In 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her bodyguards. Both were Sikhs. Immediately, afterward, a three-day riot in New Delhi was responsible for the deaths of at least 5,000 innocent Sikhs. An orphan of that riot, three-year-old Amu (played in a flashback by Ekta Sood), was adopted, thanks to an international aid agency, under the name Kaju (played by Konkona Sen Sharma), but she is not told about her family tragedy subsequent to her adoption; instead, she has been told by her adoptive mother, Keya Roy (played by Brinda Karat), that her family died in a malaria epidemic in a small village somewhere. When the film begins, eighteen years after her adoption, Kaju has just graduated from UCLA. Before getting her first job, she decides to go to India with a videocamera to discover her roots. She is greeted by relatives of her adopted parents, tours the city a bit, but is drawn to the slums of the city and a particular railroad yard, images that present a mystery to her. She seems drawn to solve the mystery. Accompanying her on the visits is a Delhi college student, Kabir (played by played by Ankur Khanna), a politician’s son, who is writing a term paper on the 1984 riot. According to Kabir’s father, there is no record of any malaria epidemic. Kaju tries to get more information from her adoptive mother, who knows the truth but does not want Kaju to become depressed over the disquieting circumstances of the loss of her parents, both Sikhs. The film, thus, is a kind of detective story that exposes the complicity of at least one government minister in inciting the anti-Sikh riot as well as the fact that police stood idly by while the violence was in progress. Clearly, there has been an official cover-up of the perpetrators of the riot, and Kaju’s adoptive family members in India are not eager to talk about the matter, associated as it is with negative karma. Director Shonali Bose, who was a nineteen-year-old student at Miranda College in Delhi during the 1984 riots and subsequently worked in Sikh refugee camps, dedicates the film to “Mamma” and gives the years of her lifespan (1943-1986). The message of the film is that nothing has been done by the Indian government to bring anyone to justice for the deaths of so many innocent persons. Within India, references to the government’s role in the riots are censored. Toward the end of the film, anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat during 2002 are described in a brief television broadcast, thereby pointing out that India’s sectarian violence will continue to haunt the world’s largest democracy until someone with political courage acts to quell the madness. The Political Film Society’s response is to nominate Amu as best film exposé of 2007. MH
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