Fired, Gently Nandita Das’s gripping directorial debut, Firaaq—a fearless exploration of Gujarat 2002 — should be the talking point everywhere, says SHOMA CHAUDHURY Into this opacity of meaning, occasionally, something slips. Briefly breaching our fortifications. Briefly triggering a healing disquiet in our being. Nandita Das’ directorial debut, Firaaq is such a moment. To say something new about the horror of Gujarat 2002 is almost impossible, to evoke empathy for it is heroic. But Firaaq does that. The film begins with an overwhelming image of the dead. A mud flow of ravaged bodies being off-loaded from a truck, and a gravedigger — the most stoic outpost of life — imploding in tears, crushed by their awful inhuman weight. This is the only direct image of violence in the film, the rest hovers just outside its penumbra, imbuing the film with a kind of nervous dread. Firaaq’s greatest triumph, in fact, is this evocation of violence in absentia. Located in the aftermath of the riots, Nandita uses an intricate mesh of life sketches to draw out not just the physical violence of the rapes and deaths, but the psychological debris the riots have left behind. A middle class Hindu woman, married to one of the rioters — a casually violent man — grapples with the guilt of having abandoned a frantic Muslim woman. A Muslim auto-driver and his wife return from a trip to find their home devastated. A gracious old musician struggles to cling to the courtesies of an older world. A group of rudderless young Muslim men are driven by impotent rage to find a weapon. And a swish, middle-class couple find themselves suddenly struggling with the idea of being Hindu and Muslim when their shop is looted. Linking all these stories is a waif of a boy, meandering through the city in search of his father — a wisp of innocent humanity bearing witness to a world gone mad. A world whose innards are falling away in little unnoticed chips.
Emotionally taut, self-assured, pared, Firaaq is a searing exploration of subterranean poisons unleashed by Gujarat 2002. Guilt, rage, self-hatred, suspicion, the brutalisation of survivors — Nandita reminds us that the legacy of violence is more dangerous than violence itself. In one of the film’s most disturbing moments, the little boy in search of his father smacks an ant dead with sudden force. “Maar diya sale ko,” he says with unexpected vehemence. He has borne witness to vast and tiny cruelties. Now, he is a premonition of a new generation. Brimming with stellar performances by Deepti Naval, Paresh Rawal, Naseer - uddin Shah and Raghubir Yadav, and much more accomplished than other well-meaning films like Parzania, for 40- year-old Nandita, Firaaq ought to have been a moment of great gratification; a moment of arrival in a long journey. In a sense, she has been grooming herself for this from childhood. The daughter of bohemian painter Jatin Das and director of National Book Trust, Varsha Das, unconventionality and acceptance of difference was coded into her blood. “There were no stereotypes possible in my life,” she laughs. “My father stayed at home and cooked, while my mother went to work from nine to five. It wasn’t until I grew up that I realised this wasn’t the norm.” Though her parents separated when she was seven, Nandita claims an uninterrupted closeness between them, her and her brother, Siddhartha. Her real catalysts, though, have been a rich cast of diverse, politically enlightened activists. Theatre activist Safdar Hashmi, tragically killed; Aruna Roy, architect of the Right to Information movement; Medha Patkar; and most unusually, Daya Bai, a Malayali novitiate who, disturbed by the abyss of poverty outside, jumped across the walls of her convent on the eve of taking her vows, and went to work among the tribals of Madhya Pradesh for 30 years. These inspirations, coupled with long stints with NGOs, have been key to Nandita’s sensibility and cinematic choices. “They gave me the strength to stand by my convictions and be disturbed by one’s own hypocrisies and contradictions,” says she. IN FACT, combating hypocrisy was the trigger for Firaaq. “I was very disturbed by the prejudice of our own class of people,” says Nandita. “This is why I wanted to make a film about ordinary people that my viewers could identify with. I didn’t want to overdramatise, show heinous acts or manipulate emotion. I wanted to take small ordinary incidents so that people who watched could not hide from themselves by saying, ‘Oh I would never do this kind of thing’.” Among other things, this is what gives Firaaq its disturbing charge. It reminds you it is not just the 2,000 dead that makes Gujarat such an indelible rupture in our national life (though that ought to be reason enough). What makes it indelible is that the riots were just the most horrific face of a prejudice that runs much wider beneath the skin. For all this, Firaaq should have been a moment of great gratification for Nandita. A moment of recognition and animated discussion. Instead, this quiet, thoughtful gem of a film has come unheralded into our multiplexes. In all probability, it will slide unnoticed out next week. The director’s great conviction is unmatched by her producers. This shameful neglect is just one of the many creeping crises of our time. | |||
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 13, Dated Apr 04, 2009 |
Monday, March 30, 2009
Fired, Gently
Sunday, March 1, 2009
The Devil In The Backyard
The Devil In The Backyard The Zardari Government is making peace with the Taliban which is hanging amputated bodies from electric poles. AMIR MATEEN analyses the dangers for Pakistan
THE ONE-TIME tourist heaven of Swat looks like a ghost valley today. The people have still not recovered from the gory nightmare that was unleashed by the local Taliban. The last one-and-a-half year has seen a population of 1.5 million people being held hostage by a ragtag force of some 2,500 Taliban. They are under the leadership of Maulvi Fazalullah, popularly known as Mullah Radio for his jihad-inflected sermons, aired through his illegal FM radio. Fazalullah’s men have fought bloody battles with the army over the past two years. They virtually took control of most of Swat last year. Over 1,200 civilians have died so far and around 350,000 hapless locals forced to leave through rough mountain terrain. The rich have left for Peshawar — 70 miles away, and the richer for more posh Islamabad — 100 miles in the south. The poor, with no place to go, suffered the trauma that makes Hollywood horrors look like a picnic. Intelligence sources dubbed as ‘spies’ and government officials — particularly from law-enforcing agencies — were specifically targeted by the Taliban. They were abducted and maimed and their killing turned into a gruesome spectacle in order to send a message to others. The reign of terror is symbolised by what has come to be known as Khooni Chowk — the Crossing of Blood. A band of Taliban would, late at night, block the central crossing in the city centre of Mingora, the district headquarters the size of Srinagar and no less beautiful. They hung amputated bodies — some headless — on an electrical pole in the middle of the crossing, with notes giving their name and details of their ‘misdeeds’ against Islam. The bodies were not to be removed before a given date. Anybody violating this dictat could do so only at the risk of being himself put up headless. THIS SCENE — perpetuated for days and weeks — is not from the Wild West of the cowboys. It happened in the Swat valley, which once took pride in having the most peaceful and bettereducated residents not just in the frontier province alone, but all over Pakistan. The princely state — annexed by Pakistan in 1969 — had better schools, hospitals and police stations than anybody else. It had an airport, and attractions like ski resorts and trout fishing on the meandering River Swat, which used to attract hordes of tourists every year. No more. A majority of the police force has either run away, resigned or simply not turned up for work. Local newspapers are filled with advertisements from policemen declaring that they have left their jobs, and hence they be spared “in the name of their small children.” A new force of 600 locals was recruited for special commando training to combat what is actually an insurgency. The story goes that 450 of them disappeared during the training itself, and another 148 did not appear on the date of joining. The two men left in the force have not ventured outside their office in uniform since. This left the entire populace at the mercy of the wolves that are masquerading as saviours of religion. People have seen throats being slit. Those who violate the Taliban code are either lashed or hanged in public jirgas (gatherings). Events where masked gunmen with the latest weaponry went on the rampage were skillfully orchestrated, and then their videos released in order to instill fear in the public. This took a severe toll on the psyche of the public, already hard pressed thanks to unemployment and hunger.
Life has come to a standstill for 80 percent of the people whose earnings came from tourism. Orchids have become rotten in the absence of labour and markets; and the fields lie barren. People go without fire, food, and electricity for days. The only cinema in Mingora was forced to down shutters, television and music has been banned, and CD shops have been closed. Even barbershops were shutdown as shaving, according to the interpretation of the Taliban, is un-Islamic. It has been particularly hard for women, children and the handicapped because of the problems of age or sickness. Over 200 schools have been blown up as they were giving “western education.” Girls are barred from schooling. Over 100,000 Swati girls stand to lose their chance of education and, consequently, any career or professional life. This is happening in a place where the ratio of women in literacy and the job market was one of the highest in the province. The new edict may allow girls an education till the fourth grade, but with a revised curriculum. Also, they must always wear scarves on their heads. In any case, it will take awhile as most schools have been destroyed. Women have been rendered prisoner in their own homes as they are now barred from going out in public, something that even Saudi Arabia has not tried. The central bazaar for women — with items like cosmetics and bangles, when partially open — today gives an image of a haunted place without shoppers. But then, cosmetics are a lesser priority when your children sleep hungry. Women are not allowed to work. Even women doctors are not permitted to carry on with their jobs. Stories abound where women lost babies because of the non-availability of doctors. Many others have died because of the lack of medicines and medical treatment. The question is — how did over a million people accept the inhuman dictates of a bunch of jihadi thugs who do not fit into any Islamic school of thought? Well, they have not. They voted liberal parties to power in the last election. But these parties did not have either the political muscle, or the will, to protect them from the evil of the Taliban. But how did the Taliban gain ascendancy? The system of justice under the princely state was more efficient than what followed. The people, therefore, wanted Sharia courts to be established as a way of achieving quick justice and dispensing with the long delays and corruption of the civil courts. But the Taliban, who had a different agenda, hijacked their demand. For ordinary people, in the absence of the writ of the state, it’s just a matter of choosing a lesser evil. All hopes now hinge upon Maulana Sufi Mohammad, the father-in-law of Fazalullah. Sufi Mohammad is no angel himself. He is a radical cleric freed in 2008 after spending six years in jail for leading 10,000 Pashtun tribesmen to fight the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Nearly 7,000 died in the bombing and he ran back for his life. The people whose children he took with him after indoctrinating them, leading to their being killed, hate him. He has now been resurrected in order to persuade Fazalullah to accept the government’s offer of a ceasefire, which he has agreed to partially. How long this respite will last, only time will tell. The ceasefire agreement with the Taliban has raised questions as to whether it is a victory for the Pakistan Government, capitulation before the Taliban who want to recreate a 1,500-year-old replica of Islamic rule, or a strategic retreat by the military. IT IS ironic that Frontier Chief Minister Ameer Khan Hoti, the great grandson of the champion of nonviolence, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan — the Frontier Gandhi — has signed the agreement. He has justified it saying, “I have done this to stop violence and to fulfill my electoral promise of restoring peace.” His uncle and Awami National Party Chief Asfand Yar Wali — whose party runs the troubled province bordering Afghanistan — is under attack from the Taliban. He survived a suicide bomb attack three months ago while most of his party members are on the run because of constant threats to their life.
The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Government at the Centre is playing it safe. President Asif Zardari’s position is that he will decide when the agreement will come to him for his signature. Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood has tried to pacify the Americans while on a tour of Washington, saying, “it’s a local remedy to a local problem.” The PPP has neither accepted the agreement nor rejected it. Obviously, the PPP Government would like to see what the outcome will be in a couple of months, if not earlier, before taking a stand. In the meantime, PPP spinmasters are arguing that the Sharia courts are not the same as strict Islamic law. The new laws, for instance, would not ban education of women or impose other strict tenets espoused by the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan. LIBERAL CIRCLES in Pakistan and abroad are fuming over what they call “the sellout.” Some, like human rights activist Iqbal Haider, have described it as a deal with the devil. “How can you sit with the very people who have maimed hundreds of people,” he protested. “It’s a matter of principle which should be supreme. These people should be tried for crimes against humanity.” The liberals have a valid argument that the agreement will now be a model for the rest of the Taliban. They will demand similar Sharia in other parts of the province. “Now they know that militancy is the way to coerce the government into submission,” said senior analyst Saleem Khilji. They have a point, as the agreement extends the scope of their power. The government has conceded that the new Sharia will be extended beyond Swat to the other five districts of Malakand division also. The Pakistan Army has taken refuge behind the government, saying that it is following orders to stay out till further notice. They should be the happiest lot if this agreement were to result in peace. They have taken the brunt of the fight. Media reports say army casualties number more than a hundred dead but the Taliban claims that it might be much higher. The issue is that the Pakistan Army has been trained to fight with India, and it may not be comfortable with counterinsurgency operations. It does not have sufficient experience of that except for the Balochistan insurgency in the 1970s, unlike its Indian rival, which has consistently countered insurgencies in Kashmir, Nagaland and Mizoram. The army will remain stationed in Swat to deal with the fallout. The underlying assumption is that either Sufi Mohammad will deliver peace or fight with his son-inlaw. This will be a tactical victory. Instead of the army fighting the Taliban, it would be the militants fighting each other. But then there is a counter-theory — the two factions might use the time to regroup, consolidate their power and fight later with even more ferocity. There are already signs of this happening. An indicator is that the price of arms in the tribal belt has almost doubled because of the massive demand. In any case, the agreement is simply not implementable. Each party has a different interpretation of it. The governments in the Frontier and Islamabad think that the Sharia court is old wine in a new bottle. Sufi Mohammad believes that his mandate is to provide Sharia courts where religious scholars will be independent judges and not advisers to the regular civil judges like in the earlier agreement of six years ago. “The choice of judges will be ours and they will be all-powerful,” said Maulana Izzat, spokes man of Sufi Mohammad, in a telephonic interview. Fazalullah wants the complete domination of the Sharia, encompassing all sectors beyond the judiciary. “We shall run the entire area in accordance with the holy book, “countered Muslim Khan, another spokesman for Fazalullah. “We don’t accept any system but our own and will inshallah spread it to other parts of Pakistan very soon.” The legal and administrative intricacies involved in merging the old system with the new are something beyond these clerics. The Taliban have simply ceased fire but not surrendered. Both sides are waiting for the next round to start with bated breath. It almost came to that when a newly-appointed senior district official was kidnapped by militants two days after the ceasefire. After a tense standoff lasting hours, the official, Kushal Khan, was freed.
Later, it was disclosed that his release had been the result of a swap: Pakistani authorities released two militants who had been picked up a day earlier in Peshawar. Next time around, it is possible that some freed militants like this might renew the fighting while both sides continue to sit in the trenches. Swat is different from other trouble spots like Bahaur, Waziristan and Khyber. It is the only trouble spot that is not a federal (FATA) but a provincial tribal area (PATA). It is wrong to generalise about the Taliban and the Swat situation in particular. FAZALULLAH, A barely-literate former lift operator, was an indigenous product. He does not come from the ranks of Taliban or Al-Qaeda, but was later accepted by them and adopted as the commander of the area looking after his hold in the area. It is only in Swat that schools have been closed in an organised manner, otherwise the Taliban have not done so in FATA, except for occasional episodes. The Taliban have generally refrained from killing hostages, except for spies or the recent Polish engineer in Waziristan. The Swat Talibans have slit throats of hostages and security forces with ruthless abandon. Swat is the only place which has been completely taken over by the Taliban. This may be because of its geography — it is a bowl-shaped valley. The Swat terrain makes it strategically easier for Taliban to hold power against numerical odds. There is one major communication artery along the Swat River that could easily be blocked from anywhere. In Bajaur, Khyber and Waziristan, the Taliban are dominant, but they do not run those agencies. Swat is also the only hotspot that does not border Afghanistan. In fact, it remained aloof and generally peaceful during the war with Afghanistan. Swat has a past of peace and culture where thousands thronged from all over Pakistan and abroad every summer. Its capital, Mingora, happens to be much bigger than any other town in any of the troubled agencies. Also, it houses the elite of Pashtun tribes, and is the abode of the royal, sophisticated Yousafzais of Tana, whereas the other agencies have a history of warring tribes. The impact of Swat’s takeover, like in the classical Clausewitzian centre of gravity, has been immense on the psyche of Pashtuns. If the impression goes out that it’s a victory for the Taliban, it will encourage militancy elsewhere, in the rest of Pakistan. It becomes more alarming when seen in the larger context where the Waziristan commanders, pro-Pakistan Mullah Nazir and anti-state Baitullah Mehsud, along with Haji Gul Bahadur, have patched up differences in Waziristan to become a formidable force; Bajaur Taliban now expect similar Sharia in their area, and Hamimullah is blocking NATO supplies in Khyber. The Taliban seem to be on the ascendant, which should be a source of worry for not just Pakistan, but also the entire region and the world. If the social fabric continues to be torn apart as it has in Swat, this will lead to the rise of more non-state actors who are not under the control of anyone. Since all of these commanders are connected to each other, including the militants in Kashmir, the genie is threatening to become ever more dangerous. The question is not just about the outcome of the investigation into the Mumbai attack. A more serious question is: what will happen if there is another attack of a similar nature? Mateen is an Islamabad-based journalist WRITER’S EMAIL | ||||||||||||
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 9, Dated Mar 07, 2009 |
The Business Of Being Santa Claus
The Business Of Being Santa Claus Philanthropy, a deeply entrenched social convention in the West, is taking on openly competitive dimensions, says NISHA SUSAN
THE CULTURE OF philanthropy is a deeply-entrenched social convention in the West, with the wealthy battling it out for fashionable causes. Until quite recently, the classic recipient of billionaire philanthropy in the West was the arts. When millionaire Henry Clay Frick in 1935 left his vast, personal art collection to the public, the Frick Museum set standards for art endowments. Today many philanthropists collect art during their lifetimes with the express purpose of leaving it to the public. However, billionaires have begun to earmark a share of their fortune for more complicated recipients such as the poor of the Third World. But whatever the recipient, the world watches this gilded set tallying up their generosity in tidy lists every year. George Soros, currently estimated to be worth around $11 billion, is the 97th richest person in the world according to the Forbes list. The former Wall Street speculator used to provide funds for the education of black students in South Africa during apartheid. Through organisations such as the Open Society Institute, Soros has spent money to promote non-violent democratisation in post-Soviet states and to end poverty in Africa. Over the last three decades, Soros has given away a total of $5 billion and his recipients include the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. He has been strongly involved in American electoral politics, fiercely lobbying for the ouster of George W Bush. In 2004, when he was asked whether he ‘felt’ it when he gave away nearly $20 million to the Democrats, he is reported to have shaken his head and shrugged no. Typically, he gives away over $400 million dollars a year. But in the history of competitive philanthropy, the American businessman Warren Buffet will always have a special place. Buffet is currently ranked the world’s richest businessman with an estimated worth of $62 billion. Wellknown for his frugal ways, Buffet lives in the same $31,500 house he bought in 1958. Highly critical of conspicuous consumption, he named his one big personal expense, his private jet, the Indefensible. Buffet announced a couple of years ago that he had irrevocably willed away his entire fortune, 83 percent of it to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This decision has been much lauded, primarily because it is unlike the very rich to leave their substantial fortunes to foundations that do not bear their name for posterity.
Buffet’s decision marked his best friend and bridge partner, the much younger Bill Gates, as the ‘market leader’ in social philanthropy. Gates, whose foundation is now the size of a major MNC, says that public giving makes rich people competitive. The Economist calls it Billanthropy. Gates, worth $58 billion, gives away $3 billion dollars a year to education and health, aiming to eradicate the 20 leading diseases in the world during his lifetime. In 2005, when he addressed the WHO assembly, he was the only delegate not representing a nation. This level of power is what makes the traditional non-profit world nervous about well-meaning billionaires. There has been much rumbling about the Gates monopoly driving inappropriate research into malaria, for instance. Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú, the world’s second-richest person, mocks both Buffett and Gates for “going around like Santa Claus.” But Slim himself is now a huge philanthropist in a region where the governments are not particularly rewarding to the charitable. Helu was reportedly hurt by the accusations of being a robber baron amidst Mexico’s poverty. Slim is revitalising Mexico City’s historic downtown to enable more people to live, work and find entertainment in this area. He heads a $10 billion project to fund cultural projects throughout Latin America. He gave a $5.5 million gift to the endowment of one of the most important research universities in Latin America. Other Third World billionaires, though not facing as much peer pressure, have begun to display a certain charitable streak. While Syed Mokhtar’s charity is a traditional one (he funds remedial classes in English, science and maths for 20,000 underachieving students each year), some fellow Malaysian billionaires have found unusual recipients. Hishamudin, funds Deir Yassin Remembered Malaysia, a movement hoping to ending the war between Israel and Palestine. Until 2004, private charities were banned in China, because the Communist Party feared their influence. But Shi Zhengrong, the solar power king, worth over $1.43 billion, has donated $2 million in the last three years, mostly to build housing for the poor in his hometown. He has donated $5 million to Al Gore’s climate change organisation, a move criticised as slightly self-serving. Twenty-eight-yearold Yang Huiyan, China’s richest person, has a $7.4 billion fortune, based on her shares in a real estate holding founded by her father, once a bricklayer from a poor family. With her father, Yeung Kwok Keung, she donated $32 million in 2007. Hong Kong’s Li Ka-Shing has a net worth of $23 billion. East Asia’s richest man, Li is as frugal as Buffet and is wellknown for wearing cheap watches. The high-school dropout has made large donations to Berkeley, Oxford and Chinese universities. Li has announced that he plans to donate a third of his fortune to charity. Also in Hong Kong, entertainment mogul Run Run Shaw, awards three $1 million prizes annually for work in life sciences, mathematics and astronomy. The biggest new trend has been the arrival of social-venture philanthropists, taking Bill Gates’ open competitiveness to a whole new level. These folks want to participate in the strategy and apply the same creativity that made their fortunes. They don’t see any difference between running a business that contributes to society and philanthropy that might turn a profit. | ||||||||||||
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 8, Dated Feb 28, 2009 | ||||||||||||
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