EXCLUSIVE: Batwara 1947 writer Asghar Wajahat on why Jis Lahore Nai Vekhya, O Jamya E Nai took 37 years to reach the screen; “Funding was a little difficult”

Some stories take years to reach the screen. Asghar Wajahat’s Jis Lahore Nai Vekhya, O Jamya E Nai took nearly four decades. Written in 1989, the acclaimed play has now been adapted into Rajkumar Santoshi’s Batwara 1947, with Sunny Deol in the lead and Shabana Azmi playing the elderly Hindu woman who refuses to leave her Lahore home.

The long wait, however, had less to do with the story and more to do with the sheer scale of Santoshi’s cinematic vision. Speaking about why the screen adaptation took so long to materialise, Wajahat reveals that Santoshi was never interested in making a straightforward, modest adaptation of the play. The filmmaker wanted to recreate the world of Partition with a strong sense of realism. However, that ambition demanded substantial financial backing, which the project did not easily attract.

“Santoshi wanted to make a film according to his own concept,” says the 80-year-old scholar, novelist and playwright to Bollywood Hungama. “His concept was that he really wanted to create reality, real life. Like a train is moving with the immigrants. All these things had to happen. More funds were required for it. It took a lot of time because the funding was a little difficult.”

The project remained Santoshi’s passion project for years. It gathered momentum only in 2024, when Aamir Khan came on board to produce it. The next challenge was to translate the stage play into a mainstream theatrical film that could recreate the upheaval of Partition without losing the soul of the original story. Having previously adapted his play godse@gandhi.com into Santoshi’s 2023 film Gandhi Godse - Ek Yudh, Wajahat knows that a stage play and a feature film have completely different storytelling grammars.

“When you convert theatre or stage play into a film script, there are some requirements and possibilities in the film. There are some things that can come out well in the film. The shots that are very emotional and intense have to be added when you make a film script. In theatre, because there is a stage and people are watching, the one sitting at the back will see more of the action. So the play is more based on action than on face expressions. Face expressions don't matter much in theatre. Action and dialogue delivery are more important there,” Wajahat says, explaining the differences between the two storytelling mediums.

He points specifically to the death sequence in the climax of Batwara 1947 as an example of what cinema can achieve that the stage cannot. “There is a death scene in this film. The death scene is very powerful in the film. But it couldn't be as powerful in the play.”

Wajahat says Jis Lahore Nai Vekhya, O Jamya E Nai was built around three key ideas, and those concerns have remained intact in Batwara 1947.

“First was the cross-cultural understanding. There are people from two different cultures, but even then they are coming closer to each other. Because they are human beings,” reveals the playwright. “Secondly, humanity is above religion, caste, creed, and nationality. Humanity is superior and above everything. The third concern was that there should be a liberal attitude. Religion is really very human. There is also the issue of co-existence. You should respect each other. You should respect the other religion. These were the major concerns why the play was written.”

Over more than six decades of creative writing, Wajahat has published more than 30 books and written dozens of short stories, full-length plays and street plays. He wrote Jis Lahore Nai Vekhya, O Jamya E Nai in 1989, when he was teaching literature and mass communication at Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi. Speaking about where the idea for the play came from, he recalls Garam Hawa, M.S. Sathyu’s 1973 film starring Balraj Sahni, which dealt with the plight of a North Indian Muslim businessman and his family in the aftermath of the 1947 Partition.

“In Garam Hawa, there was a similar kind of old lady. She refuses to go to Pakistan. I had also read somewhere about an old person who refused to migrate. There are many such instances. All these experiences come together, and you conceive a character,” Wajahat says, revealing that Shabana Azmi’s character in Batwara 1947 is loosely modelled on the elderly matriarch in Garam Hawa, who fiercely refuses to leave her ancestral home for Pakistan.

Produced by Aamir Khan Productions, directed by Rajkumar Santoshi and starring Sunny Deol, Shabana Azmi, Preity Zinta and Karan Deol, Batwara 1947 released in theatres on August 14, 2026.

Also Read: Rajkumar Santoshi disagrees with Shabana Azmi claiming that Batwara 1947 failed due to Sunny Deol playing Muslim

from Featured Movie News | Featured Bollywood News - Bollywood Hungama
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