They had been taken in as prisoners of war, when the British lost to the Japanese in the Battle of Singapore (1942) during WWII.

Given Bose's proximity to the Japanese dictatorship, since they shared a common enemy — the Brits in India, of course — these soldiers got recruited to attack their own army from Burma, and occupy Delhi eventually, as it were. Among soldiers, the idea of the traitor, or turning rogue, and indeed allegiance to the flag they fight under, reigns supreme. It's non-negotiable; writ in stone.

How do the same soldiers, and in the case of the lead character Sodhi (Sunny Kaushal) who's a fourth-generation Army-man, reconcile himself to killing army-men who were his fellow Indian soldiers up until the day before a change of heart? And where does the idea of patriotism lie in all of this?