Khamosh Pani Crosses the Border Noisily

While Pakistani director Sabiha Sumer’s 2003 film Khamosh Pani (Silent Waters) is getting rave reviews and highly emotional applause in many Indian theatres, here are some personal thoughts, if anyone’s interested. For those who haven’t seen it (and are being reminded by the “must-watch” reports), Khamosh Pani, the first Pakistani film ever released in Indian theatres, is about an idyllic Pakistani village called Charkhi which sees the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in 1979’s Ziaul Haq regime, and how it affects the ordinary villagers such as Ayesha, her son Saleem, and many others, including the visiting Sikh pilgrims from India. I shouldn’t reveal the full story to spoil the fun for those who haven’t seen it – it’s great cinema to watch. I only want to express a chilling uneasiness I had while watching it at New Delhi’s PVR cinema surrounded by many Punjabi Hindu families, a number of them sobbing through the film.

Much has already been written, produced, staged and sung about the subject of India’s Partition (on both sides of the border), and would continue to, since its horrible memories still haunt a large number of affected people. But the question we must ask today: is this memory going to help us resolve any of the present day crisis, or is it only adding further fuel to the fire. These days, when I watch a movie (or a documentary or TV show) on the subject of communalism, India-Pakistan and so on, (especially after 9/11 and the Gujarat carnage), I am often looking to see if the product can be used as a tool for the campaign of peace and cultural harmony at the ordinary lay-person’s level. Since I (and my friends) have been showing films for this purpose to a wide-range of audiences, mostly youngsters, our experience shows that (through these films) when you reveal the darker side of only one community to a lay audience (not intellectual/activists), it could have a very damaging impact. For instance when we showed Gopal Menon’s ‘Hey Ram’ (about the 2002 Gujarat carnage) to primarily Hindu school children in Delhi, even the little children became defensive, and started asking questions like “but what about Godhra? and what about Kashmir” and so on. We also knew that the same film could be extremely provocative for the Muslim audience.

But does it mean that we should not criticize or ‘expose’ the fundamentalists of either side through media. Of course we should, but in what manner and context? In my personal view (open to debate), we probably need a language that heals the already bruised feelings, rather than romanticize the horrible events. Khamosh Pani certainly does not heal. I don’t know about the audience in other places, but watching it in Delhi with the sobbing Punjabis around, I could sense a clear message reaching the new generation: “see, this is how these Muslims/Pakistanis treated us Sikhs”. When the film showed the marauding Muslim youth on the streets of Sarkhi, shouting Allaho-Akbar, and the Muslim clerics making provocative speeches, I felt, maybe there would be some resolve towards the end of the film, some kind of politically correct, sweet ending to the story. But, it kept going the way it was, and ended, quite predictably, with a stereotypical image of the fundamentalist Pakistan.

There is of course nothing inaccurate in what the film portrayed. And one must commend Sabiha, the director, for daring to produce such a film in Pakistan. She told an Indian newspaper recently, “In my film, I try to portray extremism in a bad light…if people in India decide to misuse it I cannot do anything.” And this is where the problem lies. If someone in India produces a film exposing RSS and Bajrang Dal’s nefarious activities, it would be considered a highly acclaimed worked in India and abroad, but the same film in Pakistan would work as hot material – used to incite hatred and prejudices against Hindus, even though the filmmaker may have never imagined it that way. Hence, the new generation of Indian Punjabis/Sikhs/Hindus, who are not fully aware of the horrors of Partition, would see only one side of the story in Khamosh Pani, and get more aggravated towards Pakistanis/Muslims. Worse still, the victim of fanaticism in the film has been portrayed by an Indian actress (Kiron Kher), whom the Indian audience is bound to relate to and sympathize with, against the rest of the fanatic-looking actors. Of course the film’s sentimentality may also make the audience forget that there were similar harrowing Partition stories on the Indian side of the border as well.

This is probably a dilemma that the south Asian filmmakers and media practitioners have not even begun to address, even though our cultural borders have started cracking. One should not doubt Sabiha Sumer’s sincerity in exposing/criticizing the fanatics of her country, just as one cannot doubt the intentions of Gopal Menon or Rakesh Sharma in India. But if it has been so easy for Sabiha’s European funders/distributors to sell/release this film in India, they must also be aware of its far-reaching impact. Sentimentality on this issue can sell very well but may not bridge our gaps. For that we need popular cinema that can make people think rather than sob.