Author: Tarun Vijay
Publication: The Times of India
Date: February 10, 2009
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Columnists/Tarun-Vijay-The-new-proselytizers/articleshow/4107647.cms
Nandita Das created a stir by scripting and
directing "Firaaq". It's a soul-stirring movie.
Nandita, the director and scriptwriter, has
tried to be as honest and candid with the celluloid as her deep-rooted commitment
to her political ideology. Terrifyingly impressive is the way she uses silence
as a tool to etch her message on the viewers' minds. The actors live the characters
they represent. And she admits frankly, "It's a political movie."
As a filmmaker and journalist, I would give
her full marks for a political statement that has been registered so strongly
that this film is going to have better effect than a hundred thousand people's
gathering.
Surely, more than a movie it's a political
statement. She is a person with strong colours of ideology and she has done
what she thought she must do. "Firaaq" will certainly get rave reviews
in the Indian media. She has already received some international awards, and
like "Slumdog Millionaire", the film has passed the test through
"firang" eyes and hence must be all the more acceptable to the "progressive
secular, peace loving" people here who have a large, global heart and
express their feelings in English.
Apart from its technical qualities of cinematography,
editing, direction and script it almost convinced me that barbarism begins
with Hindus.
There would be a couple of critical articles
or comments, if any, criticizing the movie on ideological points or for the
depiction of the events, which may be found completely wrong and devastatingly
hateful. These critics may forget that this is a political movie that would
sell because the West needs a Jamal or a Mohsin to be rewarded to help it
cover the feelings that emerged after 9/11. Having heard Nandita on the movie
and seen the clips, I too would have converted to her views if the Godhra
incident was not vividly clear in my mind.
I would have turned to take Nandita's autographs
with a sense of admiration if I had not heard the cries of Seema, whose father,
mother and brother were slaughtered with a butcher's knife in Doda, before
her eyes, when she was barely seven, in the name of a jihad my secular friends
interpret differently. I tried to ask a question: who were those Hindus killed
and brutalized during the Gujarat riots? It's impossible for me to keep mum
or justify what happened after Godhra, which saw innocent Muslims being killed
so ghastly that no words are enough to express the hurt. The colour of the
tears of a mother, whether Hindu or Muslim, is alike. But dividing dead bodies
and deciding levels of mourning on the basis of their faith should be as unacceptable
as the killings of innocent citizens. Killing truth and colouring facts must
also be called a pogrom of civility.
In fact, the secular messengers of the new
gospel of hate have turned into aggressive proselytizers setting their worldview
as a prerequisite to enter any socio-political or literary regime. They have
successfully monopolized the world of various media establishing English as
the only vehicle of intellectual discourse and thus keeping the doors to the
higher echelons of elite and decision makers shut to those who belong to the
Indian-language groups and represent the real ethos of the land. Although
to make profits, these very secular groups would sell bhajans and show religious
serials while attacking the very spirit of and the protective shields to such
traditions in the very next programme. They can't imagine winning votes with
speeches in English or going to the common voter with a wine glass or a beer
bottle in their hands. Yet, in their social circuit, they would raise the
flag of "pub culture" and look with contempt at a person speaking
an Indian language.
Just have a look at the loan forms of the
banks. The last paragraph says "those blind, illiterate or signing in
a vernacular language must get their signatures attested by someone who knows
English". Can this kind of instruction be tolerated in the UK or the
US for their national languages? Even the use of the word "vernacular"
for the national languages is a derogatory, colonial hangover. But who cares?
They look at Indians as slumdogs, are alien to the threads that weave a fabric
called India and treat the "natives" like Kipling's Ramu. So when
a western royal or head of state comes, he is made to cuddle a slum child
with a running nose or taken to an orphanage for a photo op to show western
compassion for the unprivileged. An Indian Prime Minister is never asked to
give alms to the homeless sleeping on the stairs of St James in London or
offer grants to an NGO in New York working for the victims of child abuse
or teen mothers. Compassion must remain a virtue of the rich and powerful.
It is this English-speaking elite that determines
what India must be reading or thinking or how Hindus must be behaving. They
read about Hindus through Oxford or Cambridge publishers and show the temerity
to sermonize those Hindus who have imbibed their dharma in their genes and
lived every bit of it, making Kumbh melas possible and taking dips in the
Ganga on the chilling mornings of Kartik and Magh. The secular proselytizer
visits Kumbh, not as a devotee but as a photographer to take pictures of bathing
Hindu women and sadhus using mobile phones, as if being sadhus they ought
to live as cavemen. The pictures they wire to press agencies essentially depict
the weird, intoxicated, obscene and the unacceptable face of uncivilized Hindus
to the west.
They don't know a bit about our faith, or
what Magh, Amavasya or Saptami means. They take Sanskrit degrees in English
and tell us, what's the use of such knowledge in today's world? To be futuristic
means denouncing all that you have preserved since ages. That's an alienated
crowd of people with an accent, detached from the Indian reality.
They tell us, you bad guys, you demolished
our Babri. Yet, not a single political party can dare to promise in its election
manifesto that if it is voted to power, it would rebuild Babri over the present
makeshift temple of Ram in Ayodhya. Their influence on the Indian masses is
hardly worth noticing, yet their control on the media and political power
centres makes them important. Their intellectual terror is so overpowering
that today most of the national parties in India execute their proceedings
in English. Poor and often unauthorized translations are dished out in Hindi
and other Indian languages. The language, idiom and attitude of this "secular"
English-speaking elite, controlling the media, advertising and governance
remain alien to the indigenous fragrances which they dismiss as folk or ethnic
contours, only to be enjoyed in a Suraj Kund mela.
The secular code is: abuse and misrepresent
the facts about the opponents, use a pub incident in Mangalore more importantly
than the anguish and pains of the soldiers demonstrating at Jantar Mantar,
turn every news desk and edit control station into Godhra, throttling the
other view point.
One isolated incident of the Hindu right would
become a globally circulated representative of the Hindu intolerance and terrorism.
None of us accepted the way Mangalore happened. Who cares whether Valentine's
day is celebrated or not. If someone says to me "Happy Valentine's Day",
I will just smile and say "same to you". That's it. Those who find
it a nice way to feel joy must be free to do so. But why I must say "yes,
Valentine's Day is the biggest symbol of love, amity and happiness" and
feel elated seeing obscenities on the streets to prove I am an educated modern
person?
To each one, his own. I must be ready to accept
every happy occasion of any colour or faith or stream to smile and send compliments,
but should it become mandatory as a fatwa?
But my questions to those who use incidents
like Gujarat riots for awards and rubbing salt on Hindu wounds was: why forget
Godhra and Doda and Anantnag and Kishtwar? In the case of Kashmiri Hindus,
the "seculars" won't like to earn displeasure of the jihadis.
I think it's self-defeating to crib about
such situations. If you feel injustice has been done, prepare to counter the
wrongs through legitimate instruments.
Nandita did what she felt was right and did
it quite courageously without bothering what the other side would feel. What
did you do to present Doda or Godhra to the world? Who stopped any other Indian
to make a movie on the pains and sorrows of Seema or to document the desecration
of temples in Kashmir and record the woes of Hindus who had to pass through
weird massacres like the one we saw at Wandhama?
The author is the Director, Dr Syamaprasad
Mookerjee Research Foundation.
