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An interview with Patawardhan by Avinash T.R.

An interview with Patawardhan by Avinash T.R. for the dissertation
Avinash Sorab: As I am concerned with an alternative tradition of documentary film making in India I have noticed lot of similarities in style (particularly in the interviews of War and Peace) with the documentary of Marcel Ophuls The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) in French. What is your opinion about it? Do you know the film? Are you influenced by his style?
Anand Patwardhan (AP): I saw Sorrow and the Pity and other Marcel Ophuls films like Hotel Terminus (on the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie) many years ago. I am of course an admirer of his work but am not sure if we have any similarity in style, though it is possible that when you admire a film, a little bit of it stays with you forever. Another film I admired in those days was The Battle of Chile by Patricio Guzman. Perhaps what is common in these works is the scale of the issues they tackle, the attention to detail and the understated humanist sympathies of the filmmaker, which while never hidden are never loudly proclaimed.
Avinash Sorab: Most people associate your name with Michael Moore in USA as both Fahrenheit 9/11 and War and Peace are anti-state anti-war films. But I have noticed Moore’s films are more television-oriented in their mode of dramatic presentation. Do you think your films are less dramatic because they not chiefly targeted towards television or television-conscious audiences?

AP: I don’t think Moore’s films like Fahrenheit 9/11 or Bowling for Columbine were primarily made-for-TV films. In fact the real breakthrough he made was to get them theatrically released and they became box office hits. It was a triumph for the documentary to compete alongside Hollywood and hold its own, despite having content that the ruling regime detested. But apart from the content and the sympathies, I think our films are different in style and approach. Moore’s physical presence in his own films is larger than life while I have used the first person narrative only once so far, in War and Peace and that too only as voice over. I also feel that Moore’s use of satire and comedy while extremely effective at times, at other times undermines the credibility of what he is saying especially for audiences whose sympathies he cannot take for granted. In my own work, while I never wanted to dilute what I was saying just to gain acceptance, I have tried to explain my positions more patiently and gently. But differences apart I want to say that I love many of Moore’s films and above all will always remember his heroic act of denouncing the Iraq War from the biggest stage on Oscar night at a time when the hawks in the USA were in a feeding frenzy.
Avinash Sorab: While discussing about Narmada diary some people opined that you look at the issue through the eyes of activists and very little time is spent on Adivasis and their life. And they say Adivasis are represented they are not re-presented. Do you think that Adivasis without activists lack agency?
AP: I never wanted to be an ethnographer or an anthropologist. I do of course take sides though I don’t want to do propaganda in as much as I will never consciously exaggerate facts or tell lies. Most of my films began because I had already begun to identify and work with the movements I later went on to film because filming seemed a useful way for me to help out. At the same time my films are not made by a committee. I retain control over what is said and try not to allow political considerations to cloud the truth of any given situation. So it was with A Narmada Diary. Both Simantini Dhuru (my co-director on the film) and I were already supporters of the Narmada Bachao Andolan when we began to film. In those days (we began filming in 1990 and ended in 1995) TV coverage of such stories was rare and we ended up shooting bits and pieces of different key moments and fed these free of charge to TV channels that were willing to carry it. Later as the footage built up we decided to put it all together as an anecdotal diary. So obviously the film is not about adivasis as such. It is the story of the Narmada dam and those who fought against it, many of whom were adivasis. As in all the films I’ve made there are hundreds of stories within stories each of which could legitimately have taken the film in a different direction.
As for representation and re-presentation, I do not get the point being made here and cannot comment until I do.
Avinash Sorab: A documentary maker can manipulate visuals to achieve a desired effect on audience and mobilize them towards his political opinions. Is it necessary for a documentary maker to take an explicit ideological stand to make his audience think in a particular way about the film? Or should he give an impression of being a neutral filmmaker not taking any sides?
AP: I think I just answered this question before it was asked! Of course I do not say that my approach to documentary cinema should be the blueprint for everybody. That would be boring. Let everyone come to the medium with their own preoccupations, their own likes and dislikes and methods of working. As for “manipulation” and subjectivity it is a given no matter what disguise is used to achieve the pretense of neutrality. Is Doordarshan neutral? The question is a non-starter. Are the CNN and the BBC neutral? Look at their coverage of the Iraq war or their bias towards Israel. Every observer and commentator brings his own bias and baggage to the table. I prefer not to hide mine but to offer it up for examination.
Avinash Sorab: You participated in the anti-Vietnam War movement in America. Is that where you realized the need for an alternative documentary film tradition in India?
AP: I wasn’t thinking that far. After my return from studies abroad I worked as a volunteer in a rural education and development project in rural Madhya Pradesh. Mostly we did farming and science teaching but I made a filmstrip (slide show with soundtrack) about post-Tuberculosis care to motivate village patients who came to our rural clinic. Later I joined an anti-corruption student movement in Bihar and ended up making a film called Waves of Revolution that began in Super 8 and ended up in 16mm. The film and myself went underground in 1975 when a State of Emergency was declared and people were jailed at the slightest sign of protest. But generally filming was far from a priority in those days and was more like a side activity that could be called upon if needed.
Avinash Sorab: I am aware that you made films much before the emergency period in India but in a way it’s a bit similar situation. Do you think that the anti-emergency movement strengthened alternative film making (Alternative in the sense of not state funded) in India?
It is true that the Emergency and its aftermath saw a rise in democratic consciousness and the civil liberties movement gave impetus to several new documentaries. I made Prisoners of Conscience, Utpalendu Chakravarty made Mukti Chai, Tapan Bose and Suhasini Mulay made An Indian Story - all films about people and conditions in prison. Later as times changed and new issues were born documentaries about other issues began to be made as well. Video had not yet arrived and we still filmed in 16 mm, an expensive proposition for independents, so the over-all output remained tiny for a long time till the video Handycam and later the DV revolution put an affordable technology into the hands of the independent filmmaker.
Avinash Sorab: What is your opinion about the cinema vérité technique or use of hidden cameras which you never made use of in your documentaries? Are they unethical?
AP: Cinema vérité should not be confused with the use of hidden cameras. Cinema vérité is a practice of filmmaking, you can even call it an ideology, espoused by people like Richard Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker that reached its zenith in the work of Frederick Wiseman. All were USA based practitioners whose best work was done in the 60’s and 70’s. I’m still not certain why the French word vérité was used. Perhaps there were people in France who also worked in this manner or perhaps as often is the case, the French were the first to spot it and name it. In essence the practice gave precedence to the camera’s power of observation and appeared to eschew or minimize all other forms of intervention like editing and the addition of effects or background music. In its purest form the vérité could become tedious, though its truth claim was obviously great. In reality even these films did have some form of editing though each cut was of much longer duration than was the norm, giving the impression that the film had not been edited. In Wiseman’s best work like Titticut Follies about an insane asylum or High School or Hospital (Wiseman specialized in studying institutions) this observational, non-interventionist cinema is seen at its best but even here the discerning eye can spot the hidden hand of the editor, seamless as the films may seem. One must remember that cameras in those days were celluloid shooting cameras which could only shoot 3 or 10 minutes per roll and needed separate machines to record sound. The whole act of continuous filming while keeping picture and sound in synch needed a degree of pre-planning. So however brilliantly the “Don’t mind me, I’m just a fly on the wall” effect is achieved, it is nevertheless, an effect. Today with video or digital cameras that have built in sound where a single shot can last for an hour or more , the dexterity and magic of vérité filmmaking has become commonplace and the only thing preventing long, unencumbered takes is the falling attention span of the world at large.
My own filmmaking as I said earlier is never shy of intervention and editing though in order to maintain the truth claim of what I document I do occasionally resort to the long, unedited sequence that at times gives the films a vérité feel. One thing I share with the vérité school is a reluctance to use background or mood enhancing music and effects, relying largely on sounds recorded in front of the camera and in the field.
Hidden camera filmmaking is a different matter. I won’t get into a debate on whether it is ethical because that depends on the situation. If I want to extract a confession from a mass murderer, I am not going to announce who I am and expect co-operation. Tehelka did just such a sting operation in Gujarat and hats off to them. Having said that I haven’t had occasion to use hidden cameras personally though in War and Peace I was more than happy to use portions shot by the Tehelka sting team when they exposed the fake arms scam of the NDA government.

ITINERARY OF PATWARDHAN’S CARRIER AS A DOCUMENTARY MAKER

CONCLUESION: REFLECTIONS ON THE ITINERARY OF PATWARDHAN’S CARRIER AS A DOCUMENTARY MAKER
In India, the early documentary scene was dominated by government propaganda made by the Films Division of India, which produced newsreels and documentaries that were compulsorily shown before every commercial film. People either arrived deliberately late or walked out during these films, and the tag of "boring" became inescapably attached to the documentary. It has taken several decades of sustained independent work to break this tag. Today with the DVD revolution making the means of production accessible, the documentary has come of age, and public interest is rising, encouraged by several attempts by the state (India) to curtail the documentary filmmaker's right to freedom of expression.
The Emergency and its aftermath saw a rise in democratic consciousness and the civil liberties movement gave impetus to several new documentaries. Patawardhan made Prisoners of Conscience, Utpalendu Chakravarty made Mukti Chai, Tapan Bose and Suhasini Mulay made An Indian Story - all films about people and conditions in prison. Later as times changed and new issues were born documentaries about other issues began to be made as well. Video had not yet arrived and we still filmed in 16 mm, an expensive proposition for independents, so the over-all output remained tiny for a long time.
He was involved in anti Vietnam War movement in USA as a student of M.A. in Communications at McGill University. After his return from studies abroad I worked as a volunteer in a rural education and development project in rural Madhya Pradesh. Mostly he did farming and science teaching. Later he joined an anti-corruption student movement in Bihar and ended up making a film called Waves of Revolution. The film and him self went underground in 1975 when a State of Emergency was declared and people were jailed at the slightest sign of protest. But generally filming was far from a priority in those days and was more like a side activity that could be called upon if needed.
Many documentary makers began as armatures there main focus was on activism. They made films to boost up the efforts of social change. Patawardhan says in his interview that they didn’t have the idea of starting an alternative film making tradition. He took it as a serious art in later stages. In fact most of the documentary makers are not trained in film schools but made excellent films of fine artistry. Till today with DV revolution many amateurs have entered the field. This has documentary films highly democratic when compared to feature films.
Virtually all Patawardhan films were driven by political events. He has discovered early the joys of mixing “art" with the desire to speak out about issues he was involved with. In the beginning, he saw filmmaking more in utilitarian terms, as a means towards an end, as a pamphlet that would be more exciting than the usual fare and would overcome the shackles of illiteracy. In time, he began to take more interest and pay more attention to the craft of filmmaking and the ways of storytelling.
With his desire to speak out about issues he discusses a wide ranges of topics which were the chief concerns of modern world. As discussed in the chapter third. Each documentary takes variety of issues ranging from nuclear nationalism to gender issues. Post modern intellectuals have extensively discussed most of these topics. For example post modern feminism now days discussing the concept of gendered nation. Patwardhan’s two documentaries War and Peace; Father Son and Holy war bring out these issues without referring to those academic debates. Vinay Lal in his article travails of nation* says
“Patwardhan’s understanding of patriarchy is not more sophisticated, and the assumption remains that one can write a seamless history of patriarchy – however much it might be dressed up, disguised, deformed, or diluted”.* (Third Text, Vol. 19, Issue 2, March, 2005)
Though one can dispute the authenticity of arguments and depiction of human history from academic point of view it’s faulty to say he lacks the basic understanding of the issues he is dealing with. Later in his article Vinay Lal acknowledges that Patawardhan remains the most sofesticated sensitive documentary maker of India.
“One has the impression that Patwardhan does not always quite think through his theses, nor is he fully aware of the politics and regimes of representation; and yet, in his understanding of the sexual politics of resurgent Hindu communalism, Patwardhan remains India’s most astute and daring documentary film-maker and one of the country’s most sensitive commentators”.
One can’t draw a clear demarcation between the issues discussed in the documentaries like environmental concerns, social concerns, and political debates. Most of these issues are brought in a complex manner but still they are intelligible to a layman. Patawardhan says in his interviews that his chief concern is to communicate the issues to a wide variety of people. So it is clearly evident that Patawardhan doesn’t dilute the complexity of the issue where as he tries to make it more lucid to the common spectators. Visual media has the challenge of walking on a tight rope. The argument has to be well spoken and well established to make its self more concrete.
The real issues of the information gathering and disseminating systems is very crucial in the modern world. Huge news agencies are owned by big medeocrates who are hand in glove with multinational corporate companies of the developed world. They easilly disseminate a totally picture of the wrold to meet their ends As CNN and FOX during the iraq war. Some global forces prevent all of us from seeing some images in the normal course of our lives.Wthought an alternative medium of documentaries Iraq war would have been easily legitimised by these news agencies. Daring documentary makers like Michel Moore has give a more wide view of the war and its illegitemacy.
Gathering information which is not accesible to the common man and disseminating it through an alternative viewpoint seems to to be another important concern of patawardhan’s documentaries. This is evident in all the five documentaries chosen in the this desretation. For instance War and peace provoids information about uranium mining in Bihar is not highlighted in any of media. This is because of legal problems involved with and state sensorship. Medea applies self sensoreship to avoid legal problems. Patawardhan dares to wage a legal batle with the state to bring such information to the general public. He trays to create awareness in a democratic set up and stebilises the democracy.
While doing it he never makes the clime of nutrality. Infact in most of his documentaries he makes his stand clear in the very begening of the films. In war and peace he says his view is of Gandian view. He never pretends to take a nutral stand point. He says
“I do not say that my approach to documentary cinema should be the blueprint for everybody. That would be boring. Let everyone come to the medium with their own preoccupations, their own likes and dislikes and methods of working. As for “manipulation” and subjectivity it is a given no matter what disguise is used to achieve the pretence of neutrality.”
His intention is not to give an ethnographers account of issues. Rather he takes sides to argue in the film Narmada Diary he openly supports the activists’ view who oppose the dam project. He says
“I never wanted to be an ethnographer or an anthropologist. I do of course take sides though I don’t want to do propaganda in as much as I will never consciously exaggerate facts or tell lies”.
While presenting his arguments he is not aggressive or bitterly sarcastic. He not only tries to develop a dialogue even with the people who oppose his views but also allows them to speak out there view in the film. He says as a Gandhian he cannot see individuals as the enemy, but only institutions. In his films he is never present physical and at times uses voice over depending mostly on interviews and naturally shot visuals which impart more credibility and covincing.
Some have occused his film as imperfect since he uses low quality cameras like 16mm, super8 or even hi8 cameras; and gives less thought to artistry. Socially committed documentary has to work in cirtain limitations.
1) Low budget the most limmiting factor.. Patawardhan does the camera work for him self. He says he cant afford a camera man.
2) They may have to work in verycritical conditions where in they cant take bulky cameras( like 35mm
camera) and a big crew for shooting. For instance in places like Jala Samarpan in Narmada Diary its tooo dificult to take a bulky camera and a big crew where director has to shoot interviews of activists who are hiding from police to sacrify there lives for stoppingn the hightening of the dam.
3) For a socially comitted documentary maker its not the aesthetics which matters most, it’s the content and its truthfullness which maters. It cirtainly imports more credibility to film since the goal in no to enchant but to enlighten.
Its opt to end the desertation at this point since it has reaced a very important stage. For committed documentary making its not the philosophical thaught in the frame which is important but it is the content and its effective presentation.
To cote Patawardhan’s own words
“What you see in the frame of my film is not an outcome of some great theoretical thought. If there is any Art, it is nothing conscious. Self-conscious art is more con than art. It’s the integrity of purpose and the passion behind a film that may lead to art at times”.*
There is also a debet about getting a wider range of audience by making documentaries more attractive and by big theatrical releeses. Ptawardhan has made an experiment by releasing War ans Peace in big mutiplexes of Mumbai. What is striking is he was success full in running the show housefull and getting back the finance invested. He is also making efforts to release them in home DVD format to make the films acceesible. There is silver lining because similar experiment yeilded goog result in USA when Michel Moore’s films got good turn out when released theatrically.

There are scopes for future study. Limitation of time and space has left many areas still unexplored. The case study can be extended to include other films are patawardhan which are very important from the perspective of cultural studies. “In Memory of Friends” discusses the use of Bhagat Sings image for communal propaganda by both Sikh separatists of Kalisthan movement and Hindu communal forces in post independence era. In fact a big debate was held about the use of anti theistic passages in the documentary. Doordarshan authorities disagreed to telecast the film by telling it hurts religious sentiments of people. High court of Bombay ordered Doordashan to telecast the film with ought a single cut. All the passages used in the film were extracts from the Book “Why I am an atheist” by Bagath Sing. Court emphasised the freedom of expression guarantied by Indian constitution. It’s very baffling that even after sixty years of independence passages written by Bhagat Sing demand censorship by Indian state media.
An interesting study could be taken up to analyse the demands for cuts by censor board to Patwardhan’s films. It’s more imperative to note none of the demands were accepted by the film maker who waged lengthy legal battles in court to overcome the censorship. Impediments for public screening are another vital area to be explored. Despite winning national awards his films were rejected for public screening by Film Division and Doordarshan. Jang aur Aman ("War and Peace", 2002), at the Mumbai International Film Festival, has been refused a certificate for general screening since Patawardhan has understandably stated his unwillingness to accommodate the censor’s demands for cuts. Indian authorities engineered its removal as the inaugural film of the Kolkata Film Festival in May 2002. Even out side India many screenings received threats of attack. From the point of view of the socially committed documentaries it’s a functional to study the reasons for censorship in a democratic set up which proclaims freedom of expression in a high voice.
Yet another big area of study where one can make a comparison between television news reel versions of facts and committed documentary versions of facts. Most of private and private owned television channels apply self censorship. The spotlight doesn’t fall on the issues which really affect large part of public such as government policies, corporate exploitation, and food crisis effects of nuclear radiations or contamination of ecology. Where as they just hassle around the trivia of every day life. A cause and effect analysis can be done on electronic media giving bits and pieces of selected information on par with committed documentaries giving detailed analysis of the issues
The claim of neutrality by the giant mass media (chiefly visual media) can be cross checked by keeping different versions of the same issues as represented in the alternative media of the committed documentary making. Selection of the visuals and their sequencing may easily create altogether different meaning. For instance patawardhans visuals from Waves of Revolution were used by Doordharshan to retell a different story version of student movement in Bihar during emergency. Patawardhan filed a petition in the court against the use of visuals from his film against the will and spirit of the documentary maker. The court decision is still awaited.
In his short music video “Images You Didn’t see” He shows how the images of Iraq war were misrepresented by CNN and FOX to hide the brutality of war. In some of the visuals stills are edited in such way that world got an impression that the operation Iraqui Freedom was welcomed whole heartedly by Iraqui people. Editing zooming and positioning of the camera involves lot of politics in mass media. Camera can be easily be used to give a predetermined view of the world out side. In this light a study can be made on the use of visuals in committed documentaries (Patwardhan’s films in particular) and use of visuals by national and regional television channels.
Since the area is a vast and unexplored there are many other quarters of study like commercial viability, mode of distribution and there cultural ramifications. The ways in which the reach of committed documentary is restricted deliberately both state and corporate agencies. Different techniques used by documentary makers to overcome these barriers are to be explored.

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PATAWARDHAN'S LEGAL BATLES WHITH CENSORSHI

PATAWARDHAN'S LEGAL BATLES WHITH CENSORSHIP AND HIS DIRECT INVOLVEMENT IN STRUGGLES OF EMANCIPATION.

Indian documentary film-making has evidently come a long way from the time, merely a decade or two ago, when the Films Division of the Government of India monopolised the production and distribution of Indian documentaries. It is true that no Indian political documentary can expect a commercial release, and that even screenings on the state-owned Doordarshan or privately owned television channels are rare.

In this respect, whatever the censorship codes, the absence of a viable distribution network for documentaries, particularly those that are resistant to the political culture of the Indian state and the free-market agendas of India’s corporate and modernising elites, itself constitutes a form of censorship. Nevertheless, there is every reason to believe that a future awaits Indian documentary film-makers.
When, early this year, the organisers of the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) sought to subject Indian documentaries to the guidelines of an archaic and repressive censorship code, 300 film-makers originated a ‘Campaign Against Censorship’ and conducted a six-day film festival that ran concurrently with MIFF. This campaign has now been reconstituted into a more permanent forum, ‘Films for Freedom’ and one can consequently indulge oneself in the belief that documentary film-makers will no longer exist at the margins of political and artistic activity in India.
The Indian independence movement, led in the 1920s and 1930s by Mohandas Gandhi, was the subject of the first concentrated phase of documentary film-making. The bulk of these films, however, never received any public screening. The Cinematograph Act of 1918 introduced censorship in India, and the Indian Cinematograph Committee of 1928, while urging the censors to curb their enthusiasm for bringing films before the cutting-board, unequivocally reaffirmed the moral necessity of censorship, especially in a country among whose natives, as many British in India believed, passions reigned supreme.
The various regional censor boards did not only certify Indian films for exhibition but also regulated the entry of foreign films into India and their public screenings. Indeed, ‘cheap American films’, which were viewed as engaging in outright sensationalism, proliferating in ‘daring murders, crimes and divorces’, and, more pointedly, as degrading white women in the eyes of Indians, were especially targeted for censorship.
By the mid-1930s, Gandhi had became a figure of worldwide veneration; moreover, the Government of India Act of 1935, which allowed some measure of autonomy to Indians, implicitly recognised that the Indian objective of full independence was no longer a mere utopian dream. Consequently, numerous documentaries that had been banned were now made available for public screenings, among them Mahatma Gandhi’s March for Freedom (Sharda Film Co), Mahatma Gandhi’s March, March 12 (Krishna Film Co), and Mahatma Gandhi Returns from the Pilgrimage of Peace (Saraswati).
Censorship remains, as will be seen, the most pressing problem for documentary film-makers; and the irony is further compounded when we consider, for example, that Gandhi is as much of a pariah figure to the modern Indian state as he was to the government of British India.
The Central Board of Film Certification ( Popularly known as Censor Board ) is a government of India regulatory body and censorship board of India controlled by Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. It reviews, rates and censors movies, television shows, television ads, and promotional material.
According to the Supreme Court of India:
“Film censorship becomes necessary because a film motivates thought and action and assures a high degree of attention and retention as compared to the printed word. The combination of act and speech, sight and sound in semi darkness of the theatre with elimination of all distracting ideas will have a strong impact on the minds of the viewers and can affect emotions. Therefore, it has as much potential for evil as it has for good and has an equal potential to instil or cultivate violent or good behaviour. It cannot be equated with other modes of communication. Censorship by prior restraint is, therefore, not only desirable but also necessary”
Anand Patwardhan is certainly India’s one of the most controversial, documentary filmmakers. Over the years, Patwardhan’s films have been subjected to censorship by the Indian state.
Patwardhan’s films, which are uncompromising in their depiction of Hindu militancy and the culture of violence generated by the political arrangements of the modern Indian state, have provoked the wrath of Hindutva advocates; and in February 2002, surrendering to pressure from militant Hindu activists, the American Museum for Natural History postponed scheduled screenings of some of Patwardhan’s films. His most recent film, Jang aur Aman ("War and Peace", 2002), celebrated at the Mumbai International Film Festival, has been refused a certificate for general screening since Patwardhan has understandably stated his unwillingness to accommodate the censor’s demands for cuts. Indian authorities engineered its removal as the inaugural film of the Kolkata Film Festival in May 2002.
Similarly almost all of his films had to face the demand for cuts by the Censor Board of India. The documentary titled 'In Memory of Friends', which was based on the Punjab situation, was granted a 'U' certificate by the Censor Board and it received number of national and international awards. It was held that it conveyed the message of tolerance and communal harmony and so it couldn't be refused screening on the television on the ground that it propagated the leftist views about the prevention of communal massacre or that it showed the interviews with the terrorist groups. Bombay High court upheld the right of the documentary maker to get film screened on the television.

Doordarshan who had decided not to telecast the documentary film made by the Patawadhan titled "Father, son and Holy War". The respondent is a filmmaker. Patawadhan in 1995 submitted his documentary film, "Father, son and Holy War", to the Doordarshan authorities for telecast on National network Doordarshan. Patawadhan was to provide a U-matic Certificate for the same to be aired by Doordarshan. The documentary film was in two parts, the film dealt with social realities and issues such as patriarchy, violence, fundamentalism, suppression of women etc. Part-I was given 'U' Certificate and Part-II was given 'A' Certificate by the Censor Board.
On 14.8.1996, Doordarshan Authorities issued a circular which stated that Doordarshan will not telecast any 'A' certified adult or U/A feature film on it. On 28.2.1997, Patawardhan handed over a copy of the U-matic Certificate of the documentary film to the appellant. However, Doordarshan still refused to telecast the documentary film. On 22.9.1998, Patawardhan filed a writ petition before the Bombay High Court against the refusal of Doordarshan to telecast the documentary film, which was disposed off by the Division Bench by directing Doordarshan to take a decision on the application of Patawardhan within a period of six weeks. Here is a table which shows some of the legal battles of patawardhan.






Summary of Litigation history concerning Anand Patwardhan's documentary films
Film CBFC (EC)
Examining Committee CBFC (RC)
Revising Committee/
ApellateTribunal Doordarshan National TV Network(DD) High Court
(HC) Supreme Court (SC) Outcome
Waves of Revolution
1975 Film shown underground
during
Emergency

“U” Certificate without cuts after Emergency ends. Screens on DD in 1977-78.


In 2001 under BJP rule DD steals footage for use in a pro-BJP film on Emergency A case against theft of footage filed against DD Film screened during Emergency underground in India and abroad from 1975 to 1977.

In 1977 after Emergency ends certified “U”. Screened on DD in 1978.

A case against DD for stealing footage from this film awaits hearing in the High Court



















Film
















CBFC (EC)
Examining Committee
















CBFC (RC)
Revising Committee/
ApellateTribunal
















Doordarshan National TV Network(DD)















High Court
(HC)















Supreme Court (SC)















Outcome

Prisoners of Conscience 1978 Asks for cuts
“U” without cuts "U" certificate without cuts after letter from Satyajit Ray
A Time to Rise
1981 Asks for cuts citing friendly relations with foreign states “U” without cuts Gets “U” Certificate without cuts after it is pointed out that the National Film Board of Canada distributes the film so obviously Canada is not that “upset”.
Bombay Our City 1985

National Award for Best Non-FeatureFilm “U” without cuts Rejects as “unsuitable for telecast” Orders DD to telecast Upholds High Court verdict in 1989 DD complies with the court order but broadcasts the film at 11 PM. The film runs past midnight.
Film CBFC (EC)
Examining Committee
CBFC (RC)
Revising Committee/
ApellateTribunal
Doordarshan National TV Network(DD)


High Court
(HC)


Supreme Court (SC)

Outcome




In Memory of Friends
1990
National Award for Best Investigative Documentary Asks for cuts Grounds include:“law and order” “U” without cuts Rejects as "unsuitable for telecast" Orders DD to telecast at prime time DD complies with court order and the film is broadcast at prime time (9 PM) on DD Metro. No law and order problems reported from anywhere in the country.
In the Name of God
1992

National Award for Best Investigative Documentary Asks for cuts Grounds include:“law and order” “U” without cuts Orders DD to telecast in 1997 DD complies with the court. Film is broadcast at prime time (9 PM) on DD 1. No law and order problems result. Hindutva groups at home and abroad
continue to threaten
Film CBFC (EC)
Examining Committee
CBFC (RC)
Revising Committee/
ApellateTribunal
Doordarshan National TV Network(DD)
High Court
(HC)
Supreme Court (SC) Outcome

Father, Son and Holy War
1995

National Awards for
Best Investigative Film, and
Best Film on Social Issues Asks for cuts Grounds include:“law and order” Asks for one cut in Part 1
Gives “A”
certificate for Part 2
Appelate Tribunal issues "U" without cuts for Part 1 Rejects telecast on grounds of “law and order Orders DD to broadcast in 2001.

After SC reverses the order a new bench of the High Court in 2004 again orders DD to broadcast within 6 weeks. Overturns the HC order but asks DD to review the film in 2001

After a second order from the HC, DD again goes in appeal in the SC. As ordered by SC, DD forms a review panel which unanimously recommends telecast but Prasar Bharati , headed by the Hindutva ideologue MV Kamath rejects the film and a new round of litigation begins.

In August 2006 Supreme court rejects the appeal by DD and orders telecast within 8 weeks
DD National telecasts the film on October 8 2006 at 10 AM
Film CBFC (EC)
Examining Committee
CBFC (RC)
Revising Committee/
ApellateTribunal
Doordarshan National TV Network(DD)
High Court
(HC)
Supreme Court (SC) Outcome

War and Peace
2002

Best Film Mumbai Intl. Film Festival 2002

National Award for
Best Non-feature, 2004 Asks for 6 cuts

Grounds include “law and order RC asks for total ban.

Second RC
asks for 21 cuts citing “ law and order”

Apellate Tribunal reduces cuts to 2 but asks for 1 "addition" Submitted to DD for telecast following National Award in 2004
Orders CBFC
to grant "U" without cuts CBFC complies with the court and issues a “U” certificate in April 2003. Film is screened widely across the country without facing any “law and order” problems.

No response from DD to offer of telecast. Legal action contemplated.
Finally DD National agrees to telecast the film at 10.30 AM on Sunday Oct 15th 2006


It’s very important to note that Patawardhan and his peers are trying to ensure that censor certificates are no longer required for national awards and film festivals. It’s ironic that after a long legal battle patawardhan received national award for the film “War and Peace” from president Abdulkalam who is one of the architects of India’s nuclear policy.
Patawardhan with his peers waged another interesting legal battle in relation to national awards. In May 2006 when new eligibility criteria for the National Film Awards (NFA) were announced, documentary filmmakers (incongruously classified as “Non-Feature” filmmakers even though some make full length films) were shocked to find that films made on digital or video format could no longer compete for an NFA unless these were released on a film format.
Two years ago filmmakers under the banner of Vikalp: Films for Freedom had demanded that digital format and video films should be allowed to compete for the 51st National Film Awards without having to be converted to celluloid first. Under pressure, the government changed this rule but did not accept the other demand made by Vikalp which was to do away with a rule that makes censor certificates mandatory for all films entered for the NFA. In the year 2006 for the 53rd NFA the government mysteriously backtracked even on the format issue and once again debarred video and digital format films from the NFA. In response documentary filmmakers Gaurav Jani, Anand Patwardhan and Simantini Dhuru, supported by Vikalp, Docuwallas and others filed a case in the Bombay High Court asking that:
(a) Digital/ video films should compete for the NFA in their original format.
(b) The censor certificate requirement should be removed as a pre-condition for the NFA.
During the pendency of this case the government conceded demand (a) by allowing the digital/video format films eligibility at the 53rd NFA. On demand (b) the government refused to give in, insisting that the censor certificate requirement was a pre-requisite for the NFA.
The petitioners pointed out that film festivals like the government sponsored Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) had run for 14 years without a censor certificate requirement and the government had recently adopted a policy document which enabled the government to exempt more such film festivals from the purview of censorship. It was discriminatory to insist that a small government appointed jury at the NFA could not view uncensored films. After all the jury’s job was to determine the best film in the country from a technical, aesthetic and social perspective. They should be allowed to view the film as originally intended by their creators, before the censors had their say.
After listening to arguments, Justice Rebello and Justice Tahilramani of the Bombay High Court upheld the petitioners’ arguments and ordered that the Censor requirement at the NFA be struck down. Advocate P.A Sebastian appeared for the petitioners and advocates Y.R.Mishra and Mr.M.R.Prajapati for the defendants.
Film maker Rakesh Sharma follows a different method to over come the barrio of censor board. Since his film Final solution on Gujrath violence requires immediate release he ventures to circulate it without the certification of censor board. He produced ten thousand copies and circulated them on the condition that each person who receives a copy of the film should duplicate at least five copies and circulate them among others. Similarly within a month’s time around 80,000 copies were circulated through out India and abroad. Similarly different film makers show resistance to the censor of freedom differently. This area alone requires a detailed study. There is a need to give a serious thought to the Mode of resistance by political documentary film makers to the censor board in the post-colonial India.
Patawarhan has a direct involvement with many activist movements in India. The recent one being the issue of Binayak Sen a doctor who was detained by Chattisgad police for two long years on a charge of supporting naxal movements in Chattisgad. Binayak Sen had worked for tribal people for many years. He was arrested for writing an article opposing Salva Judum; a police initiative to arm tribal people against naxalites.
Patawadhan was involved in the movement to pressurize the government for release of Binayak Sen from detention. Ultimately they brought Binayak Sen out of detainment.
They also ran a successful parallel film festival to that of government’s in Bombay this year to screen the films which were rejected by the government selection committee.
In his own words which he has told in the interview for this dissertation:
“Most of my films began because I had already begun to identify and work with the movements I later went on to film because filming seemed a useful way for me to help out. At the same time my films are not made by a committee. I retain control over what is said and try not to allow political considerations to cloud the truth of any given situation”.
Patawardhan like most of committed documentary makers of India has identified himself with most of the radical movements of this century. After my return from studies abroad he worked as a volunteer in a rural education and development project in rural Madhya Pradesh. Mostly he did farming and science teaching but I made a filmstrip (slide show with soundtrack) about post-Tuberculosis care to motivate village patients who came to our rural clinic. Later I joined an anti-corruption student movement in Bihar and ended up making a film called Waves of Revolution that began in Super 8 and ended up in 16mm. The film and him self went underground in 1975 when a State of Emergency was declared and people were jailed at the slightest sign of protest. His film making was more like a side activity that could be called upon if needed. Later he realised the strength of the medium. He focused more on it to support radical movements.
His direct involvement with these social movements is a distinguishing feature of the socially committed documentary making of India. Prominent film makers of this genre have identified them selves with movements of emancipation. This gives their films a more humanistic touch. They are not mute witnesses to the social issues. They are active agencies of social change. Patwardhan’s documentaries are the fine balance between social activism and a moral responsibility towards truth. This alternative tradition asks for higher social accountability and inclusive administration from the side of Indian government and polity.


Films of Anand Patawardhan

ANALYSING HIS FILMS

This chapter aims at a detailed analysis the five chosen films of patawardhan. Other films do come marginally with limited focus on them. As mentioned earlier choice of the films is based on the variety of the themes and issues focused in them. These films deal with themes like nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan, dams and mega projects, communal violence rooted in gender biasing, urban poverty, and difficulties of slum dwellers and problems of multinational capital.
These films are closely associated with cotemporary socio-political movements which are not just collective challenges to elites, authorities, but even to some cultural codes which propagate domination. They also provide sustained interactions with elites, opponents and authorities. Patawardhan collaborates with those social movements which are deliberate collective endeavours to promote change in a progressive way and by any means don’t include violence, illegality, or withdrawal in to utopian community. He doesn’t confine his films only to urbanised intelligencia. Films could even communicate to illiterate rural masses slum dwellers and manual labourers. His acute sense of humour helps audiences of any kind of upbringing to retain the interest until the end. Five films are discussed below with detail.

WAR & PEACE / JANG AUR AMAN;
(2002, Colour, 130 mins)
War and Peace is a one-man crusade against militarism and war in modern south Asia. It two parts. First part is named as “Non violence to Nuclear Nationalism” and Second one as “The Legacy”. The title sounds like an epic quite unusual for a factual film. It certainly has an epic beginning with an old newsreel on the murder of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948 followed by the nuclear proliferation in India and Pakistan. Lone crusader narrates quite passionately his social back ground through the voice over. We come to know that his family was involved in the non-violent Gandhian movement. His uncle was a socialist and went under ground. He mournfully tells how India sidetracked towards unchecked militarism laced with dark humour. Patawardhan sets up both a historical and a philosophical foundation for the film, showing how the aftermath of
Gandhi's death led to wars with China and Pakistan. As nuclear competition between the
Soviet Union and the United States gains momentum India also gets involved by exploding a nuclear device in 1974. He says "Pacifism became known as the ideal that failed,"
This process is filmed over three turbulent years in India, Pakistan, Japan and the USA following nuclear tests in the Indian sub-continent where Gandhi seem like a mirage. The ideology which killed Gandhi has been renegotiated with the atom bomb. Patwardhan's voiceover questions the trajectory that India's politics later took, “from non-violence to nuclear nationalism". In 1998, On the Buddha's birthday that year, May 11, the government of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee successfully exploded atomic bombs underneath the Pokaran desert; the same place where India had first tested a nuclear device in 1974. Patwardhan takes us to Mandals at the Ganpati festival that year where hilarious but ultimately chilling celebrations of India's new-found "virility" are being enacted. Party workers shout "Atom Bomb Vajpayee" in frenzy. Self-congratulatory speeches of BJP leaders constantly underline India's newfound "security”. They triumph over the fact that the globe, especially the United States, has finally "heard" us.
He visits the "enemy country"
of Pakistan, where Indian delegates are treated with affection by common folk. The hospitality and warmth with which both parties receive each other stands out in stark contrast to the media image propagated by both countries.
Patawardhan examines the overhead expense which is being hauled out from the general for national security. Troubles of residents living near the nuclear test site, the effects of uranium mining on local people of the villages are shown with detailed interviews of the victims. From the plight of residents living close to the nuclear test site to the horrific effects of uranium mining on local native populations, it becomes clear that there is no such thing as the "peaceful Atom".
A villager living near a nuclear test site says:
“The government is like a mother. If a mother feeds poison to its own child, what is the child to do?"
Advocates of bomb term the nuclear proliferation as “Bombs for peace” which is an ultimate oxymoron. He also questions the naming of test as ‘The Buddha is smiling’. Father of first Indian atom bomb Rajaramana says “I would never have used the Buddha's name. I have such great
respect for him."
This cultural paradigm is questioned by a dalit artist. He says why you didn’t choose other Hindu god’s names that are armed with primitive weapons. In addition to using religious messages, the leading party in India's current government, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, commissions a pro-arms music video, "We Are Indian,” which glorifies India’s military strength and arm stock. Unless a sense of belonging is nurtured actively by the various agencies of the state, the alienation of the individual from the state is only heightened.
Indians absorb the grim and effective intention of this message. One man signs his name in blood to a petition supporting nuclear tests of India. "Those who clash with us will be
ground to dust," the translation of his words reads. The young blood of the nation boils at the humiliation of underdevelopment, in the face of western stereotypes of nationhood and nationalism. Patriotic fervour often morphs into a eulogy of military prowess, praising the stockpile of arms and ammunition, while more than half the nation slaves to earn livelihood.
Dr. Ramanna says with a slight smile, saying secrecy about the test was maintained because nothing was put on paper. He adds "When we were done with wiring everything [at Pokhran], we asked the security men to get rid of the cows... if they had tripped that would have spoilt the whole show... As you know, we have been worshipping cows for centuries and we knew that they would be friendly to us." This gives a new socio-cultural dimension to the film. The links between nationalism, communal-ism and nuclearisation become obvious to the spectator. Throughout history powerbrokers have appropriated misguided nationalism and patriotic fervour to further their own vested interests.
Among the rural people around the test site Bishnoi tribe1 is the largest majority. Patawadhan explores the historical struggle of this tribe to protect the nature and native vegetation by allowing them to narrate the saga of tribal women’s struggle against Mogul army which advances to chop the trees. In an interesting interview Bishnoi chieftain their non-violent struggle to protect nature is revealed. The Bishnois of Rajasthan are known for their innate understanding and respect for the fruits of nature. It is ironic then that it is this very community that bore the brunt of the tests at Pokharan. A people who would lay down their lives for the revered Khejri trees were mute spectators to the ruin of their land. Patwardhan raises pertinent questions every step of the way. Questions that start at the basic underlying morality that ought to override an issue that looms large over democracy and civil society. Did anyone even consider the predicament of these people who, from their tranquil existence, were thrust into a struggle for normalcy? Did anyone ask the unborn children of Hiroshima before forcing upon them a future riddled with uncertainty?
In a key sequence, Lahore schoolgirls read out anti-India propaganda as part of a class assignment, but later admit that they did so only to get more marks. The Lahore classroom sums up Patwardhan's theory on why India went nuclear: to max the global exam on military prowess. The girls admit that they inculcated provocative language to win the contest which even the politicians tend to practice.

In the second part of the film, ‘The Legacy’, denial of nuclear realities is by American state is explored in extended sections on the Second World War. Patwardhan’s explores US government’s suppression of a recent exhibition at Washington’s Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The exhibition tried to show the historical context of the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This project, which became possible when government documents were declassified, would have presented Truman’s cognisance of Japan’s intention to surrender (an exchange of letters illustrates the fact), alongside documentation of the horrific deaths suffered by Japanese civilians. Put together in part by the historian Kai Bird.
His account of the exhibition’s curators ‘McCarthyite’ had to face lot of troubles for revealing the hidden facts. It foreshadows the despotic policy of the Bush administration post-September 11.

War and Peace’s montage draws further parallels between Indian and US nuclear ‘rites’. Footage of a Christian celebration at an American church with nationalistic fever mirrors the Indian religious context: a flamboyantly dressed Preacher expounds the virtues of peace in a feverishly nationalistic speech – followed by shots of the Indian Prime Minister, Vajpayee, doing much the same. It echoes United States’ eloquent expression of doctrine of "Might is Right" .It shows how enemies are re-invented and the way in which economies are inextricably tied to the production and retailing of weapons. The role of peace and non-violence has been drowned out by the disharmony created by the songs of war, sung by the most powerful nations of the world.
Probably the most moving section of the film is a series of interviews with a survivor of the bombing of Hiroshima who visits India to talk about his experience of the nuclear blast that destroyed his home and killed his sister. He later invites Patwardhan and a delegation of Pakistan and Indian peace activists to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki and attend special ceremonies at the Hiroshima Peace Museum on Hiroshima Day.
He visits Japan where August 6th incident of Hiroshima is still remembered. The tears are still flowing so many years later. Yet the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are joined together in the uncanny solitude and emotional wisdom that comes with the knowledge of a shared tragedy.Patwardhan’s War and Peace is an introspection, which shakes the very core of our existence as human beings. It questions the assumed power of a few to dictate the fate of many. It demands that we as human beings look critically at the morality that allows war to become the norm. More than anything, it is an appeal to respect the right to dignity and life of each and every being. It is a plea to humanity to take responsibility for its past, present and future. He shows how consistent denial of history has brought the greatest tragedy to humankind.
The epilogue archived from the famous news reel footage of the fall of WTC2 powerfully communicates how history awaits the moment when it will bear down on humanity, with a new found vengeance.
Discussing the film in an interactive session after the screening of the film, Mr. Anand Patwardhan says, “The film is extremely complex; not by any conscious attempt, but because of the sheer nature of the subject. Covering reality requires the movie to be complex”. Patwardhan believes that the development paradigm among people in our country keeps shifting according to their ideologies. Some believe that science and technological development are the ultimate yardsticks of a country’s progress and its citizens’ standards of living. But it is alarming to note that the part of our populace that considers nuclear strength and armaments as the only note-worthy sign of a progressive and powerful country is slowly but steadily on the rise.
This film can be compared with the films of Amar Kanwar. Documentaries have become, as well, the sites for a radical new political aesthetics, as the films of Amar Kanwar so provocatively suggest. To remember (2003) has no soundtrack: shot in New Delhi’s Birla House, where Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948, this very short film renders homage to Gandhi and the people who, in visiting this national shrine, remember his spirit. It is no accident that Kanwar deploys silence to enter into Gandhi’s spirit: silence was one of the many idioms through which Gandhi wrought conversations with himself, stilled his anger, and tested his commitment to ahimsa (non-violence), and subtly compelled the British to discuss on his terms.
By contrast, the voice-over occupies a commanding place in A Season Outside (1998), an exploration, through the border at Wagah, of the divide between India and Pakistan. That ‘mythical line’, which the two countries fear to transgress, is only twelve inches wide but, speculates Kanwar, ‘perhaps several miles deep’. What healing powers, asks Kanwar, can non-violence bring to our pain, and how can non-violence aid in making possible retreat without loss of dignity?
A Night of Prophecy (2002) creates its own distinct space but is dialectically engaged with similar themes. Gandhi had often stated that the litmus test of a democracy is how it treats its minorities and its dispossessed, and Kanwar travels to Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Nagaland, and Kashmir to film the voices of protest of those who, whether on account of their caste, religion, or political sensibilities have found the Indian nation-state to be cruelly inhospitable. Their sadness, anger, dignity, and spirit of resistance are compelling, and their collective tale has enough music and noise in it that the soundtrack requires no narrator at all. Kanwar’s use of the soundtrack is in itself a study in politics.
Patawardhan deals with all the above themes in a more concrete and tangible manner. Compared to kanwar’s films patawardhan is bolder in attacking the authority for which he had to face lot of hurdles.

NARMADA DIARY;1995(59min Colour)
A NARMADA DIARY co-directed by Simantini Dhuru tells the story of Indian villager resistance to the enormous Sardar Sarovar dam project and explores a number of issues. Issues like development versus the environment, unjust and unsustainable development, problems of mass rehabilitation, and displacement of Adivasis3, ecological, cultural, and human costs incurred for lesser gains etc.

Post-1947, investigations were carried out to evaluate mechanisms in utilizing water from the Narmada River, which flows into the Arabian Sea after passing through the states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Due to inter-state differences in implementing schemes and sharing of water, the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal was constituted by the Government of India on October 6, 1969 to adjudicate over the water disputes. This Tribunal investigated the matters referred to it and responded after more than 10 years. On December 12, 1979, the decision as given by the Tribunal, with all the parties at dispute binding to it, was released by the Indian Government.
As per the Tribunal's decision, 30 major, 135 medium, and 3000 small dams, were granted approval for construction including raising the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam.
In 1985, after hearing about the Sardar Sarovar dam, Medha Patkar and her colleagues visited the project site and noticed the project work being shelved due to an order by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India. The reasons for this were cited as "non-fulfilment of basic environmental conditions and the lack of completion of crucial studies and plans". What she noticed was that the people who were going to be affected were given no information, but for the offer for rehabilitation. Due to this, the villagers had many questions right from why their permission was not taken to whether a good assessment on the ensuing destruction was taken. Furthermore, the officials related to the project had no answers to their questions. While World Bank, the financing agency for this project, came into the picture, Patkar approached the Ministry of Environment to seek clarifications. She realized, after seeking answers from the ministry, that the project was not sanctioned at all, and wondered as to how funds were even sanctioned by the World Bank. After several studies, they realized that the officials had overlooked the post-project problems.
Through Patkar's channel of communication between the government and the residents, she provided critiques to the project authorities and the governments involved. At the same time, her group realized that all those displaced were only given compensation for the immediate standing crop and not for displacement and rehabilitation.
As Patkar remained immersed in the Narmada struggle, she chose to quit her Ph. D. studies and focus entirely on the Narmada activity. Thereafter, she organized a 36-day long, solidarity march among the neighbouring states of the Narmada valley from Madhya Pradesh to the Sardar Sarovar dam site. She said that the march was "a path symbolizing the long path of struggle". This march was resisted by the police, who according to Patkar were "caning the marchers and arresting them and tearing the clothes off women activists".
While Patkar established Narmada Bachao Andolan in 1989, many groups joined this national coalition of environmental and human rights activists, scientists, academics and project-affected people with a non-violent approach.
Documentary “A NARMADA DIARY” is a ‘sporadic video-record’ of five years of popular resistance to the Narmada Valley Development Scheme. It introduces the Narmada Bachao Andolan (the Save Narmada Movement) which has spearheaded the agitation against the dam. As government resettlement programs prove inadequate, the Narmada Bachao Andolan has emerged as one of the most dynamic struggles in India today. With non-violent protests and a determination to drown rather than to leave their homes and land, the people of the Narmada valley have become symbols of a global struggle against unjust development.
Beginning in December 1990, Dhuru and Patwardhan diarized the Narmada Bachao Andolan, a local struggle which attained global resonance in 1992-93.It posed a policy crisis for the World Bank. Bank had to withdraw its funding to resolve the crisis. India is historically the Bank’s biggest customer. The subsequent hunger strikes and voluntary commitments of movement activists to self – sacrificial drowning in the face of the continuing stubbornness of the Indian and state governments reinforced the image of a powerfully rooted, resourceful and courageous movement. Through this local case, the participant camera documents the resistance of the indigenous communities of the rural poor of India. It shows how a technocratically designed, and coercively implemented form of development, positions them as objects.

In the very beginning of the film, by showing excerpts from the government film, which tells the advantages of dam followed by a scene of what might possibly be the last Holi celebrated by the adivasis celebrated in March 1994 at the village of Domkheri. So called “Speed and Technology” is counter posed to images of the seemingly timeless harvest festival of Holi. Linear, progressive, industrial time confronts cyclical, ritual, agrarian time.

But in their closing shot of the traditional ceremony, Patwardhan establishes that there is definitely more to the dam than meets the eye. Through this order of scenes, Patwardhan clearly states that the first victims of dams are people, and together with them, their cultures. Dhuru and Patwardhan let us see what we can now more fully understand: the body-painted, head – dressed adivasi dancers confront and burn their demons, singling out the newest, greatest malignity of all, the Sardar Sarovar dam itself. Their ritual dance is a configuration of actuality, of living collective experience, open to history. Resistance has been integrated, innovatively, into the everyday activity, language and rites of the people of this region.

Throughout the film he gives one argument after another, constantly juxtaposing the government’s pro-dam and pro-development rhetoric, together with the effects of these arguments on the people. One such instance is the scene of the rehabilitation colony, where one man talks about the flooding in the rehabilitation colony and then Patwardhan shows the film that the government is using to convince people to shift from their homes.
Thus, Patwardhan presents one argument after another, constantly moving from one facet of development to another, and through the people who are directly affected by this development, clearly states that this “development” is simply not feasible, and in fact, dangerous and irreversible in the long run. For the government and the elite, the Sardar Sarovar dam in western India is a triumph of industrialization and “progress.” For the Adivasis, farmers and fisher folk living along the Narmada River, it is a disaster.
The illogic of the dam comes across clearly in the narration as Patwardhan speaks of displacement, submersion of land, official and unofficial estimates of the cost of the project. The illogic is even harsher when Patwardhan speaks of the last Holi to be celebrated at Domkhedi because the village might not exist the next year.

The inclusion of the scenes in which the adivasis are celebrating, serve to show that the adivasi culture too will be destroyed as the dam comes up. The inclusion of songs and scene where adivasis dance to celebrate the withdrawal of the World Bank, celebration of Holi, adds a cultural identity to their person, instead of only portraying them as project affected people.
Through the interviews, the views of several people emerge, both pro-dam and anti-dam. What also comes across clearly is that the adivasis have their own world-view, which is fundamentally different from what the government wants to impose on them. It is clear to them that they are paying a price that no one should be asked to pay, for the benefits of someone else.

The excerpts of the government films are significant because of the general world-view that they represent. They represent the dominant paradigm of development propagated by the technocrats and administrative bodies, and also, the world-view that is accepted by the middle-class and the elite.
The songs sung by the adivasis reflect their determination to resist and also the cruelty that they are resisting. Many songs were used by the movement to explain the evil effects of damming. The locally rooted social movements with effective ‘low-tech’, small scale methods of communication and solely indigenous leadership can effectively mobilize a challenge to dominant paradigm without the assistance of external change agents. Folk arts serve as a vehicle of social protest. People hesitate to complain against injustice and oppression. Their anger finds expression through songs and proverbs. In India, peasants, agricultural labourers, women, tribals, bonded labourers and other oppressed groups are rediscovering the potential of traditional performing arts as a weapon in their struggle for land, better working and living conditions and human rights. Environmental movements in India, therefore, are not necessarily for a ‘green’ and ‘clean’ earth, or for saving endangered species as in the West, but for the very survival of the local poor. Gandhi used the reformulated religious and cultural idioms that were an integral part of the Indian tradition for mass communication. He drew his model from the folk culture. Narmada Bachavo Andolaln effectively makes use of folk culture. It gives a model for local resistance movements in the future.
Dam opponents are not just ‘antis’, but are advocated for what they see as more sustainable, equitable and efficient technologies and management practices. Political changes which would best encourage the preservation or adoption of these technologies and management practices have been a central demand of many anti dam campaigns. It is made evident in the documentary that they are advocating an entirely different model of political and economic development.
Social movements have been and continued to be closely concerned with democratic political systems. Occasionally social movements have been involved in democratizing nations, but more often they have flourished after democratization. The clearest illustration of the wider political importance of anti dam movements is the crucial role that dam struggle played in the pro-democracy movements of the 1980’s in Eastern and South America.

Patawardhan provides a democratic access to media and bridges the gap between the rural people under submergence, government, and international agencies. Social movements demand democratic access to the media in order to be on even ground with the rest of the news sources. When this right is denied, activists immediately provide an alternative mode of communication. Patawardhans documentary provides an alternative channel for communication. Thus it can be concluded that this documentary is a medium of people’s communication.
Social movements are thus clearly different from historical movements, tendencies or trends. A social movement must evince a minimal degree of organization to the highly institutionalizes and bureaucratized movement and corporate group. Patawardhan efficiently uses new video technology to reach out remote audiences and their by generate social consensus.
A Film on same theme by Aradhana Seth DAM/AGE traces writer Arundhati Roy’s bold and controversial campaign against the Narmada dam project in India, which will displace up to a million people. The author of The God of Small Things, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1998, Roy, has also published The Cost of Living, a book of two essays critical of India’s massive dam and irrigation projects, as well as India’s successful detonation of a nuclear bomb. In her most recent book Power Politics, Roy challenges the idea that only experts can speak out on such urgent matters as nuclear war, the privatization of India’s power supply by Enron and issues like the Narmada dam project.
DAM/AGE shows how Roy, despite the threat of imprisonment, chose to use her fame to stand up to powerful interests supported by multinational corporations and the Indian government. In a clear and accessible manner, the film weaves together a number of issues that lie at the heart of politics today: from the consequences of development and globalization to the urgent need for state accountability and the freedom of speech. Here we see Roy building a movement from the beginning.
Dhuru and Patwardhan are filming an already solidly established movement. So there is less scope to show the process of building of the movement. Though there are sidelong and backward glimpses their main concern is to capture the idioms, repertoire and meanings of resistant protest as it is enacted, spoken, sung and danced, individually and collectively. Scrupulous attention is paid to the particularities of action, speech, meetings, marches, evictions, confrontations with authorities, delegations to the alien city world, celebration of success, sharing in grief. All these are explored in episodes and interviews, composed and edited to release spaces of disclosure. This documentary is an intimate microscopy of political struggle.


FATHER SON AND HOLY WAR;1995

This film is the third part of a trilogy of documentary films against communal violence that the author made from the mid 1980's to the mid 1990's. His two earlier films In Memory of Friends (1990) (on building communal peace in strife torn Punjab) and Ram Ke Naam/In the Name of God (1992) (on the Ayodhya crisis) looked at the question of class and caste. Unlike his previous films, this one has been made with a focus on gender.
Rustom Bharucha says
“Besides situating the theme of hegemonic masculinity within the specific political atmosphere and organisation of the Hindu right in contemporary India, Anand Patwardhan's film moves out in different directions to illuminate the crisis of male identity in society at large.” 4
What began as a documentary on the Hindu" Right and its legacy of communal and fundamentalist violence became, in Patwardhan's words, reflection on the 'crisis in male identity'.
The documentary “Father Son and Holy war is in two parts”: “Trial by Fire” and “Hero Pharmacy”. This two-part video contains a lot of agonizing imagery and some brutal truths. It explores the psychology of religious violence. He deals with the notion of protection of land, culture, and religion which are perceived, by patriarchy to be under threat. This patriarchy develops a deadly cult of machismo (Fantasy of ultra manhood) in India. The narrative of the film ranges across several social processes and social forces which influence a person on an individual level, and as a part of society, and also forces which influence the collective ethos of the society.
This documentary negotiates a wide range of locations and contexts, ranging from the developments following Roop Kanwar’s murder at the sati
Economic and Political Weekly July 1, 1995 site of Deorala, Rajasthan in 1987; communal tensions in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, also in 1987; the International Puthrakameshti Yagna (the ritual for the birth of sons) in Cochin, Kerala, 1992; the aftermath of the Babri Masjid crisis leading to the devastation of the Bombay riots in 1993.
Indeed, the film opens with the burning embers of these riots, accompanied by the voices of men disembodied; desultory, casually inhuman. Trial by Fire records the out break of Communal riots in Bombay in the year 1993. Arsonists rampage Muslim localities in predominantly Hindu areas. Patwardhan's camera focuses on what were not looted burned-out bales of cloth lying in front of emptied shops owned by Muslims. The deliberate violence is undercut through the men's indifference:
One says 'Remember Jagjit Singh's song - If people are afraid, why go out of the house? Another man puts it more bluntly: 'How do I feel? I’m having fun'.
This violence is a sexual metaphor and potent symbol in the Hindu nationalist discourse and signifies Hindu manhood. Flames rise. The voices of men are shrill and harsh. Shops are looted, burnt out and reduced to ash. Hear Patawardhan shows a mutilated roasted body which lies on a crowded road. Censor board demanded to cut this seen. Patawardhan was successful in convincing them that he wants show the sheer indifference of people towards the body. Hear the sheer banality of death is striking. The dehumanisation of the men is heightened through one of the most terrifying shots in the entire film an almost surreal sight of a charred corpse lying on the street, hardened through rigor mortis, one leg stretched upwards, the body corroding like a piece of metal, past which pedestrians walk, as if it were a piece of garbage. The sheer horror of the image lies not in its grotesque physicality, but in Patwardhan's ability to make us confront the people’s indifference to violence.
Militant cries in the Hindu camp fizzle out, giving way to Sikh militant sneering. Muslims vow to rebuild Babri Masjid and ‘break the chains of slavery.
Sati defenders at sati site in Deorala, Rajasthan valorise satimatas*, who burn themselves to preserve the cultural traditions and to celebrate the glory of Rajaputs. Hindu reformist Swami Agnivesh joins anti-sati marches saying ‘Sati is not religion it is plain murder.’ Discourse of sati plays an important role in the documentary.
In Ahmadabad, Krishna’s chariot passes through Muslim neighbourhoods. Hear Patawardhan’s camera clearly shows the provocative behaviour of youth in the procession which often cause communal violence in most of rampages. Statements are made spontaneously by members in a belligerent crowd: 'Let Rao and V P Singh become Muslims'; 'Let Rao wear a sari'; 'Wearing saris is a sin ('paap')'. To begin with, the prime minister and V P Singh are on the 'other' sides 'secular' politicians. But it is not enough for them to be branded as secular. They also have to be 'Muslims'. Even that is not enough, a sullen teenager insults: 'Let him wear a sari' (and thereby, by implication, become either a woman or a 'hijra'). One way or the other, this sign of femininity is a paap.

Later in the film Shambu Maharaj, in his speech resolves to deal The Muslim menace with might and valour. As Shambhu Maharaj, the extremist Hindu leader from Gujarat, endorses the Shiv Sena in a rally, there is at one level, a dissolving of differences between 'them' (theMarathis) and 'us' (the Gujaratis). But in the process, he reinforces the 'Muslim menace' that brings the two communities together. Shifting his focus to the women in the rally, he rhetoricises the problem by reaffirming one of the deep-seated prejudices against Muslims: their alleged hyper-fertility. 'Their population is growing', Shambhu Maharaj warns the women, 'while ours is shrinking'. Blessing the women to have eight sons, who in turn will have eight more sons, he envisions a 'creeper-like' growth of the entire 'dynasty', contributing to the strength of the 'Hindu nation'. The bottom line of his communal chatter is specifically woman-targeted:
'I request you not to practise birth-control'.
Camera shifts to Kerala where Centre for Astrological Research and Development (CARD) has arranged a Yaga (ritual offering) for putras (sons) is performed for child less families. An MBA holder with his wife justifies the validity of Puthrakamesthi Yagna, as he assures us that it is 'not just sons' that the ritual guarantees, but 'progeny of a very, very high quality'. Quite unexpectedly, and with tacit support from his wife he terms Muslims as a privileged, minority community
On the contrary, Patawardhan makes us confront the other side by interviewing a Muslim leader in Ahmedabad, who for all his apparent anti-communal zeal is derisive of the notion of equality for women. Falling back on the crudest biological argument, he asserts: 'They're not match for us in physical strength'. Immediately after this interview, we hear a Muslim woman in a meeting organised by the Lawyer's Collective stating the problem bluntly: 'The men use Islam to put us down'. In next scene Women’s Lawyers’ Collective mobilises the community against talaq*(divorce) and anti sati. Through all these juxtapositions - Hindu/Muslim, fertility/infertility, strength/weakness, equality/inequality - Patawardhan sets us thinking about the problems underlying communalism, where in the final analysis, it is the deep-seated legitimisation of violence against women by men, regardless of community or party affiliation, which lies at the root of 'holy wars'.
In the second part ‘Hero Pharmacy’ Shivsena5 chief Bal Tackeray calls for Hindu unity against enemies and says if there were no Shivaji by now all Hindu would be circumcised He blames Ambedkar for his book “Riddles in Hinduism” for maligning Hindu gods.
Soon after this we see a news paper excerpt telling “Twelve killed as Versus Riot erupts” which is caused as Muslim extremists call for Salman Rashdie’s arrest for the abomination in his book “satanic verses”. He tells on lookers who were killed in the cross fire will get martyrdom.
Shivsena calls for a Bandh*, an innocent Sikh is stabbed. We see his wife in tears at the hospital. She reveals that her parents died in partition violence of 1947.
In the Shivaji Uthsav6 we see a mobile statue of actress Mandakini taking bath. People around say, it symbolises that women were very secure in Shivaji’s kingdom. They also organise body building contests. We see youths emulating the machismo and virility of Euro-American role models like Rambo, Arnold and Hitman. Patawardhan is at the height of his proficiency when he visits house where children are watching a television wrestling mach. We see the immediate effect of the violence on children’s psyche.
An aphrodisiac seller charges Indians for their sexual impotence. He says impotency of the men of this country has made it prone to external invasions. We see Sadvi Ritumbara a rightwing activist making similar remarks towards people of the country. Sadhvi Rithambara titillates the predominantly male audience by playing on the patriarchal norms of 'izzat' and revenge.' Targeting Mulayam Singh Yadav, she rails: 'Why do you need arms? To kill a eunuch, why waste a bullet? We're Hindu, India is ours'. It is through such rhetoric that 'impotent secularism' is set against 'potent Hinduism'.
Same argument runs through the speeches of Bal Takre through out the film. More emphatically, in one of the most provocative cuts in the entire film, the aphrodisiac seller's sales-pitch rhapsodising the semen 'shooting like an arrow from a bow' is juxtaposed with the icon of the arrow glistening in the night sky of a Shiv Sena rally. Such is the shock of the visual that there is no need to spell out the incredible layering of sexuality, potency, and militancy in the construction of masculinity. What would seem like a thoroughly harmless, through obscene 'male' image, the residue of indigenous sexual folklore claiming allegiance to Hanuman, provides the counterpoint to a modernist, masculinist, fiercely Hindu communal ethos.
Patawardhan makes a clever collage of these seemingly unconnected incidents. Many slogans and wall writings appear on the screen to show home made chivalry. Even the corporate advertisements don’t lag behind to use masculinity as marketing strategy to lure customers. Though Patwardhan maintains a discreet silence on alternative masculinities (and male sexualities), his film nonetheless suggests, through the sheer debasement of patriarchy that it represents so relentlessly, the necessity of envisioning other ways of being a man.

A sage tells that the whole world belongs to Aryans not to any tribal people. He tells how all the countries of resent world are derived from the original Sanskrit tradition. This discourse dates back to the Nazi theory of Social Darwinism7. Here patawardhan proves that Social engineering of Hindutva precursor is based on the same ideology of Hitler of Second World War.
At the end of the film we see the interviews of sufferers of communal violence. Human rights tribunal registers number of cases. We see activists trying to heal the wounds of affected families. The help is indiscriminate. We see a rally of women calling for unity and protection against violence. The say women of all religion must unite against religious violence.
“Father, Son and Holy War” compels one to confront the dubious privilege of being a 'man' in Indian society. 'Man', 'masculinity', 'manhood': the terms are not that clear. Do you 'become' a man or are you 'born' one? Are 'men' necessarily 'masculine'? Indeed, some men may reject 'patriarchy' at an academic level. But these very men would possibly find it a little more difficult, if not embarrassing, to acknowledge that they are against masculinity, because the unavoidable inference in such a position would suggest an undermining of their 'manhood' itself. There are so many false assumptions here insofar as it is often assumed that homosexuals, for example, are 'not men'; they are 'feminine'. It is this 'hegemonic masculinity' that is, to a large extent, the subject of Father Son and Holy War within the specific political atmosphere and organisation of the Hindu Right in contemporary India, particularly in the aftermath of December 6, 1992. While the narrative of the film is contextualised within this time-frame, including certain events preceding, yet foreshadowing the crisis in Ayodhya, the discourse of Father Son and Holy War concentrates on the patriarchal rhetoric of communalism and fundamentalism, while dispersing in different directions to illuminate the 'crisis of male identity', which the film does not attempt to resolve.
This can be compared with other three films made in recent days by three prominent documentary makers. It’s evident that none of these three could offer as matured analysis as patawardhan.
Barely two or three months had elapsed before the first documentaries on the Gujarat killings were beginning to circulate. Gopal Menon’s Hey Ram! Genocide in the Land of Gandhi allows the victims a dominant voice: here a retired man who describes how his forty years of savings went up in smoke when rioters ransacked his home, there a woman who recalls her pregnant niece, whose stomach was slit open and her foetus tossed into the fire. But Menon’s film illustrates all the difficulties to which political documentaries, particularly those made to meet the exigencies of a situation, are susceptible. The opening frames of the film establish what Menon construes as the genealogy of the violence in Gujarat, namely the conflict over the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, a sixteenth-century mosque eventually destroyed by Hindu militants in December 1992, which was claimed by them to have previously housed a Hindu temple.
Menon’s film offers no insight on the rise of Hindu militancy, the ideology of Hindu supremacy, caste and class politics in Gujarat, or the relationship of communal violence to urbanisation. It is true that the people aboard the train that was partly set ablaze at Godhra were Hindus and their families returning from Ayodhya, but Menon entirely overlooks the troubled history of Hindu–Muslim relations in Gujarat over the last four decades, and is unable to offer any account of why the conflagration should have commenced in Gujarat.
Most viewers would have thought that the words ‘Gandhi’ and ‘genocide’ stand in stark opposition, but in Menon’s film they occupy much too easily, and inexplicably from the point of view of the common viewer, the same space. One cannot doubt that the film-maker intends to evoke the mournful irony that the very same state which proudly claims Gandhi, the principal practitioner and theorist of non-violent resistance in modern times, as its native son should have been the breeding ground for sustained eliminationist violence against Muslims. But neither ‘Gandhi’ nor ‘Mahatma’, the honorific (meaning ‘Great Soul’) by which he was known throughout the world, have ever been words that had only a monochromatic existence. As far back as 1920–22, during the first nationwide non-cooperation movement against the British under Gandhi’s leadership, violence was committed in Gandhi’s name. In the north Indian town of Chauri Chaura, Indian nationalists burned down a police station and killed over a dozen Indian policemen while shouting slogans, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai’, ‘Long Live Mahatma Gandhi’.8 Gandhi was aghast at these developments, as is, evidently, Menon today. But that the killings might be waged with ruthless abandon precisely because in Gandhi’s Gujarat one expected otherwise is a consideration which seems far removed from the film-maker’s mind.
As Menon’s camera moves from one victim to another, it begins to read much like one of the many first-hand, partly investigative reports that surfaced amidst the killings and in the immediate aftermath. The film as sociopolitical document does not necessarily have the advantage of immediacy, and it might be handicapped by lack of distance.

More complex is Bombay film-maker Suma Josson’s Gujarat: Laboratory of Hindu Rashtra (2002). Josson charts the ascendancy of Hindutva, the ideology of Hindu supremacy that seeks to distil Hinduism into its purest essence and interviews with its advocates, as with civil rights activists and political opponents of Hindutva, furnish some backdrop to understanding how Gujarat has become the site of efforts to secure a Hindu nation (rashtra).
Josson’s film adds more sociological depth to the narrative of Hindu violence in Gujarat. But that question again surfaces: just how did Gujarat, ‘the land of Gandhi’, become so hospitable to advocates of Hindu militancy? One might have thought that the legacy of Gandhi would have worked to make Gujarat, which also boasts higher degrees of urbanisation, literacy, and industrial development than most other Indian states, into a model state for the rest of the country. Yet Gujarat has been subject to insistent communal strife. These apparent anomalies are left unexplained, which is again inexplicable considering the argument advanced that Gujarat represents the laboratory of the Hindu nation. If, as we know, the word ‘laboratory’ exists on multiple registers, we must perforce ask how far Gujarat mirrors the nation, and what Gujarat portends for the future. In his own way, Gandhi turned Gujarat into a laboratory for the perfection of his doctrine of Satyagraha, non-violent resistance. How far are the advocates of Hindutva playing on this legacy? These questions remain unanswered.

Rakesh Sharma’s The Final Solution (2004) is easily the most capacious of the handful of documentaries on the Gujarat killings. Entire picturisation is highly in its longest version, the film runs for 3 hours 40 minutes; however, since audiences are not habituated to documentaries of this length, Sharma generally screens one of two shorter versions, either 100 minutes or 148 minutes in length. Part I, entitled ‘Pride and Prejudice’, offers insights into Hindutva’s vociferous attempts to instil pride in an unabashedly militant conception of their faith among Hindus, and the price that the Muslims of Gujarat have had to pay to make Hindus feel ‘secure’ in their own homeland. Initial shots of ‘Gaurav Yatra’, or a Hindu pilgrimage of pride, are interspersed with interviews of schoolboys and their teachers; the camera then moves on to the refugee camps where nearly 150,000 victims of the pogrom were lodged. Even as victims recount the brutalities they survived, or were forced to witness, the camera cuts, with chilling effect, to a speech by Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat, who pompously declaimed on first being told of the massacres, ‘Every action has an equal and opposite reaction’.
The subsequent three parts, ‘The Terror Trail’, ‘Hate Mandate’, and
‘Hope and Despair’, are similarly structured. Occasional footage from a Gujarat Government VCD on Godhra, snippets from the Concerned Citizens Tribunal Report, and coverage of speeches by Narendra Modi and other ideologues of Hindutva, such as Praveen Togadia and the religious leader Acharya Dharmendra, punctuate scores of interviews with victims and their families, perpetrators and their patrons, and bystanders. Among the very first shots with which Final Solution opens is of a schoolboy, perhaps six or seven years old, describing the mutilation of his father and the rape of his aunt; and, as the film closes, the boy appears in an extended conversation with Sharma himself. He describes all Hindus as ‘bad’, and says, quite unbelievably, that he is prepared to kill them all. Sharma reminds him that he, too, is a Hindu. We witness the boy struggling with this difficult truth: if the film-maker before him appears to be a nice man, then all Hindus surely do not stand condemned. But if they do, then Sharma cannot be the Hindu he claims to be: this appears to be, logically speaking, the easier reality to accept. If framing devices are ordinarily intended to furnish closure, Sharma resolutely refuses such comforts; moreover, by concluding with excerpts from his conversation with the schoolboy, he draws sustained attention to the question, generally little explored in India, of what the voices of children tell us about communalism and how they mediate unspoken social truths.
Sharma’s achievement, considerable as it is, is not unique. At least among documentary film-makers working in the socialist tradition patawardhan is the most sensitive film maker. Both war and peace and father son and holy war deal with the topic of communal violence. But they probe deep into the issue. Patwardhan remains India’s most astute and daring documentary film-maker and one of the country’s most sensitive commentators. Again, Patwardhan conflates patriarchy with masculinity, but it is remarkable that he should have zoomed in on masculinity, long before anyone in India (or, for that matter, almost anywhere else) had appropriated it as a fitting subject of scholarly inquiry and cultural commentary.

BOMBAY: OUR CITY; 1985
This film tells the story of the daily battle for survival of the 4 million slum dwellers of Bombay who make up half the city's population. Although they are Bombay's workforce - industrial laborers, construction workers, and domestic servants - they are denied city utilities like electricity, sanitation, and water. Many slum dwellers must also face the constant threat of eviction as city authorities carry out campaigns to "beautify" Bombay. It is an indictment of injustice and misery, and a call to action on the side of the slum dwellers. Patawardhan gives us this story simply and clearly, with restrained passion, and it becomes, finally, dreadful and moving. The film does not claim to be objective. If it did, it would turn into another of those essays of confusion, like the T.V. or the Films Division specials that balance everything out till they get a collection of disparate facts and platitudes that are considered "responsible journalism". What "Bombay: Hamara Shaher" does in a span of 82 minutes is to present the slum demolition issue as Patawardhan sees it. And his interpretation is always persuasive. He has gone through an enormous effort to assemble the film. The words of the evacuated shake your insides while the commissioners, municipal ward officers and the mayor strike us as heartless when they're not downright cruel.
Indeed, the most powerful sequences turn out to be the on-the-spot interviews with slum-dwellers. A skeleton of a woman cries before the camera, "Don't come and take our photographs." A mother points at her brood, wondering where they will live or where they can find a scrap of food. A lame craftsman says he can't get a job because he's handicapped. The monsoon has begun, he adds, and it will be possible only to camp at the railway station. A couple of food vendors report that on some days business is so bad that they have to go around selling packets of rat poison; anything will do as long as they can survive in the city. The conditions back home weren't any better. If some take to crime, they are branded as killers and devils. What drove them to crime isn't analysed at all. Anand Patwardhan is everywhere on the long road to eviction of the poor from the streets of this city. He goes into areas and textures of the poorest of the poor as no camera has ever gone before, with such consistency. Condescension is totally absent, the questioner at best nudges the train of thought of a householder who has his meagre belongings scattered and must, inevitably, without choice, start all over again, tying rope to bamboo, putting up her sari, as one woman said, as the only cover she could have. There are children in the slum, learning elementary lessons of the need for food and sleep when there is little chance in their lives that there will be the proper mix of either. When the waters of copious monsoon flood the slums, a lame beggar hops across on a stick.
An upper-class person talks about the calm British colonial days when only a few Tongas and pedestrians walked past Victoria Terminus. Colonial past is shown through an appropriately photographed in a tight close-up picture from archive. An industrialist compares slum folk with American slaves who didn't want to give up bondage. At an advertising club meeting, people joke facetiously about the need to train the gentile in martial arts in order to combat the slum menace. The advertising club discussion with Ribeiro, Sukhtankar and Pasricha and the banners for a new Bombay that came up, is also time for a look through the plush corridors of Oberoi Towers which the poor have helped to build and which ejects them the moment their usefulness is over. The fat housewives and superficial foreigners who know of the poor only through their servants talk about the hyper fertility of poor. They describe how there servants don’t follow family planning.
The Bombay Chamber of Commerce felicitation of Ward Officer D. A. Pinto becomes another parody of the Establishment's unseeing hatred of the poor and the weak. Municipal Commissioner Sukthankar sits in his enormous Bungalow talking of evicting pre 1976 hordes when the camera shows his fluffy dog sauntering along and then lingers on the lawns and the huge windows and facade of the colonial mansion.
Against the backdrop of the slum demolitions, there are yacht races in the harbour; waltzes struck up against photographs of a serene old Bombay more than half a century ago and the rich celebrating their tribal rites at the Yacht Club under the colonial flag.
The two sides provide enough expression without any additional narration. If any extra comment is made, it's through a street theatre troupe singing songs about the exploitation of the poor. Emotionally, this device evokes our moral conscious. It doesn't take the easy way out by merely blaming the government. Instead, it questions our complacent attitudes. It is an extremely strong document which provides a historical background and puts the events of the last few years in an intelligible framework. We feel helpless witnessing the plight of the uprooted; we wish there could be a solution; and the fact that there isn't one demoralises us. The viewer feels utterly powerless. The part in the film of the local MLA and his young colleagues coming to the slums after the Supreme Court stay on the demolitions is excellent satire. The Indian Constitution as engraved in marble outside the new Council Hall, stops the camera. It is a powerful moment. Is there something to be said for the Legislative and the Judiciary, other than for the Executive as is made out? The Supreme Court Stay on demolitions is all that is mentioned. A look at paintings of the Gokhales and Tilaks in the Bombay Chamber of Commerce Hall is according to the film maker is to represent the political heritage as it was and the film of what it has come to.
Film a critic poses some interesting questions about the documentary. In his own words8
“Why should the camera and the film make Sukhtankar the obvious villain? What of those who make policy, not those who merely execute them!”
1) Couldn't a single sympathetic statement be recorded from the rich? Or were they left out deliberately not to spoil a good film? Is there not one rich person in this city who is not an unfeeling idiot?
He further goes to the extent of saying the film has consumed the Marxist dogma (Rich are bad and poor are good) which makes the film maker over look major managerial problems of large scale immigration to urban areas. He also finds out some narrative flows like
2) “As did, some rather obvious pieces of dishonesty. The Municipal Commissioner asks for ration cards and other evidence of pre-1976 occupation. These are collected, but what happened is conveniently forgotten.”
3) “An evicted hawker (who looks thoroughly dishonest if it is admitted that the poor can look as dishonest as the rich) brandishes a licence from the B.M.C. even as his goods are taken away. What this licence entitles him to is not even thought of. Does it entitle him to sell on the pavement or somewhere else?”
In March 1986 it was announced that 'Hamara Shahar / Bombay Our City', a documentary film on the daily battle for survival of Bombay's slum-dwellers had won the National Award for best non-feature film of the year. But the slum dwellers problem was not solved.
Above comments by S. Shankar Menon can be understood on this back ground. The issue of demolition is not as simple as that. But even critics like S. Shankar Menon can’t answer the questions of the slum dweller Vimal Dinkar Hedau, a resident of Shastri Nagar, Bandra West who asks in the film
"Why don't they demolish the illegal high-rises? Because they are paid off. The poor cannot pay. We are here only to get beaten"
Vimal Dinkar Hedau received the award on behalf of patawardhan as a sign of welcoming government’s consideration of the problem. In fact Adoor Gopalkrishnan's otherwise splendid 'Face to Face' has the same defects. The establishment is all jack-boots, batons and khaki, smashing the trade-union workers with barely any provocation. It doesn’t focus on multiple dimension of the issue. Though patawardhan looks a bit biased his intention is not to produce a balanced footage of government patronage.
Fishing in the Sea of Greed; 1998
The film opens with the compelling and memorable image of a boat flying towards the audience on the crest of a giant wave; the deep roar of the breakers in the film is echoed by the boom of the tide coming in, not a hundred paces from where we sit. The audience is spellbound: this film does not lull them into a sense of torpor with a judicious combination of fantasy and nightmare; instead, it depicts their struggle for livelihood and justice. If it establishes an epic for them to rejoice in, the epic is an inclusive one: the fisher-people form the supporting cast themselves, and the workaday heroes are drawn from among their own ranks.
Fishing in the Sea of Greed" spans several years in the life of the South Asian fisher-peoples movement of protest, and traces the story from coast to coast, dwelling on the courageous battles that dispossessed and marginalised communities have fought against the State and private enterprise, in western India, South India and Bangladesh. To the people of Machimar Nagar, the film brings news from elsewhere, gives them visual evidence of the solidarity among the dispossessed across the boundaries of region, ethnicity and language.
"Fishing in the Sea of Greed" shows them that their situation is no different from that of the legendary Kattamaram fishers of Kanyakumari, who gave their name to that English synonym for outrigger, the catamaran; it shows them that the injustices meted out to them are matched by the brutality suffered by fisher communities in the Sunderbans, where salination and land-grab operations have choked off the local estuarine economy. And, by way of counterpoint to the narrative of despair, Patwardhan's documentary gives its audience such inspiring figures as Thomas Kochery, who has organised and led the fisher communities of India against the powers that threaten their livelihood with extinction.
Conveying the sense of passionate urgency implicit in such a collective life, "Fishing in the Sea of Greed" embodies an empathetic symbiosis between film-maker and subject. For Anand Patwardhan has long taken up, as his mission, the mandate of articulating popular struggles, lending his unsentimental yet persuasive camera to those whose voices do not always carry as far as the capital-cities where aloof mandarins decide their fate through abstract legislations and ordinances.
The powerful new film “Litigating Disaster” explores how Union Carbide successfully manipulated both the U.S. and the Indian legal systems against each other, to avoid having to defend its record in the Bhopal plant in court. Featuring, a young Indian-American lawyer, the film follows the case he brought on behalf of the victims in front of the Federal District Court in New York. Case number 99CIV 11239 has survived two motions to dismiss, and is now proceeding to trial. About midnight on December 3, 1984, huge amounts of toxic gas leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, resulting in the biggest and deadliest chemical disaster of all time. Nearly twenty years later the ordeal isn’t over, justice has not been done. Had the disaster occurred in the developed world, heads would have rolled, prison sentences would have been served, changes would have been made. But the disaster didn’t happen in the West, but in this obscure Indian city.
Today, hundreds of thousands of people still suffer. Drinking water for at least sixteen nearby communities remains severely polluted, while, to date, no court of law anywhere in the world has ever held Union Carbide or any of its officers responsible for what happened that night.
Constructed as attorney Rajan Sharma’s case as presented to fictitious jurors, LITIGATING DISASTER takes the viewers on a riveting cinematic investigation; presenting the compelling evidence assembled against Union Carbide including unique, never before seen documents unearthed through prolonged legal struggles, exclusive interviews with Union Carbide former officers, powerful archival material, and scenes filmed in and out of the abandoned plant. As the story unfolds, the film makes it clear the real culprit is the lack of any international law or tribunal to govern the activities of multinational corporations.
Though both the films deal with reasonably similar topics patawardhan documentary isn’t mournful because it documents a successful struggle. Context of Bhopal gas tragedy involves loss of lives in a large scale. Patawardhan has the privilege of having a celebrative ending of the film with the footage of fisher men’s dancing to rhythm of drums celebrating international fishing day.
All the five films discuss some of the most burning problems of the developing countries. There interrogate modern life style and social stratification. Anand Patwardhan's career-graph as a film-maker demonstrates clearly that the medium of film need not confine itself to amusement: it reassures us that the film-maker as annoying person, as critic, as conscience-keeper of society, is alive and well. Threatened by right-wing assailants and sought to be deprived of the vast viewership of national television by a wary bureaucracy, the critical film-maker remains undaunted nonetheless, and reaches out to viewers by informal means when the formal ones fail.


Notes
1. Bishnoi tribe - A tribe of Rajsthan desert area has twenty principles(bish-20) . Most of those principles are about homogenous co-existence with nature.

2. WTC- World Trade Centre. New York

3. Adivasis -aborigines, indigenous people
4. Rustom Bharucha,. Dismantling men: “Crisis of Male Identity in 'Father, Son and Holy War'”:Routledge Taylore and Fracis Group informaworld (http://www.informaworld.com)

5. Shivsena- A right wing political party of Maharastra

6. Shivaji Uthsav - A ceremonial ritual started by Bal Gangadar Tilak to organise freedom struggle

7. Social Darwinism- Social Darwinism, in sociology, theory formulated in the late 19th century that argues that the development of individuals and societies follows the pattern described by Charles Darwin in his theory of evolution by natural selection.

8. S. Shankar Menon. “Beautifully flawed” Financial Express July 7, 1985