19 November,2009 06:59 AM IST | | Daipayan Halder
The massacre in Marich Jhapi in a distant corner of Bengal in the late Seventies is a subject taboo to most artistes. There was Ghosh's novel Hungry Tide and a few write-ups. And now a documentary tries to expose one of official India's cruelest secrets
Tushar Bhattacharjee doesn't want his photographs to be published. His films require him to be a part of the crowd. And not stand apart. A minor sacrifice if you have to take on the might of the state and document an event that makes Nandigram look like a minor offence.
In his latest documentary Tortured Humanity, this Kolkata-based filmmaker has talked about one of the least known instances of state persecution of backward communities and displaced population groups in post-Independence India. The Left Front government in West Bengal in 1978-79 allegedly massacred unknown refugees from the erstwhile East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, after promising them an alternate homeland.
"There was a settlement of more than 30,000 refugees in Marich Jhapi. At least, three to four thousand were killed. Many others were raped and beaten up. Few live to tell the tale," says Bhattacharjee. And for him to track them down and make them speak was in no way an easy job.
This pogrom was done away from media glare, yet word of it got out and has found a place in Bengal's oral tradition as the Marich Jhapi massacre.
Though some scholars and writers like Ross Mallick, Udayan Namboodiri, Annu Jalais and Amitav Ghosh (in his novel Hungry Tide) have highlighted it in their works, no filmmaker had come forward to document this massacre. Until now.
Bhattacharjee says he has tried to unravel for the first time the machinations and brutality that preceded Marich Jhapi by catching up with relatives of the victims, survivors and even the perpetrators.
So what made the state government wipe out a settlement? There are no ready answers. Some Left-leaning political observers say the settlement was taking an anti-Left turn and hence required 'stern action'. Too stern, one would say, considering thousands were killed in cold blood.
The documentary,u00a0though, takes a balanced view by talking to both sides. Catch it.
Tortured Humanity will be screened at Indian Social Institute, Lodhi Road, tomorrow at 4 pm
