[IMC-Editorial] [India Thinkers Net] Watch this film, Praveenbhai

[India Thinkers Net at Zinester.com]

Watch this film, Praveenbhai 
 
 
‘Pinjar’ is an eloquent testament against the politics of 
division 
 
 
MOHAMMED WAJIHUDDIN     
 
 
 
 Praveen Togadia is a heart surgeon by training, but is 
known more for haranguing the masses than for holding 
the scalpel. In his blind rage, he seems to have forgotten 
a doctor’s compassion for fellow human beings, his 
respect for human life. Last week he went ballistic 
again, threatening communal riots if ‘‘Rambhakts’’ 
were stopped from reaching Ayodhya. 

In any law-abiding nation, Togadia would have been 
behind bars by now. But since the neocons in the 
Vajpayee government think otherwise, and no amount 
of lectures on the absurdity of riots are likely to 
sway Praveenbhai, I choose an alternative method. 
I recommend that he watch director Chandraprakash 
Dwivedi’s Pinjar (Skeleton) releasing soon. He may 
take Narendra Modi, Hindutva’s poster boy, along 
for the show. 


As they watch Pinjar, based on Amrita Pritam’s 
Partition saga, unfold on screen, they will get 
jolted. As the camera focuses on two pitchers at 
the mouth of a narrow street — marked Hindu ka 
paani and Muslim ka paani — they will see the 
yawning gulf communalism can create between 
communities. 

A serious indictment of the madness that’s communal 
violence, Pinjar shows why the Subcontinent 
should have exorcised this evil long ago. It 
didn’t. The film doesn’t shake, it stings. The 
burning bazaars of Lahore, the fear-stricken 
people fleeing their homes, the rape of refugees 
behind the bushes, in sugarcane fields — the 
frames leave you speechless. 

And yet it’s not just about man’s bestiality against 
man. It’s also about the triumph of love over hate. 
And it’s conveyed through the character of Puro 
(Urmila Matondkar), a Hindu woman kidnapped by 
her Muslim neighbour. The boy doesn’t defile her, 
he brings her food and gets a Hindu girl released 
from forceful confinement at a Muslim home, 
reuniting her with her family. Puro becomes 
Hameeda, but doesn’t forget her Hindu roots. 
In the climactic scene she refuses to walk out 
on her once tormentor, now a doting husband — the 
Muslim neighbour — and refuses to cross over to India. 

By the time the film ends, you are reduced to 
tears. ‘‘I couldn’t get up from the seat for 10 
minutes,’’ a young woman said after a special 
screening in Mumbai. Praveenbhai may react 
similarly. Or he may just brush it aside as a 
dream-merchant’s exaggeration, a novelist’s 
fictitious tale. But he can’t deny the desperation 
rioters foist on a city and its inhabitants. 
Remember Qutubuddin Ansari, the Ahmedabad tailor 
beseeching a mob for mercy during the Gujarat 
riots? That’s what communal violence reduces you to. 

Praveenbhai may argue he threatend violence because 
he seeks justice for Ram. But Ram belongs to India, 
not to the Sangh Parivar alone. Poet Iqbal calls 
Ram Imam-ul-Hind (Leader of India), not Imam of 
Hindus. You cannot build a house for the 
Imam-ul-Hind and please him by masterminding 
riots and destroying others’ homes. Ram will reject 
a ‘‘Rambhakt’’ who threatens violence and brings a 
city under siege.

 
http://www.indian-express.com/full_story.php?content_id=33776


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