Earth, 1947: Shades of Innocence by Devangi Vivrekar

Earth, 1947: Shades of Innocence

by Devangi Vivrekar 

Deepa Mehta's Earth, 1947 is a deeply moving and powerful depiction of the social fragmentation that occurred as a result of the partition of India. Mehta successfully uses many motifs to illustrate the rapid progression from harmony in the characters' lives to complete chaos, betrayal, and heartbreak, sticking closely to the region's changing political timeline. Throughout the film, I was captivated by her skillful use of the motif of "breaking," which serves to show the increasingly violent progression of the conflict and also to illustrate the growing gap between communities that were once close-knit. I was also struck by the simple but poignant scene featuring a rooftop conversation between Lenny, her friend, and a Muslim child victimized by local violence, which was particularly effective in helping the audience experience the effects of the partition on the innocence of children, who represent the future of their societies. This scene also reveals Mehta's skillful depiction of the era's political situation in her character development as well as visual staging of the scene.

First, Mehta repeatedly presents the motif of "breaking" to signal key progressions in the growing social rifts in mid-twentieth-century India. For example, the film's title and opening credits are shown with a crack appearing on the word "Earth," representing the physical Radcliffe Line that split up India and Pakistan on August 17, 1947. Then, in the opening scene, Lenny drops a plate on the ground, shattering it – an incident that is immediately followed by a denial of any damage that will come from Britain's partition. Both of these scenes foreshadow imminent destruction and prime us to look for more signs of breaking. Indeed, about halfway through the film, Lenny and her friend break a doll in an attempt to cope with the rising tensions and violence that they see around them. This "break" is more horrible than the other two and elicits revealing responses from Lenny's mother Bunty and Ayah Shanta. While Bunty readily consoles Lenny after the smashed plate, she is unaware of the fate of Lenny's doll. This reflects the stubborn Parsi impartiality and deliberate blindness to the conflict broiling at their doorstep, especially since Bunty has been established as a symbol of the archetypal Parsi – invisible "like sugar in milk." Instead, it is Shanta who finds the doll, but is unable to mend it even after ripping buttons off of her own blouse, signaling that the violence has reached an irreparable level and has passed the point of no return. The doll's mangled body echoes the depiction of the actual hundreds of mangled bodies Dil Navaz finds in the train, piled up with their limbs entangled like bloody rag dolls. In one of the climatic scenes of the film, we see the continuation of the motif in the transition from broken bodies to entire broken buildings, as homes are torn down in blazes of fire and noise while Lenny and Shanta watch from a rooftop; these visual and auditory elements create a surreal yet harsh glimpse into the increasingly unimaginable reality of the time.

On a more nuanced level, Shanta's group of friends also exhibits the "breaking" that several objects undergo. Interestingly, Mehta uses the physical placement of the characters as well as dialogue to show the barriers that politics forcibly inserts into a group of best friends. In the beginning of the film, we see the group, including the Ice-Candy-Man Dil Navaz and the masseur Hassan sitting congenially in the grass in a circular formation, laughing and sharing street food. Since they are in a circle, everyone is equidistant – equally friendly – and on equal footing; likewise, the sharing of food and the peaceful and humoristic conversation in these scenes depicts communion and a comfortable accord that is almost too good to be true and will be dismantled in future scenes. Later, as tensions start to rise between the friends, we see them around a rectangular table in a cramped diner. They no longer share food and instead order vastly different food; Dil Navaz's friend even threatens to kill the waiter unless he brings him meat, which is symbolic of the once-ignored religious differences of the friends starting to tear them apart. Then, during the "darker" periods of the film, after an entire trainload of victims is massacred, the friends are shown sitting in a setting much different from the earlier, sunny park; they sit in a dimly lit room, some positioned vertically above others, farther away from each other physically, and they have much harsher dialogues that always result in someone walking away in a flurry of anger. This physical placement resonates with inequality and mistrust, showing the heartbreaking results of political manipulation of a community that turns it into a "hopelessly scattered flock […] divided by politics but defined by religion" (Modern South Asia).

            A recurrent and captivating theme in the film is the destruction of innocence as a result of political and social catastrophe. The audience experiences this destruction through the point of view of Lenny, who is present in almost every scene, always soaking in whatever Shanta's friends say to each other and learning more and more about the brutal, animalistic nature of mankind with every conversation. However, while it is important to examine the group of adult friends drifting apart, it is also intriguing to look at one of the few scenes that features only children: the scene on Lenny's birthday in which she and her friend climb up to the rooftop and talk to a Muslim boy who has escaped from a city attacked by Hindus in a riot characteristic of the attacks of the time, such as the 1946 Bihar massacre. I am struck by the dialogue between the children and the physical mise-en-scène, which illustrates varying degrees of corruption of innocence as well as "the contradictions and structural peculiarities" of society that contributed to the onset of the partition" (Modern South Asia).

The scene begins with Lenny inviting her friend to the rooftop to see the refugees: "come see the refugees…they are fallen women." The way Lenny pronounces "giri hui aurat" (fallen woman) in the middle of her English sentence, as if proclaiming a scientific name for an exotic creature, intensifies the eagerness with which the children subsequently gawk at the artifacts of ethnic displacement as if looking at at animals in a zoo. This also brings back an echo of the motif of the metaphoric lion, symbolic of the chaos and danger in society, now unleashed from its cage. It further illustrates the desensitization of the youth of the 1940s to the plight caused by religious conflicts, including rape and social shunning. It also portrays their detachment on a certain level from the conflict and even an unhealthy interest in seeing its effects, since to them, the violence is the biggest, twisted, real-life drama they have seen. The way Lenny's friend tersely calls over the Muslim boy ("Hey you…come here") and smirking, declares "I'll show you some day" to Lenny when she asks what rape is, shows another shade of corrupted innocence; he has implicitly learned the way to flaunt his social status by addressing victims rudely, and learned the way men established their social dominance at the time.

Another level of impact that violence is portrayed to have had on innocence is emotional; this is seen paradoxically through the detached facial expressions and vocal delivery of the children in the scene. They deliver their lines simply, almost mechanically, with blank faces. For example, Lenny uninhibitedly asks "Was your mother raped?" and the Muslim boy responds in short, choppy sentences as he describes how he found his mother in the mosque. These aspects of delivery show that the children have been overloaded with misery in their youth and have reached a level of disillusionment with the world, which will manifest itself in the continuing ethnic violence of the period. Furthermore, the shot is an important element of the scene – it tosses us back and forth between Lenny's view and the bereaved boy's, letting us experience the emotions of both parties, which evokes the tumultuousness of the social situation of the time and complicates the pathos for viewers. We identify at once with Lenny's innocence and blunt refusal of mingling with the boy, and with the boy's innocent desire to return to a normal life and play with marbles. Lenny's refusal shows that when one "innocence" refuses another, the impossibility of peace is definite.  

Finally, the visual mise-en-scène illustrates the reach of the growing cultural divide caused by partition, by showing that the barrier has percolated down to the children's relationships. The division between the children is visually represented as an insurmountable barrier – a brick wall. Upon the wall, a ladder is propped precariously, showing that the higher, Promised Land of peace is out of reach of the little boy, who has already "fallen." The wall represents the border that will soon be created between India and Pakistan, powerful and enduring, almost impossible to cross alive. The scene also highlights the boy's attempt to cross the barrier: he reaches out his hand, and the question to play marbles escapes his lips as if he has been dying to ask it – and then he is silently and permanently refused. This triggers in me a nostalgic echo of every Lion King and Mufasa, every falling, innocent creature that has extended a hand in a last, desperate plea for help. And yet Lenny is not Mufasa, which complicates the situation – she is not inherently evil but is a product of her era and the Parsi community, which makes her reluctance even more permanent and scary, since the idea of mingling with a "fallen child" is absolutely against her social rules. The knowing looks that Lenny and her friend exchange when the boy does not know what cake is just cements their divide further by showing their cultural gap.

Silence also plays a role in the scene, which is devoid of the clamor and yelling that characterize many others – it shows that while the boiling anger and violence might subside into silence, the barriers will still be as real as ever in the years to come. These barriers – social, cultural, and physical, depicted through the simple scene with the three children still persist to great degree in post-colonial, independent India. In the end, while the conflict between Shanta and her friends represents the state of current society, the behavior of the children gives an indication of the future of society in Lahore and in similar regions of India that experience a mass exodus. Deepa Mehta shows that a conflict of such large magnitude, a partition of such a depth and totality, and a "bloody baptism of the states" (Modern South Asia) all leave scars that persist far into the next century.