American director Oliver Stone’s movie, “Alexander,” when released in 2004 met with negative reviews from critics in the U.S. and Europe. The three-hour-long epic, which cost an estimated 150 million dollars to make, purports to show the life of Alexander the Great, who in less than a decade conquered much of the ancient world. But some complained the movie was riddled with historical inaccuracies. The epic also stirred controversy by portraying Alexander’s bisexuality.

Even before its release, Oliver Stone’s film “Alexander” sparked controversy. While a group of Greek lawyers wanted to take legal action against the movie because they were upset about suggestions in the film that Alexander was bisexual, campaigners for homosexual rights criticized Stone for not making Alexander openly gay.

Zoroastrian communities in the United States and Parsis in India got upset for different reasons. They noticed that in promos for the movie, the winged Zoroastrian symbol of Farohar or Fravahar was used in the background.

Kaveh Farrokh is an expert on the history and linguistics of Persia, particularly in the pre-Islamic era. “One of the reasons we don’t know many aspects of Zoroastrian teachings is that people wrongly blamed it on the Arab invasion of the 7th century. In reality, we have to go back and look at Alexander’s invasion, which was extremely destructive, and many of the ‘magis,’ the Zoroastrians priests, were killed,” Farrokh says.

Since the release of the movie, some historians have expressed surprise and regret that some key events of the time, such as Alexander’s burning of the city of Persepolis, are overlooked. There are different historical accounts about the arson. Some say Alexander instigated it in revenge for the destruction caused by Persians in Greece in the 5th century before Christ. Other say Alexander did it while he was drunk, on the encouragement of a woman.

Some people, some media, wrote letters, e-mails and decided to show their protests but their actions were not correlated, it didn’t draw any attention. Some boycotted the movie, but many went to see the movie out of curiosity.

But viewers in India were surprised about the important factor they all have read in their eighth standard history books was simply left out or ignored. The one about how Alexander was very much moved by Porus alias Purushothaman’ courage, and Alex out of a new leaf of friendship gave back the kingdom to him and went back to Greece. The entire part was left out. A lot of people in India too felt that the movie was heavily inaccurate according to the sources from their history books.

A lot of that same application of mind should have created this string of protests against the new movie, “Jodhaa Akbar”. They did not read anything in their history books about the facts that were shown about Akbar in the movie. The protestors argued that Akbar was not as innocent as depicted in the movie Jodha Akbar. He was barbaric, greedy, and imperialist and maintained a big harem of women. He did convert who so ever (Jodha or was some one else) was married to him to Islam and she was buried too by Islamic tradition and not Hindu tradition. Akbar shed lot of blood and only at fag end of his life of lust for territory he realized the futility of all. The movie also showed fancy conclusion that Akbar had played a vital role of uniting the entire territory into Hindustan. They have read only under British rule the whole country was brought together but not under Akbar.

The question is why people care about these things. One lived some two thousand years ago and the other five hundred years ago. Is it really necessary to know how kings with devastating expansionist ambitions lived or loved? Or is there anything a movie that was actually produced entirely for entertainment purpose going to change anything that actually happened some centuries or many centuries ago? Why this hullabaloo?

Written by Nathesh