‘Main Vaapas Aunga’  (MVA)  is an emotionally poignant film centred around the cataclysmic 1947 partition of the erstwhile Punjab province and it explores the trauma and horror of that tectonic tragedy through three generations:  Keenu, the now 95 year old Sikh patriarch (played with aplomb by Naseeruddin Shah), his grandson Nivi (Daljit Dosanjh who is very good) and the younger Keenu – the college kid in 1947 Sargodha (kudos to Vedang Raina) - who is in love with Jiya (Sharvari), his Muslim sweetheart.

Keenu and his younger brother Pali have lived through the August 1947 Hindu-Sikh-Muslim pogrom that devastates the family and the visuals are intense. My   wife Ira was  dabbing her tears while I fought mine in vain.

For GenZ that has a hazy knowledge about the events that rocked the sub-continent and shaped the blood-soaked birth of India and Pakistan, this is a film that I would strongly recommend. Watch and ponder, discuss with the peer group and look for the dots that can be connected.

The most powerful bit that stayed with me was a brief dialogue between Niviand his granduncle Pali, where the latter offers solace,  suggesting that the poison that afflicted the 1947 generation will turn to ash when they all  die – one by one.

But “What if the poison enters our system?” asks Nivi and this one line gives MVA its moral weight and contemporary resonance. That line is no longer about memory. It is about a slow socio-political process over the decades. 

Across South Asia, the difference between prejudice and collapse is not the existence of hate. Every society has it in varying shades.  The difference is whether the majoritarian state internalizes hate against the ‘other’,  whether FIRs get diluted, trials get delayed, mobs get garlanded  and impunity driven violence against minorities becomes low-cost. When that happens, the poison is not outside the system. It becomes the system.

This bleak thought becomes even more depressing on June 22. On that day in 2017 a young 15-year-old Junaid Khan and friends  boarded a Mathura-bound train from Delhi  after Eid shopping. An argument over seats turned communal. Eyewitnesses said the attackers called them “beef-eaters” and “anti-national” before one of them  pulled a knife. Junaid bled to death before the next station. The case made headlines for a week and then it entered India’s legal labyrinth.

Nine years later, there is still no final conviction. The trial has moved through adjournments, absent witnesses, and a pandemic backlog. The main accused are out on bail. Junaid’s parents mark June 22 with a quiet prayer in their village in Haryana while the state does not mark it at all.

When the State is Indifferent

Junaid’s death is  not an aberration. Since 2015, India has seen a documented pattern of lynchings and vigilante attacks, often tied to cow protection, “love jihad” claims, or blasphemy allegations. Dadri in 2015; Alwar in 2017; Palghar in 2020.

The script repeats: rumor, mob, murder, FIR, delay and erasure from public memory. The National Crime Records Bureau stopped publishing disaggregated hate-crime data after 2017. But independent trackers  have recorded  a sustained level of “mob violence” and related  incidents through 2023. The Supreme Court has  called lynching “horrendous acts of mobocracy” and issued preventive guidelines but compliance has been patchy. The trend continues and this has grave implications for India’s internal security and societal ozone layer.

Internal security does not fail because of one riot. It fails when the state’s monopoly on the  legitimate use of force is usurped by the 'mob'  and the state appears indifferent, or worse. complicit in targeting the minority.  Max Weber’s tenet that the  “state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory ” is a central element in ensuring the credibility and integrity of the state-citizen covenant.

When non-state actors can kill a teen on public transport and face no swift, credible consequence, three consequences follow. First, targeted communities hedge. If the police will not protect them, they seek protection elsewhere - from community groups, religious outfits, or, in extreme cases, radical networks that promise the elusive security the state failed to deliver.

Second, perpetrator networks learn. Low-cost violence encourages  repetition. Third, institutions adapt. Police and lower court judges read political signals. They learn which FIRs to weaken, which witnesses to leave exposed, which cases are not career-enhancing. The result is “social impunity”: violence that is illegal in statute but tolerated in practice.

Pathology Rhymes Across South Asia

India’s own history is instructive. The Punjab insurgency of the 1980s followed by the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms and the Godhra killings of 2002 are stains on the   palm of the state. Deep dismay and anguish lingers – that no senior political/police representatives  were brought to justice. The Kashmir militancy of 1989 followed years of electoral manipulation and custodial violence. In every tragic convulsion that led to many avoidable deaths,  the trigger was not ideology alone. It was the perception that the state would not punish crimes against a specific community. That perception is the poison entering the system.

India is not alone in grappling with this malignancy. South Asia’s post-colonial states share a structure: strong state muscle, overstretched criminal justice systems  and animated electoral politics that often  reward identity outbidding. The symptoms differ, but the pathology rhymes. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal are all afflicted with ‘otheritis’ – demonizing a minority community with the help of social media.

Nivi the grandson  asks what happens if the poison enters our system. South Asia in 2026 is answering it. Junaid Khan’s case is nine years old with no closure. Mashal Khan’s killers were filmed, yet blasphemy mobs still gather. Bangladesh’s puja pandals still need paramilitary guards. Sri Lanka’s riot commissions still sit on shelves.

Cleansing the Ecosystem of Hatred and Bigotry

The deeper remedy  is to cleanse the socio-political  ecosystem of hatred and bigotry and films are a powerful medium. 

In the short term, it  is about case velocity and fast-track courts with assured witness protection as default. Disciplinary action for officers who file diluted FIRs will act as a deterrent. And above all, political speech that condemns every lynching within 24 hours, without taking recourse to  “both sides is imperative. ”

The post 1947 poison that entered the system did not turn to ash. It has become 'the'  system. And a system that cannot protect a boy on a train cannot guarantee the security of a republic -  in Delhi, Dhaka, Colombo, or Lahore. 

The film MVA  was right to raise these concerns. Will South Asia show the sagacity  to regain its socio-political equipoise, atone and walk down the path of truth and reconciliation?

(The writer is a former Indian Navy Commodore and strategic analyst. The views expressed are personal)