The pains of Bhagirathi
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Director Anwar Jamal talks about his association with the Tehri dam struggle and his well known documentary "Call of the Bhagirathi".
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Photo: Anu Pushkarna
ON COURSE Director Anwar Jamal in New Delhi.
With due respect to activists of different hues — whose numbers have swelled over the years, and who now seem to support any cause that comes their way — it sometimes becomes difficult to distinguish the genuine crusaders from the charlatans. Till one encounters concerns and counter views, espoused through different genres, as in the documentary "Call of the Bhagirathi", directed by Anwar Jamal. The film was screened recently at Quotes from the Earth, a film festival on the environment, held at New Delhi's India International Centre.
Made in 1990 and released two years later, the film, as per Jamal, "is an outcome of five years of work, when I was involved in the struggle against the Tehri dam to save Tehri town, countless villages, forests, cultivable land and eco-systems from submergence." The film depicts the struggle mounted by these hill people to save not only their assets and livelihood but their way of life as it had existed for generations. Indeed, in one scene, the baritone of Om Puri states the tragic reality of ordinary people being uprooted from the shores of their beloved river, to be supplanted, sometimes forcibly, on an alien land, with nothing more than barren rocks.
National award
Jamal, a frontrunner in the struggle against thediscriminatory effects of globalisation on the everyday life of common people, had won the National Award for the Best Investigative Film in 1992 for this documentary. Ask him whether he had experienced a sense of dichotomy at receiving the award from a government that his documentary had targeted, he says, "I am a firm believer in democracy and our Constitution, and accepting the award from the President of India is an honour, as that is a position above any politics."
Jamal says till about five years after making the documentary, he was closely involved in the movement, "but then I moved on to other issues, including female foeticide," he admitted, adding, "through my lectures as visiting faculty, I must have spread the ideas espoused in my documentary to several youngsters, some of whom would definitely have taken over the work. I believe that it is the task of a filmmaker to document events as they unfold, and present them before the world and then move on to newer subjects."
Expressinganguish, Jamal says, "The plunder of common resources by vested interests continues unabated, at a grave cost to the environment. The location may changebut the indifference persists, as the same people who oversaw the destruction of the Tehri river system are now presiding over the debasement of the Ridge near Vasant Kunj." He calls for"a more sustainable and less discriminatory development model,with a win-win situation for all."
Here is hoping that it reaches the right ear.
APS MALHOTRA
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