Rakesh Sharma

Final Solution

Director	Rakesh Sharma
Country of production:	India
Year of production:	2005
Duration:	149 min
Sound:	Rakesh Sharma
Camera:	Rakesh Sharma, Tanmay Agarwal
Editing:	Rakesh Sharma
Music:	Bhadraben Savai, Ahmad Khan
Production and distribution:	Rakesh Sharma

Film plot

Film title intentionally evokes Nazi rhetoric. Starting with the view of brutal mass murder of the Moslems in Gujarat, Rakesh Sharma, step by step, shows the development of extreme right winged politics in India calling it “Indian Fascism”. Nationalistic parliamentary campaign where the speech of hatred reaches its maximum is watched. Several months after showing, the distribution of this best-known Indian documentary was forbidden.

Rakesh Sharma began his film/TV career in 1986 as an assistant director on Shyam Benegal's Discovery of India. His broadcast industry experience includes the set up/ launch of 3 broadcast channels in India: Channel (V), Star Plus and Vijay TV and several production consultancy assignments. He has now gone back to independent documentary film-making. His last film Aftershocks: The Rough Guide to Democracy won the Best documentary film award at Fribourg, Big Mini-DV and at Big Muddy and won 7 other awards (including the Robert Flaherty prize) at various festivals in USA and Europe during 2002-03. It has been screened at over 100 international film festivals. Aftershocks was also rejected by the government-run Mumbai International film festival in 2002.

Director's Statement

Post - 9.11, we live in a world where politics of hate and intolerance has gained mainstream acceptance, even grabbed centre stage. The "War on Terror" dominated the electoral discourse in the US presidential elections, with both candidates promising to hunt 'em and kill 'em better than the other. The right-wing seems to be tightening its stranglehold across Europe as well, a nationalism being fuelled by the anti-immigrant/anti-Moslem rhetoric. In a world where it has become legitimate to use fictitious intelligence to justify the bombing of innocents in Iraq, where it has become acceptable to launch precision bombs and rockets against non-"embedded" journalists, where shameless politicians divide up oil wells and farm out reconstruction contracts for their $ 36 million bonuses, where babies are killed and mutilated as acceptable "collateral damage", we face a challenge greater than ever before.

We have earlier lived through many dark periods in history, often justifying our barbarism by using similar rhetoric. Hate, despair, destruction and tragedy can not possibly be the foundations of harmonious societies and a democratic world.

I find shocking parallels between India 2002-2004 and Germany of the 1930s - The state-supported genocide violence against Moslems in Gujarat and its continuing impact – segregation in schools, making a ghetto of cities and villages, formal calls for economic boycott of Moslems and attacks on intelligentsia by right-wing Hindutva cadres.

Unchecked and unchallenged, the rapid rise of politics of hate and intolerance could very well be the forerunner of a 21st century Endlosung – the Final Solution.