Caught by Contemporary Politics and Culture

The winding political trajectory of Bangladesh has influenced the discourses of cinema – making less films on 1947 Partition and more films on 1971 Liberation War (LW) although there was almost no production on 1971 for nearly two decades since 1975. Parallelly, the independent filmmakers started making short films related to 1971 in the late 1980s and the number of productions increased in the new millennium.

This article will investigate why there is low number of 1947 and abundance of 1971 related films in Bangladesh? It will also examine how contemporary politics determine the content of these period films? To validate the investigation, film director Tanvir Mokammel has been interviewed, who made films both on 1947 and on 1971.

For Bangladesh, the experience of 1971 has overshadowed 1947. The people of Bangladesh live in ‘Partition’s post amnesias’ (Kabir, 2014) and the wound of LW is relatively fresh. The victory in the war and the creation of a new nation generates a feeling of pride and worth of celebration among Bangladeshis though the loss in 1971 is also colossal in number and size. That might be the reason for the low number of productions of films on 1947 partition. There are only three feature films and one documentary made by Bangladeshi directors. Despite a latter incident, there are 55 feature films, 24 short films and 39 documentaries made on 1971 LW made by Bangladeshi directors.¹ Here is a perspective from Tanvir Mokammel, a filmmaker who made films both on the Partition and the Liberation War says:

In 1971, things also happened in mammoth dimensions – three million killed, two hundred thousand women raped, ten million people left their homes and had to migrate to another country. The numbers are almost biblical. Besides, 1971 war is also more recent than the events of the 1947 Partition. So, it is obvious that 1971 figures in much more in our cinema than 1947 (Mokammel, 2021).

And he tends to justify his filmography as it stands:

Though I have made films both on 1947 Partition and on 1971 war, my films on the 1971 Liberation War are higher in number. The reason is obvious. I saw and experienced the war, as a teenager. … So, whenever I ponder to make a film, an incident or memory, from 1971 war crop ups in my mind. I think it is true for a whole generation of filmmakers like me. And that’s why the films on the 1971 war is much higher in number in our oeuvres than on 1947 (Mokammel 2021).

In Mokammel’s view, there are at least three reasons of absence of 1947 and abundance of 1971 – the degree of the incident, immediacy and filmmakers’ personal experience. However, if compared to literature, the situation might not be the same. Amongst the Bengali fictions written in Bangladesh, there are a few novels and short stories on the Partition that reveal the accounts of Bengali Muslims. The notable novel titled Agoonpakhi (2006) by Hasan Azizul Huq is one of the greatest novels on the Partition. Kalo Borof (1992) by Mahmudul Haq and O Te Ojogor (1978) by Abdul Mannan Syed are among many others. But the number of films on the Partition can be counted as too low. Like cinema, there are high number of novels and short stories on 1971 Liberation War.       

In the political discourse of Bangladesh, 1947 remains as a ‘historical incident’ that happened ages before. Bangladesh celebrated 50 years of independence in 2021. Dina M. Siddiqi (2013) observes, in the time of 50^th anniversary of the Partition in 1997, Bangladeshi newspapers and other media exhibited a muted interest in the anniversary or ignored it altogether. She summarizes, ‘1947 does not merit remembrance, let alone celebration’ (Siddiqi, 2013: 156). Apart from Mokammel’s three aspects, in the contemporary politics, the LW is still a key factor. Set by political and cultural elites and implemented by the current AL government who are holding power since 2009, the hegemonic political discourse determines moral acceptance or negation of any entity (a person, an organization or any idea) in the society and the determining lens here is whether that entity is pro or anti-Liberation. This hegemonic discourse influences cinema too. Present Bangladeshi government not only encourage making films on LW², also they offer a few grants, the number which has been gradually increasing and LW is the priority area for the proposed screenplays to be awarded. The Daily Star reports on June 15, 2021 that 20 films got the grant for the 20201-21 fiscal year in three categories – Liberation War, general and children’s’ film.³ Patronization of the government in power is another reason behind the abundance of films made on the Liberation War.

Like Indian Cinema on the Partition, Hindu centrism remains as a limitation for the Partition films made in Bangladesh. In all three feature films made on the Partition the main protagonists were Hindus. The documentary was no exception. In Palanka (dir. Rajen Tarafdar, 1975), a co-production between India and Bangladesh, one of the two protagonists was a sub-altern Muslim. The film also portrayed the emergence of Muslim elites and fall of the once-empowered Hindu aristocrat in a rural setting. Bangladeshi Partition films have rightly portrayed communal politics and post-partition violence. Mokammel (2021) thinks:

There was no ‘serious riot’ in post-Partition West Bengal since the Partition days, and for that the migration of Muslims from India to East Pakistan ceased, almost stopped. The case is opposite in the other way around. Hindus from East Bengal had also migrated after the riots of 1950, 1964, 1971, in 1975 after the killing of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in 1992 after the post-Ayudha carnage, and even as late as in 2001 when BNP won the national election and created a havoc on the Hindu families, especially in the rural areas. It is assumed around 150 million Hindus have migrated from East Bengal so far.

According to Mokammel (2021), the effect of partition created many plights to the Hindu communities in comparison to the Muslims. Pakistan was a like a ‘promised land’ for them. Thus, he justifies Hindu-centrism in the films made on 1947 Partition. Also, the films especially made by Tanvir Mokammel, try to say, the partition was, perhaps unnecessary. It is clearly stated in Simantorekha (2017). In Chitra Nadir Pare (1999), there was a crazy and tramp character who used to stop people suddenly and asked them, “Are you going or coming? It’s all the same! Going and coming are same anyway!” The crazy man’s philosophical query raises the question the necessity of the Partition.

The idea of ‘prolonged Partition’ (Ferdous, 2022) someway denotes many of Bangladesh’s today’s affairs have some links with the 1947 Partition. In that sense the LW as well as the border killings in post-independence period are directly or indirectly connected to the Partition. The Partition films also show the process of the Partition went on for years. In Chitra the character Badal was a link between 1947 and 1971. In Palanka, the son of Dhala Karta visits in the post-independence Bangladesh with his family at the beginning of the film who migrated to India immediate after the Partition. But the Bangladeshi films made on LW never relate anything to the Partition. Sometimes Language Movement of 1952 or the autonomy movement in the 1960s remain as the context, but the storyline never traces back to 1947.

Most of the films made on 1971 are based on the dominant discourses of the LW – freedom fighters are always the heroes; women are always the victims and demonic Rajakars are essentially Islamists. Sometimes Rajakars become more important as villains than the Pakistani military (as seen in Agami [dir. Morshedul Islam, 1984], Nadir Naam Madhumoti [1995, dir. Tanvir Mokammel] and Rabeya [2008, dir. Tanvir Mokammel]). The reason is, the Rajakars in 1971 were from Islamist parties like Jamaat-E-Islami (JI), which is still a major political party in post-independence Bangladesh, members of which must be denounced by the pro-Liberation filmmakers. The directors enthusiastically want to show the audiences of the new generation the role of JI in the moment of the creation of Bangladesh. Filmmakers’ relentless attempt to portray the war crimes committed by JI people in 1971, contributed to strengthening the discourse of war crimes that became significant later in Shahbag movement and in post-Shahbag trial of war criminals in between 2013-2015. However, in the time of the global rise of Muslimness, some Islamists are also shown as freedom fighters. I wrote in another paper: 

In earlier films [on LW] the Muslim characters [clad with Islamist attires] were portrayed as singularly negative characters, but in recent films the Muslim characters are portrayed as singularly positive characters. The recent portrayal of identity issues can be seen as inconsistent with reality, like the earlier representations. The reality is always somewhere in between (Haq, 2020: 36).  

Most of the films on LW forget to mention that it was a people’s war. People from all classes and background participated in the war – as victims and as resistants. The portrayals may give a wrong message that the dominant middle class were the only actors in the war. However, Muktir Kotha (dir. Tareque Masud, 1996) tries to depict that people from sub-altern background – peasants, women, indigenous people – were also active participants in the war. The sheer victimhood of women is a condemnable issue here. Only in recent times, some documentaries (such as Bishkanta [dir. Farzana Boby, 2015]) show the heroic roles of women in the LW. Kaberi Gayen (2015) observes, women could not be heroes in the war films. They could only be the Birangonas, the connotation of which is now the raped women, and thus ‘dishonoured, disgraced and fallen’ women.      

It is to be noted again, there were almost no production of LW films in between 1975-1990 as the rulers of this period directly or indirectly upheld the spirit of the creation of Pakistan. Through the state patronization, themes of the films in reference to the Arab world increased and so the reason of the decrease in the number films made on the ideologies of LW, which are secular in nature, in the late 1970s and the1980s. In recent years, if the number is higher, the discourses are dominant – portraying Mujibur Rahman as the only or supreme leader of the LW and restraining to show it as peoples’ war. In the time of global rise of Islamization after 9/11, Muslimness got some space in the films made on 1971 LW. Actually, the numbers as well as the preferred discourses of the LW films depended on who was in the power and what identity discourses were dominating – both locally and globally.       

Another point to observe – the leading independent directors who grew in the 1970s-1980s (Mokammel, Islam and Masud) chose reexploring 1971 on the screen as their artistic mission but the next generation directors (Mostafa Sarwar Farooki, Nurul Alam Atique, Amitabh Reza, Akram Khan, Kamar Ahmad Simon and Rubaiyat Hossain) are less interested in period films, rather they are more interested to work on post-globalized and contemporary complex issues of Bangladesh. Bangladesh society, like others, has been going through a transformation from its early history. It is no surprise that the contemporary filmmakers are more interested, if not always, to the contemporary issues. But the previous generation of filmmakers were interested in period drama that deal identity issues and their focus was mostly on 1971. Tareque Masud was ready to make a film (Kagojer Phool [Paper Flower]) based on 1947, but he died in an unfortunate road accident in 2011. However, for most of the filmmakers, except Mokammel, period film means the films based on 1971, not on 1947.        

All films made on the Partition in Kolkata and Dhaka are Hindu-centric (i.e. films made by Ghatak or Mokammel), which is not a rational response to what happened before and after 1947. Hindus suffered a lot, they continued leaving Bangladesh to India even after 1971. However, Muslims too have their experiences of pains and plights (a little reflection was found in Khancha [dir. Akram Khan, 2017]). Though they got their promised land Pakistan, still there are stories of both of sufferings and of satisfaction of the Muslims. Those stories should be told. Perhaps, Bangladeshi directors are caught by the dominant narrative of Hindu-centrism or Indo-centrism (Ferdous, 2022) or the absence of the voices of East Bengal (here I read as the ‘absence of the voices of Muslims’ by amending Feldman’s⁴⁷ proposition). Resurgent interest in the Partition has been promoted, in large measure in India, by efforts to understand the communal riots in India since the 1980s. Bangladeshi scholars (as well as the filmmakers) need to explore the Partition to understand the politico-cultural problems of today’s Bangladesh as Ferdous (2022) suggests. If Feldman (1999) suggests including the experiences of East Bengal or Bangladesh to get a comprehensive Partition narrative, this paper suggests that serious and methodical scholarships as well as creative expressions like cinema should include the stories of both Hindus and Muslims to make a comprehensive contribution in that from East Bengal/Bangladesh.    

I want to say, the abundance of 1971 or the absence of 1947 in the cinematic texts come according to the contemporary necessity of the dominant forces in the society. A total absence of the film of the Liberation war in between 1975-1990 was also an outcome of the political desire. The nature of the portrayal of stakeholders, such as the freedom fighters, the Rajakars or Pakistani Army also determined by the current need. However, creative people (here filmmakers) need to transcend the contemporary desire of the dominant political or cultural forces while creative their cinematic texts.

Endnote

¹ This numbers are calculated by updating the numbers denoted by Hayat (2011).

² On May 10, 2014, while distributing the National Film Award 2012, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called upon Bangladeshi filmmakers to project the great achievements of the 1971 LW and the history of sacrifices of the people through movies (See Dhaka Tribune, May 11, 2014).

³ See ‘20 films to receive government grants for 2020-21’ at https://www.thedailystar.net/arts-entertainment/news/20-films-receive-government-grants-2020-21-2111669, accessed on July 29, 2021.

References

Ferdous, S. (2022). Partition as Border-Making: East Bengal, East Pakistan and Bangladesh. London: Routledge. 

Gayen, K. (2015). “Women, War and Cinema: Construction of Women in the Liberation War Films of Bangladesh”. French Journal for Media Research. https://frenchjournalformediaresearch.com/lodel-1.0/main/index.php?id=478. Accessed on July 29, 2021.

Haq, F. (2020). National Identity and Cinematic Representation: Independent Films in Bangladesh. In Elora Halim Chowdhury and Esha Niyogi De (eds), South Asian Filmscapes: Transregional Encounters. Seattle: University of Washington Press, pp. 25-42.

Hayat, A. (2011). Bangladesher Muktizuddhovittik Cholochchitro (Films on Liberation War of Bangladesh). Dhaka: Bangladesh Film Archive.

Kabir, A. J. (2014). Partition’s Post-Amnesias. Dhaka: The University Press Limited.

Mokammel, T. (2021). Interview for this paper conducted on July 30, 2021.

Siddiqi, D. M. (2013). “Left Behind by the Nation: Stranded Pakistani in Bangladesh”. Sites: New Series. 10(1). Pp. 150-183. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.11157/sites-vol10iss2id253

Shelley Feldman, S. (1999). “Feminist interruptions: The Silence of East Bengal in the Story of Partition”. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. 1(2). Pp. 167-182. DOI: 10.1080/13698019900510291

Note: Fahmidul Haq is a film and media scholar. This is a short version of a research paper published previously (Haq, F. [2022]. Cinema of Bangladesh: Absence of 1947 and abundance of 1971. India Review. 21(3). Pp. 419-437. DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2086409).

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