Last night after work I attended a screening of the movie
Final Solution. A documentary filmed in the aftermath of the the riots and carnage in Gujarat in following the massacre in Godhra in early 2002.
Excerpt from director:
"Final Solution is a study of the politics of hate. Set in Gujarat during the period Feb/March 2002 - July 2003, the film graphically documents the changing face of right-wing politics in India through a study of the 2002 genocide of Moslems in Gujarat. It specifically examines political tendencies reminiscient of the Nazi Germany of early/mid-1930s. Final Solution is anti-hate/ violence as “those who forget history are condemned to relive it”
This is a powerful film. The reaction of the crowd was worth noting. There was no appropriate reaction to the devastation in front of us. We're not equiped as human beings to deal with horrific acts and in some cases what we were seeing and hearing was so incredulous that as a audience we laughed, not because it was funny but because we didn't know what to say.
My own personal reaction was the most surprising. Of course I was outraged, its the reaction I've been conditioned to feel when such acts are presented in front of me. The movie was full of stories, made up of the accounts of many victims who's stories tugged at every single one of my heart strings, and then came the disbelief, at the sermons preaching hate coming from within the grounds of the temple, at the forced ineffectiveness of the police, at the . Most of all, I was embarrassed. Embarrassed as a Gujarati, embarrassed as an Indian and embarrassed as a Hindu.
People are products of their environments. We all develop our opinions based on the lessons and exposures we are subject to growing up and these are compounded or changed as we get access to different information every day. That being said I still think that people are inherently good, that we are not programmed to cause harm to others. That being said I can't condemn the people in Gujarat who are in involved in this for what they think, for many of them the only information they receive is this hate-filled propaganda, from newspapers, from religious leaders, from politicians. What else are they supposed to think; these mobs are people who don't have access to the internet, to any outside source of information. But what I can't excuse is their actions. Even with the hate their complete disregard for the welfare of others is inexcusable. Then there are their leaders, their munipulators. For them I feel nothing but disappointment, in their actions, in the values, in their lies and in their lives. The desire for power and privilege is something I understand but not at the expense of others.
After the screening there was a Q/A with the film’s director, Rakesh Sharma, which, after a handful of the usual questions, turned into an interested exchange fueled by a comment about the film’s under-representation of Hindu suffering from one of the spectators. Whoever he is I’m glad he attended and watched the movie because with his few comments he provided a window into the reality of the movie, it was no longer this farfetched opinion on a screen.
I’m left wanting to know more, to do more, to do something. Not necessarily about this but about something that gets me this fired up. I’m searching.
