Backstage Partition

In one of the documentaries being screened at the Shanaakht Festival, Beyond Partition was based on how South Asian film-makers view and have expressed what they think and felt about the division of India into two separate states. Film-makers such as Sabiha Sumar, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, M.S. Sathyu, Shyam Benegal, Chandra Prakash, Dwivedi and Indian film historians and archivists such as Prof Suresh Charia and P.K. Nair, spoke about different Indian moves where the Partition was talked about, albeit subtlety and on a handful of films that were made on the subject itself.

Notable movies mentioned in the documentary was M.S. Sathyu’s Garam Hawa (1971) which was considered a landmark film since it changed the way Muslims in the subcontinent were perceived in Indian cinema regarding Partition. Also, a movie titled Tamaas (1987) made by film-maker Govind, based the movie on the philosophy of the novel by the same name, showed the Sikh perception of Partition. Several clips from the movie were shown which included a particularly haunting scene in which an aged Sikh militant, standing in the middle of a burnt, deserted and completely destroyed street, looks around in shock and horror. With acting that was completely natural, the scene lacked the overdramatic acting predominant in most movies of that era. Another scene from the movie showed Sikh women walking towards a well behind their temple, intent on committing mass suicide with their children, while the men of their family fought on the other side — for them it was better to die than to have themselves compromised on the hands of the ‘enemies’. The sheer determination and single-mindedness with which we see the women first walk and then jump into the well is what both grabs and haunts the viewer (not to mention the background score which added to the intensity in the scene). Sabiha Sumar’s Khamosh Pani (2003) and the fact that it continues to remain under the scrutiny of the censor board in Pakistan, thereby not making it to theatres here, was a refreshing view on what the women went through both during and post-Partition. Saeed Akhtar Mirza’s Naseem (1995) was based on the Muslim viewpoint of the destruction of the Babri Mosque in India in 1992. According to the film-maker, he was never concerned with the mosque itself, he was more perturbed by “the sadness that surrounded it and the fact that it was allowed to happen.” According to Shyam Benegal, “The Babri Masjid destruction shook many beliefs of the Indians who believed that they were ‘naturally’ secular.”

Beyond Partition is one of those documentaries which one can see time and time again and still find something new to reflect upon. It’s an honest insight into the hearts and minds of those individuals who are responsible for communicating stories and their perception on Partition and the events that followed it, which some claim, haunt us to this day.

First Published:
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August 19, 2007