In February 2000 Deepa Mehta, the acclaimed Indian born director, was all set to begin work on Water. The film would round off the Elements trilogy, a startling series of excavations into modern Indian history.
Set in the pre-independence era, Water dealt with the social exclusion of Hindu widows, who are shunned by society after the loss of their husbands. Condemned to perpetual mourning, these women must remain shut away in ashrams, excepting those forced into prostitution.
Unhappily, Hindu fundamentalists were outraged when details of the script began to emerge. Ms. Mehta had only got five minutes of footage in the can when a mob destroyed the set and burned her effigy.
“Once it was shut down in one province we went to another,” recalls Deepa, “In the end I went to three provinces before I had this moment of epiphany. I just decided there was something wrong with this film. I felt I was so filled with anger the film would have been tainted by it. I put it in my basement and five years went by before I felt I could revisit the script. I was so terrified. Most of my family live in India and they had to suffer so much during that period. It was like being in a bad horror film. But you revert to humour in these situations. I remember I asked my daughter, ‘So, what was my effigy wearing?’”
It was not the first time that Elements had caused a stir. The first film was Fire (1996), a story of two married women who fall in love. Fundamentalists, mindful of giving women such terrible ideas, protested vigorously against the film’s depiction of lesbianism. Hindu activists went as far as burning down the Delhi cinema where Fire premiered, and Deepa Mehta was unable to leave her home in India without an armed guard.
“I suppose Fire was influenced by my mother’s arranged marriage and her feelings of isolation,” says Mehta. “Most of my formative years were spent in New Delhi, surrounded by numerous aunts. We women, especially Indian women, constantly have to prove our purity. It’s important to ask if we have choices here and if, as women, we make those choices, what is the price we pay for them?”
The second film, Earth, based on the novel ‘Cracking India’ by Bapsi Sidhwa, dealt with the British partition of India in August 1947 into a Muslim-controlled Pakistan and a Hindu-dominated India. At least 11 million people — including Deepa and her family — were driven out of their homes. Some reports put the death toll from pogroms and related violence at one million. The brainwave of a British Labour government with collaboration from the Muslim League and the Indian Congress Party, these events are rarely spoken of in India. Again the material proved controversial. In particular, the sex scenes were edited out all over the sub-continent.
“Earth for me was very specific,” says Deepa. “But partition has a universal resonance. Whether you look at Kosovo or Ireland or whatever country has been colonised, it fosters separatism, division or so-called ethnic cleansing. I think it was painful and we don’t talk about it. There is a lot of literature dealing with it but not many movies. That’s the main reason I wanted to do it. In my mind it was as much about Bosnia or Rwanda as India. When politics is used to divide for economic reasons – and they are always economic – it’s the people who suffer, particularly the women. I think that all wars are fought on women’s bodies.”
Following the furore around Water in 2000, it seemed unlikely that the trilogy would be finished. But undeterred, Deepa returned to the material in 2006 and began shooting in neighbouring Sri Lanka. As a Canadian citizen she has divided her time between that country and India over the past thirty years. Indeed, Water became Canada’s official entry to the Oscars.
Does this duality give the director a safety net when dealing contentious subjects in the country of her birth?
“Oh, I’d be critical anyway,” she laughs “Since I got married in the ‘70s I’ve lived in both countries for six months at a time. I have two homes and I am just as critical of Canada in that I can see the good and bad in everywhere.”
Told through the eyes of a eight-year old child condemned to life in the ashram, Water represents the collusion between religion and the patriarchy to terrific effect.
“That’s it,” says Deepa, “For me, the film is not about child brides. It’s not even about child widows. It’s about the politics of religion and how that impacts on women. Religion becomes a means of manipulating women. It’s motivated by financial gain and exists on behalf of a patriarchal society. It’s about oppression and suppression.”
Though ‘widows’ houses’ still exist and the widows continue to be regarded as unclean when deprived of a man to give them self-worth, Water ends on a positive note at a rally given by Mahatma Gandhi.
“I wanted to point to the things that Gandhi represented,” says the director. “And things are much better for Indian widows now. Women activists in India have realised they need to do something and it is amazing the amount of progress they have made in the last 10 years. The most important aspect is to make widows economically independent. They were shunned in the first place so nobody would have to support them.”
The film also stands as a sharp rebuke to women who would collaborate with any system that seeks to suppress their own gender.
“Well, it’s women who run the ashrams themselves,” says Deepa. “That is what happens. If someone hits you hard enough on the head, you start believing you are a moron. Another dynamic sees people who are victims learn to make others into victims and perpetuate the same thing that happened to them. It is not about black and white or men against women because that is too simplistic for me. It is the psychology of what happens in a society where everything happens for economic aims. We need to keep our eyes open.” Quite.