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Trauma retold on celluloid

Pangs of Partition continue to reverberate through the corridors of time. One of the most tragic moments in the recent history, Partition tore apart a country and hearts and devastated millions of lives. Involving migration of nearly 15 million people across the hastily drawn Radcliffe Line, perhaps each migrant’s story on either side of the border deserves to be told.

Trauma retold on celluloid

Revisiting the past: A still from Gurinder Chadha’s Viceroy’s House (Partition: 1947)



Nonika Singh

Pangs of Partition continue to reverberate through the corridors of time. One of the most tragic moments in the recent history, Partition tore apart a country and hearts and devastated millions of lives. Involving migration of nearly 15 million people across the hastily drawn Radcliffe Line, perhaps each migrant’s story on either side of the border deserves to be told. Yet when it comes to history being told through the celluloid world, only a handful of films have recreated the trauma and fewer still have done it poignantly enough to touch a raw nerve.

Till date, the most compelling cinematic treatise has been M. S. Sathyu’s Garam Hawa. Though set in post-Partition India, it looked at the identity and dilemmas of secular liberal Indian Muslims, who chose not to migrate to Pakistan. Hailed a timeless masterpiece, here was a film, also legendary actor Balraj Sahni’s last film, that did not resort to the familiar tropes known to Bollywood. Realistic, raw and unflinching, it mirrored both despair and hope. Decades later, Deepa Mehta was to achieve a similar, if not equally sterling, feat as she adapted Bapsi Sidhwa’s part autobiographical novel The Ice Candy Man into Earth. As she made us look at the horrific chain of events through the eyes of an 11-year-old Parsi girl, its narrative device became both its strength and weakness. Train To Pakistan, based on Khushwant Singh’s popular novel of  the same name, too, created the necessary impact. Interestingly, though the relationship between cinema and literature has been at best tenuous, the best films on Partition have been those based on literary works. Be it Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar or Ismat Chugtai’s unpublished story that formed the basis of Garam Hawa, literary might has fuelled and channelled creative impulses of filmmakers in the right direction and manner. 

 The most significant work on television Tamas, too, has flown from the pen of indomitable and sensitive writer Bhisham Sahni. A mute witness to the horrors of the mayhem that put humanity to shame, he consciously chose to write the novel many years after Partition to gain an objective vantage view. Several makers, however, would rather throw in exaggerated histrionics, heightened melodrama and oodles of unnecessary jingoism to drive home the trauma of the displaced. The biggest blockbuster on the theme of Partition, and perhaps, in the records of Bollywood’s boxoffice has been Gadar: Ek Prem Katha, at best remembered for Sunny Deol’s growls and over the top antics. With Deol playing one-man army, the film high on anti-Pakistan rhetoric focused singularly on his bravado to bring back his beloved from Pakistan.

A love tale involving nationals of divided countries has been a time-tested tactic and safest bet to look at the travesty of politics which otherwise calls for far greater imagination and research. No doubt, 70 years after Independence, the cataclysmic event continues to fire the imagination of filmmakers. Yet most succumb to reductionist logic and simplistic treatment. Indo-British filmmaker Gurinder Chadha’s Viceroy’s House, being released in India as Partition: 1947, has created the necessary buzz yet failed to impress the critics in the West. Benazir Bhutto’s niece Fatima Bhutto’s acerbic criticism, “I watched this servile pantomime and wept” of the film might be biased and stemming from her personal prejudices, but the film has not earned any brownie points for factual accuracy from other reviewers either. Since the film awaits its release in India, we reserve our verdict on Chadha’s film. However, taking liberties with historical facts is often deemed poetic licence. 

Indeed, no one film can do justice to the suffering of millions and has to tell the story at the micro level to arrive at the bigger picture. So Srijit Mukherji can’t be faulted for making a brothel the fulcrum of the story in this year’s release Begum Jaan. But when the tale of prostitutes fails to echo the anguish of those whose lives were turned upside down by a political decision, the below par cinematic treatment and directorial prowess certainly can’t be excused.

If Gulzar’s couplet “Sapno ki sarhad nahi hoti, band aankhon se roz main sarhad paar chala jaata hun milne Mehdi Hasan se” can mirror the yearning of a man uprooted from his birthplace, why not those chroniclers who have many more tools and a potent all-encompassing medium such as cinema at their disposal? Perhaps, a real story is still waiting to be discovered… perhaps the real courage and intent to tell it the way it was, is yet to be found. Till then, the industry that produces 300 films a year can only cite examples that are few and far between. Or look across the border where Pakistani filmmaker Sabiha Sumar possesses the fine sensibility and sensitivity to make Khamosh Paani. Though focusing on the vitiated atmosphere that prevailed in the 1970s in Pakistan, its production notes read:  the film is based on actual events that took place when the Indian subcontinent was partitioned in 1947. Rather emphatically, it looks at the unresolved issues and conflicts of Partition firm and square in the eye.

More such unblinking accounts would help us understand (if not fully come to terms with) the tensions of those tumultuous times even better. Provided those revisiting the times remember what Jayasmita Ray wrote, “When neither Hindu nor Muslim. A human being stripped of all that meant life” and also recall Jasbir Kaur Thadani’s lines “Sarhad ke us paar humne apna bachpan bitaya hai, rishtey jeeye hain, tyohar manaye hain, talwarein toh baad mein uthi….”


Bringing alive the divide  

Dharmputra, based on a novel by Acharya Chatursen, is touted as the first film on Partition. Directed by Yash Chopra, who had himself borne the brunt of displacement, it dealt with Hindu fundamentalism, religious bigotry and communalism against the backdrop of Partition. Telling the story of a Muslim child adopted by Hindu parents who grows to be a bigot, the sensitively handled film won President's Silver Medal for Best Feature Film in Hindi.

Telling A tragic tale 

Punjabi cinema may not always win plaudits. But Shaheed-e-Mohabbat Boota Singh, once again a love tale between real life hero Boota Singh and Muslim girl Zainab, won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Punjabi at the 46th National Film Awards. Starring Gurdas Maan and Divya Dutta, it encapsulated the tragic fate of lovers. Interestingly, a similar film had already been made in Pakistan.

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