Weaving Faith, Love & Change

Soni Pandey’s Suno Kabir captures Azamgarh’s Ibrahimpur—its weaving tradition, fractured Hindu-Muslim ties, and women reshaping identity—portraying an Indian village in uneasy yet hopeful transition

- SANJEEV CHOPRA

Soni Pandey’s Suno Kabir took me back on a memory lane to 2004, when I was an election observer for the Azamgarh constituency in the general elections that year.

I knew three things about Azamgarh at that time: Allan Octavio Hume of the ICS and the founding father of the Congress had included this district in his survey report on agriculture and revenue. Kaifi Azmi, the famous lyricist, belonged to this city. And that this was also the birthplace of Rahul Sankritayan.

One of the first things I did was to visit the Shibli National College Library (established 1883) to seek out books on and about the three of them. In the peak summer of May and June, when the election volunteers with posters and autorickshaws with loudspeakers took a break between 11 am to 4 pm, so did the Election Observers. This gave me a well-deserved opportunity to catch up on my readings. In the evenings, I would often end up visiting village chaupals for an interaction with the people, predominantly male, and some reflection of communal discord was visible (and audible), although these elections were based more on caste identity.