Director’s Statement

The film ‘Haribol’ portrays the plight of marginal minorities of Bangladesh, through the story of a family from the minority community getting persecuted by the village Panchayat and evicted from their homeland, and eventually forced to feel the country. The head of the family Nitai living a life of ‘bairagya’ (nonchalance or abstinence from material ambitions) fails to resist the eviction of his family. Haribol elucidates on the helplessness of minorities and the way they succumb to the persecution they are facing. The narrative unfolds through the point of view of a young filmmaker. He is the story-teller who embarks on making a biopic film based on a war heroine. He discovers the family of Nitai while researching on the war heroine named Suparna Basu at Baleswar region. Although he faces difficulty in finishing the script for not being able to find current location of his subject of interest, Suparna, he finds a parallel narrative in the conditions being faced by Nitai’s family. He gets increasingly drawn to the story of Nitai and Paru’s plight. He cannot ignore the ongoing trials and tribulations of the course of events that unfold for Nitai and Paru, while looking for locations to shoot his proposed biopic. Their lives seem to echo the same outcry of the dying tributaries of River Padma, their decreasing flow of water, as a result of the Farakka Dam. The lives of Nitai and Paru is merely a metaphorical consequence of the dead Baleswar. Although a riverine deltaic region, the rivers of Bangladesh are slowly drying up because of the Farakka Dam on the Ganges. This has resulted in a detrimental effect on the flora and fauna of the regions along the tributaries of River Padma. The south-western regions of Bangladesh are slowly undergoing a process of desertification. Similarly, despite being an independent nation, minorities do not have independence to exist and while retaining their identity and culture in their own land. The oppression and persecution of minorities are an everyday reality for Bangladesh. Political instability at different points of time as well as religious insinuations has threatened the lives of minorities in the country. As a result, persecuted minorities from various corners of the nation are silently accepting their fate and fleeing. The rivers drying up and the gradual decimation of minority population are the two grave contemporary realities of Bangladesh. The persecution and slow wiping out of minorities have been depicted symbolically through the metaphor of the dead Baleswar River and subsequently through the story of Nitai and Paru in the film Haribol. The story of Baleswar locality in this film is not just merely anecdotal but is in fact the stark-naked reality of entire Bangladesh of today. Reza Ghatok Director of HARIBOL