Screening of “Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai” + Discussion with Director Nakul Singh Sawhney

This Friday, MONSOON is hosting a screening of Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai and a discussion with the director in Gardner Hall Room 105.

Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai is a documentary film by Nakul Singh Sawhney about the socio-political-economic dynamics that shaped the violence in the Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts of Western Uttar Pradesh, India, in September 2013. 

While looking at the immediate violence and its repercussions, this film takes a journey around the many facets of the massacre – the question of a woman’s ‘honor’, which becomes the biggest rallying point to instigate people, the way communal polarization was orchestrated by Hindu nationalist organizations including BJP-RSS, the merging of caste identity politics within the larger Hindutva fold and the breakdown of the once powerful farmers’ union, Bhartiya Kissan Union, from this region, whose survival hinged on the unity of Hindu and Muslim peasants. 

It also explores the various aspects of Dalit politics in the districts and the dubious role of the Samajwadi Party, the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh at the time of the riots. This has, today, resulted in a feeling of complete alienation and marginalization of the Muslim community. All these aspects are weaved together by the 2014 Indian General election campaign. The film looks at how the massacre finally found its resonance in these elections. But in the midst of this gloom the film narrates the tale of a continued and growing resistance in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts against the corporate-communal nexus. Muzaffarangar and Shamli districts have not given in yet. And so the film asks the question: what will be the fate of Muzaffarnagar?