The film Chittagong (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
-- Jaya
was screened at MIT recently. The screening was followed by a Q&A session
with the director, Bedabrata Pain. Hats off to ex-NASA scientist, Pain, on
his directorial debut.
Chittagong is about the Chittagong (Chottogram) revolutionaries Surya Sen
(Master da), Nirmal Sen, Pritilata Waddedar, Kalpana Dutt, Gautam Ghosh,
Loknath Bal, Anant Singh and the 50+ students (aged 14-20) who left school
to take up arms in the uprising. We see much of the film through the lens
of 14 yr. old Jhunku (Subodh Roy). We get to see the real Subodh Roy in a
clip from a 2006 interview (in his hospital deathbed; he died 2 weeks after
the interview).
The film is very different from your typical Bollywood one, and is shot
with a washed-out look, the diffused lighting giving Jhunku the wondrous
look of an impressionable boy. In Bedo’s words, he used a “shallow depth of
field to get Jhunku’s eyes to face you directly.” The film was not shot in
Chittagong (now in Bangladesh) but in a place called Latagudi in the N. W.
Bengal countryside. The photography, sound (no dubbing) and music (Bolo Na
based on Raag Bageshri by Shankar Mahadevan) are all well done.
I liked that the film takes no liberty with historical facts (it is a
feature film and not a documentary). This is an uprising many of us in the
audience knew little about. Bedo opined that it was an event that must be
told to future generations (“there must be a re-telling of South Asian
history”), and correctly, not as the Easter Rebellion it came to be known
as because of a British Raj coinage stemming from an internal memo (the
uprising was ‘home grown’, with little influence from the events in
Ireland). Pritilata Waddedar, Kalpana Dutta grew up strongly influenced by
the likes of Rani of Jhansi. Women in traditional roles - housewives –
participated by donating their jewellery for the cause and sewed uniforms
for the boys and men.
Someone in the audience asked why he had not shown any Muslims in the
group. Bedo said that this was a primarily educated middle-class Hindu
group. However, the villages where Master da was in hiding for 3 years, had
a Muslim demographic, and without their protection, he would not have
lasted that long (I read somewhere that it was his own uncle who betrayed
him to the British for Rs. 10,000). In fact, sending Ahsanullah as CID in
charge was a calculated divisive move by the British; he is shown in the
film to spread anti-Hindu sentiments to the poor Muslims in the surrounding
villages).
There was also a discussion on the ethics of recruiting 14 and 15 yr.
olds, all of whom were academically very good and with promising futures)
for the cause.
If there is one criticism of the film, it is that almost no mention is made
of events going on in the other parts of the country. There is a brief
scene at the outset where the students have joined the protestors on the
streets in 1929 over Jatin Das’ death whilst in captivity in Lahore jail,
one where Jhunku has secretly acquired the banned book “Pother Dabi”
(Sharat Chandra Chatterjee), a fleeting mention of the Gaddar Party
activists who are also sent to the Penal Colony in the Andamans the same
time Jhunku is.
The film has an uplifting ending, showing a shift from a small movement to
the mass Tebhaga movement with the stirring song “Ishan” playing in the
background.
-- Jaya
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