FIRAAQ : The Aftermath
iView Author: Timtomlee (Thane, India)
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FIRAAQ : The Aftermath
A mob is marching towards you. They have all the weapons, swords, guns, gas-cylinders, you name it. They are shouting slogans against your community. Now they have spotted you. You can’t run. You can’t hide. You just watch them, coming closer and closer and closer….FIRAAQ puts you in that situation even though you are not.
GUJARAT riots 2002. We all know what happened. But we don’t’ know what happened after the riots. A month has passed. A Muslim auto-rickshaw driver and his wife, learn that their house is burnt. They want to know who did that to their house. A mixed religious couple (Hindu –Muslim) wants to flee, after their showroom was looted in the riots. A Hindu housewife wants to get rid of her guilt for she had shut the door on a helpless Muslim woman, begging her to save her life. An ailing Muslim musician wants to get back to teaching music to his hindu students, who have not showed up after the riots. A Muslim boy wants to search for his father, who he believes is the only surviving member of his family, massacred in the riots. But what do they really want? What is their quest, what is their FIRAAQ?
They want to live with dignity; they want to live with respect. They cant’ run away from their conscience, because conscience is one such thing that will keep haunting you no matter where you go, no matter how much you justify your actions, you just cant’ deny it. How will they do this? Will they avenge their wrong-doings or will they accept this as reality and move on with their lives. The film doesn’t answer this question. It leaves us to our interpretation. You may think that this is the conclusion of their respective journeys. But it’s not. For we don’t’ know what will happen to them next. What will be the Aftermath of their actions?
NANDITA DAS has made a powerful debut as a film-maker. She has extracted brilliant performances from the entire cast. You just can’t pinpoint to whose performance was better. Everyone was better than the other, if I could put it this way. This film was actually based on the banned documentary “FINAL SOLUTION” by RAKESH SHARMA. I would recommend you to watch it. It’s available online on GOOGLE video. You will find parallels to most of the victims interviewed in the documentary with the characters in the film. It also makes occasional entry, as the characters watch it on their T.V sets, indicating as a mirror to their conscience.
It has been seven years after the riots. I hope that those who suffered will get justice.
I hope that the lost ones will be re-united. I hope that they don’t’ die everyday in the fear of dying someday. I hope they will all live like HUMANS; once again. I hope…that’s my FIRAAQ.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
And what happened to families of those 60 odd people who were burnt alive in the train at Godhra? May be Miss Das knows the answer? May be she cared? Someone? Please!!
@Tejas: two wrongs dont make a right.
godhra incident is still an accident, till proven otherwise. if there was any truth to tat, a movie wud have been made on it as well.
and plz lets discuss this movie instead of digressing.
The Godhra incident was bad, but no way that justifies the Gujarat riots. After 9/11 happened, NYC mayor Rudy Gulliani, went out of his way to make sure that no Arabs or Muslims residing in NYC were attacked. And trust me Rudy is hard core right conservative. Yet he went all out to ensure no minorities were targeted deliberately. It was well known that after Godhra there would be a volatile situation, given the communally charged atmosphere, but the Govt did not step in to control it. The fact is we choose to be a secular democracy governed by rule of law, and we have to abide by it, else we would end up like our neighbours.
Good time to see the post. I just finished watching Parzania another excellent movie on same incident.
Killing anybody (from any religion) is horrendous crime. No second thoughts for that. But the problem is we always look from some religion per se and find reasons to support such heinous crimes.
“It has been seven years after the riots. I hope that those who suffered will get justice.”
This will happen, once, Modi government is ousted. People will come out and talk. All the bureaucrats whose mouths are forcibly shut will confess otherwise it will haunt them for their entire lifes.
sorry it is lives* (not lifes)
Just came home after watching it… Simply Brilliant!!!
Another strong propaganda movie from the leftist pseudo secular intellectuals…
No, any kind of riots are not justified…but one sided portrayal will only antagonize the other side…& of course Ms Das & ilk would never talk about Kashmiri Pundits…
I pity the ones who still want to make themselves feel better by saying Godhra was an accident…come out of your illusion…if it was an accident how the doors were locked from outside?…stop portraying one side as monsters & one side as innocent victims…
About the preset status…As someone currently staying in Gujarat…I would like to inform that it has been sever years since and no disturbance has been detected after that and no one is living in ghettos as portrayed by section of the media…
@roy…
lets for a sec assume godhra incident was not accident. Did the innocent people who were killed aftermath the incident do this? It was done by some fanatics. People should kill those fanatics not the innocent ones. Police who should be the ones protecting turned blind eye. Where else innocent people can go asking for help? And its clear under whose orders they were working?
Its like saying attack all pakistanis because some people from pakistan have committed crimes on india.
@Cherish…
If you have read the entire post you would have noticed that I am not supporting any riots…But I am & will be against one sided portrayal of the events…
Can you tell me why these people never utter a word against J&K seperatists, naxal marauders or illegal Bangladeshi immigrants who have a soft corner for ISI?
As far as Pakistan is concerned…they have enjoyed enough mildness from our side despite repeated violation of international norms & glaring proofs…lets not talk about them here…
I got your point. My point is find the perpetrators and then attack. Rather than blaming a community for no fault of so many people and going on a killing spree.
Tejas – My heart felt condolences are with all those who lost their loved ones,including hindus. i have never said in my post that it is just about muslims suffering. if u will see the film, there are instances when muslims vow to take revenge but get traped by their own designs. So there is no justification for their actions. My point was about the film that shows the situation after the riots, not why did the riots started. Still I pray that no one should suffer the way they (both hindus & muslims) did.
@crazyrals
Godhra was not an accident.It was a pre planned incident. The Banerjee commission has put it on record.
I accept that two wrongs do not make right. But why is this always told to Hindus?
Nobody preached this when riots broke out after Babri demolition, when Sikhs were massacred in broad daylight in 1984. In fact our then PM made that infamous “when a big tree falls” statement.
Nearly 5 Lac Kashmiri Hindus stay in refugee camps in Delhi and not one film maker utters a word about it forget making a film (with notable exception of Ashok Pandit). Why? Are they not human beings?
@Ratnakar
Gujrat has seen worst communal riots in the history. In fact for the records 259 Hindus were killed in police firing during the riots. If the government was not interested in contianing the riots there would be no such deaths.
As far as the example of NY city and its mayor goes, the state machinery in US is certainly more powerful and efficient in US.And please do not forget the case of one sikh man getting murdered in a gas station in US just because he resembled a muslim.
People of Gujrat have moved ahead with times and it is time that the film makers and intellectuls take a note of this.
roy – Recently held INDIA TODAY CONCLAVE, Mussharaf was asked a aquestion by a female Kashmiri Pandit migrant about her conditions. she said she cant’ visit her house in srinagar. But that lunatic made fun of her and said, “you should go to your house”. He has not even an iota of feelings for them as he himself is responsible for their plight. I was furious, i wish i could have stood by her, replied him in his own language. But that was Musharaff, not the entire muslims community. Lets not generalize it. i want to see films on kashmiri pandits, i want to see more awareness of their present conditions in the international community. But plz dont’ think that I am writing just for the muslims. I stand for all those who lost their lives just because they belonged to a particular community.
“As someone currently staying in Gujarat'–I would like to inform that it has been sever years since and no disturbance has been detected after that and no one is living in ghettos as portrayed by section of the media”—
Thats what I said in my post. They are dying everyday in the fear of dying someday. If they will not get justice, then the situation is same. God forbid,If again some mischief mongerers from one particular community does anything dastardly, then…is there any gurantee that there will be no riots in future, and no innocent will be killed just because he or she belonged to one particular community?
@shrirang…
who is blaming hindus here? there are few people (who are disgrace to any religion) who are responsible and the angst is against them. Not a community. That is the point movies like parzania and firaaq wants to convey.
Come on, no-one should shy away from the Godhra incident, if Godhra incident is proven then I from my point of view consider the riot justified.
I lived in Surat back then when it happened and their was always a weird atmosphere around, the feelings indescribable. But Godhra incident is not be shied away from.
That’s the reason I didn’t go to watch this film in the theaters.
@12
you’re completely right.
It was a bit too much media-hyped
What in the world is a pseudo-secular anyway?
My viewpoint? Godhra wrong, riots wrong, plight of Kashmiri pandits wrong…everything is bloody wrong anyway…and will stay so until we start treating crime as crime and criminals as criminals and not projecting our hatred or our indifference for communities onto conflicts.
“Come on, no-one should shy away from the Godhra incident, if Godhra incident is proven then I from my point of view consider the riot justified.”
riots justified? how? killing innocent people? Who benefited from the riots? Hindus or Muslims or Politicians?
And regarding the debate if godhra was accident or not – there are two versions floating around. Central government reports have pointed it to be accident. State government reports point it to be not an accident. So what to believe?
@Chicken Pakoda with Sambar
“What in the world is a pseudo-secular anyway? ”
Those who say,
Godhra-accident
Riots-heinous communalist pogrom
Kashmiri Pundits- No Comments
Bangladeshi Immigrants- No Comments (or dear estranged brothers)
Fact is that all of them are deplorable things… as responsible citizens we all should oppose these incidents…and that is why we should not encourage skewed portrayals…
After reading the comments, i dont’ think many who are writing have actually seen the film. I have not seen any biased view in this film. There is no hindu bashing or muslim appeasement, its all about HUMANITY and loss of innocence. Plz do watch it and then comment.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind
@cherish
Nobody blames Hindus but then nobody notices the killings of 59 innocent Hindus killed in coach S6.
These filmmakers would have got credibility if there was an equal condemnation of Godhra incident also.