There are moments when I love my job or rather, my business of journalism – even I, a hard-nosed cynical hack of nearly three decades. It is because you love and cherish these moments that you are so grateful you are in this business. How else would I, a hopeless, hopeless philistine, hope to find myself on a rain-drenched terrace in old Varanasi with Ustad Bismillah Khan? As it happens, it was almost exactly the same time last year.

I can fill the rest of this space just describing the beauty of his face, his spirit, his talent, his madness, even his commercialism. To date, he is the only guest who demanded, and was paid – though only a very reasonable tribute – for appearing on Walk the Talk. He said he had a large family to support, even at 91, and could do with whatever money came his way. And when I reminded him, while leaving, that he had to come and perform at my children’s weddings, he said yes immediately. And then quoted the price: five lakh, plus air tickets and stay for seven people. You could touch his innocence with bare hands in the heavy monsoon air.

Khan Saheb let me down on this one though. He will not come and perform at my children’s weddings, whatever the price. But he left me with memories – and lines – that will never go away. What was the difference between Hindu and Muslim, he asked. What, indeed, when he sang to Allah in raga Bhairav (composed for Shiva) and brought to tears the Iraqi maulana who had just told him music was blasphemy, “evil, a trap of the devil”. Khan Saheb said, “I told him, Maulana, I will sing to Allah. All I ask you is to be fair. And when I finished I asked him if it is blasphemy. He was speechless.” And then Khan Saheb told me with that trademark mischievous glint: “But I did not tell him it was in raga Bhairav.”

Why did Khan Saheb not migrate to Pakistan with partition? “Arre, will I ever leave my Benares?” he asked. “I went to Pakistan for a few hours,” he said, “just to be able to say I’ve been there. I knew I would never last there.” And what is so special about Benares, his glorified slum of a haveli in a grandly named Bharat Ratna Ustad Bismillah Khan Street that had more potholes than footholds and more heaps of chicken entrails from nearby meat shops than garbage heaps from homes? “My temples are here,” he said, “Balaji and Mangala Gauri.” Without them, he asked, how would he make any music? As a Muslim he could not go inside the temples. But so what? “I would just go behind the temples and touch the wall from outside. You bring gangajal, you can go inside to offer it, but I can just as well touch the stone from outside. It’s the same. I just have to put my hand to them.”

How is that devotion in a week when our parliament was rocked by issues like the forcible, and criminal, chopping of a Sikh boy’s hair in Jaipur and the controversy over state-mandated singing of Vande Mataram in schools to launch the 150th anniversary of 1857? Or when we were all so outraged by the paranoia that caused the Mumbai bound KLM-Northwest flight to return to Amsterdam, the racial profiling of Muslims, particularly Asian-Arab Muslims and so on?

Khan Saheb’s was a talent worthy of a Bharat Ratna and immortality. But he also personified, so strikingly, the fact of how the Muslims of India defy the stereotypes building up in today’s rapidly dividing world. They may be poorer than the majority, or even other, smaller minorities, they may still live in ghettos of sorts, but they are a part of the mainstream, nationally as well as regionally and ethnically, more than Muslim populations are in most parts of the world. A Tamil Muslim, for example, is as much an ethnic Tamil as a Hindu or a Christian and certainly has more in common with his ethnic cousins than with fellow Muslims in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh. India’s Muslims work in mainstream businesses where their interests are meshed inextricably with the rest, particularly the majority Hindus, even if they happen to spar occasionally.

That is why, unlike Bush’s America or the western world in general, India cannot even think of the diabolical idea of “Islamic” fascism or terrorism. No country can survive if it starts looking at nearly 15 per cent of its population as a fifth column. That is why India’s view of the war against terror has to be entirely different from the western world’s, more nuanced, more realistic and, most importantly, entirely indigenous.

It is a difficult argument to make in times when it is so tempting to tell America and Europe that see, the people who are terrorising you are the same as the people who have been terrorising us. So far you never believed us. Now with every other terror suspect being traced back to Pakistan and, more precisely, Jaish or Lashkar, accept and acknowledge that we have been in the forefront of the global war against terror for a decade before it hit you. The danger in that approach is, the Americans and the Europeans can choose that approach – though it is not working for them as well – because for them these Muslims are outsiders, different, and therefore candidates for racial profiling. You can racially profile a million people in a universe of 27 crore. Can you profile 14 crore in a universe of a hundred crore? Particularly when most of them, in their own big and small ways, are as integrated in the mainstream, as zealously proud and possessive of their multiple (ethnic, linguistic and professional) identities as of their faith?

That is why the key to fighting, okay, this wave of terror emanating from Muslim anger is to absolutely avoid the “global war on terror” trap.

The terrorists know it. That is why attacks in India, even by angry Indian Muslims, are not directed against some evil global power or its symbols. Nor are they meant to support some pan-Islamic cause, Palestine, or even, for that matter, Kashmir. Their objective, always, is to strike at our secular nationalism. Every single attack has had the same purpose, starting with the first round of Bombay bombings in 1993.

Sharad Pawar made a bold confession to me earlier this month that he parachuted from Delhi into a riot-torn Bombay then figured immediately that the terrorist plot was to kill a large number of people in Hindu localities to trigger large-scale mob attacks on Muslim areas where automatic weapons and grenades had been stored with their agents. Once the mobs were stopped with these automatic weapons it would lead to a carnage that would be uncontrollable. It is for that reason that, he says, he lied on Doordarshan that there had been 12 blasts (where there had been 11) and added the name of a Muslim locality as the 12th. Today we can all rue the fact that judgement in the case of those blasts is still awaited, 13 years later (this article was written in 2006). But we should also cherish the fact that in eschewing any rioting and actually returning to work the very next morning, Bombay had defeated the larger design of the terrorists.

Every attack since then, the temples at Ayodhya, Akshardham and Varanasi, Raghunath temple in Jammu, even the bombs at Delhi’s Jama Masjid, had the same purpose: widening that divide. But it is tougher in India where any notion of ‘Them versus Us’ is an impossibility given how closely communities live, work and do business together. It is one thing to say that we have learnt to live with diversity for a thousand years. It is equally important that we internalise the idea of diversity, equality and fairness that is in our Constitution and in the process of nation building make the very idea of a global war against ‘Islamic fascism’ totally alien and ridiculous for India.

There is a war on for us and there is no getting away from the fact that some of those on the wrong side today are fellow, angry Indians, and we have to deal with them firmly and effectively. But we will need to evolve an idiom and a strategy entirely our own, in tune with a society which loves equally Ustad Bismillah Khan and Pandit Ravi Shankar, who both sing and pray to Allah and Shiva, Krishna in ragas composed for either. Today India enjoys great respect in the world because of its unfolding economic miracle. If India can get this nuance right, it could be the toast of the world tomorrow for an even greater socio-political miracle, a secular but deeply religious nation that defeated terrorism while taking its 14 crore Muslims along.

Courtesy: The Indian Express

Archived from Communalism Combat, August-September 2007, Anniversary Issue (14th), Year 14    No.125, India at 60 Free Spaces, Music

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Two events have hung on the conscience of modern India because we, as a society, have not responded to it. It is not easy to respond to violence either as a mnemonic or as a continuing process. Witness and victim almost become irritants testifying to our passivity.

In fact, when one sees the prime agents of ’84, one realises that as tigers they are toothless. The late HKL Bhagat, even Sajjan Kumar, had better claims to an old age home than prison. It raises then the question of whether we should pursue these people into dotage.

Even more, it confronts us with the question – should society forget and go on?

There is a therapy in forgetting, a hygiene that does not allow old wounds to fester. But there is a sense of history as convenience which a society cannot allow. Also, denial produces its own pathologies. For instance, the Israeli Sabra’s contempt for the Holocaust Jew was so blatant that camp documents were sold as pornographic literature. The denial of violence comes back as a new form of destiny. Sociologists also banalised the ’84 riots with writers like Emma Vidal pursuing a ruthless ethnography of how widows exploited the situation. While competent as sociology, this form of work blunted the sense of justice by treating the victims as entrepreneurs of their own misfortune. What Ms Vidal forgot is that not all memory can be commoditised. All trauma does not graduate to the circus as a "monster".

The 2002 riots were a bit different from the riots of 1984. The first major difference was that in ’84 civil society and especially academics, university students, groups like the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) rose to the occasion to provide succour to the victim. The state, in Gujarat, treated the victims as recalcitrant citizens of a development process. The riots were seen as part of a logic of development, of an old city sulking in its ethnicity. Worse, there was a blatant sense of exterminism. The local society in general wanted not just to terrorise the victim but also to eliminate him. This psychology in fact contributed to the carnivalesque mode in the aftermath of what was genocide.

What kept memory alive, apart from the efforts of the survivor, was not the media but the defiance of dissenters. One thinks, in particular, of Teesta Setalvad and the defiant testimony of Sreekumar before the Nanavati Commission. It was partly because of their efforts that the court established the Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe into the Gujarat riots.

The entry of the SIT was an extraordinary event. It came at a moment of cynicism about law and justice. It worked quietly, almost invisibly. Yet its very adherence to protocols, its readiness to listen, its determined patience created a sense of the law as an occasional oasis of hope. Just like with Sreekumar in the earlier phase, for RK Raghavan enactment of protocols has become iconic of the processes of a decent society.

In a performative way, faith in justice is going to depend not merely on what the SIT unearths but on how Mr Raghavan, in his role as SIT head, behaves. He has to perform the drama of legal interrogation and investigation and he has to do it with immaculate correctness. In an odd sense, Raghavan has to play Raghavan to be convincing. He has created an everydayness about the interrogation, playing the unflappable Jeeves to a legal system that often tends to be empty-headed. As CBI director, Mr Raghavan embodied professionalism and honesty. His was a respected career.

But when, on April 27, the SIT opened the file on 41 new cases, something new was signalled. A Pandora’s box of question marks exploded to encompass police officers, IAS officers, including chief secretaries, and even a few ministers. It was an electrifying moment. A new set of expectations has been created. The demands for justice as procedure, as ritual, as performance and as meaning has reached a new high.

When the SIT opened the file on 41 new cases, something new was signalled. A Pandora’s box of question marks exploded to encompass police officers, IAS officers, including chief secretaries, and even a few ministers. A new set of expectations has been created

Mr Raghavan is not merely a person. He is now a persona. His new role demands an immaculate performance as the circle of suspicion tightens around an elite bunch of officers. Tacitly and explicitly, he has to define what duty is. Is one loyal to a chief minister or the Constitution? Is duty clerical adherence to procedures or following one’s conscience? Is silence punishable? Is a request for transfer an adequate form of dissent? Is duty doing things right or doing the right things?

This drama does not belong to Gujarat alone. It is a truth commission of a different sort, asking why officers meekly follow unjust orders. In a psychological sense, we will have to face the idea that obedience is not enough. Following the psychologist, Stanley Milgram’s questions, one then asks why people obey indiscriminately and what differentiates the ethics of duty from the ethics of obedience.

Mr Raghavan has to enact this entire pedagogy and compress it into a report. If he succeeds, he will become an icon and if he trembles, it is the bureaucracy that will turn iconoclastic, dismissing the SIT as a partisan or incompetent body. It is ethical high drama enacted within the procedural domain. If the rituals are completed with fidelity then a new generation of bureaucracy will face new standards of truth and propriety. They will realise that truth does not die when a file is closed. Mr Raghavan has enacted the first move by summoning one of the members of the SIT itself for interrogation. But the SIT drama is also a challenge to society.

One of the fragments of violence one has lived with is how ordinary people kill and live with themselves. The question is what happens to a society that allows murder as a permissible occasional ritual.

The SIT drama should now be seen as more than a cat-and-mouse game, a record of which bureaucrat got caught and which did not. One sympathises with the families of officers under scrutiny. Communities get ungenerous at these moments. But justice or, rather, the search for justice, can help cleanse our society. We owe the SIT a debt of gratitude for this moment of ethics.

Courtesy: The Asian Age; www.asianage.com

Archived from Communalism Combat,  May 2009 Year 15    No.140, Comment

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Dubious standards of public opinion and debate

We witnessed, a few weeks ago, how the media launched a broadside against the Congress and two leaders, Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, based upon leaked reports from "sources" in the CBI and a flung shoe. The situation was built into an expression of the ire of the Sikh community, the candidacy of the two gentlemen was withdrawn by the Congress and top guns of the media community got them and others to time and again apologise on air.

I am not trying here to defend these two gentlemen for what they may or may not have done nor am I trying to judge the treatment meted out to them. The events of 1984, as the targeting of any specific religious or ethnic group anywhere in the world, is a matter for grave condemnation, reproach and indeed the sustained search for redressal and justice. And it is truly unfortunate that successive governments and dispensations of the CBI seem to have failed to convincingly press for justice in this case.

However, I would contend that this search for justice must remain within the realms of a judicial system that our, and indeed any other nation, chooses to set up. It must not be based upon speculation and perceptions rife in the media or the supposed "public space". My point here is to bring to your attention the very different standards that are being used to judge the Supreme Court’s queries into the actions of the Narendra Modi government of Gujarat in the events of 2002.

Why is it that while Tytler and Kumar are pronounced guilty and termed recipients of a "clean chit" thanks to the largesse of the present central government, Mr Modi continues to be hailed as the most development-oriented chief minister around despite the fact that the highest court in our country deems it fit to include his name for investigation into these dastardly events? Is this the model of development that we must extol and cherish so highly, where a state high court may be judged unsuitable by the Supreme Court to impart fair judgement?

Why, when interviewing Mr Modi, is a poignant silence allowed to reign as he digs in his heels and refuses to answer questions about the riots of 2002? The footage of the man who must lead us in the future (if we believe the BJP propaganda, endorsements of India Inc and that of some media houses too), folding his hands, sulking and refusing to answer questions like a chastised little boy, was truly unflattering.

I am by no means an expert on the law; however, even to a lay person it should be evident that the fact that the Supreme Court of the country sees merit in relocating the riot cases outside Gujarat, in setting up the Special Investigation Team as its own impartial investigator for the cases and now, finally, having it investigate the role of none less than the chief minister in the events under scrutiny does bring into serious question the entire administrative machinery of the state and its ability to administer justice to its citizens, if not further its complicity in the acts of violent crime.

Would we grant Hitler the same leniency that we seem to be bestowing on Mr Modi for having supposedly created development and won an election?

Must we still uphold the Gujarat government as an epitome of development when, in addition to being investigated for complicity in communal violence, the government’s track record on various social and political indicators such as health, education and land rehabilitation is more than dubious, as evidenced by the reports from various social commentators and also analysis of the government’s own published data. Additionally, most of the financial IOUs signed at Mr Modi’s glorified "Vibrant Gujarat" shindigs too have scarcely materialised into actual investments on the ground.

It may serve us well to remember that the regime of Hitler was supported by most of the conservative governments of the West and in fact did win a popular mandate at the polls too. His reign was marked by significant architectural development, military growth and advances in the fields of science and technology and industry at a scale and grandeur far in excess of Mr Modi’s Gujarat thus far. Would we then grant Hitler the same leniency that we seem to be bestowing in judging Mr Modi for having supposedly created development and won an election?

You may call me opinionated or biased but I am unable to bring myself to support this travesty in the name of the "popular".

If we must address the anguish felt by communities, as a responsible rational society must, then it must be equally so for all communities, not just those that may be convenient for us. The disaffection felt by the Muslim community after repeated attacks upon its faith and, more importantly, innocent members of its community, must also be addressed and assuaged at least by public displays of being fair if not more sincere efforts at finding justice. And certainly not by having the Hindustan Times in its Delhi edition editorial (on April 28, 2009) claim that this new investigation, instituted by none other than the apex court after a prima facie examination, may in fact be an opportunity for Modi to prove his innocence and rid himself of this "controversy". This raises the question then of why the ‘sources’ seem so silent this time around and why no harrowing interviews of the ‘morally deplorable politician blindly supported by his party’ seem to be forthcoming with their rather virtuous and moralistic closing lines.

Archived from Communalism Combat,  May 2009 Year 15    No.140, Media

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Early Hindi cinema wins many accolades – for its idealistic themes, for its propagation of Hindustani and for its secular temperament. While it is true that the political atmosphere of the 1950s and 1960s, the Nehruvian era, was responsible for many of these attributes, the contribution of communist writers and poets to early Hindi cinema and to its idiom, language and content is often forgotten.
 

Obviously, a medium like cinema which is so responsive to public demands and public tastes does reflect its social and political context to a large extent. Therefore the values and excitement of the national movement, the heady brew of freedom from colonial bondage and the novelty of nation building and Nehru’s secular, modern outlook provided much of the inspiration for the best-remembered films of the era. But they would have been incomplete without the contribution of a galaxy of communist literary giants who chose this medium precisely because it was the most effective medium of mass communication.
 

It is important to remember that there is a basic difference between the way in which a communist uses the word ‘mass’ and the way others do. A communist uses the word with a feeling of reverence and respect and wishes to communicate with the mass in order to imbue it with what he considers to be the highest values and ideals and in order to help it achieve its historic mission to bring about universal equality. Others use the word mass contemptuously, in a pejorative way, with the objective of converting as much of it into mindless consumers of their products, including cultural works, as possible.
 

It was this attitude towards the mass combined with their enormous talents that made the communist contribution to early Hindi cinema so memorable.
 

Perhaps no country in the world has at any time in its history witnessed such a large number of first-rate talents harnessed to a common ideology. It is important to remember that communist writers, poets, actors and artists did not come from Hindi and Urdu backgrounds alone. All Indian languages were blessed by similar practitioners at the time.
 

They were all products of a unique blend of nationalist and revolutionary fervour that was peculiar to the 1930s when most of them came of age. This was complemented by the fact that many of them came from feudal and traditional families. For them the Communist Manifesto, the experiences of Soviet Russia and the national movement in their own country fused into liberating images far removed from the suffocating conservatism surrounding them. Patriarchy, feudal oppression, caste hierarchies and inhuman cruelty would all be blown away by the winds of change that they had not only begun to experience but which they themselves would fan into invincibility. This was the dream they dared to dream – not alone but in communion with each other, with their comrades – and which they longed to communicate to the masses.
 

Bombay, the working-class capital of the country, was the headquarters of the Communist Party of India. Its journals attracted the finest talents in the country. Sajjad Zaheer was able to bring writers and poets of the calibre of Kaifi Azmi, Ali Sardar Jafri, Jan Nisar Akhtar, Krishan Chander, Sahir Ludhianvi, Majrooh Sultanpuri and a host of others to work as party whole-timers. Without compromising the quality of their work they had the opportunity to test it every day against the touchstone of the people: the textile workers of Bombay, the handloom weavers of Bhiwandi, the fighting peasants of Bhiwandi.
 

It was this unique circumstance that would stand them in good stead when they brought their thoughts and verses from the world of cramped party offices, factory gates and vast public recitals to the world of cinema. Here they were joined by other comrades from the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) who gave Hindi cinema many of its earliest and finest actors and actresses.
 

A New World. The New Woman. These were the hallmarks of what is nostalgically referred to as the golden era of Indian cinema. Awara. Shree 420. Mother India. Pyaasa. Do Bigha Zameen. The era’s sheen was provided by the communists. Of course, their convictions underwent changes with the years but their commitment to secularism and to its language, Hindustani, never diminished. And the dross of crass commercialism could never completely dull the brightness of their earlier dreams…

Archived from Communalism Combat, September 2008. Year 15, No.134, Cover Story 5
 

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Q: What was the reaction in Pakistan to Khuda Kay Liye? Did you visit Pakistan after the movie was released?

A: The reaction was absolutely unbelievable. In Pakistan the theatres are very tacky, badly equipped, there is no air conditioning and rats run across your feet. They are like those old theatres that we still have in towns like Aligarh and Meerut. There are no multiplexes, no places where a person could go with the family. Yet this movie ran in theatres to packed houses for over 100 days. It was released at the same time the Lal Masjid incident occurred. Whether that was engineered or not, I don’t know.

Now I think the government was behind it – backing it – which is why it overrode all objections made by the madrassas. The director and some of the actors received threats. Therefore I credit them doubly for having the courage to do the film. I was recognised everywhere I went in Pakistan. People would hug me and thank me for making this film. It was more than mere sentiment and therefore it appealed to people.

The film was well researched. I consider it to be the most significant film I have ever made despite the brevity of the role. Initially, I turned the film down. I turned it down because I had seen Pakistani movies. But the scenes that were narrated to me were hair-raising and these are exactly the things that matter to me.

I did a thorough study of Islam (for the role of a Muslim cleric). I learnt the Koran in my childhood because I was made to. We still don’t feel the need to tell our children the meaning of what we read. We just memorise it like drill and recite it when there is a need to. That’s all we are taught. This must end. Muslim children must be taught what it means. There I was, a five-year-old child, told by the maulvi that ‘every kafir will go to hell, every Muslim will go to hell; when you grow up you must grow your beard and wear a pyjama’ and so on.

The movie reached more people than my other movies – such as Nishant – did. Nishant was also human-centric. There is a worldwide obsession with Islam. There is a hatred for Islam, which is unreasonable, biased and unfair. What bothers me most of all as a Muslim however is this seemingly rising awareness in youngsters of their identity as Muslims. The rising awareness doesn’t bother me as much as their misdirection. It is almost as if they are vigorously trying to compensate for the shortcomings in their own lives by living in the hereafter.

It seems to be happening a lot among Muslims. You see much more of an assertion of Muslim identity over the last 10 years, you hear many more salaam walekums than you heard earlier, you see many more men visibly sporting beards during namaz. I suppose the same thing is happening among the Hindus.

I’m really curious – particularly among the young Muslim men who are turning devout – whether there is in fact a deep study of Islam taking place or is it just the rewards of what awaits believers after death that is attracting them. These are the kinds of things that worry me. I think I can say this without offending Hindus or Muslims, that you need more awareness of the world and you must learn to interpret the vision according to the needs of the day.

It is in fact very puzzling as to why this is happening. If you’ve travelled to the US and have been hassled by immigration because of your name then I can also sort of understand that angle.

Q: Do you think that – at least in India or perhaps the subcontinent – we are ignoring the sane voice that understands the worldliness essential for living and also understanding religion?

A: Nobody speaks up against this absurd member of parliament who offered a crore of rupees for the head of the Danish cartoonist. Where did this man get a crore of rupees is a question nobody has asked. That seems of no importance. He has offended our sentiments and so he must die. The alarming thing is that you find so many people willing to do this. It can be downright frivolous for someone like me to stand up and talk against this person. So what are we to do if we are not activists nor are we soldiers?

I think the start has to be made in our own lives in a small sort of way. I think too many people obsessed with social change tend to reach too far, too quickly. I feel that if I’m rearing my children with an awareness of each religion as I understand it and not classifying them as Hindu or Muslim it is a progressive step. I’m leaving them free to choose the religion that suits them; that serves their purposes because that’s what religion is supposed to do.

Sweeping it under the carpet and apathy are old characteristics of our nation.

Q: This is obviously a very difficult position to maintain, given the circumstances. Does that sometimes frighten you, the sheer magnitude?

A: It terrifies me because I don’t know when it is going to end. It seems that religion, which was perhaps created to unify, is serving the opposite purpose. At the same time what also terrifies me is if my children, 20 years from now, are confronted by a mob that wants to know their religion. What are they going to say?

But I take solace in the fact that they will not be parochial and hide under the shelter of false hopes, of "I belong to this community and so I am safe".

The narrowing interpretation of Islam that is taking place is what really terrifies me because it is giving Islam a worse name than it already has. Too many of our so-called spokesmen are aggravating the issue. This has become clearer over the past few years.

Q: Professionally, do you feel that you are currently at the richest stage of your life as an actor or do you feel that you have done terrific work earlier and now it is no longer the same?

A: The environment is more conducive to doing better work. I don’t feel like I’ve done whatever I am capable of. I don’t look back on my past work and think it’s fantastic. There’s a lot of it I don’t like in fact and yes, I would say the answer to that is yes. Because the craft of the filmmaker has grown over the last 30 years their consciousness has grown too.

It is no longer fashionable to make movies on exploited peasants about whom we know nothing. The situation is much more alive now because filmmakers are attempting to make films on subjects they know about, subjects they’ve seen before. I’ve always believed that you cannot calculate the success of a movie before it is made; it should be made with conviction.

There seems to be lot more courage in today’s filmmakers. You have, apart from a film like Khuda Kay Liye, a film like A Wednesday and Nandita (Das)’s film Firaaq based on Godhra, which is extremely hard-hitting and extremely well made and which I am very proud of. Even a movie like Parzania, which it still takes an NRI to make. Still, he is an Indian who feels for the situation.

You have directors like Anurag Basu, Rituparno Ghosh and Neeraj Pandey – these are the people I have hope for and these are the people who have got their craft down pat and have a socially aware mind. These are people who want to tackle the real issues and not make fancy movies.

Among the filmmakers of the 1970s there was a bit of posturing and it showed in the way their commitment disappeared as soon as greener pastures arrived. As an actor too I feel it is richer ground for me. I may not be getting great roles to display my abilities as I did in the past but that doesn’t trouble me because to prove my worth as an actor is not of any concern to me any more. To participate in a project which I feel is significant is what attracts me.

Q: You were a very strong critic of the cinema that existed even though you were a part of the industry…

A: I was a critic of the quality of work, not a critic of the type of cinema. I’ve been misinterpreted greatly. In fact, I’ve even been quoted somewhere as saying that I hate good cinema. Why would I be idiotic enough to say that? My complaint was against the level of commitment of those filmmakers and the stagnation of their craft. That’s what I was angry about and that’s what turned me against them in the sense that I don’t want to work with some of those filmmakers any more.

But there are plenty of youngsters who I’m still working with, more first-time filmmakers than established ones. So perhaps it is my maturing as an actor and my realising that acting is not an end in itself. You don’t act to show off your acting, you act because you’ve put your abilities at the service of somebody who helps to make a statement. As an actor you are never making your own statement, you are a mouthpiece for others.

Q: How has the Hindi film industry, in your opinion, progressed? Has it got better?

A: It has become more self-congratulatory. It believes the world is sitting up and taking notice. In a way the world is sitting up and taking notice only because of the multicoloured mithai. I don’t know if there is true enjoyment of these movies or whether they are considered to be anything significant. For the NRIs it is a great link to home – you get together and eat your samosas and talk in Hindi and you cry. It is a mirage to say that Bollywood cinema has gained acceptance worldwide. As far as the film industry is concerned, it is exactly where it was; their concerns are still with making huge amounts of money and satisfying the self-agenda.

Q: It must be a business kind of pursuit when the amount of money involved is so great and so many lives are depending on it. Is this because somebody is coughing up money and you need a return on the investment?

A: Our cinema has modelled itself on the Hollywood of the 1940s and 1950s, with one huge difference. We are still trying to make those kinds of musicals, those musical numbers, those basic stories – exchange babies, boy meets girl or rich boy-poor girl – We are still making those kinds of stories without the excellence of the old music.

You see a film like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and it still delights me even though it was made in the 1950s. You see the Hindi version of it and it turns your stomach. The big difference between Hollywood (at that time) and our industry is that even though the producers of those days loved money and multiplying their investments they also loved movies. And even at that time there were socially aware movies that came out once in a while. Why can’t we do that?

I understand the love for money and I understand you want to get your investment back and see that your family doesn’t lose its standard of living and so on. What is preventing you from searching your conscience, from wondering what kind of movie one should really be making with the kind of facilities at our disposal?

It is obviously sufficient for a person in the position of Rakesh Roshan or Subhash Ghai to continue churning out those Hollywood imitations so that they can multiply their investments. There is a superficial nod towards a technical finish. I think it is just the whole concept of Hindi movies which is so shallow that a person who thrives on that kind of life, for whom it is a part of his bloodstream, I don’t think is capable of these kinds of thoughts. When he is asked to invest one zillionth of his fortune in a film that will state something of importance he will not do it. It is a lamentable situation.

Q: The audience that laps it up…

A: They will always lap it up. There are umpteen movies, with stars and the formulae, which the audience never really went to see. The audience is not taken into consideration. The filmmakers say they cater to the audience but the films are not made for the audience. They are made to multiply their own investments. And now you can recover and make a healthy profit in the first week itself. So all you need to do is to con the audience to get in there on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and you are sitting on a gold mine. The days of 50-week runs are gone, even the desire to make a good film is gone. You just have some slick stuff that will pull the audience in on the first three days and your job is done. I think they are heading down a dark end.

Q: You did make a valiant attempt to become director…

A: The film was not accepted. It was my film producer who completely lost faith while it was being made and then refused to do anything to help it get noticed so it sank without a trace. I don’t feel broken up about it because it would have been just one little straw in the wind. At least it was made. But I do feel disappointed that I couldn’t make a better film.

I feel disappointed that the audience did not respond to it. I don’t feel shattered and discouraged at the end of the day. I hope to attempt another one at some point. That film was attempted, as it was the kind of subject or script that states something or coincides with my beliefs. I had absolutely no hesitation in doing it. There are many things that trouble me, that trouble any man: The lack of consideration towards the common man and his complete facelessness.

I have taken my standing as an actor too lightly. I have participated in movies that I felt were making significant statements but it has not been a consuming passion. I was also at a point where I was struggling to become a popular actor. I have been through it all and survived.

At this moment what is of prime importance to me is to participate in movies that state something and follow ideas that it was not possible for me to do before. And hence my choice of films like Khuda Kay Liye. I’m not someone who believes in making political statements in an individual capacity. I am not interested in politics and politicians just turn me off. Nor have I believed in wearing my heart on my sleeve like many actors do. I didn’t feel the need to do it all these years and have not done it. I finally feel the need. I am approaching what could be said is the last innings of my career.

Excerpted from an interview posted on www.dnaindia.com on August 29, 2008. www.dnaindia.com

Archived from Communalism Combat, September 2008. Year 15, No.134, Cover Story 4
 

The post The role of a lifetime appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The reasons why an actor accepts a role change from time to time? Most times it’s a matter of appetite and newness. Sometimes it is the lure of working with an exciting director. Or even, in more cases than I imagined, the lure of a large acting fee. (Something I have never had a chance to wrestle with my conscience about, as nobody has ever offered me a large acting fee. I get offered large smiles instead.) More seriously, when I was considering the role of Sid in Shaurya the prime reason I accepted was because of the two questions it posed, one direct – are Muslim soldiers in Kashmir looked upon with any kind of prejudice by their contemporaries and superiors? The other, indirect – what remedial measures did the army and other institutions have in place to counter the anti-secular agenda?

The story had been written by the film’s director, Samar Khan, a Muslim himself, who for reasons of indiscipline had been asked to leave the National Defence Academy (NDA) five days before he would have completed its three-year course. By his own admission his lifestyle and the one imposed by the NDA were mutually abrasive. What is most significant are the years Samar spent there – 1991 to 1994. Years that ‘bookend’ Ayodhya 1992, the anti-Muslim riots in Bombay and the subsequent bomb blasts by Muslim members of the underworld.

For a man who was 120 hours away from becoming a gentleman cadet at the Indian Military Academy (IMA), Samar holds no bitterness against the institution. On the contrary, he loves the army, its regimen, its code, its very raison d’être. But he believes civilian India with its growing prejudices silently infiltrates the best of institutions in the only way infiltration can – through a few individuals. Here he is emphatic the infiltration was neither devised nor was it excessively malevolent. "Post-Babri Masjid it was terribly difficult being a Muslim. These individuals expected you to hate Hindus or at the very least were fairly convinced you harboured feelings of resentment against them. Did they hate Muslims in turn? I don’t think so. Were they now a little guarded around their Muslim colleagues at the NDA? Possibly. Were they simply more aware of a classmate’s ‘Muslimhood’? Definitely."

Shaurya is about a Muslim army captain brought to trial for shooting his superior, Major Rathore, at point-blank range while on a night raid in Kashmir. An army lawyer defends this seemingly hopeless case only to find that the major was one of his commanding officer, Brigadier Pratap’s band of communal-minded protégés out to purge the country of all Muslims. The trial is successfully fought and the captain acquitted with honour.

Discussions on the film with a few senior members of the army at different points of time have elicited a fairly unanimous response. One, there is no way religious prejudice in an officer would go unnoticed till he achieved brigadier status. In all cases a communal mind-set is spotted and corrected at a more junior level. Two, there are definitely communal elements in the army but it is always the individual and never the institution. It is correlated to the rise of communalism in civilian India. Three, and most interestingly, the wives of the four officers of colonel rank who I was speaking to on one occasion unanimously agreed that the anti-Muslim sentiment in the army was far higher than their husbands claimed.

It is a matter of sadness to me that in the movie the argument for hatred seems as – if not more – attractive than the argument for peace and non-discrimination. (This is an entirely personal opinion, I might add.) I wonder if in making for an engrossing, entertaining climax Samar has not short-changed his emotional reason for writing this story. Did he too unwittingly succumb to the belief that hatred and violence are more riveting in cinema than peace and love?

While all conclusions based on this random, minuscule sampling must be severely discounted, the unanimity on all three points is certainly interesting. On another occasion I raised the issue of being a Muslim jawan or junior officer in Kashmir with a major-general who had served in the region. He was absolutely sure a discriminatory attitude existed. Not sharing his cynicism, a host of his juniors strenuously countered his argument. Both sides sounded pretty convincing.

As interesting as the rise of the communal mind-set in civilian India and its repercussions on our institutions founded on the principles of secularism is, equally significant for me is how this mind-set is handled by the institutions concerned. Few civilians know that court martials in the army don’t necessarily have to be closed trials. The commanding officer on the case can decide to make it a public trial.

Looking beyond the army there is absolutely no doubt that our civil and administrative services are subtly yet definitely fractured along communal and/or political lines. Having experienced blatant non-cooperation from civil servants who are sympathetic to the cause of right-wing Hindutva, I asked a few members of the civil services how this could be countered and the startling answer was forget about countering, this trend was being further fostered by alumni of the services meeting new inductees in their colleges to subtly spread the communal doctrine. This was corroborated by a few Dalit trainees who claimed they suffered discrimination during training.

So what do our institutions do about this? The only thing they can. Reiterate the theory of secularism as laid down in the Constitution. A theory that today seems naïve in its assumptions. That people hear but don’t listen to. That seems utopian, pedantic and far removed from reality. Ironical, because the beauty of secularism is that it is so easy to fall in love with because practising it makes one feel open, free of fear, strong.

But perhaps the most important point to make is that in today’s India a vibrant secular movement has to start from civil society. Just as the doctrine of any religious fundamentalism, be it Christian, Islamic or Hindu, rises from civil society and spreads its tentacles into established institutions, so should the principles of secularism. I believe the country is too far gone down the communal river to think that the passive, ‘kind-uncle’ secularism of the past is going to be the bulwark against communalism. It’s time we developed an aggressive secular agenda. One that makes a convincing argument to establish why religious non-discrimination is an energising, even profitable proposition. One which convinces people to practise certain directives on a day-to-day basis. This is what our institutions will be happy, even relieved, to borrow, to effectively neutralise the spread of hatred.

Coming back to Shaurya. It is a matter of sadness to me that in the movie the argument for hatred seems as – if not more – attractive than the argument for peace and non-discrimination. (This is an entirely personal opinion, I might add.) I wonder if in making for an engrossing, entertaining climax Samar has not short-changed his emotional reason for writing this story. Did he too unwittingly succumb to the belief that hatred and violence are more riveting in cinema than peace and love?

Archived from Communalism Combat, September 2008. Year 15, No.134, Cover Story 3
 

The post Building a character appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Be it Lagaan (a period drama) or Swades (a social drama), I have just poured my thoughts into those films, especially with regard to our world, society and our nation. I really believe that patriotism is something that we are inborn with. You don’t have to tell a child that he is an Indian and he should be proud to be one. What needs to be inculcated in us is nationalism because that is dormant in all of us. This needs to be given more lift and power. We need to make people realise how we need to work for the upliftment of our country. So for me these things are very important and if I can bring those themes in while telling an entertaining story then why not?"

– Ashutosh Gowariker to Anuradha SenGupta on in.news.yahoo.com, viewed on February 26, 2008

It’s not a new story, not an old one, but a story that seems to recur with ugly frequency. A young man and woman, neighbours who have fallen in love, elope from home. They run away for two years. When they return the woman’s family tries to get her to go back home. A peacemaker from the boy’s side is killed and one more inter-religious marriage finds itself spattered in blood.
 

If you read this alongside the Jodhaa Akbar controversy, the reasons for the outrage on the part of the Rajput community clear up a little. The film has a Hindu woman marrying a Muslim man. This does not seem to have been about religious pride though it does figure somewhere. This was about the operations of the patriarchy.
 

In all patriarchal societies, for which one might read in all societies, it is the control of the womb that is of central importance. The woman is thus reduced to her capacity to bear children. And once she has borne those children her importance is effaced again because it is the religious identity of the children that comes into focus. This brings into play another of India’s recurring demons: demography.
 

Who has how many children and what religious identity these children will have is a question that has traumatised us each time the census figures are released. Since these figures do not tell us patterns of land ownership, since they do not tell us about the religious or caste identities of the owners of the nation’s wealth, since they are prone to misinterpretation of the most unscientific kind, no census is released without someone ‘reading’ the figures to indicate that India is rapidly turning into a Muslim nation. Or that the Christians are taking over.
 

(Recent developments in Orissa show that the clumsy nature of the religious Right’s desire to demonise minorities continues. The church is now to be associated with the Naxalite. That there is no credible evidence for this is another matter. That the chief secretary of Orissa says that there have been no forced conversions there does not matter. Hatred is not an emotion that allows for rationality.)
 

But why Jodhaa Akbar? After all, Mughal-e-Azam had already played out the scenario of Emperor Akbar, the Muslim, and Jodha Bai, the Rajput mother of Prince Salim, some time earlier. There is a scene in K. Asif’s classic film in which Akbar is shown participating in Janmashtami, a Hindu festival: he is pulling the palna (cradle) on which the infant Lord Krishna is seated.
 

No one seems to have objected to the film at all. No one seems to have questioned whether Jodha Bai was a real figure or an imaginary one. One could put this down to the palmy days of the 1950s when there was still a widespread faith in the ability of the republic of India to provide for all its citizens, when inclusivity was an automatic response rather than the exception to be treasured but this seems to me to tread dangerously close to a nostalgic reinterpretation of the past. (The Other, we have always had with us. It is only our response to the Other that has grown more crude.) And this also does not explain why the film’s coloured version, released a few months before Jodhaa Akbar, should not have evoked the same level of rage.
 

The DVD version of Jodhaa Akbar contains a series of disclaimers. Before the film begins titles run to background music:
 

"Historians agree that the 16th century marriage of alliance between the Mughal Emperor Akbar and the daughter of King Bharmal of Amer (Jaipur) was a recorded chapter in history…

"But there is speculation till today that her name was not Jodhaa…

"Some historians say her name was Harkha Bai, others call her Hira Kunwar and yet others say Jiya Rani, Maanmati and Shahi Bai…

"But over centuries her name reached the common man as Jodhaa Bai. This is just one version of historical events. There could be other versions and viewpoints to it (sic)."

DVD 3 contains a bonus feature: "Historical References". The disclaimer is repeated here and 12 books are offered, including, surprisingly, the novel Gulbadan by "Ruman Goden" by which presumably the compiler of this list meant Rumer Godden.
 

But that’s history. We have never been terribly worried about historical truth. Sohrab Modi’s Jhansi Ki Rani established the image of a brave and valiant queen fighting for her land, her people and only incidentally, her right to choose an heir. Her actual role in history has been ignored.
 

But then Modi was offering us a Hindu heroine. Gowariker is offering us a Muslim hero. His Akbar (played rather capably by Hrithik Roshan) is given to short justice but he is also the kind of person who grants a woman an audience, listens to her requests that she remain a Hindu and have a temple built inside her apartments, agrees and then falls in love with her.
 

None of this seems offensive to either side and it is a sad thing that such a question would still have sides determined by religion. Akbar himself was slightly more complex a character. His hunger for religious instruction meant that all ‘holy men’ were welcome at his court. And though they fought for the soul of Hindustan through the throne of the grand Mughal, Akbar seems to have managed a diplomatic way out of the mess of Muslim clerics and Hindu sages and Jesuit envoys: he invented his own short-lived religion. At Fatehpur Sikri you see the quarters for his wives and all the guides tell you about Jodha Bai and the Catholic wife from Goa, the Turkish wife and so on. The memory that remains with me is the small church, built exactly as if the architect had seen a child’s drawing of a church.
 

That may well be why no one strives for truth in cinema; reality is simply too complex for good storytelling.

Archived from Communalism Combat, September 2008. Year 15, No.134, Cover Story 2
 

The post Phantasms of the living appeared first on SabrangIndia.

"To call Aamir a thriller would be reducing its power and ambition. The film is an eloquent statement on the state of the nation and the Indian Muslim." – Film critic Anupama Chopra
 

Aamir Ali (Rajeev Khandelwal), a non-resident Indian doctor, arrives in Mumbai expecting to be met at the airport by his mother and siblings. When no one shows up he calls home but no one picks up the phone. Suddenly, he is ambushed by strangers who toss him a cellphone. Aamir’s life changes. He is left to follow the instructions of the anonymous caller because, as the video clip on the phone reveals, his family has been held captive. From this time on Aamir is on the run, trying to chase the ‘Mcguffin’ that the anonymous caller sets up in order to save the lives of his family members. To cut a long story short, and consequently disclose the ‘surprise’ ending, Aamir is being trapped and blackmailed by Muslim ‘terrorists’ into planting a bomb in a crowded bus. If he fails, his family will be killed.

The director, Raj Kumar Gupta, describes his protagonist as a "common man" whose life changes with one phone call. Ostensibly inspired by the Filipino film Cavite and carrying resonances of Hollywood films like Falling Down and The Game, the eponymous film Aamir (2008) adopts the Hitchcockian narrative device of implicating an ordinary unsuspecting person in a series of dangerous adventures. Structured like a thriller, the film is remarkable for its gritty art design, energetic camerawork and an excellent performance by Rajeev Khandelwal as the main protagonist.

Cinéastes will be quick to notice that the visual style of the film is strongly influenced by Anurag Kashyap’s films, particularly No Smoking and Black Friday. Raj Kumar Gupta has been a close associate of Anurag Kashyap who has been credited as being the creative producer of the film. Given the film’s genre elements – the clip and rush of action, the visceral quality of paranoia and its strong visual style – it is possible that the film will be discussed primarily in relation to its craft and production values. Yet this thriller actively invites a reading of the backstory without which the central plot would be nothing but incoherent.

The entire film unfolds from the point of view of the central protagonist barring one significant exception. While Aamir never gets to see who the voice over the phone belongs to, the audience does. The anonymous phone caller who holds Aamir and his family to ransom is a dark, bald, clean-shaven mastermind who dresses in white. This shadow figure is an Islamist ideologue who, apart from providing instructions to Aamir, berates him for being oblivious to the plight of the "qaum" (community or nationhood) and leading a privileged life which includes having a Hindu girlfriend.

Operating from an undisclosed inner sanctum of safety, the ruthless manipulator denies Aamir a glass of water while feasting on an elaborate cuisine himself. Aamir only gets to eat after he has satisfactorily followed a set of instructions. The mise en scène within which the caller appears is rich with allusions. In one sequence he folds a prayer mat while speaking to Aamir on the phone. In another sequence his voice is accompanied by close-ups of a small child who sits on his lap wearing an oversized prayer cap. As his voice becomes increasingly intimidating, the child begins to cry and is promptly whisked away by a waiting woman. Ensconced in the safety of his home, this ‘bad Muslim’ is a threat not just to Aamir’s family but also his own. He stands in contrast to Aamir whose love and loyalty to his family drives him to negotiate the hellish netherworld.

For a film that relies heavily on verisimilitude, the film’s premise is strangely random. Why, for instance, is Aamir chosen to execute this particular act of political violence? Why should a militant outfit that is so well networked and resourced waste their energies (and chances of success) on an ideologically opposed man-on-the-street? Why would Aamir’s clean credentials matter in an operation where he is not expected to be caught in the first place? Why would Muslim ‘terrorists’ take sadistic pleasure in persecuting innocent members of their own community at the risk of botching up their own projects? I am not sure the film provides any clear answers.

Aamir’s frenetic journey through the underbelly of Mumbai is designed ostensibly to serve a double purpose. It is supposed to lead him to the site of the bomb blast and educate him about the living conditions of his unfortunate brethren. The working-class landscape, saturated with filth, squalor and congestion, is also a hostile panopticon where his every move is monitored by seen and unseen eyes. He is stalked, pursued and chased. Every man and woman who inhabits this shadowy nether land seems connected to the voice on the phone. The entire ‘qaum’, including a seemingly trustworthy sex worker, has been pressed into the service of ‘terrorism’.

Like the shadowy mastermind, the unmarked terrorist (no longer iconographed by the stereotypical beard and prayer cap) is dangerously anonymous and everywhere. This however does not stop the film from mobilising crude metaphors. Aamir, the hapless lamb-to-the-slaughter, is shown walking down a butcher’s lane filled with hanging carcasses. The tension is heightened with close-ups of meat being minced by cleavers. In another sequence the mastermind manipulates a toy performing monkey as he plays with Aamir’s destiny over the phone.

In one instance Aamir is told to collect ‘information’ from a filthy public toilet. The ‘information’ is contained in a tiny scrap of paper tucked into a crack in the wall. He manages to retrieve the clue after reaching across stinking human waste. As he emerges from this fetid claustrophobia into yet another squalid wasteland, he vomits uncontrollably. "Have you seen how your community lives?" the voice on the phone asks.

For the audience Aamir is both victim and hero. His heroism lies in becoming a martyr by default as he subverts the terrorist strike by choosing to die and not kill. The end is poignant for many reasons. Not least for suggesting that Aamir’s sacrifice is atonement for the political violence unleashed by his people. I have yet to see a film where Hindus are called upon to atone for the misdeeds of their community

This journey of familiarising belongs to the audience as well. Here the ‘ghetto’ is introduced in all its visceral texture; the supposed "breeding ground" of terrorism. This landscape, straddling conic Muslim neighbourhoods like Dongri and Bhendi Bazaar, embodies a millennial urban nightmare which, according to the representational logic of the film, has been authored by the violence of the Muslims.

Another situation demands that Aamir retrieve information over the phone. As instructed, he dials the number from a local STD booth. As the phone begins to ring, the sequence cuts to the location at the other end of the phone line which turns out to be a well-to-do drawing room in Karachi, Pakistan. A woman picks up the phone and tells the man next to her that it’s a call from Delhi. The man snatches the phone and grimly provides the next clue which turns out to be a hotel address. This banal slice of information needn’t have come all the way from Pakistan but it serves to reiterate the popular ‘metanarrative’ that marks all Muslims as ‘Pakistani agents’. Having made this point, the film never returns to this connection again.

After making the call to Pakistan Aamir is tailed by an ineffectual policeman who is shown to be tipped off. "Did you see how you were chased by a policeman just because you made a call to Pakistan?" asks the shadow voice on the phone. Clearly, this sequence speaks to the popular belief that Muslims have dangerous connections with Pakistan. This ‘myth’ is invoked but not debunked. On the contrary, any scepticism that one might have about such claims is swiftly subverted.

Let us return briefly to the opening sequences of the film. As Aamir lands at Mumbai airport, he encounters a prejudiced immigration officer who harasses him for no good reason except that he bears a Muslim name. Even though nothing is found in his possession, the officer repeatedly checks his bags. In exasperation, Aamir retorts that he is a doctor, not a terrorist. The immigration officer replies that whether or not one is a "terrorist" is not written on the body.

This is a common enough experience for Muslims in India and therefore it would seem perfectly logical to conclude that we are being encouraged to empathise with Aamir’s predicament. But this invitation to empathise with the central protagonist soon lands us in trouble. In an unexpected turnaround the adversaries mutate as the oppressed becomes oppressor. In a troubling, ahistorical twist Aamir becomes a victim of his own beleaguered community. The one ‘good’ Muslim in the film is pitted against a sea of demonic Muslims.

As the film moves towards its climax, the voice on the phone becomes impatient. Aamir’s encounter with his own community seems to have taught him nothing and so he is upbraided for selfishness. "If everyone is invested in self-interest then what will happen to the community?" he asks. Aamir replies that if everyone were to look after their own interests the community would certainly prosper. The irony in the film lies in Aamir’s failure to do precisely that.

After planting the bomb in the bus he is unable to make an escape and reunite with his family. He is unable to kill for the sake of his own happiness. He returns to the bus, grabs the briefcase (which makes the other commuters think he is stealing) and looks frantically to dispose of the bomb without claiming casualties. But there are people everywhere so Aamir embraces the briefcase and detonates with it. The screen is engulfed in flames as TV news reports are heard describing him as a "terrorist" on a suicide mission. The shadowy mastermind collapses on the floor in what could be seen as defeat, frustration or anguish.

For the audience Aamir is both victim and hero. His heroism lies in becoming a martyr by default as he subverts the terrorist strike by choosing to die and not kill. The end is poignant for many reasons. Not least for suggesting that Aamir’s sacrifice is atonement for the political violence unleashed by his people. I have yet to see a film where Hindus are called upon to atone for the misdeeds of their community.

The profound irony of Aamir is that it depicts the innocent Muslim as being terrorised by his own community. If the filmmaker’s intention was to acknowledge "innocent" victims like Dr Mohamed Haneef, who was falsely accused by the Australian government of abetting the Glasgow terror attack, then all that remains is the stench of burnt good intentions. The irony is no less underscored by the fact that the last decade has witnessed the rise of the Hindu Right along with an acceleration in hate crimes, including the horrifying genocide in Gujarat. Aamir’s proposition that Muslims are oppressed by their own community is a complete disavowal of history, circumstance and the testimony of brute fact.

Cinema is a phantasmic site on which desires, aspirations, fears and anxieties are envisioned. Apart from recreating external worlds cinema can access the dark recesses of our imagination and give shape to repressed phantoms that haunt our inner worlds. It is said that cinema is akin to dreams in that it encompasses our best hopes and worst fears. Films are "cultural dream works" says Ashis Nandy while Ingmar Bergman says that "when film is not a document, it is dream". Aamir is a fascinating document precisely because it is an articulation of a dream; a dream that meditates, albeit unselfconsciously, about communal prejudice. It struggles with what Mahmood Mamdani calls the idea of the ‘Good Muslim’ and the ‘Bad Muslim’. In so doing it invokes amnesia and historical forgetfulness. Therefore Anupama Chopra, whose quote I begin with, is right when she says Aamir is more than a thriller in "power and ambition". I would modify her quote to address the power of ‘unintended ambition’ and suggest that the film is "an eloquent statement on the state of the nation and the mind of the Indian non-Muslim."

 Archived from Communalism Combat, September 2008. Year 15, No.134, Cover Story 1

The post Style and prejudice appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Recently, I was invited to speak at a seminar about ‘Media in the Market Place versus Media in the Public Sphere’, which gave me a chance to interrogate the limitations and possibilities of both "public" and "market" in relation to the preposition "versus". While I was thinking through the two words, I received an email from a former student of mine working for a leading television production company. The mail read as follows:

"Dear Shohini,

I am going crazy working in a news channel… not that it’s not good work. But there is a lot of false glamour attached to a job on television. Apparently [Channel X] is the number one channel… I don’t believe the TRP game since the entire thing is lopsided. But anyway, having said that, all the creative, experimental ideas are now being shelved because they fail to generate numbers for the channel. And being [Channel X] there is focus first on profit and then if there is scope for creativity, they’ll give it a go! I did, early in the channel, get an opportunity to do a lot of exciting things but the days of glory are officially over and a lot of saleable things are being solicited. Unfortunately, I know that channels are not meant to be creative, they are mostly commercial. And my expecting something outstanding from a news channel is immature."

This email is typical of the emails that I receive almost every week from former students who have found employment with various television channels jostling to become number one in the TRP (television rating points) race. The email sums up perfectly the compulsions and aspirations of media in the marketplace. But I must clarify at the outset that my critique and reservations about the corporate media never makes me nostalgic for a pre-liberalisation era when the state had monopoly over the airwaves. Doordarshan’s political dishonesty combined with its spectacular lack of imagination is a chapter that needs firmly to be put in the past.

But both Doordarshan and the corporate media have used the term "public" to justify their politics and functioning. Doordarshan’s selective reporting and repressive culture was perpetuated in the name of "public interest" while corporate television claims to cater to "public demands" as testified by TRPs. Both state and corporate media liberally use terms like "public concern", "public issue", "public interest", "public service" and "public morality".

In the last decade, "public interest" has been cited as the guiding principle behind corporate media’s spectacular intrusion into private spaces through "sting operations" using hidden cameras and a range of entrapment strategies. The most high profile sting operation, Operation West End, was conducted by the web portal, Tehelka, where hidden cameras and ‘set-ups’ were used to ‘expose’ corruption in defence deals.

Two journalists posing as agents from a fictitious arms company called West End hawked a non-existent product to the defence ministry and paid money to the president of the (ruling) BJP, bureaucrats and army men in order to push the deal through. All transactions were recorded on spy cams and the footage was released at a press conference. Operation West End created a sensation and came to be reported widely in the print and electronic media.

Tarun Tejpal, editor of the web portal, Tehelka, and mastermind behind Operation West End, justified the use of spy cams by insisting that "extraordinary circumstances demanded extraordinary means" and argued that by exposing corruption in defence deals Tehelka had served "public" and "national interest". Unfortunately, the extraordinary means did not yield extraordinary results as the "entrapped" politicians went largely unpunished and were eventually reinstated in public life. Tehelka, on the contrary, had to provide lengthy explanations to the enquiry commission appointed to investigate the Tehelka exposé until finally the web portal had to be shut down.

The spate of sting operations that followed amply illustrated the lack of consensus in interpreting "public interest". In 2005, India TV conducted a "sting operation" to prove the existence of the ‘casting couch’ in the Bombay film industry. A 21-year-old reporter pretending to be an aspiring starlet solicited the mentorship of Shakti Kapoor (best known for playing the villain in Bombay films) to make a career in films. She pursued the actor, invited him to a room and offered him a drink. Predictably, Shakti Kapoor offered his mentorship in exchange for sexual favours at which point the ‘hidden’ camera crew barged in, claiming to have "exposed" the "casting couch" and the "sexual exploitation" of young women in the film industry.

Even a cursory telling of the story reveals how flawed the ‘rationale’ for such an exercise is. Coercion and violation of consent are central to the definition of harassment, none of which existed in this case. This was a case of two consenting adults agreeing to indulge in unethical business practices of which the exchange of sexual favours was a part. Moreover, corruption, unethical negotiations, the exchange of favours (both material and sexual), are not exclusive to the entertainment industry but rampant in all professions and institutions including supposedly ‘respectable’ professions like law, medicine, education and even journalism! Money, privilege and sexual favours have always been staple ingredients of bribery and corruption. Consequently, the sting operation achieved nothing apart from making invasion of privacy synonymous with the ‘right to know’.

During a recent debate on the ethics of using hidden cameras, Tehelka editor, Tarun Tejpal wrote, "Every responsible journalist believes that stings should not cross into private lives" and that "every sting should be tested on the anvil of public interest". Were we to take stock of the entire gamut of sting operations carried out after Operation West End, we would find them to be poised precariously between private lives and perceived public interest. Where does public interest end and private life begin? For instance, does the planting of spy cams in the homes of public officials constitute public interest or violation of privacy? The line between the two is as slippery as the one that divides pornography from erotica. As the old saying goes, "what I like is erotica and what you like is pornography."

We need to remember that the acceptability of such intrusive strategies in the name of investigative journalism comes from being embedded in a larger culture of surveillance that has become endemic to our urban existence. Security cameras in public and private spaces, wiretapping, citizen journalists brandishing phone cams, information supplied to banks and credit card companies, and legislations like TADA (Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act) routinely violate our privacy. Research done by friends at Sarai: the Old and New Media Centre in Delhi reports that the Ministry of Home Affairs has a proposal for a multi-purpose national identity card system that will probably house the largest collection of biometric data the world has seen and will include information on health, medical services, education, lifestyle, economic status and transactions, fingerprints and retinal scans. It will not be long before we hand over to the state an enormous slice of our private lives imagining that we have "nothing to hide". The long shadow of surveillance will soon be cast over the many overlaps between our private lives and public selves.

Most importantly, private spaces are not just for the playing out of personal lives but are integral to the nurturing of political thought and the contemplation of social action. Take, for instance, the attempt to stifle the circulation of Jashn-e-Azadi (How We Celebrate Freedom), Sanjay Kak’s new documentary on the Kashmir crisis. On July 27, 2007 the Mumbai police stopped a preview of the film for an invited audience at the Bhupesh Gupta Bhavan in Prabhadevi.

Notwithstanding irate protests from the audience, the police seized and confiscated copies of the DVD. Next, they issued a notice to Prithvi Theatre where a subsequent preview had been scheduled, warning them of consequences were they to show the film. The justification for this unwarranted intervention arrived in the form of a letter dated July 29 that senior inspector of the Dadar police station, MG Sankhe, wrote to Sanjay Kak. Quoting Section 7 of the Cinematograph Act in defence of the seizure, the letter directs Kak to apply for a censor certificate because "the film contains inflammatory and provocative scenes based on terrorism in Kashmir". It further states that "there are certain scenes that are objectionable and if the said film is shown to public (sic), it may create law and order problem".

Jashn-e-Azadi has had a number of previews across the country and has not caused any "law and order" problems. Made over two years, the 139-minute documentary is a meditation on the political crisis that has gripped the valley for over a decade and is an articulation of the disillusionment and alienation that the Kashmiri people feel at this historical juncture. One may reasonably ask why Sanjay Kak is being difficult and not applying for a censor certificate. The answer is obvious. He will never get one. The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) will insist on cuts that would defeat the very purpose of the film. Besides, the granting of a censor certificate would not guarantee safety for either film or filmmaker.

The extra-legal censoring of Deepa Mehta’s Fire despite a censor certificate is one such instance. The "law and order" argument has always functioned as a veiled threat. Paraphrased, it means, "If some individual or group does not agree with your work and puts your life and work in danger, don’t count on us for protection. On the contrary, we may press criminal charges against you for causing such inconvenience." This argument is akin to the ‘tight-sweater excuse’ that sexual harassers resort to when they declare that the victim of harassment "had asked for it". Painter MF Husain and more recently, writer Taslima Nasreen, are victims of this twisted logic.

In the last decade, documentary filmmakers have persistently campaigned against censorship, and demanded an urgent review and amendment to the Cinematograph Act under which the CBFC was set up in 1952. The three amendments urgently proposed have a direct bearing on the Jashn-e-Azadi case. The first proposed amendment seeks to make the CBFC an autonomous body free from the stranglehold of the government. The second amendment demands that the CBFC have powers of certification (through ratings and classifications) and not the power to censor. The third and most urgent amendment proposes that non-commercial public screenings be decriminalised.

According to the existing law, screening a film without a censor certificate, even within educational institutions, classrooms, clubs or private gatherings, is a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment (for up to three years) and a minimum fine of one lakh rupees. All three amendments are long overdue and essential for upholding the constitutional right of free expression. Demanding the decriminalisation of non-commercial public screenings will be an important step in creating a strong civil society that is not threatened by cultural experimentation, dissident expression or new and outrageous ideas.

The 21st century confronts us with both utopian and dystopian possibilities around the access and circulation of information. The dystopian impulse of allowing our lives to be subject to increasing censorship and surveillance needs to be resisted by the creation of "new publics" that lie outside state control and corporate interests. These new publics may not reside within concrete venues but may appear anywhere, albeit temporarily, as people and ideas converge.

Take the independent documentary film, for instance. In the absence of television broadcasts and theatrical releases, documentary films are screened in spaces where people and ideas converge and "new publics" are born. These new publics are created, dismantled and endlessly recreated in a multitude of spaces as the documentary film travels from one place to another.

The power and potential of this new public was not lost on those who stopped the screening of Jashn-e-Azadi. Which is all the more reason why we should fight for our right to occupy such spaces. This holds true for all writers, artists and media practitioners whose work may not find circulation through mainstream distribution channels. Every film, media product or artwork should be able to carry with it possibilities of its own exhibition and circulation.

The age of portable new publics has finally arrived.

Archived from Communalism Combat, August-September 2007, Anniversary Issue (14th), Year 14    No.125, India at 60 Free Spaces, Media
 

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Anis Haroon, the well-known women’s rights and peace activist, relates a story about the time she visited Bangalore, India, in 1989 to attend a South Asian women’s conference. She was among the three Pakistani participants but the only one to have a ‘police-reporting visa’. This led to a memorable incident at the local police station, at a time when few Pakistanis were able to visit India and vice versa…

Pakistan-India relations had for years been marked by acrimony and tension at the best of times, punctuated by outright war at others, the most bitter of which was still a not too distant memory – 1971, when Bangladesh won its liberation from Pakistan with India’s help. But by 1989 there was a different atmosphere. The cold war was over. So was the Afghan war. Those were the heady days of the ‘restoration of democracy’ in Pakistan. Gone was Gen Zia-ul-Haq who had taken Pakistan in an altogether different direction than envisaged by earlier leaders. Gone were Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Indira Gandhi and their tense competitive relationship, particularly since 1971. A cautious thaw in Pakistan-India relations was discernible with the new generation of leadership symbolised by Benazir Bhutto and Rajiv Gandhi, both of whom had recently come into power in their countries, holding out the promise of participatory democracy and better neighbourly relations.

But all the years of a lack of contact between Indians and Pakistanis had made the people of either country almost an alien species to each other – and it took a grumpy subinspector to bring home the ridiculousness of this enforced separation, when visas were difficult to obtain – and then only for those visiting relatives across the border. The eighties saw the formation of the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation in 1984 and the rise of the NGOs. Many individuals and NGOs began to form regional alliances to discuss issues of mutual concern – the earliest such meetings were focused on safe ‘non-political’ issues like environment and women’s rights, and played a crucial role in bringing people together on these platforms, particularly Indians and Pakistanis.

It was in this context that Anis Haroon, in India to attend one of the first of such regional meetings, found herself outside a police station at the remote suburb of White Plains in Bangalore, armed with her ‘police-reporting’ visa and accompanied by a conference volunteer.

South India is another country for many North Indians and Pakistanis. The only common language is English and some Hindustani. The following conversation took place in a mixture of both, with some frustrated exclamations in mutually incomprehensible Urdu and Kannada escaping the protagonists from time to time.

"Hello, I’m a Pakistani," Anis announced, waving her green passport at the drowsy subinspector inside the police station.

Grunt. "So?"

"I’ve come to report," she persisted.

The policeman finally looked up, displeased at being disturbed. "Report what?"

"I have to report my arrival."

"Why?"

Nonplussed silence, then: "…Because I was told I must."

He seemed more alert suddenly. "Are you here illegally?"

"No."

"Have you lost your passport?"

"No…"

"Your ticket then?" Inspector a bit irritable by now.

"No but…"

"Have you lost your luggage? Has someone misbehaved with you?"

"No, no, no." Anis also somewhat irritated.

"Then WHAT are you reporting? Go away and stop wasting my time!"

With this bit of irrefutable logic, the man flapped Anis and her companion out of the police station and returned to his snooze.

Perturbed at not having the precious stamp attesting to her legal sojourn in India, they reluctantly began to turn back when the station house officer put-putted up on his motorbike. A superior officer! He would understand the complexities of Pakistan-India relationships and legal requirements! The two women explained the situation and the SHO went inside to confront his recalcitrant junior. After five minutes of loud arguments in Kannada, the visibly annoyed subinspector beckoned in the source of annoyance, who returned inside meekly to present her passport to him.

Grumbling loudly in Kannada, he scribbled something on the police reporting form, and gave back her green passport (thankfully duly stamped) and gestured her away. Safely outside, Anis Haroon looked at what he had written: "A Pakistani has come to this police station to report. But she has nooooothing to report."

Thankful to at least have the precious stamp attesting that she had ‘done the needful’, Anis returned to the conference where she recounted the story.

Later, Shoaib and Salima Hashmi made a skit out of it, which they played out in front of Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto – both reportedly laughed a great deal at the ridiculousness of the situation, which was actually a true story. But their personal response to the story notwithstanding, neither was able to do away with the visa requirement that Pakistanis and Indians visiting each other’s countries must report to the police within 24 hours of arrival and departure (although this condition is occasionally waived).

A child of 15 or a grandmother of 70 – unless they have the connections to obtain a waiver, all Indians and Pakistanis visiting each other’s country must present themselves to the police after arrival and then before departure. The logic of this requirement defies all reason.

The subinspector in Bangalore in 1989 hadn’t caught on yet because there were, at that point, so few visitors from Pakistan, but the only beneficiaries of this archaic and discriminatory requirement are the police, who make a nice extra packet every month by facilitating such reports.

As Dr Mubashir Hasan (founding member of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission) notes, even when the rulers try to end this requirement, the bureaucracy stands in their way – he cites the specific example of Nawaz Sharif and Vajpayee during that historic bus trip in 1999 when the senior civil servants in attendance shot down this proposal made by the two prime ministers during their meeting.

With the composite dialogue dragging on and on, showing no results, surely this is something both governments can agree on – something that a grumpy police officer in Bangalore recognised years ago – that Pakistanis and Indians legally visiting each other’s countries have nothing to report. n

Courtesy: www.chowk.com

Archived from Communalism Combat, August-September 2007, Anniversary Issue (14th), Year 14    No.125, India at 60 Free Spaces, Neighbours

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