The Final Solution
Five years ago, in 2003, Rakesh Sharma made a documentary film, the Final Solution about the politics of hate in Gujarat. It chronicled the instigation and aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat Riots.
These riots broke out after the burning of Coach S/6, on the Sabarmati Express, in Godhra, on February 27th, 2002. Fifty eight people (23 men, 15 women and 20 children) were killed, burnt to death by a mob, while returning from a pilgrimage from Ayodhya. Using these killings as an excuse, the Hindutva outfits VHP, RSS and Bajrang Dal (members of the Sangh Parivar) unleashed mass riots in which close to two thousand people were killed and over a hundred and fifty thousand people displaced. Most of them were Muslims.
The Sangh Parivar (family of strong associations) is a group of various political parties. The BJP, which controlled both the state and national government, at the time of the riots, is the largest member of this family. The Prime Minster of India, at that time, Atal Bihari Vajpayee started his political career as a member of the RSS. The BJP chief minister of Gujarat, Narinder Modi has close ties to the VHP and the Bajrang Dal.
When the riots went on unchecked for over two months, till May 2002, allegations started surfacing that these riots were pre-planned, organized and aided by local authorities with carte blanche from the Government. It was a serious charge because if these allegations were true, it meant the government of Gujarat was aiding the massacre of its own people divided on lines of religion.
At that time there was no clear proof for such a heavy charge. It was based on logical deduction that since the perpetrators were mostly right-wing Hindu organizations, which the Government was close to and they were able to carry on with such impunity for a such a long time they must be getting help from the local authorities and the State Government. In addition, Chief Minister Narinder Modi, Deputy Prime Minister L.K Advani and Prime Minister Vajpayee kept evoking images of poor Hindu children burnt in coach S/6, in their speeches, but never once acknowledged the plight of those who were massacred in the riots. They even justified the riots by stating that the Muslims of India did not "condemn it [the train burning incident] enough" and and hence the riots took place.
Then the voices of the victims started coming out of Gujarat and they confirmed the worst. Most survivors spoke of how the police either shot at them or were onlookers as the rioters went about raping and murdering people. The Gujarat government rubbished such claims. In apathetic cynicism, perhaps subconsciously deliberate, many supporters of the BJP Government, all across India, also dismissed them as lies. The focus shifted on blaming the anti-Indian western media such as the BBC for spreading lies about India. The Government tried to push forward insinuations that we were victims of the bias of the western world because of India's rising power. But then hundreds of victims and eye-witnesses, both Muslims and Hindus, kept saying the same thing, that the pogrom had full police sanction. It was hard to cover-up two thousand deaths and a hundred and fifty thousand displaced people in refugee camps.
Rakesh Sharma's documentary features interviews with riot victims talking about the horror they went through. He also interviews families of those who were killed in the burning of Sabarmati Express. It clearly emerges that the police was soft on the rioters and even shot at innocent people trying to escape. But its greatest strength, in my opinion, is its clear trail of how Narinder Modi, the BJP and the VHP have used the Godhra incident to fan hatred amongst Hindus and Muslims and retain their own political power.
When the Final Solution was released in 2003, it was banned by the, then, BJP Government of India citing fears that massive communalism and radicalism would be ignited by its extremely inflammatory content. The ban continued till 2005. Ironically, the only inflammatory content in the documentary is from the BJP and the VHP's speeches!
The BJP was banning their own propaganda because when presented outside the space of fear and bigotry it clearly unmasks them for what they are. Charlatans of Hinduism, pimping God and using fear-mongering tactics to stay in power. I do not say that lightly. You have to see this movie to realize how precariously unbalanced India's future could be if the BJP are not held accountable for the crimes they are committing. The BJP does not belong in the sphere of politics. Yes Politics is filthy and involves back-stabbing, false promises, compromises, lies and sometimes in that very rare moment you get positive change. The BJP and the Hindutva project is not politics. It is the Hindu Talibanization of India. These people are in the poison spreading, murdering business.
Here's the documentary which you may watch here or download it. [660MB]. Make copies and distribute it to your friends.
Here's an interesting interview conducted by BBC Four with the filmmaker Rakesh Sharma. Below is a sample where Sharma talks about how he was able to circumvent the illogical ban on the film.
BBC Four: The film was banned in India. Could you talk about some of the issues that face independent filmmakers at the moment?
Rakesh Sharma: The law is that you must have a censors' certificate before you screen your film in public - otherwise it's an offence punishable by jail terms and fines. As soon as the certificate is denied, the film is buried. So then you have to go to court, but the legal system takes time. When you do eventually win your case, the film is not as current and then it finds a limited release within the 'people like us' kind of crowd; you're preaching to the converted through the NGOs and universities. That's the pattern I wanted to break with this film. So, the moment Final Solution was banned, we did all kinds of campaigns around it including 'pirate and circulate' efforts whereby I made copies of the film available free of cost, provided people promised to make at least five more pirate copies and hand those out as well. I only circulated 10,000 copies to begin with but something like 80,000 copies got out over the first couple of months of the ban. Another campaign held on 2 October (Mahatma Gandhi's birthday) saw several Gujarati writers and organizations get together and decide that if public screenings were banned, we'd hold private ones instead. People invited their friends, family and neighbors to their homes and we had over 220 screenings on that day alone. With each such campaign there was the attendant media coverage highlighting not just on the film but the entire issue of state censorship itself.
1 response
Have your say
This Saturday afternoon was spent in watching the movie documentary "The final solution" by Rakesh Sharma, which I obtained from a blog titled Kalabaaz. It was not the most pleasant way to spend part of the weekend, but it definitely was thought provoking. I will not claim that the movie tells us what "really" happened in [...]