RAJU AND HIS FRIENDS

40 minutes Colour 1988
Film-maker: Marcus Banks

This film explores the nature of friendship in Jamnagar, a town in Gujarat state, western India, through the eyes and impressions of Raju, an unmarried Jain man. These friendships are with school friends, a woman he loves and the film-maker himself.

Throughout the film we follow Raju as he shows us his shop, his town, his home and other places that are important to him. From the outset the friendship between Raju and the film-maker is clear and at intervals throughout the film the film-maker reveals himself through commentary, discussing their relationship and speculating on Raju's reactions to events in his life.

Raju and his father are traders and the film-maker observes and interviews them in their shop, learning their views on religion, business and the affection they feel for Jamnagar, which they consider to be peaceful. Ironically, this particular conversation is swamped by the continual noise of the street and traffic, but it is clear from their comments here and elsewhere that this peace is not solely an aural quality. The sensitive camera work (by Andy Jillings) helps communicate this affection.

Later, Raju discusses relations between Hindus and Muslims in the town, pointing out areas where they live together, but noting that marriage rarely occurs. Raju then reveals that he and a Muslim woman (a Bohra in fact, see Roy 1984) had fallen in love but that, in the face of parental opposition, they decided that duty to their families was more important than their own happiness. The woman is now married to another man and does not appear in the film: Raju tells us that the friendship, treated with great propriety, still remains, however.

In echoes of what might have been, Raju then takes the film-maker to a relative's wedding and then on to his ancestral village to worship at the family shrine-an act always performed by a newly-married man and his bride. They then return to Raju's home in the town where we see the easy relationship he has with his immediate family, including his brother's children.

The second half of the film focuses more on relationships with friends: we meet an old school friend with whom Raju takes tea and discusses the finger signals they use to order it; afterwards we see him with a group of Muslim teachers with whom he once worked. In the film's final sequence Raju, two friends and the film-maker take a trip into the countryside and while relaxing there, Raju makes his final comments on the nature of friendship. It is partly duty, he says, but as he explores the idea of duty, he decides that the commitment of friendship is more of a pleasure than a duty. Thus it has been a pleasure for him to collaborate in the making of the film, not a duty.

Raju and His Friends was made under a scheme sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust and the Royal Anthropological Institute, which allowed a small number of anthropologists to study at the National Film and Television School, Beaconsfield, UK. Two of the references below are directly concerned with the making of the film. Catalogue numbers, (16mm): RA177 £15; (VHS): RA/VHS 177 £8.

M. Banks, 1988. `Forty-Minute Fieldwork'. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, Vol. XIX, No.3, pp. 251-263.

M. Banks, 1989a. `The Narrative of Lived Experience: Some Jains of India and England'. Critique of Anthropology, Vol.9, No.2, pp.65-76 [Photographic essay].

M. Banks, 1989b. `Seeing Yourself as Others See You'. Commission on Visual Anthropology Review (Fall 1989), pp.33-38

H.G. Briggs, 1849. The Cities of Gujarashtra: Their Topography and History, Illustrated in the Journal of a Recent Tour. James Chesson, Bombay.

M. Carruthers and C. Humphrey (eds.), in press. The Assembly of Listeners: Jains in Society. Cambridge University Press.

P.S. Jaini, 1979. The Jaina Path of Purification. University of California Press, Berkeley.

S. Kakar, 1981. The Inner World: A Psycho-Analytic Study of Childhood and Society in India. Oxford University Press, Delhi.

D. Pocock, 1973. Mind, Body and Wealth: A Study of Belief and Practice in an Indian Village. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

S. Roy, 1984. The Dawoodi Bohras: An Anthropological Perspective. B.R. Publishing Corporation, Delhi.

A.M. Shah, 1982. `Division and Hierarchy: An Overview of Caste in Gujarat'. Contributions to Indian Sociology N.S., Vol. 16, no.1, pp.1-33.