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I needed three heroes who looked shareef for Raag Desh Tigmanshu Dhulia

16 Sep 2017

For his new paean to patriotism Raag Desh which is about three soldiers in Subhas Chandra Boses Indian National Army (INA), director Tigmanshu Dhulia says he needed three honest faces. Back then in the 1940s people were so devoid of trickery subterfuge and artifice. Hamare maa-baap ke generation ke log kitne imaandaar dikhte the (people from our parents generation looked so honest). Dhulia, whose last directorial project Bullett Raja was released a good four years ago, had a tough time finding the three faces to play the INA soldiers in Raag Desh.He finally zeroed in on Kunal Kapoor , Mohit Marwah and Amit Sadh. It was very important not to cast known stars as these real-life soldiers from Subhas Chandra Boses army. I firmly believe iconic stars do not do not do justice to real-life characters. When Ben Kingsley played Gandhi nobody knew him. Because of his relatively unexposed personality he became stamped as Mahatma Gandhi for a lifetime. I hope Mohit, Kunal and Amit become the faces of the three INA soldiers in the audiences mind, says Tigmanshu. For the role of Subhas Chandra Bose, Tigmanshu chose a new actor Assamese Actor Kenny Basumatary. He was already working with me in my other film Yaara while I was looking for an actor to play Subhas Chandra Bose. I suddenly realized Kenny bore a striking resemblance to Bose. That was it.