Gujarat, after the violence

By Daniel Nelson “I don’t want to be a martyr and get it banned and boast about it,” says actress Nandita Das of her directorial debut, Firaaq. But she was aware when making her film about people caught up in the anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002 that it might prove controversial. Or to be more precise, might be made controversial by, for example, Hindu fundamentalists trying to whip up a storm over her sympathetic portrayal of Muslim characters. These characters include Khan Saheb, a gentle musician who lives in a Hindu suburb and who refuses to see the prejudice and conflict around him (though I doubt that even he could have failed to notice the pogrom against Muslims that has already occurred when the film begins). There’s also middle-class Sameer, married to a Hindu, who fears for his life and wants to flee; Muneera, who comes out of hiding after the riots to find her home gutted; and an orphaned Muslim boy taken in by Hindu housewife Aarti. The film expertly weaves these and other stories together. Tension and a sense of impending disaster hang over the characters, but little violence actually takes place. There are no flashbacks to the killings (Das uses the word “carnage” rather than riots to describe the events in Gujarat): they are suggested by an opening scene in which two men are digging graves for heaps of bodies. “I’m not really interested in the violence per se,” Das told me during the London International Film Festival last year. “You see so much violence, in films and on Indian and foreign TV. I’m interested in what happens when the violence finally finishes.” Even now in Gujarat, she says, many people feel they cannot return to their homes. Even now, prejudice continues. Asked about communal tensions in India, she retorts, “I’ve never used ‘Hindu-Muslim’ as much as I have in the last 10 years. The number of times I’ve mentioned it is nauseous! “Now this kind of violence is happening in other parts of India towards Christians - there's so much Christian killing and massacre and rape – it's just unbelievable, the kind of intolerance.” (In another interview at the Festival she said that “In India things have changed, we were so proud of our secular fabric, especially in South Asia where a lot of regions are more troubled. I think the social fabric is still secular by and large, but it is being threatened.”) “The idea is not to preach,” she stresses, “but to raise questions. I want to reach out to as many people as I can,” which is why, she explains, she acts, directs and works with human rights groups: “Film gives me a platform to talk about these things.” Firaaq certainly addresses questions of religious identity, gender and violence. But it is not a dry intellectual exercise: it works wonderfully well as a gripping film. + Paul O'Callaghan interview with Das * Firaaq will be screened as part of the Human Rights Watch film festival in London in March 2009.

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