Battle of Saragarhi Remembered: Bollywood, Books and Beyond

Saragarhi was a signalling post linking two forts on a bleak ridge in what was then British India’s North-West Frontier (now in Pakistan). A small detachment of 21 Sikh soldiers, led by Havildar Ishar Singh, was attacked on 12 September 1897 by a vastly larger force of around 10,000 Afridi and Orakzai tribesmen (estimates vary, and exact numbers are debated).

The defenders fought until the post was overrun; they held out for many hours, inflicting heavy casualties before falling themselves. Their sacrifice during the Battle of Saragarhi was noticed at the highest levels: all twenty-one were posthumously awarded the Indian Order of Merit—then the highest gallantry award available to Indian troops.

The moment that began as a small, desperate military action has been burnished into something like myth—not to inflate reality, but because communities needed a simple, powerful example of courage. The Sikh Regiment of the Indian Army marks 12 September as Saragarhi Day; regimental parades, wreath-laying and ceremonies keep the memory alive inside the army.

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Across the world, Sikh communities commemorate the day; museums and memorials—from a new Saragarhi museum in Ferozepur to diaspora memorial projects in the UK—collect artefacts, names, and oral histories that anchor the event in place and memory.

Popular culture has a way of pulling historic moments into the sunlight, and recent Indian cinema did exactly that. Kesari (2019), starring Akshay Kumar, dramatises the last stand and brings the Battle of Saragarhi to a mass audience—with the usual trade-offs between cinematic sweep and historical micro-detail.

Reviews praised the film’s emotional climax and spectacle, even as critics noted liberties taken with characterisation and pacing; nevertheless, the very existence of a mainstream film about the Battle of Saragarhi pushed the story into conversations among viewers who might otherwise never have heard of the 36th Sikhs.

The cinematic and television retellings of Saragarhi extend well beyond Kesari. Notably, the Indian historical drama 21 Sarfarosh – Saragarhi 1897, which aired on Discovery Jeet from 12 February to 11 May 2018, dramatises the events leading up to the final stand of the 36th Sikh Regiment. Featuring Mohit Raina as Havildar Ishar Singh, the series ran for one season of 65 episodes and was later made available globally via Netflix.

More recently, Battle of Saragarhi 1897, a docudrama released in 2023, presents the true-life story of the 21 defenders in a concise, immersive format. Spanning around 55 minutes per episode, it traces the soldiers' duty and sacrifice through modern visual storytelling and is accessible via Prime Video and Apple TV.

Looking ahead, there's buzz around an upcoming Bollywood project: Border 2, directed by Anurag Singh and inspired by the Battle of Saragarhi. Set to release on 23 January 2026, it features a high-profile cast—Varun Dhawan, Diljit Dosanjh, Ahan Shetty, and Medha Rana—and promises a fresh cinematic tribute to the legendary battle.

For those who want to go beyond cinematic retellings, a rich body of books explores the history and legacy of Saragarhi. Among the most cited is Saragarhi: The Forgotten Battle by Jay Singh-Sohal, which reconstructs the dramatic hours of 12 September 1897 and situates the event within the wider politics of the frontier. Equally valuable is The Iconic Battle of Saragarhi: Echoes of the Frontier, which traces the cultural and martial resonance of the encounter across communities and generations.

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Other important works include Saragarhi and the Defence of the Samana Forts, a meticulous study of the broader Tirah Campaign in which Saragarhi was a key episode, and simply titled Battle of Saragarhi, which distills the facts, figures and oral traditions surrounding the stand. Together, these volumes ensure the battle is not just remembered as legend but examined in its full historical context.

Complementing the books are documentaries and regimental pamphlets that bring the past alive through eyewitness accounts, archival research, and on-location storytelling. They help separate fact from embellishment, while still preserving the sense of awe that the story naturally commands. For anyone seeking to understand why Saragarhi endures — as history, myth, and living memory — these texts provide essential entry points.

One reason Saragarhi retains power is that it functions on multiple levels. To the military historian, it is a tactical episode—a study in signalling, small-post defence, and frontier warfare. To communities, it’s a story of sacrifice and duty that affirms group values. To the filmmaker and novelist, it’s dramatic material: a small number of protagonists, a clearly defined moral arc, and an easily communicated climax.

None of these readings cancels out the others; rather, they layer. That layering explains the rituals and monuments: from annual regimental observances to new museums cataloguing insignia, weapons, and the signalling lamp that once blinked between forts.

When stories become icons, they can also flatten nuance. Modern retellings sometimes inflate enemy numbers, simplify political causes, or turn a messy colonial frontier into a tidy morality play. Good history doesn’t have to puncture admiration, but it does invite questions: What were the politics of frontier administration in 1897? How did the British use martial narratives about Sikh soldiers in their own propaganda? And how do communities today reinterpret the past to serve present needs?

Seeking answers—in archival documents, museum collections, and rigorous scholarship—enriches the admiration rather than diminishes it. (For balanced background reading, look to established history outlets and museum collections rather than just popular retellings.)

Stories like the Battle of Saragarhi endure because they give a language for courage that is specific and human: names, hours, a ridge, a signalling lamp and a handful of men who chose not to surrender. Whether told in a regimental hall, on a museum placard, in a book, or through the lens of a camera, the battle continues to invite us to think about duty, memory and the ways we honour the past. That is why—125 years after a desperate stand on a windswept ridgeline—Saragarhi still finds new life in film, on bookshelves and in the stone of new memorials, and is commemorated every year on Saragarhi Day.