Peaceful Nuclear Tests,Eco-friendly Reactors,and the Vantage Point of Tamasha

Claiming the Name of Documentary

According to Paul Ward (2005), even a nonessentialist notion of documentary that accommodates films ranging from Salesman (Maysles, Zwerin, & Maysles, 1968) to The War Game (Watkins, 1966) incorporates one idea, which is unchanging. This is that documentary “is a form that makes assertions or truth claims about the real world or real people in that world” (Ward, 2005, p. 8), although the modalities of this assertion might differ. Such claims about the real need to be evaluated in detail because they serve as the basis for the construction of pronuclear knowledge claims in the domain of documentary.

In India, the term documentary is commonly used to denote a wide array of non-fiction works, ranging from public relations films like India Innovates (Biswas, 2007), to long-format news reports, to the essay films of Amar Kanwar. The “documentariness” (Cowie, 2011, p. 50) of these works could be better understood by using a framework that asks “what claims the name of documentary and for what purposes?” rather than the more popular question, “what is documentary?” Here, I am treating documentary claims about the real as performative acts. Building on the writings of Judith Butler (1990) and J. L. Austin (1970), Stella Bruzzi has defined documentaries as “performative acts, inherently fluid and unstable” (2006, p. 1). According to Butler, “gender is not a fact” and “the various acts of gender create the idea of gender, and without these acts, there would be no gender at all” (1999, p. 173). Since the “reality” of gender is a fiction which is held together by iterative practices, subversive repetitions of such iterations which make use of hyperbole and other such devices open up possibilities to create trouble within the configurations of “real” around gender. In this article, I will be treating documentaries as being constituted performatively, similar to Butler’s idea of gender performativity. ⁴

In the context of state films on nuclear energy, Vigyan Prasar categorizes its films which are part of the Public Awareness Campaign on Nuclear Energy as documentaries. On the other hand, the newspaper advertisements from the same campaign which aim to improve “public trust on nuclear power” (Vigyan Prasar, 2013, p. 59) are termed as “advertorials.” However, when it comes to films that are intended to communicate messages like “nuclear energy is a boon to mankind” (Vigyan Prasar, 2013, p. 61), the term used to describe them is documentary. Understanding the factors behind this categorization requires an engagement with the history of the documentary form in India, and how its epistephilic ⁵ dimensions operated during and since the colonial times. In India, both the colonial and postcolonial states (Jayasankar & Monteiro, 2016) as well as the elite were enamored by possibilities of the documentary form to educate the “masses” who were perceived as people in need of tutelage. The postcolonial state began a development project to cure India’s “backwardness” and a fetishized account of science and technology had a major role in this initiative. Following in the footsteps of its colonial predecessor, the independent Indian state used the documentary form to “educate” the so-called masses.

Partha Chatterjee (1993) has talked about the role of the discourse of development in the self-definition of the state in independent India. Drawing upon Chatterjee’s writings, Itty Abraham stresses the pivotal role that the statist idea of science as the “epitome of and metaphor for the modern” (1998, p. 26) has played in this discourse, and how the nuclear project of the state came to be projected as the pinnacle of science in the service of the nation. Historically, documentaries were an important site in which the authority of science was made visible to the general population in India (Roy, 2007). Films Division, established in 1948, played a central role in these documentary efforts. Its output was screened across India as part of the compulsory screening of approved films in theaters as mandated by Section 12(4) of the Cinematograph Act 1952. As the main film-producing unit of the Government of India, Films Division had a mandate to supply approved films that were shown before the screening of fiction films in theaters. These compulsory screenings had their beginning in the colonial times. ⁶ The organizational trajectory of Vigyan Prasar, established in 1989 under the Department of Science and Technology, is different from that of Films Division. It endeavors “to promote and propagate scientific and rational outlook” (Vigyan Prasar, n.d.) through its efforts in science communication. When compared with the output of Films Division, which is often described as the largest documentary-making unit in the world (e.g., Roy, 2007), Vigyan Prasar’s output might appear to be miniscule. However, the ecology within which it operates is totally different from that of Films Division. In its efforts to instill a scientific outlook among the nation’s population, Vigyan Prasar enlists the service of interactive CDs, activity kits, radio programs, and suchlike. The audio–visual material produced by the organization includes factual material as well as fiction. Its programs find an outlet through the state broadcaster as well as screenings at educational institutions, film festivals, and special workshops. ⁷ Despite the differences between both institutions, there are many similarities between the films on science and technology produced by them; a sizeable number of these films are influenced by the rationalist documentary tradition that is “devoted to certitude” (Renov, 2004, p. 136).

In independent India, the Films Division’s nonfiction efforts over several decades have made a particular style of state documentary identifiable, characterized by authoritative voice-overs, use of jargons, explanatory visuals, and repetitive stock shots as well as hyperbolic statements. This predominant form of the state film frequently induced a sense of boredom in its viewers. ⁸ Several accounts ranging from the report of the Chanda Committee appointed by the state to newspaper articles (Bhaskaran, 2014) and scholarly studies (Waugh, 2011) chronicle the boredom of watching such state documentaries. ⁹ At the same time, the practice of compulsory screening of these films in commercial theaters provided them with an extensive screening network. According to Srirupa Roy (2007), the boredom and disenchantment that characterized a large section of Films Division’s work was productive in terms of generating recognition of the authorial signature of the state. Rather than their effectiveness in terms of persuasive power, it is their iterative prevalence that needs to be taken into account while determining their functionality. In Roy’s words, networks of state practices, including the production and circulation of state documentaries, consolidate statist narratives through their “iteration rather than credibility, their ability to elicit recognition rather than inspire passion” (2007, p. 8).

Extending Roy’s arguments, I would contend that in India, the history of state-approved documentaries with their intention to educate the masses played a significant role in situating documentary as a valid site through which knowledge claims can be produced.

Thus, in the Indian context, the epistephilic dimensions of documentary and the knowledge authorized by it through its claim to be a record of reality need to be seen together with the state’s use of the form to assert assured knowledge claims. Iteration of the familiar devices of the state documentary such as omniscient voice-overs or explanatory visuals did not just serve to induce boredom. They also signaled authority and the ability of such stylistic devices to give an access to “the real,” which in turn helped to situate these films as different from the “unreal” fiction films. So, when the producer of Clearly Nuclear, Vigyan Prasar, terms the film a documentary, such a naming draws upon a history where iterative practices were linked with truth claims. ¹⁰ Here, the documentary form is used to produce “truths” that demand acceptance in the name of science as well as documentary, and this in turn helps in the configuration of a pronuclear reality.

Pronuclear Reality and its Documentary Articulation

The nuclear situation as envisaged by the state documentaries is a performative construction, and documentary utterance plays a role in bringing this reality into being. It is co-constituted by other performative acts such as the bravado of prime ministerial announcements about the country’s latest nuclear weapon tests, the foundation stone-laying ceremonies for new nuclear reactors, expert sound bites on national television about the necessity of nuclear power, and police violence against antinuclear protesters. The easy transference of the nuclear rhetoric into ultranationalist Hindutva registers, where tableaux about the country’s nuclear success are incorporated into religious festivals like the Ganapati Puja (Kaur, 2010), can also be viewed as significant parts of such formations.

Within such configurations, what is the role of pronuclear documentary assertions as in the case of Films Division and Vigyan Prasar films? Let us take the example of a film like Clearly Nuclear (2012–2013). It invokes science as well as documentary to legitimize its argument that Indian nuclear reactors are essential for India’s progress, and that they pose no threat to the environment. As a viewer, one could be disinterested or bored during the screening of a film like Clearly Nuclear. However, opposing that narrative by being part of an antinuclear movement can mean facing police violence or the impounding of one’s passport. In other words, the certainty in the knowledge claims of pronuclear documentaries is not produced by their strong arguments or persuasive qualities alone. ¹¹ Instead this certainty is coproduced by police firings, imprisonment, and other acts of state violence against those who challenge the pronuclear knowledge claims. These extra diegetic networks of power/knowledge around pronuclear state films ensure that their meaning making is realized, even if these films lack persuasive suaveness.

In terms of numbers, Films Division and Vigyan Prasar films that deal with the nuclear question are limited. Amidst the Films Division’s output of more than 8,000 titles, since its inception in 1948, the number of films that directly deal with the nuclear question may be fewer than forty. ¹² The topics of such films range from the importance of nuclear energy, history of institutions such as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, films on eminent nuclear scientists such as Homi Bhabha or Vikram Sarabhai, works that attempt to inform audiences about the structure of the atom or the everyday use of radioisotopes, as well as those that highlight the dangers of nuclear weapons. ¹³ Apart from these, a much larger group of films on the progress made by independent India in various fields include constant references to Indian achievements in the field of nuclear energy. There are several newsreels on the topic as well. Spanning several decades and made by different filmmakers at various points in history, they show considerable differences as well as similarities. For example, a film like From Tiny Grains of Sand (Chaudhuri, 1961), which explains the necessity of nuclear energy and elaborates on the processes behind the mining of atomic fuel, uses a detached voice-over and visuals that illustrate the points made by the voice-over. On the other hand, Atomic Energy and India (Chandra, 1972), directed by Vijay B. Chandra who is associated with the experimental phase of Films Division (Gangar, 2006), endeavors to be formally innovative and relies on montages, text, and music to build its narrative. It avoids voice-over narration. Despite these formal differences, the films around the nuclear project produced by Films Division work together to create documentary iterations about the necessity of nuclear energy, which they claim is essential to fulfill the needs of the nation. ¹⁴

Vigyan Prasar has produced six films as part of its Public Awareness Campaign on Nuclear Energy in collaboration with Nuclear Power Cooperation of India Limited (NPCIL). The time of commissioning of the Vigyan Prasar films is significant. The tender came out in June 2012 amidst protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project. The ignorance of the so-called masses regarding nuclear energy is a recurring theme in the explanations provided by the nuclear establishment to dispel the “myths” about the dangers posed by the nuclear project (Basu, 2011). The Vigyan Prasar films attempt to counter what they perceive as misconceptions about nuclear energy. Made between 2012 and 2013, these films have much in common with the sleek production styles of the satellite news channels, which target an urban middle-class audience. This is not surprising because the production companies involved in making these films come from the postliberalized Indian media landscape where competition among private players prompt them to vie for the very short attention span of viewers. For example, the New Delhi-based Pulse Media Pvt. Ltd., which made the film Safe Haven: Safety of Indian Nuclear Power Plants (Kondapalli, 2012–2013), lists a host of clients ranging from National Geographic and Asian Paints on its website, and Vigyan Prasar is listed among its government clients. ¹⁵ So, instead of the clumsy and boring style, which is often identified with state-sponsored nonfiction films, Safe Haven attempts to dazzle the viewer with fast edits, split screens, and visual effects. However, in terms of content, the Vigyan Prasar films follow the dominant pronuclear narrative of Films Division documentaries. Made after the Fukushima disaster and the public protests against nuclear plants in India (especially at Kudankulam), these films declare in no uncertain terms that Indian nuclear plants are “well guarded to withstand earthquakes” as well as any other imaginable failures (Kondapalli, 2012–2013). A closer analysis of the Films Division film The Atom: Man’s Most Powerful Servant and Vigyan Prasar’s Clearly Nuclear can help to provide a detailed understanding of the pronuclear articulations of Films Division and Vigyan Prasar documentaries.

Peaceful Nuclear Explosion and Scientific Evidence

The Atom: Man’s Most Powerful Servant (Pendharkar, 1974) begins with an expository voice-over in English. It compares nuclear energy with atomic energy from the sun that sustains life forms on earth. The self-assured male voice-over of this black and white film has an authoritative tone. The opening credits appear after a declaration, which states that in atomic energy man has found “a servant more powerful and quicker than the genie who came out of Aladdin’s lamp.” Images from inside and outside Indian atomic reactors are edited together to form a narrative that explains the technical processes inside the reactor as well as the various applications of nuclear energy in diverse aspects of life, including agriculture and medicine. The evidentiary style of editing (Nichols, 2001) makes use of the words of the first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Homi Bhabha, the architect of the Indian nuclear program, to build a case for the “absolute necessity” of nuclear power as well as the peaceful nature of the Indian nuclear project. The film uses a few onscreen sound bites, all of which are from senior nuclear scientists. The first such sound bite introduces the process of making radioisotopes and their utility in various fields. The voice-over links this section on radioisotopes and their uses with visuals from the Indian nuclear weapons test in Rajasthan’s Thar Desert in 1974. What follows is a framing of this nuclear test as a scientific experiment. Sound bites from the chairman of Atomic Energy Commission, Homi Sethna, and other scientists, as well as visuals of the weapons test work together to form this framing. Homi Sethna categorically states that the experiment was not an explosion. He refers to it as an effort to stimulate oil and gas production from Indian oil fields. Other senior scientists in the film also provide expert sound bites that stress the scientific nature of the experiment. During the course of its roughly 13-minute duration, the film employs visuals from the technical processes within nuclear reactors as evidence to build a narrative that locates the Indian nuclear project as a “scientific endeavor to tame and train” the atom in the service of man. The images of such technical processes have the qualities of a unique darshan. ¹⁶ For example, over the visuals of the cloud and dust from the 1974 nuclear weapons test, the voice-over of the film stresses that the audience is watching “the only filmic record” of the event (Figure 1). The last section of the film focuses on the future prospects of nuclear energy. This section uses sound bites of senior nuclear scientists and shots of construction of nuclear reactors to highlight the importance of research to further the progress of the Indian nuclear project. The film ends on a note of hope about the possibilities of fission reaction and the scientists’ quest for it.

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Figure 1.

Image Courtesy: Pendharkar (1974).

Vigyan Prasar’s Clearly Nuclear was produced in 2012–2013, more than three decades after India’s first nuclear weapons test. ¹⁷ The voice-over of the film is more informal than that of The Atom: Man’s Most Powerful Servant. The film frequently addresses the viewer directly. It begins by asking the question of why “we” are reluctant to appreciate the benefits of nuclear reactors despite power shortages. Visuals of the Kudankulam nuclear reactor are placed within the context of India’s three-stage nuclear program. This is followed by a list of the milestones from the history of the Indian nuclear project. The film stresses indigenous achievements in the field. It then highlights the contributions of Indian industry to the nuclear project. The international sanctions that followed the nuclear weapons test are obliquely referred to while mentioning how Indian engineers tackled a technical issue in the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station, when international experts refused to help. The noncooperation of countries with nuclear expertise is framed in a critical manner. ¹⁸ However, the film does not mention the Indian nuclear weapons test, which was the reason for such a refusal to help.

Like the first and only record of the nuclear “experiment” that The Atom: Man’s Most Powerful Servant (Pendharkar, 1974) takes pride in, Clearly Nuclear uses visuals of calandria and marvels at the luck of the viewers who have the unique opportunity of beholding it. The voice-over explains that the calandria in a nuclear reactor is a “closed reactor vessel” which keeps “the moderator separate from the coolant.” These visuals of the calandria can be viewed through the prism of darshan. They are placed as images that bestow on their viewers the privilege of viewing a rare sight. For example, the voice-over exclaims, “Plain lucky you! No one would ever be able to see it like the way you are watching the final works in this particular calandria….”

The film also touches upon the ecological impact of nuclear reactors. Shots of nuclear power plants are edited together with visuals of birds, animals, and pristine natural surroundings to produce the “truth” of the nonpolluting nature of the nuclear enterprise. The voice-over claims that the Kaiga nuclear plant “works equally peacefully as the birds.” The evidentiary potential of the documentary form is invoked to convince the viewers of what “we” saw. According to the voice-over, a lizard and hornbill pose for the camera while a kingfisher “fully agrees” with the film crew on the nonthreatening nature of the nuclear plant. One of the major concerns of the fishing community at Kudankulam about the impact of the nuclear reactor on fishing is also dealt with in the film. Visuals of birds hunting fishes from the area of the lake into which water from the Kaiga nuclear plant is expelled works as a testimony to prove that such discharges do not create any adverse impact on the environment. The film crew lowers the camera underwater and is surprised to see a fish. The marine life is shy, but definitely present, to provide evidence for the nonpolluting nature of the nuclear power plant. The film signs off with a shot of a bird which flies off, leaving the viewers to ascertain for themselves the achievements of nuclear power plants which, according to the film, produce electricity with minimum impact on the environment.

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Figure 2.

Image Courtesy: Rahman, 2012–2013.

This 17-minute film of Vigyan Prasar does not follow the pedantic style of The Atom: Man’s Most Powerful Servant (Pendharkar, 1974). Compared with the Films Division film, the tone of the voice-over of Clearly Nuclear is more friendly; it addresses the viewers directly and tries to involve them in the narrative. The film maintains a fast pace with its quick edits, use of graphics, and visual effects (Figure 2). The Vigyan Prasar film uses fewer shots of the technical processes inside nuclear reactors. Its visual vocabulary is more accessible than the highly technical narrative of the earlier film. Some of the formal differences between both the films can be traced to the diverse time periods in which they were made. Made in the 1970s, The Atom: Man’s Most Powerful Servant belongs to the “pre-video era” (Battaglia, 2014, p. 73). On the other hand, Clearly Nuclear, which is made much after the liberalization of the Indian media landscape, reflects the technological and social changes that followed.

In spite of these differences, there are considerable resemblances between both films. The knowledge claims in both Clearly Nuclear and The Atom: Man’s Most Powerful Servant are validated through the authority of science as well as that of documentary. In The Atom: Man’s Most Powerful Servant, science is invoked to justify the nuclear weapons test; what the film puts forward as routine scientific explanation about radioisotopes is used to strengthen a narrative that asserts the benign and scientific nature of nuclear weapons testing. This instance can be used to look again at some of the less controversial “scientific” knowledge claims in similar documentaries. When the top nuclear scientists in the country aid the documentary magic of turning a nuclear weapons test into an experiment that aims to increase the output of oil and gas fields, why should one take the more routine explanations, like the one about the radioisotopes, at face value? Here my intention is not to deny the existence of radioisotopes. Instead the question is about how the site of documentary is utilized to script scientific credentials.

In the case of Clearly Nuclear, the film works with a premise that takes the status of the documentary camera as a scientific instrument very seriously (see also Winston, 2008). Unlike The Atom: Man’s Most Powerful Servant (Pendharkar, 1974), Clearly Nuclear carries its reflexive acknowledgment of “we,” the filmmakers, with perfect suavity. However, this reflexivity remains superficial. The logic of an idea of documentary that can serve as an authoritative account and document of the reality around the nuclear travels without much trouble from The Atom: Man’s Most Powerful Servant to Clearly Nuclear. In the accounts produced by these pronuclear films, there is no space for doubts about the claims put forward by the narrative. As I have argued before, these knowledge claims, which present themselves as certain about the advantages of the nuclear project, are produced through narratives and practices that are spread across many sites, including that of the documentary film.

How can comic modes and irony unsettle the certainty of such knowledge claims? My practice-based enquiry into this question resulted in the film Nuclear Hallucinations. The processes of the film were informed by the strategies of antinuclear films, including Anand Patwardhan’s War and Peace/Jang aur Aman (2002) and Shriprakash’s Buddha Weeps in Jadugoda (1999), films that challenge the truth claims of the state’s nuclear narrative. In many of these films, comic modes and irony play an important part. For example, Anand Patwardhan uses a variety of strategies to bring the arguments of nuclear nationalism into a register of farce. War and Peace structures its arguments for peace through Patwardhan’s personal voice-over, interviews with radiation affected villagers, ordinary people from India and Pakistan, and Gandhian activists. When juxtaposed against these sequences, jingoistic statements about the need for the nuclear bomb, “rational” arguments from nuclear scientists, and shots from defense expos appear ludicrous. Patwardhan successfully incorporates satirical performances by Dalit activists against the nuclear bomb to underline the antinuclear stand of his film. He also uses text to bring forward the irony of escalating defense budgets in an India that is still fighting poverty. Similarly, Amudhan uses the sound track of the nationalist song “Vande Mataram” against the visuals of radiation victims in Radiation Stories Part 2: Kalpakkam (2011). My film Nuclear Hallucinations builds upon the use of comic modes and irony in such works. At the same time, the film relies on an approach that situates the pronuclear knowledge claims of state documentaries as a tamasha.

Tamasha

The conceptualization of tamasha in my work is informed by the way in which assertions of colonial science faced a response from the vantage point of tamasha in pre-independent India (Prakash, 1999). The narratives and practices that authorize the epistemological violence around the Indian nuclear project in contemporary India are not necessarily similar to the operations of power around modern science in colonial India. However, there are structural continuities that exist between both. Since it was not easy to assert the universal authority of modern science amidst the various existing ecologies of knowledge in the subcontinent, the colonial state resorted to diverse practices to affirm this authority. Gyan Prakash stresses the involvement of the Indian elite in the configuration of the authority of modern science, though their endeavors and conceptualizations were not identical with those of the colonial state. However, “the subaltern continued to occupy an unmanageable position” (ibid., p. 44) vis-à-vis both elite Indian and colonial endeavors. Exhibitions and museums played an important part in the staging of science in colonial India, for “If the lower classes did not threaten the project of disseminating science by spreading rumors, they undermined its gravity by demanding frivolous amusements as the price of their participation” (ibid.). Prakash quotes Edgar Thurston from the Administration Report of the Government Central Museum for the Year 1894–95, where he writes about how the native visitors treated the staging of science in the museums as a tamasha. This attitude, which undermines the authority of modern science by approaching it from the point of view of tamasha, became a key strategy in my own practice-based research.

In the South Asian context, the word tamasha, which can be roughly translated as “show” or “entertainment,” has wide connotations. The Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases has the following entry on the word: “Tamasha…Persian and Urdu (tamāšā…walking about for amusement, entertainment, from Arabic tamāšā walk about together, from mašā walk). 1 (in the Indian subcontinent) a grand show, performance, or celebration, especially one involving dance. 2 A fuss, a commotion Colloquial…” (Delahunty, 2008, p. 337).

The word is used across many parts of the Indian subcontinent where it has a host of implications ranging from trivial or empty entertainment (Trevithick, 1990), to carnival (Guha, 1997), spectacle (Kuldova, 2012) or farce (Singh, 2003). There is also a central Indian folk theater form called Tamasha, and it has strong comedic elements. However, I would like to stress that in my work, the term “tamasha” is not used to denote this folk form. Instead I am using tamasha as a broader conceptual category, which makes use of the diverse implications of the word in the subcontinent. ¹⁹

In everyday usage, a domestic quarrel or a parliamentary election becomes a tamasha, depending on the way in which people engage with these events. This mode of engagement often has an amount of self-derision attached to it. Once an event or discourse is viewed as a tamasha, it becomes a source of entertainment and loses its legitimacy in the solemn order of things. It is reduced to a sort of joke in which the viewer is a participant as well as an onlooker. The resulting space of delegitimization could offer possibilities for resistance. I am interested in the possibility offered by the viewpoint of tamasha to ridicule the seemingly invincible operations of power/knowledge in the context of the Indian nuclear project.

Here, I am not writing off the prospect that in its connotations as entertainment or spectacle, ²⁰ tamasha could become a site for regressive practices. Viewing a government scheme as a tamasha may not be the same as opposing it, and this may not be a radical act. The word itself suggests the presence of ineffectual participants. My argument is that it is difficult to police the boundaries of tamasha precisely because the gawking spectator or spectators can defy all logics of intentionality. This is because the only requirement for turning something into a tamasha is to approach it as one. I would argue that a shift in outlook about something that is as unopposable as the nuclear project of the Indian state could foster spaces of “dissensus.” Jacques Rancière defines dissensus as the “essence of politics.” According to him, “Dissensus is not a confrontation between interests or opinions” but “the demonstration (manifestation) of a gap in the sensible itself” (2010, p. 46). The permissible assertions around the Indian nuclear project can be viewed as “a distribution of the sensible” (ibid., p. 44) where the only arguments that count are those that can display their scientific credentials. Before the certainty of state assertions, the “ignorant” villagers who oppose the KKNPP become worthy targets of violence. In this scenario, the call to approach such knowledge claims about the benign nature of the Indian nuclear project as a tamasha can create “scenes of dissensus” to “crack open the unity of the given and the obviousness of the visible, in order to sketch a new topography of the possible” (Ibid., p. 49). Nuclear Hallucinations explores this possibility.

Nuclear Hallucinations (Nizaruddin, 2016)

The film uses the context of the antinuclear movement at Kudankulam in the state of Tamil Nadu, which can be traced back to the 1980s. India and the erstwhile USSR agreed to set up nuclear reactors at Kudankulam, and the deal was signed in 1988. Soon thereafter, many factors including the disintegration of the Soviet Union resulted in the project being called off (Srikant, 2009). It was revived in 1997, when the Prime Minister of India, Deve Gowda, and his Russian counterpart, Boris Yeltsin, signed a supplement to the original agreement of 1988. In 2004, a tsunami affected the coast at the project site. The years 2011 and 2012 saw huge protests when several thousands of people joined the nonviolent resistance against the nuclear project in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster. In September 2012, there was a massive state clampdown on the protests. In the resulting violence and police firing, many people were injured and one person was killed (Murari, 2012); several people were imprisoned. Hundreds of cases were filed against villagers and activists. The charges included those of sedition, attempt to murder, and waging war against the state.

In this scenario, the focus of my project was to destabilize the production of expertise that legitimizes the various acts of violence against the antinuclear protestors. The filming was done over a period of almost three years, and I visited Kudankulam several times between 2013 and 2016. The project was self-funded. ²¹ While the intimidating atmosphere at Kundankulam definitely had its imprint on the filming process, ²² my attempt during the course of the project was to interrogate the conditions and iterative practices, including documentary assertions that engender such an atmosphere. Thus, studying the stylistic devices used by the pronuclear documentaries of Films Division and Vigyan Prasar was an important step in the formation of the narrative of Nuclear Hallucinations. As I have mentioned earlier, documentary constructions of the state version of reality in relation to its nuclear project use certain common devices. These devices include explanatory voice-overs, interviews, expert sound bites, and graphics that provide “scientific” explanations. These stylistic devices of actuality come with the support of a history of legitimization through constant iteration across different sites of construction of what professes to be “the reality,” ranging from news reports to informational videos, documentaries, and educational programs.

Nuclear Hallucinations attempts to undermine the legitimacy of these devices by inviting the viewers around the film’s processes to approach the knowledge produced by them as a tamasha. It uses satirical impersonations, hallucinatory voice-overs, and gibberish graphics to comically appropriate the pronuclear assertions of state documentaries. The film situates itself around the antinuclear movement against the KKNPP. As part of the filming process, tables for “experts” were set up at Idinthakarai, the village which is at the heart of the movement against KKNPP. Antinuclear activists, villagers, and sympathizers of the movement came forward to impersonate nuclear scientists, politicians, and government officials who stress the necessity of constructing nuclear power projects. The impersonators spoke about radioactive waste that can be disposed of in plastic covers without any ecological impact, the “troublemakers” at Idinthakarai who need to be dealt with by an iron hand, as well as the necessity of nuclear bombs for the progress of the nation. ²³

The decision to invite antinuclear activists from within and outside Idinthakarai to impersonate state functionaries was in response to the state’s decision to file cases of sedition against the protestors (see Sudhakar & Kumar, 2012). Joel Schechter (1994) has given an interesting account of the potential of satiric impersonations. According to him, if we consider satire “as a political art responding to specific social situations” (p. 5), then satirical impersonations have the potential to contest the legitimization of authority. In my research, such impersonations operate on several levels (Figure 3). Apart from raising questions about the absolute certainty of state claims by moving those claims to the realm of tamasha, these impersonations also undermine the indexical claims of state documentaries in which the camera’s ability to show birds around a nuclear plant exists as proof of the peaceful coexistence of the nuclear plant and nature (see Clearly Nuclear).

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Figure 3.

Image Courtesy: Nizaruddin, 2016.

The comic modes employed in Nuclear Hallucinations are not limited to satirical impersonations. The film also uses hallucinatory voice-overs and gibberish graphics. Instead of relying on any one comic mode, the work employs them in a fluid manner wherein their interlinked nature contributes to the outlook of tamasha.

In its efforts to situate the documentary response of pronuclear state films within the register of tamasha, the multiple strands of voice-overs in Nuclear Hallucinations play a significant role. The voice-overs in both The Atom: Man’s Most Powerful Servant and Clearly Nuclear have what Paromita Vohra calls a “unitary quality” which speaks for “a unitary being who had gathered knowledge and then processed it for our benefit into bite-sized bits” (2011, p. 46). Instead of such a unitary voice, which is not troubled by uncertainties about its pronouncements, Nuclear Hallucinations uses the hallucinatory ramblings of a woman who speaks about a nuclear disaster that may or may not have happened. The male voice in the film issues self-assured but farcical statements that glorify the nuclear project of the Indian state. The male voice-over also reads out First Information Reports (FIRs) launched against the villagers and antinuclear protestors at the Kudankulam police station. Though the FIRs that charge villagers who engage in nonviolent resistance will appear to belong to a farcical register, they are in fact read out from actual FIRs. This blurring of boundaries between the absurd sections in the film and the farcical elements in the pronuclear narrative was a strategy of Nuclear Hallucinations to create sites of engagement where knowledge claims about the peaceful nature of the Indian nuclear project can be perceived as a tamasha.

The film also uses devices like the toy nuclear plant made of Lego-like bricks. The toy plant stands in for an actual nuclear plant (Figure 4); thereby building a tension between the stylistic devices of actuality and the “actuality” that was being conveyed through them. While I discussed the ideas of my film with the participants in advance, the final impersonations themselves were unrehearsed and unscripted, and the camera followed the impersonators without making any efforts to direct them. As should be apparent, these tactics were used for comic and ironic effect rather than in any search for “documentary authenticity” (Nichols, 2001, p. xi). My approach is different from that of antinuclear documentaries such as Living in Fear (Sasi, 1987) that contest the facts behind the pronuclear knowledge claims. However, Nuclear Hallucinations aligns itself in solidarity with the antinuclear pronouncements of these films. This could be seen as an example when tamasha works as part of multiple networks of resisting narratives that challenge pronuclear assertions.

In his writings about power/knowledge, Foucault (1980) talks about the prospect of insurrections of disqualified knowledges like those of the mentally ill which are ranked low in hierarchy because of their perceived lack of scientificity. The knowledge of the indigenous leader in Buddha Weeps in Jadugoda (Shriprakash, 1999), who asserts that Uranium mining should stop, or the woman suffering from cancer in Radiation Stories Part 2: Kalpakkam (Amudhan, 2012) could be seen as such disqualified knowledges. From the terrain of tamasha which refuses to acknowledge the supremacy of nuclear reason, it might be easier to be more receptive to the words of the indigenous leader or the woman suffering from cancer. At the same time, as Butler points out in the context of gender, “subversive performances always run the risk of becoming deadening clichés through their repetition” (1999, p. xxi). Creating dissonances within iterations demands an inventiveness that can cope with the assimilation of the subversive devices into the accepted order of things. Currently, satirical impersonations or hallucinatory voice-overs have the potential to create destabilizations within the state narrative about its nuclear project because they are not considered to be worthwhile tropes by that narrative. Once they become part of the order of reiteration, there will be a need to look for other devices to create destabilizations within these iterations.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 4.

Image Courtesy: Nizaruddin, 2016.

Not all invitations to adopt the vantage point of tamasha are taken up by the audience members who encounter them. Nuclear Hallucinations does not aim for tangible impact. It is informed by Rancière’s observation that instead of being weapons, art works “help sketch new configurations of what can be seen, what can be said and what can be thought and, consequently, a new landscape of the possible. But they do so on condition that their meaning or effect is not anticipated” (2009, p. 103).

Tamasha and New Configurations of the Possible

So, what precisely is the significance of the vantage point of tamasha in the configurations around the Indian nuclear project? While encountering the narrative of nuclear reason as a tamasha, the participant onlooker is refusing to meet the power/knowledge of the Indian nuclear state on its own terms. This approach may not result in an instant repeal of cases against the antinuclear protestors or an immediate end to the nuclear power (bomb) project. However, even for someone who is wary of the consequences of questioning the pronuclear state assertions, it offers a position that is different from that of a reluctant approver. Like the subaltern’s response to the invincible stagings of science in colonial India, s/he can approach the apparently self-evident authority of “science” and “documentary,” which are used to script pronuclear assertions, as a tamasha. Such a vantage point can contain the possibility of destabilizing the totalizing meaning-making of these assertions.

Through networks that share this point of view of tamasha, solidarities could emerge that can resist the terms that categorize the antinuclear protestors as antinational as well as antiscience. Such solidarities would offer the possibility of reimagining the configurations of “nation” and “science.” This could lead to the imagination of another world wherein the grand schemes of ecological suicide devised through the logic of rationality and progress will have to be resisted, and the greedy consumption behind them will need to be ridiculed. In that world, it may not be possible to construct the reality of a nuclear project that peacefully coexists with nature and provides unlimited energy because the tropes of reiteration as well as the content proposed by them would have lost their legitimacy.