Ramchand Pakistani, a film with a difference
Ananth Krishnan
Will it be a precursor to greater cultural exchanges between India and Pakistan?
— Photo: K. Pichumani
Movie with a message: Director Mehreen Jabbar at the shooting. (Above) Javed Jabbar makes a point.
Chennai: “Two nations poised for war. One family torn apart,” reads the tag line for the soon-to-be-released film Ramchand Pakistani. While this dramatic description would seem to fit the bill for any of the numerous war movies Bollywood has produced, Ramchand… is a film project with a difference.
The first-ever film from Pakistan whose main characters are from the country’s minority Hindu community, Ramchand seeks to emphasise the commonality between the people of the two countries rather than focus on the differences and the violence, as many Bollywood movies have tended to do.
“While the story is very sharply drawn in a political context of extreme polarisation, what it attempts to do is to project the unifying human dimension,” says Javed Jabbar, former Pakistan Cabinet Minister and Senator, who wrote and is producing the film, where the characters speak Urdu and Hindi.
The film, which is directed by his daughter Mehreen Jabbar and stars Nandita Das, tells the story of how an accidental border crossing affects the life of a poor Pakistani Hindu peasant family. The two Hindus find themselves imprisoned in India as unwelcome trespassers.
Inspired by actual events, the narrative attempts to depict the heavy irony that underlies the relationship between Pakistan and India.
Many parts
Mr. Jabbar, who was born in Chennai and lived here with his mother before migrating to Pakistan, is a man of many parts: a leading figure in the advertising world, who ran a successful ad agency, MNJ Advertising, for 22 years; a film-maker who created Pakistan’s first English language film Beyond The Last Mountain, which was shown at the first Bombay International Film Festival in 1976; a political figure; and a highly articulate public intellectual. His 1972 documentary for Pakistan television, Moenjodaro: The City That Must Not Die, (the title is a play on ‘Mound of the Dead,’ the Sindhi term for the celebrated Indus Valley city), won several international awards. He is also known in the adve rtising world for his memorable line on the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-daro: “Miss Mohenjo-daro: Her Age is Her Great Attraction – 5000 years.”
Mr. Jabbar was recently in Chennai to render fattehha at the grave of his maternal grandfather, Khan Bahadur Sharif Mohammad Ali, a senior police officer in the 1940s.
The director
Mehreen Jabbar, who is in her mid-thirties, is an acclaimed independent film-maker (see www.jazbah.org, www.mehreenjabbar.com).
Her interest in theatre and film began in the advertising agency; her first play, Nivala (Morsel), was based on a short story by Ismat Chagtai, the Indian Urdu writer; and she studied film at UCLA (University of California Los Ange les). Her portfolio ranges from short art films to tele-plays shown on television in Pakistan and abroad, including Putli Ghar (Puppet House), Farar (Escape), Pehchaan (Recognition) and New York Stories. She is known for her fresh voice, her original style of story telling, and her themes focussing on the everyday lives and dilemmas of women in Pakistan.
Ramchand Pakistani is Ms. Jabbar’s directorial debut in full-length feature films.
Mr. Jabbar, the writer, notes that this story of difference ultimately seeks to convey a message of universality, but without compromising the inherent differences in identities of self, religion, or nationality. “While we are respecting the diversity and plurality of identities, we are trying to find the commonality of human values.”
Larger issue
The larger issue within which the film is situated is the ongoing peace process between India and Pakistan. “Fortunately we have been able to release several hundreds of prisoners on both sides,” Mr. Jabbar points out. “But the unspoken, unexplored tragedy is that for many prisoners, whether they are Pakistani prisoners in India or Indian prisoners in Pakistan, when you are held for just having crossed the line or overstaying your visa, you become a part of the larger morass of it all. This film will attempt to make a small contribution towards this process of improved appreciation of each other.”
Part of this process is portraying Pakistan’s Hindu community in a different light. “Pakistani films have so far dealt with the Hindu community in stereotypical terms,” explains the former Minister and three times elected Senator.
“This is a country where 97 per cent of the population is Muslim. If you happen to be Muslim and poor, that is bad enough. But if you happen to be Hindu and come from the lowest caste, then you are completely at the bottom of the bottom. We wanted to show life from their perspective.”
Director Mehreen Jabbar believes that despite the location of the film’s message so far from the mainstream in Pakistani and Indian cinema, it will be received well by the public in both countries. “I don’t think the religious aspect will be a negative factor,” she told The Hindu over the phone from Mumbai. “It is more a human story with universal themes.”
The collaboration between Pakistani and Indian artists during this project speaks to the same sentiment Ramchand invokes. While a majority of the actors are drawn from Pakistan’s thriving television industry, the film stars Na ndita Das and features the musical talents of director Debajyoti Mishra and singer Shubha Mudgal.
Support
“I wanted to support the message of the film,” Ms. Das told The Hindu over the phone from New Delhi. “It is a small way of dispelling the myth and perception that Pakistan is our enemy. There is this whole idea tha t Pakistan is another country, but I don’t feel like an Indian living in Pakistan. In fact, to do a film in Malayalam and Tamil is in some ways more difficult than doing one in Pakistan.” Ms. Das hopes that the film will start a cinematic ‘revolution’ in Pakistan, noting that it will be “quite a big leap” for such a film as Ramchand to be shown in Pakistan’s cinemas, “which is something we take for granted in India.”
The poor quality of films usually screened in Pakistan has resulted in declining audiences and the absence of a movie-going culture as in India, according to Ms. Jabbar. After the 1965 war, Pakistan and India banned the exhibition of each other’s films in cinemas.
Recently, Pakistan exempted films such as Taj Mahal, Mughal-e-Azam and Awarapan. It is also common for Pakistani cable operators to show pirated Indian films.
The plan, according to Mr. Jabbar, is to release the film — which is in the post-production stages in Mumbai and New York — commercially in India and Pakistan some time after October, after it goes through the film festival circuit. Mr. Jabbar hopes that such a cinematic collaboration will be the precursor to greater cultural exchange and political cooperation between the countries.
He says: “Recently there has been another step forward. A Bollywood film, Awarapan, has just been released in Pakistan, and a few films from Pakistan are going to be released in India. So these are all very good signs.”< /p>
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