TIFF 2023 | Anand Patwardhan: ‘It is up to each person to take the better aspects from our cultural past’

Award-winning documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan's new movie, 'The World is Family (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam)' premiered at the 48th Toronto International Film Festival on September 10. (Photo: Courtesy of Anand Patwardhan)

At the 48th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), which concludes on Sunday, one of the top draws in the event's much-anticipated documentary section is Anand Patwardhan's new film, The World is Family (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam). In the Mumbai-born director's last appearance at the North American festival five years ago, he shared screen space in TIFF Docs with such fellow veteran filmmakers as American director Michael Moore, Cambodia's Rithy Panh and German director Werner Herzog.

Patwardhan's more than four-and-half-hour long film, Vivek (Reason), explored the rise of relgious fundamentalism and nationalism in India while Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9 handled Donald Trump's election as US president, Panh's Graves Without a Name was his memories of the genocide in his country by the Khmer Rouge and Herzog painted a portrait of the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Meeting Gorbachev. Vivek went on to win the top prize at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam, a first for an Indian film.

A University of Mumbai and McGill University alumnus, Patwardhan's more than three-decade-long career has seen works like In the Name of God (1992), Father, Son, and Holy War (1994) and War and Peace (2002), all tracing the roots of the subcontinent's troubling modern history. His new film, however, is a rare personal document, about the links his parents shared with India's freedom movement. Patwardhan talks about the making of the film:

Mumbai-born Anand Patwardhan won the top prize at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam for his previous film, Vivek (Reason) in 2018. (Photo: Courtesy of Anand Patwardhan)

The World is Family (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam), which had its world premiere at TIFF 2023, follows your IDFA-award winning Vivek (Reason).  What is the film about?

As my parents grew older, I became conscious of their mortality and began to film with whatever material was at hand, just to keep their memory alive for myself.  As they and some of my uncles spoke, a kind of oral history began to emerge about the Indian freedom struggle that the whole family on both sides had been a part of. Later, during the COVID-19 lockdown almost a decade after both my parents had passed, I began to edit my home movie material. That is when I realised that the film was speaking not just to me but had something to contribute to others as well.

What was the influence in deciding to make a rare personal film?

In some ways the film is extremely personal, and parts of it are difficult to watch for me, but overall it reminds us of an India that our freedom fighters had aspired to build, an inclusive India very different from the hate-filled version of 'nationalism' that is being peddled today. Actually describing the film in words to someone who has not yet seen it does not do it justice. Let me put it this way. Secularism and humanism were so deeply embedded in our elders that it is almost an act of violence to isolate these values from the rest of their being.

The poster of The World is Family (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam) (Photo: Courtesy of Anand Patwardhan)

You shoot your films over long durations and on the ground. How long did it take for The World is Family and does the film depend largely on archival material to depict history, something your films generally do not use?

In all I shot for over 20 years or so, although for a long time I was not aware that I was making a film. There is archival footage in this film as well, of course, as I was born three years after Independence and did not pick up a camera till I was 24. Both archival as well as biographical elements do occur in one of my earlier works, War and Peace, but in the past I was reluctant to talk at length about myself or my family.

Anand Patwardhan calls The World is Family (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam) 'extremely personal' (Photo: Courtesy of Anand Patwardhan)

You have omitted 'One' from the film's title that borrows from the Sanskrit Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam giving a contemporariness to a historical narrative from the post-Partition years. Please comment.

I translate the Sanskrit term Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam as The World is Family to highlight its universalism and inclusiveness. It is clearly a different stream to the dominant one that extols an oppressive caste hierarchy. It is up to each person to take the better aspects from our cultural past and discard all that does not stand up to the test of time and of human rights.

What are the lessons to be learnt from history about the violence during Partition at a time of recent communal riots in places like Delhi and Nuh?

What is happening to India today, whether in Manipur, Delhi or Nuh is unacceptable horror. It is a horror that I have been warning against for the last 50 years through all my films. Many did not take these warnings seriously and now it is almost too late. Now we have no choice but to collectively stare down the horror. Reminding people that another idea of India existed is my way of doing this.