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Panel
Dr Meena Dhanda, Reader in Philosophy and Cultural Politics, University of Wolverhampton and a recipient of a research Fellowship from The Leverhulme Trust. Dr Dhanda is working on a pioneering project entitled ‘Caste Aside: Dalit Punjabi Identity and Experience’.
Amin Mughal was born in the Punjab in 1935 and has lived in England as a political exile since 1984. He is a critic of Urdu and Punjabi literature. He taught English at Islamia College and Shah Hussain College in Lahore. As a leader of the National Awami Party, he was imprisoned a number of times. He worked for the weekly magazine Viewpoint in Lahore and was editor of Awaz, an Urdu daily published in London.
Dr Pritam Singh, of Oxford Brookes University, has published extensively on the political and economic development in India and the Punjab region. He has focused on development, secularism and religious revivalism; and nationalism, development and human rights. He approaches these issues from the viewpoint of the relationship between globalisation and changing identities. His latest book is Economy, Culture and Human Rights: Turbulence in Punjab, India and Beyond.
Kitte Mil Ve Mahi Where The Twain Shall Meet
Presented by the India Foundation For the Arts
Duration: 70 Minutes
Language: Punjabi with English Subtitles
Year: 2005
Director/ Producer: Ajay Bhardwaj
Camera: Ajay Bhardwaj
Sound Editing and Mixing: Asheesh Pandya
Editor: Shachindra Bisht
Punjab was partitioned on religious lines amidst widespread bloodshed in 1947, and today there are hardly any Punjabi Muslims left in the Indian Punjab. Yet, the Sufi shrines in the Indian part of Punjab continue to thrive, particularly among so-called 'low' caste Dalits that constitutes more than 30% of its population.
Kitte Mil Ve Mahi explores for the first time this unique bond between Dalits and Sufism in India. In doing so it unfolds a spiritual universe that is both healing and emancipatory. Journeying through the Doaba region of Punjab dotted with shrines of sufi saints and mystics a window opens onto the aspirations of Dalits to carve out their own space. This quest gives birth to ‘little traditions’ that are deeply spiritual as they are intensely political
Enter an unacknowledged world of Sufism where Dalits worship and tend to the Sufi Shrines. Listen to B.S. Balli Qawwal Paslewale - a first generation Qawwal from this tradition. Join a fascinating dialogue with Lal Singh Dil - radical poet, Dalit, convert to Islam. A living legend of the Gadar movement, Bhagat Singh Bilga, affirms the new Dalit consciousness.
The interplay of voices mosaic that is Kitte Mil Ver Mahi (where the twain shall meet), while contending the dominant perception of Punjab’s heritage, lyrically hint at the triple marginalisation of Dalits: economic, amidst the agricultural boom that is the modern Punjab; religious, in the contesting ground of its ‘major’ faiths; and ideological, in the intellectual construction of their identity.
Rabba Hun Kee Kariye Thus Departed Our Neighbours
Duration: 65 Minutes
Language: Punjabi with English Subtitles
Year: 2007
Director/ Producer: Ajay Bhardwaj
Camera: Ajay Bhardwaj
Sound Editing and Mixing: Asheesh Pandya
Editor: Tenzin Kunchok
While India won her independence from the British rule in 1947, the north western province of Punjab was divided into two. The Muslim majority areas of West Punjab became part of Pakistan, and the Hindu and Sikh majority areas of East Punjab remained with, the now divided, India. The truncated Punjab bore scars of large-scale killings as each was being cleansed of their minorities.
Sixty years on, Rabba Hun Kee Kariye trails this shared history divided by the knife. Located in the Indian Punjab where people fondly remember the bonding with their Muslim neighbours and vividly recall its betrayal. It excavates how the personal and informal negotiated with the organised violence of genocide. In village after village, people recount what life had in store for those who participated in the killings and looting. Periodically, the accumulated guilt of a witness or a bystander, surfaces, sometimes discernible in their subconscious, other times visible in the film.
Without rancour and with great pain a generation unburdens its heart, hoping this never happens again.
Ajay Bhardwaj (b.1964) is a documentary filmmaker based in Delhi. He holds two Master’s degrees, in the fields of Political Studies and Mass Communications, and has worked in media for the past two decades.
His documentaries have been screened at international film festivals, academic conferences, and community and activist events.
REVIEW
Punjab in Focus
Sundjata Keita, September 2011
Watermans Arts Centre screened two seminal films on the Punjab, India in September.The event was organised by the arts organisation Pop Samiti.
Twenty minutes before the screening was to start the reception area downstairs was pretty empty. It looked like these important films were going to be seen by one man and his dog. But within a couple of minutes remaining before the first film was to start, the place filled up with all manner of people. Sikhs men in turbans, women in European dress, saris and salwar kameez. Even English and African-Caribbean members of the public turned out for this important event. As part of the African group and thus a true outsider I tried to grapple with the complexities of the Punjab, both films were a virtual sell out.
The Q&A expertly chaired by Dr Meena Dhanda was a lively affair. The audience was knowledgeable, highly educated and kept the panellists Amin Mughal and Dr Pritam Singh on their toes.
The Punjab seems to describe the fabled eastern mysticism that westerners point to.
Thankfully Ajay Bhardwaj’s film dispels this western view in his documentary Kitte Mil Ve Mahi (WhereThe Twain Shall Meet).
The legendary poet Lal Singh Dil is the centre of this film. He discusses with his neighbour how Dalits have been persecuted for centuries. Dil’s affable nature can’t hide his deep sense of injustice meted out to Dalits at the hands of upper caste Hindus.
Ajay Bhardwaj frames Dil in his run-down shack, half naked reading classical poetry. The self-styled rogue poet looks straight into the camera like he is challenging us to disagree with his fight for justice taking any form.
Bhardwaj cuts away from Dil to take us on a journey into the world of Sufi shrines. Many believed that with the massacre and migration of thousands of Muslims during partition in 1947, the holy Islamic spaces would have fallen into a state of disrepair. But the filmmaker is eager to show us that there is a thriving Sufi shrine culture, which Dalits have made their own. The shrines offer the "lowest of the low" sanctuary. Dalits have found a way to be both culturally and spiritually free by adopting Islamic mysticism.
A westerner may see this documentary as reaffirming their belief that India is a place of exotic wonder. But if you read the subtitles when the Sufi (Qawwali) players sing, you get a different view.
Bhardwaj uses the Qawwali players to punctuate the film and to get across key facts about the Punjab. On first viewing this film seems way too long and a bit random. But if you take the time to watch it again without your Hollywood spectacles on, you will become a devotee.
Rabba Hun Kee Kariye (Thus Departed Our Neighbours) is an innoxious title that disguises one of the greatest crimes against humanity in the 20th century.
This film focuses on a small number of elderly men who survived the killing-spree following the partition of Punjab in 1947, to become East Punjab, India.
The esteemed Professor Karam Singh Chauhan was student at Lahore University in 1947, in the film he bears witness to the outbreak of violence. He recalls how local politicians whipped up religious hatred for their own mendacious reasons. But what has also been buried with the innocent is the way in which ordinary, everyday people took in upon themselves to kill their neighbours for merely material advantage.
He tells of how in a village, in Patiala province that he loved and visited often, the Muslims were massacred. Under the threat of forcible conversion to Sikhism, the respected village headman Sai Gulab Shah refused and said that he would rather die than convert. The following morning he was found brutally killed. The Muslims villagers were encouraged to convert and a slaughter ensued.
In a series of candid testimonies, the director asks us to bear witness and remember the victims, the living and the dead.
Hanif Mohammad and Amar Chand Sharma of village Attalan, tell of a time before partition when Hindu, Sikhs and Muslims, together as a community built the Mazar (Shrine) of Baba Nabi Shah. All the villagers would gather at the Mazar in celebration of this noble soul. Can this collective tradition survive the act of partition.
What makes this film so vital is the fact that Bhardwaj has made this film without a reciprocal honest documentary from Pakistan.
In an act of great humanity Professor Karam Singh Chauhan recites the Kalma, a holy Muslim prayer for the dead. He bravely identifies with the suffering of Muslims past and present.
This film calls on Punjabis in India and Pakistan to seek atonement for their wrongdoings in 1947. Bhardwaj has started something that we should all get involved with.
Links to articles & reviews
http://www.hindu.com/fline/fl2523/stories/20081121252309300.htm
http://uddari.wordpress.com/?s=ajay+bhardwaj&submit=Search
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/documentaries/rabba-hun-kee-kariye
Kitte Mil Ve Mahi Where The Twain Shall Meet Rabba Hun Kee Kariye Thus Departed Our Neighbours
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