— ✍️ Shobhita Thakur

On the eve of our 80th Independence day I watched the documentary “Qaidi No. 626710 Haazir Hai” by Filmmaker Lalit Vachani. The documentary was available for viewing absolutely free on vimeo for only sixty hours. As a filmmaker I strongly believe cinema is the greatest and most intricate memory project- One that preserves emotions, feelings, histories for posterity. Watching this film on the eve of independence day made the experience particularly poignant, every single piece of memory that got buried in time, came rushing back to me. It left me gutted to realize it is Umar Khalid’s 6th Independence Day in Prison. It is agonizing to feel celebratory when a fellow human being is in a forever limbo trapped in bleak prison awaiting his trial (freedom).

Life moved on, seasons turned, and Umar’s name slowly began to dissolve into the quiet background of public memory and my own. In hindsight, the calculated attempt to whisk him away felt less like a detention and more like an effort to erase his very existence. But as only cinema can, this documentary resurrects him, making him flesh and blood again, and every time all over again when someone chooses to watch it. In every scene, a stark, unvarnished truth stares directly into our collective conscience, standing as a quiet, unyielding testament to his story and the story of a nation that stood silent when the very foundation of our constitution shook. Dissent isn't a violation of the constitution, it is its very heartbeat.

In the opening few minutes, Dr. Bonojyotsana Lahiri summons the ghost of quiet, ordinary days, fondly recalling how Umar was (still is) a mind that never stopped asking difficult questions. Yet beneath the warmth of those memories lies a familiar ache: how those around him gently tried to quiet his questions, not out of annoyance, but out of a fierce, desperate urge to shield him from the world. Her eyes light up as she describes, his beautiful mind that never rested, waking each day with fifty new questions waiting to be answered. He was (still is) a bright, accomplished young intellectual whose only crime was his refusal to stop asking. That such a fierce pursuit of knowledge could be so unceremoniously stolen and replaced with the cold walls of a cell without trial leaves an indelible scar on our collective conscience.

The documentary leaves no room to hide, forcing a terrifying query upon us: what did our freedom actually mean? When our ancestors united across every divide of caste, creed, religion, colour, language to claim our beloved land, they fought for the absolute right to think, to speak, and to dissent without permission as a birth right. To celebrate that victory today while watching an innocent mind rot in pre-trial limbo is not patriotism, it is a betrayal of the very soul of our republic. Mirroring Umar’s infinite spirit of inquiry, every frame of this film carries a million crushing questions screaming directly at our conscience. When the moguls of television news sat on their thrones and barked at Umar like rabid dogs, the very soul of ethical journalism choked to death. The kingpins of sponsored media houses stand stark naked in these scenes, performing their grotesque dance against free speech. Watching this made me ask: how could this ever be possible in a supposedly thriving democracy like ours, where the media ceases to be a watchdog and becomes the enabler, the facilitator, and the co-perpetrator of injustice.

In one scene of the film, an unnamed far-right woman faces the camera without a single qualm, openly calling on the public to commit mass murder against anyone opposed to her idea of Sanatana Dharma. Looking into her blank, murderous eyes, it was impossible for me to believe as someone born into a Hindu family that anyone who truly understands Hindu Dharma could ever issue such a call for slaughter and then walk away with such brazen impunity, without so much as the threat of police action. The question that seared through me was not merely how such a call could be made so openly, but how a society that claims to uphold the rule of law could allow such incitement to pass without consequence.

I spent a good part of my childhood in the city of Ujjain, where people of every faith Hindu, Muslim, or Christian would naturally visit Gopal Mandir, Mahakal Mandir, or Kal Bhairav Mandir. These sacred places were simply spaces of shared existence for everyone. I still remember the narrow gullies around Gopal Mandir, where Muslim artisans and tailoring masters crafted the sacred garments for Bhagwan Shree Krishna, living and working side-by-side with Hindus in complete harmony. In the Gopal Mandir of my childhood, the homes and shops of Muslim and Hindu craftspeople had no hard boundaries. It was a single, seamless world, filled with the rich fragrance of dhoop-agarbatti and the melodious sounds of aartis.

When I see people claiming Hinduism today only to weaponize it for a dark, hate-fueled agenda against the Muslims of our country, my head hangs in shame and my heart weighs down with anguish. I cannot help but think: if Umar were not Muslim, perhaps his dissent would have been overlooked, brushed aside as one of our own exercising his right to question authority. Instead, this deliberate 'othering' trapped him in a vicious cycle, branding him a threat to national security simply because of the religious identity he carries.

As someone born a Hindu, the film confronted me directly, asking if I have an answer to this horror and whether I, too, am guilty of being complicit in the criminalization of our own fellow citizens.

As I became immersed in the world of this documentary, it slowly peeled back layer after layer of the state of human rights and the rule of law in our country. It left me confronting a deeply disturbing question: is there any sense of accountability or responsibility within the judiciary and the police? Do those entrusted with upholding the law ever feel the weight of what happens when the human rights of an individual are flouted so mercilessly and so callously or have we reached a point where such suffering has simply been normalized?

Umar’s friends speak about how they are trying, in every way they can, to give him an experience of a social life that still has variety, warmth, and movement. They organize their visits in a manner so that each week he encounters different friends, different interests, different conversations, anything that can keep his emotional and intellectual life vibrant. They make sure he has a steady supply of books, on subjects as varied as cricket, mysteries, and everything in between. Even the conversations they have with him are consciously kept alive with humour, so that they do not descend into perpetual somberness.

In a strange and profoundly moving way, the documentary reveals Umar as someone surrounded by an extraordinary circle of friends and family who continually replenish him with love, energy, and hope. One friend even says that, in fact, it is Umar who gives him hope that Umar’s passionate, hopeful conversations help him endure and make sense of his own life outside the prison.

As an artist myself, this absolutely tore my heart into pieces. Because what does it say about us when the judiciary, the police, and the state can become so cynical that the prolonged agony and suffering of one human being and of everyone who loves him can be made to feel ordinary, so normal that it is worthy of no thought. How much suffering must one person endure before it becomes unbearable even to those who wield institutional power? Or the ones in power are evil personified?

What would it take to shake the conscience of our nation? What would it take to stir the souls of those who imagine themselves as the absolute unaccountable ZARS of this country simply because they possess the power to decide the fate of others with insurmountable power?

At what point does power cease to be authority and become indifference? And at what point does a nation lose something of its own humanity by allowing such anti-humanitarian suffering to continue in plain sight?

This film changed something in me. It asks the most pertinent and urgent questions that do not limit themselves to Umar alone. They are, ultimately, our questions too.

As Martin Niemöller put it so hauntingly:

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.”

The power of these words lies in their warning: injustice is never truly someone else’s problem. Every time we allow the rights of another to be violated in our silence, we weaken the very ground on which our own rights stand.

- Shobhita Thakur is an alumna of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, where she completed a three-year program in Film Editing. Shobhita has also worked as a freelance Editorial Creative with Netflix India and has collaborated with several leading advertising film production houses as an Assistant Director. Her debut short film Khilawadi has been well received, Premiering at Fascinasian Film Festival Canada, Winning Audience choice award at Fascinasian Film Festival Calgary, and Best Shot Film Award and Building Bridges Award at Fascinasian Film Festival Edmonton.