For all its appearance of a historical film, the events in “Begum Jaan” seem far removed from the time. There is barely any evidence of the churn taking place in India or of the communal tensions at the time. Mukherji doesn’t seem to be able to tie together the twin themes of partition and the exploitation of women.

This film has nothing new to tell us about this tumultuous time in our history: the British were apparently very bad, so were politicians on both sides, so were royal families. This is the kind of broadly simplistic film in which a little girl can ask, “Is it the same thing to kill a Hindu and a Muslim?”