October 3, 2022 • 49 mins
This week, Neha discusses a few examples of films and television shows that depict Partition. She speaks with Shanti Thakur (Terrible Children) and Fatimah Asghar (Ms. Marvel).
Sources/Links:
Richard Attenborough - Gandhi
Sabiha Sumar - Silent Waters
M.S. Sathyu - Garm Hava
Gurinder Chadha - Viceroy’s House
Gandhi Is Deeply Revered, But His Attitudes On Race And Sex Are Under Scrutiny - NPR
Voiceover for Vinay Patel is provided by Raghav Ravi
Social Links:
https://www.instagram.com/partitionpodcast/
https://www.instagram.com/nehaaziz/
https://twitter.com/NehaAziz13
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Warning the following episode contains sensitive material. Film is an
essential part of my everyday life. I studied it in
college along with journalism, and for a time reported on
local film events and wrote reviews. Now in addition to
trying my hand at writing films, I programmed movies for
(00:24):
a few festivals. You could say I was a little
more than excited to talk about film and TV on
this show. In episode one, you heard me say that
my experiences watching Partition portrayed in the media left much
to be desired. I have seen a handful of depictions.
I'll discuss some of these examples with writers and filmmakers
(00:44):
Chaunty Dcor and Fatima Uscar, both of whom also have
their own work related to Partition. Before recording this podcast,
I had only watched Gandhi directed by Richard Attenborough, Viceroy's
House structed by Grinder Chad, the entirety of the Crown,
and one episode of Doctor Who. Since then, I have
(01:05):
watched Garum which means Hot Winds directed by m Satu
Commosh Pawnee or Silent Waters directed by Sabia Sumar, and
of course Miss Marvel. Which one should you skip and
which one should you immediately explore from I Heart Radio,
(01:27):
I'm Nahasis and this is partition a podcast that will
take a closer look into this often forgotten part of history.
(01:56):
Gandhi seems like an excellent place to start. It is
your base, sick, run of the mill biopic that starts
out with Gandhi as a young lawyer and how he
then transforms into the benevolent leader we learned about in
our textbooks. This film was made in two and I
think it's one that older generations tend to cling to
because of how massive this film was in every aspect,
(02:18):
the cast, the costumes, the production value, the sheer amount
of extras. I'm sure at the time the people of
India and Pakistan felt like their struggles were being recognized
by a global audience. In fact, when I asked an
elder relative if he had any suggestions on what maybe
good examples to watch, he suggested Gandhi. This film is
considered an epic and movies like this don't really get
(02:41):
made anymore. It won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture,
Best Director, and Best Actor for Ben Kingsley for the
titular role. It is also probably the most mainstream film
related to partition in terms of availability and so called prestige.
My first viewing of this film, I can say with
the utmost confidence, will be my last. I don't think
(03:04):
this film was great to begin with, and I certainly
don't think as time went on it aged particularly well.
It was truly a struggle for me to get through it,
not only because it was three hours long and felt
like it, but the utter lack of nuance is painful.
We don't really get a critical and honest portrait of Gandhi,
but one that is more filled with hero worship than
(03:24):
anything else. It is documented that Gandhi was a racist.
An MPR article from two thousand nineteen states that in
his early writings, Gandhi made comments that white people should
be the dominant race and black people are troublesome, very dirty,
and live like animals. If a film is attempting to
paint us a realistic portrait of a man, it must
(03:47):
also include the parts of him that are flawed and
unethical too. Now we don't have the time in this
podcast to dissect all that is wrong with the film Gandhi,
but here are a few key points. Ben Kingsley's brown
Face was truly unacceptable. He maybe have Indian, but that
doesn't change the fact that his skin was made significantly
darker with makeup. Gandhi was directed by a white British male.
(04:12):
I know this film was a passion project for director
Richard Attenborough, but when you have someone not from the
effected community at the helm of a project of this magnitude,
something will usually feel off. We get a finished product
that is clean and glossy instead of genuine and raw.
We had the villainization of Mohammad A Llegina, the founder
of Pakistan, so much so that the film was actually
(04:35):
banned in Pakistan upon its release. Instead of giving us
an accurate glimpse into the complexities of independence and Burrow,
along with screenwriter John Briley, decided to create a good
guys Versus Bad guys narrative. In reality, we know that
every man involved had their own self serving plan with
how they wanted independence to play out, including Gandhi. If
(04:57):
you're going to make a film with a hundred and
nine a minute runtime, at the very least attempt to
make it more on the mark. The last thing I'll
say is that Attenborough dedicated this film to Lord Mountbatten,
the man who oversaw partition and is responsible for a
good amount of the bloodshed. We see this declaration in
the first minute of the film that, more than anything else,
(05:20):
should tell the audience what type of film we're about
to embark on. It was Mountbatten's idea to hasten the
original timeline for a partition so the British wouldn't be
held responsible for the fallout. I don't think any Indian
or Pakistani would ever thank him for his service, which
brings me to The Crown. Let me preface this by saying,
(05:41):
I love the Crown. I love period pieces and costume dramas.
I worship Olivia Coleman, I love Corgis. I even had
a Twitter through I devoted to every corgy that appeared
on the show. Not enough, if I'm being honest. The
Crown tells the story of Queen Elizabeth the Second and
how she ascended to the throne and the many political
(06:01):
events that took place during her reign. I didn't watch
the show for research at all, more so because we
were sheltering in place and it was on my watch list. However,
that didn't stop me from noticing the extremely small allusion
to partition. In the pilot episode. Well, I know the
purpose of the series is to showcase the royals and
(06:22):
their lives. The British Raj was a major part of
their empire, and the pilot episode takes place shortly after Partition.
In this scene, we see the wedding of Queen Elizabeth
the Second and Prince Philip Winston. Churchill makes a grandiose
entrance with his wife and sees Mount Batton across the
church and gives him a very sharp look. As they
(06:45):
take their seats, Churchill whispers, with much disdain to his wife,
this whole thing is Mount Batton's triumph. He engineered it all,
the man who gave away India. I remember watching this
being like cool, that's a take, I guess. In contrast,
(07:08):
another popular British show, Doctor Who, actually portrayed the story
of Partition with respect. The episode Demons of the Punjab,
aired in and was written by Vinet Patel. Now I
know absolutely nothing about Dr Who, or the science around
it or what the police Box does. But when I
(07:28):
mentioned my work with this podcast to a few friends,
they told me about the storyline from the eleventh series,
so I decided to give it a watch. Watching this
one hour episode completely out of context. I was pleasantly
surprised it managed to capture the emotion, confusion, and brutality
of the situation well because it was told from the
(07:49):
perspective of the people. It directly affected supernatural elements aside.
We follow a Hindu family in a Muslim family in
the days leading up to a wedding where their children
are said to Mary. Tensions arise when the groom's brother
and his nationalist beliefs clash with the community. The audience
could feel the fear and the unknown future and safety
(08:11):
of these characters. Best of all, I did not see
any British characters, minus the characters who traveled with a
Doctor journalist Christian Hello from Entertainment Weekly as Hotel the
following question. Most Doctor Who time travel stories tend to
focus specifically on English history and it's great heroes like
(08:31):
Charles Dickens and Queen Victoria. But here the focus is
an event connected to England, but it also challenges English
assumptions about their own history and their role in the world.
Was that intentional? Potel responded with a lot of Doctor
(08:52):
Who history episodes are focused on these great figures like
Queen Victoria or William Shakespeare, and I liked the idea
of doing a story about people on the ground were
affected by a period of history but aren't really rich
or famous or well known enough where they can just
(09:13):
shake it off of it, because the greatest tragedy of
partition is that the people it affected were people who
are not remembered or acknowledged. Making them nobody's to focus
on them felt like a really exciting thing and an
important thing to do, rather than focus on the viceroy
(09:34):
who would have been in charge at the time. I
couldn't agree more. I met with filmmaker Shanty Decor to
talk about some other films that depict partition. Shanty directed
(09:56):
a deeply personal documentary about her father titled Terrible Old Children.
She explores many different facets of his life, including partition.
I discovered this movie when I was submitted to the
Cleveland International Film Festival, where I was curating films. Since then,
it has gone on to screen at numerous festivals around
(10:18):
the world. So my father got a letter from his
father who was still in India, and he only opened
the letter twenty years after his father's death. And he
gave me this letter and said, maybe you can do
something with this. So I read the letter and that
(10:41):
was the beginning of a path to making my film
Terrible Children. Over the next three years, and I really
learned the challenges that he had, not just within his family,
but living in India during the backdrop of partition, which
really triggered him to one to leave India to come
to California where he eventually met my mother. And it's
(11:05):
an unlikely love story between my father and my mother,
who was from Denmark. And I learned the context for
why my father's family banished my family when my father
married a Danish woman. Shanti is another person who had
to find out the story of nine herself, and I
wanted to know what sources she looked into to find
(11:27):
out more. Well, because my father never talked about partition,
I knew I had to learn about it on my own.
So it was really literature where I was able to
get like the heart and soul of the stories. Um.
Two books I learned about were Cracking India by bobsy
sidwa Um that's through the perspective of a party woman
(11:50):
living through partition, and Midnight's Children of Course by Salmon Rushdie.
And what I loved about those books was there was
an authenticity about characters and the day to day moments
of living in this environment where people had to make
very subtle choices which could lead to life or death.
(12:12):
So literature really informed me. And then um, and then
I saw a documentary, a four part documentary. I believe
it was from BBC or Channel four, I can't remember.
And it was a very you know, it was a
journalistic you know, give me the dates, give me the
politicians name of what happened. And of course I watched
it because I wanted to learn as much about the
politicians who were involved and so forth. But there was
(12:35):
really something lacking. It seemed really one dimensional around these
kind of almost arbitrary conversations between politicians, but not like
what was happening in the hard and soul of the
people on the street. I asked her how she prepared
to talk about partition in her documentary. So the first
(12:55):
thing I did when I was preparing to make the
film was I started to write the vice over. I
had to make sure all the facts were in place,
but I also had to get to the emotional truth
of the story, which was my father's story, which I
was telling. I went to the National Archives to see
what I could use for my film, and there were
(13:16):
just incredible images that, um, you know, it's true that
that an image can tell you a thousand words. And
I didn't know what was possible because I had to
figure out, how am I going to tell this story?
How can I represent the unrepresentable about these stories if
I don't have the footage right? So, um, there's a
part in partition where I found this footage in the
(13:39):
National Archives. It was footage of demonstration um in India
and where British soldiers were essentially beating Indians out right.
So I looked in the US for footage, and then
I also looked in the UK for footage. It's she
(14:00):
discovered something that shocked her. What was so interesting was
this particular section of footage which was so important to
tell the story. Of course, you want to see, like
here's the tension between the colonialists and the Indians, right.
And then when I was looking at exactly the same
footage from the UK, it had deleted. It had taken
(14:24):
out the shots where the British soldiers were beating up
the Indians, And it was so fascinating to think well,
this is supposed to be the quote objective history of
a country that is saved in the archival footage. And
I thought, well, that's really interesting. And of course you think, well,
what in America are we not showing this our national history?
(14:46):
But that's another conversation. But it was so it was
very interesting to see how different countries represented their relationship
to partition, as well as taking these epic stories and
turning that into a micro event. I think his children
of parents who went through partition and who won't talk
(15:11):
about it so much, a part of our healing is
to understand what happened on a micro level and a
macro level. You know, how did this affect our family
in ways that we have to investigate when they won't
talk about it. Shanty then describes walking in the streets
and neighborhood where her father witnessed violent attacks. So when
(15:37):
I went to India to shoot the film, it was
just myself and my cinematographer, and I met my cousin
who is my father's nephew, and he brought us through
the neighborhood where my father experienced partition. It was an
interesting neighborhood. Um, it was in Old Delhi. My father
ran away from home at sixteen. Tolaeth's grandmother and she
(16:01):
lived in this building that was just on the edge
of the Muslim section in Old Delhi, and she ran
an a or vetic business. She had her doors open
to everyone. She was a healer, right, And so my
father has this memory of waking up in the middle
of the night to the sounds of slaughter, and that
(16:23):
was Muslims passing through the street unaware it was a
Hindu neighborhood. And this is what he woke up to
as a teenager, and it haunted him. One Terrible Children
premiered in Cleveland. There was quite a few audience questions,
mainly from older viewers. I really appreciate people's curiosity and
(16:47):
willingness to learn, and whether they come from a South
Asian background or a Jewish background, or you know. I mean,
I just think that that reverberation of trauma translates on
so many different levels. So if people have never heard
of partition before, that's cool. Let's have a conversation and
(17:09):
let's start to make observations and share these observations with
each other about how this affects us and how this
affects our families. Moreover, how do we survive it and
how does it make us stronger? I wanted to know
how Shanti's father felt about the seventy anniversary. Yeah, I
(17:30):
brought it up to him, and it was obviously something
he was very uncomfortable about. But what I do see
is that he is deeply, deeply affected by seeing what
was happening in the Ukraine, seeing what was happening in Rwanda,
seeing the same cycles of this belief of racial purity
(17:52):
and ethnicity and how that destroys people. So he kind
of sees these goes of partition throughout his lifetime, which
is really haunting. And I think that's something that everybody
needs to listen to about partition, because it is yet
just another example of how history keeps repeating itself. You
(18:16):
can learn more about future screenings and bookings for Terrible
Children on Shanty's website shanty decor dot com. I thought
Shanty would be a fun and interesting person to discuss
(18:36):
the last three films on my list, so I asked
her to watch them so we could talk about it.
All of these films were directed by South Asians. Up
first is Vice Roy's House, which was released in and
based on the books Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins
and Dominique LaPier and The Shadow of the Great Game,
The Untold Story of Partition by Norandera Singh Sarila. Like Gandhi,
(19:01):
this film was also been a Pakistan due to its
characterization of Jinna Viceroy's house. Follows Mount Batton and his
family while he oversees the disillusionment of the British Raj
in India. There is a downton abbey upstairs downstairs like
way of storytelling where you see the Indians, Muslims and
Sikhs serve Mount Batton's household as they talk amongst themselves
(19:23):
about the issues going on as they overhear possible outcomes
of partition. A felt filmmaker grew in their child A's
heart and intention were in the right place, but the
general consensus for Shanti and I was that there was
too much information being squeezed into the film. Both of
us greatly admire Childa's work, but here we get a
cliffs notes version of events, fragments of stories that ultimately
(19:47):
leave us with nothing. It's so interesting trying to judge
films on a historic event. We're going to be looking
at several different films that portraying Partition. But for me,
the first question is who is the audience? Whoever the
writer director is, they have to think about who the
(20:08):
audience is, who's funding it? Right? So I mean it's
a vice stories house. It's showing both the British and
the South Asians, but it's pretty clear that the primary
and protagonists are the Mount Mountains and we're following their narrative,
We're following their point of view, and the secondary story
(20:31):
is about you know, Lord Mount Battons, Indian valet who's
falling in love with the Muslim woman and the loss
of his family during Partition. But that's just structurally in
terms of the script. That's how it's created, and we're seeing,
which I think is good. We're seeing both positive and
negative characters in both the British and for the South
(20:53):
Asian characters, but essentially we are being asked to emphathize
with the Mount Battons. This was another point of contention
for me. Mat Baton was portrayed with an exuberant amount
of sympathy. I have not read Phenom at Midnight. My
father had read it when he was in school, and
I did consider looking into it as a part of
my research for this podcast. I had asked several historians
(21:17):
and other academics about their thoughts. But this book wasn't
held in very high regard because it's mostly a firsthand
account from Mobaton. Combine this with the fact that Viceroy's
House was in part produced by BBC Films and the
British Film Institute, I can hazard our guests as to
why his character isn't judged too harshly. But it would
(21:40):
have been very different if the primary story was about
this Hindu man falling in love with a Muslim woman,
seeing what she had gone through in the refugee camp
with her father, etcetera, etcetera. So I mean the structure
of the story I would imagine I have not read
the book that is based on, but the writers and
(22:01):
the director had to follow that particular story. So I
don't want to ask a square to become a circle.
It is what it is. But what was interesting was
the scenes that were supposed to be so dramatic that
was happening on Partition, with the riots and the trains
and and the violence. It somehow did not fall to
(22:27):
me as horrible as it actually was. Whereas when I
see the suggestions of it in other films and how
it's absorbed by the families on an intimate day to
day level or moment to moment level, when we're invested
in those characters, that's a whole other experience. So you know,
(22:49):
here in the Viceroy's House, it felt more just something
to keep the plot moving. There were a few scenes
that planted seeds for what was going to come with partition,
but they don't really grow in the way that is
needed to showcase the gravity of the situation. When the
filmmaker makes it very clear that this is a story
(23:13):
about a Muslim patriarch and his family, like in garm
Haaba or Silent Water, where it is a story about
the matriarch of her family and her very problematic son,
we are clear from the get go this is who
we're following, and we get their subjective point of view,
(23:34):
whether we agree with it or not, that's what it is,
and I think with the Viceroy's House we were getting
his point of view, but there were just too many
things going on. At the end of the film, there
was a message where Chada, the director notes her own
partition story about her grandmother who fled to present day
(23:55):
India and was reunited with her husband after a year
and a half at a refuge camp. That is a
story I would have liked to have seen. When you
can put a phase to an event like this, that
to me is where the audience is going to really
resonate and connect with the story and characters. I had
the same reaction when I saw the kind of biographical
(24:18):
summary of of who she was as a director. I
was like, Oh my gosh, I would love to see
the film that she would write from the beginning. That
would be amazing. Unlike Gandhi and Vice Rays House, which
(24:40):
can easily be found on a variety of platforms to stream,
rent or buy, that was not the case for Garamhava
or Silent Waters. I could not find either of them
on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, Max or the countless other
streamers we have at our fingertips. For Silent Waters, I
was able to find and its streaming online on Canopy
(25:02):
from my local public library, but different libraries have different
content available. They luckily also had a DVD I could
check out if I needed. When I looked for garamha
The only copy I could find was a VHS at
the UT Austin Library, where it certainly was not going
to work. I miraculously ended up finding it on YouTube,
(25:22):
but it is unclear if that was purely by chance
or was vetted to be on the platform. It's no
wonder many don't know about partition or the tragic details
the widely available examples I came across given incredibly condensed
version of events. We live in a world where if
something isn't available in an instant or at the push
of a few buttons, we are less likely to seek
(25:44):
it out. Accessibility is a big problem when it comes
to finding more accurate depictions of partition and it's lingering effects.
Silent Waters takes place in nine nine. We follow Aisha,
a widow who survived the violence of part Visition, going
about her life in a Bakisani village. She has a son, Selene,
(26:05):
who is lost in more ways than one, and in
the process of trying to figure out his future, get
swept up in extremism when some Islamic activists come to
their village. Her son's new erratic behavior triggers a lot
of painful and traumatic memories for Aisha. This film took
the well known European Film Festival Locarno by storm, taking
(26:28):
home the awards for Best Film, Best Actress for Care
and Care, and Best Director for Sabiya Sumar. Garamhava takes
place in as AMRSA family are trying to navigate their
lives as Muslims in India since they did not want
to leave their ancestral home. The family struggles with discrimination
within a changing political landscape. Since both films take place
(26:53):
after a partition and follow a specific family and the
consequences they must endure from their choices and lack thereof.
Shanty and I discussed these films mostly in conjunction with
each other. Something that I felt was very distinctive in
these movies is that we see the perspective of two
Muslim families, and that was very deliberate, Loyalty being a
(27:14):
major theme that overlaps. Before Pakistan everyone was Indian and
in garam Hova where we really see what identity the
family prioritizes. They don't want to go to Pakistan. India
is their home and that doesn't change because of some
man made border. I think they're so interesting to watch
(27:36):
side by side because garm Hova, you know, he was
made in nineteen seventy three. It's an art film. He
was credited with pioneering a new wave of art cinema
movement in Hindi cinema was for a very specific audience.
And Silent Water is also an art film. So these
are two films that assume the audience has some understanding
(27:58):
of what partition was, so they don't have to go
through the historic epic scenes. And so both of these
films are so intimate by getting to know these characters,
becoming invested in them, feeling what they feel, being concerned
for them, and that's how it triggers our interest into
(28:19):
what partition is. If we're outsiders, we don't need to
know the history lesson version of partition, but more so
how people reacted to it, how it changed their life,
the ramifications both positive and negative of their actions. That
is how you get people to engage and care. Throwing
a number of statistics without context isn't really going to
(28:42):
mean much to people. It seems to be made like
it's for folks who are already familiar with partition. But
when it wins Best Film at the Lucarna Film festival
in Switzerland. Clearly it is translating to an audience outside
of the South Asian audience. So Silent Water it was
(29:03):
made in two thousand three. So now we're we're seeing
a woman character who has agency and Garaba. The women
are quiet, they kind of go along with what's happening
with the family patriarch. I'm not going to judge in
vent three film with the two thousand lengths us simply unfair,
but Silent Water it was. What was so interesting was
(29:28):
from the very first scene to the very last scene,
we're watching this woman's choice with how she deals with
her son, with how she teaches young girls the Koran.
She's very inclusive in her teachings, to her choice of
talking to her son when he's dealing with Islamic extremists
(29:51):
and is frightening Lee taking their stance on things. We
learned that Aisha used to be a seek and a
former life. So when many Seeks are granted permission to
visit shrines in the village, she makes food for them,
but their presence also makes a recall memories from her
past to her choice of giving food to the visiting Seeks,
(30:18):
and these are quiet, very simple very profound gestures. She's
not calling arms to anything, but these are the areas
where she has agency and she can make a difference.
And once we see the film and we know and
we understand that it was her choice to not jump
(30:39):
in the well with the other seek women, that was
her choice to live. And then when we learn what
her choice is at the end of the film, which
I won't give away again, is her choice, but this
time her choice is affected by how the whole village
(31:01):
and her family treated her. It is a story about
how a woman is using her agency in an incredibly
oppressive situation. We talk about as sun Selin. We see
similar situations play out, not only in film and TV
and literature, but in real life. So many lost boys
(31:25):
and men are susceptible to radicalization and ray superiority. The US,
for example, it's home too many of these people. I
was really taken by the portrayal of the Sun and
how he was lost. He was under employed, he was
under educated, he was hopeless. That's an awful feeling, and
(31:51):
that is a timeless stateless nationless existence, right Like in
other words, it doesn't matter where you are in the world,
what century, or what decade you're in. That's a constant
that you're going to have people in the population who
are under educated, underemployed, feeling powerless. And in so many
(32:13):
different countries we're seeing like those are the guys who
will join whatever extremist group, and you can I'm not
just gonna say it's you know, in this case, it
happened to be an extremist Islamic in this country and
maybe a white supremast. So the film was about what
was happening in nineteen seventy nine. But the beauty of
(32:35):
this kind of storytelling is it becomes universal and it
is this kind of warning of like, this doesn't just
happen in this country in nineteen seventy nine. We're seeing
it right now, and that's the beauty of a film
that's beautifully told. In Garama, we see two brothers of
a multigenerational family, Salim and Helene. Salim owns the family
(32:57):
shoe business and Halim is a political community lead here
who is the first of the family to move to Pakistan.
This was a story that was so smartly told. You
have these two brothers, one who is a very well
respected businessman who is the main character and the other
(33:17):
who is he's a kind of religious leader in the community,
but also an opportunist, and so it's really the businessman
who sticks around and who has this unwavering optimism to stay.
And I found it so interesting. There was a quote
in the film that was said by his brother which was,
there's something stronger than religion bribery. So day today you're
(33:42):
seeing how this family is disintegrating before your eyes. And
it's all the more heartbreaking because his father, the patriarch
of the family, is a man who holds such dignity
and kindness and compassion for those around him. Because the
(34:02):
majority of the mers A family stay in India, they
see their lives crumble around them. They do not hold
the same statue in the community. They are treated very
differently by people who are once their friends and their neighbors.
Their business deteriorates immensely. Multiple acquaintances tell them to move
to Pakistan, that they would have a better life, but
(34:23):
the mirrors as are steadfast, and their decision to stay again.
I think it's a specific in the story that becomes
so universal, Like we know what racism is in the
Western world, but when we see it there the day today, humiliations.
It is crushing to watch this wonderful person have to
(34:47):
bear this load of like not getting a bank load,
difficulty finding a house to rent, watching his family one
by one leave from Pakistan, until we actually see, you know,
something being thrown at him in the street, and it's
just it's it's so hard to watch again. I think,
(35:08):
similar to Silent Waters, We're watching a character make choices,
day to day choices, and those are the choices that
define who they are and their morals and their way
that they're going to survive that fits for them, not
how the country tells them what they should do. I
(35:52):
knew with that question when MS Marvel came out on
Disney Plus that I was going to watch it. I'm
very behind the m c U, but I had to
watch to this show with a Muslim superhero. Kamala Khan
is an ordinary girl living in New Jersey with her
Pakistani family when one day she gets superpowers like the
heroes she's always looked up to. I had absolutely no
(36:15):
idea that partition was going to be a major storyline
in the series. Thanks to this show and its creative team,
so many more people in the West know about partition.
Here to talk more about bringing these stories to life
is writer and filmmaker Fatima Ascar, who wrote the fifth
episode in the series called Time and Again, and serves
(36:35):
as a co producer on the show. Fatima uses she
they pronounce. All six episodes of Miss Marvel are streaming
on Disney Plus. Fatima's latest work, a novel called When
We Were Sisters, will be released on October eighteenth, and
the book is currently on the National Book Awards long
list for fiction. But before we had our conversation about
(36:59):
Miss Marvel, I talked to Fatima about their collection of
poems published in If They Come for Us. The book
features several poems about partition. I actually hadn't really seen
partition in media at all, and it was kind of
mostly through the stories of my family that I pieced
(37:20):
together and figured out we're about partition. I was like, wait,
what is this event? Like what is this thing that happened?
And it was really then that I was like, oh, okay,
like I want to learn more about it. And so
as I was writing If They Come for Us, and
this was like before it was even an idea that
(37:40):
it was going to be a book, I was writing
poems that were about Partition, and it was really through
you know, the writing of those poems and and wanting
to do more research that I really started to look
into that. So it was it really came about because
I was very hungry for information and I was looking
at it, and that's kind of how I found out
(38:02):
so much about Partition. That was when I was really
in deep research mode for Partition, and it was very
clear to me as I was writing if They Come
for Us, and there were so many ethical questions I
was up against. There's so many things that I considered
as I was writing that book, and especially as I
was writing the Partition poems, and I did an incredible
amount of research in order to write that book. The
(38:24):
next year, they got a phone call. There was a
moment in twenty nineteen when Marvel called me in to
have a meeting with them, and they didn't tell me
what it was that. They were just like, hey, we
would like to meet with you, and I just kind
of thought it was like a regular meeting. And I
remember I got to Marvel in my head, I was like,
I wonder if they would ever do like Miss Marvel
as a series like it was. So was nineteen like
(38:46):
it was just so different. Um, and I didn't. I
just didn't think it was on the radar, especially because
it had been such a few years under publishing, like
she had just come out, and so I was like,
I think I'm just going to ask them in my meeting,
like hell, if you what what would you ever do
something with that? And then the executive who brought me in,
we were like walking around and then she swiped in
(39:07):
for a conference room that was just gonna be me
and her. We walked in. As soon as she shut
the door, She's like, I'm here to talk to you
about Miss Marvel and I was like, Okay, cool, I
don't need to bring it up. You're going to bring
it up. And then, um, that started off a very
intense period for me where I was I just started
to work for Marvel. I was incredibly curious how show
(39:28):
and her Bishop k Elie infused Partition with Miss Marvel
and asked how the idea came about. Fatima explains, when
we all started to work in the writer's room, you know,
she had an idea and a vision um, but there
wasn't a pilot script yet and we were all kind
of really working on what would this show look like.
(39:49):
And it was really beautiful how she ran the room
because it was very um. There was a kind of
egalitarian quality to it or equal um quality, where it
was like everybody just was really able to contribute a
lot of ideas and she was a really good facilitator
of that, and so it was just really beautiful to
work with that creative team for um the months that
I worked there. There wasn't a mandate from Marvel that
(40:13):
was like these are the storylines. It was done through
Visi's vision and through the writer's in the writer's room,
and so very early on into the process, I actually
talked a lot about partition. I kind of gave a
like a luxury to the writer's room about partition, and
everybody was like, we would really really like to include
this and the series, you know. And I think that
that was something that Bisha had wanted um before, you know,
(40:36):
and it was something that I felt like also was
really important. All the South Asian Muslim writers in the
room front like was really really important and so um
that was kind of how that came, and they really
came from the writers in that room really wanting that
and then really fighting to have Partition via centerpiece of
the show. They went into more detail on how Partition
(40:58):
was going to be represented on the screen. You know,
in terms of getting into the mindset, it's also getting
into the characters, Like it's a very character driven story,
and there were things that you know, even just considerations
around like knowing that it was going to be on
the Marvel, knowing that it was going to be on Disney,
knowing that we were going to do these things, what
were we anchoring in? And it was very important for
(41:21):
me that we not anchor and I think all the
writers in the room, Ambishop, that we not anchor in
like trauma porn, and that this wasn't just like look
how bad this thing was, or look how bad we
had it. But what we did was we anchored in
a love story, and we anchored in the love between
these two characters, and we were able to say, look
at this as the backdrop of what we've seen. And
I think for most people in the West, I don't
(41:43):
know that they've really seen images of partition. I think
that like that is not a thing that folks have
a visual reference point for. And so you know, it
was very important to me that that story be around
and centered around a train because of the symbolism, the inventory,
symbolism of the trains and partition, and I think it
(42:04):
was very important for a Western audience to see that
visually and to say, wow, this is what this looks like.
You know, you read a number and you don't compute
the number, but this is what this looked like. And
I think that that was very important. With each episode
of Miss Marvel, I would get more emotional because so
(42:26):
many parts of the show I can wholeheartedly relate to
on many levels. There is one specific scene in episode
four where Kamala travels to Karagi and she's having a
conversation with her grandma. Her grandmother tells her my passport
is Pakistan, but my roots are in India. And in
between all of this there is a border, a border
(42:50):
marked by blood and pain. People are claiming their identity
based on an idea some old Englishman had when they
were fleeing the country. These few sentences holds so many truths.
In previous episodes, we talked about the difficulty of going
back to India and Pakistan and how these borders are
(43:11):
soul crushing for the people who are in some ways
trapped what I've seen is people be like, I did
not know that you could get that on Marvel. Like
the fact that you guys did that, the fact that
you pushed forward and fought and got that on Marvel
is huge. And I think I've heard that from South
(43:32):
Asian people, but I've heard that from people who are
not South Asian but who are like the fact that
you could include like this deep historical component on a
major superhero franchise like show is pretty wild. And I
was like, yeah, I think so. And you know, there's
just things that I saw, like Fisha had sent me,
(43:53):
like there was like a little bit of a like
a Google search history um for you can kind of
like see the Google metrics and stuff. After episode four,
the search results for Partition like skyrocket, Like people were
googling like what is the partition of Indian and focus
on and so to literally be like, wow, we like change.
(44:13):
The Google algorithm is pretty huge. And you know, I
think also I saw a lot of people and a
lot of South Asian people on Twitter being like I've
never asked my family about our partition history, Like I've
never asked about this, and now I'm going to go
ask And then people were sharing their stories and to
(44:34):
do something like that, like to have a moment like
that in popular culture where you're like, you know, I
I grew up never seeing South Asian people on TV,
Like I, you know, it was like I think all
of us did, where it was like there is no
South Asian people and if we have them, their gas
station owners or their doctors, or their terrorists or they're
they're repressed Muslim woman, like, there's really no nuanced representation
(44:57):
of South Asian people. M This right here is proof
of how powerful the visual medium can be. Representation is important,
but it needs to be accurate, show multiple types of
groups instead of showing stereotypes. Fatima mentions a study that
came out recently about Muslim representation by the Pillars Fund,
(45:20):
an organization that champions Muslim voices. There was justice statistic
that Pillars issue that was like one percent of characters
on TV are Muslim and of the world's population is Muslim.
And it's really disheartening when you occupy those bodies and
you occupy those identities to say like damn, like really
(45:41):
like you can't fathom my existence, Like you can't fathom
that someone like me exists. With a rich, complicated history,
with rich complicated identities. And I think that what I
saw from the show overall was people responding to being
like I feel seen, you know, thought them has the
hope that with the success of the show, more stories
(46:03):
about Muslims by Muslims can be made. They kind of
are like a punch in the ceiling, like they allow
for more things to happen because people then have a
reference point to be able to say, like, well, look
at the success of this, like look at what they did,
Like look at how people felt seen. Now we can
make more content that's like this, or we can make
(46:24):
content that's different. But because this show exists, it allows
for more freedom. Like I think one thing too about
representation is that when you're so underrepresented that any time
then you have a character that is of Muslim or
salth Asian descent, they kind of have to be like
perfect quote unquote, because then you're like, but then everyone's
going to say that most some people are bad or
(46:45):
it's gonna be this representational burden, and it's like, well,
some mostli people are selfish, like some of some people
are assholes, like some Muslim people are whatever, just like
everyone is and I think that when you kind of
have the first one to really go than what you
allow for us people to get into more nuanced conversations
about what does the slice of life version look like
(47:08):
for Muslim people? What doesn't mean for Muslim people to
have complicated identities where they're not good or bad, but
whether they're just human and they get to exist in
this kind of complicated existence. And I think that, um,
when you have shows like this, it really becomes a
blueprint or a openness for more things to be created
(47:29):
in the aftermath of it. Unfortunately, Disney Plus is not
available in Pakistan, but MS Marvel was released theatrically there
with six episodes being screened two at a time. How
special for Muslim kids to finally see themselves as a
superhero on the big screen. The Indian and Pakistan borders
(47:55):
are discussed or alluded to in some capacity in every
single episode on this show. Next time, I sweet to
dr Data a lecture on international relations, so further break
down this topic with me from an historical perspective, Whether
(48:15):
the border is open or closed, as you rightly said,
is often a question of geopolitics. It's, you know, down
to who's in power, who's not in power. There was
at one point of bus that went to Lahore, there
was a train that went to Taka, right, So there's
this kind of bus diplomacy. There are trains on the
eastern side of the border, and then every so often
something happens like the Cargill War and these are shut down,
(48:38):
you know. So there are moments in which diplomacy opens
up these borders and moments in which the borders are
closed until next week. I'm Nejazis and this is partition.
Partition was developed as a part of the Next Up
initiative created by Anna has Ni, a Joel Monique and
(49:01):
the Sinia Median. Partition is produced by Anna Hosnier, Tricia
Mukerjee and Becca Ramos. It is edited by Rory Gagan,
with original score composed by Mark Hadley.
Warning the following episode contains sensitive material. Film is an
essential part of my everyday life. I studied it in
college along with journalism, and for a time reported on
local film events and wrote reviews. Now in addition to
trying my hand at writing films, I programmed movies for
(00:24):
a few festivals. You could say I was a little
more than excited to talk about film and TV on
this show. In episode one, you heard me say that
my experiences watching Partition portrayed in the media left much
to be desired. I have seen a handful of depictions.
I'll discuss some of these examples with writers and filmmakers
(00:44):
Chaunty Dcor and Fatima Uscar, both of whom also have
their own work related to Partition. Before recording this podcast,
I had only watched Gandhi directed by Richard Attenborough, Viceroy's
House structed by Grinder Chad, the entirety of the Crown,
and one episode of Doctor Who. Since then, I have
(01:05):
watched Garum which means Hot Winds directed by m Satu
Commosh Pawnee or Silent Waters directed by Sabia Sumar, and
of course Miss Marvel. Which one should you skip and
which one should you immediately explore from I Heart Radio,
(01:27):
I'm Nahasis and this is partition a podcast that will
take a closer look into this often forgotten part of history.
(01:56):
Gandhi seems like an excellent place to start. It is
your base, sick, run of the mill biopic that starts
out with Gandhi as a young lawyer and how he
then transforms into the benevolent leader we learned about in
our textbooks. This film was made in two and I
think it's one that older generations tend to cling to
because of how massive this film was in every aspect,
(02:18):
the cast, the costumes, the production value, the sheer amount
of extras. I'm sure at the time the people of
India and Pakistan felt like their struggles were being recognized
by a global audience. In fact, when I asked an
elder relative if he had any suggestions on what maybe
good examples to watch, he suggested Gandhi. This film is
considered an epic and movies like this don't really get
(02:41):
made anymore. It won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture,
Best Director, and Best Actor for Ben Kingsley for the
titular role. It is also probably the most mainstream film
related to partition in terms of availability and so called prestige.
My first viewing of this film, I can say with
the utmost confidence, will be my last. I don't think
(03:04):
this film was great to begin with, and I certainly
don't think as time went on it aged particularly well.
It was truly a struggle for me to get through it,
not only because it was three hours long and felt
like it, but the utter lack of nuance is painful.
We don't really get a critical and honest portrait of Gandhi,
but one that is more filled with hero worship than
(03:24):
anything else. It is documented that Gandhi was a racist.
An MPR article from two thousand nineteen states that in
his early writings, Gandhi made comments that white people should
be the dominant race and black people are troublesome, very dirty,
and live like animals. If a film is attempting to
paint us a realistic portrait of a man, it must
(03:47):
also include the parts of him that are flawed and
unethical too. Now we don't have the time in this
podcast to dissect all that is wrong with the film Gandhi,
but here are a few key points. Ben Kingsley's brown
Face was truly unacceptable. He maybe have Indian, but that
doesn't change the fact that his skin was made significantly
darker with makeup. Gandhi was directed by a white British male.
(04:12):
I know this film was a passion project for director
Richard Attenborough, but when you have someone not from the
effected community at the helm of a project of this magnitude,
something will usually feel off. We get a finished product
that is clean and glossy instead of genuine and raw.
We had the villainization of Mohammad A Llegina, the founder
of Pakistan, so much so that the film was actually
(04:35):
banned in Pakistan upon its release. Instead of giving us
an accurate glimpse into the complexities of independence and Burrow,
along with screenwriter John Briley, decided to create a good
guys Versus Bad guys narrative. In reality, we know that
every man involved had their own self serving plan with
how they wanted independence to play out, including Gandhi. If
(04:57):
you're going to make a film with a hundred and
nine a minute runtime, at the very least attempt to
make it more on the mark. The last thing I'll
say is that Attenborough dedicated this film to Lord Mountbatten,
the man who oversaw partition and is responsible for a
good amount of the bloodshed. We see this declaration in
the first minute of the film that, more than anything else,
(05:20):
should tell the audience what type of film we're about
to embark on. It was Mountbatten's idea to hasten the
original timeline for a partition so the British wouldn't be
held responsible for the fallout. I don't think any Indian
or Pakistani would ever thank him for his service, which
brings me to The Crown. Let me preface this by saying,
(05:41):
I love the Crown. I love period pieces and costume dramas.
I worship Olivia Coleman, I love Corgis. I even had
a Twitter through I devoted to every corgy that appeared
on the show. Not enough, if I'm being honest. The
Crown tells the story of Queen Elizabeth the Second and
how she ascended to the throne and the many political
(06:01):
events that took place during her reign. I didn't watch
the show for research at all, more so because we
were sheltering in place and it was on my watch list. However,
that didn't stop me from noticing the extremely small allusion
to partition. In the pilot episode. Well, I know the
purpose of the series is to showcase the royals and
(06:22):
their lives. The British Raj was a major part of
their empire, and the pilot episode takes place shortly after Partition.
In this scene, we see the wedding of Queen Elizabeth
the Second and Prince Philip Winston. Churchill makes a grandiose
entrance with his wife and sees Mount Batton across the
church and gives him a very sharp look. As they
(06:45):
take their seats, Churchill whispers, with much disdain to his wife,
this whole thing is Mount Batton's triumph. He engineered it all,
the man who gave away India. I remember watching this
being like cool, that's a take, I guess. In contrast,
(07:08):
another popular British show, Doctor Who, actually portrayed the story
of Partition with respect. The episode Demons of the Punjab,
aired in and was written by Vinet Patel. Now I
know absolutely nothing about Dr Who, or the science around
it or what the police Box does. But when I
(07:28):
mentioned my work with this podcast to a few friends,
they told me about the storyline from the eleventh series,
so I decided to give it a watch. Watching this
one hour episode completely out of context. I was pleasantly
surprised it managed to capture the emotion, confusion, and brutality
of the situation well because it was told from the
(07:49):
perspective of the people. It directly affected supernatural elements aside.
We follow a Hindu family in a Muslim family in
the days leading up to a wedding where their children
are said to Mary. Tensions arise when the groom's brother
and his nationalist beliefs clash with the community. The audience
could feel the fear and the unknown future and safety
(08:11):
of these characters. Best of all, I did not see
any British characters, minus the characters who traveled with a
Doctor journalist Christian Hello from Entertainment Weekly as Hotel the
following question. Most Doctor Who time travel stories tend to
focus specifically on English history and it's great heroes like
(08:31):
Charles Dickens and Queen Victoria. But here the focus is
an event connected to England, but it also challenges English
assumptions about their own history and their role in the world.
Was that intentional? Potel responded with a lot of Doctor
(08:52):
Who history episodes are focused on these great figures like
Queen Victoria or William Shakespeare, and I liked the idea
of doing a story about people on the ground were
affected by a period of history but aren't really rich
or famous or well known enough where they can just
(09:13):
shake it off of it, because the greatest tragedy of
partition is that the people it affected were people who
are not remembered or acknowledged. Making them nobody's to focus
on them felt like a really exciting thing and an
important thing to do, rather than focus on the viceroy
(09:34):
who would have been in charge at the time. I
couldn't agree more. I met with filmmaker Shanty Decor to
talk about some other films that depict partition. Shanty directed
(09:56):
a deeply personal documentary about her father titled Terrible Old Children.
She explores many different facets of his life, including partition.
I discovered this movie when I was submitted to the
Cleveland International Film Festival, where I was curating films. Since then,
it has gone on to screen at numerous festivals around
(10:18):
the world. So my father got a letter from his
father who was still in India, and he only opened
the letter twenty years after his father's death. And he
gave me this letter and said, maybe you can do
something with this. So I read the letter and that
(10:41):
was the beginning of a path to making my film
Terrible Children. Over the next three years, and I really
learned the challenges that he had, not just within his family,
but living in India during the backdrop of partition, which
really triggered him to one to leave India to come
to California where he eventually met my mother. And it's
(11:05):
an unlikely love story between my father and my mother,
who was from Denmark. And I learned the context for
why my father's family banished my family when my father
married a Danish woman. Shanti is another person who had
to find out the story of nine herself, and I
wanted to know what sources she looked into to find
(11:27):
out more. Well, because my father never talked about partition,
I knew I had to learn about it on my own.
So it was really literature where I was able to
get like the heart and soul of the stories. Um.
Two books I learned about were Cracking India by bobsy
sidwa Um that's through the perspective of a party woman
(11:50):
living through partition, and Midnight's Children of Course by Salmon Rushdie.
And what I loved about those books was there was
an authenticity about characters and the day to day moments
of living in this environment where people had to make
very subtle choices which could lead to life or death.
(12:12):
So literature really informed me. And then um, and then
I saw a documentary, a four part documentary. I believe
it was from BBC or Channel four, I can't remember.
And it was a very you know, it was a
journalistic you know, give me the dates, give me the
politicians name of what happened. And of course I watched
it because I wanted to learn as much about the
politicians who were involved and so forth. But there was
(12:35):
really something lacking. It seemed really one dimensional around these
kind of almost arbitrary conversations between politicians, but not like
what was happening in the hard and soul of the
people on the street. I asked her how she prepared
to talk about partition in her documentary. So the first
(12:55):
thing I did when I was preparing to make the
film was I started to write the vice over. I
had to make sure all the facts were in place,
but I also had to get to the emotional truth
of the story, which was my father's story, which I
was telling. I went to the National Archives to see
what I could use for my film, and there were
(13:16):
just incredible images that, um, you know, it's true that
that an image can tell you a thousand words. And
I didn't know what was possible because I had to
figure out, how am I going to tell this story?
How can I represent the unrepresentable about these stories if
I don't have the footage right? So, um, there's a
part in partition where I found this footage in the
(13:39):
National Archives. It was footage of demonstration um in India
and where British soldiers were essentially beating Indians out right.
So I looked in the US for footage, and then
I also looked in the UK for footage. It's she
(14:00):
discovered something that shocked her. What was so interesting was
this particular section of footage which was so important to
tell the story. Of course, you want to see, like
here's the tension between the colonialists and the Indians, right.
And then when I was looking at exactly the same
footage from the UK, it had deleted. It had taken
(14:24):
out the shots where the British soldiers were beating up
the Indians, And it was so fascinating to think well,
this is supposed to be the quote objective history of
a country that is saved in the archival footage. And
I thought, well, that's really interesting. And of course you think, well,
what in America are we not showing this our national history?
(14:46):
But that's another conversation. But it was so it was
very interesting to see how different countries represented their relationship
to partition, as well as taking these epic stories and
turning that into a micro event. I think his children
of parents who went through partition and who won't talk
(15:11):
about it so much, a part of our healing is
to understand what happened on a micro level and a
macro level. You know, how did this affect our family
in ways that we have to investigate when they won't
talk about it. Shanty then describes walking in the streets
and neighborhood where her father witnessed violent attacks. So when
(15:37):
I went to India to shoot the film, it was
just myself and my cinematographer, and I met my cousin
who is my father's nephew, and he brought us through
the neighborhood where my father experienced partition. It was an
interesting neighborhood. Um, it was in Old Delhi. My father
ran away from home at sixteen. Tolaeth's grandmother and she
(16:01):
lived in this building that was just on the edge
of the Muslim section in Old Delhi, and she ran
an a or vetic business. She had her doors open
to everyone. She was a healer, right, And so my
father has this memory of waking up in the middle
of the night to the sounds of slaughter, and that
(16:23):
was Muslims passing through the street unaware it was a
Hindu neighborhood. And this is what he woke up to
as a teenager, and it haunted him. One Terrible Children
premiered in Cleveland. There was quite a few audience questions,
mainly from older viewers. I really appreciate people's curiosity and
(16:47):
willingness to learn, and whether they come from a South
Asian background or a Jewish background, or you know. I mean,
I just think that that reverberation of trauma translates on
so many different levels. So if people have never heard
of partition before, that's cool. Let's have a conversation and
(17:09):
let's start to make observations and share these observations with
each other about how this affects us and how this
affects our families. Moreover, how do we survive it and
how does it make us stronger? I wanted to know
how Shanti's father felt about the seventy anniversary. Yeah, I
(17:30):
brought it up to him, and it was obviously something
he was very uncomfortable about. But what I do see
is that he is deeply, deeply affected by seeing what
was happening in the Ukraine, seeing what was happening in Rwanda,
seeing the same cycles of this belief of racial purity
(17:52):
and ethnicity and how that destroys people. So he kind
of sees these goes of partition throughout his lifetime, which
is really haunting. And I think that's something that everybody
needs to listen to about partition, because it is yet
just another example of how history keeps repeating itself. You
(18:16):
can learn more about future screenings and bookings for Terrible
Children on Shanty's website shanty decor dot com. I thought
Shanty would be a fun and interesting person to discuss
(18:36):
the last three films on my list, so I asked
her to watch them so we could talk about it.
All of these films were directed by South Asians. Up
first is Vice Roy's House, which was released in and
based on the books Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins
and Dominique LaPier and The Shadow of the Great Game,
The Untold Story of Partition by Norandera Singh Sarila. Like Gandhi,
(19:01):
this film was also been a Pakistan due to its
characterization of Jinna Viceroy's house. Follows Mount Batton and his
family while he oversees the disillusionment of the British Raj
in India. There is a downton abbey upstairs downstairs like
way of storytelling where you see the Indians, Muslims and
Sikhs serve Mount Batton's household as they talk amongst themselves
(19:23):
about the issues going on as they overhear possible outcomes
of partition. A felt filmmaker grew in their child A's
heart and intention were in the right place, but the
general consensus for Shanti and I was that there was
too much information being squeezed into the film. Both of
us greatly admire Childa's work, but here we get a
cliffs notes version of events, fragments of stories that ultimately
(19:47):
leave us with nothing. It's so interesting trying to judge
films on a historic event. We're going to be looking
at several different films that portraying Partition. But for me,
the first question is who is the audience? Whoever the
writer director is, they have to think about who the
(20:08):
audience is, who's funding it? Right? So I mean it's
a vice stories house. It's showing both the British and
the South Asians, but it's pretty clear that the primary
and protagonists are the Mount Mountains and we're following their narrative,
We're following their point of view, and the secondary story
(20:31):
is about you know, Lord Mount Battons, Indian valet who's
falling in love with the Muslim woman and the loss
of his family during Partition. But that's just structurally in
terms of the script. That's how it's created, and we're seeing,
which I think is good. We're seeing both positive and
negative characters in both the British and for the South
(20:53):
Asian characters, but essentially we are being asked to emphathize
with the Mount Battons. This was another point of contention
for me. Mat Baton was portrayed with an exuberant amount
of sympathy. I have not read Phenom at Midnight. My
father had read it when he was in school, and
I did consider looking into it as a part of
my research for this podcast. I had asked several historians
(21:17):
and other academics about their thoughts. But this book wasn't
held in very high regard because it's mostly a firsthand
account from Mobaton. Combine this with the fact that Viceroy's
House was in part produced by BBC Films and the
British Film Institute, I can hazard our guests as to
why his character isn't judged too harshly. But it would
(21:40):
have been very different if the primary story was about
this Hindu man falling in love with a Muslim woman,
seeing what she had gone through in the refugee camp
with her father, etcetera, etcetera. So I mean the structure
of the story I would imagine I have not read
the book that is based on, but the writers and
(22:01):
the director had to follow that particular story. So I
don't want to ask a square to become a circle.
It is what it is. But what was interesting was
the scenes that were supposed to be so dramatic that
was happening on Partition, with the riots and the trains
and and the violence. It somehow did not fall to
(22:27):
me as horrible as it actually was. Whereas when I
see the suggestions of it in other films and how
it's absorbed by the families on an intimate day to
day level or moment to moment level, when we're invested
in those characters, that's a whole other experience. So you know,
(22:49):
here in the Viceroy's House, it felt more just something
to keep the plot moving. There were a few scenes
that planted seeds for what was going to come with partition,
but they don't really grow in the way that is
needed to showcase the gravity of the situation. When the
filmmaker makes it very clear that this is a story
(23:13):
about a Muslim patriarch and his family, like in garm
Haaba or Silent Water, where it is a story about
the matriarch of her family and her very problematic son,
we are clear from the get go this is who
we're following, and we get their subjective point of view,
(23:34):
whether we agree with it or not, that's what it is,
and I think with the Viceroy's House we were getting
his point of view, but there were just too many
things going on. At the end of the film, there
was a message where Chada, the director notes her own
partition story about her grandmother who fled to present day
(23:55):
India and was reunited with her husband after a year
and a half at a refuge camp. That is a
story I would have liked to have seen. When you
can put a phase to an event like this, that
to me is where the audience is going to really
resonate and connect with the story and characters. I had
the same reaction when I saw the kind of biographical
(24:18):
summary of of who she was as a director. I
was like, Oh my gosh, I would love to see
the film that she would write from the beginning. That
would be amazing. Unlike Gandhi and Vice Rays House, which
(24:40):
can easily be found on a variety of platforms to stream,
rent or buy, that was not the case for Garamhava
or Silent Waters. I could not find either of them
on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, Max or the countless other
streamers we have at our fingertips. For Silent Waters, I
was able to find and its streaming online on Canopy
(25:02):
from my local public library, but different libraries have different
content available. They luckily also had a DVD I could
check out if I needed. When I looked for garamha
The only copy I could find was a VHS at
the UT Austin Library, where it certainly was not going
to work. I miraculously ended up finding it on YouTube,
(25:22):
but it is unclear if that was purely by chance
or was vetted to be on the platform. It's no
wonder many don't know about partition or the tragic details
the widely available examples I came across given incredibly condensed
version of events. We live in a world where if
something isn't available in an instant or at the push
of a few buttons, we are less likely to seek
(25:44):
it out. Accessibility is a big problem when it comes
to finding more accurate depictions of partition and it's lingering effects.
Silent Waters takes place in nine nine. We follow Aisha,
a widow who survived the violence of part Visition, going
about her life in a Bakisani village. She has a son, Selene,
(26:05):
who is lost in more ways than one, and in
the process of trying to figure out his future, get
swept up in extremism when some Islamic activists come to
their village. Her son's new erratic behavior triggers a lot
of painful and traumatic memories for Aisha. This film took
the well known European Film Festival Locarno by storm, taking
(26:28):
home the awards for Best Film, Best Actress for Care
and Care, and Best Director for Sabiya Sumar. Garamhava takes
place in as AMRSA family are trying to navigate their
lives as Muslims in India since they did not want
to leave their ancestral home. The family struggles with discrimination
within a changing political landscape. Since both films take place
(26:53):
after a partition and follow a specific family and the
consequences they must endure from their choices and lack thereof.
Shanty and I discussed these films mostly in conjunction with
each other. Something that I felt was very distinctive in
these movies is that we see the perspective of two
Muslim families, and that was very deliberate, Loyalty being a
(27:14):
major theme that overlaps. Before Pakistan everyone was Indian and
in garam Hova where we really see what identity the
family prioritizes. They don't want to go to Pakistan. India
is their home and that doesn't change because of some
man made border. I think they're so interesting to watch
(27:36):
side by side because garm Hova, you know, he was
made in nineteen seventy three. It's an art film. He
was credited with pioneering a new wave of art cinema
movement in Hindi cinema was for a very specific audience.
And Silent Water is also an art film. So these
are two films that assume the audience has some understanding
(27:58):
of what partition was, so they don't have to go
through the historic epic scenes. And so both of these
films are so intimate by getting to know these characters,
becoming invested in them, feeling what they feel, being concerned
for them, and that's how it triggers our interest into
(28:19):
what partition is. If we're outsiders, we don't need to
know the history lesson version of partition, but more so
how people reacted to it, how it changed their life,
the ramifications both positive and negative of their actions. That
is how you get people to engage and care. Throwing
a number of statistics without context isn't really going to
(28:42):
mean much to people. It seems to be made like
it's for folks who are already familiar with partition. But
when it wins Best Film at the Lucarna Film festival
in Switzerland. Clearly it is translating to an audience outside
of the South Asian audience. So Silent Water it was
(29:03):
made in two thousand three. So now we're we're seeing
a woman character who has agency and Garaba. The women
are quiet, they kind of go along with what's happening
with the family patriarch. I'm not going to judge in
vent three film with the two thousand lengths us simply unfair,
but Silent Water it was. What was so interesting was
(29:28):
from the very first scene to the very last scene,
we're watching this woman's choice with how she deals with
her son, with how she teaches young girls the Koran.
She's very inclusive in her teachings, to her choice of
talking to her son when he's dealing with Islamic extremists
(29:51):
and is frightening Lee taking their stance on things. We
learned that Aisha used to be a seek and a
former life. So when many Seeks are granted permission to
visit shrines in the village, she makes food for them,
but their presence also makes a recall memories from her
past to her choice of giving food to the visiting Seeks,
(30:18):
and these are quiet, very simple very profound gestures. She's
not calling arms to anything, but these are the areas
where she has agency and she can make a difference.
And once we see the film and we know and
we understand that it was her choice to not jump
(30:39):
in the well with the other seek women, that was
her choice to live. And then when we learn what
her choice is at the end of the film, which
I won't give away again, is her choice, but this
time her choice is affected by how the whole village
(31:01):
and her family treated her. It is a story about
how a woman is using her agency in an incredibly
oppressive situation. We talk about as sun Selin. We see
similar situations play out, not only in film and TV
and literature, but in real life. So many lost boys
(31:25):
and men are susceptible to radicalization and ray superiority. The US,
for example, it's home too many of these people. I
was really taken by the portrayal of the Sun and
how he was lost. He was under employed, he was
under educated, he was hopeless. That's an awful feeling, and
(31:51):
that is a timeless stateless nationless existence, right Like in
other words, it doesn't matter where you are in the world,
what century, or what decade you're in. That's a constant
that you're going to have people in the population who
are under educated, underemployed, feeling powerless. And in so many
(32:13):
different countries we're seeing like those are the guys who
will join whatever extremist group, and you can I'm not
just gonna say it's you know, in this case, it
happened to be an extremist Islamic in this country and
maybe a white supremast. So the film was about what
was happening in nineteen seventy nine. But the beauty of
(32:35):
this kind of storytelling is it becomes universal and it
is this kind of warning of like, this doesn't just
happen in this country in nineteen seventy nine. We're seeing
it right now, and that's the beauty of a film
that's beautifully told. In Garama, we see two brothers of
a multigenerational family, Salim and Helene. Salim owns the family
(32:57):
shoe business and Halim is a political community lead here
who is the first of the family to move to Pakistan.
This was a story that was so smartly told. You
have these two brothers, one who is a very well
respected businessman who is the main character and the other
(33:17):
who is he's a kind of religious leader in the community,
but also an opportunist, and so it's really the businessman
who sticks around and who has this unwavering optimism to stay.
And I found it so interesting. There was a quote
in the film that was said by his brother which was,
there's something stronger than religion bribery. So day today you're
(33:42):
seeing how this family is disintegrating before your eyes. And
it's all the more heartbreaking because his father, the patriarch
of the family, is a man who holds such dignity
and kindness and compassion for those around him. Because the
(34:02):
majority of the mers A family stay in India, they
see their lives crumble around them. They do not hold
the same statue in the community. They are treated very
differently by people who are once their friends and their neighbors.
Their business deteriorates immensely. Multiple acquaintances tell them to move
to Pakistan, that they would have a better life, but
(34:23):
the mirrors as are steadfast, and their decision to stay again.
I think it's a specific in the story that becomes
so universal, Like we know what racism is in the
Western world, but when we see it there the day today, humiliations.
It is crushing to watch this wonderful person have to
(34:47):
bear this load of like not getting a bank load,
difficulty finding a house to rent, watching his family one
by one leave from Pakistan, until we actually see, you know,
something being thrown at him in the street, and it's
just it's it's so hard to watch again. I think,
(35:08):
similar to Silent Waters, We're watching a character make choices,
day to day choices, and those are the choices that
define who they are and their morals and their way
that they're going to survive that fits for them, not
how the country tells them what they should do. I
(35:52):
knew with that question when MS Marvel came out on
Disney Plus that I was going to watch it. I'm
very behind the m c U, but I had to
watch to this show with a Muslim superhero. Kamala Khan
is an ordinary girl living in New Jersey with her
Pakistani family when one day she gets superpowers like the
heroes she's always looked up to. I had absolutely no
(36:15):
idea that partition was going to be a major storyline
in the series. Thanks to this show and its creative team,
so many more people in the West know about partition.
Here to talk more about bringing these stories to life
is writer and filmmaker Fatima Ascar, who wrote the fifth
episode in the series called Time and Again, and serves
(36:35):
as a co producer on the show. Fatima uses she
they pronounce. All six episodes of Miss Marvel are streaming
on Disney Plus. Fatima's latest work, a novel called When
We Were Sisters, will be released on October eighteenth, and
the book is currently on the National Book Awards long
list for fiction. But before we had our conversation about
(36:59):
Miss Marvel, I talked to Fatima about their collection of
poems published in If They Come for Us. The book
features several poems about partition. I actually hadn't really seen
partition in media at all, and it was kind of
mostly through the stories of my family that I pieced
(37:20):
together and figured out we're about partition. I was like, wait,
what is this event? Like what is this thing that happened?
And it was really then that I was like, oh, okay,
like I want to learn more about it. And so
as I was writing If They Come for Us, and
this was like before it was even an idea that
(37:40):
it was going to be a book, I was writing
poems that were about Partition, and it was really through
you know, the writing of those poems and and wanting
to do more research that I really started to look
into that. So it was it really came about because
I was very hungry for information and I was looking
at it, and that's kind of how I found out
(38:02):
so much about Partition. That was when I was really
in deep research mode for Partition, and it was very
clear to me as I was writing if They Come
for Us, and there were so many ethical questions I
was up against. There's so many things that I considered
as I was writing that book, and especially as I
was writing the Partition poems, and I did an incredible
amount of research in order to write that book. The
(38:24):
next year, they got a phone call. There was a
moment in twenty nineteen when Marvel called me in to
have a meeting with them, and they didn't tell me
what it was that. They were just like, hey, we
would like to meet with you, and I just kind
of thought it was like a regular meeting. And I
remember I got to Marvel in my head, I was like,
I wonder if they would ever do like Miss Marvel
as a series like it was. So was nineteen like
(38:46):
it was just so different. Um, and I didn't. I
just didn't think it was on the radar, especially because
it had been such a few years under publishing, like
she had just come out, and so I was like,
I think I'm just going to ask them in my meeting,
like hell, if you what what would you ever do
something with that? And then the executive who brought me in,
we were like walking around and then she swiped in
(39:07):
for a conference room that was just gonna be me
and her. We walked in. As soon as she shut
the door, She's like, I'm here to talk to you
about Miss Marvel and I was like, Okay, cool, I
don't need to bring it up. You're going to bring
it up. And then, um, that started off a very
intense period for me where I was I just started
to work for Marvel. I was incredibly curious how show
(39:28):
and her Bishop k Elie infused Partition with Miss Marvel
and asked how the idea came about. Fatima explains, when
we all started to work in the writer's room, you know,
she had an idea and a vision um, but there
wasn't a pilot script yet and we were all kind
of really working on what would this show look like.
(39:49):
And it was really beautiful how she ran the room
because it was very um. There was a kind of
egalitarian quality to it or equal um quality, where it
was like everybody just was really able to contribute a
lot of ideas and she was a really good facilitator
of that, and so it was just really beautiful to
work with that creative team for um the months that
I worked there. There wasn't a mandate from Marvel that
(40:13):
was like these are the storylines. It was done through
Visi's vision and through the writer's in the writer's room,
and so very early on into the process, I actually
talked a lot about partition. I kind of gave a
like a luxury to the writer's room about partition, and
everybody was like, we would really really like to include
this and the series, you know. And I think that
that was something that Bisha had wanted um before, you know,
(40:36):
and it was something that I felt like also was
really important. All the South Asian Muslim writers in the
room front like was really really important and so um
that was kind of how that came, and they really
came from the writers in that room really wanting that
and then really fighting to have Partition via centerpiece of
the show. They went into more detail on how Partition
(40:58):
was going to be represented on the screen. You know,
in terms of getting into the mindset, it's also getting
into the characters, Like it's a very character driven story,
and there were things that you know, even just considerations
around like knowing that it was going to be on
the Marvel, knowing that it was going to be on Disney,
knowing that we were going to do these things, what
were we anchoring in? And it was very important for
(41:21):
me that we not anchor and I think all the
writers in the room, Ambishop, that we not anchor in
like trauma porn, and that this wasn't just like look
how bad this thing was, or look how bad we
had it. But what we did was we anchored in
a love story, and we anchored in the love between
these two characters, and we were able to say, look
at this as the backdrop of what we've seen. And
I think for most people in the West, I don't
(41:43):
know that they've really seen images of partition. I think
that like that is not a thing that folks have
a visual reference point for. And so you know, it
was very important to me that that story be around
and centered around a train because of the symbolism, the inventory,
symbolism of the trains and partition, and I think it
(42:04):
was very important for a Western audience to see that
visually and to say, wow, this is what this looks like.
You know, you read a number and you don't compute
the number, but this is what this looked like. And
I think that that was very important. With each episode
of Miss Marvel, I would get more emotional because so
(42:26):
many parts of the show I can wholeheartedly relate to
on many levels. There is one specific scene in episode
four where Kamala travels to Karagi and she's having a
conversation with her grandma. Her grandmother tells her my passport
is Pakistan, but my roots are in India. And in
between all of this there is a border, a border
(42:50):
marked by blood and pain. People are claiming their identity
based on an idea some old Englishman had when they
were fleeing the country. These few sentences holds so many truths.
In previous episodes, we talked about the difficulty of going
back to India and Pakistan and how these borders are
(43:11):
soul crushing for the people who are in some ways
trapped what I've seen is people be like, I did
not know that you could get that on Marvel. Like
the fact that you guys did that, the fact that
you pushed forward and fought and got that on Marvel
is huge. And I think I've heard that from South
(43:32):
Asian people, but I've heard that from people who are
not South Asian but who are like the fact that
you could include like this deep historical component on a
major superhero franchise like show is pretty wild. And I
was like, yeah, I think so. And you know, there's
just things that I saw, like Fisha had sent me,
(43:53):
like there was like a little bit of a like
a Google search history um for you can kind of
like see the Google metrics and stuff. After episode four,
the search results for Partition like skyrocket, Like people were
googling like what is the partition of Indian and focus
on and so to literally be like, wow, we like change.
(44:13):
The Google algorithm is pretty huge. And you know, I
think also I saw a lot of people and a
lot of South Asian people on Twitter being like I've
never asked my family about our partition history, Like I've
never asked about this, and now I'm going to go
ask And then people were sharing their stories and to
(44:34):
do something like that, like to have a moment like
that in popular culture where you're like, you know, I
I grew up never seeing South Asian people on TV,
Like I, you know, it was like I think all
of us did, where it was like there is no
South Asian people and if we have them, their gas
station owners or their doctors, or their terrorists or they're
they're repressed Muslim woman, like, there's really no nuanced representation
(44:57):
of South Asian people. M This right here is proof
of how powerful the visual medium can be. Representation is important,
but it needs to be accurate, show multiple types of
groups instead of showing stereotypes. Fatima mentions a study that
came out recently about Muslim representation by the Pillars Fund,
(45:20):
an organization that champions Muslim voices. There was justice statistic
that Pillars issue that was like one percent of characters
on TV are Muslim and of the world's population is Muslim.
And it's really disheartening when you occupy those bodies and
you occupy those identities to say like damn, like really
(45:41):
like you can't fathom my existence, Like you can't fathom
that someone like me exists. With a rich, complicated history,
with rich complicated identities. And I think that what I
saw from the show overall was people responding to being
like I feel seen, you know, thought them has the
hope that with the success of the show, more stories
(46:03):
about Muslims by Muslims can be made. They kind of
are like a punch in the ceiling, like they allow
for more things to happen because people then have a
reference point to be able to say, like, well, look
at the success of this, like look at what they did,
Like look at how people felt seen. Now we can
make more content that's like this, or we can make
(46:24):
content that's different. But because this show exists, it allows
for more freedom. Like I think one thing too about
representation is that when you're so underrepresented that any time
then you have a character that is of Muslim or
salth Asian descent, they kind of have to be like
perfect quote unquote, because then you're like, but then everyone's
going to say that most some people are bad or
(46:45):
it's gonna be this representational burden, and it's like, well,
some mostli people are selfish, like some of some people
are assholes, like some Muslim people are whatever, just like
everyone is and I think that when you kind of
have the first one to really go than what you
allow for us people to get into more nuanced conversations
about what does the slice of life version look like
(47:08):
for Muslim people? What doesn't mean for Muslim people to
have complicated identities where they're not good or bad, but
whether they're just human and they get to exist in
this kind of complicated existence. And I think that, um,
when you have shows like this, it really becomes a
blueprint or a openness for more things to be created
(47:29):
in the aftermath of it. Unfortunately, Disney Plus is not
available in Pakistan, but MS Marvel was released theatrically there
with six episodes being screened two at a time. How
special for Muslim kids to finally see themselves as a
superhero on the big screen. The Indian and Pakistan borders
(47:55):
are discussed or alluded to in some capacity in every
single episode on this show. Next time, I sweet to
dr Data a lecture on international relations, so further break
down this topic with me from an historical perspective, Whether
(48:15):
the border is open or closed, as you rightly said,
is often a question of geopolitics. It's, you know, down
to who's in power, who's not in power. There was
at one point of bus that went to Lahore, there
was a train that went to Taka, right, So there's
this kind of bus diplomacy. There are trains on the
eastern side of the border, and then every so often
something happens like the Cargill War and these are shut down,
(48:38):
you know. So there are moments in which diplomacy opens
up these borders and moments in which the borders are
closed until next week. I'm Nejazis and this is partition.
Partition was developed as a part of the Next Up
initiative created by Anna has Ni, a Joel Monique and
(49:01):
the Sinia Median. Partition is produced by Anna Hosnier, Tricia
Mukerjee and Becca Ramos. It is edited by Rory Gagan,
with original score composed by Mark Hadley.
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