Sahebs Who Never Left

The Film

A documentary duology produced under Prachyam examining how colonisation persisted in India through internal complicity rather than external force alone. I developed the "saheb" metaphor the film runs on: the proverbial sahebs, Indians who took up colonial ideologies, subverted the freedom movement and undermined civilizational confidence from within — and in doing so set the nation's post-independence trajectory.

How I Made It

The first installment lays out a historical narrative running from the early Islamic invasions through the British Raj, tracing the psychological defeats that eroded intellectual resistance and cultural self-worth. The argument is about interior states — deference, self-doubt, borrowed contempt — across several centuries, and the period has almost no usable footage. Painted sequences and animated visualisations were built alongside dramatized scenes directed by Praveen Chaturvedi, to establish period atmosphere where archival material could not. Production ran to over eight months, with direction, writing and editing by me.

Where It Landed

Released on Prachyam TV, the film passed three million views on YouTube. It was the work that established Prachyam. With Part Two, it documents what the series frames as successive layers of colonisation and self-betrayal.