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The article reviews the motion picture, Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India, starring Aamir Khan, Raj Zutshi and Javed Khan. On the surface, the film Lagaan offers a story of resistance. Set in the traditional musical mode of films coming out of the prolific Mumbai studios, Lagaan tells, sings, and dances the story of the resistance of Indian villagers against their British colonial oppressors. Smaller resistances within the village shore up this larger unfolding of tension, as the hero Bhuvan, played by Aamir Khan, defends the village untouchable, welcomes the token Muslim, Ismail, played by Zutshi, and token Sikh, Ram Singh, played by Javed Khan, and stops the villagers from violently killing the turncoat spy for the British, Lakha, played by Yashpal Sharma. We watch as the villagers conquer the clear evil of British Captain Andrew Russell, whose smirks send simultaneous chills and giggles down ones spine and whose capricious wielding of power irks even his superiors at colonial central command. However, this message of resistance rides on the back of other, more problematic assumptions regarding our understanding of the historical colonial relationship. Just as architectural, archaeological, and textual history is often rewritten or ignored in order to support the notion of a Hindu India oppressed by Muslim or British outsiders, Lagaan presents a colonial past in which resistance to the colonizer unifies the villagers, but only under the banner of Hinduism. From the conservatism of the film's depiction of the village to its token inclusion of Muslims, Sikhs, and untouchables, Lagaan unwittingly reasserts the primacy of Hinduism in India, and does so through the two-pronged approach of recasting both Indian history and Hindu gods.