New Delhi: “Where should I go? Tell me, leaving my fertile land, the Padma River, where should I go?” says a haggard old man, looking directly into the camera. And then comes a surly response from a young man behind him. “It’s time you became a refugee.”
With these telling lines begins the 1961 movie, Komal Gandhar, part of legendary Bengali filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak‘s poignant refugee trilogy – also including Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960) and Subarnarekha (1962) – depicting a storm of feelings following statelessness.
This month, family members of the auteur issued a statement, alleging that the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP, "misappropriated" content from his films for its promotional video in support of the contentious citizenship law amendment and “discriminatory” National Register of Citizens (NRC).
Among the signatories are actor Parambrata Chatterjee and economist Maitreesh Ghatak (grandnephews of the director) who said that the act of using any content from Ghatak’s films “to support a law which seeks re-establishment of identity, talks about the possibility of taking away citizenship of a particular minority community is deemed unacceptable and violates the values and principles espoused by Ghatak”.
While the BJP youth wing reportedly insists that the video, where dialogues of Ghatak’s movie Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-capped Star) have been used, is yet to be released in public domain, the fear of misinterpretation due to decontextualisation remains.
The Dhaka-born Padma Shri awardee was an alcoholic virtually from the time of Ajantrik (1958), his second feature film, and susceptible to spells of deep depression and periods of institutionalisation. He and his family moved to Murshidabad and then to Calcutta (now Kolkata) just before millions of other refugees from the-then East Bengal began flooding into the city, fleeing the catastrophic Bengal famine of 1943 and the partition of Bengal in 1947. His death in 1976, at the age of 50, followed a long string of illnesses.
Ghatak leant heavily on leftist political themes in his work but always managed to deliver a message. Meghe Dhaka Tara was the only popular success he saw in his life. The other films were commercial failures and also met with significant critical castigation, even from his communist comrades, for what was perceived as opacity, incoherence, and melodrama. This is in sharp contrast with the works of his contemporary, Satyajit Ray, where social themes were dealt with, though rarely, as readily digestible pills.
Ghatak‘s films revolved around the agony of dislocation, the turbulence of identity crisis and trauma, primarily what constituted the Partition. His work never celebrated independence but showed the cost at which independence arrived.
Ghatak and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), thus, make an absurd combination given that the legislation seeks to grant citizenship to migrants who suffered “religious persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh”, except Muslims. This Muslim-exclusive nature of the Act is fundamentally against everything that Ghatak’s movies are known for. His work paints a turbulent picture of forced exile and statelessness, oppression of casteism, irrespective of religion.
Decoding Meghe Dhaka Tara
Based on the lives of a Hindu ‘bhadralok’ (gentleman) family living in a refugee camp, Ghatak gave us the iconic line — “Dada, aami baanchte chaai” (Brother, I want to live) — that reverberates even now. It was a visual excellence that showed Partition through the female experience of it.
A riveting tale of backbreaking work, forbearance and family consumerism, which eventually sees the stoic protagonist, Nita, slogging herself to death to sustain the life of her refugee family. In Nita, you find courage without aggression. She is the personification of resilience and sole breadwinner of her family. However, her only position in the family was that of a sacrificial goat who eventually fell to tuberculosis in a tragic climax even though she was long numbed over her mother’s betrayal.
Through Meghe Dhaka Tara, Ghatak skillfully juxtaposes the decaying of a family that resulted from a refugee crisis with spread of a deadly disease like tuberculosis. Her soul-churning cry to survive accompanied by the coldness her family offered to her whole existence showed the naked reality of an impoverished refugee family.
“Ghatak’s thematics in his Partition films were centrally about the struggle for survival of refugee families and those like Nita who supported the family became victims of consumerism. So, who is the oppressor? There is no Muslim as an oppressor in these films. It is the suffering of ordinary individuals after Partition that Ghatak was concerned with. So, how can one use his films to justify the Citizenship Amendment Act? Ghatak was a humanist, a Marxist, a critic of oppressors and very secular,” said Ira Bhaskar, professor of cinema studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
The problems that his characters face in all the films that deal with Partition are those of refugees who came from the other side and were looking to re-establish themselves, Bhaskar added. “It’s the poverty that they face. His films were never against Muslims at all. In fact, the film that he made in Bangladesh has all Muslim characters, and it is their suffering that he represented on screen in Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (A River Called Titash),” she said, referring to the new citizenship law’s exclusion of Muslims.
However, senior BJP leader Jay Prakash Majumdar said, “Ghatak was against Partition of Bengal and he took the revolutionary stand against it through his films that were based on refugees who were essentially Hindus living in colonies. We think his work is relevant with the CAA because in all these years, so many promises were made to them and were never delivered. But only we kept the promise that Hindu refugees will get citizenship, which is their protection, their right.”
A Matinee Name in Bengali Households
Childhood in many Bengal homes was incomplete without a staple must-watch list of classics by Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak. Afternoons were often reserved for discussions – frequently uncomfortable – on the Partition and its aftermath, which eventually culminates into a cozy afternoon nap.
When movies such as Nagarik (The Citizen) played on television, they evoked a multitude of emotions in children whose parents were forced to migrate from erstwhile East Bengal to Kolkata. Inexplicable feelings ran through the drawing rooms as families watched the heartrending depiction of human loss after statelessness with teary eyes.
The paraphernalia of a Bengali household have changed over the years; and so has the politics of the land.
Commercial films have replaced old classics on Bangla television channels. Lest we forget, Ray’s Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne and Heerak Rajar Deshe are telecast once a month as appetiser to the bhadrolok. Thus opening avenues for misrepresentation and misinterpretation of such magical films for the simple reason, out of sight, out of mind.
“Bengalis today suffer from a dichotomy of appreciating everything that is associated with the community, but not knowing what it actually stands for. The problem exists in a bizarre way: anything that is popular must be appreciated even if those appreciating are oblivious of the nuances of the matter,” said Rupleena Bose, a Delhi University professor who also writes films, fiction and documentaries.
However, Bose pointed out that attempts at re-interpretation of Ghatak’s works may get challenged only in urban spaces where his movies still enjoy significant popularity and are held in high regard. The problem arises in the rural Bengal which largely offers no demand for such politically important films. “The rural population is mainly serial-based and has a huge market of commercial movies; thus, it gets tricky here,” Bose added.
Room for Travesty
Vulnerability of Ghatak’s cathartic movies, and the scope of their misrepresentation is far more than the works of other filmmakers like Ray whose works are better preserved.
It is easy to take advantage of Mrinal Sen and Ghatak’s films as a lot gets lost in poor translation of vernacular dialogue. Therefore, it is simpler for political parties to twist the message of films to suit their agenda, Bose said.
Besides, decontextualisation for political purposes also warps popular sensitivity towards the refugee crisis and migration.
“There is a powerful scene in Komal Gandhar (E-Flat) where two refugees are standing on a railway track at a barricade that has closed off the train tracks that used to go across the river to East Bengal,” said Bhaskar. “They wonder how their Bengal has come to be what it is.
They look across the river to the other side where their home used to be from which they are now exiled. And in a wonderful shot after this conversation, Ghatak's camera tracks down the railway lines and crashes into the barricade while the screen goes black, which represents in an abstract resonant mode the darkness that has descended on the world. All the while on the soundtrack are cries of ‘Duhai Ali’ (a cry against injustice). Here, Ghatak's film connects history with myth, evoking the historical injustices against Ali, his son Hussain, his followers and family that the Battle of Karbala represents. What a terrible situation. So, Ghatak's themes are about the injustices of history and the tragedy of people and situations that are caused by historic events over which ordinary people have no control.”
“In his films that deal with Partition it is the suffering of one set of people that Ghatak represents but his vision is civilisational and epic which applies to Hindus and Muslims alike. Ghatak’s work speaks of grief and loss and does not justify the amendment today that has left Muslims who are refugees out of the Citizenship Act,” Bhaskar added. “To associate Ritwik Ghatak with anything remotely partisan is unacceptable. He was certainly not anti-Muslim. How do you explain his film Titash Ekti Nadir Naam? Ghatak never talked about the oppression of Hindus at the hands of the Muslims in East Bengal at all.”
Referring to the film Subarnarekha, the JNU professor said, “There, Ghatak depicted the problems that refugees who came to West Bengal faced when they were driven out of the spaces that they were trying to settle in by Hindu landlords. It was Hindu goons who oppressed them. There is a class discourse here. There is a disturbing scene early in the film where a little boy gets separated from his mother who is carried away by Hindu goons. How do you explain this? Ghatak was not anti-Muslim, he mourned the violence of history that affected Hindus and Muslims alike.”
A Celluloid Rebel
Ghatak’s cinema was cultural and civilisational that represented catastrophe on an epic scale, Bhaskar said.
The legendary director dedicated his life and work to exhibit the violence that gripped society in the name of nations. His movies are cathartic, speaking to the enduring violence that was a product of the forced exile, refugee crisis and the everyday authoritarian challenges to democracy, which extends beyond the Indian subcontinent. Therefore, an attempt to incorporate his movie clippings in a publicity video, as decided by the BJP’s youth wing, may not be the correct representation of his works on a population that was most affected by the Partition and the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971.
Ghatak was an ardent communist, a lifelong follower of an ideology that the BJP seldom forgets to diss. An active supporter of the CPI, Ghatak was part of the Indian People’s Theatre Association, a communist collective. However, due to his independent nature, he was expelled from the party in 1955.
“As Ghatak’s family said, the new Citizenship Act stands fundamentally against everything that Ghatak stood for. Anybody who knows him and understands his cinema will know that this move is totally a non-contextual use of his work, misrepresenting his cinema fundamentally,” Bhaskar said.
Ghatak’s creations were largely anti-establishment that sometimes left the audience uncomfortable with the raw reality. “The BJP youth wing in Bengal should watch Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (Reason, Debate and a Story) to understand who Ghatak was – a critic of the violence of the state, authority and power. Always speaking truth to power. Even in Meghe Dhaka Tara, what will they say? The violence is within a Hindu family. Subarnarekha is a critique of casteism, and of social violence and the violence of history. His cinema upheld the rights of the poor, of those who were struggling to survive, and is a critique of capitalism, of violence and power,” Bhaskar said.
During an interview in 1976, the ace filmmaker had spoken about the excitement he felt to work with Ustad Alauddin Khan and be a part of the latter’s project, Sangeet Natak Akademi.
Bengal remains volatile as a sizeable number of Muslims feel the threat of statelessness and fear of disappearance – a feeling that Ghatak soulfully essayed in his movies.
“Tagore once said – art has to be beautiful, but, before that, it has to be truthful. Now, what is truth? There is no eternal truth. Every artist has to learn private truth through a painful private process. And that is what he has to convey.” These are Ghatak’s own words. And it’s not too far-fetched to surmise that they will perhaps find more resonance than ever before in the days to come.