The Kerala Files: "1921 Nadī Se Nadī Tak"

 

The Kerala Files: "1921 Nadī Se Nadī Tak"

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

I have just this moment returned from seeing the preview of a film 1921 Nadī Se Nadī Tak, and I am writing this review of the film when it is fresh in my mind, although it is 10.20 p.m. at the moment of starting this article. A few days ago, I received an invitation in my mail for the preview of the film, as a member of the Indic Academy online discussion group; and as, after having received a similar invitation for the preview of the film The Kashmir Files at probably the same venue (at a theatre in Juhu, Mumbai) and having been for various reasons unable to attend it, I did not want to commit the same mistake again, I made it a point not to miss the bus this time. And I certainly did not regret the decision. The film is superb, and I urge every Indian and Hindu to see the film as soon as it is released anywhere in their vicinity: as the film apparently received its censor certificate just yesterday, and I am one of the persons who had the privilege to be among the first few to view it before its official release, my review will also hopefully be the first one.

The film is directed by Rama Simhan (formerly Ali Akbar) from Kerala, and is based on the events of August 1921 known as the "Moplah Riots" as part of the "Khilafat Movement" , based on the detailed reports of the riots as penned down by K Madhavan Nair and K Gopalan Nair. Coming so soon after the film The Kashmir Files, there will naturally be comparisons and contrasts (and similar vicious attacks by the Breaking India Forces), and, as I had myself written a review of that earlier film, these comparisons and contrasts will necessarily and especially be there in my review as well.

I had personally met the director of The Kashmir Files, Vivek Agnihotri (even otherwise a well known personality and film-maker), before the release of the film, since I had the real privilege of having my fourth book released by him at a public function in Andheri (Mumbai) in 2019 along with another book by Major General G.D. Bakshi. However, I was not acquainted with the director of this film, Ram Simhan, before I received the invitation and met him today.

The film, as I already pointed out, is an absolute must-see for every Indian and Hindu, and historically literate person. It is an extremely worthy successor to the earlier film on Kashmir, and (this is a purely personal perspective, and in no way impinges on my tremendous respect for the earlier film and its director) and in fact even neutralizes (if that is the word) some minor grouses that I had expressed in my otherwise glowing review of that film:

1. I had written "The color schemes in the film struck me, as soon as the film started in the theatre, as on the dark and gloomy side." That could not be said in any sense about this film: not only are the color schemes in the film bright and attractive, but the film is full of beautiful scenery and views that makes one understand why Kerala is so highly rated as a tourist paradise.

2. I had written "The film seemed to show a minimum of gory scenes. Of course, as the Marathi proverb puts it, 'shitavarun bhatachi pariksha' (testing the whole rice dish by testing one cooked grain from it): the whole picture can be understood from the samples shown. But frankly, I personally would have preferred that the massacres, killings, molestations, burning of vehicles and houses, shooting of defense personnel, stone throwing by Kashmiri children and youths, etc. could have been shown on a larger scale and with larger casts". Again, that cannot be said about this film, which does not mince either words or cms. of film in showing the brutality of the Moplah rioters in all its stark reality and of the ideology behind it.

3. I had written "Finally, the one thing in the film that, to put it in Hindi, mujhe khatka, was the unnecessary reference to the present Modi-BJP regime. In the last few years, no-one can talk about any Hindu issue without directly binding it with the Modi-BJP identity. Both the anti-Hindu as well as the pro-Hindu sides compulsively link any and every Hindu issue with the Modi-BJP government". Once more, that cannot be said about this film. The film sticks strictly to the historical narrative and d0oes not bring present-day political-party interests into the picture.

 

I will add one more positive point about this film. While sticking strictly to the historical narrative, it indirectly makes a very important point which no-one (i.e. no Hindu) ever really bothers to learn: that bullies exist only because cowards exist. (a principle that even Gandhi had famously expressed). While on the one hand, it shows the overwhelming majority of Hindus allowing themselves to be beaten up and killed without raising one finger to defend themselves or to inflict injury in return, it does show two very important exceptions which furnish us with a very important lesson. In the first instance, while it shows Hindus being ambushed and killed at every juncture without the slightest resistance, it also shows one Hindu suddenly stepping out of his house with a sword and (I assume) highly trained kalaripayattu techniques, and confronting a number of sword-wielding Moplah attackers, killing most of them and driving away the others. Likewise, it later shows the main male protagonist hero of the film, Chathan, similarly attacking and killing or driving away a similar gang of Moplah rioters and killing most of them while the last one beats a hasty retreat.

This principle has been very strongly proved in modern times in at least two major instances in India. Before 1992-1993 in Mumbai, and before 2002 in Gujarat, rioting by Muslim mobs was a very regular (at least) annual feature of the scenario; and there was never any need for any genuine pretext. As I put it in my very first book in 1993, "Any event in any Muslim country [or, actually in any part of India] gives Indian Muslims the right to take to the streets and start vicious riots, all over the country, in an orgy of loot, arson and vandalism (especially vandalism of Hindu temples, shops and houses situated near Muslim areas). The event may be the arson by an Australian tourist in the Al-Aqsa mosque in far-off Jerusalem, the temporary take-over by a group of Sunni extremists of the mosque in Mecca, the execution of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto by Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan, or the death of Zia-ul-Haq in an aircrash." But after Bal Thackeray in Mumbai in 1992-1993, and Modi in Gujarat in 2002 (readers of my articles cannot be unaware that I am no Modi-bhakt for Modi as a PM, but I respect his role in Gujarat in 2002), and the fitting answer that the rioting Muslim bullies got, there has not been a single notable riot either in Mumbai or in Gujarat.

 

Another very positive point is that the film does not propagandistically show Hindus as saints. It depicts the casteist cancer in Hindu society on at least two occasions: in the first one, it shows brahmin landlords beating up a "lower-caste" person who inadvertently brushes against them in  the middle of a field, and in the second one, it shows the main female protagonist heroine of the film, Savitri, telling the main male protagonist hero Chathan (who is a "low caste" person working in her father's household till her family is killed by the rioters, following which he makes it his life's duty to protect her from the rioters during a long flight) that, even after the concerned rioters are all arrested or executed by the British, she cannot go back to her old house because the other brahmins will not accept her among themselves after she has spent such a long period in his (i,e, "low-caste") company, and so she prefers to marry him and remain with him.

And the film does not, as leftists and other Breaking India brigadiers do, treat this cancer as justification for the Islamic rioters, as if in some way the rioters are comrades or liberators of the "lower castes". In fact, it shows that the "lower castes" as well as the "upper castes" are both equally enemy heathens/kafirs to the Islamic ideologues, and equally targets of their fanatical zeal. Incidentally, I must point here to another short film (in Tamil, but with English sub-titles) which makes this same point with respect to Evangelists in Tamilnadu:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naFweLu42s0&t=196s

 

As this is a review, I must point out a few negative  things which I found missing or worthy of comment. First is the absence of reference to the follow-up of the riots. In a sense, this is not really a criticism, because I am sure the director knew exactly where he must stop (and he is finally the best judge of that), and, as I already pointed out, the avoidance of linking it to present-day political parties is a positive point. But, as a follow up to the film, I think it is only fair to point out certain things. Since there are repeated references to Gandhi in the film, I think it is necessary to mention here that after the horrific riots, Gandhi refused to condemn the Moplah rioters, called them "my brave Moplahs", insisted that there was only one case of forcible conversion in Kerala, asked the Hindus not to break "Hindu-Muslim unity" by reacting negatively to the riots, and actually set up a relief fund for the Moplah rioters rather than for their victims! And after Independence, Moplah rioters were classified as "freedom-fighters" and given pensions!

It is necessary to keep this in mind because, as a song in the film points out, the things taking place are going to continue taking place again and again, because no-one ever learns lessons from the past. What happened then is happening again today, and will continue to happen again and again till Hindus are completely wiped out from existence or reduced to a micro-minority in the whole of India. At that time Hindus refused to face facts and reposed all their faith in Gandhi and Nehru, confident that they were saviors of India and of Hindus. Today, Hindus in very large numbers hold them responsible for all the present ills. But today, there are new saviors, but the same refusal by Hindus to face facts and the same insistence on blind faith in "saviors". A hundred years from now, if Hindus still remain in existence in India in sufficient numbers to make their presence worthy of mention, there will be other new "saviors" along with the same refusal to face facts and the same insistence on blind faith in the "saviors" of the time.

Also, in the same vein, it is necessary to point out here that, in the centenary year of the Moplah riots, the same situation is very much accentuated even today in Kerala, whose percentage of Muslim population, and the jihadic fervor of that population, are increasing at an accelerating rate. In another twenty years, the dream expressed by the leaders of the rioters in the film, of turning Kerala into an Islamic state, may well become a reality.  

A second (minor) problem in my opinion was the language in the film. I set out under the impression that it would be a Malayalam film with English subtitles, and was happily surprised to find that it was a Hindi film, since it is necessary for such films to reach a larger audience within India. But, while the people of Kerala in the film speak Hindi (the main male protagonist even with a rural Hindi tinge, with words like "hamra" and "hamri"), there are large stretches of important dialogues spoken by the British characters in the film in English. They could also have been shown speaking Hindi (if necessary the caricatured British Hindi so popular in Hindi films and serials). The effect is that those dialogues may not reach the larger audience. Another thing I could not understand was the regular use of the English word "prophet" by Muslim leaders in the film instead of "nabi" when speaking in Hindi.

 

However, while there can be many more things to write about the film (for example, I did not exactly get the identity of the two rivers implied in the title of the film), I will end with a repeat of my request to Indians and Hindus to see this film and to propagate it on a war footing.

 

Additional section added 8/8/2022 morning:

I was in a hurry to write and post the article yesterday night, and forgot to add a point which I wanted to make.

The point is that, while watching the film, it struck me that to some people it may seem that the film, in certain parts, tries to promote the popular line: "Islam is good, it is only a section among Muslims who make it look bad". But this is not correct:

1. Firstly, the film presents Muslim leaders and religious figures spouting both the lines: "Islam is good, it is only a section among Muslims who make it look bad", as well as "To Islam, all non-Muslims are enemies who deserve to be converted, killed, or driven away". It is up to us to use our viveka-buddhi and choose.

2. The film is about history and religious politics, and not about religion itself as such, and it does splendidly on both the counts. It is not the duty of the director to tell us the truth about Islam. Anyone interested in that truth should read Voice of India and related books, by Sita Ram Goel, Ram Swaroop, Koenraad Elst, Arun Shourie, and others.

3. After the recent Nupur Sharma affair — and the way she was targeted, attacked, persecuted, insulted and humiliated from all sides, her life put at risk, and she herself thrown to the dogs and wolves — it would be extremely unfair to expect an efficient film-maker to concentrate on telling us the truth about Islam.

4. The truth is that it is not "Islam is good, it is only a section among Muslims who make it look bad", but, in the words of Mr. Kothari (I cannot recall his first name: he is the uncle of the Kothari bandhu who were shot and killed in pre-demolition Ayodhya under Mulayam Singh Yadav's chief ministership), whom I met in 1993 in Mumbai when he was touring the nation: "Musalman jab paida hota hai, wo insaan hota hai. Islam use haiwan bana deta hai".

Nevertheless, any orthodox and practicing Muslim, who is a Muslim only because his parents were Muslims, and who does not endorse or implement the "hate-non-Muslims" agenda of Islam, is very much an insaan. A disproportionately large proportion of my best friends in school, college, office, and outside, have been Muslims and Christians (and, incidentally, Parsis) who respected my honest, open, objective and non-hating stance on religion in contrast with the hypocrisy of leftists and secularists — incidentally, there were many Muslim workers in Sita Ram Goel's printing press — and in fact I was accompanied during my viewing of this very film by my orthodox and practicing Muslim friend.

5. And the best answer to the above (possible) charge is that the extremely brilliant director of the film is a Muslim who returned to Hinduism.

[A final point, totally unrelated to the film, but which I felt I must write about — as I sat squirming uncomfortably during the entire tenure of my viewing of the film — (and where else can I write this if not here) is the nature of the particular type of seats that it has become fashionable to install in all the latest and most posh and modern theatres. I have experienced them in other "posh" theatres. The backs of these seats do not end at the shoulders, they are long backs which go above the level of the top of our head. And, for some weird, inexplicable reason, the particular portion behind the head juts out prominently in the form of a convex bulge, which makes the viewer sit with his head slightly bent forward all the time, leading to intense pain in the back of the neck. This, in a nutshell, is the kind of progress and increasing user-friendliness that we find today in every matter].

 

Postscript added 8/9/2022: As was only to be expected in India, the film is facing a tough time in getting released:

https://www.opindia.com/2022/09/exclusive-how-ramasimhan-ali-akbar-movie-1921-moplah-genocide-hindus-stonewalled-cbfc/

With parties in power both in the state of Kerala and at the Centre vying for anti-Hindu votes (the party at the Centre has no qualms about losing Hindu votes: it believes, and correctly, that the "Hindu" voters are in its pockets and will not budge from that spot whatever happens), now the only event that seems certain is not the release of the uncut version of the film, but the cut "sar tan se juda" version of the film director.