Deepa Mehta's 'earth'

Earth is a twisted tale, of a group of people, from different classes and backgrounds that revolve around a Parsi family in Lahore. This movie takes us back to the once multi-ethnic city of Lahore, where different religions - Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism - all co-exist in harmony. Earth uses the eyes of a Parsi girl, Lenny, while examining the social vicissitudes in Lahore, from March 1947 (the start of the movie) up until the time when partition actually takes place: the abruptness and uncertainty of partition divides the social fabric of the sub-continent - especially in Punjab - stripping its inhabitants of all identification apart from their religious affiliation.

Lenny’s maid Shanta, to whom she is greatly attached, is Lenny’s only source to the outside world, which essentially includes a handful of suitors for Shanta and a few other working staff personnel of the Parsi family. In Lenny’s interactions with these people we find that the suitors are a heterogeneous mix, religion wise. As tensions brim in the city with refugees pouring in large numbers, this little group of associates make a hollow vow to stay united and support each other.

The benignity of the general population is demonstrated in a scene where Dil Nawaz - one of Shanta’s suitors - disguised as a maulvi, fakes a telephone call to God to appease a crowd that bombards him with political queries. Later, the very same naivety of the general public draws them into some of the most gruesome acts history has ever witnessed: one night, trains drenched in blood and filled with mutilated bodies arrive in Lahore from Gurdaspur - a Sikh dominated town. At least one thing is made clear: the apprehensions associated with partition had by now brewed into a religious war, with Muslims on one side and Sikhs and Hindus on the other.

This was a turning point in the movie. Dil Nawaz lost his sister who travelled from Gurdaspur to Lahore and was even more devastated when Shanta refused to marry him. Mehta successfully shows how Nawaz turns from ‘man’ to ‘beast’ as he kills his own friend, Hasan, a Muslim, who was planning to abscond with Shanta to Amritsar. In the end, the only Hindus that survive partition in Lahore are those that convert to another religion - mostly Christianity and Islam.

Jinnah’s decision to play the “Islam in danger” card, in his attempt to garner support for his political goals - which did not include the partition of Punjab and Bengal, coupled with Congress’ tilt towards using Hindu symbolism to gain support for itself, had ostensibly moulded the issue of independence into a religious framework, that seemed like a zero-sum-game of power struggle between the Hindu’s and the Muslims. Prior to partition, in a conversation between Gandhi and Jinnah, Gandhi said, “you have hypnotized the Muslims,” to which Jinnah retorted, “You have mesmerized the Hindus.”[1]

Partition is the perfect example of how religion based politics is capable of dissipating widespread fear among the masses, which in India’s case has stained its history forever with the blood of countless innocent men, women and children.

[1] Partition of Pakistan: Legacy of Blood (film)

Deepa Mehta's Fire, movie review

Daring, bold and unequivocally explicit; the movie Fire successfully ventilates issues of a largely passive Indian society that would rather let ‘taboo’ stay ‘taboo’. Several issues, ingrained in Hindu culture and innate to Indian society, such as ‘male chauvinism’ and ‘inequitable religious dogmas’ are broached and subsequently questioned in this movie. In doing so, the director uses a middle-class, joint-family setting where two wives, partly victimized by Indian tradition and partly by circumstance, find union between each other as the only outlet to their oppression and loneliness.

The two subjugated wives, Radha and Sita, are shown to be alienated from their traditional role as wives. This process is greatly catalyzed by their husbands’ neglect of their wives’ basic human needs: Radha’s husband Ashok joins a religious cult and embraces celibacy in frustration of Radha’s inability to conceive, accentuating his belief that all desire is evil and that copulation is meant only for procreation; on the other hand, Sita’s husband Jatin ‘openly’ extends his love affair with another woman even after his marriage with Sita. In the end, Sita and Radha loose the battle against tradition. The movie therefore ends with a new beginning - as the two wives are forced to leave their home and find refuge elsewhere.

A movie threatening age old customs and the status quo between husbands and wives was reason enough to stir up resistance in parts of India. The voice against Fire - condemned as a fabrication of Indian society - was most audible in the Indian state of Maharashtra, where Shiv Sena was the ruling party. This party finds most of its support from a Hindu nationalist faction within the Indian populace and is therefore ideologically based on fundamentalism, portraying the conflict as religiously unacceptable before viewing it as a threat to Indian society. The director of Fire, Deepa Mehta argues that the Shiv Sena party functions in a manner that is conducive only towards gaining greater political support; they target the illiterate masses, those easily espoused into religious extremism. Hence, the smooth running of Fire in cinemas and its possible ‘liberating’ effect on the Indian people - which would obviously weaken support for the Shiv Sena party - is what threatened the party and instigated a protest.

Soon after its protest against Fire, in 1999, the Shiv Sena party vandalized a cricket pitch in Delhi to prevent a cricket match between India and Pakistan. Shiv Sena translates to Army of Shiva, referring to Shivaji - founder of the Maratha Empire and hero to many Maharashtrians today. The party’s name, ‘Army of Shiva’ speaks for its conspicuous tilt towards using force as a means to voice its concerns, and its apparent commitment towards Hindutva.
Shiv Sena is one of many Hindu nationalist parties in India today that derive their ideology from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the first party of its kind, formed in Maharashtra in 1925. Hindu nationalist parties have often been crtiscized as Indian fascists in the media and although Fire’s release sparked agression seven years ago, the threat to Indian democracy from Hindu nationalism is glaringly evident even today.