If there was ever a need to remind ourselves of the need for the profound in our everyday life, and its enduring place among those we refer to as ‘common’ folk, then this film nudges us to that doorstep.
Could it be that 62 years on, the scars of the Partition violence have still not healed because there is so little voluntary admission of guilt, so much glorified victimhood? Here’s a narrative finally that trains its gaze at the perpetrators.
Journalist Gretchen Peters follows the drug and terror money flowing out of Afghanistan, Pakistan and the UAE and finds Dawood Ibrahim at the heart of it. An extract from her book
This film offers many of the old-fashioned pleasures of the documentary: it takes us to an unfamiliar place and tells us an unknown story. In this case it’s also an unexpected story.
It could have been a period piece about political prisoners and state repression during the Emergency. But 30 years after it was made, the film still rings with contemporary relevance.
TCA Raghavan is a former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan and Singapore. His first book, Attendant Lords: Abdur Rahim and Bairam Khan: Courtiers and Poets in Mughal India, was awarded the Mohammad Habib Prize by the Indian History Congress. He is also the author of The People Next Door: The Curious History of India’s Relations with Pakistan and History Men: Jadunath Sarkar, G S Sardesai, Raghubir Sinh and Their Quest for India’s Past. His latest book is Circles of Freedom: Love, Friendship and Loyalty in the Indian National Struggle