10 Indic Films

The Slate

10 Indic Films is a slate of ten short documentaries proposed by Prachyam in January 2021 — scientifically argued retellings of contested episodes in Indic history, science and philosophy, made for a young audience in the visual register of a big-budget streaming documentary. We pitched it to the broader Indic community as a crowdfunded production, seeking $95,000 to produce the whole slate.

The ten titles: 50,000 Years of Indian Civilisation, on evidence from astronomy, hydrology and genetics; India's Gifts to World, on Indian contributions from antiquity to the present; Dating the Ramayana, anchoring the Ram-Ravan Yuddha to 14,000 years ago; Dating the Mahabharata, anchoring the war to 7,000 years ago; Aryans Never Invaded India; Healing the World, on India's holistic health sciences; The Guru Shishya Tradition; Demystifying Aghora, on the science of Tantra and Aghora; 'Sahebs' Who Never Left, on the neo-colonial agenda; and Swarajya Warriors, on the origins of the Indic wing and the fight for Swarajya.

The proposal's argument was that Hollywood production values have become a proxy for authenticity: anti-India lobbies have disguised well-produced lies as truth for unsuspecting young viewers, because that "just-feels-cool" impulse is what draws a young mind to otherwise baseless narratives. On the other side, the fusion of gripping filmmaking and scientific research is absent from the Indic space, so Indic content has to fight hard to reach the surface of the internet. The tremendous scholarly work facilitated by organisations like Indica and Sangam Talks was not getting its due attention for lack of powerful video adaptation. Each film therefore had to work for two audiences at once — "cool" enough for young kids, "scientific" enough for skeptics worldwide — and be made at a fraction of what the same slate would cost in the West.

How We Planned It

Research first. Every film was to be built on published work by named researchers — Nilesh Oak, Shrikant Talageri, Prof. C. K. Raju, Dr. Anil Narayanan, Aabhas Maldahiyar, Rupa Bhaty, Dr. Anil Suri, Dr. Premendra Priyadarshi and Ruchir Sharma — alongside the civilisational views popularised by Sanjay Dixit, Rajiv Malhotra, Niraj Atri, Hari Kiran Vadalamani, Abhijit Chavda, Shiv Sastry, Bala Sankuratri, Saiswaroopa Iyer and Mitra Desai. The proposal marks that list as illustrative, varying with each film's content direction.

The reference style is the big-budget Netflix documentary, brought into vogue by shows such as Vox: Explained — which is why half the entire budget is allocated to visual effects and graphic design. The rest divides into 15 per cent for compiling and adapting the research, 5 per cent for scripting and storyboard, 10 per cent for voice-over narration by multiple actors, 15 per cent for editing and sound mixing, and 5 per cent for promotional content.

The $95,000 ask was argued as a value proposition rather than a discount: the same ten-film project produced in the US or Europe would land at $300,000 to $400,000, and a highly skilled Dharmic team of filmmakers and animators based in India brings that to a third — the way ISRO's Mission Mangal cost less than making the film Gravity. Prachyam had always self-funded its social media videos; this was the project we took to the community.

The schedule ran to twelve months for the slate, up to 30 days per film, and one release every month. Every film was to be made in English and Hindi, with closed captions for other languages. Release was planned on YouTube, promoted on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook by leading Indic social media influencers and through collaborations with Indic content producers.

The core team: Praveen Chaturvedi directing and writing, a Master Mariner who sailed the world for a decade before taking his film education at USC and UCLA and working on leading Hollywood and Canadian productions; Nilesh Oak as executive producer and content supervisor; myself as assistant director, editor and VFX supervisor; and Abhishek Singh, an award-winning cinematographer, as cinematographer and production supervisor.

What Actually Happened

The crowdfunding worked and production began, but the slate ran far past its schedule. Two years in, two films existed rather than ten.

Sahebs Who Never Left took six to seven months of research and compilation alone, and grew extensive enough to force a split. Part One, around 30 minutes, gained millions of views on YouTube; Part Two, close to an hour, took another six to seven months. That amounts to an hour and a half of finished film, surpassing the total duration of the original plan, against an initial estimate of ten-to-fifteen-minute films at 10–15 lakh rupees each.

Guru Shishya Parampara, over 30 minutes, was completed for release in December 2023, with Aryan Invasion — proposed as Aryans Never Invaded India — set as the fourth film. The remaining slate as of that update: the Ramayana, Mahabharata and Antiquity dating films, and a two-part India's Contribution to the World.

Distribution changed along the way. Censorship concerns, particularly the prospect of Sahebs Who Never Left Part Two being censored on YouTube, led Prachyam to launch its own OTT platform — a distinct dream when the journey started, and the reason Prachyam now operates as three arms: video and OTT technology, film production, and a creative agency handling graphics and social media. All ten Indic films are free there, and the compulsory signup that initially applied to Sahebs Who Never Left was removed.

Contributor credits were withheld on both Sahebs films because of their politically sensitive and charged subject: for safety reasons even the filmmakers involved went uncredited. Credits and the promised crowdfunding perks resume from Guru Shishya Parampara onward, alongside a dedicated project page on the OTT site linking to the films.