Nakul Singh Sawhney’s new documentary, Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai, lays bare the crucial relationship between the communal pogrom in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts of Western Uttar Pradesh, and the historic victory of the BJP and Modi in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The film is framed by Gorakh Pandey’s poem: ‘The riots were fierce this time/Blood rained heavily/Next year’s crop of votes will be good.’

What comes through very powerfully in the film is Muzaffarnagar’s legacy of harmony between Hindus and Muslims. This legacy of ‘Mohabbatnagar’, of the love between Hindus and Muslims, still has survivals, as is shown by Pravin’s testimony. Pravin conducts the filmmaker through his village, pointing out the homes of the Muslims who have been chased out, and speaking of those Muslim friends with intimacy and warmth.

The filmmaker has dogged the footsteps of BJP leaders as they campaigned in Western UP interiors during the Lok Sabha elections. As we see the film’s footage of BJP leaders’ speeches and rallies that are an indictment of their stoking of communal hatred for votes, we are forced to ask, why did the mainstream channels stay away from these selfsame meetings and rallies?

The film records speeches Modi lieutenant Amit Shah made to Jat audiences, justifying riots by drawing upon the ideology of ‘avenging honour of women’: the same ‘honour’ for which women and self-choice partners are killed by khap panchayats in this part of the country. In speech after speech Shah and other BJP leaders refer to Muslims as rapists of Hindu women, and the need for communal violence. Amit Shah makes it very clear that the votes, following the riots, are to ‘avenge’ the humiliation of Jat men – the riot-accused - who have been booked in rioting cases.

Nakul Sawhney’s last film, Izzatnagari Ki Asabhya Betiyan, had examined the ‘honour’ killings of Haryana by the khap panchayats. As he says, Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai is in many ways a sequel, because it looks at how the ideology and gender violence of the khaps, masquerades as ‘protection from and revenge of rape’ and becomes a powerful political tool for the Sangh Parivar and BJP.

A leading activist for women’s rights in the area, Rehana, says, “The VHP studied khaps closely and forged a unity with them on a patriarchal plank.” The film documents how the powerful peasant organizations like the BKU were divided on Hindu-Muslim lines by the communal pogrom, with the BKU becoming a platform for the mahapanchayats that turned into communal mobs.

Watching it, I recalled the late BKU stalwart Mahendra Singh Tikait saying, in 2009, ““Only whores choose their own partners.... Recently an educated couple married against the samaj’s (community’s) wishes in Jhajjar. We hail the panchayat’s decision to execute them...The government cannot protect this atyachar (immoral behaviour).... (The law of the land) is the root of all problems... That’s your Constitution, ours is different.’’ More recently, a peasant leader from Muzaffarnagar, himself Muslim, declared at a peasant rally, “’Sangathan’ (organization) and ‘sangharsh’ (struggle) are masculine gender in Hindi, and ‘sarkar’ (Government) is feminine. That’s why the former must dominate the latter.” The BKU was famed for the unity between Hindu and Muslim peasants. Was a shared patriarchy one of the bonds with which that brotherhood was forged? And ironically, was that same patriarchy the Achilles heel that the Sangh Parivar used to divide the peasant organisation and movement?

Kum Kum Sangari has reminded us, “Patriarchies provide a potentially hospitable space where racism, casteism, communalism could meet.” If patriarchy continues to thrive in the peasant movement and in Hindu, Muslim and Dalit communities alike; if there continues to be an impermeable wall between the women’s movement and the peasant movement; if the ‘azaadi’ (freedom) of daughters to love and marry by choice remains is not directly and openly asserted and promoted in rural society; is it not a foregone conclusion that communalism will nestle and take root there?

Moreover, the film reveals how the communal pogrom has meant the weakening and defeat of the peasant struggle, and as a result, sugarcane farmers are being denied their rights by the Government – something it would never have been able to do when the movement united Hindu and Muslim peasants.

Some of the most powerful parts of the film are the conversations with young girls and women in the aftermath of the communal violence. These women speak of how sexual harassment and violence is a daily reality. But they point out that Muslims are far less likely to feel entitled to sexually harass a Jat girl. Rather, the girls say, ‘Jat men assume that they’ve a licence to harass Jat girls; if our own brothers do it, why blame it on others? And why put the cap of honour on women’s heads? Why not instead teach men to take responsibility for their own conduct?’ This beautifully underlines that sexual violence flows from a sense of male entitlement, rather than being an attack by ‘outsiders’. These women also speak of how the communal pogrom has resulted in further tightening of the restrictions on both Hindu and Muslim women by their communities, in the name of their safety.

Juxtaposed with the women’s conversations, is the interview with one of Modi’s foot-soldiers. This man, a Brahmin VHP leader, is forced to concede that he can’t cite name a single victim of the ‘love jehad’ he claims is rampant. He makes it clear that his organisation seeks the repeal of laws allowing inter-caste and inter-community marriage, and property rights for men. What the ‘Hindu Rashtra’ will mean for women, is starkly exposed by him.

His own words expose the fact that the Hindu ‘victim’ is happily married to her Muslim husband, and that even her parents are no longer keen on interfering. ‘Parents can say the daughter is dead to them, but we can’t, our community lost a girl,’ he says. His words and those of other Sangh/BJP leaders show how Hindu women are like cattle to the Sangh Parivar – seen as reproductive machines and as property. The comparisons of Hindu women with cows (with Muslims painted as threat to both) in their speeches is not coincidental.

The film is also unsparing of the role of the ruling Samajwadi Party and its Government. The manner in which the Mulayam Singh administration allowed the pogrom to take place, and then the callous, brutal treatment meted out to the riot victims in the relief camps, makes for uncomfortable viewing for those who would like to foster the fiction that the SP is ‘secular’. In the struggle for protection and prevention, and now for justice against communalism, it is clear that the Samajwadi Party has left the poor labouring riot survivors alone.

The film also captures fascinating conversations with a young, committed, Dalit grassroots worker of the BSP – who valiantly counters the communal hate-campaign. After the elections and its shocking results for the BSP and the sweep for the BJP, the same activist expresses his sense of disappointment with BSP’s journey towards pandering to casteist and communal politics.

The film shows the work of a small Left organisation – the Naujawan Bharat Sabha – and its growing support, as it reaches out to people across religious divides, who are angry and disillusioned with communal politics. As the film progresses, we see the numbers at Naujawan Bharat Sabha meetings swell.

The film makes a choice not to end with Modi’s swearing-in as Prime Minister. Instead it makes the choice to end with Naujawan Bharat Sabha’s first-ever torchlight procession in the region.

With the haunting tune of ‘Ham Ladenge Saathi’ (We shall fight, comrade), we are left, not with a sense of despair but with hope and determination to fight, not only against communal-fascist politics, but against the imposed ‘option of cynical, manipulative and corrupt political formations. That fight is to carve out space for a politics that can fight class, gender, caste oppression as well as communal politics; that can fight for a better world.