Similarities, not differences, key to a new understanding

By Neha Trivedi

A new film by Ajay Raina uses cricket as a peg and rekindles hope of peace between India and Pakistan

WAPSI: The Return . A film that travels through Pakistan, with cricket fans, during the Indo-Pak Cricket series returns not only to Pakistan and to the now 58-year-old partition stories but to much more. Returning to the core of the India and Pakistan divide, returning to the core of many of the problems that keep resurfacing on either sides of the border under different names and at different times.
Wapsi: The Return is directed by Ajay Raina, whose first film, Tell them the tree they had planted has grown now, had won the Golden Conch and Best National Documentary Award. Raina, a Kashmiri Pandit who was forced to leave his home, straddles a troubled history and a difficult present, and the film reflects his feelings on the Kashmir issue and his views of the Indo-Pak struggle, on the conflict in his homeland.


The opening shots of the film present the strange situation of people awaiting visas to go to Pakistan: special visas are offered to cricket fans even as those who long to go across the border to visit relatives have to wait for their papers. Through the next 60 minutes, the camera travels the streets of Lahore and Delhi, the towns of Pakistan, and revisits stories of the people, bringing forward a “real” depiction of the Indo-Pak relationship.
It shows you both what you would have liked to see and what might come across as unpleasant reality. But what it ultimately leaves you with is the hope of the real possibility of peace within the two countries rather than romantic ideas of the neighbor we are separated from.
The movie raises several issues through brilliantly chosen scenes of everyday life. Scenes of news headlines where cricket headlines compete with news headlines about Kashmir; or the conversation on the streets of Lahore between the visiting Indians and the locals which narrow down to the ‘Kashmir’ issue and the status of Muslims all over India or the candid admission of a taxi-driver that the demolition of the Babari Masjid in India resulted in the demolition of a temple in Pakistan. Each scene is permeated with the intensity of the issues, yet flavoured by the realization that the people are so similar.
The film moves to Harappa, the site of the Indus Valley civilization, exploring the ‘common heritage’ and the depiction of the origin of civilization when no Hindu or Muslim existed. The reconstruction of history on the other side of the border clearly emerges in the commentary at the Harappan museum as it dwells on the advent of Muslim rulers and their influence on India.
It’s the voiceover that provides the shock of the present, as a series of shots from streets in Lahore, abandoned during Partition, to similar ones in Kashmir and Gujarat are accompanied by the commentary: ‘And a year ago, I was in Kashmir looking at streets similarly left behind by the Kashmiri Pandits and a year before that in Gujarat.’ No stronger indication is needed of the common thread that runs through the story of displaced people, of the violence that their lives were subjected to, of the sense of ‘difference’ that led to bloodshed merely because we failed to look at the similarities.
The film draws on the message of sufi followers who dance to music and celebrate their love for God, neither Hindu nor Muslim. Their final message is a powerful plea: ‘that instead of looking at all our divisions cant we look at similarities…the spiritual impulse which is part of the land be it Islam or Hinduism’…
Talking to this writer after the screening of the film, Raina felt that the ‘Kashmir issue’ is not so much about the so-called clash of Hindu-Muslim Civilizations. What irks is the feeling that the ‘so-called secular forces have not been able to take their debate forward’, he said,
There is a sense of confusion and hopelessness amongst Kashmiris today and there is a greater need to voice alternative opinions, he felt. Recalling the narrative of the houseboat owner in his first film, he pointed out that Independence was a higher ideal and striving for a higher ideal should lead to regeneration of society. “But this has not happened in Kashmir. Society has instead collapsed. There is a disjoint between what you want and what you are striving for”, he felt.
Raina also perceives a strong sense of defeat amongst Kashmiris today especially since so many had ‘believed in the movement at one point in time and had invested everything in the movement’. Now, he continued, you see a sense of personal defeat as well.
“While a similar thing happened in Punjab, the people of Punjab had moved on but in Kashmir, people have invested so much they would still want to hold on to it. That’s the state Kashmir is in now. They won’t criticize India but they will want to maintain that sense of alienation”, Raina felt.
For Raina, the solution lay in ‘first acknowledging and recognizing the problem, stressing on similarities and moving beyond our single religious identities. The Hindu-Muslim identity had become part of our psyche more after partition when it has become a tool. This is true of Kashmir also. It is when this has happened that vested interested have played their roles. We need to move beyond this single identity. We have many other common identities, Identities of us probably fighting the same system, identities of class, occupation. We need to stress on these.’
‘There is hope in education, economic growth. To become involved in leading our daily regular lives, to move beyond our only religious identities. Today in Kashmir, as my friend says in the film, people are more religious that before,” said Raina, wondering whether the heightened religiosity amongst youth indicated a major shift in society.
Raina’s films drawing to the need to stress on similarities, but along with an identification and recognition of the problem. As he put it, ‘WAPSI is not only about returning but to start over again, and it’s also about a new beginning.’

How far from being human

A brief note on Raina’s first film - Returning Home: Tell them 'the tree tree they had planted has now grown'.

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The film began as a personal journey for the director, to return to his home.
In Kashmir after 11 years. As the Director says, the film was “an attempt to overcome the fear of going back. And in the process talk to whoever we could” In a very subtle but strong way, the film communicates to us so much more than what is apparent. By bringing forward all the opinions that are not apparent in the regular news and political debates of Kashmir.
The opening line of the Film are evocative but soon bring into sharp forcus a deep sense of betrayal: “When my parents built our new house in Srinagar, they also planted trees on the boundaries of our compound thinking that some day our children, grandchildren would reap their fruits. The fruits we reaped instead is years of continued exile from our home cause we believed India is our country!”. And that is enough to get across to you the sense of betrayal that the.
Was trust the main casualty of the Kashmir conflict? Raina tries to leave the sense of betrayal Kashmiri Pundits have felt since the mass exodus in 1989 and find out whether the walls of mistrust can be broken.
Through the film, one hears several opinions and what clearly emerges is the realization that none of the groups seem to have obtained what they set out to grasp. Everyone seems to be worse off, from the JKLF representative who said, “when the movement began, it was different, and we all take sometime to realize our mistake’ or the board at one of the many graveyards in Kashmir reads ‘Lest you forget, we’ve given our today for tomorrow of yours’.
Everywhere, one cannot escape feeling a sense of deep remorse, for those who fought for a cause they believed in (right, wrong, no one can make the judgment) the movement which today as the movie reflects knows what Ii does not want but does not know what it wants.
For the ordinary person on the street, the last 15 years have led to a permanent mark on their psyche. The casual reaction to sounds of gunfire or the violence on the streets or the woman who was asked whether she felt afraid…. For the director, ‘the Kashmiris have become a humble, silent people, dumb by fear. They appear to be people who are caught in a web of events, they cannot control, who are on a back of a tiger not knowing how to dismount, who want to rid themselves of the people with the gun but do not know what to do with them!’
And what of the Kashmiri Pundit? Raina continuously asks himself is ‘If I were a Kashmiris Muslim, how would have I seen things?’ and the answer is, that it would be different. The tension between the sense of being a Hindu and a Minority did exist earlier and the Pundits in the camp voice the feelings that ‘when we left in 1989, we did not think we were leaving for good. We thought we will come back’.
And in this entire chaos, as the Director tries to make his personal journey back to the House in Srinagar only to find it completely deserted, with all the cupboards empty or to have even visited the temple at Rainawari but found it in ruin or the sense of regret amongst Kashmiri Muslims for the exodus and the feeling that though the ‘average Kashmir is still secular but the collective identity is that of a Muslim’, one is forced to re-examine the reasons for the apparent independence movement in Kashmir.
For the director, it is imperative that we ‘confront the ghost of partition and its effect on our collective psyche’. Only then, he believes, can we seek a solution that satisfies us all and build a road of rapprochement between to estranged brother nations!”
And what of the trees planted in his house: Alas, they were uprooted, leaving behind only the memories of better, more human, days and the realization that we have indeed strayed far away from the path of humanity…

The Mumbai-based writer is currently working as a research associate with a voluntary organisation. She is also (in her own words): ‘trying to figure my way out in this confusing world by talking to as many people, to learn of the different interpretations to life and the world! New knowledge and new viewpoints are what excites me the most!’. She can be contacted at nehatrivedi@gmail.com

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