A Selective Study in Post-Colonial Bengali Cinema - always yours

33|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2
the partition: instead of analysing it, he always simply thought that it should never have happened,
he always refused to “accept” it (290), as if it did not become a reality till he accepted it, and
commented that he did not have anything else to say about partition, except that this cutting of
Bengal into two parts was a disaster (290). There is a touching melodrama in his attitude, but he
fails abjectly to offer an artistic interpretation of partition: but then how could he interpret
something that he always lived in denial of? Cultural clashes (just like religion, myth and faith)
constituted a blind spot in the class only vision of the communists. His class conscious sympathy
for the Muslims of Bangladesh notwithstanding, Ritwik had to go alone to Bangladesh for shooting
Titas Ekti Nodir Nam as it was insisted by his Bangladeshi producers that his unit for Titas could not
have in it a single Indian (296). It goes without saying that the tremendous oppression on the
Hindus in East Pakistan/Bangladesh has never been a matter of concern for Ritwik. Interestingly,
after he returned from Bangladesh, Ritwik Ghatak enthusiastically started addressing his
interviewer in Kolkata (not a Muslim) as Mian (307). Bilet Ferat (England Returned) of 1921 was a
comedy film by Dhiren Ganguly, one of the earliest films made in Bengal, and we think there could
have been a Bangladesh Ferat with a character like Ritwik as its main protagonist.
Ritwik exhibited an unusual propensity of calling those he disagreed with CIA agents: a
film-maker or two who could do something in India already sold themselves off to CIA, he
thundered (88). All those who are making blockbuster movies with superior techniques at the
investment of big capital are CIA agents too (30), and Delhi is full of CIA agents who do not allow
revolutionary movies to be made (326), as Ritwik points out. About fellow film-makers and artists
who fail to toe the world revolutionary line, he reserves some choicest abuses: Ritwik calls
Bergman a “jochchor” (swindler) because he depicts myth, spirituality, religious symbols and
ancient mythical times of the Vikings in his films (instead of showing some proper materialistic and
atheist subjects in a suitably communistic outlook), and accuses that Bergman is taking the audience
backward, instead of explaining the ancient times away in the terms of the present; Ritwik Ghatak's