Original subtitles

Inside a cupboard in room S18 of a hostel in the FTII

a box was found with several assorted items

newspaper cuttings, dried flowers and memory cards.

Amongst them were letters written by a student of the film school

only named by the initial 'L'.

My love,

How are you?

I am thinking of you...

More and more it seems, as the days stretch on.

I'm getting by...

still not quite able to get my head around things...

Yesterday Mukul came to the room to have tea.

He told me these days he's been having a strange, recurring dream.

He narrated it to me and I also found it strange.

And listening to him, all I could think of was of our situation.

I suppose it is always on my mind...

I went to the Dean's office this morning.

He asked me where you were, and when you would be back.

I didn't know what to tell him.

How could I tell him

that your parents locked you in a room and won't let you out...

because you expressed your desire to marry me?

How could I tell him...

that even if you escaped and came back,

they would find us

and who knows what they would do?

I just told him you were dealing with a family problem...

That's the truth, I guess.

Anyway, there is a party tonight.

I don't feel like going, but maybe I will...

Just to take these thoughts out of my mind.

I'm thinking of you...

What else can I say...?

Yours, L

Yesterday Mukul came to the room to have tea.

He told me these days he's been having a strange, recurring dream.

It was a moonlit night...

I was in love with a girl...

She was petite, so delicate.

We had decided to meet in the field behind her house,

in the fields that would hide our love...

I was waiting for my beloved...

waiting to touch her gentle lips

take her in my arms,

kiss her.

I saw a figure crouching in the bushes.

Suddenly...

it started to move towards me...

and I realised that it was her father!

Her father and his men chased me through the forest...

I saw a river, I recognised it.

If I jumped into it...

I wouldn't remember my past... I would know nothing.

What choice did I have?

If they caught me... I would be dead.

I have this dream often.. More often, these days...

Sunday morning, the campus is still asleep.

There are only the sounds of birds and faithful dogs.

Here, life goes on.

Tudu! What's cooking in the Mess?

I really hope it's not pumpkin.

- Pumpkin. - Dammit!

I have to still take a bath!

They will run out of beer!

We are having a party!

My love,

I am sorry I have not written in so many days.

I have been trying to keep myself busy.

That is the only way I can keep my mind off of things.

I am editing Himu's film.

And I have to admit, it has not been easy.

He watches me edit with such intensity,

as if there is some pattern

that only I can see...

But it is not true.

It is a complicated film and I think neither of us fully understand it.

Did I tell you what it's about?

It is about a girl.

She is having an existential crisis perhaps.

I know you'd say, she is like me.

- Roll camera! - Rolling.

Shot 7, take 1.

Shot 4, take 2!

Roll camera!

Today I have a day off after many days.

And again I find myself thinking of you.

I miss you.

I felt your touch...

as if you were next to me...

It is getting harder to live on campus.

Since you left,

the administration has been coming at us with more vengeance.

They're passing all kinds of rules

which have nothing to do with students or cinema.

I am ashamed to admit it...

but sometimes I think that they are punishing us for going on strike.

Like if we hadn't gone on strike, would things be better now?

But at the time, what other choice did we have?

In the monsoon of 2015,

the students of the state funded film school,

the Film and Television Institute of India,

called for a strike against appointment of their new chairman,

Mr. Gajendra Chauhan.

Mr. Chauhan had been appointed by the newly formed government in India,

headed by the BJP.

He is an actor whose most popular role

was to play a Hindu mythological character on a soap-opera

in the 1980s.

The reason for the agitation was that the students claimed

that Mr. Chauhan had been appointed to run the film school

because of his affiliation to the BJP

and his support for the Hindu nationalist organisation

the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,

the RSS.

Students further claimed that it was not just FTII

but the government had appointed many RSS sympathisers

to various public funded institutes.

All the agents of Modi...

Get out of here!

Eisenstein, Pudovkin!

We shall fight! We shall win!

Several students, academics and artists supported the strike,

and soon news channels featured it on prime time news.

Our protest is not just against these few appointees.

Our opposition is towards all these political appointments

that this government is making in all Public Institutes

since the past one year they have come into power.

All these people are associated with a certain ideology.

If anyone questions their ideology, they are immediately shut down.

If someone is against their views, they are beaten!

If anyone makes a film

that doesn't suit their ideology, it is banned.

Those protesting against the appointment of Mr. Gajendra Chauhan are anti Hindu.

Gajendra Chauhan has acted in over 150 films and 600 TV shows.

Those people who are questioning the appointment

must be joking or must be mentally ill.

It is quite clear

that all they want is to promote their anti-Hindu agenda.

And that's their goal!

As the weeks turned to months,

the students showed no sign of backing down.

The Government had to take notice.

First, the students were threatened with rustication.

When they did not stop,

five students were arrested in a midnight siege.

If you are going to arrest students in the middle of the night,

there should be some legal basis! At least show us an arrest warrant!

What's going on? Is this now a police state?

Soon the machinery in place were used to change the narrative.

Students were called "anti-national" and "anti-Hindu".

Subsequently, the students lost the public sympathy

and were viewed as freeloaders

living off tax-payer funded subsidies.

In a desperate attempt,

several students went on a hunger strike, and were hospitalised.

Unable to hold on, the strike was finally called off

after 139 days.

Do you remember that night during the strike?

Someone had set up projectors under the trees.

You were sitting next to me.

I leaned my head on your shoulder

in the pale projector light...

I don't know how it happened...

but soon we were kissing.

I miss you. Yours, L.

It must be raining outside.

There was this question also, like during the strike,

if the entire country has supported us

what if someone else is attacked tomorrow?

If something happens in a different institute,

is it our responsibility to stand with them?

It's not just a moral obligation I feel, it is also because the current scenario

if you guys think that if you are silent and if we listen to whatever they say,

your life will be better, absolutely it's a lie!

It is not going to be that. It actually will get worse.

My dear,

Last night the Student Union elections began.

Because of the yellow tarpaulin spread on the floor,

the whole court was ablaze with yellow light!

Even the leaves on the trees looked golden.

Anunay, with his gentle voice

spoke about preserving the past.

And Ranjit spoke about safeguarding the future.

OUR OLD CAR NEEDS A NEW COAT OF PAINT

LET'S COME TOGETHER TO PAINT IT!

Why did we show the film?

Why are these people coming and talking to us?

Why is this discussion happening? It is all happening so that we feed into

the clarity of vision that is needed to run this place.

Run this place from the student community's side,

from the administration's side.

What is the need for this place to exist in today's times?

If in the course of these three-four or five days,

if we can organically understand what is this vision that is emerging

not from the burden of history,

not from a legacy that is being handed to us

and forced upon us,

but, by truly observing, what is the status today?

Why do we need a film school like this in our times?

Such a heavily subsidised film school in today's times?

What are our privileges here?

How many of us could have even

dreamt of making films if this place did not exist?

Did I tell you I visited Nachi in his village in Polachi?

We rode around on his father's motorcycle.

People passed us glances as we went by...

it was funny...

But Nachi and I were not always friends.

The first time we met,

I found him too excited, too articulate.

Maybe because we are so different from one another,

we found in each other a compassionate friendship.

Out on the basketball court, I saw all our friends

who have now become so dear to me.

Neel, Shaz, Prabhati...

And amongst them, were new faces too...

who were listening so sincerely to everything we were saying.

Those faces were of the new students.

I imagined that in three years

they too might have the same deep love for one another.

Perhaps,

they might lean on each other's shoulders

and close their eyes with the tiredness of being alive.

Perhaps, they might think of each other as lovers,

as brothers, as parents or as teachers.

I saw Himu coming to us from afar.

A light shone in his hands, a small candle,

placed on a cake.

The golden light sparkled in his shy eyes.

"Whose birthday is it?" somebody asked.

"Not any of ours" he replied coyly...

"This cake is for Madhubala's birthday."

Hearing this, we were all overjoyed

and we sang a song from the late actress' movie:

"When one has loved, what is there to fear"

and rejoiced for Madhubala, for cinema and for love!

Because we knew, after all, they are one and the same!

On the margins of her letters L often makes drawings.

Doodles, shapes and forms that are unfamiliar

and quite often appear to be hands.

I believe that the students are at the frontline of the fight

against this dictatorial government.

I went to the Hyderabad Central University (HCU).

Over there, women students were threatened with rape by the police.

The police beat them and threatened them with rape.

Where there were Bahujan and Dalit students,

they were called "untouchables".

And where there were Muslim students,

they had the usual word for them: "terrorists".

My dear,

Do you still keep cuttings from newspapers like you used to?

When I asked you why you were doing it,

you said it was because you didn't want to forget.

Perhaps because I am an editor,

I continued the timeline, where you left it off.

Your notes from the past meet mine from the present.

You were right.

Our memory cannot keep up with these times, it seems.

Trump's shocking victory was quickly forgotten

when the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh took place.

We had hardly any time to process this,

before the lynching of Pehlu Khan happened.

The image of his helpless face pleading to an angry mob to allow him to live.

And then the image of flogging of the young Dalit men in Una.

It was quickly replaced by the image of a Muslim girl,

who was gang raped and murdered.

And each image vanished as quickly and horrifically as it had appeared.

A fleeting memory of violence.

But one clipping never leaves me no matter what I do.

It is from January 2016.

The day Rohith Vemula took his own life.

In his death, Rohith Vemula has emerged as a symbol

of protest against injustice and indignity.

The 26 year old PhD student killed himself on Sunday

inside the campus of the Hyderabad Central University.

Mr. Vemula was a member of the Ambedkar Students' Association,

which fights for the rights of Dalits,

formerly known as "untouchables".

Rohith and five other students allegedly faced discrimination

from the "upper" caste administration at HCU

when he got into an altercation with a leader of the student-wing

of the ruling party, the ABVP.

His death sparked protests on campuses worldwide last week

and prompted a national debate

about the discrimination of Dalit students and academics

at Indian universities.

The government has launched a judicial probe into the death

and Prime Minister Modi has said that "Mother India has lost her son".

Yes, Prime Minister Narendra Modi,

he said that "India has lost her son".

We have another question to be put before Mr. Modi.

If India has lost her son...

the same son was branded as anti-national!

The same son was branded as casteist

because he was first fighting against casteism!

The same son was branded as an "extremist"

by your own cabinet minister who is sitting alongside of you

Union Minister for Labour and Employment,

Mr. Bandaru Dattatreya.

And you think about it...

As of July, five students were suspended.

Their research fellowship is stopped!

After 4th January,

they are banned from using the library,

they are thrown out of their hostel rooms

and they are forced to sleep on the street in the cold!

The struggle going on at the Hyderabad Central University,

the martyrdom of Rohith Vemula

and the suicides of several Dalit students

in universities across the country

have sent out a strong signal to India.

I think this is going to become

the fulcrum of the anti-caste movement in this country.

Many of the pages in L's notebook were blank

and some pages were also torn out.

Some had the initials of her name

written and the scratched out.

After several of such pages, more letters appear.

My dear,

Diwali has come again...

A year has passed by...

just like that...

You didn't even try to speak to me once...

and I still go on...

People might think I'm crazy...

Maybe I am...

I don't know anymore.

Why does 'nostalgia' always remind me of something good?

While 'memory' is only about forgetting...

I keep thinking about it...

What if it were me who had fallen in love

with someone who was of an even "lower" caste or different religion?

My parents would have had the same reaction as yours.

What my parents would do isn't in the least bit important to me.

What is important is what I would do!

I remember in school too...

the "upper" caste kids always treated us badly.

They had a strange sense of superiority.

And we did the same with those who were considered "lower"...

After all, our parents propagated these thoughts...

I thought that you would fight for us.

I thought you would stand up to your parents.

But maybe...

I was wrong...

Maybe you were never brave, the way I thought you were.

I just don't understand.

How could you stand beside me during the strike,

shouting slogans of freedom stand up to the government,

but when it came to standing up to the casteism of your parents,

you did not speak up?

Another Dussehra,

the festival where we celebrate the victory of "good" over "evil".

But I no longer understand which is which...

Memory is fragile...

it cannot withstand the test of 2000 years...

Those who control it, call it "history".

All those nights...

I spent talking to you about my childhood..

And you listened to me so patiently.

Maybe I mistook your silence for understanding...

But maybe we never really understood each other at all.

I know now that I will never send these letters to you,

I no longer write to you anymore.

But to someone I wished you could have been.

In her letters often talks about the past.

She writes about a particular night, more than others.

On this night, in the capital city of New Dehli,

three student leaders were released from prison and returned to their university,

the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), the bastion of left politics in India.

The arrest of these students seem to have had a deep impact on her

and the fellow students at the film school

We want freedom

to marry whoever we want

or not to marry!

Freedom to say, "yes"!

We are going to get it!

Freedom from casteism!

Freedom from exploitation!

Freedom from injustice!

Freedom from poverty!

From starvation!

It is our right!

More dear than our life!

Our beloved freedom!

You want to shut down all the voices

that can unite!

Whether it is of a soldier guarding the border,

or a farmer toiling in the field

or a student protesting for freedom,

they don't want these voices to unite!

I want to tell you,

Babasaheb (Dr. Ambedkar) has said

political struggle is not enough...

what we need is social change!

This is why we speak about constitutional rights.

And Lenin tells us,

"Democracy is indispensable to socialism"

This is why we are fighting for democracy,

for freedom of expression,

and for equality.

This is why we are fighting for socialism.

So that the child of a janitor and the child of a Prime Minister

can study at the same school!

Let me hear you!

We are one!

We shall fight!

We shall win!

Dear

I want to send you images

of people as they gather here at Jantar Mantar in Delhi.

It is a cold November morning

and people are wearing shawls and sweaters.

The last time I was here to protest was during our strike...

It could very well be that protest...

just the banners have changed.

Common education for all!

Demand workers and farmers!

I came to Delhi to edit Shubham's film.

But when the protest erupted,

neither Shubham nor I could concentrate on our work.

We decided to join in.

WE DEMAND AN END TO THE HIKE IN FEES

You know, they have increased the fees here by 300 percent?

THIS FIGHT IS FOR ALL UNIVERSITIES IT IS A FIGHT FOR OUR SOCIETY

My ancestors broke their backs tilling fields of landowners.

No one from my family has even left the village.

EDUCATION IS NOT FOR SALE

Is the purpose of education only to teach you to work and fill your stomach?

Why can't the poor dream of getting a degree?

This is what they are afraid of.

If we become educated, who will work on their fields?

Who will mend their shoes?"

If your father is a taxi driver or a labourer,

don't you have the right to education?

A part of my scholarship goes to support my family!

What will I do?

If there's a fee hike, I'll die or become a labourer.

Why don't you understand that?"

Modi government, come to your senses!

Stop selling Education Institutions!

Stop the violence on students!

Long live the Revolution!

Long live student unity!

- Student, carry on your struggle! - We are with you!

I look at a lady cop who is keeping an eye on us.

She'll go home tonight, tired from a day of work.

She'll still have to make dinner for her family.

What will she think of as she dozes off?

Tomorrow, she'll wake up early and make lunches for her family.

She'll send her kid off to school and kiss him goodbye.

I wonder what she thinks of us?

I thought of Pasolini.

In the student protests in Italy in 1968,

he supported the police...

He said the students were children of the bourgeoisie,

but the police were the proletariat.

Could these students really cause a revolution without the workers?

But at the protest today, are the two sides of the barricade

really so different?

Pressed up against her... this is the closest she and I will be...

Really, it is just her uniform that separates us.

I feel for her...

but soon she will raise her baton and attack my friends.

She'll pull their hair, grab their arms...

And I am reminded once again

that the police is not here to protect me.

Grab me all you want! We will fight till the end!

A souvenir of violence.

A government of sticks and bullets!

We reject you!

Government of lies and deceit!

We reject you!

Hindu nationalist government!

We reject you!

Anti-Dalit government!

We reject you!

And we have taken to the streets

because we want to tell the people in power

that now the oppressed castes and the poor

will not tolerate your oppression!

They will no longer mend your shoes,

will no longer clean your filthy sewers,

will no longer burn your rotting carcasses.

We are recognising our rights!

You say you know poverty?

You have only read about poverty and caste oppression in books!

But we actually face it in our daily life!

In this country, the rich man

is already going abroad to study at Oxford and Cambridge!

And that same rich man will say,

"the government should not spend on subsidising education."

Hey mister, if you have any shame, go look at your face in the mirror!

When your kid goes to study at Oxford,

then he too is benefitting from that country's tax payers

and government subsidies!

When your kid studies from their subsidies

and when their tax payers pay for your kid's education

then you strut around proudly!

But when it comes to paying your taxes for the poor youth of your own country

you can't stomach that, can you?

If you're worried how your tax money's spent,

then I say, please worry! Most certainly worry!

But don't ask "Why is studying at JNU so cheap?"

You should be asking, "Why is my education so overpriced?"

Dear,

I have become a feverish prisoner of rhetoric.

Listening to the speeches gives me a strange rush...

We are only here to fight for our rights...

and we will keep fighting!

You better make your jails bigger!

You know I have been to jail before! Only recently you have released me!

And you know very well what we are made of.

So if you want to put us back in jail, go ahead!

But know this, if you do arrest us, we will come in thousands.

So make the walls of your jails taller, we are ready for the long run!

Some days it feels like things could not get worse.

How could it?

But soon enough,

something even more sinister takes place.

The thing is, I am feeling scared.

Any ideology that opposes theirs

is not allowed to exist.

And the sad part is, so many people are following them.

They are questioning what it means to be a citizen.

As if it is not just enough to be born on this land.

Certain people are being declared less Indian than others.

Protests have erupted in campuses across India

between last night and this morning.

News of fresh protests is pouring in almost faster than we can keep track of.

At the moment, several universities across India are protesting.

Students at New Delhi's Jamia Milia University

have been protesting for the last three days

against the Citizenship Amendment Act, a new law.

Now these were largely peaceful protests, until last evening,

when police in riot gear surrounded the campus

and they began to pull out students and beat them with batons.

They also lobbed tear gas shells inside the campus,

including inside the central library, which is a closed room,

where approximately fifty students were hiding.

It isn't just Jamia Milia Islamia anymore,

but also reports of violence

on the Aligarh Muslim University campus.

You see the police in riot gear

and there is some stone throwing happening.

The police is ready with tear gas shells and some firing as well at this point.

A masked mob has attacked teachers and students

at an elite university in New Delhi.

The incident is the latest in a series of violent clashes across India.

We are at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi.

Around hundred masked men entered the campus on Sunday night

and brutally beat up students and teachers.

More than twenty have been severely injured.

Who were the masked men who are responsible for this?

That will be a big question going ahead.

Many members of the students and the faculty claiming

that they were BJP student wing workers

who went on the rampage inside the JNU campus.

I have been brutally attacked by goons who were masked.

I don't know... I have been bleeding.

I am not even in a condition to talk. I have been brutally beaten up...

I was there with one of my activist friends.

Down with ABVP DOWN! DOWN!

I am a common student of JNU.

I do not belong to any party,

but the kind of videos that are coming out from JNU today are...

heartbreaking!

There have been videos coming out

where Aishe, who is our President, has been beaten up.

Her head is bleeding!

There are so many other students whose heads are bleeding.

There are teachers.

And in all of this,

everyone who is outside of JNU, who is inside JNU,

are feeling helpless

because there is curfew imposed right outside of JNU.

So, anybody who is mobilising, the police is beating them up.

And we all need to somehow be united not just for this protest,

not because it's fun to shout slogans,

not because it's fun to stand on the road with fire torches, no!

We have to stand against Hindu nationalists.

We have to stand against violence.

We have to stand against their stupidity

in our everyday life.

In our day to day life.

We have to stand up in front of our parents,

in front of our teachers, professors,

families, extended families

relatives, whoever it may be.

But if we don't do it and if we keep on giving into this,

people like ABVP are going to keep happening to us.

And for now it's just JNU,

it's just Jamia (University), it's just Hyderabad (University)

it's just Assam.

It's going to be all of us someday.

They'll enter your house and beat you. It's not a threat.

Because it doesn't seem like one anymore.

The people that have been calling in from JNU,

their voices are shit scared.

They are so scared that they are just like,

"Yeah, we are okay, but we don't know what will happen next."

So, I thank you all for gathering

and showing solidarity

when the entire nation has this propaganda inside their minds.

Thank you for having your conscience alive.

And I would just like to say...

Long Live the Revolution!

So, they blindfolded me and they put me in a car.

I did not resist...

Then, they took me to Lucknow.

I was sitting between two policemen

and I felt their pistols against my thighs.

I'm a 23 year old student and I was protesting peacefully.

Why did they send the Anti-Terrorist Squad to arrest me?

Then I realised that in order to be safe

I had to prove to them that I was not a devout Muslim,

because they'd try to pin me down as a terrorist.

And in jail it was so overcrowded,

it felt like we each had one coffin space to ourselves.

I was in there for four months

and finally they granted me bail.

It's funny because the court called me a bright student.

Can you tell us if you were tortured in any way

while you were in custody?

There are some things I don't want to talk about

because maybe... they will scare the students.

They might get scared of going to prison and stop protesting all together.

Maybe I'll write about it one day.

Dear,

I had a horrible dream.

My chest...

it feels so heavy...

I can't go back to sleep...

I am scared...

People are getting arrested everywhere.

One by one...

People are getting arrested.

In my dream

I had gone to a protest.

Many of our friends were there.

Everyone was shouting slogans.

Suddenly...

Suddenly, there was a police van.

They took out large canons of water,

they hosed everyone...

It was very strange...

The water began to melt away everyone.

Prateek vanished...

then Nachi vanished.

The water fell on Prabhati

and she vanished too...

Shaz...

Himu...

Neel...

Devangana...

Safoora...

Natasha...

Umar...

This appears to be the last of L's found letters

There is however a note,

written on her last day at the film school.

Here she has described the feeling of looking at the early morning sky

after a long night with her friends.

Scribbled behind the note, are the words of the revolutionary poet Aamir Aziz:

"Everything will be remembered"

We are not just FTII now,

we are a national voice.

You like it or not, we are a national voice,

and it is very important to be honest and genuine,

and to be obligated to that

because you are going to make films for people outside!

Not for this community of 200 people!

So if people have supported you for some reason,

there should be some genuine reason people have supported you.

Out of no reason nobody would have supported you.

People who have nothing to do with filmmaking have supported you.

Common people!

I'm not telling you to take it as a moral obligation or a pressure

to behave in a certain way.

Or to be outwardly political, not that.

But at least in a scenario like this

when things are reduced to black and white.

The current government and throughout the world what's the problem is that

"Either you are with us or you don't exist."

This is the problem.

I think we as filmmakers have to be more nuanced.

We should not be thinking in black and white.

If there is some kind of sensibility and ownership.

I think that is actually the crux.

Even I had this feeling, many might have this feeling that,

FTII is no longer what it was in the past.

It's okay to be happy about certain traditions and values

which we had, which was good.

But there is an evolution which has happened intellectually also.

You can't deny and go back again and again.

Then we will go back to prehistoric times and say that everything is a problem!

Filmmaking itself is a history of 100 years,

if you go back, then cinema itself will become absurd!

So it is also important for us to say, "This is the reality".

Trump is the reality, Modi is the reality.

I am not getting into good or bad,

this is how it is!

Lenin tells that revolution is the festival of the oppressed.

I am not actually equating us to people who are really oppressed.

But in a larger sense there is an urge in everybody for an alternative.

Everybody who is oppressed... across religions, across countries,

across races, across caste, creed, colour, class-

Everybody is looking for an alternative. It might be different,

but there is a genuine need of people for a change in leadership.

People are just looking for this.

People are really, really looking for people whom they can look up to.

That's the problem of our generation, I feel.

I didn't have anyone to look up to.

That's why this leadership has gained momentum. It's actually the time.

Even if you ask, "Why so much importance to FTII or this struggle?"

It is not us, it is not Chauhan, it is not RSS, it is not the government.

It is actually the times.

Time has put us in a certain place

and we reacted in a way, what we could,

and that has gained all the momentum.