'A RIFLE AND A BAG' OBSERVES A MARGINALISED LIFE BEYOND THE GAZE OF PITY, EMPOWERMENT OR RESCUE

“Are there still Naxalites in India? What do they want? What do they look like? Where do they live?” These are some questions I want the viewer to ponder on before they watch A Rifle and a Bag (2020), because keeping these crucial questions outside of the mainstream cultural space is how alienation operates.

In the language of the Indian state, the Naxalites (who since the 1960s are fighting for the rights of the Adivasis, tribes and to an extent, Dalits) are called “insurgents,” “militants”, “Maoists” or “criminal tribes” who pose the biggest threat to internal security. The other end of the extremist ideology celebrates the Naxalites as “martyrs”, “fighters” or “warriors”. This polarization has ensured the state’s perpetual exploitation of millions of people (the tribal and the lower castes) by keeping them in abject poverty, as well in the annual deaths of hundreds – on both sides – as casualties of the conflict. The mainstream media’s neglect of the situation has compounded our intrinsic casteist society’s vast indifference to the plight of the ‘tribes’. There is the occasional conversation inviting pity for the ‘noble savage’ which is also an excuse to evade systemic accountability. As a result, we do not even have a language to talk about the ‘tribes’ away from this bracket of polarities.

A Rifle and a Bag (2020) offers a possibility. It presents an alternative language and a sensitive point of view to a precarious life lived in the in-between. Somi and Sukhram wish to provide quality education for their child. In their attempts to bring this wish to fruition, they face several socio-economic hurdles. This is their story.

If I stop my description of the film at this point, it sounds like any other middle-class aspiration story, right? I will not be totally wrong in doing so. For A Rifle and a Bag documents this central conflict of the film through the remarkably focused and intimate perspective of the family. We see their mundane life: bathing the baby, washing clothes, playing with the kid, father going to work, mother going to the gynaecologist for checks, and so on. We feel for the humane in the tale. We are moved by it. But what complicates this wishfully ‘simple’ story of a family is their historical reality. Somi and Sukhram are ex-Naxals. After a decade long armed struggle, they surrendered to the government in exchange for pardon. Now in their twenties, with a growing boy and another baby on the way, they want to begin a new chapter in their lives.

Admitting their child in an English-medium school, away from home, where he can learn the lessons of the world is a way to integrate themselves into mainstream society. But the opportunity to delineate their life’s path is a freedom that’s not available to all. To admit their ward to a school under the government scheme for the scheduled tribes, the family needs to submit a caste/tribe certificate to the school. The family does not have the required documents and have to go through a chain of bureaucratic hurdles.  

A Thoughtful, Reflective and Empathetic Film

The camera follows the family like a companion in their journey. It never deserts them. We see the characters’ resilience. We also see their shame, grief and disappointment. This deep involvement with the story of the subjects extends itself as empathy towards even the ‘antagonists’ of the tale – the bureaucrats. It becomes clear that the family has been making rounds of the public office to procure the certificate as the officials seem to have softened towards them. We witness the same cycle of opaque information offered to the family, the mother in particular, who is the more confident, articulate and active parent. After a point, the faceless officials are helpless, they insist, in the absence of documented proof. There is no other authority figure in the whole film. Only scenes of them speaking to the parents with their backs to the camera.

The main issue of structural injustice of the subjects is never lost in the documentary, even when it seems like the filmmakers may be being evasive in their approach. Instead of adopting a pointed stance on the issue, the documentary opts for using it as framework while weaving a delicate tapestry of the family inside it. I prefer this thoughtful intimate approach to the standard anthropological gaze that creates a distance from the subject. The editing, transitions and cinematography are poignant and illuminating. The sound is thoughtful. It is a film of and for listening.

There is a politics to the aesthetics that evokes this sense of connection with the viewer. With a subject that is so heterogenous, and imagery so foreign to the bourgeois viewer, a documentary can take many shapes. It can be alienating, disturbing or combative. It can also take the despicable turn of evoking pity in the heart of the mainlander. But A Rifle and a Bag is thoughtful and reflective. It keeps its political references oblique, because it hopes for the viewer to be informed and mindful to fill in the blanks themselves.

In an ideal world, the middle-class spectator would be moved to see themselves in the struggles of Somi and Sukhram wanting a better quality of life for their kids, and maybe that would melt away all walls of indifference.

“We envision filmmaking as collaborative and transcultural,” reads the ‘About Us’ description of the NoCut Film Collective, a joint venture by three women directors – Arya Rothe (Indian), Cristina Hanes (Romanian) and Isabella Rinaldi (Italian) – all fellow DocNomad graduates. A Rifle and a Bag is their first collaborative documentary and certainly attests to that vision.

This review is part of our coverage of the Dharamshala International Film Festival 2020.

Review by Kanika Katyal

Published in Cinespotting, India.

The original version can be found here.