Based on the novel by the well-known writer Amrita Pritam, Chandra Prakash Dwivedi’s debut film shows the true reality of the Partition of India in 1947.

The Partition of India in 1947 has been the most widely-explored themes in Indian Cinema. Many films like Gadar, Hey Ram, 1947 Earth are set against the backdrop of Partition and the communal violence but Pinjar offers slightly different by focusing on the plight of women who were the victims of Partition. Pinjar deals with the practice of abduction of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh women, by the men of religion other than theirs and were forced to marry these men. These girls were not only forced to marry their kidnappers but were also made to change their religion to that of their husband’s. Even if the girls were lucky enough to escape, their family didn’t accept them so as to protect ‘family honour‘.

The protagonist of Pinjar is Puro(Urmila Matondkar), a Hindu girl who is kidnapped by a Muslim man Rashid(Manoj Bajpai), on the eve of her wedding with Ramchand(Sanjay Suri), in order to take revenge of the kidnapping and rape of his aunt by Puro’ s uncle. Puro suceeds in escaping but is rejected by her parents on returning home. While Puro is forced to turn Muslim and married to Rashid, wedding celebrations continues as Trilok(Priyanshu Chatterjee) is married to Ramchand’ sister Lajjo(Sandali Sinha) and Puro’sister Rajjo(Isha Koppikar) to Ramchand’s cousin. Puro’s brother Tilak outraged at the attitude of his parents is the only one who tries to find his sister and longs for her. Meanwhile as Puro struggles with her situation, the partition of India takes place. There is an outbreak of riots which forces Hindus in Pakistan to leave their home and move to India and Muslims in India to move to Pakistan. During this Lajjo gets kidnapped by the Muslim men. The rest of the story concentrates on the meeting of Lajjo and Puro and the still lingering love of Puro for Ramchand. Finally, Puro has to make a difficult choice between a life with her kidnapper or begin a new life with Ramchand and her family back in India.

There are some moments which really are heart-wrenching – when the parents are reluctant to accept their own daughter Puro back assuming that this will taint their honour and leaves her alone, Puro’s desperation to regain her old identity by rubbing the tattoed Muslim name Hamida on her wrist, Lajjo and other members of Puro’s family’s insensitivity.

Urmila Matondkar delivers a good performance as Puro, but at times the emotions seem to be forced. Priyanshu Chatterjee’s character as the concerned brother searching for his sister is well-performed and Sanjay Suri as the idealistic Ramchand offers commitment to his role. Good performances by Lillette Dubey, Sandali Sinha and Kulbhushan Kharbanda. But it is Manoj Bajpai who walks away with the honours for remarkable performance as Rashid. Ishaa Koppikar has nothing much to do.

A must-watch movie but a li’l long in duration with some insignificant scenes like depicting Seema Biswas as a mad woman….

After 60 years of Independence, one tends to forget the pain and the struggle that our forefathers must have gone through. Its the kind of film that really leaves a mark and makes you think about that phase of history and how much people had to suffer. Brings out some lesser-known and unbelievable realities of history………..