In 1986, Birkinshaw went to India where he directed an award-winning film on the life of Jawaharlal Nehru, entitled "But I Have Promises To Keep", which had been commissioned by Rajiv Gandhi and was made for the Government of India via Doordarshan, the national television network of India. The film was supposed to take three months in production, but ended up taking a year and a half. Now residing in an apartment in Saket, a suburb of Delhi, Birkinshaw used his spare time to study ancient Indian civilisations and artefacts, and research into his favourite historical subject, the Indian Mutiny of 1857. Questions were asked in the Lok Sabha, Indian Parliament, as to why an English director had been employed to make a film about Indian’s National Hero, and not an Indian director.