NEW DELHI: A 136 minute long documentary on the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 directed by Nakul Singh Sawhney has lately been the cause of much furor for the central government and its student wing ABVP. So much so that the right wing student group disrupted screenings of Sawhney’s film in DU (Kirori Mal College) and Vishwa Bharti University (Kolkata); Almost disrupted the screening in JNU and sent out threats to Sadanand Menon in Chennai. Not just disruption, they ever vandalized property and threatened people.

Since then Sawhney along with a cultural associative Cinema of Resistance has been organizing protest screenings across the country.

What is it about Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai that we need to watch it in an almost secretive 'pre-independence protest' like manner?

It’s 2015. Just one year and three months into the reign of the NDA government that shot to the center with a majority in the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections. Yet within this meager period, the BJP has managed to create an undemocratic atmosphere of censorship and oppression. Be it FTII or CBFC or India’s Daughter or CBCS the list is ever increasing. This time it’s yet another documentary – Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai.

It was on a peaceful Saturday afternoon (August 1st) this year that Montage, the film society of Kirori Mal College (Delhi University) was screening its alumnus Nakul Singh Sawhney’s documentary on the Muzaffarnahar Riots of 2013. What was to be an innocent screening followed by a discussion turned into an arena of political warfare within an hour of the film.

It all started when 2-3 members of the audience walked out of the screening claiming the film to be anti-Hindu, only to later come back with 30 to 40 other individuals (all claiming to be members of the ABVP) to forcefully disrupt the screening of Muzaffarnagar Baaqi hai by creating a fearful environment for all those who were present. Soon afterwards the ABVP tried to stop yet another screening of the same film in JNU.

During both events, the organizers tried to reason with the Right Wing activists urging them to watch the entire film before taking such a stance. ‘You watch the film and then criticize it as much as you want in the discussion afterwards’ as Sawhney says in an interview with Newslaundry.com. But it didn’t help. Clearly, Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai had hit a sour note with right wing organizations and they wanted the film not to be shown.

But why? What is it that Sawhney unearths that’s so problematic for the ABVP? Or is it truly ‘anti-national’ and ‘anti-Hindu’ as they claim? It was on the 25th of August that the author discovered the answers to these questions.

At about 8 in the evening we gathered at Masjid Moth. Documentary filmmaker Shilpi Gulati had managed to acquire a room for the screening from a friend. The place had been set up, projector and speakers rented and the crowd gathered. “I read on the internet that Cinema of Resistance and Nakul Sawhney are organizing protest screenings and I wrote to them saying I’d like to screen the film as well. So here we are” says Shilpi Gulati before we switch off the lights.

On that same evening, thousands gathered like us across India to see what the ABVP so desperately wanted to brush under the carpet in such a radical fashion (Cinema of Resistance estimates 7000 people to have watched this controversial film on the evening of 25th alone) - A collective opposition to censorship and a culture of fascism. Here’s what they saw.

Sawhney’s film is an unbiased research and observation of what led to the massacre of the Muslim community in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli in 2013, how it impacted the results of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and the disquieting aftermath. Maintaining a nonpartisan stance the film documents a collective of observations and interviews from all communities residing in the affected areas and unveils an intricate web of socio-political pandemonium of sorts.

During the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections, the coveted stage of Western UP was caught up in the frenzy created by BJP, SP and BSP to woo the Hindu, Muslim and Dalit voters using various gimmicks. Of these, caste and honour took the center stage given the Khap dynamics of the Jat land. Nakul Singh Sawhney explores how the BJP uses these issues to its benefit, merging the Hindutva agenda with Panchayat politics and carving out the Muslim community as an image of perpetrator and villain while mobilizing the Hindu population to seek revenge against it.

Muzaffarnagar Baaqi hai doesn’t end at that. The film further scrutinizes the spectatorial roles played by the Samta Party government anticipating more Hindu votes if it didn’t side with the minority community while Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party waited for the Muslim votes to merge with the Dalit votes in its favour.

“The film is very holistic in its approach” says Gulati “It’s very important to tell the story of Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai because the media didn’t do justice to it. The print got into it quite late and TV hardly covered it. It was only later when Neha Dixit came up with reports that anything was ever said about it.”

It is this role of the media and the pedestal it lays open to political parties and corporates that Sawhney looks at in great detail in his documentary. The director digs into newspaper archives and video reportage of the months preceding the riots and discovers a sudden surge in the number of stories reported about Muslim men raping or molesting Hindu women. This along with a series of inflammatory speeches made by BJP leaders Amit Shah, Sangeet Som, Suresh Rana (to name a few) led up to an atmosphere of tension and hate.

* Hate speech remarks box added below*

Through its pensive observation yet questioning tone, Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai narrates a very sensitive story very politically without taking sides. It looks at how massacres and riots are created and what the threadbare framework of communal hatred looks like in perspective. Watching this two hour 15 minutes long documentary could seem grueling and even tiring to the audience. The kind of systematic chaos that Sawhney manages to document will leave you flabbergasted but that most probably is the point.

* Here are a few of those remarks in case you have not watched the film

• Paschimi Uttar Pradesh mein yeh samman ka chunaw hai, apman ke badle ka chunaw hai aur jinhone anyae kiya hai unko sabak sikhane ka chunaw hai. (In Western UP this election is for honour. An election to avenge humiliation and an occasion to teach a lesson to those who are guilty)

• Hindu Kisi ko Cheedta nahi Lekin koi cheedega toh chhodta nahi
(Hindus will not provoke but once provoked will not let go)

• Your First job is to control the country’s population. Otherwise ten years later only ‘they’ will be contesting the elections. Hum do – humare bees (urging Hindus to produce 20 children per household)

• The earth sky and universe resound: Say with pride I am a Hindu, Hindustan is mine.

• Why do riots happen? Some incident happens and the administration doesn’t take action. That’s when the common man has to come to the streets to protect their women’s honour.

Latest News