Anniversaries that commemorate a human tragedy, recalling to memory wounds yet to heal, could be occasions for reflection, reconciliation, healing. But this is possible only in a certain socio–political climate: where the unsavoury past is not sought to be celebrated or swept under the carpet; where
people are en couraged to face up to reality and engage in honest talk however painful that may be; where the guilty are tried according to the law of the land and given their just due.

Sadly, six years after the pre-planned demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya on December 6, 1992 – which also generated the appropriate mass hysteria and frenzy for a countrywide targeting of India’s largest minority — there has been little honest attempt at introspection, let alone reconciliation. If anything, through a ironic turn of history, those who led the most serious assault on the country’s secular–democratic edifice since its birth 50 years ago, today preside over the nation’s destiny. Six years after, arguably, the greatest trauma that the nation underwent since 1947, the guilty have not been punished. The severe hurt caused to our minorities has not even been acknowledged, leave alone redressed.

Zakhm, Mahesh Bhatt’s latest and last directorial venture in the genre of the commercial Hindi film, features as our cover story this month, in recognition and as a reminder of this shameful reality. The director’s searching exploration into the country’s tortured polity and psyche, through the powerful medium of an autobiographical tale, adds a new dimension to the slogan popularised by the modern feminist movement — the personal is political.

Mahesh Bhatt had intended, and rightly so, the release of Zakhm to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the demolition. But that was not to be. Exclusive interviews with the director, producer and main actor of the film – Mahesh Bhatt, Pooja Bhatt and Ajay Devgan – will inform the readers of Combat what Zakhm is all about. Their account is also a warning to us all that that those responsible for India’s communal catastrophe are today in power, trying to everything they can to stop this film from reaching the Indian people.

Last fortnight’s huge electoral reversals have dislodged Hindutva from power in Delhi and Rajasthan and ruined their dream of recapturing Madhya Pradesh. But in Maharashtra where they still reign supreme, their commitment to lawlessness was displayed last week through attacks on film theatres showing the film, Fire, in Mumbai and Delhi. In Gujarat, another state under BJP rule, life for the minority communities continues to be a living hell. Muslims and Christians are being forced in remote areas to perform shuddhikaran (purification) ceremonies, or barred from using the village well and common grazing grounds. The charge is being led by the viterolic VHP and the Bajrang Dal while the ruling BJP and the state police look on mutely. In Uttar Pradesh, again under the Hindutva-inspired BJP regime, the kulp yojana (school programme) for all state–run schools was initiated in an attempt to entrench the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh into the educational system.

Even at the Centre, Hindutva’s utter dedication to an alternate political agenda from the one that independent India adopted at its birth in 1947, is clear. In late October, the human resources ministry of the Union government attempted to push through a sectarian and narrow agenda for ‘Hinduising’ education in state–run schools.

How much more can Indian democracy withstand? We have, on paper, a secular, socialist, democratic Constitution. But this founding document of the Indian Republic continues to be violated with impunity. While the executive is controlled by forces ideologically committed to its perversion and subversion, the judiciary stoicly refuses to acknowledge the ominous developments on the ground.

Today, more than ever before, Indian democracy rests on very slippery ground, even as the country rejoices in the triumphant return of the Congress to power. Is that the party whose acts of omission and commission laid the basis for the meteoric rise of Hindutva in the 80s?