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| Forgetting Sheikh Abdullah! | | DD, Info Deptt, Cultural Academy didn’t bother to preserve Sher-e-Kashmir for posterity | | AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Sep 7: A nation that altogether forgot its last monarch, Yousuf Shah Chak, and remembered the conqueror, Akbar, for nearly four centuries, can not be expected to remember its messiah Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah for long. But disservice done to the ‘father of the nation’ by the state’s own organs and agencies is simply phenomenal. Doordarshan Kendra (DDK) Srinagar, which has received hundreds of crores of Rupees from New Delhi for preserving icons of secularism and promoting national integration in its life of 36 years, has neither bothered to make a film on Sheikh Abdullah nor preserved archival footage of his life and contribution to the state.
Jammu & Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture & Language, which was patronized by Sheikh as its President for seven years before his death on September 8th, 1982, has not bothered either. State Government’s Department of Information and Public Relations has made a couple of amateur documentaries on Sheikh but done nothing to preserve the tapes of his transformation into the mainstream politics or the news coverage of his public speeches, official meetings and other activities, first as the state’s Wazeer-e-Azam (Prime Minister) from 1947 to 1953 and later as its Chief Minister from 1975 to 1982.
All that the state Information Department and DDK Srinagar have in hand are the excessively worn out prints of a 1981 black-and-white documentary film titled ‘Ziarat’. It is a 30-minute documentary on Sheikh’s historic pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia and Iraq, made on 35-mm format in 1981 by then Chief Producer (Films) of the Department of Information, late Ghulam Nabi Shah. Shah’s crew was in Sheikh’s entourage even as the filmmaker and cameraman was detained for some time by the Iraqi Police for violating the strict ban of shooting at the Shia Muslim shrines.
Between Sheikh’s return from the spiritual odyssey in 1981 and his death in 1982, ‘Ziarat’ was released by then Chief Minister at a grand premiere at Broadway Theatre in Srinagar. While as Bashir Malik, then a producer with Films Division of the Union Ministry of Information & Broadcasting and now Deputy Director of News at DDK Srinagar, had written its Kashmiri script, his colleague Syed Aal-e-Rasool had penned the script for its Urdu print. Sources at DDK Srinagar insist that the 35-mm film was yet to be transferred to a modern day format though hundreds of ordinary programmes had already been copied to the latest DVC.
Former Director of DDK Srinagar, Farooq Nazki, confirmed to Early Times that Doordarshan had never done a serious exercise to make a full-fledged documentary film on Sheikh or preserve the archival footage of his speeches, inaugurations, public meetings and legislative business. “Sher-e-Kashmir was a persona non-grata for the Indian national for decades. I still fail to understand why even his portrait had been removed and never installed later in the Central Hall of Indian Parliament though he was one among the signatories on the draft of Indian Constitution”, Nazki said. He said that all of Sheikh’s photographs, foundation and inaugural stones had been removed from public places and government buildings from 1953 to 1975.
Nazki revealed that in 1994, he as head of DDKL Srinagar had taken the initiative of preserving Sheikh’s archival footage, including his historic return and address to a huge gathering at Lalchowk in 1975. “It was a 30-minute duration film. We telecast it repeatedly in Kashmir. A many of senior NC leaders were surprised to the extent that they wanted to know from me whether Sher-e-Kashmir had really got a green signal from New Delhi”, he said.
While DDK Srinagar has been never generous to promote and preserve Sheikh, DDK Bombay had conducted a panel discussion on poet Iqbal between Sheikh Abdullah and two literary luminaries, namely Jagan Nath Azad and Ali Sardar Jafri for its weekly programme “Mehfil-e-Yaraan” in 1979. It was later telecast over a dozen times by DDK Srinagar. It’s tape is missing from DDK Srinagar archives alongwith hundreds others containing Sheikh’s news and programme coverage.
Even as Pakistan Television has laid its hands on some of the invaluable footage and has been showing very rare clips of Sheikh’s movement and speeches, nobody knows the whereabouts of DDK Srinagar’s treasure of coverage on the charismatic political leader. Efforts to get a comment from DDK Srinagar failed as Director of the station, Dr Rafeeq Masoodi, has not been responding to telephonic calls since the day a Central Vigilance team seized records last month. “DDK Srinagar is being fully run by an army of casual staff. They have no commitment. Who will bother to preserve archival tapes”, said an insider.
Former Executive Producer, Bashir Budgami, said that DDK authorities had openly destroyed invaluable photographs and material during the process of dismantling some old barracks. “One day I suddenly stumbled upon a very rare album of historic photographs that was decaying in debris”, he said.
Years after ‘Ziarat’, Field Publicity unit of Department of Information had made another short duration film on Sheikh. There are varying reports of its existence with the department. One of the officials claimed that a documentary series of 8-mm, that contained historic clips from Sheikh’s Lalchowk speeches to his announcement of the revolutionary Agrarian Reforms (Land to Tiller) made at a public meeting in Samba, had been acquired by the NC General Secretary, Sheikh Nazir Ahmed, and it was reportedly ‘alive’. He too was not available for comment.
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