Films of Anand Patwardhan

Anand Patwardhan: Blending Activism and Film Making

By Ashfaque Swapan
Special to India-West

SAN FRANCISCO - Even though Anand Patwardhan's documentary films have repeatedly won National Awards, such is the Kafkaesque political reality in India that state television Doordarshan has balked every time it has been asked to screen his films.

Patwardhan has taken Doordarshan to court, and following court orders - in one case a Supreme Court order - Doordarshan has had to relent and ultimately broadcast three of his documentary films.

A South Asian activist organization, Ekta, hosted a retrospective of his films Oct. 20 and 28 at San Francisco State University here where viewers got a chance to sample the breadth of his documentary work which began nearly four decades ago. Patwardhan, currently teaching a course in Stanford University on "Sociopolitical issues in contemporary India through films," was present in person. Further screenings of his films are scheduled in Berkeley and Stanford.

The nine screened films included his latest 180-minute anti-nuclear film War and Peace (work in progress), which explores a variety of underlying issues raised by India's nuclear explosions in 1998 - the perils of unbridled jingoism, the grassroots attempts to disseminate viewpoints that champion a transcendent humanism to foster peace and amity (See separate review).

At San Francisco State here, Patwardhan's calm confidence was reflected in the gentle serene visage of this 52-year-old film maker, whose films, however, are anything but dispassionate chronicles. An activist who has had few inhibitions about plunging into the struggles and causes that he has thought worthwhile, be it anti-Vietnam war demonstrations and Cesar Chavez farm workers' agitations during his student days in the U.S., or Sarvodaya leader Jayaprakash Narayan's massive non-cooperation movement against erstwhile Prime Minister Indira Gandhi - his film making has closely followed the political and social causes that he has espoused.

Overall, whether it is filming the struggle of fishermen fighting foreign trawlers, or India's growing rise of Hindu nationalist fervor, he readily agrees that if there is one common philosophical strand that runs through its work, it is an abiding compassion and commitment to the underdog. "I don't know if there is any one message but-I don't know how you can describe it-it's humanism, because it's neither pure Gandhism nor is it pure Marxism-(it's) some kind of a combination," Patwardhan told India-West. "It is a kind of an attempt to make our democracy more real. Democracy by itself is class-divided, where people don't listen to people from other classes."

This humanism is manifest in the hard-hitting documentaries that he has made over the years. Take for example three of his National Award-winning films which Doordarshan has been forced to broadcast-Bombay, Our City, In Memory of Friends and In the Name of God. Bombay, Our City (1985, 82 min) documents the battle for survival of the four million slum dwellers who make up half the population of India's financial nerve center, Mumbai. A city of grotesque juxtaposition of wealth and misery, the city depends on the labor of the city's dispossessed who themselves often lack access to the most basic civic amenities of electricity, water and sanitation, and his film is a sharp indictment of the misery to which the city subjects its underprivileged.

In Memory of Friends (1990, 60 min) looks at the fundamentalist Sikh agitation in Punjab which was met with brutal state repression. Patwardhan weaves into his documentary the story of freedom movement hero Bhagat Singh, a young socialist who was hanged by the British in 1931 when he was 23. The film reflects, ironically, on the attempt of both the state and the separatist Sikhs to co-opt Bhagat Singh when he actually fits neither ideology - he, after all, dreamed of an independent India which was non-sectarian as well as committed to the welfare of its underprivileged.

In the Name of God (1992, 90 min), one of his most controversial films which won both a National award and a Filmfare award, attacks what he considers to be the hypocrisy and strident intolerance of Hindu fundamentalism in its attack on the 16th century Babri Masjid in the Uttar Pradesh town of Ayodhya. Filmed before the demolition of the mosque, the film's attack on the rise of extremist Hindu hysteria raised the hackles of Hindutwa supporters, but the film was ultimately shown on Doordarshan after Patwardhan won a court case.

Films like these are not the sort that are likely to get easily funded, and that is precisely the case. Patwardhan says he refuses to compromise on his editorial independence. The upshot has been that Patwardhan receives virtually no funding and funds, films, edits and narrates almost all of his films.

"Documentary films are extremely difficult to sustain unless you have a big budget, then you get dependent on funding," he said. "I would like to get finances if I can, but I don't want to compromise what I am doing," he told India-West. "Basically I have been surviving on recycling money from one film into the next."

U.S. educational institutions buy his films, so that is a source of income. In India, only his award-winning films have been shown on Doordarshan. The rest are screened through friends and activists.

Limited finances also means that Patwardhan does not have the easy access to a wealth of documentary footage from news organizations that big-budget documentary film makers frequently use.

"I am shooting all the time," he said. "Whenever something important is happening and I happen to have my camera, I shoot it. Also, I record the news sometimes." Today he is a full-time film maker, and he has no regrets. "This is what I do most of the time, this is what I do best now in the sense (of being) an activist (but) also in the sense that film making is what I know best. All my films have been related to some political work going anyway."

His latest film and still a work in progress, War and Peace, champions a humanism that transcends national borders. "The film attacks the concept of patriotism-I think people have a very misguided notion," he said. "I think that being proud of being a human being is more important to me than being proud of being an Indian or anything else. It doesn't mean that I am ashamed of being an Indian. It doesn't mean that I am not happy to live in India, but I think that my allegiance is to the underdog anywhere."