TAMAS

This television mini-series, known as "Darkness" in English, achieved widespread recognition in India during the mid to late 1980s for its vivid portrayal of the Indian subcontinent's partition. In 1947, the region was divided into India, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), and West Pakistan (present-day Pakistan). The series sought to preserve the memories and truths surrounding the partition, a period when many Indians and Pakistanis appeared to be overlooking this profound historical calamity. The mini-series has evolved into a seminal 297-minute, 35mm film, predominantly showcased at Indian film festivals today. The film is adapted from the novel by Brisham Sahni, a refugee from West Punjab to India, who is now based in Pakistan. Appropriately, this epic narrative examines the partition from an Indian Punjabi perspective, with a focus on the fates of Sikh and Hindu families in West Punjab. The initial part also underscores the Muslim perspective: the provocations they endured at the hands of Sikhs, and particularly Hindus, and their ultimate dominance in West Punjab, which would become the heartland of Pakistan. The "Darkness" of that era of religious intolerance and civil war illuminates the stories of two refugee families, one Sikh and the other Hindu. These victims of hatred and their Muslim counterparts had, until 1947, been brothers, co-existing for over a millennium across the Indian subcontinent. With the advent of "modern freedom," the lands of this once unified "one people" were divided into Muslim and Hindu republics. However, non-Muslim religious groups, including Sikhs, Christians, and a significant number of Muslims (equivalent to the entire Muslim population of Pakistan), migrated to the nascent India. Pakistan, effectively, became an exclusively Muslim nation.