Note: Another of the film intro's; this time for a Mrinal Sen film.
In Search of Famine is a film that comes during Mrinal Sen’s third phase of film-making(as described in his intro thread) when he had started making more introspective films compared to his overtly political second phase. This could be explained due to the election of the party of his allegiance i.e CPM (Communist Party (Marxist)) in the state of West Bengal in 1977, overthrowing the erstwhile Indian National Congress Government. The CPM would continue to helm the affairs in West Bengal for the next 30 years.
Bengal Famine, 1943
The state of Bengal has seen several famines in its history. The most famous amongst them is the 1943 Famine which occurred during the Second World War when the Japanese had invaded Burma. The 1943 famine was largely a man-made calamity that claimed millions of lives. This is an article on International Business Times by Joseph Lazzaro that gives an idea of what happened:
When British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed regret this week for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919 in Amritsar (in which at least 400 unarmed Indian men, women and children were massacred by British soldiers), he omitted any reference to Britain’s role in a far greater tragedy of colonial India: the Bengal famine of 1943. Seventy years ago, at least 3 million people died from starvation and malnutrition during a famine in the Indian province of Bengal — a partly man-made disaster that has been largely forgotten by the world beyond northeastern India. A complex confluence of malign factors led to the catastrophe, which occurred with the world at war, including, as Indian parliamentary member and leading agricultural scientist M. S. Swaminathan cited in the Hindu newspaper, the Japanese occupation of neighboring Burma and damage to the local rice crop due to tidal waves and a fungal disease epidemic. Swaminathan also blamed “panic purchase and hoarding by the rich, failure of governance, particularly in relation to the equitable distribution of the available food grains, disruption of communication due to World War II and the indifference of the then UK government to the plight of the starving people of undivided Bengal. But while famines were not uncommon in India throughout history, largely because of periodic droughts or monsoons, the tragedy in Bengal had the unmistakable hand of man in it, making it an even greater calamity of recent global history.In the prior year, 1942, when Japan seized Burma, an important rice exporter, the British bought up massive amounts of rice but hoarded it. The famine only ended because Bengal thankfully delivered a strong rice harvest by 1944.Dr. Gideon Polya, an Australian biochemist, has called the Bengal famine a man-made holocaust. “The British brought an unsympathetic and ruthless economic agenda to India,” he wrote. Polya further noted that the “loss of rice from Burma and ineffective government controls on hoarding and profiteering led inevitably to enormous price rises. Thus it can be estimated that the price of rice in Dacca (East Bengal) increased about four-fold in the period from March to October 1943. Bengalis having to purchase food (e.g landless laborers) suffered immensely. Thus, it is estimated that about 30 percent of one particular laborer class died in the famine. Many observers in both modern India and Great Britain blame Winston Churchill, Britain’s inspiring wartime leader at the time, for the devastation wrought by the famine.In 2010, Bengali author Madhusree Mukherjee wrote a book about the famine called Churchill’s Secret War, in which she explicitly blamed Churchill for worsening the starvation in Bengal by ordering the diversion of food away from Indians and toward British troops around the world.Mukherjee’s book described how wheat from Australia (which could have been delivered to starving Indians) was instead transported to British troops in the Mediterranean and the Balkans. Even worse, British colonial authorities (again under Churchill’s leadership) actually turned down offers of food from Canada and the U.S.“If it was someone else other than Churchill, I believe relief would have been sent, and, if it wasn’t for the war, the famine wouldn’t have occurred at all,” Mukherjee told Inter Press Service.“Churchill’s attitude toward India was quite extreme, and he hated Indians, mainly because he knew India couldn’t be held for very long. One can’t escape the really powerful, racist things that he was saying. It certainly was possible to send relief but for Churchill and the War Cabinet that were hoarding grain for use after the war.” Churchill’s hostility toward Indians has long been documented. Reportedly, when he first received a telegram from the British colonial authorities in New Delhi about the rising toll of famine deaths in Bengal, his reaction was simply that he regretted that nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi was not one of the victims. Later at a War Cabinet meeting, Churchill blamed the Indians themselves for the famine, saying that they “breed like rabbits. His attitude toward Indians was made crystal clear when he told Secretary of State for India Leopold Amery: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”According to the BBC, Mukherjee said that Cameron should have apologized for the Bengal famine on behalf of his predecessor in Downing Street from decades ago — indeed, even former Prime Minister Tony Blair apologized for Britain’s culpability in the Irish potato famine of the 1840s. Outside of India, the Bengal famine of 1943 might only be known through the efforts of Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray, who directed a movie in 1973 called “Ashani Sanket” (“Distant Thunder”), based on a novel by the same name by Bengali author Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay.
Leaving all the Churchill bashing in the article aside, the important point this article makes and will be relevant to us to understand this film is the fact that famines are largely man made disasters caused by poor and insensitive governance which hasn’t changed much after independence.
So why does Mrinal Sen try to revisit this period of Indian history after almost 40 years? The reasons although not documented appears to be the following:
1>This film comes close on the heels of a major famine in Bangladesh in 1974 which also claimed many lives. India has been home to a large number of refugees from Bangladesh and Sen who also was born in Faridpur (now in Bagladesh) perhaps had sympathy towards this disaster which also appeared to be man made.
2> Sen uses “famine” as a metaphor for the vacuum that exists between the privileged and unprivileged classes which is responsible for increasing the divide between the two communities. A subject that was close to his heart.
In Search of Famine – The Film within the Film
In this film a film crew travels to a rural village in West Bengal to shoot a film that has a narrative set during the 1943 Bengal famine. They stay at a derelict mansion which previously housed the rich landlords family which saw tough times after independence. It currently houses only the ailing landlord and his wife whose children live in the city. This becomes a parallel narrative in the film that also seems to touch upon the large scale migration to the cities. Due to this setting, this film is also considered to be a companion piece to Khandar which we saw in the previous round.
Initially, the film seems to be doing well and shootings are going as per schedule. The village is excited to have the film crew and invite them with a lot enthusiasm. The difficulties are mostly economic reflecting on the times:
Sen will indulge in some irony in the meantime. Hopefully their film may not need a saviour.
But it doesn’t look like even the God’s can escape famine
In the village, our director will find his “man”, a theatre enthusiast whose family were artisan’s. They barely survive in the trade today. This would be the first parallel between the 1943 famine and our film as the famine had badly affected artisans and claimed many of their lives. The second parallel between the past and the present will be portrayed by Durga, a village woman whose life seems to strangely chronicle that of Smita Patil’s character in the film within the film.
Meanwhile, the film shooting continues..
The crew finds an admirer and friend in the village school headmaster who will try to play the role of a bridge between the privileged film crew and the underprivileged villagers.
The crew has an off-day due to rain and our heroine Smita Patil (playing herself) will indulge in an interesting game: Guess the Famine from the picture. Rest assured, Sen will provide us a healthy dose of irony.
Things appear to start getting difficult for the crew when the second herione who is to play a prostitute decides to break the contract and go back to Calcutta. The search for a new actress will begin among’st the villager’s
I will end the film synopsis at this point for viewers to enjoy the rest of the film. We will see what troubles the crew will run into and whether they will finally complete their film or not. Sen will raise some important issues through these events which we will summarize in the conclusion.
Conclusion
As mentioned in a previous section, Sen has approached the subject of 1943 Bengal famine for several reasons. As we have seen in the partial synopsis, it is also dealing with the difficulties involved in film-making on locations, especially in rural areas with a different culture and ideals. Through the difficulties the crew faces, Sen will highlight this gap between the two groups and blame both parties for lack of trust between them; The film crew for its insensitivity in dealing with the villagers and the villagers for being illiterate and not sufficiently liberal in their outlook. It is this gap or emptiness which Sen calls the “famine” and has been searching for in this film and eventually discovers.
There is also a man made famine created by the crew which is buying most of the produce in the village and raising prices which further displays the insensitivity of the filming crew which is ironically also making a film about Famine.
All in all, In Search of Famine is a multi-layered film that deals with several issues with its unique narrative style which makes it immensely rewarding. Most importantly, it is a film dealing with the ethics and morality of film-making which most filmmakers tend to forget in the effort to show us reality.
