Step back to move forward : The Tribune India

Join Whatsapp Channel

Step back to move forward

Known for making issue-based documentaries on pertinent topics such as agricultural labour, mass movements, human rights and environmentalism, Daljit Ami is now headed to Singapore for his eleventh feature-length documentary titled Singapore Mutiny – A Reclamation and Saada Singapore in Punjabi.

Step back to move forward

Unfurling history: The picture of public assassination of the 5th light regiment at Singapore in 1915.



Amarjot Kaur

Known for making issue-based documentaries on pertinent topics such as agricultural labour, mass movements, human rights and environmentalism, Daljit Ami is now headed to Singapore for his eleventh feature-length documentary titled Singapore Mutiny – A Reclamation and Saada Singapore in Punjabi. He started working on the documentary in 2012 and it is a product of his curiosity in the Ghadar Movement. 

“I wanted to make an elementary film on the Ghadar party, which was to be divided in chapters. While researching, the Singapore Mutiny of 1915 held my attention,” says Ami. He will be visiting Singapore this month as a resident artiste on the reciprocal residency sponsored by The Objectifs Films Residency, supported by the Singapore Film Commission and the Singapore High Commission in New Delhi (India).

Past tense

Ami explains, “Singapore Mutiny happened during World War I when Indian soldiers of the fifth Light Infantry Regiment of British Indian Army, instigated by the Ghadar Movement, revolted against their imperial masters whose war campaigns they were part of.” He shares, “The mutineers were arrested by the British with the help of allied forces of France, Japan and Russia deployed in nearby seas. The punishment awarded to these soldiers was staged as an imperial spectacle - 42 of the 205 court-marshalled soldiers were executed in the audience of 15, 000 people. The photographs of the execution are testimony of the spectacle, as shooting squads shoot the mutineers made to stand in front of a wall outside the Outram Prison with their hands tied behind.”

Forgotten history

More than the public execution of the soldiers, it is Singapore Mutiny’s exclusion from the pages of history books that haunts Ami. He says, “Most soldiers killed in the Singapore Mutiny were Muslims from Hisar and Rohtak districts of undivided Punjab. Ghadar Party’s plan to organise an Army revolt in India was aborted when British Government got the information and arrested its leaders. This information could not reach Singapore where 5th Light Infantry revolted despite being ill-prepared. In post-colonial nation state, Ghadar Party got passing reference in history-writing projects. However, most Muslims fled to Pakistan after independence, and this mutiny is of relevance to Pakistan, India, and Singapore.”

While sharing how history interacts with the present, Ami says that his documentary focuses on how eraser works in the conceptual category as far as history is concerned. “I went around four villages in Haryana only to find that people don’t even know about this event. Their reference point to this event is a consolation that these martyrs were from their village,” he says.

“This film is an attempt to recreate the event through these memorial plaques and memorial; architectural landscapes and people who inhabit these spaces. These questions are central to the exploration: How does memory leads back to the event? How do historical ruptures play with past events? How does repressed memory come back to problematize history?” he signs off.

[email protected]

 

Top News

Chief Judicial Magistrate's court in UP's Banda orders judicial inquiry into death of gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari

UP court orders judicial probe into gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari’s death

Ghazipur MP Afzal Ansari on Tuesday alleged that his brother...

‘Heart attack or poisoning’: The life and times of Mukhtar Ansari—crime and politics

‘Heart attack or poisoning’: The life and times of Mukhtar Ansari—crime and politics

Eastern parts of Uttar Pradesh are among the poorest regions...

Alka Rai, widow BJP MLA killed by Mukhtar Ansari, says 'justice has been served', visits Ram Mandir

Alka Rai, widow BJP MLA killed by Mukhtar Ansari, says 'justice has been served', visits Ram Mandir

Alka Rai is the wife of MLA Krishanand Rai, who was shot dea...

Cash-strapped Congress gets fresh IT notice of Rs 1,700 crore, say party insiders

Cash-strapped Congress gets fresh I-T notice of Rs 1,800 crore

Ajay Maken addresses a press conference

CBI files chargesheet against 20 institutes, 105 individuals in Himachal Pradesh multi-crore scholarship scam

CBI files chargesheet against 20 institutes, 105 individuals in Himachal Pradesh multi-crore scholarship scam

22 educational institutions were on CBI radar in the scholar...


Cities

View All