Read Part 1 of the series

Shonali Bose interviewed by Sheena Singh

This month we continue to honor the victims of the Sikh holocaust of 1984. Keeping alive its dedication to their memory, the Sikh Foundation gave its unstinting support to the critically acclaimed film “Amu” by Shonali Bose. This was an important contribution of the Sikh Foundation to keeping the memory of this ghastly event alive for history to record.

Amu is the story of a young girl, Kaju (Konkana Sen Sharma), who travels to India to visit her relatives after graduating from college at UCLA. Kaju, a Bengali girl who had lived in the U.S. since she was 3 years old, was aware that she was adopted.” What she didn’t know was this trip would be the journey of a lifetime.

Camcorder in hand, Kaju sets out to find the “real India” through dhabas, slums, and personal accounts from locals. It is in one particular slum where she is struck by the odd feeling of “déjà-vu”. Digging further into her past with the help of a young man Kabir (Ankur Khanna), Kaju is on a quest to uncover the truth about her birth parents. The two discover their families’ involvement with the Sikh genocide that took place over twenty years. Kaju finally learns the truth from her mom (Brinda Karat) that her real name is Amu Singh and she was born into a Sikh family. She discovers that her father and brother were brutally killed during the Delhi riots of 1984, which led to the eventual suicide of her mother. In a searing climax the young people are forced to confront the reality of the past and how it affects the present.

I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with producer and director Shonali Bose about the movie.

Sikh Foundation: This is a very captivating film with a strong message and the only one of it’s kind related to 1984.

Due to the controversial theme of this film, can you describe what the process was like to be able to get this film off the ground and funded?

Shonali Bose: I never realized that this was going to be such an uphill battle. I’m not surprised that no one had come forward to touch this subject because it was so difficult for me to do and get funded. First, I wrote the script and I refused to compromise or water it down. I wanted it to be authentic. Secondly, I was a first-time filmmaker so I didn’t have a previous repertoire to go by and wasn’t established in the industry. Production companies did not want to take a chance on me. I had been offered a lot of money to make it a bollywood-type film with a lead actor but I couldn’t have it be a song and dance and trivialize the subject.

Naturally, I figured this was such an important topic to Sikhs that they would want to contribute easily. “I was shocked to the core.” I talked to many wealthy Sikhs in U.S., Canada, and England over almost seven years. I was so naïve; they would never say great idea but I’m not going to contribute – so instead I kept doing fundraisers.

I had almost given up when I met Mr. Malik and his family. He turned everything around for us and was the key contributor. He helped gather other prominent Sikhs to raise the rest of the money and introduced us to Dr. Kapany and the Sikh Foundation.

I think what was instrumental was that we put in our whole life savings of $50,000 that may not have been much but was everything we had, and then we got another $50,000 from a family member. When we went to investors, we showed firsthand our personal dedication and belief in the film. If it wasn’t for that, I’m not sure if anyone else would have taken a chance on us.

Sikh Foundation: What was the process of it being released in India and America?

Shonali Bose: I was writing the script for three years while fundraising and determining the cast members. As soon as our funding was in place, we hit the ground running. It all happened very quickly. I arrived in Delhi on December 2004 and we began shooting in January till March 2005. Within the same year in September 2005, it had been accepted by many top film festivals. It finally debuted concurrently at the Berlin Film Festival and India in February 2006. This was an amazing feat because usually it takes a few years of production and then another few years to get released, but in the case of Amu it all happened in less than a year.

India wanted to censor the movie actually. They didn’t want any dialogue so as to indict the state. There is one scene where the young man, Kabir, asks the widow who was responsible for the deaths, and the censorship board did not want them to explicitly name the Indian government. India gave it a rating equivalent to “R” which really impacted the film. For in Indian social norms, going to the movies is often considered a family outing and it really hurt attendance that kids under 18 could not view it.

Despite this, there was a fantastic response from Indians overall and more than just Sikhs came out to watch the film. The film ran in India from January to April 2006. From there, it went to the Toronto Film Festival in September 2005. Finally, it came to the U.S. two years later in 2007.

Americans response was quite the contrary as it did extremely well across North America in the U.S. and Canada. The well-known ASI film festival in LA selected the film to show to American high school students. This was surprisingly well received by American teenagers who had never seen a foreign film before or a film with sub-titles. Most Americans really just never knew this had occurred.

Similarly, it was shown at the largest gurudwara in Toronto. It was great to hear the Sikh perspective and see Sikh American youth like Kaju getting the message at all levels. They were deeply moved and empowered by Amu. One youth said to me “You’ve given back a part of our history that we didn’t know. You’ve given back our country of origin.” The movie transcended all boundaries and spoke to so many people.

Sikh Foundation: Why did you feel it was necessary to make this film?

Shonali Bose: It was a scarring event. I was 18 years old when this happened,
living in the hostel of the Miranda House at Delhi University. We were locked in our
rooms for three days, November 1, 2, and 3. We would see smoke outside…

There was only one public telephone and there were some Sikh girls living with us.
They would call home and recount hearing horrendous stories and reports of the
carnage. But on TV, all we would see was Mrs. Gandhi’s body at the state, on the
Doordarshan network, the only channel we got at the time.

Our college organized relief work. My job was going into the relief camps and
helping the victims as they would dictate to me and I would write on these small
yellow postcards home to their family members. I also had the responsibility of
recording people’s history and their accounts to go file reports at the police station.

I remember feeling so helpless. We kept hearing from them, “we saw them”…
politicians that had come with these mobs of gundas.

The story line was taken from what I knew. I was a young Bengali girl working in
the relief camps and these were the stories that were echoed across all the widows.
Two years later, when I was 21 years old, I tragically lost my own mother.

“All I did was hold my arms out; hold people, and be the shoulder to cry on. That’s all
I wanted and that’s all I did for them.”

The story was a coalescence born out of their tragedy and my own personal tragedy.
This is why it was important for me to tell the story from a mother-daughter angle
as an underlying theme to the film.

Sikh Foundation: What do you want people to take away from this movie?

Shonali Bose: I want people to know that this was absolutely orchestrated by the
government and an act of state terrorism- not just mob rioting as typically heard
in the media. This was a planned cold-blooded massacre. The army was told to
stand out for three days and not intervene as politicians gave kerosene to gundas
to carry out specific orders of wiping out Sikhs. There has never been so much hard
evidence, and yet its been covered up for over 25 years without any trials. And the
families of the victims are still waiting for justice. I want people to know the truth…

To find out more about the director and Amu, visit www.amuthefilm.com.
To purchase your copy of the Amu movie, visit the our online store

Written by Sheena K. Singh, Sikh Foundation

Read Part 1 of the series