Sunday 12 January 2020

Women On the Forefront


Well-known filmmaker Sudhir Mishra recently said he will be making again Yeh Woh Manzil To Nahin taking into account the current ferment among the student community in the country over the CAA-NRC agitation.

Yeh Woh Manzil... was a haunting film on student politics released in the 1980s. The movie is about three old men who come to attend a college's golden jubilee function after many decades. They had studied there in the pre-independence era and were involved in a botched bomb attack and double-crossed one of their comrades. They never revisited this town after completing their courses and went on to build their careers and were fairly successful.

All their lives they are haunted by the guilt of betrayal, and on the campus, it is further stoked by a series of incidents - when they come across the place where their friend was gunned down by the police; an old professor who immediately recognizes them and the incident, forcing them to beat a hasty retreat; and the female friend of the dead comrade who confronts them.

They come face to face with the current tussle between two groups of students - one led by an idealist student leader and the other by the son of a local industrialist, who leads a band of thugs. They decide to throw their weight behind the idealistic student leader in order to exorcise their guilt.

If Mishra were to make a film on today's student politics it will have a tectonic shift in terms of gender. In the 1980s film probably the only two female characters - one was the brief appearance of the woman friend of the dead comrade and a freelance journalist (played by Sushmita Mukherjee). In the new version Mishra will have to allot women prominent roles, if not the lead role itself.

Right from the early days of protest women have been on the forefront. Whether it is Jamia Milia Islamia University women students leading a march, protecting fellow male protesters from police brutality, handing out roses to the police, or the sit-in in Shaheen Bagh and lastly the surprise appearance of Deepika Padukone at a protest meet in Delhi, when her fellow 'A' list stars maintained a deafening silence, to list a few incidents.

They are taking up their roles with aplomb. Whether it is making fiery speeches or being the lead slogan shouters, holding witty posters, they are confidently defiant. This is something a Savitribai Phule or Ishwara Chandra Vidyasagar would have felt proud of.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tried to give the current agitation a communal spin by saying the protestors can be identified with their clothes, but it evoked only funny cartoons and memes. 

The protestors came in all shapes and dresses - with or without headscarf, armed with Tricolour and Ambedkar portrait. Some with children in tow. They sounded confident while talking to TV cameras and minced no words while stating their views.

However, journalist Neha Dixit claims it is not an overnight phenomenon, nor a one-off case. She claims it has been building up from Nirbhaya protest days in 2012 and since then girl students have been hitting the streets for various protests, including pinjra tod and #Metoo movements. In many cases they have taken to streets in the face of family opposition. Hence there is nothing to feel surprised about.

While the mainstream media, especially servile TV channels, tried to ignore to protests or tried to paint the protesters in seditious and communal colours, it failed to stick. Many of these channels ran opinion polls on CAA hoping that bhakts and bots will bring in the numbers to show the protesters in negative light. But even they failed and many of these polls suffered a premature 'take-downs'.

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