It’s not easy to make a film on Partition and tell both sides of the story: Huma Qureshi

There is an air of old world charm about Huma Qureshi.

In the few films the actor has worked in, particularly the ones in Hindi, she evokes a certain sense of nostalgia through her roles — a nod towards the period when artists like Madhubala or Vyjantimala ruled the roost. But she is also as contemporary as they come, leaving her mark in an Akshay Kumar-vehicle like Jolly LLB 2, where she snatches a bottle of scotch from Kumar in a memorable introductory scene and downs a couple of shots. Later on in the film, she happily feasts on whatever the titular hero is cooking for her.

I met Huma during the Berlin International Film Festival, where her first major international project Viceroy’s House is having its world premiere. The film is director Gurinder Chadha’s take on Partition, with a diverse cast including Gillian Anderson, Hugh Bonneville and the late Om Puri in one of his last performances on celluloid. Huma plays a young Muslim woman, Aalia, in love with Jeet Kumar, a Hindu, played by Manish Dayal.

It’s the first interview of the day for her during her promotional rounds, and she’s positively upbeat and all smiles when she arrives. The first question I ask her is how she got involved with the British movie. “I knew Gurinder was making this film, I was sort-of hearing about it,” she replies with practised ease.

“She was in India and put Seher Latif, the casting director, in charge of finalising the Indian cast. Seher got in touch with me and sent me the script. I loved it. She said you have to audition for it, which I did. And then I met Gurinder in London, when I was shooting there for a film of mine. We met and she called me two days later, saying that I was on.”

Huma Qureshi came to the international spotlight as a gangster‘s moll with Gangs of Wasseypur but has wowed audiences with her intelligent performances in a number of films since then.

Her first British film just premiered in the UK. Icon sits down with the rising star to discuss her opinions on identity, films and India’s Partition. Even though Huma sounds very matter-of-fact about this, it must have been a big deal for her. What was it that drew her to this role?

“Gurinder is known for her slice-of-life comedies and showing the Indian diaspora-meeting-the-Western world in a very unique, quirky way. But this film is unlike Gurinder’s other work. It’s quite intense, quite historical.”

Chadha is most well-known for films such as Bhaji on the Beach (1993), Bend It Like Beckham (2002), Bride and Prejudice (2004) and The Mistress of Spices (2005). “It’s fact-meets-fiction, combined with a love story. One would not expect a film like this from her. So I was quite fascinated. And looking at the subject material, it is Partition. It is 1947. And Gurinder is a female filmmaker. British. Indian. So it was interesting for me to see how she would direct this material, because it’s not easy to make a film on Partition and tell both sides of the story.”

A couple of weeks after the Berlinale, when Viceroy’s House opened in the UK, The Guardian publishes an opinion piece by Fatima Bhutto, in which the author calls Viceroy’s House biased against Muslims. Chadha strongly disputes this characterisation. Even though the controversy erupts long after our interview, Huma does have an opinion about the film’s politics.

“As a Pakistani, I’m sure you’ve seen the film and agree that it’s not unsympathetic to either India or Pakistan. It’s quite a balanced point-of-view of what really happened.” But there will always be certain elements people will object to, I say. “There always will be. I guess it’s something that we’re very touchy about. Because it’s so raw, the emotion it brings up. I guess it’s very natural.”

“I don’t know what it is right now, because I’m in a state of flux. I’m an Indian actor who is working in the West, doing this film. It sounds very clichéd, but I’m also just a person.”

To most viewers in the West, Huma was introduced through Anurag Kashyap’s five-hour, two-part crime saga Gangs of Wasseypur. The film premiered at Cannes and must have felt like a big breakthrough for her. How does she look back at that time? “Well Gangs of Wasseypur was my first film ever. We didn’t think it would become such a big thing, that it would snowball into something like it did.”

I’m always suspicious of actors when they say this, when they claim they had no idea what kind of film they were making. Was that really the case with Gangs of Wasseypur?

“I’ll tell you why I’m saying that. We were making a two-part film nobody in India understood. We were in Benares for two, three months. Everyone was like, ‘Oh, you’re making part one and part two together? Don’t you make a film and then figure out whether you want to make a part two?’ Nobody could really put a finger on it. Sometimes I think I’m a bit of a rebel. I like films that nobody else likes. Once the film was complete, we did all these test screenings, where for the first time ever I saw an audience’s reaction to the film.”

The eventual reception by critics and audiences was nothing short of rapturous, especially at Cannes. Any doubts in Huma’s mind must have been cleared then. “It was eye-opening. I saw all these people from all over the world laughing and responding to it. And I remember, somebody asked me for a picture, a white person! I was just walking down the road and felt really cool and I was like, oh this is nice."

"Gangs will always be that special film for me, because it not just opened me to the world of films and gave me a standing in Indian cinema, but also internationally. I didn’t expect that. For me, just to be part of a film which was saying something and had meaning, that was enough. This was just too much.”

“Viceroy’s House is gearing up for an Indian release, which Huma says might coincide with India’s Day of Independence. Whether the film will release in Pakistan is unclear for the time being.

Five years on and Huma has found her footing in world cinema. I wonder what the word identity means to her, seeing as it’s a major theme running through Viceroy’s House?

“I am a Muslim, who grew up in India, a largely Hindu country. My mother is from Kashmir, which is sort of the hotbed of politics. We used to go there every year when my maternal grandparents were alive, because they couldn’t travel.

“We went there in ’90, ‘91, ’92, which was possibly the worst time in Kashmir’s history. There were crackdowns and curfews and I remember once there was a bomb blast in a row behind our house and the army came and surrounded the area. We were all asked to line up and [the locals] all have identity cards over there, which we didn’t, because we were from Delhi. Suddenly you are in this world where, just to go buy milk from across the road is a problem. And your mother is very concerned for your safety.“

“And that I guess from a young age makes you much more sensitive to what is going around the world. Otherwise you could just grow up in a cocoon, unaffected. So identity means a lot to me. But I don’t know what it is right now, because I’m in a state of flux. I’m an Indian actor who is working in the West, doing this film. It sounds very clichéd, but I’m also just a person.”

Viceroy’s House is topical not only because of the fact that it comes out 70 years after Independence, but also because, by default, it addresses the current refugee crisis going on throughout the globe, by showing displaced Hindus and Muslims during Partition. I ask Huma whether this was something that played on her mind at all?

“It’s really scary,” she quickly responds. “We are forgetting the lesson history taught us: ultimately these are people. It’s not only a problem that happened in India in ‘47, but it’s happening again, today. It’s going to keep happening.“

“When the country was cut up back then, people didn’t know whether their village would fall on the Indian side or the Pakistani side. As a Muslim in the interior of India somewhere, you felt obliged to cross over, because you were afraid for your safety, your security, and your livelihood. And that’s really sad, that somebody has to be compelled to do that. I think it’s a human problem and we should deal with this in the most humane way possible. Not us versus them, that doesn’t leave anyone happy. It’s this idea of us versus them that is creating all these problems.”

Huma continues on a more personal note. “Partition is something that has scarred and influenced a lot of Indians and Pakistanis. It continues to do so even today. A lot of our decisions in terms of policy, in terms of dialogue, are heavily influenced by that momentous decision. And my family also suffered, along with many others, although thankfully not so directly, not so brutally.

“My grandfather had a house in the old part of Delhi. A lot of refugees and families and friends of friends started arriving, with no place to go. Because it was a big haveli, my grandfather allowed them to just stay over there… Well, later it became a problem of encroachment, because they refused to leave.” Huma giggles at the memory. “But at that point in time it was just the right thing to do.”

Viceroy’s House is gearing up for an Indian release, which Huma says might coincide with India’s Day of Independence. Whether the film will release in Pakistan is unclear for the time being. I ask her what she wishes for people to take away from the film?

“Well I’m hoping a lot of people watch this film. I hope it reaches out to a lot of people. I don’t understand much about how the movie business works. What’s successful, what’s not? What’s acclaimed, what’s not? Those who have already watched the film tell me that it really moved them, that it touched them. I believe that if it manages to do that, our job is done.”

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, April 2nd, 2017