A Single Spark: documentary on the Indian People’s Association in North America (IPANA)

IPANA emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s as a collective of progressive South-Asian diasporic activists, writers, artists, musicians, and their allies in the Canadian New Left, that together shaped solidarity movements, led anti-racism struggles, and organized precarious workers, contributing immensely to the social transformation, institution- and community-building in B.C.’s Lower Mainland. This film will focus on the inclusive history of activists who worked together across racial and communal divides to create alternative political identities, and in doing so, raise awareness of the rich cultural and social history of South-Asian Canadians and inspire the next generation of activists and organizers.

The documentary will tell three intertwined stories of intercommunity organizing using thirty oral history video interviews from activists and artists recorded by Bhardwaj. The film will delve into the activities and achievements of IPANA and the development of IPANA as an organization and the challenges faced by the South-Asian diasporic community. It will also consider the paths that IPANA activists took to their politicization, including two of the foremost leaders of IPANA, Hari Sharma and Chinmoy Banerjee, long-time professors at Simon Fraser University.

In addition to the recorded interviews, the film will draw on IPANA’s cultural activism and arts, which generated a rich multimedia archive of the movement. It will include rare video 8 recordings, photographs of exhibitions, audio recordings of cultural events and performances, audio interviews, documentaries, and ” ’IPANA’s newspapers. IPANA also produced three LPs of revolutionary songs: two in Punjabi, recorded in Vancouver, and one of international solidarity songs in many languages, recorded in Montreal. The multimedia archive and oral history interviews will be woven together to form a compelling visual narrative. It will also enunciate the defining, history- and world-making features of ” ’IPANA’s activism as forms of ”workers’ internationalism, intercommunity and transnational solidarities, anti-racist and working-class organizing, including work done by BC Organization to Fight Racism (BCOFR) and the Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU), both formed by IPANA activists.

Filmmaker and Scholar, Ajay Bhardwaj:

Ajay Bhardwaj has engaged with memory, social movements, and popular culture in South Asia and its diasporas for over three decades. From September 2022 to August 2024, he worked at the Institute for Humanities to complete a Mitacs Accelerate postdoctoral project, made possible thanks to generous support from the Dr. Hari Sharma Foundation, on the “History of the Indian People’s Association in North America (IPANA), 1975-1987.” Bhardwaj is a recipient of the Public Scholars Award at the University of British Columbia, where he recently completed his PhD on South-Asian Left-wing cultural activism in British Columbia. The doctoral documentary, When the Tide Goes Out, accompanying his dissertation examined the absence of South Asian women farmworkers’ voices and subjectivities  in the multimedia archive and memory culture of the farmworkers movement. It was screened at the Association of Asian Studies (AAS) 2024 Film Expo in Seattle..

The Institute for Humanities at SFU:

Since its inception in 1983, the Institute for the Humanities at SFU has been dedicated to the exploration of the critical perspectives that relate social concerns to the cultural and historical legacy of the Humanities. The Institute seeks to facilitate the development of attitudes that lead toward active engagement in society. In taking such a role, the Institute hopes to contribute reflective, contemplative, and critical public points of view on the conflicts and contentious issues of our time.

By supporting this documentary, you are helping the Institute for Humanities tell the inclusive history of activists who worked together across racial and communal divides to create alternative political identities, and in doing so, raise awareness of the rich cultural and social history of South-Asian Canadians and aim to inspire the next generation of activists and organizers.