A case for Bharatiyata

After a long long time, I have the possibility to spend hours reading different Indian newspapers every morning and get and un update on how India is changing.

For the past twenty-five years, ever since I moved to Italy, my knowledge of happenings in India had gradually substituted by memories of past. Till about a decade ago, there was no way to receive any regular news about India, except when there were big disasters or wars or events related to Sonia Gandhi. Like the Western world, Italy also knew India thourgh the narrow lenses of yoga, spirituality, Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore, poverty, religious conflicts, etc.

Short visits for work or family holidays were cocconed in their own spheres, rarely looking out to see how the India I knew had metamorphed into new directions. My knowledge of the changes remained quite superficial, limited mostly to physical changes like the new shopping malls, metro and fly-overs.

Then about a decade ago, arrived Internet and with it the possibility of reconnecting with India. For me, the reconnection has been more related to music, culture, films, literature, friends and family. Probably I was never very keen on politics and cricket, and whatever, little interest I had, had withered away in those long years of being unconnected.

Now, for the last three weeks, I am at home alone with my mother. Apart from an occasional visit of a friend or a relative, most of my time is passed reading newspapers and magazines, and watching TV. So I have plenty of time to meet the changed India through these mediums and reflect about it.

The impact of the recent election results is one area where I have been trying to understand more about the changing India. And, I have to confess that I am a little confused.

Like, I am confused about the leftist parties. The wiping out of the smaller regional parties from the national parliament and the loss of the left parties in West Bengal, their apparent inability to reflect systematically about their defeat, etc. occupies some space in newspapers everyday. Over the past few days, the development related to Maoists in Lalgarh have been occupying front pages, increasing that confusion.

In my area of work linked with voluntary organisations, development and health, I have frequent opportunities of meeting a lot of persons who hold sympathies towards leftist or socialist philosophies. In all those discussions, I have heard regularly about the possibility of the leftist ideals of an egualitarian, sustainable world that opposes the imperialist forces of liberalization, globalisation and privatization to avoid exploitation of the poor and the marginalised. They lament that with the congess rule, without the presence of saner left forces, thse forces of liberalisation and privatization would get momentum to the detriment of the poor and the margainlised.

Yet, I have yet to read anything that properly articulates, what went wrong with West Bengal? The left-parties had the opportunity to put into practice all the wonderful egalitarian and developmental policies for the past 32 years, then how come tribals and marginalised groups of persons in places like Lalgarh continue to live lives of poverty, lack of infra-structures and lack of justice, as they do in Orissa or Chattisgarh?

Like the better known on-off relationship between BJP and RSS, is there also a gap between all these people who know all about sustainable development and justice, and their leftist parties?

The squabbles in the BJP about power and control positions are also baffling, but are perhaps more predictable. Like all those wars fought by Bush in the names of justice and liberation, even the “party with a difference” is actually made of fallible human beings that are just looking for another clever slogan for their public image. Their insistence on continuing with hindutva, seems more like hiding behind the already-known because of an inability to come up with a vision for the future.

In fact looking at the visions, ideas and strategies of the different political parties, I see a similar lack of ability to look at the wider reality and a continuing narrow focus of debate on liberalisation, privatization issues, either for them or against them. Yet issues and areas that require a new vision are so many!

Isn’t it necessary to see why did the leftist vision of anti-liberalisation, anti-privatization lead to poor and marginalised being still poor and marginalised? If the rabid stupidness of hindutva, that sounds very much like the reborn evangelists or talibans, does not work, what else can be there that does not close itself in women in jeans-pubs kinds of medieval debates? If reservations have had such a limited impact on the lives of millions of dalits, can we look for newer ways of decreasing those disparities? Our environment, our rivers, our forests, our biodiversity, how can we safeguard them and yet without renouncing to our share of material and economic progress?

I have never been impressed by these “our gods and our culture are in danger and we need to protect them” kind of ideas that are behind concepts of hindutva or muslim or christian revivals. On the other hand, I feel that Bharat has long and glorious religious traditions of acceptance, sharing and tolerance that the world does not have, also because probably no oner country in the world has such a long tradition of living with multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-lingual societies.

The kind of fearless debates that Hinduism could have about its gods, about its philosophies and about its spirituality, the way Islam could develop in directions of sufism and ganga-jamuni culture, the kind of different strains of religious doctrines of equality, peace and harmany such as philosophies of Mahavir, Buddha and Nanak, that could develop in India, how can we safeguard all those?

Can’t we think of Bhartiyata, the Indian way of looking at issues that does keep in mind our culture and our traditions, but looks fearlessly at the new and the future, including the ideas of progress that come from the more “developed” world, looking at them critically?

Where are such persons, such parties, such political manifestoes?

Tavleen Singh in her coloumn in Indian Express of 20 June, “Lessons from the Ayatollah”, had written, something similar:

“It (Iran) might wake them (BJP leaders) upto the reality that the party of Hindutva is dead, dead, dead until it severs its links with the RSS. It is this “cultrual” organisation that brought into politics all those sadhus and sadhvis whose only contribution to Indian politics was venom and bigotry. Whenever religious people enter the political arena, they have to find an enemy and, in my humble opinion, it was this very bad habbit that became the primary reason for the BJP’s defeat.

The more the BJP’s leaders vented their venom against Muslims, the better they made the “pseudo-secular” Congress look….

There is great deal about ancient, Hindu India that we should try and understand and preserve. It saddens me everytime I go to a Southeast Asian country and see the immense influence of Indian civilization that continues to exist there and that is almost totally lost here. We need to understand why it has been lost here if we are not to end up as a country whose only culture comes from Bollywood.”

Perhaps a new party or a new leader would look at the concept of Bhartiyata and articulate it in a way that makes all forward looking Indians, of different classes, castes and religions to feel that they have a stake in India’s future! I hope.

Obama's speech and Islam in India

I liked Obama's speech to the Muslim world from Cairo. I can't understand why so many Indian commentators are only concerned about "he did not mention India though ...". I think that Obama was very clearly saying that he was talking about "countries with muslim majority" in the Arab world, since the issues related to thse countries are very different from those regarding a country like India.

I can understand Tavleen Singh's point in Indian Express that Obama's dialogue is one-sided and similar dialogue from Islam's side is needed. She writes:

"The Jihad did not appear one morning out of clear blue sky. It happened because of a system of education in most Islamic countries that perpetuates the idea that Islam is the best thing that happened to mankind and that pluralism is wrong in Allah's eyes. As for us happy idol-worshipping types, we are doomed to damnation. This idea is in direct conflict with the Indian idea of Sarvadharma sambhaava. But it is more than just religion that is the problem. ... President Obama seems not to know that there are more Muslims in the Indian sub-continent than any where and that we lived in relative harmaony till Saudi money started to fund Wahabi Islam."

While Tavleen Singh is known for her position on Islam, I have been a little surprised by relatively open criticism of traditional islamists in the mainstream Indian media that used to avoid any mention of these subjects.

Like the report in The Week (June 7, 2009 issue) called "Sheikhen Shibboleths - are Indian muslims getting arabised?" In an interview in this article, Dr Ghoshal from Jamia Milia university says

"The transformation of Pakistan under Zia-Ul-Haq and the Islamization of the society had an effect on Indian Muslims, creating an assertiveness on their part, which produced Hindu extremism, and in turn produced a sense of insecurity among Indian Muslims."

I am not so sure if I entirely agree with Ghoshal here. It is convenient to show Hindu extremism "a result" of Muslim assertiveness. I think that Hindu extremism, like all other extremisms, has much more complex roots.

In May 2009 issue of the Hindi magazine Hans, there are two interesting articles about Muslim identity and issues todays. In her article, Sanvidhan aur Kabeela(Constitution and Clan), Sheeba Aslam Fehmi feels that while Indian constitution gives equal rights to Muslim women, these are not really accessible to them and wonders if this is because Muslim women in India got these rights through default at the time of independence without really fighting for them.

In the same magazine, Rajendra Yadav, one of the leading veteran Hindi writers, raises up other issues about Muslim identity in India, in a surprisingly direct way, and asks why every thing related to Islam must look for answers from Kuran?

"What kind of rule is that we can't raise any questions about Kuran or about prophet Mohammed .. why they are above all questions? Tell me what kind of eternal truths are there that are beyond questions? Can there be rules given fourteen hundred years ago that are unchangeable truths even in todays scientific and rational era, that can not be questioned? ... Can't you be free of Kuran, Shariyat and Hadis? If you will not be free then how will this production of Talibans will stop, who kill a girl only because she did not want to leave her studies. .... I was very surprised when you said that many Muslim women wear Hijab or Burqa out of their free will without pressure or order from others. Don't you really accept that every religion conditions the women in a way? What ever they do out of "free will" is a result of unnamed orders from deep inside. A bird freed of its cage, comes back to the cage out of its "free will". In "Guest" the story by Camus, the prisoner who had run away from the prison, doesn't he come back to the prison by himself? Please don't call psychological conditioning as "free will".

In the June 2009 issue of Hans, Rajendra Yadav goes back to this subject and the responses he has received about his first article:

Against my editorial of May 2009, many Muslim friends have advised me that first I should seriouosly study Islam, only then my words will carry some weight. The same advise I get from Hindu religious leaders. Christians also say the same thing. ... For me "what I can see" of a religion is more important in deciding man's thinking and behaviour. Certainly Islam gives all the rights and equalities to women that are not available in any other religion. But around us and in far away places, the "religious torture" supported by Muslim women is in no way less than Hindu torture. Here I don't see Shariyat, I see only injustices that crush women's cries with cruelty.

History of Islam in India, the way it linked with other Indian religions, the way it created syncretic thoughts and traditions such as Sufi thoughts, is too precious and needs to be safeguarded by everyone. Also I feel that all the religions, including Islam, need progressive reforms in line with concepts of human rights, so an honest debate on different critical aspects is needed. This means that sacred texts must also be reviewed critically. I believe that future of India and the world depends upon it.

Prisoner of TV serials

I am a prisoner these days, forced to watch hours of mind-numbing serials on the Indian TV. I had been always dismissive towards those who watched TV serials. Now, in spite of myself, I find myself drawn into the unimaginable complexities of the serial worlds, where in every episode before every break, a new question of life and death gravity comes out with clockwork regularity. Minor misunderstandings are somehow never cleared, till I feel an anxiety-wreck, and are stretched, till I am ready to scream.

Miracles, superstitions, ghosts, bhoot-praits and assorted characters from Purans and other ancient texts reign supreme in this Indian TV world. Most of the time, it is a world of fair-skinned upper middle class Hindu homes, where dark-skinned persons, lower castes, ethnic minorities do not or hardly exist. In that sense, the Indian TV world is similar to the Bollywood world. From their moral highground, 24x7 news channels of this world spew judgements about the racist Australians.

Among the serials that I like are Balika Vadhu and Jyoti. I had always liked Surekha Sikri, and she is formidable in BV. Among the serials, I watch mostly NDTV Imagine or Colours, since my mother's old TV seems to show them well. And I like some of the old fashioned programmes on Doordarshan, probably because they don't shout endlessly or they don't have breaks every ten minutes. A few days ago I saw an old interview of Manna Dey by Irfan and another woman journalist, that was really lovely. I also like their adaptations of books from different Indian languages.

It is a shame that Doordarshan doesn't have proper internet based online trasmissions for those like me who live outside India. Among all Indian TV channels, I would rather like to watch Doordarshan rather than all these commercial channels, with lot of gloss and stupidity. If Doordarshan can have a non-film based programmes channel, probably it will also be easier to deal with copyright issues and make transmission of all those documentary films and films by independent film makers that no one watches and that do not attract sponsors.

Some time ago, in the news they have written that people in Doordarshan are converting their old tapes into digital archives. I would love to watch those.

Climate change and dwindling arm-pit forests

There was an article on the international year of astronomy. It had beautifully illustrated pictures of different shapes of galaxies that have been photographed with potent telescopes. The pictures show specks of lights joining together to make shapes like rings, caps, spirals, etc.

It is difficult for us to imagine the distances to stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. The idea of travelling with the speed of light for a thousand years to reach a star in our own galaxy is difficult enough to grasp. Try to think of millions of other such galaxies, each expanding out forever or getting sucked back in to black holes and the distances that separate them from us, then you can understand the limits of our own imagination and understanding.

Can there be beings that are thousand light years larger to us humans in size, who inhabit this universe and walk around, taking giant strides, and for them the galaxies are like flats in an apartment building, that they pass while going to the office? At the end, it is just a question of proportions!

Because our earth is so tiny in comparison, smaller than a small pinhead compared to this universe of galaxies, and on that tiny little pinhead of earth, to those giant beings we humans would be like sub-atomic particles. Who knows if they can see us in their microscopes? or may be they have not discovered us yet?

That started me thinking about the bacteria and viruses, those tiny sub-microscopic living things that we can’t see but we can sneeze them out to pass on swine and avian flu to our fellow humans or eat in millions mixed in our yogurt. Like for us the distances to all those galaxies are unimaginable, perhaps to the bacteria that live on our bodies, we human beings are like planets or galaxies?

Like a bacteria living on our foot thinks that the little toe where s/he lives is his/her country, our body the earth, the other persons in our house the solar system and doesn’t know if there is life at those far away stars that are the apartments we can see from our window. Who knows if they have passport checks for going to other toes? And the catastrophs like we taking shower or an oil massage or getting licked by dogs or our lovemaking, that occasionally destroys all the living bacterial dinosaurs and makes for "breaking news" of the bacterial news channels. "Another cyclone is going to hit toeland, residents are request to evacuate!"

For them the distance between my house and my office must be like thousands of light years away.

Actually our bodies are like complex ecological systems as mentioned in an article on The Week recently.

"What I found most surprising was the great diversity of bacteria living on the skin," said Julia Segre of the US National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, who led the research. According to the first big census of microbes, parts of the body such as the moist armpits were akin to tropical rainforests in terms of the type of ecosystem the bacteria inhabit, whilst other areas of skin were like dry deserts.

"The second most surprising finding was that the skin was like a desert with moist areas like streams such as the armpits, and isolated oases of life where there are rich reservoirs of deep diversity, such as the navel," said genetics specialist Segre, whose study is published in the journal Science.

The human bodies are ecosystems, believed home to trillions of bacteria, fungi and other microbes that naturally coexist in the skin, the digestive tract and other spots.

And for millions of those living beings, climate change means your new deodorant or the antibiotic pill you pop in. Try imagining yourself submerged and surrounded by a living complex ecological system and you will understand that all those antiseptics and disinfectant sprays, cloth washers, dishwashers that marketing guys want you to buy from all the TV screens and ads, are actually all ecological disasters, killing millions of yet undiscovered bacterial and virus species and probably promoting scourges like antibiotic resistance, killer viruses, new kinds of allergies, etc.

Perhaps we human beings are also one of those killer viruses that sprang out and colonized the whole earth because one unthinking giant being killed all the dinosaurs because a dust particle hit him?

So please, don’t shave your armpits. And don’t put deodorants or other lotions. I don’t mind the smell. I prefer a living world on my body-planet. Down with artifical "civilization" and back to nature.

Dr Binayak Sen gets bail!

It has been a tough and despairing struggle. To know that Dr Binayak Sen was being left in jail in spite of his long work for oppressed and marginalised, in spite of there not being any kind of reasonable proof against his being a Maoist spy, had been a sad comment on the state of Indian democratic system and the state of its institutions that are supposed to protect the citizens.

In the last one year of the trial, the State authorities had not been able to present any conclusive proof, nothing to justify why it was using a draconian anti-terror law to silence and punish a person like him. If State could do something like this to an internationally known person like Dr Sen, you can only imagine the kind of things that can happen to those are poor and powerless.

Finally today the news that Supreme Court has accepted these arguments and ordered his bail. I feel a sense of anger and frustration, that it had to drag for so long and against all ideas of common sense and decency! Still at least it has happened.

Films at Bologna HRN Film Festival 2009

This year I am president of the jury judging the short films at the festival, plus I must go to work during the day, so that leaves little time for doing much else. Still I am trying to catch as many films as I can. Here are some comments about the films I have seen this time:

I bring with me what I love (director Chai Vasarhelyi, USA 2008, 80 min.): I loved this film about the Senegalese song writer, composer and singer Youssou N’Dour. The film chronicles his search to express his sufi Muslim faith through his music and his encounter with the the more fundamentalist positions in the Muslim world that see music as against Islam and feels that as a pop singer, Youssou N’Dour doesn’t have the right to sing about Senegalese sufi saint and freedom fighter Bamba and Islam.

94% of the population in Senegal is Muslim but they follow a sufi version of the religion characterized by tolerance and openness. Senegalese women do not cover themselves with black veil.

The film shows Youssou N’Dour’s journey from his Griot (traditional storyteller-singers) family background, his early attempts to sing in Gambia, his slow success and international fame and finally in 2000, his desire to express his sufi spiritual feelings through music in collaboration with a group of Egyptian musicians, that culminates in a music album called “Egypt”.

While in Senegal, “Egypt” is rejected outright without anyone ready to listen to it as religious “leaders” have expressed against it, he takes it abroad in his music tour. In Ireland, as the Egyptian musicians refuse to play till alcohol is removed from the tables, Youssou N’Dour says with a smile, “For me it doesn’t make a difference that there was alcohol, I would have sang all the same.”

He tries to take his music to Touba, to the shrine of saint Bamba but rumours of his show having nude dancing girls, creates riots and he is forced to withdraw. Still Youssou N’Dour refuses to give up. As his album receives the Grammy award, finally he finds acceptance for his music in Senegal.

The film offers a rare glimpse into Youssou N’Dour the person and has added bonus of listening to his music from different famous albums that are considered as part of the music history.

Reel Bad Arabs (director Sut Jhally, USA 2006, 50 minutes): The film based on a book of the same name by Dr Jack Sheehan takes a systematic look at Hollywood movies since the silent film era in early twentieth century right to our days, to see how American and European cinema have used particular caricatures and stereotypes of Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians over the years. These stereotypes show Arabs as rich, stupid, vicious, cruel, unethical and unsocial starting from the Disney cartoons right down to serious and pulp cinema.

While similar stereotypes were used in the past about Jews and Blacks, these have been overcome over the previous decades while Arab stereotypes continue and have been enlarged to include the ruthless terrorist stereotype. Thus while Arab women were and are mostly shown as black burqa covered submissive kinds, a ruthless terrorist Arab women figure has been added to this repertoire.

The film ends with a hopeful note citing films like Syriana and new young film-makers who are looking at the middle-eastern world with more open eyes and less prejudices.

The film is interesting in terms of its message and the examples it shows from different films. At the same time, it feels a bit monotonous and boring after some time, since all the film is made of Dr Sheehan speaking about the subject, interspersed with movie clips. Having some voice overs, having other persons say something, getting reactions of persons linked with films, especially persons from Middle east, would have made it more alive. Sheehan is good in explaining but there is too much of him, which in the end detracts from the film’s message.

Russia 88 (director Pavel Bardin, Russia 2008, 104 minutes): The film is a fictionalised account of a Moscow based Russian extreme right skinhead gang called Russia 88. Film’s hero is Sasha (Blade for his gang members, played very well by Pyotr Fyodorov) leader of the gang and the film is seen through the eyes of a half Jew boy, Abraham (Mikhail Polyakov), who longs to be accepted as a true-blooded Russian by the group but is not hard and tough enough.

Abraham is shooting a video to explain the gang’s philosophy and ideas for putting them on Youtube. Slowly the gang members get used to having him around with his camera and thus become unself-conscious in front of the camera and explain why they feel and act the way they do. Gang has a woman, Marta (Marina Orel), Sasha’s girl friend.

The film has used authentic right wing clothes, songs, etc. to present their world, as the gang plans to throw out all emigrants from Moscow, as they participate in army-camps, to aim for a “Russia for Russians” as the foreigners are “hungry and angry, ready to take away their jobs”. The main target of their anger is market where most of the shops are by emigrants. There are conservative party persons who believe in similar philosophy and want to use the gang for their political aims, but Sasha believes that they can get a better deal and is not willing to sell his services cheaply.

Tragedy  comes in the shape of Robert (Kazbek Kibizov), a Tajiki emigrant with whom Sasha’s sister Julia (Vera Strokova) is in love, leading to the death of Kliment (Archibald Archibaldovic), the ideologue of the gang. As Sasha grapples with revenge, the group scatters.

The film is an interesting view into the world of extremist right wing groups and is accompanied by good acting from the main actors. The only aspect that seemed weak to me was the depiction of mindless violence and hate usually surrounding such groups, so in the end, you don’t really feel afraid of Sasha and his gang members and you feel sympathy of his dilemma.

Film’s official website says that they are not fascists, but I feel that film has been made in a way that creates sympathy and understanding for the cause of right wing conservatives. Their concerns and fear seem understandable, while their victims, specially the emigrants, except for Robert, seem like shadowy figures, not real persons.

Waltz with Bashir (director Ari Folman, France-Germany-Israel 2008, 87 minutes): The Golden Globe award winning film does not need introduction. The film is about persons who had participated in a war twenty years ago and their nightmares. As layer after layer of memories is peeled away, the horror of the war time memory comes out.

In 1982, Israel had helped Christian militia leader Bashir Gemayel to become president of Lebanon. On his assassination, Israeli soldiers had arranged for angry Lebanese Christian militia men to kill civilians, including women and children, in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla near Beirut, in which about 3000 persons were killed.

The film is stunning in its visual imagery and merciless in showing the human cruelty. You can find more about the film at its official website.

On one hand, it made me rethink about the killings of Sikhs in Delhi after the assassination of Indian prime minister, Indira Gandhi. It also made me think of the reports in the press about the recent Israeli attack on Gaza strip, during which it seems that Israeli soldiers were given the “freedom” to shoot on all “targets”, including women, children doctors, sick persons, and destroy hospitals, houses, schools while newer chemical weapons were tested.

Jihad for Love (director Parvez Sharma, USA-UK-Germany-France-Australia 2007, 81 minutes): The film was presented at the gender-bender festival of Bologna last year but I had missed it at that time, so I was happy to have this opportunity to see it.

The film explores the conflicts and contradictions when  you try to bring together the issue of homosexuality with that of Islam. By presenting the stories of Muslim men and women from countries like India, Egypt, South Africa, Turkey, Pakistan, Morocco, etc., the film looks at the different facets of the issues people face.

The South African story is about a gay Imam (Muhsen Hendricks), as he talks on radio to explain his situation and struggles to keep his role as Imam and his relationship with his two daughters. A learned Maulana answers his quest with cold logic, “The only answer is death, while there is some disagreement about the way the person can be killed.” His daughter half-jokingly says, “Papa, if they kill you by throwing stones, I hope you will die with the first stone and not suffer.”

A group of Iranian friends exiled in Turkey wait for the UN High Commission for Refugees to decide if they will get political refugee status, while they miss their homes, friends and families. The Egyptian young man Mazen exiled in France misses his mother too and breaks down as he talks about his rape in the Egyptian prison.

The young man Ahsan from North India also wants to find answers from a learned man of the religion, “What can I do, I was born in Muslim caste, I have to follow my faith”, he says. The answer he gets is to read holy Koran, it will take away all wrong thoughts from your mind. When he persists, he is asked to consult a psychologist and get treatment for his “sickness”.

The young women (Maha and Maryam) in Cairo, hold each others’ hand. One of them is filled with guilt. It is wrong to feel like this, it is against our religion, she sobs. The other one reads an Islamic text to her and tries to consol her, “See it says if there is no penetration, it is not a serious sin.”

The only happy couple in the film is in Turkey, where the two women (Ferda and Keymet) joke outside the mosque and kiss each other.

I was surprised by this continuous struggle of Muslim men and women of trying to find some way to reconcile their sexuality with their holy book, shown in this film. Are there Muslim gays and lesbians, especially young men and women growing up in the west, who don’t feel guilty because Koran forbids it and can live in peace with themselves?

I don't think that any religion in the world really accepts homosexuality. Still persons from different faiths, Hindus, Christians, Jews have raised their voices to speak about their human rights. Among the gay persons I have known, I had never met someone who was struggling so much with his/her own sense of religious guilt and shame in the way shown in the film. Probably some young Catholic gays face something similar.

Hindus have some mythological stories that talk of male gods taking a female form or the figure of Shiva seen as Ardhnarishwar (half man and half woman) that can be constructed as religious sanction for homosexuality. In any case, Hindus are not bound by any one single religious text. Christians are bound by Bible but at least in Europe, the idea of following something because "it is written in Bible" wouldn't be acceptable to most young persons. So to find young Muslims in this film feeling that way about their holy book surprised me a little.

To me it seems obvious that if our religion does not abide by the notions of human rights, we should fight to change them. Religious books were written centuries ago, how could they understand the issues of today and give answer for every thing?

The film made me reflect on on other issues as well, like how can Muslims change such laws that relate to homosexuality, to women’s education, to women’s dress codes, etc. if they can not question the views written in their holy book? I feel that Muslims themselves, especially those who are struggling with such issues can propose answers to these dilemmas, though they are going to have a long and tough path in front of them.

Parvez Sharma is a strange name, as it brings together a Muslim name with a Brahmin surname, and I am a little curious to know the story behind it. Perhaps he is related to the well known Hindi writer with a similar sounding name, Nasira Sharma?

In any case, it requires huge courage to make a film like this. About 50% of the persons in the film never show their faces, that makes you understand the risks in raising such uncomfortable questions. Parvez's blog shows how he is still being threatened by persons, who don’t share his views. Such persons have even started hate groups on Facebook. I hope there would many more who would start groups to support the issues he is raising.

Behind barbed wires

Finally it had stopped raining, as I went for the second day of the short films in competition for the Human Rights Night film festival of Bologna. The projection started with a bit of delay as we waited for Manli Shojaeifard, the Iranian director of one of the films in programme.

If on the first day, for me the theme of the films had been crossing some kind of boundaries, yesterday I felt that stories had less hope, they were about persons imprisoned behind barbed wires. Barbed wires that were there in their own minds or were built by circumstances, but in all cases there was not much chance of getting out.

The first film was "...She was no one" (director Manli Shojaeifard, Iran, 2002, 13 minutes). It was about a saint's tomb that is supposed to cure persons with mental illnesses and where people tie mentally sick persons with a chain and a lock, presumably overnight. Manli herself explained that to avoid problems, she had visualized this film in a more symbloic form, using symbols such as green wishing-threads tied around the tomb, the rosary and the burning candles. There were no dialogues in the film.

I personally had difficulty in understanding this film and afterwards, asked Manlie some clarifications. The main event of the film was the rape of one mentally ill girl left there by her family, by the caretaker of the tomb. This was shown indirectly, when a woman living near by, finds the girl on the ground near the tomb, having convulsions and closeby she finds the rosary left by the man.

However, even after understanding the idea of the film, I had trouble in visualizing that man raping the girl, since actor playing the caretaker of the tomb seemed like a kindly elderly gnome with laughing blue eyes. Perhaps they could have taken a different actor for this role.

People tying mentally ill persons with chains and treating them like animals is probably common all over the rural world, where there are few psychiatrists and little understanding of mental illness. Both mental illness and epilepsy are surrounded by myths, superstitions, stigma and discrimination. It does happen in India and a mainstream film like "Tere Naam" (director Satish Kaushik, 2003 with Salman Khan and Bhumika Chawla) had shown it very graphically. However, I am digressing here.

The second film was Alfred (director Leonardo Guerra Seràgnoli, USA, 2008, 17 minutes) about nightmares of a man called Alfred. When he was a child or adolescent, he was involved in some war. Hit by a bullet, enemy soldiers had left him on the ground thinking that he was dead. Now he is haunted by some unseen demons, probably unable to come to terms with fragility of his life or the fear of dying.

The film has beautiful photography and actor playing Alfred (Daniel Bell) looks suitably angst-stricken, shaving off his head, toying with tablets, fighting with his pillow, contemplating the darkness in his soul. At the same time, I found the film like a glossy magazine, great looking but a little artificial and lacking in soul.

The third film was Hungry God (director Sukhada Gokhale-Bhonde, India-USA 2008, 8 minutes). It was about a young boy (Omkar Gaekwad), his face made up like Hindu god Shivji with toy snakes around his neck, going around asking for food, looking hungrily as people buy or eat food, continue to offer food to the statues but no one takes pity on him.

The film is visually very beautiful, lyrical and the music helps in that. The first shot of boy looking at his own split image in the broken mirror can be interpreted as a metafor in different ways.

Child actor (Omkar Gaekwad) playing the part has eloquent eyes and the film pulls at your emotions. Yet, the film does seem a film, little artificial, a make-believe world and not about real poverty and hunger, perhaps because it is too beautiful. The boy is too well made, clearly he had professionals doing his make up, complete with fresh flowers and eye liners and this takes away from the authenticity of the film.

There was a similar figure of the boy, dressed like a god in the riots scene of The Millionaire (David Boyle 2008). Perhaps it is films like The Millionaire that change the way we look at poverty and slums?

The last film of yesterday was "Vida Loca" (Crazy lives, Stefania Andreotti, Italy 2008) about gangs of adolescents in some countries of central America like Honduras. This film is more of a straight forward documentary with some wonderful night photography and haunting images of eyes with pupils dilating as the young gang members talk about the three dots of their crazy lives in the space between the thumb and the index finger, signifying death, drugs and jail.

The story of two gangs, Rio 18 and Mara, extending from streets of central America right up to Los Angels, about illegal emigrants, drugs trade, violence and revenge shocks because of the hopelessness of their young lives, where killing or getting killed is the only real option they have. Seen as vermin, to be crushed and violated, the brutality of the prisons, recruiting new members of the gangs in the prisons seen as the gang headquarters, show the effect of the repressive harsh ways of dealing with the issues. Social workers and rehabilitation centres show a faint glimmer of hope as some persons do manage to go out the narrow confines of the gang-thinking.

The film ends with the haunting laugh of one of the adolescent gang member, who had been talking about his lack of fear of death, that we was ready to  kill and to be killed, as he asks, "Help me to change". His heart-breaking smile and the hopelessness of his situation is what remains when the film is over.

Among the four films seen yearday, I liked "Vida Loca" most.