Left of the Dial: 'Khamosh Pani' chronicles a Pakistani life

In 1979, Pakistan had been ruled for two years by the usurping general Zia-ul-Haq. In an effort to legitimize his rule, he began implementing a panoply of Islamic reforms.

What was once the ideal modern state for the postcolonial Islamic world quickly became a country wracked with religious sectarianism. It was the dawning of a new era of doctrinal dispute and, eventually, violence. But perhaps it was not so novel.   

“Khamosh Pani (Silent Waters),” a 2003 Pakistani-Indian film, tells a tragic tale of a rustic town overwhelmed by late 1970s Islamism. With poignancy characteristic of historical cinema, it relates a story intricately woven into the larger cloth of South Asian religious divisiveness. At its center is the widow Ayesha, who lives with her innocent son Saleem in Charkhi, Punjab province.  

The town’s tawny buildings rise and fall with the unevenness of the earth, ascending to rival the smooth cheeks of neighboring mountains. Throughout its hills and dunes, colorful fabrics snap on worn clotheslines. 

A peaceful solemnity has fallen upon the villagers, who interact openly with members of various religions.

This quietude is ruptured permanently when two zealous wanderers happen upon the town. They slowly seduce and radicalize the young men of the village, including Saleem.

All of this is eerily familiar to Ayesha, however. 

In 1947, Britain has abandoned its former raj and partitioned South Asia. Sovereign states Pakistan and India have been born as scores of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and others migrate across both borders. Religious riots erupt as multitudes attempt to relocate. Millions are brutalized, and hundreds of thousands are killed.

As the audience soon discovers, Ayesha was herself a victim of the violence. Born a Sikh, she was nearly killed by her father when a hoard of religious fanatics descended upon Charkhi. A common reality for many women in the aftermath of Partition was unspeakable sexual abuse, abduction and forcible conversion. Her father, seeking to spare himself and his family members such humiliation, intends to throw them into the town’s central well. Youthful Ayesha escapes, only to endure miserable afflictions.

When the town learns of Ayesha’s former identity, they shun and abandon her. In the throes of loneliness and dejection, an apostate to both of her faiths, she can only ask hauntingly: “What heaven remains for me?”

Any modern chronicle of South Asian history cannot ignore the intergenerational nature of religious violence. Rather than treat the radicalization of Pakistan in the 1980s as unique, “Khamosh Pani” brilliantly connects it to previous events. Ayesha is a tortured woman, having suffered both the viciousness of post-Partition aggression and its reappearance in her son’s life. One of the unnerving questions of the film is whether any progress had been made between 1947 and 1979.

FSView recently spoke with South Asian history professor Dr. Claudia Liebeskind about the movie. Far from being singular in its depiction of the effects of Partition on women, “Khamosh Pani” is part of a larger historical tradition of collecting “memoirs and government files” as well as “concerted attempts to gather oral testimony,” said Liebeskind. Indeed, modern historians work continually to preserve the legacies of those who departed during and those who survived the ineffable year of 1947.

Aside from literature and written histories, Dr. Liebeskind finds cinematic portrayals helpful for vividly illustrating the events about which she teaches. “Films can humanize a bigger event and allow students to identify with characters’ emotions,” she said.

When dealing with events as traumatic as Partition and modern religious violence, such humanization is paramount. While “Khamosh Pani” is first and foremost a film about a mother and her community, it is also a representation of the collective experience of millions.