Who was Sir CS Nair? The firebrand lawyer played by Akshay Kumar in ‘Kesari Chapter 2’ 

Akshay Kumar stars in Kesari Chapter 2, portraying Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair during the aftermath of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

Actor Akshay Kumar has portrayed several famous Indians on screen, from emperor Prithviraj Chauhan to social entrepreneur Arunachalam Muruganantham. On Monday, Dharma Productions debuted the teaser of Kumar’s latest outing, Kesari Chapter 2. While the first Kesari, released in 2019,was inspired by the historic Battle of Saragarhi, with Kumar portraying the role of Ishar Singh, the leader of a valiant Sikh regiment that fended off 10,000 tribesmen while guarding a British outpost, the new film travels ahead in time to the early 20th century, portraying the brutal Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919 and its aftermath.

The teaser effectively employs sound to recreate the horrors of April 3 in Amritsar, when Reginald Dyer, a British Brigadier-General, ordered soldiers to fire upon an unarmed crowd of over 15,000 Indians gathered at Jallianwala Bagh on Baisakhi day. The crowd had gathered to peacefully protest the Rowlatt Act. The killings shook the world and became a rallying point for anti-British sentiment in India.

As the teaser makes clear, Kumar essays the role of Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair in Kesari Chapter 2. CS Nair, a Keralite from a wealthy family in Pallakad district on the Malabar coast, was a distinguished Indian lawyer, nationalist and statesman. He became the youngest president of the Indian National Congress in its nascent years. In 1912, he was knighted by the British crown.

At the time of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, CS Nair served as Education Minister and the sole Indian representative in the Viceroy’s Executive Council—a singular honour. The scale and impunity of the massacre affected him deeply. Much like Rabindranath Tagore, who relinquished his knighthood in protest of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, CS Nair voiced his anguish at the British government’s actions and resigned from his post in protest. His resignation shocked the British leading to immediate changes, such as the revocation of martial law in Punjab.

CS Nair later wrote a book, Gandhi and Anarchy (1922), where he criticized Michael O’Dwyer, the lieutenant Government of Punjab during the massacre. He accused O’Dwyer for abetting the atrocities through his repressive administration. This, in turn, invited a libel suit from O’Dwyer, who by then had returned to England after being dismissed from Punjab. It is this case, O’Dwyer v. Nair, heard in the High Court in London, that Kesari Chapter 2 seeks to dramatise.

“Don’t forget that you are still a slave of the British Empire,” a judge tells Kumar’s character in the teaser, inviting an expletive — “f**k you — from the indignant lawyer. (whether CS Nair, a lifelong constitutionalist, would have used such language in court is unclear, and is likely a creative choice on the maker’s part). Nevertheless, it is documented that the judge who heard the case was openly prejudiced against the Indian defendant, and the jury’s verdict was not unanimous. The hearing ran for over five weeks, one of the longest civil hearings in legal history, Ultimately, CS Nair opted to pay damages (500 pounds) rather than tender an apology to O’Dwyer.

While CS Nair died in 1934 in Madras, O’Dwyer was assassinated by Indian revolutionary Udham Singh in 1940 in Caxton Hall, London. A Bollywood film, Sardar Udham, starring Vicky Kaushal, was earlier made on the subject.