I don’t belong to the haloed tribe of left liberals who, every time the compromises of their own shitty lives burst up all around them, suddenly find some cause.
I think that making a film, sticking to one’s ideas, trying to make difficult films, and making films that allow you to make difficult films is a much more honorable path than farting around on X or Twitter, which I sometimes do.
Beg your pardon. I am who I am.
I have made Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi [2005], and it was about a generation that, in a sense, rejected the idea of a nation, of a place, of a legacy that was given to them by their fathers. They rejected, in a sense, their fathers, both metaphorical and real. In a sense, they felt orphaned.
So they latched on to something. We all know what happened.
In the churning that happened, there were many wrong things that happened, History is never tidy. Every upheaval carries within it both emancipation and injury. We would prefer revolutions that wound no one and transformations that demand no sacrifice, but history has never granted us such luxuries. Beneath every settled order lie voices waiting to be heard, lives waiting to be acknowledged, dignities waiting to be restored. When they finally emerge, they do not arrive clothed in perfection. They arrive burdened by contradiction, anger, memory, and hope.
So India never was the same. Some people, my upper-caste relatives, for instance, may reject it, but it is not the same.
Something always happen with churning, some necessary and some that cause a lot of collateral damage.
So now, there’s another churning, and beyond the shore I see a man called Sonam Wangchuk. I’ve heard many things about him. I’ve been around and have known many people, and some of them whisper in my ears about this man.
I’ve heard about his support to the abrogation of Article 370. I’ve heard all that. I also know he comes from a difficult place, a place that was fighting for its own identity within a larger state dominated by other interest groups.
Sometimes you tend to hold on to not so ideal hands in order to escape the clutches of those who are immediately around you. There are problems, and there are problems in everybody. There are problems in me, and the man probably has flaws. Some of the demands around him are odd and even undemocratic. Liberals are often closet fascists. So they demand things that are undemocratic. They say, “Put so and so in place of so and so!” Not surprising since most liberals in India are classists.
But the point is not Sonam Wangchuk. The point is, again, these young people feeling orphaned, unrepresented, feeling lost again, and, in a sense, rejecting the ideas that are handed over to them by their parents.
To them, we owe something.
If they have felt that someone can hold the lifeline and pull them out of a certain morass, or that at least someone is talking on their behalf when no one else is, or when nobody is listening, then maybe it is our job also to listen and hold their hands, in whichever way we can.
Again, I say, I know that there are many dangerous movers and shakers circling around the movement. I know. I know. I know.
People waiting to grab leadership positions and maul it beyond recognition. I also know that in the movement itself needs to answer many questions
However I still think we need to talk to the young. Even though I know ultimately, almost certainly, some betrayal will occur.
But some churnings will also happen.