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The Art of Storytelling
Stories shape what we think is true. They teach us, entertain us, and — if we let them — quietly remap the map of our past. That was the through-line of Mr. Sohail’s talk: a gentle, urgent invitation to ask how history is made, who gets to tell it, and what happens when two of our most persuasive storytellers — cinema and technology — start to rewrite each other.
When Machines Learn to Tell Tales
We live in a moment when “intelligence” can be simulated without a single beating heart. As Mr. Sohail pointed out, artificial intelligence is stupendously capable, but not wise: it does what it’s programmed or trained to do. That power becomes dangerous when it’s used to manufacture persuasive lies — fake speeches, doctored videos, AI-generated personalities or alternate versions of public figures. An AI can be asked to create a “Nehru” who never was, or an imaginary scene from the past, and the result can feel — to an audience used to images and moving pictures — indistinguishable from reality.
That leads to two urgent questions: Who controls the image? And who holds creative responsibility? The legal and ethical edges are still blurry. Filmmakers long exercised “creative liberties” — inventing details, reordering events, compressing time — and audiences accepted the tradeoff as part of storytelling. But when an algorithm can stitch together convincingly real falsehoods, the line between artistic invention and political deception gets thin, and the stakes get very high.
Cinema as Memory — and as a Rewriting Tool
Mr. Sohail’s walkthrough of films like Mughal-e-Azam and Padmavat reminded us how movies don’t just reflect history; they make it. Cinema has the uncanny ability to lodge images in public imagination. A palace, a costume, a single dramatic scene — these can become everyone’s shorthand for “what happened.” Over generations, mythical or symbolic texts are translated, filmed, retranslated and eventually presented as history.
Take Padmavat. Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s original is a symbolic Sufi poem — a layered, allegorical text — yet modern retellings and political appropriation have sometimes stripped that symbolism and recast the tale as literal history. Translations and popular adaptations can add new episodes, change motives, or highlight certain figures, and before long a fictional or allegorical tale is accepted as a factual chronicle.
Another example Mr. Sohail flagged was the figure of Jodhabai. Long treated in popular imagination as a straightforward historical personage, she’s a perfect case study in cinematic mythmaking — a character whose contours were sharpened, and sometimes invented, by storytellers. The film camera, with its emotional shorthand and visual shorthand, has a way of turning “fiction” into “what everyone knows.”
Nuance vs. Narrative
Colonial and post-colonial narratives have their own traces here. Mr. Sohail argued that many simplified portrayals of rulers — the easy villains and easy heroes — obscure complex realities: coins that used inclusive language, Hindu generals in Mughal courts, and the cultural exchanges that do not fit tidy partisan stories. These nuances get flattened when cinematic needs — drama, heroism, visual grandeur — trump careful scholarship. He stressed that films often rely on stereotypes to appeal to mass audiences, which risks reinforcing communal divides rather than encouraging critical reflection. By overlooking evidence from archives, inscriptions, and diverse voices of the time, cinema reduces a layered past into a story of binaries.
The Future of Fabricated Pasts
Mr. Sohail also explored how Artificial Intelligence could reshape our understanding of history. Raising the striking question of what if filmmakers or technology companies began using AI to create entirely new narratives about historic figures — not as experiments, but as persuasive, widely distributed content? The concern is not only technical but moral: why manufacture a past that serves present needs, and how can society prevent public memory from becoming a battleground of fabricated stories?
Mr. Sohail further guided the discussion beyond warnings, emphasizing the skills needed to navigate such challenges — curiosity, scepticism, and the habit of asking questions. One line that resonated with everyone was his reminder: “If children are told merely to imitate elders, who will ask the questions?” It was a powerful reminder, underscoring that the strength of our shared past rests on the spirit of inquiry.
What We Can Do
1. Be suspicious of single images. If a film or footage feels like “the only” story about an event, look for other sources — archives, scholarship, oral histories.
2. Demand transparency. Filmmakers and platforms should label where creative liberties or AI were used. The difference between “inspired by” and “based on the true story” matters.
3. Teach curiosity. Heritage walks, films, and classrooms should be starting points for questions, not end points. The moment we treat a myth as a map, we stop exploring.
A Final Thought
Stories have always shaped politics and identity; that’s neither new nor uniquely dangerous. What’s new is the speed and fidelity with which images can now be produced and spread. The remedy isn’t to stop telling stories — it’s to tell them better, more honestly, and to keep asking who benefits from the stories we accept as true.
In the interplay of cinema and AI, of myth and manuscript, our best defense is not censorship but curiosity: the stubborn, irritating, beautiful habit of asking “how do you know that?” That question keeps history alive — not as a museum of trophies, but as a living conversation.
Written by Suhani Sarin, Ananya Jena, Tooba Ayub
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