Top Bangladesh art filmmaker turns to Gandhi for inspiration

Tanvir Mokammel, one of the top directors of Bangladesh's struggling art cinema, has been as much of an artist as an activist taking up the cause of peasants in villages. But when it came to espousing his belief in non-violence as key component of democracy, he could not but turn to Mahatma Gandhi.

The director of five nationally and international acclaimed feature films invoked the message of nonviolence propagated by the Mahatma at an international seminar in Australia earlier this month.

The seminar "Role of Cinema in the Process of Conflict Resolution" organised by Sydney University was held earlier this month.

The director says non-violence and reconciliation are at the root of Mokammel's last two documentaries "The Promised Land" (Swapnabhoomi) about Urdu-speaking people who had migrated from Bihar to East Pakistan after the Partition and "Teardrops of Karnaphuli" about the conflict between tribals and Bengali-speaking Muslims in Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts.

According to Mokammel, the two documentaries made "some contributions" in the conflict resolution in two very complicated ethnic and highly-sensitive political issues of Bangladesh -- the Biharis and the indigenous people of the Chittagong Hill district.

To escape communal riots of India in 1947, the Urdu-speaking Indian Muslims, known as Biharis in Bangladesh, had migrated from India to the then East Pakistan.

During Bangladesh Liberation war in 1971, the Biharis supported the occupation Pakistan army and were stigmatised as collaborators to Pakistan. After the independence of Bangladesh, they were put in squalid camps and had remained stateless citizens for 38 years as Pakistan repeatedly refused to take them as its citizens and Bangladesh did not accept them as their nationals.

"The Promised Land," made in 2007, narrates the miserable condition of the Biharis and dealt with the legal and socio-cultural problems in bringing the community into the mainstream of Bangladesh.

The film, says Mokammel, "helped to sensitise, even to create sympathy among a good section of the mainstream Bengalis about the plight of the Bihari community which ultimately resulted in a positive High Court verdict and paved the way for the citizenship right of the Biharis".

Mokammel, who has made some feature films and documentaries on Bangladesh's Liberation War has expressed satisfaction that "The Promised Land" has helped the Biharis get voting rights in Bangladesh from Bangladesh High Court in 2008.

"One Bengali judge of that High Court bench, which pronounced the verdict, later told a lawyer, an acquaintance of mine, that his views about the Biharis changed immensely by watching 'The Promised Land'" Mokammel said.

"As an artist, and as an activist, I was gratified. Fortunately, now most, if not all the Biharis have national identity cards and they can now enjoy equal rights like their other fellow Bangladeshi citizens" says the director.

"Teardrops of Karnaphuli" made in 2005, dealt with the conflict between the Bengalis and the tribal peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

In the 1960s, an US-funded hydro-electric project on Kaptai Lake forced around one lakh indigenous people of the Hill Tracts to leave their homes and their best arable lands were submerged. There was no proper rehabilitation and pauperisation increased in that area.

In mid-1980s, around half a million Bengalis from the plains were settled in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and the result was disastrous. The conflicts often led to violence.

The army was deployed and some massacres took place. In 1997 a peace treaty was signed between the Government of Bangladesh and the tribal militants. But the peace agreement was never properly materialised. The pent up tension between the Bengalis and the hill people are still visible and massive violence may flare up in the hills in any moment!

"Teardrops of Karnaphuli" narrates the causes of this intricate problem by interviewing both the Hill peoples and the Bengali-speaking Muslims and by trying to show the problem from different perspectives.

However, the film was banned by Bangladesh government and Mokammel moved the High Court which asked the government to show cause why the ban order was not illegal. The government has not yet replied the show cause notice.

This was not the first time that Mokammel has had a run-in with the authorities--the government or the censor board -- about clearance to his films, One of his earliest documentaries made in 1991 "Remembrance of 1971", a film on the murder of Bengali intellectuals by Islamic fundamentalist death-squads and Pakistani army during the 1971 Liberation War, is still banned in Bangladesh.

Some of his feature films like "Nadir Naam Madhumati" had to released with help of High Court clearance.

South Asia is replete with instances of ethnic and religious divides and conflicts. However, Mokammel says "the feeling of any hatred stems mostly from not knowing the other. If one knows the other properly, one knows the point of view of the other too. One can then disagree with him or her, but cannot hate".

"What is required to make an honest documentary that could help conflict resolution is an unbiased and objective view an an ability to understand different points of view, says Mokammel.