new film, 'Kairan, Surkkhiyon ke Baad...'
(Kairana, After the Headlines...).
https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=6qOoeq6dYtA
A lot of you must have read about the recent controversies surrounding Kairana (a small Western UP town).
The film is 27 minutes long and is an attempt to look at Kairna beyond the binaries of Hindu versus Muslim. (Detailed synopsis below).
o o ohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?
A lot of you must have read about the recent controversies surrounding Kairana (a small Western UP town).
The film is 27 minutes long and is an attempt to look at Kairna beyond the binaries of Hindu versus Muslim. (Detailed synopsis below).
Kairana,
a small town in western Uttar Pradesh's Shamli district has recently
been in the headlines. In June 2016, Kairana's MP, Hukum Singh, who is
from the Bharatiya Janata Party, claimed that there was an exodus of
Hindus from Muslim-majority Kairana because of harassment by Muslims.
To substantiate his allegation, he released a list of 346 Hindu families
who had supposedly migrated from the town. It didn't take long, but the list was soon discredited.
Many in the list were still living in Kairana, some had moved out over a
decade ago for economic reasons, and while some did claim that
deteriorating law and order was a serious concern, no one attributed
their migration from Kairana to a Hindu-Muslim conflict.
'Kairana, Surkhiyon ke Baad...' (Kairana, After the Headlines...) – produced by Chalchitra Abhiyan and The Wire – attempts to look at the town and its politics, and the issues that
affect it, beyond the binaries of Hindu versus Muslim. The film speaks
to a range of voices from Kairana – from Muslim youth, to Hindus and
Jains, the workers who have to travel far from the town for their daily
wages, Dalits and women. The town, like many others in UP (and perhaps
India) is today confronted with the grim reality of its real issues
being glossed over under the shrill rhetoric of religious polarisation
imposed on residents by influential politicians.
Even as the recent National Human Rights Commission report on Kairana gives
credence to Hindu right wing claims that Kairana's Muslim men
selectively molest Hindu women, my film tries to scratch beneath the
surface of such claims to reveal the larger patriarchal assault on women
of both religions, by men of both religions. The Dalits of Kairana
speak of how they're at the receiving end of caste hierarchies upheld by
dominant caste men of both religions. Muslim youth and workers speak of
stark issues of unemployment in the town and the lack of any basic
amenities – factors that are leading to growing criminalisation of the
youth. A criminalisation that both Hindus and Muslims are victim to. The
Hindus and the Jains of Kairana speak of how they've never felt
vulnerable in a Muslim majority town.
In
the midst of this despair, the film tries to look at the daily
resistance of the people of Kairana and their struggles to bring back to
the fore the real issues that afflict them.