Ah, interesting that Ajay Devgn is officially on board to play the title role of Chanakya, the shrewd political thinker of Chandragupta Maurya's time. Although too early to speculate, it'll be fun to see if Ajay sports the shaven head and Brahmanical choti (knot) that is the imbedded image of Chanakya for most of us.

But Ajay as Chanakya is an eyebrow-raiser for other reasons too, one of which is that the actor joins hands with filmmaker Neeraj Pandey for the first time. Neeraj has so far been an Akshay Kumar man and it's as intriguing as "Chanakya- giri" to know how Ajay has entered that space.

Right from the time Ajay and Akshay were young, high-on-testosterone actors, they've had an unspoken rivalry. Especially because both were exceptionally good at action. They did do a film or two together, like Suhaag, but they largely kept away from each other. Of the two, Ajay outgrew the action tag earlier to make himself accepted as a respected, versatile actor.

It took Akshay another decade or more to get close to that place. And it was Neeraj Pandey's Special 26 that swung it for him. That was Akshay's first brush with audience approval for an image-breaking attempt by him. After that encouraging nod, he and Neeraj (who either directed him or produced the film), came up with Baby, Naam Shabana, Rustom and Toilet Ek Prem Katha, a string of films that elevated Akshay to the hankered-after bracket of "an actor-in-sensible-cinema".

But soon one heard of a crack in the Akshay-Neeraj friendship. The first flares were spotted when their next film, Crack, was announced and then quietly put on the backburner. Neeraj's team also registered titles like Special 2019, Special 2020 and Special 2021, as sequels to Special 26. The title they'd ultimately choose would depend on the year the sequel was going to be made. But Neeraj danced around the question a bit when he was asked if Akshay would top-line the sequel. An indicator that all was not swell on the Special front.

With Ajay Devgn in an ambitious Neeraj Pandey film, the exit of Akshay Kumar from this producer's camp seems final.

That apart, Chanakya itself has been an elusive subject in the Hindi film industry. In the 70s, Dilip Kumar and B.R. Chopra, two blockbuster names, had joined forces to film him. Dilip Kumar was to play Chandragupta Maurya's wily strategist under the latter's direction and Meena Kumari's brother-in-law, Kishore Sharma, was to produce the spectacular historical drama. A pictorial spread of Dilip Kumar with shaven head and the choti was published in the now-defunct Star & Style. The script was vetted and ready but the film never took off. It was probably too grandiose a dream for the producer to pull off.

Much later, Amitabh Bachchan was approached by another filmmaker to play Chanakya. That too didn't materialise.

But veteran B.R. Chopra didn't give up the dream as he submitted a proposal to Doordarshan (in the pre-satellite era) to make a TV series. DD gave the contract to Chandraprakash Dwivedi instead. Like a master planner, Dwivedi played the title role himself under his own direction and won a sizeable viewership.

Chanakya, who could not debut on the big screen, thus stormed the TV screens in 1991. Thereafter, Chanakya was popular as a theatre play, too. But a film on Chanakya is still to turn into a reality. Solid names like Devgn and Pandey are probably the best in the business to see it through this time around.

However, Chanakya is rarely far from controversy. When the TV serial was aired, it was panned by some for its saffron tinge and the "shadow of Hindutva" that lurked behind the Sanksritised drama. One critic slammed its " akhand Bharat" nationalism. Another saw an RSS ideology and linked it to L.K. Advani's rath yatra. Still another warned that "shaven heads and Vedic mantras is only bound to ignite passions".

That was in 1991. Can you imagine how Chanakya would be received today?

Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author