The indefinite deferral of closure

Naseem’s continuing narrative can be defined by all that has happened since 1992

Watching Naseem with the advantage of the retrospective context of the last 14 years, one can only admire Saeed Mirza’s prescience. Released in 1995, Naseem was created with the clay of those tumultuous times, following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. Through the relationship between the young girl Naseem and her grandfather, it portrays the escalating communal atmosphere of that period.

Yet Naseem is not a secular film, not at least in the way secularism is conventionally defined. Naseem’s grandfather, who represents the epitome of religious tolerance, frequently delves into the nostalgia of his days in Agra, spent with his mates Tripathi and Niyaz. In recounting memories of his youthful days, he never emphasizes even once on Tripathi’s Hindu religion. Mirza is drawing our attention to the matter-of-fact nature of such inter-religious social relationships. The grandfather’s Agra of pre-Independence is not just an idyll of religious tolerance, but united by language and regional culture. Mirza is interested not in the nature of erstwhile secular ethos, but in the inextricable syncretism of the two religions that held society like glue.

Therefore, the deteriorating health and inevitable death of the grandfather (on December 6, 1992) with his love of poetry and ethos of religious tolerance is seen as the irreversible decline of shared values. The death of a Hindu shopkeeper’s wife, with whom Naseem shared a friendship, is a metaphor for the severing of communication links and inter-religious interaction in the increasingly fractured social climate. What may be seen as an ‘ending’ in Naseem could also be interpreted as an indefinite deferral of closure. The continuation of the film’s narrative can be defined and described in all that has happened since, including the 2002 Gujarat pogrom.