‘Chittagong’: ordinary people, extraordinary courage

Posted on December 5, 2013 by beenasarwar

chittagong My column ‘Personal Political’  in The News, Pakistan last week, also for monthly Hard News, India 

“Chitta-kya?” A masterly tribute to Master-Da

By Beena Sarwar         

I want to thank the Indian scientist-turned-filmmaker Bedabrata Pain for his powerful feature film about the 1930 uprising against the British in Chittagong in the part of Bengal that is now Bangladesh.

Beautifully shot and filmed, with stellar acting by a largely amateur cast, and music by Shankar Ehsan Loy, “Chittagong” (2012) has a gripping, non-linear narrative (with nary an item number). Unlike most accounts of the time, Pain’s film does not end with the 1934 execution of Surya Sen (“Master-da”) the schoolteacher who planned the daring raid on Chittagong armory with an army of mostly schoolboys. Their Indian Revolutionary Army (IRA) took over the town for a day as the British fled. Continue reading →

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US visa weirdness

Posted on November 12, 2011 by beenasarwar

Visa delayed was visa (virtually) denied, in the case of Dr Umar Saif, who missed the conference at MIT where he was being honoured as a TR35 winner

Not that other countries don’t have increasingly stringent visa laws, but as Jason Pontin said “I’m not looking to those countries for standards and openness but to the US”. The quote ended up not being used in the final version of the report I did for the new web publication Latitude News, Visa void perplexes Pakistanis, which could have been titled ‘Visa delayed is visa (virtually) denied’, which is the case when you can’t make it to a meeting or a conference because of the delay, as in the case of Dr Umar Saif… Of course, there are security concerns, and things are getting better, thanks to the efforts of many organisations working with the State Department, but the uncertainty continues. Read more

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