Iffat Fatima an independent filmmaker from Delhi, went to Sri Lanka in 2000 to research a fellowship project on Education and Identity. In the years that followed, she worked at a television channel, Young Asian Television. In 2005, Iffat made a documentary film on conflict in Sri Lanka and what it had done to the lives of people – The Other Side of War and Peace. When she met Parveena Ahanger, the chairperson of the Association of the Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) in 2006, the urge to make a film on Kashmir’s disappeared was strong. After nine years of travel and research, Iffat made Khoon Diy Bharav, which has moved viewers in all its screenings.
A guest at The Hindu’s festival of literature, Lit for Life, in Chennai in January 2017, Iffat answers a few questions:
Can you please tell us about the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP)?
In 1994, with the support of legal professionals and human rights activists, the families of the victims of Enforced Involuntary Disappearances (EID) in Jammu and Kashmir organised themselves into a collective: The Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP). Over the years APDP has become a movement – an important space for a continuous engagement on issues of justice and accountability. Drawing attention to the trauma of the families engaged in a gruelling struggle against the Indian security establishment, APDP has succeeded not only in breaking the silence over the issue of enforced disappearances in Kashmir, but has also sustained and kept alive a public discourse on resistance and what it means to resist against all odds. APDP, in the very act of its being, poses a challenge to the official discourse of erasure that is being systematically imposed in the public domain in Kashmir.
Your film Khoon Diy Bharav was made over a period of nine years? Can you speak about the work that went into the film? It must have been extremely traumatic for you — living the horrific stories all over again. How did you manage to sail through it? Can you narrate some of these incidents?
I was, in a sense, introduced to the trauma and the grief of the families of the disappeared through the making of my film, Lanka – the other Side of War and Peace. In 2006, almost a year after I finished the film I began working on the issue of enforced disappearances in Kashmir. I had been in touch with Parveena Ahangar whose son became a victim of enforced disappearance in 1990. Parveena had been largely instrumental in bringing the families together under the banner of APDP. She became my constant companion and I travelled all over the valley with her, meeting the families. I was drawn into the struggle, the continuous trauma, the continuous torture the families were going through. Through a process of osmosis, I internalised their struggle and became part of it. I cried and laughed with them, carrying a camera and recording their struggle became an organic process. I was not thinking of the end product.
Through these many years, 2006 to 2010, the movement for azaadi in Kashmir was also going through a tumultuous period. People were coming out into the streets in thousands, young boys were being killed. Resistance was acquiring a new form and people were expressing their agency, reclaiming the movement, so to say ‘snatching it away from the gun’. The affected families kept using the term “Khoon Diy Baarav” which eventually became the title of the film. What they were implying is that blood has flown, it has congealed and sedimented into memory and transformed into resistance. So resistance is a form of justice, while there is no hope of justice from the Indian state. After 2010, I felt I had to come to grips with my material and give it a tangible form. I had more than a 100 hours of material. The editing process was long and agonizing, I made several cuts. Friends were very supportive and their suggestions and feedback was very valuable in shaping the final film.
Army, in Kashmir, is above law so to say. How did they react to your film? I have read of the demonstrations held in certain campuses during the screening of your film.
“If there is a rule of law, why are the armed forces exempt from it?” is a question that Parveena poses in the film several times. This is a challenge that many people find difficult to confront, especially in the current atmosphere of hyper-nationalism in India. They would rather not see it. But I must say that I have extensively screened the film in India and most audiences have been moved by the film and have responded in a very humane way. I get a sense that it reaches out to people rather than raising their hackles.
You have been arrested several times. Can you speak about it?
I haven’t been seriously arrested but have been apprehended several times. Majority of people in Kashmir have experienced that and most certainly anybody roaming around the streets with a camera has to be prepared for it. It is very disconcerting and rather scary, I must admit. But maybe part of being a filmmaker or a journalist is to learn to negotiate and work around these difficult situations. As a director there is also the added responsibility of the crew and the expensive equipment. I think being a woman might have some advantages as you are seen to be less of a threat. It is important to be cautious and to create a certain safety network.
Over 8000 men have disappeared in Kashmir. How are the women coping? Have they reshaped their lives?
The disappeared are all men and the women are left behind to cope. They don’t have a choice, many of them have children, they have to survive and carry on with their lives and are doing that very courageously. They have brought up their children, done their best for them. The women and the families are supportive of each other and APDP is there for them. However, it has taken a big toll, most of them have health problems — physical as well as psychological. There are some women who have remarried and moved on with their lives, but those with children largely have chosen to stay single. Keeping alive the memory of the disappeared is very important, in fact it keeps them going.
Your film about Sri Lanka also explores memory and violence. Do these two experiences – Sri Lanka and Kashmir — have any similarity?
In both cases- Sri Lanka and Kashmir- the conflict has been protracted and the state has used brute military power to repress people’s aspirations and political demands leading to a cycle of violence.
It is inevitable; brute military power can only lead to a shattered social fabric with deep wounds and scars. The state seems to be impervious to that. It doesn’t care.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Entertainment> Movies / by Deepa Ganesh / December 29th, 2016
