Book excerpt: How the film ‘Parzania’ approaches the 2022 Gujarat riots

The film’s plot is built around Parzaan, the son of Cyrus and Shernaz Pithawala, who ‘disappears’ during the violence of 2002, never to be found. While escaping a murderous mob of Hindu militants with Parzaan and his sister Dilshad, Shernaz loses her son. Cyrus – who works as a film projectionist – is away at work at that time.

The rest of the film follows the story of Cyrus and Shernaz trying frantically to find their son. They console their daughter, Dilshad, that her brother will return and then she can tie him a rakhi. Their search results in humiliating encounters with the callous and corrupt police system.

While the film shows that the violence unfolds after the Godhra train-burning incident, it does not hold this up as the precipitating event. Rather, right from the beginning, the film offers a record of how activists of the Hindu Right were involved in planning the pogrom, using maps to target specific Muslim-majority areas. Although in a particular scene Muslims are shown bursting crackers to celebrate Pakistan’s win in a cricket match, and a later scene connects Muslim anger to jihad, the film overall does not stereotype Muslims.

The Pithawalas live in a multi-religious housing complex called Mohmadi Mansion, inhabited mostly by…

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