In conversation

Sanjay Kak, film maker, in conversation with Ankur Datta, South Asian University, Delhi

 

Ankur Datta (AD): What do you see as victimhood? How does one recognize victimhood in a certain situation in your experience?

Sanjay Kak (SK): My own preoccupation has been to prevent victimhood from becoming a kind of politics; how do you rescue victimhood from that inevitable slide into a regressive, inward looking, debilitating politics, where your pain becomes more important than anything else. As a film maker working in the Narmada valley around 1999, when the anti-dam movement was at its fierce best, and working alongside the Narmada Bachao Andolan, there was a joyous aspect to it, that the andolan somehow managed to convey something to everybody, to the Adivasi, the kisan, the machuara, the boatmen. So there was a larger perspective there: it was that this valley has to be saved, the river has to be saved. It wasn’t just a narrow vision about hamari zameen, hamare yeh, hamara voh, you know.¹ There was a sense of interconnectedness, which is the politics that I am looking for. In this sense then, when someone there spoke up, it was not only about their own pain, their own loss, but also about who we are, and what is our place here.

In the same way, when I went to Kashmir in 2003, after a very long gap, it was a very curious position to be in, because as someone who was born in a Kashmir Pandit family, there ought to have been that familiar baggage – I won’t say burden – this enormous baggage of some kind of inherited victimhood. But because of my personal history, or the history of my family over those years, I did not have that and I did not want to pretend to have it either. I was not going to appropriate it simply because it was there, and it was easy; I am trying to articulate what my issue with the whole victimhood things is – this ease of appropriation that ‘we have suffered’, ‘my community has suffered.’ I would have to know: Who are you? How have you suffered personally? It is suffering as an inheritance that I would be very careful about.

And then of course, to land up in Kashmir in 2003, which had seen 14 years of terrible violence, there was this enormous silence which I had to excavate for myself. And it was only through conversations that I slowly began to understand what people in Kashmir had endured. So, these are the words which are key for me, which prise open the meanings: What constitutes victimhood? Who has endured what? At the same time, it was not going to be a trade either, an exchange of pain and sorrow, like ‘I am a Kashmiri Pandit, my community has suffered; You are a Kashmiri Muslim, you have suffered. Therefore, we are now all equal.’ It wasn’t really like that. I was obviously trying to look for a larger politics, where of course the pain and loss and everything that goes with it is critical, an understanding of it is critical, but it is not the only thing that it’s about. There is a wider context that it is part of.²

 

AD: Would one then see victimhood itself as an idea or as a condition of being? Would you say an emphasis on it would perhaps prevent an understanding of the interconnection?

SK: I can see its power. A certain sense of victimhood is so central within say Sikhism, for example. And I am not even talking about the late ’70s, ’80s and ’90s but before that, long before that. It slips in, like it does in so many religious faiths. Christianity has it. In the same way, Islam too has it, and the way one encounters it in Kashmir, one could even argue that the stability that political Islam is able to give people comes from a long history of engagement with past histories of suffering, of victimhood. If one looks at the Shia faith for example, Shias are so directly connected with their past, which is not a generalized past. It is tied to very specific massacres and killings. It is absolutely central to the construction of their identity.

So I don’t want to seem naïve and say, ‘oh, I don’t buy into this victimhood thing because if it has not directly affected one, then it is not political enough.’ Because I also know that it is an enormously political thing and has been so for centuries. What matters is the recollection of that pain, and to what end it is being deployed. Sometimes, a sense of injustice can be deployed in multiple ways; and there are ways that one is comfortable with and there are ways that make one uncomfortable. I don’t think that it is possible to generalize – it is full of ambiguity, and a very open category.

More than anything else, I would retain my right to look hard at notions of victimhood and where they come from – and I’m not just talking about Kashmir. It is important to be able to have a conversation through and around it, because the biggest problem for me is when it becomes a conversation stopper. When it’s just put down on the table like a huge concrete block so that one can’t do anything anymore, and there’s no further conversation possible. So, my skepticism, my weariness, my anxieties are all directed towards that – I don’t want to get to that situation. I am willing to engage with everything that constitutes that big block on the table, but I don’t want it on the table because I want to be able to move on.

 

AD: So in a sense, any discussion on victimhood is meaningful. There is this sense that it cannot determine the possibilities of the next stage.

SK: Absolutely. And while one can see it, it cannot be dismissed either.

 

AD: Yes, exactly.

SK: Because are you going to tell the Adivasi of Bastar, arre kya tum boley ja rahe ho ki (what are you going on about), that you’ve been exploited for hundreds of years, yaar. Abhi kya, abhi chhodo yaar, woh ho gaya hai (leave it be, what has happened has happened), let’s get on with other things? Of course not! Because that victimhood has shaped the person’s politics. In just the same way that a sharp sense of victimhood makes a young man with only a couple of weeks of training pick up a gun in Kashmir to sign his own death warrant.

In the same way, none of us are in a position to turn to Kashmiri Pandits and say, nahi nahi aapka toh loss, loss nahi hai (your loss is not a loss). Of course not. But aapka jo woh loss hai, aapko jo dard hai, aapka jo accumulation of pain hai (your loss, your pain, the accumulation of your pain – what are you doing about it? What’s the politics that comes out of it? Not that people who have suffered should just shut up and not talk about it because of a sense of weakness or whatever. No. But the question is, how and to what end are you deploying it?³

 

AD: There are two things I want to push you on. One of the things I am interested in is that victimhood has been a feature of modern politics. At the risk of sounding ahistorical, modern victimhood becomes interesting especially after the end of the Second World War and with decolonization, because a language then emerges to talk about violence and suffering. The Holocaust of European Jews during the Second World War finally forced the emergence of genocide and ethnic cleansing as recognized categories, which doesn’t mean it did not happen before. The British gave us concentration camps in the Boer War in South Africa; we know what happened to the Armenians (the mass killing of 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1923). We can think of Rwanda, where 800,000 Tutsis were murdered by Hutus in 1994 and Cambodia, where more than a million Cambodians were killed by the Khmer Rouge regime during 1975-79. In that sense the 20th century has given us a language. When I worked with Kashmiri Pandits, some would draw upon the language of the genocide of European Jews, referring to the flight of the Pandits as an ‘exodus’ and that Kashmir has been subject to ethnic cleansing.⁴ So, I wonder, does one see something distinctive about the politics of victimhood in the early 21st century? Does one see a certain change in the making?

SK: It is very interesting that you should mention Cambodia and Rwanda and, of course, there is also the Holocaust. Why is it that people do not refer to Cambodia in the context of genocide? Is it because a brother does it to brother? Then it doesn’t seem to matter how many millions are killed, the cold brutality of it, the scale of it. It doesn’t become a reference point, which is interesting. Rwanda does come in, because at least there is difference, there are Hutu and Tutsi, but that difference is slightly complicated. Because you could see kaun upar tha, kaun neeche tha, global politics kya ha (who is above, who is below, and what the global politics of it was). Plus you could always say it is a myth. And of course it is from the dark past of Africa, so you know…

In the case of the Kashmiri Pandits, I would be particularly interested in actually tracing out – and I’m not sure if you’ve done that in the course of the research for your book – when do these phrases first start showing up? Do they show up in community newsletters, for example? That could be one way, through reported speeches. I certainly do think that Zionism has always been a very important point of reference in the context of the Kashmiri Pandits.

In the US, for example, some of the important Kashmiri Pandit groups in North America have literally aligned themselves with the American Zionist groups saying, ‘we are with you in this because our stories are the same.’ So in a sense, simply because one finds a parallel in the pain – of what might even be seen as the defining pain of our century – it gives one a certain cachet, an edge.

 

AD: If we look at Partition refugees, a similar language comes into play, such as the Bengali play written in the 1950s, ‘Notun Ihudi’ or the New Jews. So there was some awareness of the history of the European Jews in our part of the world. As I have mentioned, in my work I had encountered references to Jewish history in relation to the Kashmiri Pandit ‘migrants’, as they are known in Jammu.⁵ It is interesting that one group used it in an overdetermined manner while another group, such as the migrants who lived in the camps,⁶ who never encountered Jews in their life, did not. Like one family who I am close to asked me, ye Jews kon hai (who are Jews)? It’s like a non-religion. They would say Christian hai? Nahi. Musalman hai? Nahi, Chodho (Are they Christian, are they Muslim? Leave it).

However, for well to do and better educated Pandits, that language is meaningful. There is an element of class as it is those Pandits conversant in English who become aware of Jewish history. Panun Kashmir, one of the prominent Pandit activist groups, compiled a book which draws on the language of the Holocaust, presenting what happened to them as ethnic cleansing.⁷

SK: Ashoke Pandit’s short film also takes its title from Elie Wiesel’s writing about the Holocaust.⁸ So yes, I agree that it obviously did not come from below, it came from above. But I would like to be able to interrogate what they were trying to do by invoking it? Also built into it, I think, was a new phase of Zionism that was clearly anti-Muslim, which was not how we encountered it in Europe during the 1930s or 1940s. The people who invoke the Holocaust in the context of Kashmir, I doubt if they would have been interested in the Holocaust, as we know it happened. Who made the concentration camps? The Muslims certainly did not run them. But who is the enemy today? It certainly is the Muslim. One is taking the pain of a different era and superimposing it on a new victim-perpetrator situation. I certainly do not think that any Kashmiri Pandit would have been interested in the metaphor of the Holocaust unless the new Zionism was not coming forth in a strongly, clearly – and outspokenly – anti-Muslim world. That is very central. Islamophobia is built into it.

 

AD: The recourse to Zionism gives it a language of blameless victimhood.

SK: And it is so huge, it quickly turns into the block on the table. Once I have mentioned genocide and holocaust, where is the space to escape to?

 

AD: Another thing I find fascinating is that there is a tension between where and how one locates victimhood and socio-economic inequality, especially in areas where different communities are connected via complex histories as seen in places like Kashmir. How does one talk about victimhood when a history of socio-economic difference between different groups in particular contexts can lead to a potential denial of an experience of suffering?

SK: Well, I think what you just mentioned is also very important, because on the one hand if we are talking about this colossal obstructive tool, which is based on victimhood, and it ends up obstructing all conversation, it’s also true that the denial of victimhood is also hugely problematic. There is now a generation of young Kashmiris who simply don’t know of a time when Kashmiri Pandits were around. Many of them are happy to say that ‘Oh! Kashmiri Pandits were all rich landlords’, that they were all exploiters, or police agents, or whatever.⁹ So if there is a Holocaust guilt tripping, there is also a strong tradition of denial. Because one can claim there was no Holocaust, there was no genocide, and only 261 people died, but how does one still maintain place for recording the violence of dislocation and dispossession? How do we make place for a quieter, less flamboyant victimhood? Why is it not enough for me to say, ‘I had to leave, not because I was a victim of genocide or a holocaust, not even because my neighbours threatened me, or the loudspeakers atop the mosque threatened me, but it was because the atmosphere around was so horrible that I just had to leave. And once I left, I couldn’t come back because it became impossible. Not because my neighbours threatened me, or the mosque threatened me.’

Which is why one has a problem, like with the writer Rahul Pandita saying in his book – as a personal memory and a recollection – that the mosques near his house announced that the Pandits must leave.¹⁰ And when his book came out people wrote in saying that this was simply not possible, because there wasn’t any mosque in that part of Srinagar in the early 1990s.

In this hyperbolic marketplace of pain and everything else, how does one still engage with victimhood? That is the challenge for us, and that I think is why we are talking about it. Not to debunk or deny the Kashmiris, or the Tamils or anybody else their claim to victimhood, but how does one make place for a saner way of addressing suffering, dislocation and pain because only then can we bring in those other layers. Or else someone might turn around and say, what about structural violence, what about poverty that is grinding us down every day? Can one say no, don’t talk to me about that, but listen to what happened to me?

 

AD: What would you say are some of the challenges or concerns you have when it comes to documenting contentious forms of politics, where the question of victimhood may emerge?

SK: Well, for me there are two parts to it. One comes from a personal politics, which in some sense is always looking for the progressive, the redemptive in a situation. As a film maker I don’t think I am interested in simply documenting something because I don’t believe that such a statement means anything, because I don’t think it’s just the situation that one is describing. One is in a place because one also wants to know the way out of here… If I make a film about a community building a cane and bamboo bridge in Arunachal Pradesh, it is probably possible to make it into a dirge, like it’s going to be the last time this bridge is going to be built.¹¹ But I would much rather make it a celebration of the power of that community, so that even in its passing, it’s a sort of memorialization of the possibilities of community. That’s one part of it.

The other part is that of course, what does one mean by saying that I am going to represent this victimhood? Will it be based on what I’ve read? And will I then have to balance it with what I see? What do I see? Maybe I don’t see anything because everything is in the past in which case what do I trust? Do I trust those who I speak to? How trustworthy is that? How trustworthy is even what I have read?

I often joke about it, that if there’s something which we know something about, say if one knows something about Kashmir, and one reads the newspapers, one will see how little correlation there is between what is being recorded and the reality… Then you wonder that 20 years from now, if a researcher wants to study Kashmir, is this what they’ll see?

That again underlines the importance of somewhere putting down some alternative way of looking at it. I think that because we are so uncertain about all our references, about what we see, what we hear, what we read, ultimately as a film maker or someone who writes, I think my best bet is to make an argument. For me, that argument is of course made from what I’ve read, and what I’ve seen, and what I’ve heard and all that. Because ultimately, even if one is an eyewitness to something, say I come to a village, the previous night there’s been an encounter, houses have been burnt, there are these desperately poor people moaning their fate. Of course, they are victims. But I know, I have to wait there for some time to know if there’s another story, or another story, or yet another story. You know what I am saying? Real life is very layered and complicated.

That is why I reserve the right to even treat what is seen as, or what would normally be seen as, evidentiary and use it as part of the texture. To me, it has as much validity as Yasin Malik giving a speech to some villagers, or a Kashmiri Pandit reading a poem of nostalgia on the phone line from Jammu.¹² I am just saying, I am trying to signal to my audience, ‘look I’m making an argument with these diverse pieces of evidence. And, there is pain and suffering and so much else embedded in all of these, and yet, overplaying can burn you out.’ So that is both an aesthetic choice as a film maker and as communicator, but I would imagine it is also a political choice.

Very often what really impresses me about real activists, wherever I’ve met them, is just the quiet dignity with which they get down to what they have to do. It’s not about beating one’s breast and saying, yeh ho gaya hai, woh ho gaya hai (This happened, that happened).

 

* Transcribed by Aishani Khurana.

Footnotes:

1. Kak’s film Words on Water(2002) addressed the struggle for justice in the case of dam construction along the Narmada river and featured the Narmada Bachao Andolan.

2. Kak’s film Jashn-e-Azadi (how we celebrate freedom) (2007), explored life and politics in Kashmir. The film takes viewers across the valley and introduced them to Kashmiris in a way that served as an alternative to mainstream discourses, prevalent in India.

3. The Kashmiri Pandits are the Hindu minority of Kashmir. Following the outbreak of conflict in the region the vast majority of Pandits had to flee from their homes, seeking refuge in cities like Jammu and New Delhi, where they have remained ever since. Their displacement remains controversial. Some blame the displacement of the Pandits being targeted for their faith affiliation and support for the Indian state by militants and other groups. Others blame their displacement as being engineered by the Indian state to discredit aazadi in Kashmir. The two poles prevent any significant discussion of the displacement of the Pandits and their consequent exile. It remains one of the most drastic forms of internal displacement recorded in South Asia. See Alexander Evans, ‘A Departure from History: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001’, Contemporary South Asia 11(1), 2002, pp. 19-37.

4. See Ankur Datta, On Uncertain Ground: Displaced Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2017.

5. Migrant is the official nomenclature of displaced people in Jammu and Kashmir.

6. From 1990-2011, a significant section of Pandit migrants resided in camp colonies. While accounting for a sixth of all registered migrant families in Jammu, they became iconic sites. They also accommodated those who largely fell in the lower socio-economic strata of Pandit society. The camps were shut in 2011 and replaced by the township of Jagti, located on the outskirts of Jammu city.

7. See Panun Kashmir Movement, Kashmir Documentation: Pandits in Exile. Utpal Publications, New Delh, 2004.

8. Ashoke Pandit has made a documentary film on the Pandits. He is also the director of Sheen, the first fiction film about the Kashmiri Pandits exodus made in 2004. He is known for his support for right wing political figures in India and is a vocal critic of aazadi in Kashmir.

9. The Kashmiri Pandits were historically associated with bureaucracies of various regimes in pre-colonial and colonial Kashmir and different kingdoms in Northern India. Many were prominent landlords and they largely constituted a community with middle class aspirations. Consequently, their experiences of violence and suffering are framed in relation to a complex reputation as former ‘elites’. This sometimes results in a dismissal of their claims of victimhood. See Datta (2017).

10. Rahul Pandita is the author of a memoir of being a Kashmiri Pandit migrant titled Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir. Penguin Random House, New Delhi, 2014

11. Sanjay Kak directed a film titled In the Forest Hangs a Bridge, 1998.

12. Scenes from the film Jashn-e-Azadi