Recently, I took myself to watch Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound, whose storyline I can describe as not only heartbreaking but also defiant, considering the current political climate of India.
Of course I had to watch this film, not because I heard good reviews, but because it is based on Kashmiri journalist Basharat Peer’s NYT piece A Friendship, a Pandemic and a Death Beside the Highway.
If you read the article and then watched the film as I had done, perhaps you too would feel that Ghaywan kept the story’s journalistic integrity intact.
What do I mean by ‘journalistic integrity’? This is not easy to define.
Journalism is a very subjective term, although many journalists will falsely claim to have achieved this elusive concept called objectivity.
But they are very good at giving context and plenty of background information. So does Ghaywan.
Staying largely true to Peer’s original, almost linear story line, Ghaywan gives the ending its deserved context.
Perhaps this is where you begin to understand the difference between reporting and journalism.
You begin to see that the tragedy that occurs towards the near-end of the film did not take place in a vacuum.
You see the long list of events that eventually lead to the climax of the story.
These events aren’t just random mishappenings; they are in fact deeply political and directly tied to the class, caste and religious identities of the protagonists.
I won’t give away too much in this article, but I am going to talk about how Muslims are perceived in today’s India.
Eroding trust within communities
Ghaywan lays bare the everyday Islamophobia that Muslims have to deal with in India.
The Pakistan taunts, the state-backed persecution, the hateful media, the micro aggressions towards Muslims, unsupportive and suspicious bosses, and much more.
Mohammed Shoaib Ali, the Muslim protagonist played by Ishaan Khatter remains largely quiet in the wake of the taunts meted out to him. I do not know if this was done intentionally.
If it was, kudos to the writing because that represents the majority of the Indian Muslims who are silently braving through the country’s unprecedented hate towards them since 2014.
Even when he wants to fight back, all Shoaib can do is address his superior officers in a somewhat raised tone and walk away from them.
Shoaib is a refreshing character. Especially since most Muslim representation in Bollywood serves either to demonise them or to relegate them to a supportive role in a heavily stereotyped manner.
As a Muslim, your sixth sense feels validated. You feel that okay, I’m not imagining it. They weren’t “just joking.”
As if all this wasn’t good enough, Homebound allowed me to make a shocking discovery about myself. Okay, well, it’s not that shocking. But it made me realise that a Muslim like myself – and I consider myself woke, progressive, left, and liberal – perhaps can be Islamophobic too.
At one point during the film, Shoaib commits an act that only seems disingenuous. A bit cheeky of the director, I suppose.
But it’s important. In that brief moment, I lose trust in that character even though I have already stayed with him for some 40-45 minutes. I already know how genuine he is.
If it was anybody else, I’d have made some excuses for them. So why did I not trust Shoaib?
Is it because we’ve been told hundreds of thousands of times by dozens of news channels that Muslims cannot be trusted over the last 12 years? Have Muslims heard it so many times that perhaps we may be doubting our own selves? Or perhaps there is the poverty angle at play.
Love for oneself
In an interview with The News Minute’s Sudipto Mondal, Dalit Camera founder Raees Mohammed (previously known as Ravichandran Bathran) had said, “In the caste system, it makes you hate yourself. Caste is a hatred.”
Mohammed went on to explain how family members, friends, elders, and both cultural and governmental institutions come together to enforce the caste system, and that the “love for oneself is not there.” He explained how he struggled to find solidarity from both the so-called upper and lower Hindu castes.
This is Mohammed’s personal story, which may not resonate with everyone. Still, in a paper titled What the Contemporary Dalit Movement can learn from Gandhi-Ambedkar Debate, Dr. Nishikant Kolge writes, “For Ambedkar, the problem of the caste was not just moral failure of the upper-caste Hindu. The caste system also created the mental status of self-doubt, self-denial and self-hatred among the Dalits.”
Dr. Kolge also quotes Dr. D. R. Nagaraj, a prominent critic who echoed Ambedkar’s words. “The working of the caste system has always tried to create mental states of self-doubt, self-denial, and self-hatred among the lower caste individuals in the modern context, and generally these attitudes are collectivized. The birth of the modern individual in the humiliated communities is not only accompanied by a painful severing of ties with the community, but also a conscious effort to alter one’s past is an integral part of it.”
It is centuries of caste oppression that has finally led to this “self-doubt, self-denial, and self-hatred”, which can also be seen in Homebound.
Vishal Jethwa as Chandan Kumar portrays a character who is plagued by his caste status. Chandan finds it incredibly difficult to openly accept his Dalit identity and in many instances tries to keep it hidden. But this isn’t about him being disingenuous.
His is a struggle against upper caste attitudes towards the reservation system, forcing him to deny himself the support he rightly deserves.
Perhaps it is in this context that in the Hindi heartland, in its most rural settings, would Muslim and Dalit communities find solace in each others’ company.
A new normal
Post 2014, there has been a massive uptick in hate crimes against Muslims.
While prejudice against the community existed for a long time, this kind of vile hate was kept largely controlled by various governments.
But it has now been unleashed on the poorest of the community.
India, especially in its northern states, now has regular economic boycotts of vegetable vendors.
Meat shops are shut down as and when Hindutva groups deem necessary. Muslim women are “auctioned” online using their stolen pictures.
Rapists from the 2002 Gujarat riots are garlanded and given a grand welcome.
All of the television media conspires to demonise the Muslim community.
Houses of Muslims are bull-dozed for seemingly arbitrary reasons.
And there seems to be no end to illegal lynchings of poor Muslim men on allegations of cattle smuggling or beef eating.
Rather quickly, acts of violence by Hindutva groups have become commonplace against all kinds of Muslims.
At what point are Muslims going to, en masse, engage in self-doubt, self-denial and self-hatred?
I fear that the last decade of extreme hate against Muslims may already be leading the community down the same path.
Untamed Reflections 