In early June this year, I reviewed Nakul Singh Sawhney's documentary film Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai (Muzaffarnagar Eventually…) for Himal Southasian. Shot between September 2013 and April 2014, the film captures the communal violence that tore through areas in north India in the run up to the 2014 general elections. The documentary meticulously maps out the cynical polarisation along communal lines in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts in Uttar Pradesh. Besides demonstrating how the riots played into the electoral calculations of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), it also indicts the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) for failing to provide protection, and subsequent support, to the riot victims and the displaced – an overwhelming majority of whom were Muslims. With these broad swipes at dominant political formations, the film has ruffled many feathers. Nevertheless, it was screened at a number of venues across the country, before a screening in Delhi faced a crude disruption.
On 1 August, members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, stopped a private screening of the documentary organised by the film society of Kirori Mal College in Delhi University. A video of the incident shows about 30 members of the ABVP marching into the venue about an hour into the film and demanding that it be stopped. The organisers asked them to watch the film before raising objections to it. Predictably, they refused, before threatening to assault a student who was recording the stand-off.
The immediate responses I encountered on social media after the incident ranged from the resigned ("Did you really expect them to listen?") to the belligerent ("You should have hit them back"). In a short while, however, a remarkably effective response was articulated by a number of groups and individuals, which culminated in coordinated protest screenings across the country on 25 August, less than a month after the disturbance at Kirori Mal College. To counter the unofficial censoring of the documentary, it was screened in over 50 towns and cities across 22 states. The film was watched in places as far flung as Nainital, Raipur, Lucknow, Vishakahapatnam and Gangtok, in small venues, auditoriums and even living rooms. Outside the country, there were screenings in Oxford and Kathmandu. It is difficult to say precisely how many people watched the film, but the organisers estimate the number to be around 7000. No wonder that Sawhney notes that it seems only right for him to send a bouquet to thank the ABVP, for ensuring a far larger audience for his work.
The success of the protest can be linked in part to the impressive networks nurtured by Cinema of Resistance (COR), the group that issued the call for the nationwide screenings. A movement that aims to bring progressive films and a culture of debate to diverse audiences, COR began in 2006, out of Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh. Since then it has held festivals and screenings throughout the country, funding its activities through donations alone. Many of the screenings of Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai were organised by local chapters or associates of COR. They also sent out DVDs to other groups who volunteered to host sessions. So along with the film, the day of protest was also a testimonial to the power of the kind of sustained, difficult work that COR does so well – widening the network of independent-cinema enthusiasts across the country. The date, 25 August, was picked to mark the first death anniversary of Shubhradeep Chakravorty, the documentary director whose film In Dinon Muzaffarnagar was denied the certification for public viewing by the censor board last year.