AVANTIKA HARI, whose maiden directorial venture Land Gold Women won a nomination recently at the Singapore Film Festival tells JYOTHI VENKATESH that religion is used as a scapegoat to kill, whether it is terrorism or communism.
Avantika Hari’s film Land Woman Gold that is being shown in the Indian Panorama section of the IFFI in Goa this year, after it received a lot of accolades at the Mumbai International Film Festival in November is her debut film as a director. Avantika, who had made the film after learning all about filmmaking in London Film School, adds, “It is a film that deals with the issue of honor killing; a practice that has originated from tribal codes which continues to claim the lives of not only innocent females but also males the world over”.
Emphasizing the fact that the issue that she ahs tackled in her film is relevant and topical, Avantika elaborates, “I started on a rickety bench when I read an article on the topic of honor killing in a newspaper and was intrigued that this kind of a thing was actually happening. When I first started researching the issue, I came across large sections of literature that pointed to the idea that honor killing exists today because it is condoned by certain interpretations of religious texts, especially the Quran.”
Though she admits that she is a Tamil Iyer girl, having been brought up in the Middle East and raised as an Indian, the first time that she came across honor killing was when she was studying the UK. Says Avantika, “Frankly when I was in Dubai, I had never heard of honor killing. With the rise of a new found awareness and fear of Islam, honor killing just seemed to be another issue that was swept under its extremist tendencies.”
Stating that honor killing is a universal issue, Avantika exclaims. “Research underlines that honor killing happens not just among Hindus in Bihar, Haryana and Rajasthan, among Sikhs in Punjab and within their immigrant communities in England and Canada, but also among Christians in Jordan, Syria and Brazil, among Druze and Yehidis in Iraq and Kurdistan. It is shocking to know that honor killing is rampant in progressive countries like U.K and Canada.”
The idea, Avantika avers, emanates from the concept that the women in the families should be protected from the clutches of men outside their clans. “I came to know that in Karo Kari system, both men and women are killed if they dare to rebel and marry outside their clans. On an average, a victim suffers 35 times before a FIR is registered by the cops, if at all he or she reports about the abuse to the cops in U.K or Birmingham”.
What upsets Avantika is the fact that honor killing is not just an Islamic or a religious problem, but a social malaise, one that is instigated and encouraged by people who refuse to accept that progress entails an acceptance of new ways, of new relationships, of new methods of social interaction. “It stems from fear -pure and simple. Fear of the possibility of the bloodline being infused by unfamiliar DNA, which might, in their minds, weaken the tribe, dilute its purity. Fear of new persons that might claim their right on the tribes’ possessions, its land, its gold and its women”.
Avantika asserts that religion has nothing to do with honor killing. “Religion is always used as a scapegoat to kill, whether it is terrorism, communalism, bombing or for that matter riots. No religion preaches violence. Muslims have come to me after the screening of my film and told me that they liked the film. The characters depicted in the film are not true Muslims in the sense that they do not pray five times or attend the mosques”.
Avantika who confesses that she has a very close relationship with her Dubai-based father, adds. “I cannot even imagine what would have made a doting father kill his darling daughter. I felt the strong compulsion to make a film on the subject when I came to know that a father was arrested in U.K for having killed his own daughter.”
The message that the film drives home is that killing is not an easy solution to any problem. “What is honorable about honor killing? How can you save your reputation by killing your own flesh and blood? The film’s message and our tenacity of purpose kept fear at bay while the film was in production. But once our film was ready, fear kept the distribution circuit at bay. At private screenings across the globe, we had audiences consisting of moviegoers; film buffs cry and shake their heads in shock and shame at the end of the film. When our film was showcased in MAMI International Film festival and IFFI, satisfied pats rained on our backs”.
