Anand Patwardhan for Friday Review

By Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed

Anand Patwardhan is one of India’s earliest documentary film makers and has faithfully worked at
this task for close to 40 years since his student days in the early 1970s. Almost all of his 15 films have
won National Awards while forming a tumultuous visual archive of India and are grim reminders that
all is not well with the nation state. His films clearly display his commitment to a broadly left-liberal
agenda with a concern for the working classes. “In a country like ours that is so class divided, films
like mine provide a perspective from the other side,” he said, addressing participants of the Theatre
and Arts Appreciation Course being held at Rangashankara.

Patwardhan was in Bangalore to deliver a lecture on his journey in documentary film making. On the
day, he wore a loose black short tunic and comfortable looking khaki trousers that added to the
youthful seriousness he brought to the lecture. His silver hair and rimless glasses gave him an aura of
light intensity but never too much to weigh on the audience. It was evident that he was used to
addressing public gatherings but he was not a master orator although he made this up with his
demeanour of easy honesty and effortless affability. He is the longest burning and, some would
argue, the brightest star of documentary film making in India, but perhaps because of the
marginality of his genre, Patwardhan remains grounded. If the genre itself was popular, Patwardhan
would be far better known.

Thematically, Patwardhan’s films have been versatile but there is a consistent commitment to giving
voice to people, who otherwise, would not be represented in mainstream media. He has been a
filmic chronicler of the subaltern voice, a question which social scientists in India began dabbling
with during the 1970s. His early films, ‘Waves of Revolution’ (1975) and ‘Prisoners of Conscience’
(1978), are rare gems, not only because of their uniqueness, but also because of their perspectives
on the failure of the democratic movement in India. An impish bravado has also accompanied his
film making right from the start. (He smuggled out cut strips of ‘Waves of Revolution’ through
anyone who was going abroad during the Emergency and then put it all together when he went to
Canada.)

It is difficult to associate bravado and tenacity with the amiable and pleasant Patwardhan but you
cannot help it when he blandly discusses his struggle with state censorship. “I have had to fight to
show every film of mine on Doordarshan and I have won a total of seven cases – two in the Supreme
Court and five in the High Court,” he says following it with an ironic comment that elicits a titter of
warm laughter from the group, “Every time my film wins an award, I use that to argue my case for it
to be screened on Doordarshan. Arre, you can’t give me a National Award and then refuse to show
my film on national television.” He sees this constant struggle as a fight for his freedom of
expression and the viewers’ right to information.

The varied repertoire of his films has also given Patwardhan expertise on a variety of issues. He
discusses in the manner of a ‘public intellectual’, with felicity and a simple eloquent rhetoric that is
combined with a sense of justified conviction. His films through the eighties include ‘A Time to Rise’
(1981) (on the efforts of Indian agricultural labourers to unionise in Canada), ‘Bombay, Our City’
(1985) (on the slum demolition drive in Mumbai), ‘In Memory of Friends’ (1990) (on the troubled
issue of Khalistan). This was also the time when he realised the profundity of the communal problem
in the country and made two films, ‘Ram Ke Naam’ (1992) (on the Rath Yatra) and ‘Father, Son and
Holy War’ (1995) (on the psychological element of communal violence). His later films include, ‘A
Narmada Diary’ (1996) and ‘War and Peace’ (2002) (a long documentary on nuclear tests in India and
Pakistan), among others.

Answering a question on whether his films offered solutions, Patwardhan said, “I can only make
people to look at life from different perspectives”. Responding to another question on whether he
was disillusioned with his work as it had little impact, he simply said, “I still enjoy doing what I do.
That’s why I continue doing this work.” It was a clichéd answer but there was no better way to
respond to that question at the end of a lifetime of making films that are a record of our nation. And
Patwardhan did not seem to be the sort of person who would wallow in a despairing sort of
nostalgia. He has films to make and to show other lives. He continues to work, indefatigably, and is
working on a film on caste issues now.

EOM