Program Notes
Chale Nafus
Director of Programming, Austin Film Society
For many women on either side of the Indian/Pakistani border the nightmare began, but did not end, with the geo-political Partition of 1947. In the mass exodus of Muslims going westward to newly formed Pakistan and Hindus & Sikhs traveling eastward into a newly reduced India, horrific, vengeful battles raged. Villages were raided along the way and women were raped and/or abducted. Extreme measures were often taken – not really to protect the women from harm but to protect the “honor” of the family name. Hindu and Sikh families instructed their wives and daughters to be prepared to jump into the village wells if Muslims attacked – not hide in the wells, but jump to their deaths rather than suffer the patriarchal “fate worse than death.” Similar instructions were doubtlessly given to Muslim women and girls. Even so, many women were abducted and taken into Pakistan and India, where they became wives and mothers forcefully converted to their husbands’ religions.
When India and Pakistan tried to normalize relations, after the Partition and the War in Kashmir, both countries signed a “Recovery Act,” designed to return women to their rightful families on either side of the border. There was no deadline to the Act, but as each year passed repatriation became more problematic. Many of the abducted women had married and had children. If they were to return to their original homeland, they could not take their children or husband. Many refused those conditions. Thousands, who had no children or who desperately wanted to go home, were not accepted back into their Hindu or Sikh families “because they had lived with Muslim men.” Reportedly many of these women went mad with grief and became homeless, committed suicide, or ended up in ashrams for “widows.” For them the Recovery Act of 1948 brought no relief whatsoever. The lines of Partition cut through their villages, their families, their hearts, and their very identities.
Out of this history Pakistani filmmaker Sabiha Sumar initially wanted to make a documentary. She interviewed many women in the state of Punjab in Pakistan, but was limited in her research in India since Pakistanis are given city-specific travel visas rather than countrywide access. However, she interviewed people in Delhi who had researched the plight of women during Partition and Recovery. Through them she met women in ashrams half-a-century after returning to India. The stories she unearthed were so heart-rending and still painful that she decided against making a documentary and turned instead to making a narrative feature. She also realized that through a narrative she could connect more contemporary violence of the 70s with that of the 40s, “so that it's not as if it becomes a historical film that suggests that violence occurred and then it ended, but rather that it is a continuous process.”
Sumar purposely placed her story in 1979, a few years after General Zia-ul-Haq had taken power in Pakistan and, as Sumar states, had begun his eleven-year dictatorship, during which he forcefully moved the country from a secular Muslim identity to a “national Islamic identity.” To accomplish this, he resorted to “extremist interpretations of the Quran and Sharia [the Islamic legal system], and officially undermined women’s social and legal rights, and subordinated them to men as second class citizens.” Thus, Sumar made a direct link between the fates befalling women during Partition and the reinforcement of a socio-religious patriarchy in the late 70s.
The filmmaker was especially disturbed by what she had witnessed happening to women in her native country. Born in Karachi, Pakistan in 1961, Sabiha Sumar was raised at a time that Pakistan enjoyed the “tradition of a diverse, pluralistic, popular Islam.” She grew up listening to qawwalis [Sufi devotional music best exemplified by internationally renowned Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan], Sufi stories, and Persian poetry, all recited by her father. Political discussions were also frequent and vibrant within the Sumar household, with Sabiha and her seven siblings often on different sides of issues. Above all, discourse was encouraged regardless of one’s views. “But I think at some level we all agreed with our father on the need for a change in our value system and for the feudal mindset that exists to give way to something new.”
With this strong family support, Sabiha Sumar went off to study filmmaking and political science at Sarah Lawrence College (New York) and International Relations at Cambridge. The Pakistan she returned to in the 80s felt radically different and the status of women had declined precipitously. She found the changes insidious: increasing the height of walls around girls’ schools, not allowing women to wear short sleeves, having village women covering themselves with chadors to go out of the house, and forcing mandatory use of the duputta [long scarf] to cover the hair. Sumar was even more mystified by the changes because, unlike in Iran, there had been no popular Islamic revolution. Instead, the dictatorship of Zia imposed all these changes through a “narrow, state-sponsored orthodox” version of Islam. The filmmaker began to realize that “the fact that we didn't have an Islamic revolution in a way made it more difficult for us to fight what was actually happening in the country because we didn't know what to reject, we didn't know who our enemy was.” She became determined that even “if we can't demonstrate our support for moderation, we need to question what's happened to us. Why don't we have that street power and strength, and how can we harness the support of the silent majority? The fact is, there may be a sea of people opposed to fundamentalism and extremism, but they seem to be helpless to stem the tide.”
Initially she thought that the best way to fight these repressive changes was through writing articles and making documentaries. Her first documentary would attack the Zina Hudood Ordinances of 1979, which followed highly conservative interpretations of Shari’a law regarding theft, drinking alcohol, Zina (extramarital sex), and false accusations of the latter. It was the wide-ranging definitions of “extramarital sex” that caused the most awful miscarriages of justice. Women who married for love rather than submitting to their parents’ choices could be charged with Zina. Women daring to go to the police to report being raped were almost automatically jailed while their case was (slowly) examined. By the loosest definition rape indicated extramarital sex. The violence and force used against the raped woman were seen as irrelevant. She had obviously “had sex” outside marriage, regardless of the circumstances. Sabiha Sumar and other women were rightfully incensed by such an idiotic interpretation of rape. The filmmaker began interviewing women who had been jailed because of being raped. After writing a number of articles, Sumar produced her first documentary, WHO WILL CAST THE FIRST STONE? She and her friends also created a petition for repeal of the Hudood Ordinances and secured Benazir Bhutto’s signature while she was running for the presidency of Pakistan in 1987. Unfortunately once she took office in 1988 she did not repeal the hateful laws against women. Even though WHO WILL CAST THE FIRST STONE? won several international awards, the documentary was never seen in Pakistan.
Undeterred, Sumar gained foreign financing to make other documentaries. WHERE PEACOCKS DANCE examined pre-Islamic culture in the Sindh province of Pakistan and questioned the validity of denying the glorious artistic and archeological creations predating Islam in the area known as Pakistan. The film questions what exactly is Pakistani culture – only that Islamic one created after 711 or a merging of all historical epochs in the area? Since no movie theater or TV station would show WHERE PEACOCKS DANCE, Sabiha created a “traveling cinema” which set up in various villages of Pakistan. This would serve her well with subsequent films.
She next went to Sri Lanka to do a doc about the women suicide warriors of the Tamil Tigers independence movement. Rather than overtly support their political goals, Sumar was fascinated by “this image of women at war.” She determined that these young girls became suicide warriors “to avoid rape” by Sri Lankan military. As they told her, it was the only way they believed they could survive day after day before having to finally blow themselves up in the cause of war. In some ways they had become activist women “improving” on the jump-in-the-well suicides of the Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim women of the 1940s.
Next she made a slightly lighter doc, DON’T ASK WHY, about a 17-year-old middle class, well educated Karachi girl who “finds herself in conflict with the atmosphere in a country that's becoming increasingly fundamentalist.” She wants to go out with friends and party but through her questions begins to wonder if perhaps religion can somehow give her the space she wants. Over a six-month period she goes from questioning to accepting religion and then wanting to flee. Even though the film is based on the diary of an actual 17-year-old who plays herself in the documentary, the story echoes some of Sabiha’s life before she left for study abroad.
Another documentary, A PLACE UNDER THE HEAVENS, was conceived as “a very personal journey through the Islamisation process that we’ve been through. It starts way back, before I was born. It starts with what my father and mother told me about Pakistan - the '50s and '60s, the freedom, the ballroom dancing, the cabarets… that era which we only heard about. But I had my father's personal footage of that time, so the film begins with that and then it shows how things began to change. It actually examines where the beginning of this change lies - and that really is in our constitution itself. Because the constitution says that sovereignty rests with Allah, and it is through Allah that it is manifested in the people of Pakistan. Now if sovereignty rests with Allah, then where is the will of the people? And I think that is the crux of the matter, the heart of our problem. We battle with it all the time in this country; every political party battles with it, every military regime battles with it, we as individuals, as groups, as women's organizations, battle with it.”
Then came SILENT WATERS (released in 2003), the first film she felt would be better told as a narrative than as a documentary. Putting together the funding was not easy. There would be no Pakistani financial support. Some rich Pakistanis asked her, “Why should I fund a film when I can actually build a shelter for abandoned women, or orphaned children, or distribute Quran Sharifs, or provide dowry for 16,000 women? Why should I be giving you money?” Sumar was very frustrated by the apparent ignorance of the importance of countries having their own internationally recognized films. “I don't know of any country in the world today that does not have an understanding of what it means to develop the arts or develop the art of story-telling, of what it means to control what goes out in the media about you, the image you project.” Instead, she found 22 International organizations and people willing to finance her film. German film groups helped as did ZTF (German television). French organizations wanting to support filmmaking in developing countries also assisted. “And other small bits and pieces came from here and there.”
Casting the film was not easy because of budgetary restrictions. Consequently the only well-known professional actor in SILENT WATERS is Kirron Kher, an Indian actress who would do such a great job playing the mother. The rest of the cast was chosen from non-professionals. She especially insisted on having actual Sikhs play the appropriate roles of the pilgrims returning to Pakistan. “It was absolutely essential for me to have these very intimate scenes with them, where the men have their hair down and they're combing their beards. And to get that really correct, you need the real thing, or somebody very professional….”
When asked about the relationship between 9/11 and the production of SILENT WATERS, Sumar explains that the story and script were completed in 2000 and actual production began prior to 9/11. However, because of the events of September 2001 she had to put production aside for a while. Although the film was shot on either side of 9/11, it is not any kind of response to that event. She was more concerned with the impact of fundamentalist extremism on her own country and people. However, as the world began to wake up to the dangers of such an extremist interpretation of Islam, her film would find a worldwide audience.
Unfortunately once again her newest film would not be widely seen in Pakistan. Even after a successful response at the Kara Film Festival in Karachi, no Pakistani distributor or television network would touch it, while in India it was playing for three months, along side the very popular VEER ZARA. She recognized that part of the problem in Pakistan was economic, with a 35mm print costing 5-7000 Euros, an amount distributors feared would never be recouped. Sumar was approached about having “corporate screenings” of the film, but she was against “this Pakistani habit of private screenings for suited men.” She wanted her film on TV and in theaters. With that not happening, she returned to her doc exhibition days and went on the road with her “traveling cinema.” She showed the film in open-air theaters in 41 villages and towns in the four provinces of Pakistan and conducted discussions with the townspeople after the screenings. Responding to one comment, she explained that the mother, Ayesha, “is afraid of the politicization of religion. … she's afraid that the liberal Islam that she knows and that she grew up with is changing. The problem for her is that she can see that this is a political use of Islam which is going to grow and she is going to lose her son in this storm.” When asked why Saleem, the son, didn’t simply stick with his music and become recognized for that rather than turning to extremism, Sumar pointed out the fact that under Zia’s dictatorship, “Pakistan completely wiped out the possibility of the arts and culture” and left its youth with few choices.
There were some problems with Sumar’s exhibition strategy. In the interior of Sindh province, plainclothes policemen said that the film was anti-Islam and anti-Pakistan and thus could not be shown. Sumar proudly reports that village women stood up and said, “’Listen, you guys have been lying to us all our lives and this is the first honest piece of work we have seen. This is really about us and we should be seeing more of this kind of cinema.'” Surprisingly the policemen left. In the Punjab a group of maulvis [perhaps similar to the young religious teachers in the film] stated, “’We won't let you show this film here until we see it first.'” Instead of giving them any power, Sumar and her group said “No” to censorship and moved on to another village. In Peshawar, the men said that the film would have to be shown separately to men and to women. Sumar said, “No, it will be shown to a mixed group or not at all.” Finally the women sat in one area and the men in another, but both watched the film together and heard each others’ responses.
Sabiha Sumar strongly denies that the film presents a negative image of Pakistan. Instead, her target is extremism, which she rightly recognizes can appear anywhere [neo-Nazis in Germany, militias and Timothy McVeigh in the US, death squads in Central America and Colombia, etc.]. In fact, she received a warm letter from President Musharraf’s office praising the film. Rather than attacking her homeland, Sumar simply wants to warn of the dangers of a small radical group “taking center stage” and garnering power. She feels that Zia’s crime was putting the extremist, Islamist maulvis in the center of politics and allowing them to dictate policy in Pakistan. “I think when people see this film, they see world events reflected in it, they see the growth of fundamentalism everywhere. A film can only work over a long period, and across continents, if it makes connections with other people. If it's simply a film about another country and about someone else, it would not have lasting impact.”
Supporting the global response to SILENT WATERS, the film has garnered 17 international awards, “including the prestigious Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival, the 19th Mar del Plata International film award in Buenos Aires, the Indian Star of Germany award for best film at the Bollywood and Beyond Festival in Stuttgart, and the best screenplay award at the Kara Film Festival in Karachi.” Once more she was disappointed by the lack of Pakistani coverage of her awards. She even called up the press when she won the Leopard in Locarno, but no one in Pakistan seemed to think that was important. On the other hand, her film has been widely praised in India, something she accepts but wish could be balanced by recognition in Pakistan.
Her goal for films in her country is extremely admirable, but continually frustrated: "I keep trying to put Pakistani cinema on the world map, but get absolutely no support at home. What will it take for Pakistanis to realise the power of cinema - not just in reference to the message a film conveys, but also in terms of the image-building good cinema can do for a country?" Even though subsequent to the production of SILENT WATERS she has made several documentaries, she has indefinitely put on hold another narrative feature, which would tell the story of a young woman frustrated in her dream of entering the world of fashion in Pakistan.
Sources
- Sairah Irshad Khan, “Interview with Sabiha Sumar,” Newsline [Pakistan], September 2005, http://www.newsline.com.pk/NewsSep2005/interviewsep2005.htm
- Rahat Imran, “Deconstructing Islamization in Pakistan: Sabiha Sumar
Wages Feminist Cinematic Jihad through a Documentary Lens,” Journal of
International Women’s Studies, Vol. 9 #3 May 2008 http://www.bridgew.edu/SOAS/jiws/May08/Rahat.pdf
- Nermeen Shaikh, “Q&A” [Interview with Sabiha Sumar], AsiaSource, 12 April 2005, http://www.asiasource.org/news/special_reports/sumar.cfm
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qawwali
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benazir_Bhutto
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