The republic wants to know

I had gone to see Mulk despite my worry that I would not just be disappointed but angered by yet another film celebrating, in predictable ways, the cult of the nation. An intense two hours later of viewing this intelligent, timely and truly powerful film which reduced me frequently to tears, in between clapping and cheering, I walked out feeling grateful that it had been made.

Sitting in central Delhi’s Delite cinema, with an immensely responsive audience, I was reminded of watching Maachis in 1996, when many of us who had fought an increasingly difficult battle against communalism in Delhi had sat in a row, sobbing. Thinking back, I wondered what it was then that had made me feel that as though my heart was breaking, when, each day these days, I feel a little piece of myself shattering, and dying.

Mulk , like Maachis , is supposedly about terrorism (that was about Khalistan, this is on what pushes a young Muslim man to become a terrorist, with an elliptical reference to Kashmir). Mulk is more about the manner in which anti-Muslim communalism in its present, more globalised, Islamophobic moment links with its history in the subcontinent to produce a toxic cocktail of familiar prejudices, new allegations, and what has become the default Hindutva war-cry against Muslims — “Go to Pakistan”.

Set in a densely peopled Varanasi locality, with piquant (though familiar) moments of camaraderie between Hindu and Muslim neighbours, the film moves quickly beyond this to show how such relationships can fray in the blink of an eye. The focus is on successful High Court vakil Murad Ali Mohammed’s family, consisting of him, his brother Bilal and their children. Once Shahid, Bilal’s son, is discovered to be a terrorist, the family is boycotted by the neighbourhood, including by some Muslims in the area. Shahid is killed in an “encounter”, and the rest of the film is set in dramatic relief against the aggressive police-work of a Muslim officer and an offensive Hindu legal prosecutor who are both out to prove the family’s involvement, and culpability, in the making of Shahid, the terrorist.

Nestled within this master narrative are small stories that make all the difference. For me, the greatest strengths of Mulk were in its quiet moments, its little acts of resistance through the subtle device of normalcy — such as the interfaith marriage of Aarti and Aftab, Murad Ali’s son, and the normalcy of kinship ties between Indian and Pakistani Muslims. The film begins with Aarti returning to her in-laws in Varanasi on a small break from her husband. The reason is that he wants them to decide the faith of their as yet unborn children, and she cannot see why this should matter when religion had never been an issue when they had first married. In walking away from Aftab, Aarti’s small act asserts the need to constantly demand equality. That the film could address the contours of their marriage (Hindu woman-Muslim man) with utter normalcy undoes, in one fell swoop, the now familiar and aggressive narrative of “love jihad”. The most haunting scene for me in the film was the utter humiliation of Bilal, down on his knees and facing a wall, being made to repeat endlessly, “ Mera naam Bilal hain. Shahid mera beta hain. Woh aatankvadi hain (My name is Bilal; Shahid is my son; he is a terrorist).”

The film succeeds in demonstrating that the making of ‘Shahid the terrorist’ (and, more important, casting his family — and hence all Muslims — as terrorists) is far more the police’s and the prosecution’s narrative than just something that is produced out of contingent factors. The film demands that we question the normalising of the discourse of “terrorism”, and the grave political implications of this shift. In a dramatic undoing of the prosecution’s case, the question for the defence is not about proving Murad or his family’s patriotism, but to ask the State, what is terror? And further question if a community or a religion can be named, straitjacketed, and victimised in this manner. So the most powerful moments in the film for me are the questions that the film asks of the Indian State, and of all of us. Isn’t untouchability terrorism? What about the atrocities against adivasis in Chhattisgarh or the people of Kashmir or the North-East? Wouldn’t that count as terrorism? I must say I couldn’t hear much of this dialogue clearly as at this point the theatre broke out into thunderous applause — a moment of critique that I too joined in joyfully!

The director, Anubhav Sinha, dares us to imagine a different notion of political kinship and belonging, one that’s premised on the right to claim what’s already available in the Indian Constitution, and to fight for the right for a revitalised secular republic.

I did walk away, though, from the theatre wondering if a similar film would be made that either frontally addressed the making of toxic Hindutva or that other much maligned Indian monster, the Maoist. The day that happens I will begin to feel again that Indian democracy is indeed robust, and is constituted by strong voices that constantly assert the importance of criticality and dissent.

G Arunima is a professor in Women’s Studies, JNU

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