TheDaak review

Evacuee Cinema: Bombay and Lahore in Partition Transit, 1940-1960 by Salma Siddique, Cambridge University Press, Ebook, Published: October 2022, 277 Pages, ISBN: 9781009151214, $117

by Sakshi Sharda

“The ghosts of Partition are here to haunt us again, and perhaps to alert us once again to the need to more closely examine the many aspects of history.” 

Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence, xii

Urvashi Butalia articulates for me the eerie feeling I had, whilst reading the Evacuee Cinema. I am torn on how to write a review of the book without making it a checkmark list of warning signs that Salma Siddique sheds light on. There is something untapped in the way we read partition, it is seen as an aberration in what is thought to be a peaceful and non-violent milieu. Partition scholarship has now begun to shed light on how the sporadic violence of partition had historical roots and was not an exclusive event. The book goes on to detail these roots that finally broke the industrial links between Bombay and Lahore (links of material, ideological and cultural flow), specifically looking at the industry of cinema. The key contention of the book is that, “partition has a discursive and performative power” (p. 6). It is for the reader to decide if that discursive and performative power plays both inside and outside the industry of cinema and how this power has been shaped over time, since partition. 

Covering a spoof two decades from 1940 to 1960, Siddique cases varied archival sources like, “films, film transcripts, compendiums, life-writings, biographies, play-scripts, publicity ephemera like song booklets and photographs, and newspapers from all contexts, Government reports, legislative records and home department files” (p. 17). Siddique successfully transfers the reader to reliving the cinema of the mid-20^th century both in India and Pakistan. This is quite a feat considering the dynamism of the subject media. The author renders justice to the task, the book has something for a cinephile, historian, political scientist, sociologist, in short, a true representation of interdisciplinary writing.

Salman Siddique recognizes the aim of the book is to show how “partition led cinema…perform(ed) emotive functions to reckon with political transitions” (p. 2). The overarching question throughout the reading of the book which lingers with the reader- is cinema only a representation of the social fabric in a particular milieu, or is it one of the legitimising and guiding forces in creating the very social it aims to represent? The author contextualises the book exactly in the middle of this chicken and egg problem. It begins with unfolding the intricate links not only in the market and industry of film production in pre-independent India but weaves a story of people and a community between two cities, slowly and steadily being torn apart by political developments, forces of nationalism and a lack of capital. Evacuee Cinema critiques the reading of partition by pointing to a “chronic fixation with ‘communalism,” which Siddique contends was the “product of the struggle of cultural hierarchy and control of production” (p 47). Each chapter has then gone ahead and shed light on the cultural hierarchy that went through a period of transformation because of active struggles in the controls of production. The transformation of the cultural hierarchy and the creation of a new culture within the industry of cinema itself. 

The book has been divided into six chapters each with its own conceptual focus, beginning with “The All-India Ambitions of Lahore”. It begins by shedding light on the dynamics of the two most successful production houses Pancholi and Shorey. This chapter goes on to locate for the reader the birth of the trope of ‘the good muslim’ or ‘the secular muslim’. The aspirations of production houses to become successful pan India in 1942, motivated the creation of a Muslim social palatable to all political factions. This was represented through the broader theme of how to navigate between the forces of tradition and modernity, where the Muslim social imagined reform while still grounding this creation of a new social within Islamic symbols. Siddique poignantly writes, “the secular image was constituted through an ‘anti-Pakistan’ discourse, and within this schema, the Muslim personnel could be engaged, patronized and celebrated as long as they remained distant from Muslim nationalism or Pakistan” (p 46).

The second chapter “‘Hindu Camera Muslim Microphone’: A Periodical and Two Memoirs”, through analysis of magazines, newspaper articles and the conversation about the industry of cinema in both cities, tries to categorise human responses to partition. While the first category of response tried to salvage the links between Bombay and Lahore, it was the latter two categories that became extremely important for the discursive power of partition. The second category of responses came from people who wanted to benefit from the lacuna in material forces of production, left in both Lahore and Bombay with the ties breaking between the two cities. The last category of responses came from the people who wanted to disrupt all chains of movement, communication and exchange, be it of people, money, ideas or resources. Even with the disruptors, evidence exists that “movies moved across borders, conversations, commentaries and engagement was being done through the visual” (p 38) .

The next chapter titled, “Stages of Partition: The Early Years of Prithvi Theatre” offers a detailed archival reading of the conception, creation and success of Prithvi Theatre in Bombay. Prithvi theatre today is a landmark for Bombay’s history which till date displays plays by local artists. This success according to Siddique lay in its open recognition of the trauma and ruptures of Partition. Human beings saw themselves, their pain, their fear represented through political themes, and the theatre did not shy away from addressing the violence of partition. The directors at Prithvi contextualised human stories in their history, “any history of people becomes a history of collectivities, ‘such as nations, genres and communities” (p 13).

Chapter four, “The Partition Wish: Fazli Brothers and the Muslim Social”, conceptually introduces the reader to the creation of a new Muslim social. It marks a time of transience and resilience amongst the people, asking the question when human beings are left unsettled, how do they make sense of their itinerant life and what is the role that cinema plays in these delusions or creations? The new Muslim social begins from the trope of the good muslim but now weaves within it themes of social movement and cultural emancipation. The new Muslim social even in its cinematic presence was torn between tradition and Islamic modernity. Women’s empowerment, challenges of modern means of production and family planning were just some of the themes that movies began to address. “Casting the subject and spectator in a relationship of transference, it interpellated the viewers within kinship and familial structures” (p. 130) and at the same time represented the challenges within the said kinship and familial structures.  

The next chapter titled, “The Partition Romance: Meena and Shorey Comedies” talks about the role humour played both in cinema and in subverting the existing communalism and challenging exclusive nationalism. A special recognition for this legacy of comedic theatre is given to Meena Shorey (actress) and her husband Roop K Shorey (director), the fact that this was a nuptial between a Muslim woman and a Hindu man further makes the relationship an interesting site of research within a communalised industry. Also, as a researcher and participator of gossip circles, the successful use of gossip magazines in making an academic observation by Siddique deserves a special mention. The chapter then goes on to detail a unique subversion through print culture, where the print culture starts creating its own cinematic meaning and its own social reality, almost mimicking the very nations that ground their audience.  

The last chapter details the struggle of the archive still torn between two countries whose nationalism continues to rely on the exclusion of the other. Furthermore, in the vestiges of a broken history, memories were constructed to embolden the nascent industry in the new nations. Though the nations and the industry had broken material links, did the nations actually have a monopoly over the creative? This conversation becomes even more interesting with the tracing of the life of Rattan Kumar, who as a child artist was India’s favourite national orphan and as an older actor the heartthrob of Pakistani fantasies, I do not know about the readers of this review but this did remind me of another heartthrob across the border. Eloquently put by Siddique herself the book, “seeks to convey the discordant, chaotic and transformative force of partition by identifying the evacuation, rehabilitation and voiding that went into the making of nationally separate cinemas” (p. 14) which helps us return to the introduction of this review, the feeling of eeriness that accompanies reading Evacuee Cinema. Are we in a similar period of transformation again? Are the actors of this transformation the same? Will cinema and the industry of cinema continue to be a ‘tell-all’ of these transformations?