In the Shadow of a Prophecy

Made 25 years ago, Kya Hua Is Shahar Ko? was the first-of-its-kind political documentary in India on the 1984 Hyderabad riots.

The film will be screened in Mumbai for the first time at Shehernama, a festival showcasing documentaries on city-based themes.

Made 25 years ago, Kya Hua Is Shahar Ko? was the first-of-its-kind political documentary in India on the 1984 Hyderabad riots. It has now been resorted and is being screened at festivals in India and abroad.

Never forgive a murderer. Though he may be your friend. A custodian of religion. Or a guardian of democracy. Never forgive a murderer,” these lines (translated into English) by Hindi political poet Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena are read out as the screen fills up with visuals of the curfew in post-riot Hyderabad at the end of the documentary film Kya Hua Is Shahar Ko? (What has happened to this city?). Given a chance to make the film again, 25 years later, its director Deepa Dhanraj would not have used the strong, subversive, but well-intended lines, lest it is misinterpreted. “Why create something that generates more anger? Today, this kind of language is being used by fundamentalists to provoke and incite people into communal violence,” says the Bangalore-based filmmaker.

The film will be screened in Mumbai for the first time at Shehernama, a festival showcasing documentaries on city-based themes on February 1 and later at Mumbai International Film Festival on February 3. The Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art in Berlin chose the film for their Living Archive project, describing it as “pioneering and prophetic in capturing a particular political vocabulary of supremacist politics, which in subsequent years established itself firmly as Hindutva ideology and shaped the political landscape of India and arguably South Asia.” The restored film, on the 1984 riots in Hyderabad, was screened to a packed auditorium at Berlinale twice last year.

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During the early ’80s, the rousing, aggressive Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations had disturbing implications in the way they were organised by Hindi fundamentalist groups. Dhanraj and her crew filmed one such procession which sparked riots in the city, which was followed by a curfew that lasted 22 hours.

The film started out as an instinctive reaction to the turbulence in the syncretic culture of pre-80s Hyderabad, but as Dhanraj worked on it she realised she wanted to put the violence into perspective. The film was made not just to show what transpired during the riots, but to bring about a process of dialogue between the aggrieved communities. “We wanted to show how historical facts are manipulated by political forces. The documentary puts into perspective the history of these conflicts and shows how a communal consciousness was being manufactured before our eyes in the ’80s,” says the 60-year-old, who has been making films for the past three decades on feminism and its politics. Kya Hua Is Shahar Ko? was the first-of-its-kind political documentary in India.

The film’s title, a cry of despair about one’s city, reflects the filmmaker’s tone. It was not the city she grew up in or knew anymore. “At one time, Hindus and Muslims spoke the same language, Dakhini. If one would listen to them speak, with their eyes closed, it would be impossible to tell the difference. Now, more Hindus speak Telugu,” she says.

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