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From
Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 34, Dated 25 Aug 2012 |
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A Martyr Lives On
The Anurag Kashyap-produced Shahid is headed to the Toronto Film Festival. Nishita Jha on why secular India needs to watch this film
THIS SEPTEMBER, Sunil Bohra will be taking a flight for the first time in 40 years. Having produced over 13 successful feature films and 7 television serials, one would imagine that Bohra is accustomed to jet-setting around the world — some of his projects include Shaitan, Malegaon Ka Superman, and now Gangs of Wasseypur — but he is audibly breathless over his latest project. “I refused to get on a plane for any of my other films because flying terrifies me, but Shahid is special, I have to travel wherever this film goes,” he says.
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Unsung hero Slain lawyer and activist Shahid Azmi
Photo: Deepak Salvi |
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Poised for its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 2012, Shahid is the story of slain human rights lawyer Shahid Azmi. Director Hansal Mehta spent 18 months sifting through Azmi’s case files and old issues of TEHELKA before he felt ready to pitch his story to financiers. “All my life, I made films the way other people wanted. Finally, I had a story that I believed in, but it was the kind of subject that producers would be afraid to touch,” he says. While filmmakers in Bollywood have been known to pick out unusual real life stories from the news, to tell Azmi’s tale is no easy task. A young Muslim boy attacked by a blood-thirsty mob post the Babri Masjid demolition, an insurgent before he became disillusioned with radical politics, a captive in Tihar for a crime he did not commit, and finally, a defence lawyer who fought pro-bono for the rights of minorities — Azmi was shot dead by assailants in his office at the age of 32.
Fortunately, Hansal’s old friend Bohra agreed to back the film along with Anurag Kashyap. While Bohra was moved by Azmi’s story, Kashyap felt the timing was crucial — Mehta was burning to tell the story, and would give the complex narrative all the conviction it deserved.
Refusing to divulge how minutely his film engages with the politics bound up in Azmi’s story (the draconian Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), was abused to convict hundreds of Muslims on false and forced confessions), Mehta admits that he had to sharpen the film’s focus on Azmi’s evolution as an individual. “But I couldn’t ignore the fact that when minorities are involved, the issue takes on a communal hue — like the protests at Azad Maidan, or the fact that whenever someone realises my wife is Muslim, we spend an extra half-hour at the security gate,” he says. Through the film’s shoot, as Mehta spent time with Azmi’s friends, family, and clients, he began to understand what Azmi stood for. “Strangers would come up to me to thank me for telling his story. The boy who served food outside the Mumbai High Court would serve me Azmi’s favourite pulao, saying “aap bhi unki tarah kaam karoge” (this will make you work like him)”. While it is too early to predict the film's commercial success, the team has long realised that its significance goes beyond the numbers it will generate. As it travels across the world, it carries with it the voice of a martyr who refused to be silenced.
Nishita Jha is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.
nishita@tehelka.com
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