IN the wake of the sharply polarised rhetoric after the abrupt takedown of the film Satluj from an OTT platform, I was reminded of another movie that evoked somewhat similar consternation 13 years ago.
In the opening months of 2013, there was a view that a film called Sadda Haq should be proscribed as it touched a raw nerve by raking up and rekindling a dark chapter from Punjab’s turbulent and troubled past.
The film was at that point being examined and reviewed by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), colloquially known as the censor board, for appropriate certification. As the Minister for Information and Broadcasting, I bluntly refused to intervene and allowed the CBFC and judicial processes to play themselves out transparently and completely without let or hindrance.
The only thing that the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting did back then was to request the CBFC to constitute a committee of its own board members to take a fresh, unbiased look at the film, given the ‘sensitivities’ involved.
There was palpable anxiety in the establishment both at the state and Central levels in the days leading up to the release of the film. It was finally released in the first week of April 2013, and nothing happened. All the fears, apprehensions and trepidation turned out to be completely misplaced.
The broader takeaway from this episode is that bans are no way of dealing with artistic expression. Bans only stoke curiosity and controversy and are a source of free publicity for the film and its producers. They only serve to underscore the insecurities of the establishment.
Nonetheless, the emotionally surcharged discourse around Satluj raises a fundamental question: can Punjab bury or exorcise its past, which, stretching back millennia, has been extremely traumatic, replete with violence and gore?
India was invaded over two hundred times from the time of Alexander to the turn of the 19th century. Punjab was both the pathway and the first battleground for myriad invaders who came down the Khyber Pass to loot and pillage this ancient civilisation. Except for the British and other Europeans who came by sea, the rest of the plunderers came overland from the arid deserts and wastelands of West and Central Asia.
The supreme sacrifice made by the Sikh Gurus in the fight against this tyranny bear eloquent testimony to the extent of atrocities that were perpetrated on the inhabitants of the land of the five rivers.
Their sacrifice is best summed up by this couplet: “Nau vare de Nanak ne aap jhanju nahin paaya, te nau vare de Gobind ne nauvein Nanak nu jhanju di rakhya vaste vida kita te muskuraya.” Broadly translated, it means that the nine-year-old Guru Nanak refused to wear the sacred thread (janeu) of the Hindu faith, while the nine-year-old Guru Gobind Singh smilingly bid farewell to Guru Tegh Bahadur, who fought for the religious freedom (janeu) of the persecuted Kashmiri Pandits.
These repeated depredations by foreign invaders gave rise to a sense of intrinsic fatalism in Punjab that is best summed up by a colloquial proverb: “Khada peeta lahe da, Te baki Ahmed Shahe da” (whatever you eat and drink is yours; Ahmed Shah Abdali will take away the rest).
In the 20th century, Punjab was vivisected three times. It was first partitioned by Viceroy George Curzon when the trans-Indus districts were separated from it to form the North-West Frontier Province in 1901.
The 1947 Partition of India was actually the partition of the provinces of Punjab and Bengal. Between March and September 1947, from Peshawar to Delhi, two million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were killed in a grotesque orgy of violence and fratricide and another 20 million were rendered homeless — refugees in their own land.
The Partition generation and the one that succeeded it buried these horrors in their hearts as they sought to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. That is why that carnage remains so under-documented even now.
Then Punjab was trifurcated in 1966. A mere 14 years later, it got consumed by a very violent spectre of extremism, terrorism and separatism.
Surjit Patar, the poet laureate of Punjab, poignantly summed up those dark days in these lines: “Odon Waris Shah nu vandiya si, Hun Shiv Kumar di vaari hai, Oh zakham tuhanu bhul vi gaye, Naveiyan di jo pher tyari hai.” Loosely translated, it means that first we divided Punjab with Muslims on one side and the Hindus and Sikhs on the other, and now we are trying to divide it again by creating a rift between Hindus and Sikhs. Have we forgotten the old wounds so soon that we are causing new ones?
It would be an oversight if the role of Pakistan in fomenting trouble in India since the mid-1970s is not enunciated. After India redrew the political map of South Asia by creating Bangladesh in 1971, Pakistan’s quest for retribution by implementing its strategy of bleeding India with a thousand cuts turned Punjab into the first theatre of its operation by the late 1970s.
The fight against militancy was brutal. Over 23,000 people were killed. The actual numbers are sharply contested. Both the terrorists and the State committed excesses. There were myriad judicial interventions that led to the conviction of many police officers. The families of a large number of terror victims never saw any closure for their trauma. They just had to learn to live with their loss.
While no one is arguing that the past should be buried, how far back in time should we go? Repeatedly reopening wounds that have barely healed only resurrects the worst apparitions of the past.
Would a truth and reconciliation commission still work to confront the period between 1980 and 1995, given that most of the principal actors of that era are dead and gone? Will it allow the families of the victims to move on? There are no easy answers to these questions.
However, the only way forward for the state is to breathe new life into the spirit of Punjab, Punjabi and Punjabiyat. There is a need to further strengthen the nau-maas da rishta — the symbiotic bond between Hindus and Sikhs — and stay away from the politics of polarisation, for that plays straight into the malefic machinations of our western neighbour.