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| << October26, 2003 - [India Thinkers Net] Dr Sati's letter to the editor of 'The Hindu'. |
October29, 2003 - [India Thinkers Net] Online petition to stop harassment of Mallika Sarabhai >> |
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Watch this film, Praveenbhai ???Pinjar??™ is an eloquent testament against the politics of division MOHAMMED WAJIHUDDIN Praveen Togadia is a heart surgeon by training, but is known more for haranguing the masses than for holding the scalpel. In his blind rage, he seems to have forgotten a doctor??™s compassion for fellow human beings, his respect for human life. Last week he went ballistic again, threatening communal riots if ??????Rambhakts??™??™ were stopped from reaching Ayodhya. In any law-abiding nation, Togadia would have been behind bars by now. But since the neocons in the Vajpayee government think otherwise, and no amount of lectures on the absurdity of riots are likely to sway Praveenbhai, I choose an alternative method. I recommend that he watch director Chandraprakash Dwivedi??™s Pinjar (Skeleton) releasing soon. He may take Narendra Modi, Hindutva??™s poster boy, along for the show. As they watch Pinjar, based on Amrita Pritam??™s Partition saga, unfold on screen, they will get jolted. As the camera focuses on two pitchers at the mouth of a narrow street ??” marked Hindu ka paani and Muslim ka paani ??” they will see the yawning gulf communalism can create between communities. A serious indictment of the madness that??™s communal violence, Pinjar shows why the Subcontinent should have exorcised this evil long ago. It didn??™t. The film doesn??™t shake, it stings. The burning bazaars of Lahore, the fear-stricken people fleeing their homes, the rape of refugees behind the bushes, in sugarcane fields ??” the frames leave you speechless. And yet it??™s not just about man??™s bestiality against man. It??™s also about the triumph of love over hate. And it??™s conveyed through the character of Puro (Urmila Matondkar), a Hindu woman kidnapped by her Muslim neighbour. The boy doesn??™t defile her, he brings her food and gets a Hindu girl released from forceful confinement at a Muslim home, reuniting her with her family. Puro becomes Hameeda, but doesn??™t forget her Hindu roots. In the climactic scene she refuses to walk out on her once tormentor, now a doting husband ??” the Muslim neighbour ??” and refuses to cross over to India. By the time the film ends, you are reduced to tears. ??????I couldn??™t get up from the seat for 10 minutes,??™??™ a young woman said after a special screening in Mumbai. Praveenbhai may react similarly. Or he may just brush it aside as a dream-merchant??™s exaggeration, a novelist??™s fictitious tale. But he can??™t deny the desperation rioters foist on a city and its inhabitants. Remember Qutubuddin Ansari, the Ahmedabad tailor beseeching a mob for mercy during the Gujarat riots? That??™s what communal violence reduces you to. Praveenbhai may argue he threatend violence because he seeks justice for Ram. But Ram belongs to India, not to the Sangh Parivar alone. Poet Iqbal calls Ram Imam-ul-Hind (Leader of India), not Imam of Hindus. You cannot build a house for the Imam-ul-Hind and please him by masterminding riots and destroying others??™ homes. Ram will reject a ??????Rambhakt??™??™ who threatens violence and brings a city under siege. http://www.indian-express.com/full_story.php?content_id=33776 |
| << October26, 2003 - [India Thinkers Net] Dr Sati's letter to the editor of 'The Hindu'. |
October29, 2003 - [India Thinkers Net] Online petition to stop harassment of Mallika Sarabhai >> |
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