The highly opinionated and often brutally frank Mahmooda Begum might have had something to say about the Union government’s plan to mark A...
The highly opinionated and often brutally frank Mahmooda Begum might have had something to say about the Union government’s plan to mark August 14 as “Partition Horrors Remembrance Day”.
Mahmooda Begum, better known as Mammo, would immediately have recognised Narendra Modi’s decision as an attempt to brainwash Indians into believing that Muslims were solely responsible for the creation of Pakistan in 1947 – and that Muslims in contemporary India should accept blame for this.
But in Shyam Benegal’s film Mammo, the titular heroine remembers the Partition as “jahannum”, hell. No single community is to blame. Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, all suffered equally from the violence, she says.
Mammo has spent the bulk of her adult life in Pakistan, while her sisters live in India. After her husband dies and she is ill-treated by his relatives, she lands up in Mumbai, upturning the lives of her sister Fayyazi and Fayyazi’s orphaned grandson Riyaz.
“A bukbuk [chatterbox] came today,” 14-year-old Riyaz gloomily writes in his diary. Mammo takes over Riyaz’s room, prays loudly and befriends taxi drivers and Riyaz’s friends. This busybody nevertheless endears herself to Riyaz, in turn altering his equation with his devoted grandmother.
The movie is available for streaming on Mubi India...
