Documentary plays out Hindutva's horror

It was in our late teens as a media student that we were introduced to Anand Patwardhan the filmmaker Inside a dimlylit classroom the projector flashed his criticallyacclaimed 1992 documentary In the Name of God Ram Ke Naam for a distracted bunch of young girlsTen minutes into the film it felt like the air had been sucked out of the room This silence stifled when the demolition of Babri Masjid played out on the screen A similar feeling engulfed us as we watched Patwardhans searing new documentary Reason Vivek uploaded on YouTube earlier this month Reason which won the best featurelength film at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam IDFA last year has become accessible to the public at a time when we most need to see itAnand PatwardhanOpening with the murders of rationalists Narendra Dhabolkar and Govind Pansare the film veers to discuss the role of the footsoldiers of the Hindu outfit Sanatan Sanstha in these crimes before taking us into the troubled heartland of Dadri Uttar Pradesh where cow vigilantes have spread a blanket of terror and hate It also gives us a ground report of the Dalit and student unrest in the country While originally divided into eight chapters and running over four hours the videos accessible online have been split into 16 episodes each around 12 to 13 minutes longTo say that the film is an open criticism of Narendra Modis government would mean seeing it without a prism Because rightwing Hindutva doesnt owe its existence to the ruling party If anything Patwardhan wants to show how it has acquired its trueblue form in the advent of the prism in this case the BJP which has been on the iron throne for the last five years When I went to Ayodhya in 1990 following the Rath Yatra for my film I thought that the government of the day National Front was going to stand firm on secular values and not allow any harm to the mosqueBut the karsevaks entered and the mosque was attacked That moment was frightening because CM Mulayam Singh Yadav had assured protection In 1992 the mosque was demolished and the whole HinduMuslim fabric of the nation was ripped apart by riots and bomb blasts Since then the demonisation of Muslims has continued to the present All this also propelled the Hindu extreme right into the centre of politics says Patwardhan Today the RSS which had gone underground after Mahatma Gandhis murder in 1948 has funds coming from everywhere It is the fastestgrowing NGO in the world and because the BJP is in power it enjoys incredible impunity which extends to every fringe rightwing group like Sanatan Sanstha and the gau rakshaks He points out that in the last five years every single murder and blastaccused owing allegiance to Hindutva is walking free One of them Pragya Singh Thakur an accused in the Malegaon blasts is not only out on bail but has been given a BJP election ticket There seems to be no limit to what they can do and what the public will swallowPatwardhans disappointment with the polity is evident in every video and the filmmaker doesnt mince a frame to present the facts as he sees it Activists Jignesh Mevani Kanhaiya Kumar the late Rohith Vemula and the assassinated rationalists are the real heroes of his film But sometimes exercising no restrain means becoming easy meat There is a point in the film where a Sanatan Sanstha spokesperson tells the media that the police should have broken the bones of Patwardhan who led a rally at the Asiatic Library after the assassination of MM Kalburgi Unbeknownst to him Patwardhan was at the same press conference recording his claimsYou can conduct your trial right now Patwardhan tells him I started work on the film after Pansare was murdered in February 20 2015 Earlier when Dabholkar was shot dead I didnt realise that the killing was the beginning of a series of assasinations Soon the murders of Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh followedThe film took its organic course as beef killings the JNU protests and the Dalit andolan again put the spotlight on the threat to democracy Today its the poorest of the poor who are most affected The whole small and middle scale agriculture industry has been destroyed the banking system is a disaster due to bad loans and the working class has lost jobs on a huge scale thanks to demonetisation and other economic policies The whole economy has been hollowed out he says adding But for me the biggest tragedy is the hatred that has been widely spread India is now unrecognisable from what it was during the Independence struggle The India of Mahatma Gandhi has been smothered and what we have is the India of Amit Shah and ModiCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates