This may not be as important when making a film on a fiction book, but it gets hairy pretty quickly when exploring faith.Īs a kid, listening to Sakhis or stories of Sikh Gurus, I would imagine the era and characters of Gurus. The limitation of the film as a medium is that it curtails that personal exploration of an idea and limits it to the vision of the film-maker.
Free folk have their own way of life that they wear on their sleeves when co-existing with other cultures. The African slaves brought into Americas lost their language, identity symbols, and culture of their own origins.Ĭultures that evolve with time by the people who live in them survive others that change under forced persuasion often don’t live long. This happened all under the guise of “cultural civilization”, a term often used for cultural assimilation. Generations of Native Canadians and Indigenous Australians were removed away from their own cultures into residential schools. If history is any indication, the people who became slaves, lost their own ways of life - often in the name of progress. In other parts of the globe yet, groups try to define faith for other cultures and that is where the trouble starts. In the progressive corners of the earth, people learn to respect each others’ beliefs while celebrating and minding their own. Muslims consider it blasphemous to paint Prophet Mohammad. Christianity celebrates Michelangelo’s paintings of the Christ. You cannot drink in Doha, and you cannot eat beef while on the ghats of Benaras. You cannot walk bare-shoulder in the Vatican or when traveling to Qatar or Iran. As free men and women, every community should be able to celebrate and relish their own ways of life.
People have their own beliefs, practices and their own interpretations of divinity. And I have come to realize that there is no absolute one universal exposition of the truth. I have broken bread with people of many faiths and nationalities traveling around the world. As one digs deeper into religion and its history, one starts to wonder such a film’s impact on the Sikh community.
On the first look, a movie like Nanak Shah Fakir appears like another exploration of the founder of the Sikh faith. The Artist was relishing the nectar of the faith - as Gurbani refers “Goonge Kee Mathiayi ”(the sweet tasted by the mute) - a living body of his master’s teachings. I was the latter, observing the faith as an outsider. I realized there are two types of people - those who live within the faith, and those who observe it from outside. When the Guru himself has said, if thou seek me, you will find it in the Shabad (words of Guru Granth Sahib), would that not be against the will of the Guru?” said the young painter. I would end up painting my limited vision of the Guru, limiting those who see it. “My manifestation of Guru is so limited and the Guru is so complete. In Sikhi Guru refers to one of the ten Sikh teachers that lived between 15th and 18th century, before Guru Granth Sahib, a compilation of Sikh scriptures was declared the last Supreme Spiritual Authority and Head of the Sikh religion in 1708 AD by the tenth teacher of Sikhs, Guru Gobind Singh. Two fresh immigrants nostalgic about mango trees and people we left behind, we met in his small studio in the suburbs of Vancouver. A master at Panjabi landscape and Sikh portrait painting, he was saying no to commissioned work that required painting the Gurus. “Why don’t you paint the 10 masters?” I asked the young Sikh artist. Screen capture from a preview of the movie Nanak Shah Fakir By Turbaned Man | OPINION