'''Ram Ke Naam'''


aka In the Name of God
1992 90’ col Hindi
d/p/c Anand Patwardhan
The 2nd part of Patwardan’s investigation of
communalism in contemporary India (Una
Mitterandi Yaad Pyari, 1989). The film, shot
on 16mm, addresses the rise of a fanatic Hindu
right wing and its exploitation of the Ayodhya
temple in its bid for power. The Ramayana
suggests Ayodhya was the God Ram’s
birthplace. In 1528, one of the Mughal Emperor
Babar’s noblemen built the Babri Masjid
mosque there. In the late 19th C., both Hindus
and Muslims began claiming the site as a place
of worship. Since 1984, the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad, a militant Hindu organisation allied
with the BJP, rekindled and converted the old
dispute into a nationwide political programme,
affirming that the very spot where the mosque
was built marks Ram’s birthplace. They called
for the mosque to be demolished and for a
Hindu temple to be erected instead. In 1990,
the BJP’s leader, L.K. Advani, went on a ‘Rath
Yatra’, a chariot procession from Somnath to
Ayodhya, inciting violent communal riots en
route. Advani’s arrest led to the downfall of V.P.
Singh’s minority Janata Dal government and,
later that year, to the violent Kar Seva
(reconstruction) programme that saw, amid
several killings, VHP men take over the
mosque. Since then the Hindu fanatics have
used the issue as a bargaining ploy against the
ruling Congress regime. Patwardhan follows
some of the infamous Rath Yatra and
documents the Kar Seva itself, exposing the
link between the local police and the militant
mobs. Interviewing his subjects while
operating the camera, Patwardhan has most of
his speakers address the camera directly,
revealing, often indirectly, their actual
motivations. Patwardhan also includes the
confession of the man who was employed to
aggravate communal strife by placing idols in
the temple and the remarkable statements of
the priest in charge of the temple (who was
later assassinated for his anti-communalist
position).

[[Film]]