Verbalizing silence: Disasters in Sabiha Sumar’s Khamosh Pani (Sient Waters)

ABSTRACT This article focuses on Pakistani director, Sabiha Sumar’s, debut film, Khamosh Pani (Silent Waters, 2003). The article argues that Sumar’s film, by screening the never-ending impacts of politically motivated ethno-religious and ethno-national disasters, like 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, shows that female sufferers of one such disaster become more vulnerable to additional trauma caused by future disasters having similar roots. An examination of the film reveals that politically motivated ethno-religious and ethno-national calamitous events like the partition and Islamization program of Zia regime are gendered. These events solidify the sufferers’ status as the inimical Other who need to be discarded/controlled for the wellbeing of the concerned community or nation to which they belong. Through a detailed analysis of the film, the article examines how women have to bear the maximum brunt of ethno-religious calamities that exploit their bodies as archives of violence by perennially damaging their sense of self. Instead of finding agency in voice, Sumar’s film shows superficiality of words in communicating acute trauma caused by politically galvanized ethno-religious disasters.