Table Of ContentDrake Stutesman
Anand Patwardhan: An Interview
Author(s): Robert Crusz, Priyath Liyanage and Anand Patwardhan
Source: Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, No. 38/39 (1992), pp. 118-132
Published by: Drake Stutesman; Wayne State University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44111697
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Anand Patwardhan:
An Interview*
Robert Crusz and Priyath Liyanage
It has been five years since Bombay Our City, Anand Patwardhan's internation-
ally acclaimed and award-winning documentary on the displaced and deprived
underclass of Bombay's slums. His new film, In Memory of Friends, is a docu-
mentary about violence and terror in the Punjab - a land torn apart by religious fun-
damentalism and a repressive government. After providing a historical context, the
film follows a group of Sikhs and Hindus, who at great personal risk are engaged
in an attempt to recover the tolerance and communal harmony that existed in Punjab
only a decade ago.
The group are a part of a small Left movement in the Punjab who never suc-
cumbed to religious blind faith or to the false secularism of a corrupt State. They
are influenced by the life and writings of Bhagat Singh, a self-educated socialist
and revolutionary who was hanged at the age of 23 by the British in 193 1 . Bhagat
Singh advocated class struggle as an antidote to the communal hatred which was
beginning to divide India. His writings were suppressed by the British and are still
relatively unknown, but his courage became legendary. He is now a folk hero. The
State eulogizes him as a patriot, while the Khalistani separatists portray him as a
Sikh militant. Both conveniently forget that Bhagat Singh's dream had neither re-
ligious nor national boundaries. In the last months of his life he wrote a book entitled:
Why lam an Atheist .
The film follows the group as they travel from village to village commemorat-
ing the anniversary of Bhagat Singh's death. As the government and the funda-
mentalists prepare their own versions of homage to the hero, this group reminds
the people of his true legacy of communal harmony and class solidarity. The group
have become the target of terrorist attacks. Already many members, both Hindus
and Sikhs, have been killed. One of them, Jaimal Singh Padda, who appears in the
film, had sung In Memory of Friends, a song he'd composed dedicated to the Bhagat
Singhs of today.
Framework: Could you expand on what this alternative Left movement is offering
the people of the Punjab. The film portrays a kind of moral ,
humanistic socialist alternative but what does that mean within
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the wider context of the Punjab in particular and India in
general?
Anand Patwardhan: The film tries to capture the essence of what the Left is saying
in Punjab today and what I perceive the Punjab question to
be. I don't subscribe to the theory that the Punjab problem
is primarily caused by a genuinely nationalist demand. The
demand for a separate national identity and a separate state
to go with it is very recent - it is hardly 12 years old. This is
not to say that the Sikhs do not have a separate identity. They
certainly have. But there never was a consensus within the
Sikh community which wanted a separate state and I don't
believe there is one now. What we have is a small minority
with guns. Also there is a genuine perception amongst the
people that the central government is repressive. This creates
a feeling amongst the people that since there is so much
repression against us , a retreat to nationalism is understandable.
The Punjab problem is basically a creation of the State.
In the late 1 970s the Congress Party was in opposition. It tried
to cause divisions in the Punjab and thus exploit the problems
created in order to regain power. The moderate Akali Party
in Punjab was ruling in coalition with the Janata Party at the
centre. Congress supported a fundamentalist Sikh leader
Bhindranwale. In those days he was a small village priest.
Congress built him up, gave him money and it is alleged,
supplied him with arms. They created this force which later
got too big for them to handle. When Congress did get back
into power they couldn't control Bindranwale and his followers.
Thus began the terror and counter-terror between the State
and the fundamentalists and has resulted in what exists today.
This is not to say that there are no genuine demands from
the Sikh community. These could have been dealt with within
the framework of the constitution and through direct
negotiations. For instance, the demand that Chandigarh be
a part of the Punjab, and the demand for the sharing of river
waters are mainly demands of the rich peasantry in the Punjab.
Another way of analysing it is that the green revolution in
the Punjab made a certain class of farmer much better off but
they couldn't translate this economic power into political
power. The Punjab is not industrialised very much. It is mainly
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Anand Patwardhan
an agricultural economy. So in a sense the demand for a
separate state came out of this need to translate economic power
into political power.
FW: Is there a socialist or marxist strand to the demand for political
power and/ or separate statehood outside of the group that your
film concentrates on?
AP: This is one factor which the film does not go into. After the
crushing of the Naxalite movement in the early seventies, some
breakaway elements from the surviving Left groups joined the
Bhindranwale forces and their armed struggle. This was initially
with the understanding that they had a common enemy - the
State. This was a small tendency in one section of the
Left which I feel opportunistically joined a religious group
saying well, they are fighting with arms against the State and
so are we.
Bombay Our City. Dir: Anand Patwardhan
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But this group is largely discredited today. They justified their
alliance in terms of the nationality question. They said that
the demand for a separate state was part of the genuine
aspiration of the people for the protection of their cultural and
religious identity which was in danger of being swallowed up
by the majority. But there are several fallacies in this.
Firstly, the Sikh community in India and anywhere else in
the world has never been economically oppressed. They are
not like the Muslim community in India who experience
economic oppression. The Sikhs are a hard working people
who have managed to do well in socio-economic terms.
Secondly, the Sikhs make up about 53% of the Punjab
population. There is a large Hindu minority of over 40%. So
the question of a separate Sikh state would mean dividing the
Punjab because that is the only way to deal with such a large
minority. There is also the fact that the Sikh community is
not a homogeneous one. The so-called terrorists or militants
or freedom fighters, or however you want to describe them,
belong to the upper castes among the Sikhs, the Jats. The
Mazhab: Sikhs, Dalits - the people who were harijans and
became Sikhs are by and large not with the separatist
movement. So there is a casļe and class division in existence.
FW: Where does the Communist Party of India fit into all this?
AP: There has always been a Left tradition in the Punjab. Bhagat
Singh was one of its earliest socialists. The Indian Communist
Party was formed after Bhagat Singh's time. The Party had
a strong hold in the Punjab. It later split into the CPI and the
CPM. The CPI continued with its strong presence. The CPM
also developed a base. When the Naxalite movement started
in the late sixties and early seventies many young Sikh and
non-Sikh Punjabis joined them.
By and large most of the various Left groupings have
consistently opposed the Khalistani/separatist movement. The
main difference is, however, that the CPI and the CPM did
not openly criticize the State. In their analysis the separatist
movement was part of an imperialist plot - the USA trying
to destabilize the pro-Soviet Indian government. The
communists refrained from opposing the Blue Star Operation
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Anand Patwardhan
in the Golden Temple and they didn't overtly criticize State
repression in the Punjab. Their main support base was the
workers but they couldn't become very popular because people
could perceive the State repression. In the people's eyes it was
not good enough to openly criticize the Khalistani movement
and the religious militants and not be critical of the State. The
section of the ML - the supporters of Bhagat Singh - that you
see in the film are people who recognize the two aspects of
terror in the Punjab - the State terror and the religious
fundamentalist terror.
F W : Who exactly are the ML?
AP: The ML are the Marxist-Leninists - they are basically Maoists.
The group in the film are the Inquilabi Ekta Kendra - The
Revolutionary Unity Centre. It's essentially a coalition of left
groups. The ML has consistently opposed the State as well
as the Khalistani movement, but there is a section of the ML
that was sympathetic to nationalism and was therefore indirectly
supporting the Bhindranwale forces.
FW: From what you have said so far the role of the Left in the
Punjab seems to be a very complex one. There are various
shades of complicity with and opposition to the various
opposing factions. For me this has not been analysed
adequately in the film.
AP: I have not gone into this question in depth in the film on
purpose. It is not an anthropological or sociological film in
that sense. I wanted to make a film about the essence of the
struggle between a broadly pro-socialist humanist framework
of thinking and a framework of thinking which in my view
was religious, or talked about a much narrower cultural
identification. So in a sense I use archetypal concepts and
images in the film. I haven't tried to subdivide the Left into
various components. I treat the Red Flag as THE RED FLAG
- the symbol of 100 years of socialist thought.
FW : Would it be fair to say that one of the archetypal oppositions
you concentrate on in the film is the one between the theist
and the atheist ?
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AP: At one level, yes, because I have used Singh's work "Why I
am an Atheist". But I am not making the point that you have
to be an atheist to fight religious cruelty or fundamentalism
or murder. I do not believe that. There are people who are
not communists who are opposed to religious fundamentalism,
and there are people who are religious who are opposed to
murder and violence.
I talk about this in the early part of the film. For instance,
the Golden Temple has no gates. It welcomes Sikhs, Hindus,
Muslims, Christians - all are welcome. The Sikh Holy Book
has texts from the Muslim and Hindu religions. Sikhism has
communal harmony built into its teachings. The religion grew
almost like a peace committee in order to make peace between
the warring Hindus and Muslims. Later on the religion got
militarized because of the oppression it faced. So what we
see now, in terms of terrorism on behalf of a religious identity,
is a distortion of the essence of Sikh thought.
So again I am not trying to say that you have to be an atheist
in order not to be violent. Bhagat Singh is somebody whom
everyone respects in India - because of his heroic sacrifice,
dying for his country at the age of 23. But he was an atheist
and a socialist - these are little known facts in India except
amongst some sections of the Left. It was very important for
me in the film to reassert these facts because then people can
transfer the respect they had for Bhagat Singh to respect for
someone who is an atheist. The very act of respecting an atheist
undermines the selfrighteousness of religious fanatics - you
cannot kill for your religion if you respect someone who is
an atheist. This has tremendous anti-communal potential.
FW : Do you think the fact that he was an atheist has contributed
to both sides claiming him as a hero?
AP: There aren't only two sides now. The film is slightly dated
in that recently the B JP - the fanatical Hindu nationalist party
- have started claiming him as a great nationalist hero as well.
So it is important to recover the real Bhagat Singh out of all
this distortion. Bhagat Singh, if anything, belongs to a militant
secular tradition. I do not mean militant in the sense of guns
and bombs, quite the contrary. But I feel that the same passion
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Anand Patwardhan
that goes into religious fanaticism has to be put into secularism.
You have to feel militant and passionate about your secularism
and stand for it in everything you do.
FW: You think secularism has a chance in a country like India?
AP: Absolutely. I think it is deep-rooted in India. The religious
fundamentalists, whether they be Hindu, Muslim or Sikh cannot
be a long-term force in India. I have travelled widely and
talked to people from the working class and in the countryside.
It may sound romantic to say this but there is something like
an ancient wisdom that still exists amongst these people. There
is an abhorrence for the kind of cruelties that have been
practised in the name of religion. It is common to all people
from the different religions. They never justify killings....
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FW: I asked the question more in the context of the core messages
of salvation that one finds in the major Indian religions. Can
socialism and secularism compete with them in India?
AP: We must not confuse secularism with atheism. You do not
have to be atheist to be secular. Bhagat Singh was in the small
minority who become atheists. But even his atheism that is
discussed in the film is not the kind that denounces religious
faith and belief. He asks "What is God doing? Is he enjoying
the woes of the human race? Down with such a God!" What
he means is that if this misery and suffering and exploitation
goes on in the name of God, we don't want any part of it.
So it's really a humanist critique of religion. People do not
see it as a threat to their religious beliefs. What it points out
is that their religion has been distorted and misused. It is
not difficult, when you talk to someone who is religious, to
bring out the fact that humanism is at the core of their belief.
The essence of any religion is humanism. In every religion
there are the two broad streams - the hierarchical, exploitative,
institutionalised stream; and the nonhierarchical, grassroots
stream which is anti-hierarchy and anti-ritual - i.e. the people
who say we do not need the church or the temple to intervene
on our behalf with God. This is very much the scenario in
modern India. It is not going to be easy for the fanatical Hindu
B JP to convince the majority of ordinary Hindus that their
gods reside in one temple or in one brick. People have a more
universal concept of their beliefs than that. So I think that
this is where there is real hope for a country like India.
FW : Fm sure you've been asked these questions before , but given
the kind of political work you are involved in, the kinds of
issues and concerns you concentrate on, why use the craft of
film in general and why documentary film rather than any other
kind of film genre?
AP: Documentaries are a way of documenting! Which is you just
record events and you analyse them. You present these in an
argument - as a way of interpreting history. This leads to
discussions within the groups that the films are being shown
to. There might be disagreements but these lead to further
questions. I don't think that in a one-hour film one can cover
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Anand Patwardhan
all the issues - especially in a film about the Punjab. There
are many issues that are not dealt with in my film. There
are other ways of seeing the Punjab which have not been
represented. But usually all these points are touched upon
in discussions; so the film acts as the initial stimulant.
My filmmaking is a form of intervention and is my
contribution in any given situation. I'm not really making the
film for the outside world to analyse what's happening. I'm
more directly interested in the film being a contribution to
the given situation. I've put subtitles on it for the people outside
India to understand, but that's about as far as I will go. The
film is also being circulated outside the Punjab in India because
it is meant to be used in the context of countering the growing
racism against the Sikh community. The images of secular
Sikhs who are opposed to religious fundamentalism as well
as State repression - this is very important for the rest of India
to see - it undermines the stereotyping of the Sikh as a terrorist.
It is also important to show that it is possible and essential to
do both at the same time - to oppose the State as well as the
fundamentalists - and that it is wrong to do them separately.
The reason I work with documenatry and not with fiction
is partly personal and partly political. I'm not very interested
in fiction. I'm more excited by documentaries, in found
material rather than in material I create myself. I do not trust
my ability to imagine situations and get actors to perform them.
I'm happier in finding images and moments in time which I
feel are important and highlighting them. Documentaries do
many things that fiction cannot do. They can become a
dialogue between people who would otherwise not have a
dialogue in real life. In the Punjab now it is difficult for Hindus
and Sikhs to speak openly about the problems. In the film
you have Sikh fundamentalists saying something. You then
have Hindu fanatics saying something. They are seen side
by side and you can evaluate what they say. In a sense they
undermine each other. You have the third force which is the
secular movement and the secular tradition. They have a
chance to speak. You have people in society who aren't given
a voice - workers, peasants - given the chance to speak in the
film and to be seen and heard.
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