Indian Film Warns of Dangers of Nuclear Rivalry
Tue Feb 12,10:01 AM ET
By Adam Tanner
BERLIN (Reuters) - Of the 400 films playing during this year’s Berlinale film festival, perhaps none is as topical as “Jang Aur Aman” (War and Peace), a polemical look at the dangerous nuclear weapons rivalry between India and Pakistan.
The three-hour documentary highlights the absurdities of unbridled nationalism with footage from India, Pakistan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan as well as the United States.
“My film is against all this kind of patriotic idiocy,” filmmaker Anand Patwardhan, 51, said in an interview. “Not just Pakistan and India. America is very similar, that is the point I am making in the film.”
“I was in America after September 11,” he said. “Every house, every car had an American flag. This is juvenile, I think, in the 21st century.”
Patwardhan spent three and a half years traveling around with a small digital camera to make the film, typically staying with friends or supporters of the Indian peace movement.
The film – which first screens at the Berlinale on Wednesday – is especially effective in showing the human face of villagers near nuclear test sites as well as the mix of pride and passion the tests ignited in the South Asian country.
It also shows politicians shamelessly using militarism to solidify their own power base.
NUKES OUT OF MIND
India detonated its first nuclear device in 1974 but said it was for atomic research, not weapons. In 1998, it carried out five underground nuclear tests and announced plans to build a nuclear arsenal.
Rival Pakistan conducted six tests of its own in response.
Tension between the former British colonies, who have fought three wars since independence in 1947, surged in December after gunmen attacked the Indian parliament in New Delhi.
Patwardhan said that many Indians do not want to discuss the dangers of their nuclear rivalry with Pakistan.
“People do not want to deal with it because it is such a huge catastrophe,” he said. “People pretend or even subconsciously keep it out of their minds because it is too huge to imagine.”
Americans also ignore the horrible reality of wars past and present, Patwardhan said.
“The American public is given a sanitized version of the effects of its own war machinery is,” he said. “America even today won’t come to terms with the fact that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs weren’t necessary.”
The passionate filmmaker attended an American university during the anti-Vietnam war movement and went on to make documentaries on religious tensions in India, poverty and other themes.
He spends a lot of time seeking an audience for his work, and has fought court battles to get Indian television to broadcast them.
“Even if I were to take my video projector and do screenings every day of my life I would still reach less than one percent of the Indian population,” he said. “The only way to reach out and really make an impact both politically and socially is to get it on TV.”
If Patwardhan fails to get the message across, “War and Peace” carries an ominous conclusion. “If the mad race for armaments continues, it is bound to result in a struggle such as never happened in history,” it says.