Movies have the ability to take us through a rollercoaster ride of emotions in the two hours that we spend watching them, and some are so exceptional that they stay with us for a very long time. In India, our hunger to consume newer movies has made the industry a 2.7 billion dollars a year venture. In this mountain of content, Malayalam movies might only contribute a small part, but they do seem to churn up great content, especially in the past few years; ushering in a wave of movies that make the audience think, enjoy, and debate over the plot lines. Among them, historical fiction movies are few and far between, possibly because a good historical fiction must effortlessly navigate the relationship between history, fact, and fiction. And movies dealing with a historical event often come under much scrutiny as there are a lot of pits one could fall into and some of these stories mistakenly transcend the realm of creativity and enter the psyche of society as a fact. What recent years and innovative thinkers today have taught us is that history is anything but a dead subject, there is no absolutely correct representation of an event, there are endless possible point-of-views and lives to consider still. And the facts are still interpretations and information is not knowledge. But when this ever-changing, ever-questioned event is fictionalized, the filmmaker has the creative freedom to interpret it.
Or as the Booker prize-winning historical fiction writer Hillary Mantel wrote:
“Historians are sometimes scrupulous and self-aware, sometimes careless or biased. Yet in either case and hardly knowing which is which, we cede them moral authority. They do not consciously fictionalize, and we believe they are trying to tell the truth. But historical novelists face – as they should – questions about whether their work is legitimate. No other sort of writer has to explain their trade so often. The reader asks, is this story true?.… For this reason, some readers are deeply suspicious of historical fiction. They say that by its nature it’s misleading. But I argue that a reader knows the nature of the contract. When you choose a novel to tell you about the past, you are putting in brackets the historical accounts – which may or may not agree with each other – and actively requesting a subjective interpretation. You are not buying a replica, or even a faithful photographic reproduction – you are buying a painting with the brush strokes left in.” [Mantel, 3rd June 2017, The Guardian].
Filmmaker Ashiq Abu’s proposed project on the life of Variyamkunnath Kunhamed Haji, one of the known leaders of the 1921 Malabar rebellion, was facing these problems of the questioning public even before the filming had begun. He had to withdraw from the project following protests from Sangh Parivar outfits calling the event: ‘A Hindu genocide’. The Malabar rebellion or the Mappila riots of 1921 gained traction yet again because of this project.
What is interesting is that there already exists a Malayalam movie titled 1921 which represents the Malabar rebellion but it attracted no qualms from the public before or after its release, however, the new proposed film led to many crying-wolf and jumping the gun too early.
The Mappilas, or the Malayali Muslims of northern Kerala who held political and economic powers before the arrival of the European colonists, fell from their mantles to poverty and oppression at the hands of these colonists and the local Janmis, or landlords. This sparked sporadic rebellions at various times in various parts of Kerala which were inspired by economic as well as religious sentiments and nostalgia of the past but fizzled out due to their lack of organization. But in 1921 following Gandhi’s calls for the Khilafat movement, the Mappilas for the first time organized themselves against both the Hindu landlords as well as the colonial overlords which led to the Malabar rebellion. Thus this event represents a freedom struggle against the British rule for some, a movement against oppression for others, and a Hindu genocide for a few. But as Manu Pillai writes:
“The facts suggest, however, that to varying degrees all three elements manifested here. A century on, acknowledging this is perhaps critical to making better sense of the Mappila Rebellion — a bloody but complicated event with many roots and a long back story.”[ Pillai, 28th August 2021, The Hindu].
Mired in the same struggles is yet another Malayalam movie Malik, which gives a fictionalized account of Beemapally police firings. It was on May 17th, 2009 that the police opened indiscriminate fire on the Muslims of Beemapally who were mostly fisherfolk. Six people died in this firing, and twenty-seven were majorly wounded, mostly because of the gunshots. The communist party was in power during this time.
The movie deals with the themes of religion, power, charity, morality, politics, and politicians, who ultimately poison everything they put their eye to. The movie begins with the protagonist Sulaiman Malik preparing to undertake hajj but gets arrested on the way. Following his arrest, we are told of the events leading to the present in flashbacks from three different points of view. Set in the fictional town of Ramadapally, the movie tells the story of a town mired in crime and its residents, a close-knit group of Muslims and Christians living in harmony, involved in it. In the face of the inability of the authorities to break up the illegal activities and fearing the creation of Kerala’s own chor bazaar, we see politicians, policemen, and bureaucrats devising a plan to create a scuffle in the middle of Urus, giving them a sure-fire way to enter the area. But their plans go awry and lead to a communal riot and eventual police intervention and the death of innocent bystanders including the Sulaiman’s son. The movie’s use of many real-life images of the event, minimal accountability given to the government for them, the overarching theme of a communal riot, and the importance given to the criminal activities as a way of life, are some of the problems cited by many, regarding the movie. And since this event is fairly unknown amongst the common people, this movie very well has the makings of becoming history in the minds of the masses and that is problematic. But this is a problem all retellings might have to face at some point; the solution is not to ban movies or protest to the point that they get shelved, but use this as an opportunity to go where history taught in classrooms could not, to start a dialogue and debate, and inspire people to go in search of retellings and to fill in the erasures and holes in History.
Induja Thampi
Induja Thampi completed her undergraduate degree in economics from Lady Shri Ram College and is currently doing her post graduation from Central University of Tamil Nadu. She loves to read and believes in humanity's ability to right its wrongdoings. With a pen in hand and a few trusty books at her desk she tries to go about doing just that, wherever injustice prevails.