 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I am Paranjoy Guha Thakurtha. On the 1st of July, 2023, I was honored and privileged to interview India's greatest living filmmaker, Shyam Benegal. I spoke to him for almost two hours at his office in Tardew in Mumbai. In the first part of this interview, we discussed his forthcoming film on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. It is titled, Mujib, the Making of a Nation and scheduled to be released towards the end of 2023. In this, the second part of this interview, we discuss his famous trilogy of films made on Muslim women. We also discuss politics. We discuss the Muslim questioning in Narendra Modi's India. I ask him questions about minority communalism, majority communalism and Shyam Benegal is somewhat ambivalent in condemning the Rashtriya, Swayamsevak Sangh, and he is non-committal about commenting on India's present Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Let me specifically ask you, Shyam Benegal, you have made films about both of them on the basis of two people. One is Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Today, we, the Indian government, not just the Indian government, which is the support of the Indian People's Party, which is the support of the Rashtriya, Swayamsevak Sangh, today, in every occasion, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who is moving forward to destroy Chhavi, and is still doing it. The image of India's first Prime Minister is being sought to be tainted and even tarnished by large sections of people who claim to be supporters of the Bharti Janta Party and the Rashtriya, Swayamsevak Sangh. What do you have to say about this? Well, clearly, you know, you can't wipe out history. How can you take away the fact that you had India's first Prime Minister, probably who was the Prime Minister the longest in our country? Now, the fact is that he laid the foundation for the country. Look at the five-year plans. Not all of them were successful, but the fact was that it made, he laid the first brick as far as development processes of development in India were concerned. A lot of the present day political establishment does not give him credit for that. But the fact is that he did, you see his five-year plans, the first five-year plan, and then the second five-year plan. Of course, it couldn't be completed or it was done, but there were wars in between. You know, we had a war in 1965, we had a war in 1971, but he was there when the 1965 war took place. So, you see the problem is that you have a situation which has a, where he said, I mean, without him, you cannot think of a modern India. You know, you can't really, at least me, for myself. I don't think you can think of a modern India without the foundational work that was done by that generation. Among them, Joala Nehru played an important part. There were other people like Sardar Patel and various other people who were, in fact, maybe more important. Today, there are large sections of the ruling establishment, the ruling regime, who try to portray Nehru, Vanam, Sardar Patel, and a concerted effort is being made to portray Joala Nehru in a negative light. Why is this being done? You see, I think that's being unfair to both because, you know, as long as Sardar Patel lived, they were both very, I mean, they worked together. They may have had differences, differences of a period, differences of the method that had to be used and so on, and maybe Sardar Patel was more indulgent towards the younger man. You know, all these things were there. But then, these are, in the larger, if you look at it, if you take a historical perspective, they were both equally important for independent India. You know, and Sardar Patel, of course, there are people who believe that his contribution was greater, but then I don't want to go get into that kind of thing. But the important thing was they worked shoulder to shoulder. You know, when it came to India, unfortunately, Sardar Patel died very quickly. You know, if he had lived longer, maybe we would have had a slightly different history for ourselves. I repeat my question. Why is there such a concerted attempt to not just downgrade his contribution, but to actually tarnish the image of Nehru? I know, but the fact is that, you know, this is an entirely, I mean, it's a political thing, and it's also kind of, I'm not quite sure whether it is, it's a tactical thing for the opposition parties, no, no, no longer opposition party. You mean the ruling party? The ruling party. But you know, because it's a, there was a certain kind of tactic used, you know, to come to power as well. And so people who went before you, you tend to discredit them, no? This is a tendency for most politicians to do that. It's nothing unusual in that. You don't think it's anything unusual? Tell me, when you look at the changes that are being made to the history textbooks across the country, there is simultaneously a section of people who claim their allegiance to the RSS, the Rajaswamy Savaksang, to the Bharati Janta Party, to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to glorify and defy Gandhi's assassin, Nathuram Godse. You see, RSS. And his mentors, and his mentors, including Savalkar. Yeah, but the fact is that you see, RSS never claimed to be a political party, or political, I mean, the ideology had a political ideology, except that of, you know, the allegiance to the land, you know, to the land of your birth and where you're living. So RSS, in that sense, you know, it was a, it was a kind of, because when it came, the British were still here, you know. So they were claiming their bit of land as theirs. But the important thing here was that there were several others. I mean, you had different kinds of political views on this. As far as RSS was concerned, it was based entirely on principles that are basically Hindu, in that sense, you know. But then they defined Hinduism as Hindu, because that people who lived in India, because it was Hindustan, and they were Hindus anyway. And it wasn't a definition of their religion. You know, it was a definition of their status as Indians, being Hinduism. Now, it wasn't totally accepted by a whole lot of other people, certainly not by minorities in this country. Hinduism and Hindutva. More importantly, I repeat the question, why is there an attempt made by sections of people to glorify Gandhi's assassin, and his mentors, including Savarkar? Well, that I, I don't think I can answer that question. Because, you know, what the, what the thing was, I mean, what the strategy was, political strategy, wanting to do something like this. Because I cannot see the thing, except that I know that, you say, RSS claimed to be Indian, but it was Hindu, because they considered that everybody living in India were Hindus, you know. And then, of course, they said that there was no caste system, you know. You know, there was no caste, there was no such thing as a minority, you know. But do you agree with that viewpoint? No, I don't agree with that, because, you know, the fact is that I believe that our unity, it's a very unique thing as far as India is concerned, our unity lies in its diversity. Because we are not a country, like a European country. You know, there's something, the single language, single religion. Europe has defined their nation in those terms, but we have always defined our nation as a kind of, you know, unity and diversity that nobody disagrees with. Give us the answer to one question. For the independence of India, the struggle between our father and his father, the freedom struggle, was there any land of RSS in it or not? This was a very, very controversial topic today. RSS, as you know, had never claimed to be a political party. Social organization. No, because it was never defined as such. They saw themselves as a cultural organization. And it was a certain amount of cultural revivalism there. You know, the whole idea, there is cultural revivalism, but there it depends on who is defining that. You know, it depends on from which part of the spectrum you are and you will define it differently. But the important thing, of course, is that they were also efforts for the good as far as independent India was concerned. One minute. So you believe that the RSS had a role to play? But there is a controversy today that the RSS did not support the freedom movement, but sided often with the British. Well, I don't know. That's probably stretching it a bit too far. Because, you know, they didn't think that it was important that they need to support, you know, support the allies as it were during the war and all this kind of thing. Or any such thing, because they defined themselves as a cultural organization, not as a political organization. Let me ask you that. The Bhartya Jansang was born. RSS is going to be 100 years old in 2025, if I'm not mistaken. The BJ, the Bhartya Jansang is much younger. But the role of those who subscribe to their ideology, the Hindutva ideology, do you think they had a role to play in India's freedom movement? Well, you know, it depends on how you look at it really, because it wasn't like the Congress. You know, the Congress had a very distinct anti-British stance. You know, a whole lot of other parties also did. Socialists, the Congress Socialist Party also did. But then you had at the same time, you had people who had supported the British during the war. You know, that is, you had, Savarkar was clearly against the British, not only was he against... But he wrote an apology. But he later, because once he was condemned to jail, when he was put in jail for a lifetime, then he repudiated many of the things that he had earlier said so that in order to get his freedom, he came out of jail. But the fact was that that didn't make him any less a nationalist. You know, because his stance was, of course, he came out of jail, because when he was there in Andaman's, he said that... So you're saying he wrote the series of letters of apology to the British rulers to get out of jail? No, there were letters of apology, which he had didn't. There's no question about that. But the fact was that he, they saw it as a tactic. Let me ask you something related today. And I'm talking about today's India. And you have examined not just the way caste works, the way class works, politics of sex works. But we'll talk about that in a little while from now. You made three films, which are often described as your Muslim women's trilogy. And these were three films, Mamo, 1994, Faridah Jalal, Surekha Sikri. It deals with the partition. It deals with Pakistan and India. It deals with Mumbai, how she starts living in Mumbai, how she has to pay bribes to get a permanent visa, how she's arrested, sent back to Pakistan. And you've shown how political priorities often triumph humanitarian considerations. And it's told through the sister, Faridah Jalal, the character played by Faridah Jalal. She's her older sister's son. This is 1994, 1996 Sardari Begum, musical Kiran Khair. She's a member of the ruling party, Amrish Puri, who's no more. It deals with family relationships, generational relationships, sexual politics. But once again, there is a political angle, in the sense, the stone which is thrown, the riot that takes place in old Delhi. Less political is Zubeda, of course, loosely based on the life of the mother of film critic Khalid Muhammad, starring Karishma Kapoor and Rekha. Now, what we see, it's called Zubeda's a story of a princess. And she marries an already married man, who's married to the character played by Rekha, Manoj Bajpayee's character. And then her brother-in-law makes advances at her, but eventually both the Maharaja and Zubeda die in the plane crash. And you suggest that it was really a conspiracy for Uday Singh, the younger brother, to get hold of the kingdom. It is perhaps less political than the two other films. But all the three films talk about the condition of Muslims in India. Today, many could argue that Islamophobia is at a level that prevailed in the 40s. When the sub-continent was partitioned, when Bengal and Punjab were partitioned. And nowadays, many people say that if you are a Muslim in India, then you are a second-class citizen. You saw what happened, Citizenship Amendment Act, National Register of Citizens. So, on the one hand, the present ruling establishment, the Bhartajanta Party, and its ideological parent, the social and cultural organization, the RSS, who are believers in Hindutva, and their critics say they are believers in a majoritarian ideology. As a person who's examined through your films, Muslim women, what are your views on how Islamophobia has spread in India today? Where one out of seven Indians who are Muslim, how they feel in today's India? In the last nine years that Narendra Modi has been in power. There are more Muslims in India, in all countries in the world, except for Indonesia and perhaps Pakistan as well. But the Muslims in this country, one-seventh of India, do feel that they are beleaguered, that they are being treated as second-class citizens. Large sections of the media have contributed to the spread of Islamophobia. And barring a few token individuals, the Bhartajanta Party, not a single member of parliament, is a Muslim who is to the Lok Sabha. There are two things here. One, the most important thing is that the country got, India got partitioned. On the basis that you had to have, because of the population ratios and so on so forth, Jinnah brought about two-nation theory. That two-nation theory became actually a fact. But the odd part of it was that India is not sort of clearly between Muslims and Hindus, or Hindus and other minorities and Muslims on one side. It has never been like that. But the fact was that if you're going to make a nation, create a nation, then you have to have that kind of division made. Now, which they made, which caused horrors all over the place, I mean vast movements of populations in 1947, 48. And then even later, when Pakistan split itself into two, but the important thing was that when the first partition took place between India and Pakistan, at that time, you had in people's minds that we constantly claimed to be secular. That is India claimed to be secular. We created a constitution that made it important that our secularism was very important to us. But the funny part of it was that because it was a Hindu majority country, India being a Hindu majority country, there was always a tendency for minorities to feel that they didn't really have a kind of place here as they should have. Pakistan was fine because it was already divided and it could claim itself. It could make the claim of being Islamic and Islamic Republic also. But even that got hit when Pakistan itself split. Because this is still part of the continuing historical dialogue in this country. Because we constantly have different kinds of problems, people claiming, there's people claiming that, all sorts of things. But the important thing is that you can keep claiming if you want. You can always evolve the whole process as long as it doesn't become a tinderbox. But tell me, has Islamophobia in India again peaked and we have in some ways regressed, gone back 80 years to the forties? Well, you know, we can use the word, but I don't think I would use the word Islamophobia easily because we have, for instance, if you look at a place like Hyderabad, where the Nizam state of Hyderabad, it had four languages, it had Urdu, it had Telugu, it had Kannada and of course it had English because English was the language through which all higher education was taught, you know. So you had these were the languages. But then the moment we developed a concept that language will determine the nation. So a language is one of the important components of a nation. Then this whole Hyderabad thing was collapsed. Today, in India, in the last nine years, the Indian People's Party has not even held a Muslim prayer in Lok Sabha Chuna. You see, after the 2019 Lok Sabha Chuna, in the 540 Lok Sabha Chuna, there are 303 Indian People's Parties. There is not even one Muslim. One seventh of India is not represented in the lower house of parliament in the ruling party. So what do you have to say that the Bharti Janta Party, which claims that it is the, its ideological parent, the social and cultural organization called the RSS, the Raj Tuya Swamseh Vaksan, that it has shown this is their attitude towards one seventh of India, 200 million Muslims. What do you have to say? You know about Muslim representation in parliament or in parties, I don't really believe that's all that important, quite frankly, because you don't necessarily have to be represented by your religion, by your claim of being one or another religion. If we, if we claim to be a democracy, we shouldn't worry about these things. Why should we worry about that? Because according to me, as long as there are equal opportunities, you know, equal opportunities when it comes to work, equal opportunities when it comes to education. Is that happening in India? Well, I think it is happening, but it's happening very, fairly slowly, but in India we also had another thing. We had, for instance, schools that cater to Muslims, you know. So you had, but slowly that changed. For instance, you know, I come from Hyderabad and in Hyderabad, we had, for instance, my school, the school that I went to. It was called Mahbub College High School. Now the fact was that when it was originally started, it wasn't seen as a school for everybody. It was, it was seen as a school that would be, that would bring up the Muslim population, you know, the quality of education for them. Since they were, they, they, they were all, you know, mothers of people. So they didn't have modern education. Now the fact was that when it started the school like this, Nizam started a school like this. The Mahbub High School, like Nizam College was there. And it was, I mean, the regional language in which you were given education was an Urdu. But it changed. No, I am answering your question about today's India. About whom? Today's India, today's India. Do you believe that Muslims feel that they have been treated as second-class citizens? I'm not quite sure that is entirely true. Because I don't believe that if you, if you went to a place where there has been a great amount of, you know, like, for instance, the old Mysore state, that is Karnataka. That is Hyderabad, that is Andhra Pradesh, but mainly Telangana part. Now I don't believe that this, this holds good for them. But what about Northern India? What about Uttar Pradesh? Well, there you see, which has been affected. Those parts of the country that were affected by partition. That feeling is much greater there. No, that's Bengal and Punjab largely. But I'm talking about Uttar Pradesh. I'm talking about Madhya Pradesh, Shatizgarh, Rajasthan. There is a feeling. Muslims do feel that they are being treated as second-class citizens. Do you agree? And this feeling has grown in the last nine years of the Narendra Modi regime. Would you agree with me? I don't know enough about Northern India in that sense. Because to make any kind of broad comment on that, you know, because it's very difficult for me to say that. Because you see, when I go to, when I'm traveling, it doesn't seem like there's any problem there. You know, it's, it's, that is very, in some ways, it's quite superficial. See what happened in Gujarat in 2002. Oh, Gujarat is definitely Gujarat. See what happened in Delhi. Sir, see what happened in Delhi very recently. No, Gujarat, Gujarat has a certain, because you had Muslim majority parts. You know, because there was a Nawab. There was a, you know, what was his name? I, the fellow who went off. Junagar. Junagar. Now Junagar had a Muslim majority at that point. But today's Gujarat, the proportion of the population, that is Muslim, is half that of the rest of the country. Rest of India, as per the 2011 census, is around 14 percent. So you don't want to comment on, you don't believe there is, Islamophobia has reached a level comparable to the 40s. Well, it comes up from time to time. Because we do have rights. We have different kinds of things like that. But I don't believe that it is a threat to our country in that sense. There is a certain amount of Islamophobia. Certainly there is. Just as much as there is a kind of prejudice among Muslims, you know what I mean? No, but show them, show themselves much more easily in things like marriages and stuff like that. What kind of Communalism would you condemn more? The Communalism of the majority community? Or the Communalism of the minority community? Yes. The majority of the people in Bahumut are not that dangerous. As majority, majoritarian Communalism, that is worse. Because they have much greater influence. See minority Communalism, of course Communalism generally is bad in the secular country. But the fact is that minority Communalism is something that can be kept held together. But the majority, majoritarian Communalism is really dangerous to all minorities. Do you think we are going through such a stage like that in India at present? I don't believe that, I don't believe that. Because I think it's not, it's not a simple between two groups. It's not just Hindus and Muslims. Because we have people from different faiths. I mean you have Christians, you have this, you have... But look, the last time we had a census in this country was in 2011. We haven't had one in 2021. But that census shows that roughly 80%, little more than 80% of the population is Hindu. 14% is Muslim and the rest are the other communities. Yeah, of course. But then I don't know how that is a threat to our unit is affected by that. I don't believe so. Because there was a time, for instance, northeast when it was on the boil. It is still Manipur is on the boil. Manipur, yes. But just now it's not here in the year old. The whole Manipur is one, but the whole Nifa part. Arunachal Pradesh, northeast and frontier agency. Okay, Shamminigal Ji, you have received several awards. You've got 18 national film awards. You were given the, in 2005, the Dadasai Falke Award, India's highest award for filmmakers. In 1976, you got the Padma Shri in 1991. You got the Padma Bhushan. You served on the juries of several film festivals in India and across the world, including in 2009 at the Moscow International Film Festival. At the same time, your films indicate that you're not really pro-establishment. In more ways than one, you have been a beneficiary of the establishment. And yet you've been a critic. And a critic, often a strident critic of the establishment. And I'm looking at all the films that you made and, you know, including the most recent one just before Mr. Narendra Modi came to power. In 2014, the one on the Indian Constitution, Samvidhan, Rajasabha Television, March 2014. You made films on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of India's independence, Sankranti. Of course, Bharate Khoj was there. At the same time, you worked with the government. You criticized the government? No, because you see, I personally believe that India has to be democratic because the diversity points to that direction. All right, that is number one. Number two, you have to look at the flaws. You must pinpoint the flaws in your system. As a filmmaker, you normally look at your society in a particular way. And therefore, you also look at the flaws that exist. You know, to pinpoint those flaws is one of the things you can do through cinema, like which I have been doing over a long period of time. You know, it does not mean that I'm against the system, but I'm really very concerned about the flaws in our system, you know, which need to be pinpointed from time to time. So, do you feel in the last nine years that Narendra Modi has been the Prime Minister of India? Democracy has become stronger in India or weaker in India? I'm not quite sure. You see, the jury is out on that one. Because, you know, it's very difficult to tell. But one of the things, of course, is that there has been a certain amount of it has been possible for a certain kind of development to take place. Because then much of the satisfaction has been contained. You know, I'm not able to understand your point. It has been contained, except in the northeast, places like that. By and large, of course, but you have to accept that. But the fact is, what about Gujarat 2002? What about Delhi? Delhi, as recently as 2019. What do you say to that? You've seen communal rights, Hindu-Muslim rights. You see it even now as we are talking in the state where you are and where we are sitting in Maharashtra. It's not as if Hindu-Muslim tensions in the country have come down. There is, on the contrary, there is evidence that it has gone up. I'm saying that it is being, or rather we know how to contain it. We have known how to contain it. Because, you see, if you look back from the time of partition, you see that... No, the question is, was it contained in Gujarat in 2002? Was it contained in Delhi almost two decades later, northeast in Delhi? Was it contained or was it the establishment was complicit with the rioters? And they belong to the majority community, the Hindus. I really wouldn't know. I mean, I'll stop all my questions on politics, but I have one last question. How do you evaluate Narendra Modi as the prime minister? How did I? Evaluate Narendra Modi as the prime minister of India in the last nine years? Well, you know, the fact is that he has not curtailed democracy in that sense. You know, the democratic norms have not been constantly tampered with. That he has not done. I would disagree with you, but you are entitled to your opinion. I believe whether it's the media, whether it's the civil service, whether it's law enforcing agencies, whether it's been constitutional authorities, all these organizations which I was supposed to provide checks and balances in a democracy, in my opinion, it's become weaker in the last nine years. Would you agree with me? Well, I cannot comment on that, really. We conclude the second segment of this interview with Shyam Benigal, India's greatest living filmmaker. In this segment, we've discussed politics and I keep questioning him. I have questioned him again and again on his views on majoritarianism. He's clear. The communalism of the majority Hindu community is to be condemned more than the communalism of the minority Muslim community. Yet, he's ambivalent about the role of leaders of the RSS, the Rashtriya, Swamseh Vaksang in India's freedom movement, and he's also non-committal about Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Wait for the third part of this interview. Shyam Benigal reminiscences about several individuals, actors he made, actors like Smita Patil, Om Puri, Amrishpuri. He reminiscences about the films he's made, about the documentary films he made on Satyajit Rai. That will all happen in the third and final segment of this interview. Till then, keep watching NewsClick. Subscribe to this channel.