I went to the 7 PM show of The Bengal Files today (September 10) at PVR Cinemas, Next Galleria Mall, Punjagutta, Hyderabad.
As I watched, I was reminded of a debate I took part in during the Inter-Medical College Festival at Osmania Medical College in the early 1980s. The topic was: “Truth is Complex.” I argued against it and won second (or was it third?) prize. The winner, a Muslim student, spoke for the motion. He cited history’s darker chapters—Hitler’s gas chambers at Auschwitz and Treblinka among them—as examples of how truth resists simplicity.
That memory came back to me while watching Bengal Files.
The film portrays a “complex truth.” One might call it a depiction of carnage under Hindu-Muslim riots, but it’s not only that. Violence, after all, cannot be confined to one lens—religious, political, or national.
Was there ever an age without violence? No. Violence continues, daily and everywhere:
- Domestic violence.
- Violence in the name of religion, caste, gender, race, nationalism.
- Violence in the sharp word, the dismissive gesture, the obedience born of fear.
Violence abounds.
Krishnamurti put it starkly:
“Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. Violence isn’t merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper… When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind.”
To me, Bengal Files is a reminder that truth is complex not only because history is tangled, but because violence is woven into the fabric of our daily lives, often invisibly.
For more of Krishnamurti’s reflections on “stopping violence,” see Freedom from the Known.
Know Thyself 