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[Every Indian should be ashamed that our Kargil martyrs were forgotten].
 
The Pioneer, Aug 11, 2003
Lens, lies & awards

Priyadarsi Dutta

It was ironical that Aparna Sen's Mr & Mrs Iyer won three National Awards, including for 'Best Patriotic Film', on Kargil's Martyrs' Day (July 26), the commemoration of which was summarily called off by the Government to pander to 'friend in the making' Pakistan. The Centre's inexcusable decision not only demoralised the army, it was technically faulty as well. Has Pakistan ever officially acknowledged responsibility for Kargil? What has our legitimate right to defend ourselves -and to take pride in it-have to do with friendship or enmity with someone else? If there is indeed a link, why not discontinue celebrating August 15 as well, since our erstwhile colonial master, Britain, is a friend of Independent India?
Meanwhile, Konkana Sen Sharma (Aparna Sen's daughter), recipient of the 'best actress' National Award for her portrayal as Mrs Iyer in the eponymous film, said to a TV channel that she hailed from privileged society and had no personal experience of communal tensions. This was well said. Indeed, Bengal's elite Leftist tribe does not believe in sending its children to the army but to America. The "privilege" of leftist intellectuals (who divide their time between India and the US) doesn't stem from the Marxist principle of bourgeois-worker relations-it comes from the fact there is a Hindu-Sikh army defending our frontiers. Yet we forget about Kargil martyrs and honour Mr & Mrs Iyer.
In a recent editorial in a women's magazine she edits, Aparna Sen criticised Bollywood films as communal, reflecting neo-Hindutva and based on the ethos of the opulent North Indian Hindu family. She is right. Bollywood rarely mirrors regional realities. But surely she knows the Hindi film industry gives Muslims greater representation than Tollygunj does? The Bengali film is 'not' under the Hindutva spell. But pray, in how many films has Sen ever played a Muslim? Also, it could be statistically proved that the legendary Uttam Kumar played an upper caste Brahmin Hindu 80 percent of the times. Why?
In her film, Aparna Sen herself does not portray the typical Muslim but a Westernised, cosmopolitan character, Jahangir Chaudhury 'Raja' (played by Rahul Bose). The other Muslim character, an old man played by Bhishm Sahni, is clean-shaven. They do not represent the orthodox majority of the Indian Muslim community, whose women wear the burqa. How many average Muslim men are free-wheeling wildlife photographers like Raja? The film tries to recreate a mini-India in a luxury bus against the breathtaking backdrop of majestic mountains-a mobile version of Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain Europe. The film demands willing suspension of disbelief when a Sikh character says his brother has a roaring business in Lahore-though Pakistan methodically cleansed or converted Hindus and Sikhs, leaving only the dregs.
The film suggests that there is no Muslim bigotry or underworld and squarely lays the blame for communal tensions on Hindu fundamentalists. Having written the script a few months prior to the incident, she did not account for Godhra -an event that represents the very antithesis of what the lady portrays. But surely she knew about countless cases in Kashmir where Muslim terrorists have stopped buses and selectively killed Hindus in the 1980s-1990s? Or about what happened in her home province at Dhantala, Nadia, where seven Hindu girls were gangraped in a madarsa under construction in February last? Either Sen's directorial third eye was flawed. Or she deliberately perpetrated a cinematic fraud, which the film jury hailed as a masterpiece.