Bhaskar Sarkar,
Mourning the Nation: Indian Cinema in the Wake of Partition.
Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8223-4411-7
US$25.95 (pb)
372pp
(Review copy supplied by Duke University Press)
Mourning the Nation is an important and timely book that seeks to explore the impact of the 1947 partition of British India on Indian filmmaking. In order to grasp the significance of this work it’s necessary to recap the events leading up to and comprising what has become known as Partition, which created India and Pakistan (and subsequently Bangladesh) out of British India and what was known as Princely India. The latter comprised a patchwork of states varying in size from Hyderabad to very small ‘princelets’, ruled by a variety of maharajas, rajas, nawabs and so on, who owed allegiance to Britain but were technically independent and in control of domestic affairs. In the immediate post-WW II era the British Labour government recognised that it could no longer rule India and agreed to independence. It appointed Lord Louis Mountbatten as Viceroy, who in turn accepted that a unitary state was not possible and that Muslim demands would be met with the creation of Pakistan as a separate nation. Mountbatten also advanced the date when Britain would leave India to August 1947, thereby creating another level of problems, one of which was how to divide the country. A London lawyer, Sir Cyril Radcliffe was appointed by Britain to determine the boundaries of the two countries on the basis of religious dominance of certain geographic areas. In the space of forty days Ratcliff and a very small team divided the subcontinent into two nation states: India and Pakistan, which in turn was divided into two non-contiguous areas; West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). A number of princely states tried to opt out of this arrangement without success. The outcome was that two major areas of British India, the Punjab and Bengal, were divided along religious or communal lines. The consequences of these actions have yet to be fully resolved (i.e Kashmir) but more importantly they led immediately to a period of unprecedented blood shed with over a million people killed and social and cultural dislocation; over twelve million internal refugees were created. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, some sixty-three years later, still bear the scars of Partition. Mourning the Nation is a brilliant attempt to uncover the traces (Sarkar refers to them as ‘runes’) through a combination of film studies, trauma studies and cultural history and their application to the Hindi and Bengali film industries.
The book is composed of an introduction, seven chapters and a brief coda. The introduction is the key chapter. Here Sarkar acknowledges the scale of the problem he seeks to address and then outlines the manner in which he will interrogate the problem. There is no doubt that Partition was a traumatic event not only for individuals but also for a country that was seeking to establish itself. Under Nehru a conscious decision was taken to emphasise nation building and economic autarky, create a polity that was inclusive and modern and underplay the divisive, separatist tendencies that were always there just beneath the surface. But above all the Nehruvian ideology was secular and opposed to communalism, which had underpinned partition. In short there were Indians rather than Hindus or Muslims.
Given that India has been film mad since at least the 1930s and that partition was traumatic one could reasonably expect to find the tensions it created worked out textually in the hundreds of films produced in the newly independent nation but Sarkar along with others have been hard pressed to find examples that actually confront partition. However, as others have pointed out, partition has been like an itch. You can’t see it but you feel it, and you scratch for relief. In many respects Indian films produced between 1947 and the 1970s treated partition in a similar manner to the way Hollywood dealt with the Vietnam War; through allegory and metaphor. Ulzana’s Raid (USA 1972) is in many respects a mediocre Western but when it’s read as an allegory of the Vietnam War the film acquires a depth and resonance that could otherwise be missed. The allegorical reading of Indian films, or more precisely Hindi films, is precisely what Sarkar proposes. To achieve these readings he constructs a theoretical framework that draws on an impressive number of key thinkers on culture, textual production and philosophy and takes as its core the concept of trauma. In this account trauma, in complex ways, leads to mourning and repression. The ability to read these films requires a number of strategies that Sarkar develops, drawing upon theories of memory and nostalgia and their relationship to allegory. The application of these strategies reveals that partition is a recurring motif of Hindi film from the very beginning, affecting not only content but also the form of the Hindi film, which in many respects is the defining characteristic of the Hindi cinema with its deployment of extravagant melodramatic tropes and reliance on bright colour codes and particular modes of editing. Thus partition hasn’t been ignored, but repressed and manifested in traces that shape the reading of the films and accounts for the overall sense of melancholia that infuses the films. It’s an ingenious argument that provides an interesting and insightful take on Hindi cinema but I’m not sure that it actually works, as I’ll argue below.
It’s not possible to do justice to all seven chapters in the space available so I will focus on two chapters; Chapter 3 ‘Bengali Cinema: A spectral subnationality’ and Chapter 7, ‘Mourning (Un)limited’ respectively, which I think illuminate both the strengths and weaknesses of the book. Calcutta was Bombay’s major rival for cinema until at least the 1970s and was noted for making more atmospheric, intellectualised films than the formulaic song and dance extravaganzas of Bombay. Moreover, Bengal suffered directly from partition as it was divided into West Bengal (India) and East Pakistan and the region witnessed some of the most ghastly sectarian violence in the lead up to independence. Consequently one could reasonably expect to find greater evidence of the impact of the division on films than elsewhere and I think Sarkar finds it, especially in his analysis of the films of Ritwick Ghatak, which are characterised by exuberant melodramatic content and technique. Hitherto the focus has been on Hindi cinema, avowedly All-Indian in its agenda, so by adding a major regional cinema, Bengali, to his argument Sarkar broadens the scope, marshalling some pretty convincing evidence for the trauma caused by partition.
Chapter 7 concentrates on a number of films that can be loosely categorised as ‘War Films’, a genre that emerged after the 1962 war with China and the occupation of Goa (1961) and expanded after the skirmish between Pakistan and India in Kargil in 2001. As I understand him, Sarkar is suggesting that the ongoing struggle to gain territorial integrity, that is recreate the imagined community evacuated by the British in 1947, allows the scars of partition to be foregrounded. Pakistan is the enemy, illegitimately carved out of Indian territory on spurious sectarian or communal grounds. Thus it’s permissible to discuss openly the trauma and resolve it through collective action. The war films, reminiscent of Hollywood, are star vehicles that feature military units comprised of men from all regions of India, who die for their country and thus atone for the past silence. Partition thereby becomes an all-India matter rather than a northern or Hindi issue. Indeed, as Sarkar points out, there now seems to be a Partition Industry operating in India with books, television serials and films all eager to explore the consequences of events that occurred sixty-three years ago. The value of this book is that it traces the origins of this form of cultural expression.
It is quite clear that I think that Mourning the Nation is an important addition to Indian film scholarship because of its depth and breadth of vision. Nevertheless, I have some reservations about the book. First, and its probably inescapable, Sarkar spends a lot of time discussing and analysing films that few viewers, if any, in the West will have ever seen or are likely to see. This may change as specialist courses in Indian cinema emerge and the films become available on DVD but in the meantime Western undergraduates will be turned off. Second, one has to ask what nation is being mourned? Or, more appropriately, whose nation? Sarkar acknowledges that partition has never had much impact on southern India where Tamil or Malayalam intellectuals are likely to interpret an argument about partition as a defining moment in Indian history as another example of Hindi cultural imperialism. Further, Sarkar, like many Indians, cannot avoid conflating India with South Asia leading them to assume that Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans see history through the same lens. They don’t! In Bangladesh, 1947 is acknowledged as a significant event but the defining moment is the 1971 liberation struggle whose trauma is visited on an almost daily basis in the popular press and TV. However, these criticisms do not detract from the value of this book as a work of scholarship.
When I began reading Mourning the Nation I was irritated beyond belief. Densely written, packed with references to postmodern theorists and concerned more with citation than clarity, the book was heavy going. However, I am pleased to say that perseverance paid off. On conclusion I felt that I had read something worthwhile, that has added to my knowledge of the Indian cinema and provided a new critical lens through which to gaze upon and think about the vibrant industry that is at last gaining a place in the critical arena. Mourning the Nation ensures this and is highly recommended.
Brian Shoesmith,
Edith Cowan University, Australia.
Created on: Monday, 23 August 2010