Two films and a thought

I saw two good films this week that offer hope for gritty journalism. Hansal Mehta`s Shahid (The witness) is the story of Shahid Azmi, a 32-year old Mumbai lawyer who was shot dead in his office in 2010, evidently for representing Muslim youths in false terrorism cases.

Callum Macrae`s No-fire zone is an intensively researched account of the mass murder and sexual abuse of Jaffna Tamils by government troops in 2009. Remember what Faiz Ahmed Faiz said about writing in adverse conditions.

Mat`a-i-lauh-o-galam chhin gaee to kya gham hai; ke khoon-i-dil mein dubo li hain ungliyan maine. (They took away the quill, so I`ll still write the message with my blood).

Far too many journalists and other chroniclers of our times have gone down doing their duty. Kidnappings, killings or dire threats have not deterred the good men and women from doing a good job in spite of the fact that South Asia has a heavy turnover of ill-fated journalists of integrity.

From Pakistan to Bangladesh, from Nepal to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, not to leave out Afghanistan there isn`t a limit to the dirty tricks used by the state (or its equally dubious adversaries) to crush the media`s selfrespect.

In India, which is flush with money at the top, they stuff the faces of `useful` journalists with it. No wonder the Radia Tapes exposé was hushed up. It isn`t surprising also thatsome of the high-ranking journalists who doubled as gobetweens for leading business houses as lobbyists pressing for corporate-friendly candidates to be sworn in as ministers with handy portfolios now appear to be supporting Narendra Modi, their logical mascot, if he ever gets to where he wants to be.

I watched Mehta`s Shahid on a pirated copy of very poor quality. But it was worth the travesty. Played in brilliant low key by new actor Rajkumar Yadav, the real-life role of the besieged lawyer Shahid Azmi is etched with compassion as the centerpiece of an everyday story in South Asia.

It is a tale of an individual`s stand against pervasive bias that drives the system and its keepers. Seeing a movie with a serious story to tell without the use of overwrought messages is indeed a rare experience. Azmi`s trials and tribulations are retold by Mehta and Yadav all the more effectively as an eerie understatement.

The film was too quickly taken off the few movie halls it was shown at, and the usual Delhi shops that sell legal DVDs didn`t have it on their shelves. This subversion of the truth by trying to hide it away is par for the course with exposés written as books.

As more and more journalists of integrity lose their livelihoods, if not their lives, there comes the odd one with a heartwarming candour, not in a newspaper or a TV channel, but as a book or a movie, or a spectacularly researched documentary.

The Mystery of Birla House, for example, was written in1953 by Debajyoti Burman as an account of a leading tycoon`s sleight of hand with bookkeeping. It was bought by the Birlas, including all copies (except perhaps one copy) of its first two editions, followed by the copyright itself. This was under Nehru`s watch. What did Mr Burman do with the useful loot? He opened a leftist press with it.

As a souvenir of India`s early tryst with a journalism of integrity, a copy of the book did survive, and is preserved in the Nehru Memorial Library in the rare books section.

The other significant book on the underhand shenanigans of the corporate world that was mysteriously removed from the shops by an unknown district court`s order was The Polyester Prince. The 1970s gem was a painstakingly researched account of the rise of Dhirubhai Ambani as India`s leading and politically influential businessman.

Pirated copies of Hamish McDonald`s seminal book are available near Mumbai traffic lights, but I am not sure if it retains all the details about the political dramatis personae, some occupying very high offices today as defenders of India`s constitution.

The book was written before Modi came on the scene but it could reveal how and why he rose. British director Macrae`s No-fire zone was shown to a shockingly sparse audience at Delhi`s highbrow India International Centre by the film`s otherwise committed promoters, a group of leftwing activists. As expected, Macrae was denied an Indian visa to be present at the film`srelease, underscoring a standard practice by Delhi to hide an inconvenient truth.

How many others have met a similar fate, been banished or denied visas for holding upright views on India`s dismal rights record? Some of Macrae`s gutwrenching visuals, for example, of prisoners being shot at point-blank range by mimic soldiers or the horrendous rape and mutilation of suspected Tamil Tiger women, have already done the rounds on the YouTube circuit.

What he released this week was a full-length film as an alert to the Commonwealth leaders who are meeting in Sri Lanka this month. India has grudgingly cancelled Prime Minister Manmohan Singh`s participation in the summit but it has refrained from confronting the bigger question of rights abuse.

It is heartwarming that the ascent of the corporate media, led by private channels that mouth daily inanities on Modi`s behalf, has not gone unchallenged. Relentless chronicler Manisha Sethi and journalist Ashish Khetan have led the field with several other dedicated journalists to expose the compulsively right-wing state India is becoming.

Khetan`s cinematic exposés are infused with the humanism he feels for the besieged Muslims. But he is not the only one readying for a grim battle with the religio-ethnic bigotries that have emerged as the preferred vehicle to ply corporate fascism and its global allies. •

The writer is Dawn`s correspondent in Delhi. jawednagvi@gmail.com