Naseem (1995)

Understated but intense family drama set in June-December 1992, the days preceding the demolition of the Babri Masjid on Dec 6 by Hindutva fanatics. Naseem (Kango) is a schoolgirl belonging to a middle-class Bombaybased Muslim family. She enjoys a warm relationship with her aged, ailing grandfather (Azmi). With increasing horror and foreboding, the family watches on their television set the news of the build-up at Ayodhya while the grandfather regales Naseem with poetry and stories of life in pre-Independence Agra, shown in several flashbacks. Naseem’s brother Mushtaq (Shah) tends towards desperate, possibly terrorist measures of resistance which pushes him towards Muslim fundamentalist circles. The family feels increasingly beleaguered by saffron-waving mobs and the police who infest all public spaces. The grandfather dies on December 6th, his death coinciding with the news of the mosque’s destruction. The film’s major feature, in addition to its finely judged creation of moods and its admirably controlled performances, is noted poet and former radical Azmi playing the grandfather, providing not just a reminder but a literal embodiment of the cultural traditions that were at stake in those tragic days.