What We Became
Thousands of years of Indian history compressed into crisp statements, set in stark contrast with what oppression, colonialism and persecution made of it.
The Edit
What We Became compresses thousands of years of Indian history into very crisp statements, setting them in stark contrast with the changes India faced through oppression, colonialism and religious-political persecution.
The Subject
The historical summation video is a format with a short and traceable history,
and Prachyam is where it started. Celebrating New India, released in 2020,
established the shape: a very large span of history compressed into a runtime
measured in seconds rather than minutes, carried by pace, cut and image instead
of the narration that explanatory video normally depends on.
What We Became applies that format to a harder structure. Where a summation
video usually runs forward, this one runs as contrast — a statement of what
India was, set directly against what displaced it — so the argument lives in the
join between two shots rather than in either one.
The format has since been widely imitated across the Indic sphere, to the point
where it now reads as a native idiom of the space rather than as anyone's
invention.
How I Made It
The edit works by contrast. Each statement is short enough to land on its own, and the sequence sets what India was directly against what displaced it.
Where It Landed
The video went viral, and was shared by a number of well-known accounts in the Indic sphere.
