How historical narrative is changed, case of movie Veer. Set in late 18th to early 19th century this movie depict Pindaris as freedom loving, family oriented, good guys who hated British to the core and on other hand were wily Rajputs who betrayed Pindaris to the British. (1/8)
In the movie there are dialogues like "Pindari jaban ke pakke hote hai" and all uttered by their nemesis, a rajput prince, depicted by Jackie Shroff. On the other hand Salman Khan a Pindari warrior uses words like "Gaddari to hamne rajputo se hi sikhi hai" to Jackie Shroff. (2)
Although the dialogue was later changed to "Gaddari to hamne aap se hi sikhi hai" after karni sena protested against it, while history was totally different than what was shown. Pindaris were rapacious hordes whose sole job was to loot common people in war torn country. (3)
Pindaris were predominately muslims and were mostly employed by maratha sardars like Sindhia, holkar to wreak havoc in north India from Thar desert to malwa bundelkhand and Bengal these hordes closely followed maratha fauj and marathas encouraged to loot (4)
them to loot and unlike soldiers of the army marathas didn't pay any money to Pindaris, on the contrary Marathas used to take money from Pindaris as share of their loot because they were allowed to loot under maratha army. (5)
This was the situation in which these pindaris operated, in early 19th century when maratha started to fight amongst themselves these pindaris started their own freebooting expedition and also acted as mercenary for petty feuds. (6)
After a decade or so British finally put down their activities in whole of India and people of Hindustan finally breathed sigh of relief. So it's not like anybody who fought with British were freedom fighters and we should glorify them, some of them were (7)
rapacious hordes of bandits which were needed to be stamped out. And it was due to these regular pindaris and marathas looters that most of the rulers of the area promptly signed treaty with British which gave their state a sense of stability and peace for the time being. (8)
Princely state of Tonk was established by one such Pindari leader Amir Khan who was right hand of Jaswant Rao Holkar. Holkar gave him the territory of Tonk looted from Rajputana and he also gave him title of Nawab. This was the only muslim princely state of Rajputana. (9/9)
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