A Queer Identity

And the Unclaimed, reveals deep-seated prejudices against the other gender in India.

A still from Ebang Bewarish (And
the Unclaimed).

When two girls killed themselves in a village in West Bengal, filmmaker Debalina Majumder began to ask uncomfortable questions. Her documentary, And the Unclaimed, reveals deep-seated prejudices against the other gender in India.

In February 2011, the suicide of two girls in a village in Nandigram, West Bengal, generated an unusual amount of interest. It wasn’t that the village had not seen or reported deaths before. What was strange in this case was that the girls’ parents had refused to claim the bodies. “When I heard from the local sub-inspector that the bodies had been lying in the morgue for a week and nobody had come to claim it, I broke down,” says Kolkata-based documentary filmmaker Debalina Majumder. She visited the village as part of a team from Sappho For Equality, an organisation that works with the LGBT community in Kolkata. “When we spoke to the parents, we felt they were relieved that their daughters were dead. I wondered what could have happened to harden them so much,” she says. Majumder began to explore, a journey that she has captured in her documentary film Ebang Bewarish (And the Unclaimed). It was screened at the 10th IAWRT Asian Women’s Film Festival in Delhi last week. The film has previously been shown at last month’s Mumbai International Film festival and Kerala International Documentary Festival in December.

People in Nandigram who knew the girls, Swapna and Sucheta, made veiled references to their queer sexual orientation. As the film delves into the story behind the suicides, it also becomes a prism to view contemporary attitudes towards the other gender. Is a child’s sexual orientation enough reason to abandon them or even take their life — the question emerges repeatedly through the film. “When we went to the village for the second time, the villagers were hostile towards us. I could not get to know the girls’ parents well enough and barely had enough footage or interviews with the villagers. I did not want the film to be an investigative documentary with many interviews,” says Majumder, 41.

Story continues below this ad

The filmmaker’s only link with the girls was a five-page suicide letter left by them, which becomes the spine of the story. The 62-minute documentary features four queer characters — Sutanuka, an LGBT-rights activist from Kolkata; Swarup (Rupa), a married queer man in his 40s; Banani, a fashion designer who was disowned by her parents for her orientation; and Sumita, who reads the suicide letter. “These characters are my friends from the LGBT community in Kolkata and I felt that they would be able to relate to the letter better. I wanted to capture their raw emotions as they read it,” says Majumder. The film includes several powerful scenes that focus on the characters’ faces as they recount their own stories of love, hate and survival.

Majumder studied Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University in Kolkata before turning into a filmmaker. This is her fourth film dealing with queer issues. In 2002, her first docu-drama Kee Katha Tar Saathe revolves around male homosexual sex workers in Kolkata, and her last project, in 2011, More Than a Friend, looked at the lives of four queer characters. “I don’t know what pulls me towards social issues. I come from a very politically conscious atmosphere at home and I am also interested in religion, identity and politics,” says Majumder, who began filmmaking in 2002.

Her next film is a biopic, tentatively titled Caught in the Middle, on tainted middle-distance runner Pinki Pramanik, who was charged with rape and assault on her live-in partner in 2012. It is co-directed by Payoshni Mitra, a Kolkata-based researcher who works on gender and sports issues.

Ebang Bewarish (And the Unclaimed), meanwhile, will next be screened at the 11th World Film Festival in Estonia.

LGBT-rights activist

Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram