How Maharaj could have brought Aamir Khan and Junaid Khan together in a FASCINATING historical crossover

Filmmaker Siddharth P Malhotra’s Maharaj, which released earlier this year on Netflix, succeeded in getting positive reactions from audiences and critics alike. The film was also a launch for Junaid Khan, who gave an impressive performance after honing his skills by doing theatre for a number of years.

Maharaj is an adaptation of the Gujarati book of the same name written by author Saurabh Shah, first published in 2013. It is based on the real life Maharaj Libel Case of 1862 where the head priest of a major Vaishnav haveli (temple) Jadunathji Maharaj is accused of sexual misconduct with female devotees.

The story revolves around the fearless journalist and social reformer Karsandas Mulji, played by Junaid, who is accused by the Maharaj of a haveli in Mumbai (Jaideep Ahlawat) of defamation after he writes about his misdeeds in the newspaper Satyaprakash.

There have been various films based on books. On most of the occasions, it is not possible to include all the incidents of a book into its film version because of the time constraints of a feature film. The same is the case with Maharaj too. The makers had to leave out various incidents from its original source.

One such occurrence in the book which didn’t make its way in the movie generated interest of this writer. The book has an incident where Karsandas Mulji mentions in his diary about a news report he read about the British soldier of Barrackpore regiment Mangal Pandey likely be sentenced to death by the British army court for killing a senior British army senior. The soldier resorted to the act to protest against the use of the cow fat in the cartridges of bullets given to the soldiers. Mangal’s rebellious act ultimately gives rise to the 1857 mutiny.

This incident brings an interesting possibility to light. In Ketan Mehta’s Mangal Pandey: The Rising (2005), Junaid’s father Aamir Khan played the titular character. If the makers of Maharaj had included the incident of Karsandas reading the aforementioned news item in the movie and if they had explored it, there could have been a chance of a crossover between Maharaj and Mangal Pandey.

This could have given us a chance of seeing the father-son duo of Aamir-Junaid in the same movie, if not the same frame. Both the father and son play different types of rebellious characters in their respective movies. Another reason why this could have been possible is that Yash Raj Films is the producer of Maharaj as well as one of the distributors of Mangal Pandey: The Rising.

Also Read: When Aamir Khan and family visited Maharaj sets to support Junaid Khan for his debut with Siddharth P Malhotra