When the past continues to flow into the present and the open future, then the past has not been remembered, understood and stopped at its temporal zone. Then, the past is at once behind us, with us and in front of us. This is the price we pay for covering up the past.

In a courageous attempt, with extensive research, care, responsibility and cinematic creativity, Vivek Agnihotri uncovers the past that has not been through active remembering, to demand that the nation and the world at large confront a lot of inconvenient truths in his film ‘The Bengal Files’.

Understanding the past is not a mechanical exercise of taking an excursion to another temporal zone and returning with few events. It needs the present to shed light on the events of the past. The present is more than a necessity for understanding, particularly when the present is a continuation of the past. Agnihotri has understood the principle very well and hence, the movie begins not with Direct Action Day or Noakhali Genocide; instead, it begins in Murshidabad, where a CBI officer—who has seen his share of horror in Kashmir—arrives to investigate numerous crimes committed by the MLA, Sardar Husseini, and his gang of that region.

By doing so, Agnihotri is not simply juxtaposing the past and present; instead, he is clearly demonstrating the continuity. Several dots are connected—the past with the present, Sardar Husseini, the MLA of Murshidabad, and Ghulam Sarwar Husseini, the butcher of Noakhali and the genocide in Kashmir and in Bengal and much more, with a clear warning that failure to remember these events inevitably leads to repetition.

If Agnihotri’s Kashmir Files smashed false narratives that had been circulating, the Bengal Files tend to haunt us for our inability and unwillingness to let the events of the past congealed in our collective memory undergo liquefaction. The film forces us to face head-on our timidity and indifference to the horrific past. By beginning with Murshidabad, Agnihotri brilliantly shows the continuation of the past.

Sardar Husseini of Murshidabad is no different from Ghulam Sarwar Husseini of Noakhali. Their actions were diabolical in nature and there was no secrecy in their actions either and both were gleeful about their crimes. Furthermore, the recent MLA from Sandeshkhali is no different from these evil characters from Murshidabad or Noakhali. Therefore, the past continues. Do we need any more reason and explanation on why we must remember the past? It is the present-ness of the atrocities that has been enabled, supported and denied that makes the present-day government in Bengal ban the film.

Agnihotri obliquely tells us why we need to squarely face horrifying events of the past. Unlike the narrative that has been peddled for so many decades that India’s freedom movement was non-violent, the real history tells us that it was drenched in blood and there has been armed resistance towards Islamic and British invasions. We no longer can afford to delude ourselves with superficial feel-good falsehoods. Courage can either be a pre-requisite to remember, or courage can be the outcome of remembering brutalities of the past. Either way, it is a must for healing and not repeating the errors of the past.

If Agnihotri’s Tashkent Files is an exercise in Right to Truth, his Kashmir Files is about Right to Justice, and given the carnage of........

© News18