‐1 FILM REVIEW Women’s Lives From Partition To Islamization A Review Of Sabiha Sumar’s Khamosh Pani Khamosh Pani or Silent Waters is a film about the tensions between state, community, family, and individuals in Pakistan under Zia Ul Haq regime. Through the depiction of the strained relationship between a mother, Ayesha and her son, Saleem in the context of Islamization, the film raises important questions about the gendered nature of politics in Pakistan in the late 1970s. Some of the questions that we are compelled to confront through the film are: What does communal violence mean for women whose bodies become sites for communal contestation? (Bhasin and Menon, 90-91) What are the implications of the state’s assertion of itself as the “giver of values” on the lives of women? (Das, 467) And what does resistance look like for women in such situations? To raise these questions, the film shows us the deep and complex entanglement between the national political history and the biography of individuals. It successfully shows us the ways in which first partition and later Islamization in Pakistan create dramatic changes in the life of a woman who straddles two religious communities of Sikhs and Muslims. The film has a couple of strengths. It is able to ground the plot in realistic social and historical contexts that allow us to understand the influences of political change in the rural Punjabi village. Similarly, it deals sensitively with issues of trauma and memory and enables us to see the history not simply as an event in time but the consequences and lingering experiences of different processes. In this paper, I will explore the strengths of the film to argue that Khamosh Pani does not fall into the trap of depicting individuals or women for that matter as simply pawns in the larger socio-political histories of their communities. On the ‐2 contrary, it allows us to see them as critical actors and agents who are able to understand their position and act like-wise. Even as the film presents us with the state’s tendency to define practices within a community, it avoids essentialism in depicting the shifts and changes community. Khamosh Pani is about the strains and tensions in community and its practices. In showing us the changes in community and its practice in rural Punjab in 1978, the film challenges the idea of a bounded community defined by fixed practices and suggests how women’s lives can provide insight into the multiplicities and heterogeneities within community (Das, 468). In a broader sense, as an artistic endeavor, the film stands evidence to the fact those women’s lives and histories that nation-states suppress can speak much about the public politics. Sabiha Sumar’s setting of the film in a bucolic Punjabi village and the use of vernacular ground the film in context. It is in this context that we can come to understand some of its major characters, particularly Salim and his mother. The film opens to a pan of the village where Ayesha and her friend are drying clothes. The first couple of images in the film establish the context of the everyday in the Punjabi village. Sumar suggests a certain lull in the village life, a certain sense of laidback calm through these everyday scenes where the carefree Salim wakes up late to his mother coaxing him to clean his room as she rolls rotis or flatbread. Similarly, through the depiction of the intimate scenes between the young Zubeida and Salim, the depiction of men and women intermingling, and dancing and singing at the wedding, Sumar establishes the relaxed social practices that shift as the film progresses. The harbingers of the Islamic policies in the village enter during the vibrant celebrations of the village headman’s daughter’s wedding. This entrance suggests the introduction of more conservative elements to the village. ‐3 In contrast to the common assumption of rural as the site of “tradition,” the rural practices appear less constrictive that the ideas about organization of cultural life that radical Islamists bring to the village. The state agents that Sumar introduces in the film attempt to fix and define tradition that is novel to the context that we are initially introduced to. Young Salim with his limited options for jobs to make a livelihood is lured into the political agenda of the new political players who show him the promise of a better society. Salim attends a mass gathering in Rawalpindi where he is exposed the ideologies of the Islamic politicians which includes the closer “protection” of women against un-Islamic enemies. Following this he exchanges a conversation with his friend about Zubeida to which his friend explains, “love marriage is not our culture” (Sumar, Silent Waters). After his exposure to such ideas, Salim’s relationship with Zubeida is strained. The idea of a “love marriage” as unrespectable and the idea of women who engage with men before marriage as “dishonorable” become grounds for Salim’s tensions with his young lover. The idea that morality comes from the regulation of women’s bodies in the film is a recurring theme that Sumar examines. Bhasin and Menon explain that the “construction that identified her [a woman] first and foremost, as the member of a religious community, and then invested her with the full responsibility for upholding community honor denied her any autonomy” (103). This narrative influences the women in the film, particularly Ayesha. During partition she avoids being killed at the hands of her father who would rather have his daughter dead than be taken away by Muslims. Again during Zia Ul Haq’s regime her past crops up and she is forced to define her allegiance despite of having lived in a community for over 30 years. In both cases, partition and Zia Ul Haq’s rgime, we see the “redefinition of national character through commitment to upholding honour and ‐4 restoring moral order” via the regulation of sexuality and women’s bodies (Bhasin and Menon 107-108). In the context of the film, Sumar introduces us to the discourse on women at the mass gathering in Rawalpindi where the political leader explains that women’s mobility in public ought to be restricted for the sake of maintaining national character (Sumar, Silent Waters). The idea of women’s unrestrained mobility as un-Islamic is an “exclusion of alterity” which in turn is a “device by which the hegemony of the state is established” (Das, 447). Salim’s internalization of such ideas and the shift in this relationship thus show the normalizing tendency of such a normative discourse. The larger political agendas of the radical Islamists seep into the individual relationships as such discourses become normative and gain normalizing tendencies. However, despite the fact that Salim is influenced by political ideologies of the Islamist radicals, these ideas are not entirely internalized by other characters. The tension between the Islamic radicals and the local community is established by the several instances such as the divergence between the Islamic radicals and the local barber. Upon being asked to close shops for the afternoon prayer, the barber responds, “no one tells me how to pray" (Sumar, Silent Waters). Zubeida and Ayesha stand against the political discourses that are introduced into their lives. Ayesha is particularly critical of her son’s political involvements. Having been through the horrors of partition, she sees the use of the idea of religion for political end as highly problematic. She asks her son to stay away from the “political types” as they “use Allah’s name for their own political ends” and such political involvements will “destroy their lives” (Sumar, Silent Waters). When Ayesha’s brother attempts to locate her and “retrieve” her, Salim discovers his mother’s past life as a Sikh woman and displays a sense of anxiety. He asks, “what shall I do mother?” Ayesha’s secret silenced for years comes out to the open. Her son and his ‐5 radical friends ask her to define herself as a Muslim and claim her full commitment to Islam. She refuses to openly identify herself and align herself to such categories. Similarly against her brother’s pleas to return with him to India to see their dying father, Ayesha replies, “What will he do when he sees me alive and a Muslim? How will he go to his Sikh heaven? And what heaven is there for me? A Sikh heaven or a Muslim heaven?” Her questions interrogate the patriarchal ownership of women’s bodies within religious groups. She sees herself as both Muslim and Skih and none of the two. Whereas the patriarchal agents in the film, the father, the brother and the son attempt to fix Ayesha within their religious communities, she refuses. However, Sumar does not want us to understand men in such contexts as largely patriarchal actors. In some ways, Ayesha’s husband occupies a different position. As an abductor who decides to marry Ayesha, he shows the multiple ways in which individual actors responded to the political upheavals of partition. Bhasin and Menon suggest that among the different things that happened to women postpartition, many women were also married to their abductors (Bhasin and Menon, 94-95). In this sense, Sabiha Sumar provides us an accurate account of history, enabling us to see the various possibilities and outcomes of the horrific events of 1947. Whereas, the radical Islamists are engaged in a larger political agenda of giving the nation an Islamic character through the policing of community practices and women’s bodies that that is not entirely different from the contestation over women’s bodies during partition, the people in the community as well as the women are resistant to such projects. The instances where the women in the film are squarely opposed to these radical Islamists, where they see such political projects as destructive of the lives that they have built for themselves, we are able to see women as political actors, resistant to the forces that attempt to define and describe ‐6 their lives. They also allow us to see the heterogeneity of community. Even as the Islamist discourse has the tendency to attempt and define the national community, members of the village including the women stand against the discourse and assert their position. I suggest that we understand Ayesha’s suicide through this line of argumentation, that we see it as her refusal to be defined by either category of Muslim or non-Muslim. Her refusal to be owned and claimed by a society defined by fixed boundaries of religious practice contradicts Ayesha’s interior life where she teaches and recites the Koran even as she keeps a copy of the Sikh scripture locked in her box. In a society that demands full loyalty to a bounded community, Ayesha’s duality finds no space and she refuses to give into such a bounded community. Khamosh Pani ‘s deals with history not only as an event but also as lingering memories and consequences. In the presentation of history as non-linear, the film effectively uses flashbacks as a cinematic tool that disrupts a straightforward narrative trajectory. Memory in the form of flashbacks are used in the film depict subjugated “history and archive” that women’s lives stand for (Das, 468). The flashbacks depict the trauma that partition inflicted on individuals and communities. Even as individuals as well as communities can remain silenced on issues of communal violence and its aftermath, the events haunt the societies. Even as we see Ayesha to be well established in her community, we find her reverting to fragmented memories of the time when her father was on the verge to pushing her into the much despised well. The use of a woman’s memory to tell a story of partition is a strong choice on Sumar’s part. It is a way through which we understand the multiplicity of Pakistani society in 1979 and the resistance wages by women against the homogenizing tendencies of Islamization. Not only does Ayesha embody a history of resistance against patriarchal pressures to uplift communal ‐7 honor by diving into the well but her later act of suicide encapsulates resistance against the pressures of Islamic radicals including her own son to define herself and her practice. It is only through her memory and her interior biography that we can access this resistance. The painting of the interior biography of a woman works well in the favor of Khamosh Pani. In the final scenes of the film, we see Zubeida dressing up to go to work. From this we understand that she has indeed pursued her dreams of further education. In these final scenes, Zubeida explains that she continues to remember Ayesha and collects dreams where Ayesha comes to her. This re-establishes the power of memory as the site from which women continue to draw inspiration. Khamosh Pani as a film about two historical moments where gendered politics bring changes into the lives of communities and individuals provides a crucial understanding of the different intersections between larger political processes and individual lives. It not only effectively deals with the ways in which larger political changes influence a rural community but also shows the ways in which women respond to such changes. In depicting the numerous ways in which women respond in such contexts, it allows us to access an alternative history. In this history, we see women as agents of their resistance. Even as the larger political process attempt to subsume them into projects to create a hegemonic political culture, the women negotiate their position and resist in a number of different ways. ‐8 Citations: Menon, Ritu and Bhasin, Kamla. Borders & Boundaries: Women in India's Partition. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998. Das, Veena. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent Into the Ordinary. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.