Filming the Line of Control

ii Filming the Line of

Control
Filming the Line of Control
The Indo-Pak Relationship through
the Cinematic Lens

Edited by
Meenakshi Bharat
Nirmal Kumar

LONDON NEW YORK NEW DELHI

First published
2008 by
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© 2008 Meenakshi Bharat and Nirmal Kumar

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A catalogue record of this book is available from the British
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ISBN 978-0-415-46094-1
To the ties that still bind us
vi Filming the Line of
Control
 Contents

Introduction ix

NEGOTIATING THE BORDER

1. Genre Development in the Age of Markets and

Nationalism: The War Film 3
Kishore Budha

2. Aggression and Transgression on the

India-Pakistan Border 21
Adrian Athique

3. Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and

Veer-Zaara 40
Rajinder Dudrah

DRAWN LINES

4. Partition Literature and Films: Pinjar and Earth 59

Meenakshi Bharat

5. ‘Millions of Daughters of Punjab Weep Today’:

The Female Perspective in Partition Films 71
Claudia Preckel

6. ‘Broken Memories, Incomplete Dreams’:

Notes towards an ‘Authentic’ Partition Cinema 86
Savi Munjal

7. Partitioned Memories: The Trauma of Partition in

Ghatak’s Films 96
Kamayani Kaushiva
viii Filming the Line of Control

RAPPROCHEMENT

8. Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation

Self in Hindi Cinema 1996–2006 111
Sunny Singh

9. ‘Kaisi Sarhaden, Kaisi Majbooriyan’:

Two Countries, Two Enemies, One Love Story 128
Nirmal Kumar

10. My Brother, My Enemy: Crossing the Line of Control

through the Documentary 140
Aparna Sharma

11. Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine

Critiques: Young Hindi Film Viewers
Respond to Violence,
Xenophobia and Love in Cross-border Romances 157
Shakuntala Banaji

INTERVIEWS

12. Aijaz Gul on Cinema in Pakistan:

History, Present Scenario and Future Prospects 179
Interviewed by Arshad Amanullah

13. Guftagu: M.S. Sathyu, Javed Akhtar, Mahesh Bhatt

186
Interviewed by Tavishi Alagh

Filmography 195
Bibliography 219
About the Editors 230
Notes on Contributors Contents 231
Index 234
 Introduction

When, in 1947, India threw off the shackles of British

colonial rule and the Muslim state of Pakistan was born,
there was no way of knowing how this one historical act
would reverberate down the
years, in sphere after sphere.
Patently, the immediate historical spin-off was the
unleashing of a five-decade period of a protracted and
ongoing troublesome relationship of war and hostility
between the two new nations. India and Pakistan have
been involved in three major cross-border confrontations
in 1948, 1965 and 1971. The Kargil face-off of the 1990s
may not have been a major skirmish but it served as an
ugly reminder of the unsettling relationship between the
two countries. The crippling and atavistic travel restrictions
between the two countries, the recurrent use of political
strong-arm tactics, and the rhetoric of hate and intrigue have
taken up much of the energies of the two nations.
Possibly, the bitter experience of the partition-related
carnage could excite no other response. The violence
that hacked complete families off the face of the
subcontinent, the horrendous assault and rape of
thousands of women, and the staggering loss of
property had the nations reeling. One looked to
intellectuals and artists for meaningful comment on this
historical act. Writers like Manto, Intezar Hussain, and
Chaman Nahal may have recorded their responses almost
immediately, but from the comparative fledgling arena of
cinema, there was little or nothing forthcoming. It was as
if a pall had descended on both sides. With people either
too ashamed or too traumatised to speak of their
experiences, this silence was understandable. Giving
cinematic voice to this hurtful subject at this early
juncture was quite unthinkable. The immediate national
x Filming the Line of Control

imperative was the painstaking erection of the edifice of

new nations; cinema inevitably came to be
commandeered for the purpose. Indian cinema, in its
earliest stages, mouthed the lofty ideals of nation-building
in patriotic and venerating references to political makers of
modern India like Gandhi, Nehru and
Lal Bahadur Shastri. It is to be noted that, though these
references were abundant, references to Pakistan were
conspicuous by their absence. All allusions to the ‘other’
nation were assiduously Introduction
avoided. It is in this nebulous
beginning, that is yet extremely vocal and evocative in its
silence, that the wellsprings of the interest of this
volume lie. The trajectory of this relationship through
celluloid representation affords an insight valuable and
crucial to the understanding of the evolving identities of
the two nations.
This initial silence was followed by a discourse of
animosity and cultural antagonism which found its way
into the cinematic text, manifesting itself in various
ways, from cultural shadowboxing to open Pakistan-
bashing. One of the earliest films in Hindi, which make
direct references to Pakistan, was Upkar (The Favour,
1965). Though the theme of Pakistan and India’s
relationship with it was merely an adjunct to the larger
concern of tracing the changing façade of independent
India and extolling the potential of agriculture, stressing
the importance of the ‘Jai jawan jai kisan’ (Hail the
soldier, hail the farmer) slogan of Shastri, it is significant
that Pakistan figured at all in conjunction with larger
concerns of patriotism and nationalism in an emergent
nation.
With Hindustan Ki Kasam (Swear by India, 1973) the
India- Pakistan theme moved up several notches to become
a major concern. Set against the backdrop of the India-
Pakistan war of 1971, this film clearly identified Pakistan
as the enemy, and set the trend of the deployment of a
strong anti-Pak sentiment in the ongoing exercise of
forging and discovering an Indian national identity.
Following this, many films, both good and bad, both hits
and flops, were made with Pakistan as the central theme
or, at least, as a central reference point. But recently, there
has been an opening up and responses other than deep
hatred towards the enemy nation have wended their
way in. Though the release of a rabidly anti-Pakistan
film Gadar (Tumult, 2001) continues to be met with box-
office success, films like Main Hoon Na (Don’t Worry, I’m
Here, 2004) essay portrayals of Pakistan that are rather
more neutral if not more positive.
xii Filming the Line of Control
The reason for this is, of course, the ostensible easing of
the political tension between the two countries. The thaw in
relations has resulted in the opening up of the padlocks
on the iron gates separating them, for both cultural and
academic exchange. The coast is now clear for Pakistan-
friendly films. Already, the Yash Chopra hit, Veer-Zaara,
has romantically verbalised the need for both countries
to foster a
 Introduction xi

positive relationship. The change of heart is seen in the

new state policy of Pakistan that has allowed the
screening of Hindi films in Pakistani cinema houses.
Cultural exchange at the level of acting has also picked
up, with Pakistani and Indian actors picking up projects
with makers from across the line.
Obviously, this is the time to take stock. This volume
is a first effort in this direction. Academics and
filmmakers from all over the world have come together
in this commitment to a fresh, cultural assessment and
integration of the subcontinent, all recognising the fact
that the time has come for cinema and cinematic
colloquy across the border to be taken seriously. Even
otherwise, cinema has been recognised as one of the
most powerful of the visual media, needing to be studied
for its representations, for the creation and perpetuation
of stereotypes, and for the construction and deconstruction of
tradition. But in the context of the dynamics of
subcontinental relations, the need for this attention
becomes more piquant. As has already been pointed out,
the theme of patriotism in our films has been a veritable
barometer of the political climate of the two countries.
The essays included in this collection help trace the
historical trajectory of these relations: how films are
reflective of the tensions that simmer along the line of
control, and how cinema ultimately becomes a means to
understand the complex agenda of forging a sense of
‘nationality’ and the concept of nationhood in films and
how it sometimes moves away from political rhetoric to
iterate the need to maintain links of love and common
heritage.
A need to fully comprehend the dynamics of this
popular showing of culture, in the light of the improved,
ever-changing political atmosphere between India and
Pakistan, led to the idea of putting together a book
documenting the history of the relationship between the
two countries as represented in films. The need was also
felt to study films made in the two countries, to construct
the history of Indo- Pakistan relations, locating and
discussing the aspects that link the two sensibilities either in
divergence or in a coming together from a unique
perspective. Hence, the response to films with this thematic
brunt, and to Indian films in general, both within the two
xii Filming the Line of Control
countries and amongst the Pakistani and Indian diaspora, has
become an important part of this study. The involvement of
contributors from across the globe, of different
nationalities and ethnicities, goes a long way in proving
the basic premise of this exciting study: that the interest
of arriving at a better awareness of one of the most
crucial political and historical relationships in the
continent does not merely have a limited, ‘localised’
 Introduction xiii

value pertinent only to the subcontinental scholar. The

recognition of the key role of this relationship in world
politics and in the shaping of world history is critical for
the world scholar. This is a first holistic effort at
enhancing cultural and sociological understanding
through the focus on the unique confluence between
history and film studies. Through this, readers through
the world—not only those who claim some relationship
with the Indian subcontinent, however tenuous it may
be, by virtue of ethnicity or nationality—but all alert
world citizens who have their eye on the burgeoning
importance of the subcontinental players in the global
arena. It is hoped that this first, committed multi-pronged
approach would spur more such works, to bolster Indo-
Pak studies, indeed Indo-Pak relations.

II

With the motivating principle being the ‘honest’ impulse to

arrive at a fresh understanding of the India-Pakistan
association through its treatment in cinema, this volume
wilfully embarked on a journey and methodology that
would allow space for more than one genre of cinema,
more than one linguistic foray and more than one kind of
approach. The first essay, by Kishore Budha, attempts an
assessment of the overall situation by subjecting it to a
deep and incisive look. He traces ‘genre development’ in
the context of the current market conditions, with special
emphasis on the rise of the war film. He links the rise of
this genre to the growth of nationalistic fervour and the
formation of a national identity in the Indian
subcontinent.
With the scene thus set, Adrian Athique goes on to
examine the visualisation and narrative construction of the
India-Pakistan border. He focuses on the southern
portion of this border that runs from the southern bank
of the Sutlej river across the Thar desert to the Arabian
sea, and on the human interactions across that liminal
space, as depicted in two films directed by J. P. Dutta,
Refugee (2000) and Border (1997). Athique foregrounds the
necessary problematics of articulation that constitute
xiv Filming the Line of Control
these films and their attempts to reconcile the obvious
accidents of twentieth-century nation-building in the
subcontinent and the physical implausibility of the border
itself, within a redemptive nationalist rhetoric.
This analysis clears the ground for Rajinder Dudrah
to zoom in on key scenes from select films since post-
2000 that have explicitly
 Introduction xv

dealt with the border in contemporary Bollywood

cinema. He offers a close textual reading of the framing
and representation of the border as actual physical and
symbolic space in two films, in terms of aesthetic intent and
possible audience effects. Introducing his thematic with
preliminary remarks on Lakshya (The Objective, 2004), he
analyses in detail two mainstream cinematic texts, Main
Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara. The presence of the border
automatically recalls the act of border making. In the
case of the subcontinent this holocaustic event has been the
one most definitive and identifying event in its history,
coming back to prey on the minds of subcontinental
denizens over and over again. Little wonder that it has
repeatedly spurred filmmakers to take it up for cinematic
representation. Taking cognizance of this important
historical truth, Meenakshi Bharat looks at the dynamics
and politics of the adaptation of literary originals to the
cinematic medium, focusing on Pinjar (The Skeleton,
2003) and Earth 1947 (1988). The essay seeks to engage
with the changes in the perceptions of this single
cataclysmic historic event that cleft the Indian
subcontinent into two, India and Pakistan, as these
novels get transformed into visual montages. Bharat
lays bare the dynamics of the politics of adaptation that
underlies the making of the two films, making for two
totally different perceptions and positions on the event.
Claudia Preckel zeroes in on the treatment of women in
films dealing with the Partition, while highlighting the
complicating and defining factors of community, religion
and nationality in Gadar, Pinjar and Earth. Savi Munjal’s ‘
“Broken Memories, Incomplete Dreams”: Notes towards
an “Authentic” Partition Cinema’, vindicates realism in
contemporary cinema by examining the ways in which
the choice of genre colours the ideological leanings of
Partition cinema. It adopts a relativist approach towards
history and argues for a plurality of equally credible
histories. The article examines Sabiha Sumar’s Khamosh
Pani (Silent Waters, 2003) as an example of feminist
historiography and compares it to mainstream Bollywood
melodrama. The central premise is the treatment of the
auteur as a historian who uses the visual-auditory
discourse to transpose history onto screen. Kamayani
xvi Filming the Line of Control
Kaushiva treats of the other front of the Partition, the
part of the ‘Indo-Pak’ border that is normally sidelined
and never gets cinematic coverage—the eastern front.
She takes up the central and continuous concern of
Partition and its impact in Ghatak’s evocative Bangla
trilogy, Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-capped Star, 1960),
Komal Gandhar (E-flat,
1961) and Subarnarekha (The Golden Line, 1962).
 Introduction xvii

But sixty years down the historical line, a generation

removed from the experience of Partition, possibly born
of parents who are themselves post-Partition children,
has come to occupy centre stage. Sunny Singh points out
that, distanced from the Partition of 1947, the generation
that is now increasingly coming to the fore as filmmakers
and viewers of Hindi commercial cinema are thus marked
by changed historical perceptions, which impact on national
self-image and identity formation. In the past ten years,
commercial Hindi cinema has begun addressing these
changes in a variety of ways. Drawing on films as
different as Maachis (Matchstick, 1996), Border, Gadar, Phir
Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani (Yet the Heart is Indian, 2000),
Sarfarosh (The Martyr, 1999), Lakshya, Main Hoon Na, Veer-
Zaara, and Khakee (Uniform, 2004), among others, the
essay considers how these films mediate, legitimise or,
indeed, subvert entrenched Pakistan-centric political
discourse through the use of content, theme, star-power
or, indeed, auteur-intent. It attempts to demonstrate the
gradual but distinct move by Hindi cinema from a
Pakistan-centric and Partition- related construct of the
national self-image to an increasingly self- reflexive and
self-reflective one.
Carrying this reflective strain forward is Nirmal
Kumar’s essay in which he examines the irony of two
cinematic cross-border love stories being filmed by
directors who originally hail from Punjab, the state most
devastated by the Partition of the Indian subcontinent.
Veer-Zaara and Henna (1991), made in different times and
by two widely different kinds of directors, represent a
combination of astute market savviness and popular
filmmaking. He analyses the thematic concerns of these
films both at the wider political level and at the level of
gender, taking into account the complications that arise
at the knitting junctions of these two threads.
Aparna Sharma takes up the genre that is often
forgotten when the ‘biggies’ come up for consideration.
She closely examines the ethnographic documentary, My
Brother, My Enemy (2005), set against the backdrop of the
Samsung India Pakistan Cricket series, made by two
young filmmakers from India and Pakistan, positing it as
a presentation of a complex view involving personal
xviii Filming the Line of Control
histories where politics, propaganda and history
intermingle. She specifically studies the film’s camera
choreography, in particular its use of the telephoto lens,
which she argues parallels the filmmakers’ ideological
stance in the film that is clearly critical of the mindless
jingoism both nations display in relation to one another,
embedding the discussion in the
 Introduction xix

cinematic philosophy of French philosopher Giles

Deleuze, and the constructivist discourse within the
ambit of film theory and social anthropology.
From behind the camera, Shakuntala Banaji moves
beyond it to the reception of the finished product.
Intrigued by the partisan nationalist sentiments, the
xenophobia and anti-Pakistan rhetoric in India and
amongst sections of the diaspora in everyday contexts, that
have frequently been called upon and utilised by
governments and/or fascist organisations, with divisive and
traumatic consequences, she chooses to conduct an
extended, in-depth qualitative study into texts and
contexts, personal and group identities. In an effort to
analyse the unremitting concern expressed about the
effects of Hindi films, especially ones that choose to
represent Pakistan and Pakistanis, she carried out
interviews over a two and a half year period outside and
inside Hindi film showings at cinema halls in Bombay
and London, two cities with large Hindi-film viewing
populations. This article is a distillation of around eighty
brief public interviews conducted with young Indian and
South Asian viewers, both individually and in groups, and
thirty-six in-depth interviews lasting between one and
four hours, engaging issues of religion, nation, romance,
violence, ethnicity, family, gender, and sexuality in life
and films. Whilst at the same time considering the ways in
which these young viewers from different classes and
locations experience films about the nationalist conflict
between India and Pakistan and religious violence in the
present historical arena, this article specifically addresses
questions about the political significance of the meanings
attributed to film representations of romance and
national identify as well as religious and xenophobic
violence between Indians and Pakistanis and, in India, within
communities with different histories and experiences.
Banaji argues that the ways and contexts in which
commercial Hindi films choose to depict issues of India-
Pakistan tension and violence, although often accurately
labelled by critics as dangerously conservative and
ideologically suspect, can have unanticipated
implications for—and be interpreted in surprising,
critical and liberatory ways by—some young viewers.
xx Filming the Line of Control
Having thus given honest space to both the film theorist
and the
practitioner of the craft, to the sophisticated, ‘literate’
viewer and the ‘ordinary’ spectator, finally come the
voices of the people who are making cinematic history,
filmmakers, directors, and commentators. First, from
across the border, is the voice of Aijaz Gul, leading film
 Introduction xxi

critic, himself desirous of subjecting Pakistani films to

the kind of scrutiny that we have endeavoured to give to
films in this volume. His observations about the Pakistani
film industry and the link between the two nations as
seen in films give the reader the much needed ‘other’
perspective. To complete the picture, Tavishi Alagh, herself
an independent filmmaker, draws out the responses of three
stalwarts from the Hindi film industry who have, at some
point or the other in their work and in their lives, given
thought to the erection and demolition of The Fence: M.S.
Sathyu, maker of Garam Hawa, the quintessential film that
critiques the drawing of the border, the first real
Partition film; and Javed Akhtar, with his sensitive yet
sharp comments on the ‘ghost’ of the dividing line, both
in films and in reality and how the two ultimately
converge. Mahesh Bhatt comments on the connection
between the two countries in his blood and in his work.

III

Keeping in mind the wide embrace of the approaches thus

essayed in the volume, and acknowledging the
burgeoning importance of the vibrant field of film studies,
this text attempts to locate a fresh dynamic entry point
into this area of enquiry, examining a sphere not hitherto
touched. The effort has been to steer clear of adding to
what Ashis Nandy calls ‘the proliferation of insipid,
mechanical works on cinema’ (Nandy 2003). The
intention has been to enable fresh scholars at the local
level to see the possibilities in the field and to facilitate
an analysis of the intersections of the various aspects of
such a study. At the broader level, those who have never
been exposed to such views will be brought face to face
with ‘insiders’ perspectives’. Further, the volume
recognises the importance of maintaining an inter-disciplinary
alertness to historical, sociological and even economic
reverberations. It is this in-depth multi-pronged approach
that marks the commitment of the researchers and editors
of this volume. We are invigorated by the newness of the
foray and hope that this will spur more such works, to
bolster Indo-Pak studies in general, and thus to create the
space for a healthy intellectual and genuine dialogue.
xxii Filming the Line of Control

Negotiating the Border

2 Kishore
Budha
 1
Genre Development in the Age of Markets
and Nationalism: The War Film
Kishore Budha

Not only do industrial and journalistic labels and terms constitute crucial
evidence for an understanding of both the industry’s and the audience’s
generic perceptions in the present; they also offer virtually the only
available evidence for a historical study of the array of genres in
circulation, or of the ways in which individual films have been
generically perceived at any point in time.
—Stephen Neale, Genre and Hollywood,
1999

‘We have never had a war film … all we have had are love stories
told against a backdrop of a war.’
—Aamir Hussain, quoted in Pearson, ‘War pix storm theatres’, 2003

F ilm criticism in the media has played a key role in

sustaining Indian cinema. Indeed, in the absence of journals
such as Cahiers du Cinema
or sustained academic study, journalistic criticism and
reporting has helped shape the industry. Higson places
film criticism as one of the ways to explore national
cinemas.1 Furthering this approach, Darrell William Davis
has proposed three ‘models of reflections’—or criticism—
about a national film industry. These are: the reflectionist
model, which evaluates a national film industry in relation
to national politics; the dialogic model, which examines
the similarities and differences between a national
cinema and other national cinemas; and the
contaminated model, which considers national cinema to
be a compartment of a larger international institution
(see Davis 1996: 17–25). The study of national cinemas
in an age of globalisation is considered essential to
examine perceived threats of assimilation within larger
transnational systems of entertainment, culture, and
economics.2 It has been argued that economic
deregulation, ushered in the early nineties, has
impacted the media industries to cause
4 Kishore Budha

historical disjunctures.3 It is in the above-mentioned

contexts that this paper examines discussions of the war
film in English-language newspapers between 1997 and
2006. The public space is a rich site to understand the
collective of interest groups. These discussions reveal in
various nuances the concepts, concerns, and themes about
the war film in industrial, aesthetic, ideological, cultural,
and political terms. Thus, through a discursive analysis
of statements and journalistic criticism published in
newspapers, this article reveals three major themes—
nationalism; the state, economics and cinema; and aesthetic
criticism of form and style. The discourse substantiates
historical continuities in cinema’s relationship with
dominant socio-cultural formations, late capital’s
inability to formally subsume cinema, and journalistic
criticism obsessed with (western) cinematic realism. Here, the
conclusions point to a validation of Higson’s argument
that an analysis of national cinema:
… would need to take into account the range of and relation
between discourses about films circulating within that cultural
and social formation and their relative accessibility to different
audiences. (Higson 1995: 279)

It is argued that the tension between intellectual

discourse and political discourse about patriotism needs
to be negotiated by the industry. Thus, the industry needs
to put forward an institutionalised class of texts by setting
rules and expectations about the concerns of the genre,
instead of letting the vagaries of India’s relationship with
Pakistan prevail on film production and aesthetics. This
would require working closely with journalist-critics, who
are well placed to counter dominant political discourse.
In their seminal study of ‘classical’ Hollywood,
Bordwell et al (1988) demonstrated how, besides modes
of production and norms of narratives, discourse played
a crucial role in setting the rules and expectations about
the concerns of a cinema—such as film form, genre and
modes—in the form of statements and assumptions
found in trade journals, technical manuals, memoirs, and
publicity handouts. The repeated articulation of these
notions helped the industry to cement a distinct
approach to film form or style. Examining the case of the
 Genre Development in the Age of Markets and Nationalism 5
Hindi film industry, Prasad (1998) and Pendakur (2003)
have argued that the Hindi film’s disaggregated nature is
the cause of the fragmented ideological nature of the
Indian state; the mercantile nature of capital in the film
industry; the role of the state in regulating cinema,
especially through the instrument of censorship; and
the
6 Kishore Budha

elite nature of film criticism biased towards

verisimilitude. They have argued that late capital would
formally subsume the production process, thereby
rationalising film form. Here it is important to look at the
relationship between industry and genre development.
Altman (1984) Neale (1999) and Schatz (1981) have
argued that genres are defined by the industry and
accepted by the audience, and the genre reaffirms what
the audience believes at both individual and communal
levels. Altman (1984) states that genres negotiate the
relationship between a specific production system and a
given audience. This implies that greater managerial and
professional control over the way film texts are conceived,
produced, discussed, and sold would lead to stable genres
and new aesthetic possibilities.4 Indeed, cinema is seen as part
of a larger scheme of ‘deregulation’ and Indian industry’s
inevitable assimilation into global consumption. For
example, Sudip Talukdar (2004), writing in The Times of India,
argued that the film industry was a mismatch with other
industries, which had been globally competitive. This belies
the deterministic view of critics who see cinema eventually
realising a global aesthetic of realism. The phenomenon this
paper seeks to highlight is the dichotomy of this position
with the reality of the way the industry sees itself—
firmly embedded in the ideology of the nation-state. A
close examination of journalistic discourse, industry
statements, and right-wing politics reveals positions that are
continuous with the period preceding deregulation. Late
capital has been unable to certify the genre and this
makes the war film open to interpretations and cooptation
by right-wing politics. Different interest groups push
competing agendas, and fears of political-commercial
propagandist takeover are exaggerated, though, going
by the fears expressed by filmmakers such as Mahesh
Bhatt, the threat has not gone away. This can be attributed
to the fact that, despite active journalistic support for
change, the industry has been unable to advance a
stable genre structure. Instead, the sporadic success of
jingoistic films made by independent filmmakers gives them
a larger space in the media, though the war film in its
current form has been proven to be unreliable at the box
office. This has significant implications for industry
 Genre Development in the Age of Markets and Nationalism 7
practices, as negotiating the genre with the audience
directly would help reduce the linkages between
production and right-wing politics. Some answers lie in the
success of films made by newcomer directors aimed at
urban audiences that challenge the dominant war-film
form. The article is divided into three sections—right-wing
politics and cinema; economics and the war film; and
journalistic criticism.
8 Kishore Budha

Nationalism, Patriotism

The Context: Border and Right-wing Politics

Discussions of the war film have to be placed in the

context of the rise of right-wing politics during the
1980s, the eventual electoral victory of the BJP in 1998
and the box-office success of Border (J. P. Dutta 1997).
After Haqeeqat (Reality, Chetan Anand 1964), Dutta’s
Border (1997) is considered a landmark film. On release, it
played to packed houses while generating protests
amongst Muslims as far as Bradford in the UK. While
denouncing the film for its ‘concomitant rancour against
the more brutal, less intelligent and unduly aggressive
opponent’ (Nikhat Kazmi cited in Varma 1997), critical
reaction to the film was mixed. Mitu Varma argued that
the film was after all a ‘Bollywood film’ with its formulaic
fare of romance and songs. On a more critical note,
Firoze Rangoonwalla and Nikhat Kazmi played down the
film’s media effects (cited in Varma 1997). Despite the
critics’ dismissal of the film’s significance, Mitu Varma
reported that the film had generated concerns in certain
quarters about the timing of the film, given the ongoing
diplomatic engagement. There is clearly anxiety and
excitement over the perceived power of mass media—on
the one hand it warrants anxiety and fears, while belief in
media-effects makes it a target to be coopted for the
purposes of propaganda. This creates the conditions for
filmmakers to take sides with those in power and
undermine the industrial development of genre.

War Films, Right Wing Politics, Patriotism

Right wing politics has always seen mass media as

propagating conservative ideas of nationalism and
patriotism. Their arguments stem from the belief in
media effects as well as the soft power of Hindi cinema
in creating and sustaining imagery, myths and legends
about the nation. Pratibha Advani, daughter of BJP leader
Lal Krishna Advani, produced a documentary on the
‘essence of patriotism in Hindi films’. The documentary,
Ananya Bharati, stressed the role of Hindi films in
promoting patriotism (see Pisharoty 2005). Writing in
 Genre Development in the Age of Markets and Nationalism 9
the journal of the BJP’s ideological mentor, the RSS, she
explained:

As an art form that strikes the chords of both emotion and

intellect, the power of cinema is unmatched. Naturally,
Indian cinema has contributed immensely to the cultivation
of this uniting and uplifting feeling of
10 Kishore
Budha
nationalism. Patriotic films, as a special and much-admired
genre of Indian cinema, have had a tremendous impact on
our people, cutting across religious, regional, linguistic and
economic identities. Moreover, they have also proved their
unsurpassed power of communicating both to educated and
illiterate masses.
For most Indians, cinema is the enduring source of the
image of their nation as a vast and diverse land bound by
the Himalayas in the north, surrounded by oceans on three
sides, girdled by sacred rivers like the Ganga, Yamuna, and
Godavari, and blessed with captivating natural beauty and rich
resources. For them it is also the primary source of
knowledge about our national heroes, martyrs, the struggles
and sacrifices of our forefathers, the work of our social
reformers, the wars of the pre-and-post-Independence era,
including the recent and ongoing war against cross-border
terrorism, and our achievements as a free and democratic
nation.
Thus, few can contest Indian cinema’s, particularly Hindi
cinema’s, unmatched contribution to strengthening the bonds
of national integration, countering divisive feelings, educating
the people about our shared national history and, through all
this, re-enforcing in them pride and love for the Motherland.
(Advani 2005: 22)

The BJP’s media policy, outlined in 1998, clearly

articulates a normative function position:

The BJP believes that, a healthy polity and democracy

cannot survive without the support of an extra-political moral
order which the democratic political order cannot itself
impose on its citizens. This belief is also the emerging belief
of more advanced democracies that are experiencing a
steep slide in morality which is endangering the very idea of
orderly society. (BJP 1998)

Filmmakers such as J.P. Dutta echo piety to this

argument and remind the industry of its patriotic duties
and obligation towards the martyr:

I don’t care about the industry…. They would rather have me

shoot inane films in Switzerland. I only care for the mother
of a dead war hero who rings me up and blesses me. (J.P.
Dutta cited in Unnithan 2003)

Dutta’s enthusiasm and willingness to be appropriated

 Genre Development in the Age of Markets and Nationalism 11
by the BJP discourse was fed to a large extent by the
production assistance he received from the Indian Army
and by his proximity to politicians who found his
sympathies useful to further their own goals. In return
for his patriotic championing he received production
support from the
12 Kishore
Budha
Indian Army5 while hobnobbing with right-wing
politicians helped him gain publicity for his film. Key
ministers from the BJP government cabinet, including
Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee and Deputy Prime
Minister L. K. Advani, turned up for the premiere of LOC
—Kargil (2003; see Gelder 2004). News reports observed
that the promotional events preceding the release of LOC—
Kargil played up the militaristic posturing. The release of
the film music was marked by the presence of officers who
took part in the Kargil war, fiery speeches, and a degree
of nationalism not ‘normally seen in the otherwise
bubblegum world of Bollywood’ (see Mirani 2003). In the
political arena, Pakistan and India were used in
gendered metaphors, i.e., to create imageries of the
vulnerability of the Indian nation, necessitating extreme
caution, military empowerment, and the normalisation of
violence against a Muslim Pakistan by avenging the
wrongs of the past atrocities against a Hindu India.6 At the
height of the BJP’s rise, the spectre of atrocities against
Indian women was invoked to justify the nuclear bomb.
The naming of the external Muslim enemy also functions
to indirectly remind India of the internal manifestation of
that enemy, the Muslim citizen. Emboldened by the US
declaration of the ‘war on terror’, the BJP raised the
stakes of the game by talking of a swift victory against
Pakistan to teach it a lesson. At the same time, the party
was busy ‘fanning the nationalist sentiment created by the
crisis with Pakistan’, in the hope that it would benefit the
party in crucial state elections later in 2002.7 Shiv Sena,
an important right-wing ally of the BJP, engaged in
lumpen activities such as digging up cricket pitches before
India-Pakistan matches or issuing threats to film actors who
engaged in any activity with Pakistan.
Such political developments created the environment
for the film and television industries to believe that there
was a market for content centred on jingoistic patriotism.
During the rule of the BJP from 1994 to 2004, many films
were made with storylines and attitudes reflecting the
party’s conservative stance, emphasising family values and
religious patriotism. A survey of the news media shows
that the television and film industries had appropriated
the Kargil conflict by announcing a slate of films,
 Genre Development in the Age of Markets and Nationalism 13
producing chat shows, inserting war into existing soap
plots, and releasing patriotic music compilations. The
retail industry too organised special sales towards the
war veterans fund, while painters and fashion designers
organised fund-raising events. ‘Kargil is a cake and
everybody wants a slice’ (Jain et al. 1999). Some
editorials sarcastically commented that the film industry’s
fixation with the war
14 Kishore
Budha
was so as to cash in on the situation rather than to
develop a war- film aesthetic. This view was based on a
comparison with Hollywood films such as Saving Private
Ryan, which, such editorials argued, were ‘masterpieces’.
The Hindi war film was criticised for its ‘absurdity,
clumsiness, bizarre plot twists, and canned nationalism as a
prop for the standard mundane love story’. This judgement
rested on comparisons with what was considered true
representations of the Vietnam war with fears that
comparative representations in Hindi films led to ‘the
trivialisation of the issue by well-meaning but entirely
misguided individuals’ (Anon 1999). It was a different
matter that the industry was unable to sustain
commodified nationalism, as a majority of the ‘patriotic’
films failed at the box office during 2002.8

Economics, the State, and the Film Industry

Pakistan as Market·Threats versus Opportunities

In comparison to the enthusiasm shown by the media

industries to capitalise on the anti-Pakistani rhetoric
unleashed by the extensive media coverage of the Kargil
war, the lowering of Indo-Pak tensions by 2004 led to a
dramatic turnaround. The Indian film industry today is
no longer considered an unorganised sector that is
funded, managed and organised by mercantile capitalists.
Well integrated into the economy and recognised by
government and industry bodies,9 the new capital seeks
to maximise itself rather than occupy itself with concerns of
genre development. In the lowering of the rhetoric against
Pakistan, producers see economic opportunities in a
large Pakistani market. However, it is only a shift in
discourse that permits voicing such opportunities. The
Film Producers Guild of India, a significant industry
body, has been emboldened by developments to openly
acknowledge the opportunities offered by the Pakistani
exhibition market. Komal Nahta, a trade analyst,
claimed that the Pakistan exhibition could provide the
leading producers excess revenues of 50 million rupees
(see Ansari 2004).
Not only does this reflect the new liberal economics of
 Genre Development in the Age of Markets and Nationalism 15
the country,
but also masks the hegemonic ambitions of the Hindi
film in the region. Pakistani producers are acutely aware of
this threat but, unable to acknowledge their own
vulnerability to the soft power of Hindi films, they raise
alarms of damage to the moral fabric of Pakistani
society. The problem has been exacerbated by satellite
television and
16 Kishore
Budha
home video, both of which have undermined the local
exhibition sector. Though exhibitors stand to gain from
the screening of Hindi films, analysis of policy
statements of the Pakistan Culture Ministry reveals that
Hindi cinema is viewed with hostility, requiring
intervention by the state by encouraging tie-ups with
other film industries—even when the proposed tie-ups
are with film industries that have little or no aesthetic
similarities. In a recent national conclave on the future of
the film industry, the Federal Culture Ministry invited
producers and filmmakers to find ways to arrest the
decline of the exhibition sector. Given that the woes of
the distribution and exhibition sectors could be alleviated
by allowing access to Hindi films, it appeared odd that
their representatives were kept out of the conference.
Said minister
G. G. Jamal: ‘…the government would encourage Pakistani
filmmakers to co-produce films with those from other
countries such as Iran and China, and the culture
ministries of Iran, China and Pakistan would hold talks in
this regard soon’ (Ahmed 2006). The official support for
production partnerships with countries other than India,
within a week of declaring that no more Indian films
would be screened in Pakistan, betrays the fears of a
cinema that is perceived as hegemonic (see Anon 2005;
Anon 2006a; Anon 2006b; Kamal 2004).

The Film Industry and War Films

Despite the opportunities offered by the Pakistani market,

the Indian film industry is unable to leverage a position of
strength. This is partly due to governmental control via the
instrument of censorship, which has created a culture of
self-restraint, and the proximity of influential independent
filmmakers who are reported to be close to the political
elites. Evidence demonstrates that filmmakers have
historically reconciled to governmental control over what
can and cannot be shown on film screens. Thus, cinema
functions as a reflector of the political establishment
instead of acting as an independent intellectual force.
Given the powers of the Central Board of Film
Certification, which, by its own admission, argues that
 Genre Development in the Age of Markets and Nationalism 17
censorship is ‘not only desirable, but also necessary’,10 the
film industry finds it necessary to acquiesce to the
dominant political ideology. Pendakur and Prasad have
adequately highlighted the role of censorship in
regulating cinema. This leads to constant shifts about
what constitutes a successful film, largely dependant on
political dispensation. The interdependence between
reception and production, which Neale (1999) and
Schatz (1981)
18 Kishore
Budha
argue is driven by mutual negotiation leading to genre
development, is instead manipulated by political discourse.
Thus, genre development is based on the sporadic success
of films that are linked to political events. Trade analysts
attributed the rash of war films in 2001 to the success of
anti-Pakistani rhetoric in Gadar (Tumult, 2001) and the
colonial-era nationalist film, Lagaan (The Tax, 2001; see
Bamzai 2001). In contrast, by 2004, while the political
discourse became amiable to relations between India
and Pakistan, producers were ‘busy working cross-
border camaraderie into their scripts’ (Ansari 2004).
That year, Times of India reported that Nitin Manmohan’s
Vande Mataram (Salute to the Motherland, 2004) on the
1971 war had been shelved and Sarhad Paar (Across the
Border, 2006), a war film starring Sanjay Dutt, was

being adapted to the peace mood, even though the film was
largely in the can…. More significantly, director Anil
Sharma, whose last two films: Gadar—Ek Prem Katha and The
Hero—unabashedly rode the jingoistic wave, seems to have
amended the tone of his latest film, Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan
Saathiyon. (Ansari 2004)

Filmmakers such as Mahesh Bhatt, considered

uncompromising in their stand against right-wing politics,
see the mellowing as hibernating patriotism. ‘If right-wing
Hindus come to power on anti-Pakistan rhetoric, then
this wave will fade away. I would say that we’re on the
edge. Hatred is a very difficult emotion to neutralize.’
(Bhatt cited in Browne 2004). Given the change in
relations between the governments of India and Pakistan,
filmmakers were quick to distance themselves from
positions that were cheered earlier. Director Farhan Akhtar
took pains to clarify that Lakshya (The Objective, 2004)
merely used the war as a backdrop to explore struggles
of individuality (see Ansari 2004; Kumar Singh 2004;
Singh 2004). The failure of Maa Tujhe Salaam (Salute to
my Motherland, 2006) led Sunny Deol to distance
himself from patriotism and stick to ‘straightforward
dramas’ (cited in Deshmukh 2002). This change in
tactics can be attributed to change in political climate,
coupled with extensive media coverage of the Indian
cricket tour of Pakistan, which portrayed lay Pakistanis
 Genre Development in the Age of Markets and Nationalism 19
positively. Some filmmakers completely reshot parts of
their films, toning down the anti-Pakistan rhetoric.
Notwithstanding the differences of opinion surrounding
genre theory, filmmakers’ constantly shifting arguments
about the structure of the war film indicates a general
inability to put forth ‘an institutionalised class
20 Kishore
Budha
of texts’—films that are systematically negotiated with
the audience through conceptualisation, production,
marketing, and modification based on extent of success.
Stephen Neale (2003) stresses the financial advantages to
any film industry from an aesthetic regime based on
regulated difference, contained variety, pre-sold expectations,
and the re-use of labour and materials. He refers to the
commodification of mass-art, a necessary requirement
for economic exploitation. Thus, the film industry’s
inability to develop a stable structure for the war film not
only highlights managerial shortcomings but also the
overall nature of capital within the film industry.11 The
discourse of war films shows that genre in Indian
cinema is not subject to advanced capitalist conditions of
production, distribution and exchange. Instead of producers
and managers, the agenda of its production is defined by
influential independent filmmakers, trade spokespersons and
politicised members of the industry. The chair of the
Central Board of Film Certification has been particularly
prone to partisanship; it is a political appointment,
characterised by eminent publications such as The Hindu and
Frontline as a seat reserved for ‘friends or sycophants’. 12
Nothing reflected this more than the arguments of
Anupam Kher, its chair between 2003 and 2004. He
argued that filmmakers ought to make films that
benefited political realities. Dev Anand, brother of the late
Vijay Anand, who vigorously campaigned for reformation
of India’s cinema laws, was the only voice that argued
that the reality of history required wars to be examined
from different sides as long as it was not propaganda
(see Anon 2004b).

Journalistic Criticism

Film critics with major publications such as The Indian

Express, India Today, Hindustan Times, and non-Indian ones
such as Observer and Variety can be considered critical and
insightful in writing about Hindi films. This criticism is
informative and often refers to a wide body of films within
and outside India, widening the scope of the discourse.
For example, Kermode (2004) finds that in the
representation of Pakistanis as wicked adversaries in
 Genre Development in the Age of Markets and Nationalism 21
Deewaar (Luthria 2004), Maa Tujhe Salaam, Mission Kashmir
(Chopra 2000), Lakshya are similar to the ‘Boche of British
war films or the ‘gooks’ of American Vietnam films’. While
being critical, they also instruct readers to look beyond
the ‘typical Bollywood film’. It should be cautioned here
that this is not reflective of all reviews and features about
films and should not
22 Kishore
Budha
be considered a generalisation of the entire English-
language press, though reviewers with smaller
newspapers are considered pliant in their writing.13

Critics and the Rhetoric of Modernisation

Film critics in media categorise the film industry as

unresponsive and rigid; they characterise the industry as
being obsessed with formulaic themes that are no longer
relevant to contemporary audiences, who, they claim, are
part of ‘a new unfolding reality’ and among whom, they
argue, a quite revolution is taking place. Popular cultural
production is argued to be out of touch with changes
taking place in Indian society. While periodically
admonishing the big three production houses—Yashraj
Films, Mukta Arts and Dharma Productions—they cite
low-budget filmmakers such as Mani Shankar, Mohit
Suri and Onir, advising the big three to not ‘cling to old
habits’ Saibal Chatterjee (2005), in particular, has
consistently railed at what he sees as the film
establishment, calling it an ‘iron grid’ of ideology that
refuses to confront reality. In a particularly scathing
instance, he accused it of choosing to remain in the
safety of palliating productions of ‘action, romance,
emotions and comedy’. With particular reference to war
films, filmmakers are charged with overuse of the
jingoistic formula and not attending to the changing
expectations of young spectators. Such critics,
responding to what they perceive as the interests of
their readers, actively promote an alternative aesthetic.
This is illustrated in the discussions surrounding the
success of Rang De Basanti (Colour Me Saffron, 2006) in
2006, which recommend narratives of reflexivity instead
of taking spectators for granted.14 The continuing
disapproval of Hindi films by newspaper critics has
shepherded filmmakers into a guarded relationship with
them. While courting mass media for publicity, during
pre-release they are careful to stress that their
particular film is not a reissue of the war film formula. In
Farhan Akhtar’s interviews to the press, he was keen to
distance his film Lakshya from earlier war films and stress
that the Kargil war was merely a plot device to narrate a
 Genre Development in the Age of Markets and Nationalism 23
coming-of-age story (for example, Ansari 2004; Rao 2004;
Singh 2004). Despite his box- office success with Dil Chahta
Hai (Do Your Thing, 2001) and the film’s critical acclaim,
Lakshya met with limited box-office success, though it
earned the critics’ praise for its style and production values
(Anupama Chopra 2005).
24 Kishore
Budha
A key factor behind the emerging cracks in the Hindi
film form is the entry of multiplex operators in the
exhibition sector, which allows producers to also make
urban-specific films. The emergence of multiplex exhibition
provided exhibitors and distributors opportunities to juggle
capacities, tap into segmented urban audiences and
therefore explore newer aesthetic possibilities.15 This
audience is seen as enmeshed in the culture industry,
driving the film industry to court ‘elite’ critics. The
producers of Tango Charlie (2005) chartered a twenty-
seater plane to ferry television and print journalists to
the Indo-Pakistan border. This worked to mutual
benefit, generating publicity for the film’s producers
while providing ‘news’ for the media.16

Form and Style

Sustained informed critique of the war film genre, or, for

that matter, other film genres is seen to be absent.
Whatever critique remains, relegates cinematic discussion
to the polemics of style. Sudip Talukdar wonders how, in
the age of television and DVD when audiences
encounter the realism and verisimilitude of Hollywood
war films, the disaggregated form of the Hindi film17 can
fit with a genre such as war. He argues:
A potential cinematic milestone has been sunk by the
deadweight of songs, flashbacks and expletives, out of sync
with a battle zone, where survival alone dictates every other
consideration…. In other words, Bollywood, by its very
being and circumstance, is rather mismatched with a genre
configured on a different set of skills, attitudes, aptitudes
and expertise. (Talukdar 2004)

For Talukdar, the central organising feature of war films

is realism; he is representative of the English language
critics’ yearning for ‘cinematic realism’. For such critics
Indian cinema is destined to ultimately unshackle itself
from the dominant—and by implication— backward film
form and join the inevitable global aesthetic of realism, the
same way as other industries have been unshackled from
economic controls. Such critics draw parallels between film
producers and other Indian industries that service global
 Genre Development in the Age of Markets and Nationalism 25
customers and exhort the former to set ‘higher goals for
themselves’. The assumption here is that only in the
realist aesthetic can Hindi film depict true and
meaningful representation. This polemic is part of a
historical continuity of media discourse that is divided
between a preference for continuity
26 Kishore
Budha
editing versus star publicity and gossip. Though it is
Pendakur (2003) who informs us of this distinction, this
research shows a new trend intensified by a rapidly
expanding mass media and the influence of capitalist
concerns. Previously an elite concern, contemporary mass
media discourse is inclusive of producers, distributors and
exhibitors shunned earlier. The entry of capitalists into
what was the preserve of left-leaning intellectuals has led
to the legitimisation of ‘mass appeal’ and the logic of the
free market. It is pertinent to note that beyond arguing
for mass appeal there is little analysis of aesthetics in a
free market. Nevertheless, the insights of industry
spokespersons appear to validate the case for active
spectators. They are significant players in the shaping of the
film aesthetic and underscore the gap between what the
industry considers economic reality and the elite view of
cinema and society. Commenting on the box office
performance of LOC—Kargil, exhibitor Yogesh Oza said:
‘The film has a lot of ingredients to make it look very real
and impressive. But it is not like Border which had mass
appeal.’ Clearly, spectators do not share the critics’
aesthetic opinion and seem unimpressed by realism.
Some trade critics even suggest sticking to the Hindi
film form and style. Komal Nahta argued that there was
‘so much realism in the movie because of which it seems
like a documentary on war. It is too repetitive, too
realistic and too lengthy.’ What follows is the prescription
to stick to the ‘escapist form of entertainment rather than
something so real’.18

The War Film Canon

There is little contention that Haqeeqat is canonical for

war films. Eminent film journalist Bhawana Somayya
signals it as ‘pathbreaking’ and the ‘first widely-acclaimed
war-film (Somayya 1997)’. However, this criticism is more
an exercise in auteurism than a desire to group, classify
and find typicality—time honoured traditions in the
acquisition of knowledge—to evaluate subsequent films.
Thus Haqeeqat and Border are praised for their directorial
vision and faithfulness to the motif of the heroism of the
Indian solider. Talukdar (2004) emphasises that Haqeeqat
 Genre Development in the Age of Markets and Nationalism 27
should be recognised because its

portrayal of the soldier’s psyche, both in war and in peacetime, is

unmatched for realism. Stark shots of jawans in Haqeeqat,
bereft of equipment, numbers, supplies, artillery or air
support, who die defending their posts in sub-zero
temperatures against an external enemy….
28 Kishore
Budha
Unnithan (2003) credits Border with validating the
war-epic as a genre in the industry. Similarities are
drawn with Haqeeqat for its motif of valour. However,
unlike Haqeeqat’s motif of unflinching gallantry in the face
of defeat, heroism in Border culminates in victory over the
adversary. The film’s box office success is attributed to
the novelty of this closure and the fact that a war film
had been made after a long hiatus. Border is reported to
have grossed Rs 400 million. Dutta’s auteurism in
straddling ‘the two worlds of art and commercial cinema’
was emphasised (Varma 1997), while Unnithan located
Dutta’s individual style in lavish budgets, harsh terrains,
and casting excesses. Readings of film criticism in the
mass media since 1997 demonstrate a tendency to append
facts and legends about auteurs and their films rather than
to build an informed discussion. There was no discussion
about the vast array of subjects—war, history, nationalism,
masculinity—that could have been debated. Though
critics were generally unanimous in critiquing the Hindi
film form, the success of films such as Border was met with
unenthusiastic acknowledgement and the customary
veering off into film form.19 When subsequent war films
failed at the box office, critics were quick to point to the
rhetorical excessiveness. Remi Fournier Lanzoni argues
that auteur-narrated films have a greater sensitivity
towards contemporary situations and that they force
audiences to be an active force (2002). The fixation with
verisimilitude appears to turn the focus of mass media to
criticism of form and style, rather than question the
ideological fantasies of such films. What follows is a blind
spot of film criticism. The constant clamour for visual
realism whittles away Alexandre Astruc’s argument of the
tyranny of what is visual—image for the sake of it,
serving the demand of the narrative, achieving the goals
of realism and social fantasy (1968).

A New Reflexive Cinema?

While it would be tempting to raise the spectre of right-

wing com- munitarian politics, productions such as Swades
(Homeland, 2004) and Rang De Basanti (2006) have not only
bucked the trend, but avoided jingoism and anti-Pakistani
 Genre Development in the Age of Markets and Nationalism 29
rhetoric. Swades adapts Nehruvian ideology in the globalised
age. Its plot has the protagonist Mohan Bhargav
stumble into India’s forgotten hinterland in search of his
childhood nanny. This starts off a process of self-
identification with rural India, which forces him to
confront the bleakness of life there. Having led an
30 Kishore
Budha
economically and intellectually rewarding life in the West,
he decides to stay on and help ‘his people’. In his
interactions with the village residents Mohan concludes
that the solution to their problems lie in empowerment
through self-sufficiency. Mohan demonstrates that
prosperity can be attained by scientific and engineering
interventions, which provides the village water and
electricity. This hyphenated identification with both the
individualistic wages of economic migration and the
need to contribute with actions to alleviate rural poverty
are attempts to recontextualise Nehruvian ideology in an
era of globalisation. Gowariker’s interviews to the media
confirm this hypothesis: ‘If you have the opportunity, you
must go abroad, study, work and make your money. But
after a substantial amount of time, look back at what
you’ve left behind and see if you can contribute in any way’
(Gowarikar cited in Anon 2004a) argues for the Swades
benefits of the Nehruvian ideological state apparatus,
suggesting a clearly defined programme of rural
development through motifs of modernity, application of
science and technology, and self-sufficiency. In such
relations, rural Indians are the bearers of the incomplete
nationalist project. Such portrayals ignore the reality of
radical rural movements such as Naxalism and Maoist
insurgencies. Instead, their politics is defined and acted
out by the returning, scientifically-educated, nostalgic,
and ‘activist’ Indian. Critics such as Saibal Chatterjee argue
that a market for self-reflexive Indian cinema is slowly
unfolding and filmmakers can profit from this demand by
keeping the budgets low and exploiting niche exhibition.
This middle-class market is the space where small-scale
experiments in cinema are taking place. As argued by
filmmaker Sudhir Mishra:
The audience that goes to see Jhankaar Beats [Musical Beats,
2003] or Chameli [2004] is in the mood for something
different. Besides, this is a love story. In the ‘90s, it was
fashionable to be apolitical. But when you hear that
someone like Bhupen Hazarika has joined the BJP, the
younger generation is bound to react to the fall from grace
of such people. The youngsters’ cynicism is certainly being
provoked into political consciousness. (Cited in Shedde 2004)
 Genre Development in the Age of Markets and Nationalism 31
Conclusion

This article has studied the lack of unity in the discourse

of various interest groups, demonstrating the inability of
organised capital to set the agenda and institutionalise
the war film. As a result, the war
32 Kishore
Budha
film is dependent on the repetition of a formula that is
inextricably bound to the politics of the nation-state. This is
not only an industrial weakness but also bodes ill for the
politics of the country, which is vulnerable to right-wing
ideologies. It is argued here that film criticism’s inability
to play a constructive role in the development of the war
film is symptomatic of trends rooted in history. Pendakur
and Prasad have argued that journalistic film criticism has
been unable to play a significant role in shaping the film
industry and its practices, and this has been
demonstrated in the media discourse on the war film.
Media criticism is limited to debates about the form and
styles such films should take, reflecting an elite and
urban conception of what cinema ought to be, though
there is some evidence of critical discussion and
suggestions. The film industry does not appear to be able
to utilise the media as a space to advance the war film as
a stable genre. Instead, all critical discussion of the war
film leads to the oft- repeated focus on of Haqeeqat and
Border. This eventually closes all opportunities for further
examination of genre. This demonstrates that far from
modernising, the Hindi film continues to be influenced
by socio-political formations. However, the success of some
war films that have avoided Pakistan as the basis of their plot
shows that spectators are open to newer forms of narrative.
Sudhir Mishra has argued that there is room to engage
with an audience that is unhappy with the nation they
have inherited from their parents. However, to capitalise
on this opportunity will require sustained discourse to
develop audience and negotiate the cinematic
possibilities.

Notes
1. Higson (1989) argues that national cinema can be explored in the
following ways: a) as a production-centred industry, via ‘an exhibition-
led’ or ‘consumption- based approach’; b) with ‘a text-based
approach’; or c) by way of ‘a criticism-led approach’.
2. Globalisation here is understood as an age of accelerated flows of
people, capital, technologies, images, and ideas. Malcolm Waters
(2001) provides a good overview of the various discussions
surrounding globalisation. For discussions about globalisation and
national cinema see, for example, Kinder (1993); Semati et al.
 Genre Development in the Age of Markets and Nationalism 33
(1999).
3. Madhava Prasad’s work (2005) is one of the most significant
arguments for a relationship between capital, ideology and
aesthetics. For specific inquiries into other media in the post-
nineties era see Dhareshwar and Niranjana (2000); Kumar and Curtin
(2002); Scrase (2002).
34 Kishore
Budha
4. In this context it is important to highlight the efforts by RGV and
Yash Raj Films to institutionalise the genres through control over
production and a consistent set of statements to the media.
5. Dutta is reported to have stated that the Indian Army, impressed by
the success of Border, encouraged him to produce LOC—Kargil: ‘I
didn’t want to go-back and shoot another war film. But the Army
asked me to come over and placed the facts before me. After that,
I couldn’t say no’. See Nair (2002).
6. For an account of the gendered discourse of India, Pakistan and the
subject, see Das (2006).
7. For more about the politics of the BJP during 2002, read Seabrook
(2002) and Deshmukh (2002).
8. Deshmukh (2002) reported that, despite thousands of troops
amassed at the borders with Pakistan, ‘pop patriotism’ was
sinking at the box office.
9. For example, since 2001, the Federation of Indian Chambers of
Commerce and Industry has been hosting an annual event for the
film industry called ‘FICCI- Frames’ (http://www.ficci-frames.com),
which provides an interface between the film industry, government,
capital, and other industries.
10. See http://www.cbfcindia.tn.nic.in/
11. Pendakur (2003) offers an excellent overview of the Indian film
industry— unorganised financed by the underworld, full of star-
heavy productions and infrastructural shortcomings—and its role
in shaping discourse and politics.
12. See Gangadhar (2004) and Narrain (2004) for detailed coverage of
Anupam Kher’s removal from chairmanship of the Censor Board,
particularly the controversy surrounding the extraordinary delay
in the release of Anand Sharma’s anti-right wing documentary
‘Final Solution’.
13. Pendakur (2003) has argued that this kind of journalism ‘serves the
function of creating demand for the films rather than providing
any sustained critique of film and culture’. Criticism of Lakshya in
the media tended to focus on the hype surrounding the director
and the production quality of the film. For illustration see Anon
2004c.
14. In post-film release analysis, critics have argued that the time-
tested formula of patriotism and bellicismo should be eschewed in
favour of cinematic realism. See, for example, Doval (2006); Tyagi
(2004).
15. With the earlier system of single-screen large-seating theatres, films
would be made for audiences spanning large populations. Since
regional distributors subsidised production costs, they would have
considerable say in film narratives, given their perceptions of their
audiences.
16. See Kazmi’s (2005) report on the event, organised by the film’s
producers and covered by all leading news publications.
17. Here I refer to the term forwarded by Madhava Prasad to describe
the Hindi film form. Prasad argues that the Hindi film form is a
direct result of the economic nature of production. After the
collapse of the studio system, the new capitalists in the industry
 Genre Development in the Age of Markets and Nationalism 35
were mercantile in nature, unable to aggregate production, distribution
and exhibition, as in Hollywood. The producer, financier, distributor,
and exhibitor were often separate entities. Producers, on one hand,
did not own the production process and relied on various
independent professionals who were hired to put the film together.
This resulted in a film form that was not conceived by, strictly
produced, and directed at specific audiences. On the other hand
were the regional
36 Kishore
Budha
distributors and exhibitors, who bore upon the producer plot,
character, narrative, and style imperatives that they perceived as
satisfying the tastes and preferences of their regional audiences.
For more, see Prasad (1998).
18. Yogesh Oza and Komal Nahta’s comments are in response to the
failure of
LOC—Kargil at the box office. See Tyagi (2004); Kumar Singh (2004).
19. For readings on criticism of the war film, see Talukdar (2004);
Tyagi (2004); Pearson (2003); Somayya (1997); Singh (2004b);
Mirani (2003).
 2
Aggression and Transgression on the
India-Pakistan Border
Adrian Athique

The Performative Border

This article examines the visualisation and narrative

construction of the India-Pakistan border, and human
interactions across that liminal space, as depicted in two
films directed by J. P. Dutta. The first of
these films is the high-profile, multiple award-winning war
film Border (1997) and the second his subsequent feature
Refugee (2000), which was loosely described in its
publicity literature as ‘a human story’. Through these
films, Dutta established his reputation as the leading
Indian director of the ‘war film’, a genre marked by its
relative absence in the Indian cinema prior to the 1990s.
Both Border and Refugee thus constitute part of what has
retrospectively been described as Dutta’s ‘war trilogy’,
along with the more recent LOC—Kargil (2003) which
focuses on the 1999 Himalayan conflict. In the first two
films of the set, which I will consider here, the border in
question is not the line-of-control (LOC) that divides
Kashmir, but rather the southern portion of the long
border with Pakistan that runs from the southern bank of
the Sutlej river across the Thar desert to the Arabian
Sea. Refugee, moreover, is not a war film in the accepted
sense, and I will make the argument that it is not so much
the martial posturing which constructs the thematic inter-
relation of the two films considered here but rather their
attempts to naturalise the abstract barrier created by the
Radcliffe line in the West.
Although the location of the India-Pakistan border itself
may have been determined, and periodically re-
determined, by the arbitrary separation of jurisdictions
38 Kishore
Budha
and the deliberations of technocrats, the function of the
border represents a much more fundamental schism in the
narrative production of South Asia. As Navtej Purewal
observes: ‘The border not only signifies where the nation-
states of India and
22 Adrian Athique

Pakistan begin and end, but it also territorializes and

nationalizes local populations and identities’ and is employed
as ‘a site for the construction of a dominant national
consciousness (Purewal 2003: 547).’ Sanjay Chaturvedi
makes the argument that one of the key defining
elements of nation-building has been the reflexive
production of Otherness between the two nations,
where geopolitical visions are constructed through
‘imaginative geographies’ in which ‘inclusions and
exclusions, as mutually reinforcing forms of place-making,
have become central—rather, indispensable—to the
“nation-building” enterprise of the post-colonial, post-
partition states of India and Pakistan’ (Chaturvedi 2001:
149). As such, the political existence of the border is not
sufficient in itself, since the performance of this border is an
even more essential component of the processes of
Othering at work in the subcontinent. Perhaps the most
obvious example of this performativity is the flag-lowering
ceremony conducted at the Wagah border post in Punjab,
a spectacle of mutual aggression favoured by tourists
that, as Chaturvedi observes, displays the common
heritage of both nations precisely in the manner in which
it seeks to proclaim their difference (ibid.: 156–57). Here,
the locale of the India-Pakistan border itself is of far lesser
significance than the complex impossibility of both
difference and sameness that it is enacted, literally, to
represent. However, despite the apparent enthusiasm of such
performances, there appears to be some evidence that, in
both its physical and symbolic manifestations, the border
is not yet satisfactorily located in the realm of the ‘real’,
and as such it
continues to evoke action and response from both hegemonic
and marginal perspectives, with fundamental questions
around the border’s meaning and legitimacy still being posed.
The symbolic and practical implications of the border thus
exhibit both border aggressions (acts ensuring its sovereign
status is maintained) and border transgressions (acts which
defy or challenge the processes it symbolises). (Purewal
2003: 547)

The two films that I will go on to consider here provide a

useful illustration of how these aggressive/transgressive
currents and actions contribute to a contradictory, and yet
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 23
clearly symbiotic, affirmation and denial of the India-
Pakistan border in popular discourse. Both Border and
Refugee clearly demonstrate the self-reflexive instability of
South Asian nationalist texts as they seek to
accommodate the complex, harrowing and comparatively
recent historical events that have shaped the region. In
this sense, the two films elucidate some of
24 Adrian Athique

the challenges faced by Indian filmmakers in narrating

fraternity and difference in the subcontinent.

Maintaining Boundaries
Border stages a dramatic account of a battle in western
Rajasthan during the 1971 war. A large Pakistani force
attacks during the night and a small Indian Army garrison
of 120 men at Longewala puts up stubborn resistance,
refusing to concede their positions until the Indian Air
Force is able to come to their aid the following day. The
film begins with the prelude to these events as India
deploys its forces along the border. In the opening
scenes, air force Captain Suraj (Jackie Shroff) is sent to
establish a forward air base in Rajasthan. In transit, he
meets Major Kuldeep Singh (Sunny Deol), the Sikh army
officer who will command the army post at Longewala.
Singh commands a detachment from a Punjabi regiment,
which includes the reluctant young Lieutenant Dharam
Vir (Akshaye Khanna), the bullish Sgt-Major Ratan
Singh (Puneet Issar) and jocular army cook, Bhagiram
(Kulbhushan Kharbanda). Bhairav Singh (Sunil Shetty), a
local Rajasthani officer of the Indian Border Security
force (BSF), is also assigned to the unit. The film employs
the classic features of the war genre: we are gradually
introduced to a small group of soldiers through half a
dozen key characters who reveal their backgrounds,
hopes and fears to the audience in the mounting tension
preceding a victorious climactic battle against a faceless
and numerically superior enemy. However, unlike the
majority of western war films since the decline of the
Hollywood musical during the 1950s, Border incorporates
four musical sequences into its narrative, composed by
Javed Akhtar and Anu Malik. The visual sequences for
the songs are employed in two modalities: in the first part
of the film, the musical interludes take place in romantic
settings away from the scene of the conflict and in the
second part they are ‘picturised’ on the battlefield itself.
The proclamation of the film, during the opening
credits, as a
narrative re-enactment of a real event makes a claim for
situating Border within the web of South Asian history.
However, the primary motives for India’s involvement in
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 25
the 1971 conflict, and its long-term political significance,
both of which lie in the eastern portion of the
subcontinent are consciously occluded from the account
provided in Border. Only a brief comment by Captain Suraj
to Major Kuldeep Singh, as they share a transport plane at
the beginning of the film, relates the forthcoming action at
Longewala to the wider context of the war.
26 Adrian Athique

Major Kuldeep Singh [in English]: Do you think we’ll see

action, Sir? Captain Suraj: Going by the situation in East
Pakistan it’s pretty certain that they will start trouble on the
western front.
Major Kuldeep Singh: As you said, Pakistan will start
trouble on the western front but we will be the ones to
finish it. They will fire the first bullet. We will finish off with
the last.

Aside from this briefest of exchanges, the confrontation

in Border is presented simplistically as an unprovoked
Pakistani invasion of Indian Rajasthan. The audience is not
invited to consider the real imperatives for the unsuccessful
attempt by Pakistan to open a second front in the West in
1971. Instead, the conflict is explained as misplaced
avarice for India’s territory on the part of Pakistan.
Indeed, given the central importance to the film of the
narrative affirmation of the border as a line of defence,
this is prefigured as the only permissible explanation for
the events taking place.
However, despite the centrality of this premise to the
narrative, it is thirty minutes into the film before we
actually get our first glimpse of the border itself. Kuldeep
Singh, accompanied by Bhairav Singh, Dharam Vir and
Ratan Singh, travels the Sixteen Kilometres from the
border post to visit the Radcliffe Line itself at border
pillar 635. The pillar stands in the centre of a small flat
between two banks of sand dunes. From a defensive
position set amongst the sand dunes on the Indian side,
the soldiers of the Punjab regiment watch their Pakistani
counterparts stationed in the dunes opposite them. The
Pakistanis, in a mirror-image montage, also watch them.
One of the rank-and-file soldiers at the Indian post
cautions Kuldeep Singh against standing in the open,
arguing that Pakistani snipers are trigger-happy and
liable to shoot him. On hearing this, Kuldeep Singh
immediately leaves the cover of the post and strides out
purposefully across the sand towards the border pillar.
Completely in the open, he covers the short distance and
stands next to the pillar itself, facing the Pakistani
positions. In the next shot, we see the Pakistani soldiers
in their dugout, asking their officer if they should shoot
the ‘mad’ Indian officer. The officer indicates that they
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 27
should not. Kuldeep Singh then returns to the Indian
dugout and, once inside, he laughs heartily, prompting
Dharam Vir to ask him to clarify the difference between
bravery and madness. Kuldeep Singh explains that
madness is subjective according to faith and asserts that
his faith in God is sufficient to protect him, given that God
is with him rather than with his enemy.
28 Adrian Athique

This sequence is a useful example of the border

aggressions defined by Purewal, that is, performative acts
seeking to affirm the sanctity of the dividing line. The
posturing of Kuldeep Singh has the obvious purpose of
taunting the enemy, prefiguring the inevitable conflict
through an unspoken territorial challenge. The audience,
of course, knows that the Pakistani Army will take Kuldeep
Singh’s challenge to cross the line and that they will pay
dearly for doing so. So, as an act of bravado, Singh’s
action invites identification. There is more at work here,
however, than simple playground dramatics. The fact is
that this sequence is absolutely necessary for the
demarcation of the space that will stand in for the wider
realpolitik of the war, especially since the border itself is
simply a small concrete obelisk set in a featureless sand
flat in the middle of a desert. Put very simply, without the
dramatised posturing of Kuldeep Singh the border is a
visual non-event and cannot of itself provide a sufficient
rationale for the events that follow. Rather, the border has
to be made to mean something, and this difference must be
marked out rhetorically. At the same time, the scene
juxtaposes two sets of soldiers whose similarity is more
apparent than their difference. The mirror image of the
Pakistani border post, set amongst matching sand dunes,
with a matching dugout and flag post serves to indicate
the somewhat artificial and contingent nature of Pakistan’s
otherness. However, it can also be argued that this does
not ultimately destabilise the production of a national
other. Instead, it merely highlights the well-worn cliché
of martial narratives: that the soldiers of the enemy are
not much different from us (as soldiers), but soon it will
be our patriotic duty to kill them nonetheless.
Taken together, the physical abstraction of the border
itself, its
bellicose performance (by Kuldeep Singh) and the mirror
imaging of the Indian and Pakistani positions are all
evocative of the Wagah flag ceremonies. The purpose,
then, of this sequence is precisely the same: to provide a
performative account of difference which facilitates the
narration of the border as something both tangible and sacred.
It is also the case that this rhetorical sacralisation of the
India-Pakistan border in the early parts of Dutta’s film is
also intended to emphasise that this border, like other
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 29
borders, is constantly under threat from acts of
transgression. The transgression of the border that will take
place at the climax of the film—an armoured invasion—is
perhaps the most literal example, the ultimate violation of the
national space. In this scene from the first half of the film,
however, there is an exposition of another
30 Adrian Athique

form of transgression, enacted through a sinister juxtaposition

between Kuldeep Singh’s valiant gesture at border pillar 635
and questions posed by infiltration, kinship, treachery, and
retribution. The evening before they visit the border pillar,
and immediately preceding that sequence in the film, the
following exchange between Kuldeep Singh, Bhairav
Singh and Dharam Vir takes place:
Major Kuldeep Singh: Are the villages around the border
friendly to us?
Captain Bhairav Singh: They used to be, sir. Many moved
across the border during the war of 1965. They’re all
related, and some of them are informers too, sir.
Major Kuldeep Singh: Dharam
Vir! Lieutenant Dharam Vir:
Sir!
Major Kuldeep Singh: Start a full-scale checking of the
villages from tomorrow.
Lieutenant Dharam Vir [in English]: Shall we use
force, sir? Major Kuldeep Singh: Only if necessary.

After Kuldeep Singh’s posturing at border pillar 635

the following day, the film cuts to a meeting after dark
where the defence of the area is being discussed. Bhairav
Singh points to the map: ‘These are the villages that are
most endangered, sir, because they use these very paths for
movement.’ At this point an enlisted man interrupts
them, with the news that their Pakistani counterparts are
requesting to speak to Kuldeep Singh on the radio. In the
exchange that follows, the voice from Pakistan indicates that
the Pakistani military is aware of the deployment of the
Punjabi unit at Longewala and of the identity of its officers,
and proceeds to taunt and threaten Kuldeep Singh, who
responds furiously. At the conclusion of the call he turns
to his junior officers and says in English: ‘Gentleman,
they have got the full information, that the 23rd Punjab
is at the Longewala post and the commanding officer is
Kuldeep Singh Chandpuri. They have got informers.’
Dharam Vir cannot restrain himself and cries out:
‘Bastards!’
At this point, the film cuts to a shot of the officers
travelling in a
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 31
jeep past a set of ruined buildings where a fire is being
kept. We hear Bhairav Singh’s voice: ‘It’s the villagers
who must have passed the information to them. They
keep going across the border very often.’ The camera
remains static on the buildings as the jeep reverses back
into the shot. Looking at the light coming from the
buildings, Bhairav Singh says: ‘I wonder who they are
and what they are doing here?’
32 Adrian Athique

The officers enter the camp and challenge the men they
find there, who claim, in Rajasthani, that they come from
the village of Dongra and are ‘travelling to Tanuad for a
visit to the goddesses temple. Singh translated this from
Rajasthani for the benefit of the Punjabis. Searching the
men, they find nothing, but as they leave the camp,
Bhairav Singh notices that the men’s camels are being fed
on freshly cut green grass. He draws Kuldeep Singh’s
attention to this: ‘Out here in the deserts we don’t have
green grass for miles’ and, after a pause, ‘Across the
border in Pakistan, however, they do have such grass.’
This is enough to confirm their suspicions, and they return
to conduct an extra-judicial execution of these men, whose
camel’s culinary habits have exposed them as ‘infiltrators’
from across the border. The men have remained
confined in the small enclosure of their camp and are
shot down without warning by the Indian officers using
their handguns. The execution is graphic and begins in
slow motion that allows the fetishised hyperrealism of
the close range headshots to have full effect. Once the
killing is underway, one of the men recovers hidden
automatic weapons—thus confirming the status of the men
as agents of Pakistan. Nonetheless, Dharam Vir, for all his
earlier anger, finds himself unable to ‘finish off’ a
wounded man, despite a direct order to do so. This
provokes Kuldeep Singh’s wrath: ‘Wars are won by
slaying the enemy! You have to kill them!’
The interpolation of the sequence at border pillar 635
within this
narrative of informers and infiltrators creates a powerful
juxtaposition between an ideal situation, the affirmation
of the border marker by daylight, and a murkier reality
after nightfall, where the border is frequently being
transgressed. There is also the implication of a
transgression that is still worse: the identification of an
enemy within. The account of the villagers who inhabit
the border regions is quickly transformed by the events
shown in this scene. At one moment of articulation, the
Indian soldiers must protect the villages located near the
border that are endangered by attack, but in the next, they
must also remember that the villagers themselves cannot be
trusted. The villagers are accused by Bhairav Singh of
harbouring informants and making frequent transgressive
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 33
crossings. It becomes clear, therefore, that the villagers
may be an even more disturbing threat than the
Pakistani army since they do not respect the border or its rules. An
explanation for their strange behaviour has, of course,
already been provided: ‘they’re all related’ to the people
on the other side. In the context of India- Pakistan
relations, and their history, the invocation (and conflation)
34 Adrian Athique

here of discourses of ‘infiltration’ and ‘relational’

loyalties is very clearly marked. After all, it is India’s
Muslims who have relatives over the border in Pakistan,
and whose loyalty has been most often the object of
scrutiny by the military apparatus of the state. The
people who inhabit the borderlands are shown to be
reluctant members of the Indian nation who, if not
adequately policed, would prefer to maintain their
communal affiliations with villagers on the Pakistan side,
rather than demonstrate the patriotism for India that the
heroes of the film so vocally espouse. The possibilities for
those wishing to read metaphorical parallels between the
unreliable Rajasthani villagers and India’s most significant
minority cannot be easily overlooked. Here then, the
nationalist discourse being constructed around the
border is full of ambivalences marked by a paranoid
suspicion and hostility towards a significantly marked
segment of India’s own citizens. The lack of the ‘good
Muslim’ character, so often used as a redemptive device
in Indian cinema, amongst the main heroes in Border,
perhaps for reasons of historical accuracy, taken along
with the periodic affirmations of patriotic religiosity
made by the Sikh and Hindu protagonists, can be seen
as a very powerful moment of absence throughout the
film. This can only be highly significant when set against
the doctrinal precepts of the Hindutva politics that
flourished in India during the 1990s.
There is a very obvious discontinuity arising from the
shooting
down of the infiltrators and the relish with which it is
presented, when this event is set against the ‘peace
message’ that serves as the denouement of the film. At
the film’s ending, following the major sequence that
relates the failed attack on Longewala by the Pakistani
22nd Armoured Regiment, we return to the border
itself. After a night of desperate fighting on the ground,
followed by Captain Suraj’s decisive strike from the air after
dawn, Major Kuldeep Singh takes in the aftermath of the
battle. As the omnipotent camera tracks across the
battlefield, we see border pillar 635 again, this time
surrounded by the bodies of fallen Pakistani soldiers. The
hand of one corpse clasps a photo of a young woman; we
see a ring of Muslim women lamenting. Now that victory
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 35
over the enemy has been achieved it becomes possible for
Kuldeep Singh, hitherto the very caricature of the
belligerent Sikh, to display feelings of compassion
towards his defeated foes. This message is powerfully
scored by the Anu Malik—Javed Akhtar song Mere
dushman, mere bhai– (My enemy, my brother). The film ends
with a shot of the two national flags, the
superimposition of flying
36 Adrian Athique

doves, the sun setting in the West, and the phrase

‘begining of a lasting peace’ [sic] that appears across the
screen in the stencil typeface that has become requisite
for the war-film genre worldwide.
This final montage provides formal notice that
equilibrium has been re-established, that the border has
been maintained and can, if it is respected, offer the hope of
peace. Of course this is a victor’s peace, and the fraternity
that is offered in this brief sequence sits uncomfortably
with earlier suggestions made in the film that those who
have relations in/with Pakistan help to foster infiltration
and invasion, and that retribution for such treachery
should be swift and subjudice. It would be unrealistic,
however, to expect a nuanced presentation of the
difficulties of inhabiting border-zones or the traumas of
familial separation that are caused by the imposition of
borders in this particular film. It would also be self-
deceiving to expect a sustained pacifist message from
Border which, after all, is so consciously a war film. With
such an agenda it is not surprising that Border received
generous co-operation from the Indian military, as the
(stencilled) credits of the film make explicit: ‘Without
these forces behind J. P. Films, “Border” would not have
been possible.’ Nonetheless, Dutta has responded to
criticism of the film as ‘jingoistic’ by seeking to make a
distinction between being pro-army and anti-Pakistan:
‘Border wasn’t meant to open wounds. It tried to instil a
sense of pride within all Indians regarding the Indian
Army which has upheld some values even when there has
been a discernible drop in moral standards in all walks
of life. Border wasn’t meant to indulge in Pakistan
bashing’ (Jha 2000a).

Crossing Borders

Refugee, J. P. Dutta’s ‘sequel’ to Border, was released in 2000.

This film focuses again on the India-Pakistan border, this
time as it stretches across the Great Rann of Kutch
further to the south, demarcating Indian Gujurat and
Pakistani Sind. While, in the first film, the narrative
progression begins with the national border being
affirmed and then defended against transgression, Refugee
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 37
inverts this structure. Here, the border is transgressed in
the first part of the film and then affirmed in the second. The
narrative of Refugee focuses on the cross-border
transgressions of a young man: Refugee (Abhishek
Bachchan), con- veniently unmarked by family,
community or nationality, who works as a smuggler of
both goods and people across the India-Pakistan
38 Adrian Athique

border in both directions across the Rann of Kutch. The

first part of the film narrates the efforts of a family of
‘Bihari Muslims’ who have fled Bangladesh by
‘infiltrating’, and then crossing India in order to reach
the border with Pakistan. They hope to cross illegally in
order to re-settle in the homeland that abandoned them after
Bangladesh seceded from Pakistan in 1971. Refugee assists
them in reaching their goal, and then becomes
romantically involved with the daughter of the family,
Naazneen (Kareena Kapoor). However, in the latter part
of the film, Refugee, who claims to have no allegiances to
either country, is ultimately forced to take sides as his
people-smuggling unwittingly facilitates an infiltration of
terrorists from Pakistan, who conduct a bombing in Delhi
with the aid of his ‘bad’ brother Shadab (Shadaab
Khan).
The plight of the Bihari Muslims, with which the film
begins, presents an entirely different set of problematics
around the border, not least because the primary aim of
the protagonists is to breach the border in order to leave
India. The Bihari Muslims of Refugee are the ‘stranded
Pakistanis’ of Bangladesh, Urdu-speaking Muslims who
originally migrated from the eastern parts of India to
the eastern wing of the newly-created Pakistan in 1947,
as well as their descendants. It is estimated that some
700,000 Muslims from West Bengal, Orissa, Assam and,
in the majority, Bihar, migrated to East Pakistan. Initially
well-received in East Bengal as Muslim migrants during
the creation of Pakistan in 1947, relations between
Bihari immigrants and the Bengali majority in East
Pakistan became increasingly strained as relations
between the western and eastern portions of Pakistan
turned sour. After India’s intervention in the civil war and
the declaration of Bangladesh as an independent nation,
some 160,000 West Pakistanis were repatriated from
Bangladesh. However, Pakistan was only willing to take
those non-Bengalis from the former East Pakistan who had
been in government service or formerly domiciled in its
western provinces. Thus, most of the non-Bengali
minorities in the former eastern wing who had migrated
there in 1947 were left behind after 1971 in a
Bangladesh that refused to accept them as citizens. As such,
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 39
the ‘Bihari Muslims’ lack the citizenship of either
Bangladesh or Pakistan, with as many as 300,000 of
them living out their lives in refugee camps in
Bangladesh (Ahmad 2003:173). This complex tale of
multiple displacements and disavowals, shifting borders
and nation-splitting is recounted in the opening voice-
over of Refugee:

In 1947 when our country was partitioned, people from

Bihar left their homes and set out for East Bengal, which
had become part of Pakistan,
40 Adrian Athique

with dreams of a better life. But those dream were fragile.

Then came 1971 and the dreams were completely
shattered. East Pakistan became Bangladesh and these
Muslims from Bihar became refugees once again. Once again,
stateless. Bihar they could never return to, like the tree that can
never throw roots into the very soil from which it has been
uprooted. Now they embarked upon a very long journey from
Bangladesh to Guwahati, from Guwahati to Delhi, from Delhi
to Ajmer and then onwards to Ahmedabad. From there to
Bhuj and finally to Haji Pir. The journey to Pakistan would
take them through the Rann of Kutch, illegally. For miles
stretch the salt-infested wastelands and marshes. No man, no
animal, not even a blade of grass in sight for miles. There are
these men, professionals, who specialise in evading the border
guards and smuggling them out. One of them is the young
‘Refugee’, who has no home, no family, no parents to name,
maybe that’s why they call him Refugee. For Manzoor
Ahmed and his fellow travellers from Bangladesh, perhaps
he is the kind of man they have been looking for.

Abandoned by their contacts, Manzoor Ahmed

(Kulbhushan Kharbanda) and his family languish on the
Indian side of the border. Manzoor assesses their plight
with a statement of contrition: ‘Out first mistake was in
1947 when we left Bihar and went to Bengal.’ His aged
mother supports him with her own assertion that the family
have been cursed for forsaking the graves of their
ancestors in Bihar. At this moment, they are approached
by a local villain who offers to help them cross over into
Pakistan. Taking their savings as payment, he takes the
family to meet Jaan Mohammed (Anupam Kher), the
Muslim headman of a village near the border. Before they
arrive, we see Jaan Mohammed addressing a group of
villagers as he articulates the impositions that the border
villages have suffered since being divided from their kin
across the border:
All I’m saying is that Pakistanis eat the same food as we eat,
right? And they dress the same as us and think the same as us.
We’ve friends, brothers and relatives on that side, and on this
side too. We want to wed our daughters to their sons. And
we want our sons to wed their daughters. It used to happen
this way before Partition didn’t it? What seals the
relationship is a bond of sweet love. But these leaders and
those men in uniform. They won’t let us live in peace [
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 41
gestures into the distance] nor them. And when things go out of
control they go counting heads. All because we live near the
border.

With this speech, Jaan Mohammed provides a rationale for

the border transgressions that are to follow. The
motivation being articulated
42 Adrian Athique

here is similar to that given in Border, that the villagers

who inhabit the borderlands do not respect the border, and
prefer to maintain the ties of kinship that it has sundered.
The treatment of this position is much more sympathetic
here, as it is throughout Refugee, but the coding of the
explanation is remarkably similar. The compulsions for
fraternity with Pakistan are much greater for those
Indians who ‘eat the same food’, ‘dress the same’ and
‘think the same’, that is for Muslims. If Indian Muslims are
represented only by a powerful absence in Border, then in
Refugee they become central to the narrative, and thus
central to the didactic message of the film, which addresses
them directly on the inherently dangerous nature of
fraternisation and transgression. The non-Muslim
audience is positioned implicitly as sharing this
instructional address to their compatriots on the crucial
matter of unambiguous loyalty, an imperative that
speaks back to Jaan Mohammed as the events that
transpire in the film unfold. For now, Jaan Mohammed
greets Manzoor Ahmed and his family and, having taken
their money from the middleman, introduces them to his
‘adopted son’, Refugee, who will take them across the
border to Pakistan, where they will be assisted by Jaan
Mohammed’s brother whose village lies on the Pakistan
side.
Under the cover of darkness, Refugee leads the Biharis
out towards the border. The party includes Manzoor, his
elderly mother and his wife, their daughter Naazneen, as
well as Asghar Ali, his wife and their daughter, Selma.
Evading the searchlights of the Indian watchtowers and the
patrols of the BSF, they move out towards the Rann. As
they move through the night, a series of coy exchanges
foreshadows the romance between Refugee and
Naazneen. They eventually reach border pillar 423, set in
the midst of the great salt flats, and Refugee informs
them that they are now in Pakistani territory. Manzoor’s
mother, however, collapses in fatigue against the border
pillar, asking them fatalistically: ‘How long will you carry
this corpse’? Refugee tells them that it is too dangerous
to remain by the pillar and, taking Manzoor’s mother upon
his back, leads them on onwards into Pakistan. Her plight
has slowed them down, however, and they cannot pass
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 43
the Pakistan border posts before sunrise. They are forced
hide in the scrub, to avoid detection by the Pakistan
Rangers in the watchtowers and to wait out the daylight
before moving on. This is too much for Asghar Ali, who,
believing that he has reached his promised land, refuses
to wait: ‘Are they going to stop me? Are they going to
kill me? One of their brothers? They are my people. This
is the land of
44 Adrian Athique

my dreams.’ Closely followed by his wife, Asghar Ali

runs towards the Pakistani watchtowers shouting: ‘I am
home, it’s me, Asghar Ali!’ The border guards,
predictably, shoot them both down, and Refugee and his
charges are forced to slip away hurriedly as Pakistani
troops search the area.
As the bodies of the Alis are brought back from no
man’s land by the Rangers, a local guide tells their
commander, Mohammed Ashraf (Sunil Shetty): ‘They look
like refugees attempting to infiltrate’ and reveals that
there had been others there who had slipped away. Ashraf
declares that a sweep of the border villages must be
conducted. Once night has fallen again, Refugee, still
carrying Manzoor’s mother, guides the reminder of the party
(Manzoor and his wife, Asghar Ali’s distraught daughter
Selma and Naazneen) across the border to the safety of
Jaan Mohammed’s brother’s home. As they are resting,
Mohammed Ashraf and the Pakistan Rangers sweep
through the village, and the Biharis are saved from
exposure by Jaan Mohammed’s brother, Altaf Mohammed,
who claims that Manzoor Ahmed is an old friend who is
visiting the area to find a match for his daughter. After
Ashraf departs, Refugee reveals to Manzoor that his mother
has been dead ever since the shooting of the Alis, and
that now she must be buried. Having carried her corpse
through the night, Refugee has demonstrated his noble
nature and, in this way, he relieves Manzoor of the family
curse: he will now be able to bury his mother in the
Pakistan that she has reached finally, only in death.
In the sequences that follow, Manzoor and his family,
along with
Selma, continue to live in the village of Jaan Mohammed’s
brother. Here, we see a world much like that on the other
side. The villagers make money from the activities of
smugglers like Refugee with a stream of people and
goods, from narcotics and guns to Lata Mangeshkar
cassettes being moved across the border. The transgressive
space of the border is politically marked here in partisan
terms by the dangerous nature of all the Pakistani exports
(drugs, guns and eventually terrorists) as opposed to the
benign Indian exports (Lata Mangeshkar and stranded
Bihari refugees). Stripping the politics of this aside,
however, the role played by cross-border smuggling in
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 45
the border regions is a crucial component for the creation
of transgressive spaces. This is the socio-economic nexus of
the borderlands where, as Purewal observes: ‘The market
and trade run by smugglers on both sides for such goods as
alcohol, dry fruits, electronics, videos, and cigarettes has been
influential in mapping out the routes across the border’
(Purewal 2003: 549).
46 Adrian Athique

Given the importance of the cross-border economy, the

people of the villages on the Pakistani side are as cautious
and evasive of the Pakistan Rangers as their counterparts in
India are of the Border Security Force. The morality of the
borderlands and its inhabitants shown in the film is a rich
mix of greys where there are army informants in the
villages on both sides, just as there are army personnel
(again on both sides) who pass information to the
smugglers. It is within this dangerous, yet also close-knit
and familial, world that the romance between Naazneen
and Refugee develops as Refugee moves backwards and
forwards across the Rann between India and Pakistan.
The stability of this transgressive cross-border society
is soon threatened, however. Refugee unwittingly assists a
group of terrorists to cross over, who enlist his wayward
younger brother’s aid in carrying out a bomb attack in
Delhi. Horrified, Jaan Mohammed disowns his younger,
legitimate son, but the damage now has already been
done. The profitable life led by Jaan Mohammed and
Refugee, undisturbed by any particular national loyalties, is
about to come apart. Following the Delhi bombing, the
commanders of the two opposing border forces meet at
a tent on the border for their quarterly ‘border flag
meeting’. Their meeting begins with an exchange of
sweets, balushahi from India and sewaiya from Pakistan. As
they eat, Raghuvir Singh provokes an exchange with
Mohammed Ashraf by telling him that he hopes that he
is enjoying his Indian sweet, because it is ‘soaked in the
blood of Indians’.

Mohammed Ashraf: What was that you said?

Raghuvir Singh: From Delhi to Coimbatore, when the
bombs explode, India bleeds. Pointing to the sweet. Surely a
drop or two will splash over here.
Mohammed Ashraf: Raghuvir sahib, before levelling that
allegation, you should have considered that from Peshawar to
Karachi, subversives are having an orgy of blood. This
sewaiyan you eat is soaked in Pakistani blood.
Raghuvir Singh: So now the thief accuses? Are you alleging…?
Mohammed Ashraf: No. Not at all, sahib. I am just asking you
to eat a sweet.
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 47
Raghuvir Singh: Ashraf, enmity, like friendship, can never be
one-sided. It’s both-sided.
Mohammed Ashraf: From day one it is an enmity that you
have scored.
48 Adrian Athique

Raghuvir Singh: Mr Ashraf, this is your misconception. For

centuries it has been the tradition for sons to move out of
their homes once they are grown up. So we give them a
separate house to live in. But even after you have been given
[a separate house], you are still unhappy?
Mohammed Ashraf: That’s provided you leave us in peace.
And what is this everyday heckling. You have cut off one of
our arms. That which you call Bangladesh today.
Raghuvir Singh: Revenge? We haven’t cut off anyone’s
arms. But with this feeling of vengeance, blood will flow.
The blood of innocents. On our side, on your side too.
Mohammed Ashraf: Both sides must think. We must stop
the enemies of humanity.
Raghuvir Singh: Not the handful of terrorists who are pawns
for hire. The real enemies are the ones who employ them,
who do not want us to live in peace with our neighbours.
They want us to keep on fighting, so that attention is
diverted from the real enemy.
Mohammed Ashraf: The problem is no one knows who the
real enemy is. The real enemy is hunger, poverty,
helplessness.
Raghuvir Singh: For which we are the ones responsible. The
ones who trade in the merchandise of war. We buy planes,
ships worth millions to bomb each other. Without a thought
to how many schools we could build with that money, how
many hospitals.
Mohammed Ashraf [in English]: Right. [Nodding]. Anyway, our
countries are large and our borders vast, but in the areas
under our command we can stop the enemies of humanity.
Raghuvir Singh: That’s what I’m here to tell you. Far better
would be to start searching the villages near the border.

Refugee, meanwhile, is caught trying to re-cross the

border to India. He is beaten unconscious by Pakistan
Rangers and packed off across the Rann on a camel laden with
explosives by Mohammed Ashraf’s sadistic and lecherous
second-in-command Tausif Ahmed, who turns out to be in
league with the terrorists. As Refugee recovers in hospital on
the Indian side, Raghuvir Singh confronts him over his
smuggling activities. Contrite, Refugee elects to finally
become an ‘Indian’, volunteering his services to the BSF
to atone for his past activities. He is quickly made an
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 49
officer in the BSF and informs on, and then helps arrest,
his former colleagues. The one drawback to this new life
is that he is unable to cross the border to see Naazneen,
now pregnant with his child, on the Pakistan side. At this
point, the terrorist group decides
50 Adrian Athique

to invade India and annex Jaan Mohammed’s village,

counting on the Muslim population’s support. Manzoor’s
hitherto meek host in Pakistan, Altaf Mohammed, is
suddenly transformed by religious zeal and joins with the
terrorists. Mounted on their camels, the terrorists and the
Pakistani villagers cross the border and seize Jaan
Mohammed’s village of Astalkot. Jaan Mohammed refuses to
join in their insurrection and is shot dead by his brother,
thus finally discovering that he does not ‘think the same’
as those over the border, and that he really is an Indian
after all. Refugee and Raghuvir then lead the BSF forces
in a counter-attack which liberates the village.
This somewhat unlikely turn of events in the second part
of the film works to re-establish the authority of the border
that is undermined in the first half of the film. From the
entry of the terrorists that confirms the sinister side of the
smuggling network, Refugee begins its switch away from
arguments for transgression towards supporting the same
discourses on infiltration as Border. At the flag meeting,
Mohammed Ashraf and Raghuvir Singh make a formal
assertion of this position as they conclude that peace is
only achievable if they work together to defend the
integrity of the border. This agenda is played out in the
events surrounding the sudden ‘invasion’ of Astalkot by the
terrorists and the Pakistani villagers. Here, the film
works to separate and delineate the competing loyalties
of the people of the border villages. This provides a
parallel to the discourses on Indian Muslim identity
structuring John Mathew Mattan’s contemporaneous
Sarfarosh (The Martyr, 1999), as identified by Vazira
Fazila-Yacoobali (2002: 183–198). Here, the permissible
attachments for Indian Muslims are spelt out through
the concepts of ghar (home/family), qaum
(community/faith) and mulk (homeland/nation). In Refugee,
Altaf Mohammed shows that he is ready to kill his
brother for qaum and mulk whereas Jaan Mohammed
defies the terrorists on the basis of ghar and mulk. Here
qaum and ghar are formally separated and each becomes
joined to mulk in a mutually exclusive arrangement.
This opens up the possibility/requirement for Indian
Muslims to become fully Indian by privileging mulk over
qaum, homeland over faith. There is also another layer
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 51
to this message in Refugee that functions as a restoration of
the equilibrium of difference that marks the border itself,
as those who have privileged not only qaum, but also
ghar, over mulk in the first part of the film ultimately see
their family split along national lines and destroyed.
Refugee alone is redeemed by his earlier decision to put
his nationality first and to respect the
52 Adrian Athique

authority of the border, thus adopting the standard

cinematic role of the ‘good Muslim’. During this
transition, his first adopted father, Jaan Mohammed, and
the community of villagers and smugglers is replaced by
the patriarchal Raghuvir Singh, and the community of
the Indian military and its service to the state.
In the final scene of the film, Mohammed Ashraf
organises for Naazneen to attend festivities taking place
at a shrine located in the border area. Raghuvir Singh
and Refugee, as officers in the BSF, are also present. In a
gesture of magnanimity, Ashraf arranges for a priest to
wed the heavily pregnant Naazneen to Refugee. As the
two Indian officers are escorted back across the border,
Naazneen’s labour begins and she reaches out for the
border pillar and hangs on to it for support. With the aid
of a handful of women who are gathered at the border
fence to watch the celebrations on the other side,
Naazneen and Refugee’s baby son is delivered on the
ground next to the border pillar, just as fireworks start
going off in the sky above them, because the moment of
this birth is also the midnight between the 14th and
15th of August, India and Pakistan’s two independence
days. As the film ends, Raghuvir and Ashraf haggle
amicably over the nationality of the baby. Raghuvir notes
that, since this is an international border area, the child
belongs to neither country. This makes the child, as
Ashraf puts it ‘neither, both, a citizen of the world’. In reply,
Raghuvir says: ‘He will make a place for himself. A land
with no boundaries. A land where comings and goings
are not restricted. His country will be called the
kingdom of mankind.’ Together they conclude: ‘No
passport. No visa.’

Equilibrium

J. P. Dutta has been insistent that Border and Refugee were

both films that promoted a message of peace between
India and Pakistan (quoted in Jha 2003). Nonetheless, it
remains the case that Border was accused of being an anti-
Pakistan film and was therefore banned in the Middle
East markets where Hindi films are commonly exported.
Border provoked violent agitations against video stores
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 53
by Muslim South Asians overseas (Varma 1997). Refugee
was somewhat better received offshore but did less
business in India than its predecessor. Despite the self-
conscious peace messages with which both films end, Dutta
has been much criticised for his supposedly one-sided
portrayal of the issues dividing India and Pakistan. Anish
Khanna, reviewing the
54 Adrian Athique

less provocative Refugee, still declared it to be ‘less than

subtly biased’ (Khanna 2000). So, even though both films
end with the invocation of a post-confrontation subcontinent,
as one amateur reviewer comments: ‘One can’t help suspect
that J. P. Dutta imagines such a world would be
established on India’s terms rather than Pakistan’s (IMD
2001). Dutta, however, is unrepentant: ‘I’m trying to tackle
a serious bilateral issue here. At least I have the guts to
bring such a sensitive subject in a mainstream Hindi film’
(quoted in Jha 2000b).
In commenting on the two films Dutta has said: ‘Border
was a war film. But I don’t think Refugee was a war film’
(quoted in Jha 2003). In other respects, however,
particularly in their primary focus on the border itself, the
two films are discursively inter-referential. Indeed, in many
ways, Refugee can be seen as a rejoinder to the many
criticisms of Border: the complexities of Indo-Pak
relations receive more recognition, the questions
surrounding nationalism and Muslim identity are
considered, and the people of the border regions are given
more sympathetic and substantial treatment. It is, of
course, far from insignificant here that Hindi (or
perhaps more accurately Hindustani) cinema has a large
following in Pakistan. For filmmakers, the importance of
audiences on both sides of the border has to be
balanced by what constitutes a permissible articulation
of India- Pakistan relations within India’s political-economy.
Needless to say, the political implications of any cinematic
account of inter-state relations in India are subject to an
explicitly national(ist) censorship regime. Nonetheless,
for their part, Pakistani audiences for Hindi films seem
prepared to take the occasional jingoistic outburst with a
pinch of salt. Whereas Border presents a narrative in which
hostilities between the two countries are relatively black-
and-white, Refugee goes some way towards nuancing the
many grey areas that provoke the nationalist anxieties
that feed conflict in the region. Nonetheless, despite the
contrasting affirmative/transgressive positions towards
the India- Pakistan boundary with which the two films
begin, their concluding positions are remarkably similar
to official Indian doxa: conflict will continue as long as
enemies outside the nation are trying to enter, the loyalties
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 55
of border communities are suspect and must be policed,
a secure border and the establishment of a clear
demarcation between the two states and the adoption of
unequivocal national loyalties are the only means of
achieving peace.
Whether they are engaged in military confrontation
over the border, or collaborate in its operation, both states
have a fundamental
56 Adrian Athique

stake in the existence of the border. As such, the films of

J. P. Dutta work consistently towards reconciling the
constant problem of the border, making it the central
problem of nationalist confrontation in South Asia. The
considerable challenge of its visual incongruity, arising from
its literal existence as an artificial cartographic
intervention in real space, is met with considerable
creativity through a whole series of dramatic metaphors
staged around the border pillars. Unable to discount the
accidents of history entirely, however, or to negate the
lingering bitterness caused by Partition, the meanings
that seek to establish themselves in these border
narratives direct themselves towards a mythic future
where the border is no longer transgressed. They seek to
suggest that once the border is finally naturalised, and
everyone has positioned themselves unambiguously within
two nation states that have each ceased to make claims
upon the territory of the other, then peace can be
achieved. The unfinished business of partition in a strictly
territorial sense thus becomes both cause and solution to the
nationalist problem, with the border serving as the
fulcrum between secure and contented national spaces.
However, this message, while seemingly clearcut, is
undermined by
a number of subtexts that construct another implicit, and
contradictory, agenda. Here, the narrative treatments
given to the people of the border regions and to their
relationship to the state, and the focus on the ambiguities
of belonging which are assumed to concern Muslims in
particular, suggest with equal force that the true
meaning of the border arises from human, rather than
spatial, geography. The need, five decades after
Independence, to continue striving for a clear boundary
in terms of political and cultural identity is a visible reminder
(for audiences on both sides of the border) of the
impossibility of a purely cartographic expression of
cultural differences. Paradoxically, the India-Pakistan
border in the films of J. P. Dutta emerges not as a
physical location, but as a psychological condition
underpinned by a regime of violence.
 Transgression on the India-Pakistan Border 57

3
Borders and Border Crossings in
Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
Rajinder Dudrah

Lieutenant Karan Shergill (Hrithik Roshan) stands at

the edge of the border landscape between India and
Pakistan in the Kargil-region mountains in the film Lakshya
(The Objective, 2004). Accompanied
by his Indian-Muslim army Captain, Jalal Akbar
(Sushant Singh), Karan is driven to the LOC (Line of
Control) to be shown what he is to defend as part of his
duties as an officer of the Indian armed forces. Karan and
Capt. Akbar stand in the same frame looking onwards over
the Indian border and into Pakistani territory. The camera
films a long shot over the top right angle of the Indian
chowki (army bunker) and looks across into the distance
at the Pakistani chowki. Capt. Akbar interrupts the
diegetic sound of the mountain terrain:

Capt. Akbar: Karan, do you see the Pakistani bunker

over there? Karan: Wow! It’s unbelievable.
Capt. Akbar (Pointing to the pillar in between the distance of the two
bunkers): That pillar marks the LOC and from here to there is
no man’s land. Not ours not theirs. Even so, we exchange fire
almost everyday. If there’s firing we also retaliate.
Karan: That’s amazing. It’s like I’ve always known, but
somehow…I’ve never felt this Indian before. (Pauses as he looks
on, over the border) I’m an Indian.
Capt. Akbar: I still remember seeing these borders for the
first time. I understand how you must feel. Come, let’s go.

A mid-shot remains on Karan as Capt. Akbar moves

out of the frame. Karan stands still. He is momentarily
captivated by the sight of the physical geography in
front of him, demarcated as Pakistani by the Pakistani
bunker. The final closing shot of this scene is a long
 Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
41
shot, from Karan’s point of view, of the Pakistani chowki
from across the Indian border.
The sequence of this scene is composed of silent and
natural diegetic physical sounds (like that of the wind
whistling through the mountains), the insertion of non-
diegetic music (when Capt. Akbar points out the pillar
marking no man’s land, a slow and gradual orchestral
score begins signalling a military motif that remains implicit in
the background), and long- and mid-shots that are edited
to suture the characters, landscape and, by implication,
the predominantly Indian viewers of the film into a
symbiotic relationship where the nation is invoked and
shown to be in need of border controls and raksha
(protection).
This scene is telling of the moments in recent popular
Hindi cinema, through which the border is conveyed on-
screen through audio and visual gestures, and how it
comes to signify certain kinds of under- standings that
are created by filmmakers for possible kinds of inter-
pretation by Bollywood film audiences. In this instance
from Lakshya, narratives, symbols and metaphors of Indian self
versus Pakistani other, as versus them sameness versus
difference, and defence versus attack are articulated
together and can be deciphered by paying attention to the
audio and visual style of the film. 1 Audio and visual style,
is a useful indicator of the motifs and politics that
operate throughout a large part of the film Lakshya. The
film has been crafted in the predominant mode of a war
drama set during the Kargil conflict between India and
Pakistan in 1999 and, as such, its polarities of the Indian
‘self ’ and the Pakistani ‘other’ are marked in clear
ideologically and culturally hegemonic ways that are used
to demonstrate India’s legitimacy to defend itself against
an invading Pakistan. But what of the moments also in
contemporary Bollywood cinema where the use of the
border and, by implication, the Indo-Pak self/other
dichotomy is not as easily coded and perhaps allows for
more fluid representational possibilities at and across the
Indo-Pak border?
This essay will provide a close reading of some key
scenes from two select films of the post-2000s that have
42 Rajinder Dudrah
engaged with the border in contemporary Bollywood
cinema. It offers a close textual reading of the use of the
border as actual physicality and symbolic space in two
different and select films in terms of aesthetic intent (how
the border appears, is framed and represented) and in
terms of possible audience effects (what kinds of pleasures
and meanings the use of the border generates).
 Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
43
The films that are focussed on in terms of their audio and
visual style around the border are Main Hoon Na (Don’t
worry, I’m here, 2004) and Veer-Zaara (2004). The reason
for the choice of these films is twofold: First, they
appear in the context of flashpoints of both aggression
and opportunities for peace across the Indo-Pak border:
post-millennium South Asian themes that the two films
engage with.2 Second, the two films interpret and create
meanings about the border (i. e., they speculate on the
consequences of borders) and, especially in Veer-Zaara,
they also invoke border crossing as a possibility and
aesthetic pleasure that transcends easy and conservative
constructions of Indians and Pakistanis in problematic
binary terms.
The methodological imperative, in this essay, of articulating
together screen textual analysis and socio-cultural
commentary draws inspiration from scholarship in border
studies, particularly relating to the Indo-Pak region. Recent
work on the history of the simultaneous independence and
violent partition of India that resulted in the 3000 km-long
Indo- Pak border has argued for the need not only to intervene
in the political formation of borders, but also the
terminology that defines borders to carefully consider
(Kalra and Purewal 1999; Purewal 2003).3 A border can
be considered an actual and physical place—literally, a
line of control and division. Arising from an intervention
into the plight of the people who live near or are
connected (even through diasporic or transnational
routes) to borders, the term ‘borderland’ is an apt way
of addressing the socio-cultural space that is created and
exists as a possibility that can encapsulate the pleasures,
pains and politics of residing near and sometimes
crossing, and at other times wanting to cross, actual
borders. As Gloria Anzaldua puts it, ‘A borderland is a
vague and undetermined place created by the emotional
residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a state of
constant transition’ (Anzaldua 1987: 3). Navtej Purewal,
elaborating on borderlands, argues for the importance
of analysing the formations of culture in these spaces: ‘
The significance of culture in those places and spaces
around borders presents a challenge to the political
science of international borders in which it is not merely
44 Rajinder Dudrah
formal arrangements between nation-states that are of
importance’ (Purewal 2003: 541). Borderlands, then, can
become sites of creative cultural production that require
investigation. For the purposes of the present chapter, it is
argued that Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara both attempt
representing and engaging with the Indo-Pak border as
actual physical place but more so as symbolic
borderland space. What kinds of cinematic
 Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
45
borderland spaces are constructed in these two case
study films will be evaluated in the conclusion.

Main Hoon Na

Main Hoon Na was the hit film of the summer of 2004, both
in the domestic Indian and overseas Bollywood markets.
Main Hoon Na is the story of Indian Army Major Ram Prasad
Sharma (Shahrukh Khan) who is involved in events to
ensure that ‘Project Milaap (Unity)’—the releasing of
innocent captives on either side of the borders of India
and Pakistan—can take place as a sign of trust and
movement towards peace between the two nations.
Opposed to this project is an ex- Indian Army officer, who
parades under the pseudonym of Raghavan (Suniel
Shetty) and, together with his group of ex-army
militants, terrorises those involved in Project Milaap in
an attempt to prevent its occurrence.
Main Hoon Na has been made in the mould of a classic
masala film— having ample ingredients of action, romance,
melodrama, and elaborate song and dance spectacles. Like
almost any other Bollywood masala film, it too draws on
one of the predominant mythic and religious texts of India,
the Ramayana. Evidently, Shahrukh is cast as Ram, his
younger brother (played by Zayed Khan) literally as
Lakshman, the villain is a reworking of the name of the
demon king Ravan, and Shahrukh’s role can be read as
averting a threat to the nation, India. Ram also has to
bring together his separated and bickering family.
However, the film’s creative team, headed by renowned
dance choreographer Farah Khan in her directorial
debut, has deliberately gone against the grain of
applying this Hindu text in a right-wing nationalist vein.
Main Hoon Na can be situated in recent popular Hindi
cinema as following on from the anti-Pakistan, anti-Muslim
slanted films of late such as Gadar—Ek Prem Katha
(Revolution—A Love Story, 2001) and The Hero (2003),
both starring Sunny Deol. Main Hoon Na is a conscious
attempt to move away from the depiction of Pakistan as
the constant wrongdoer or sole villain. Instead, it
reinterprets the Ramayana predominantly as a story of
reconciliation and diplomacy, in which the nation of India
46 Rajinder Dudrah
has to deal with its internal enemies and terrorists, as in
the character of Raghavan, that pose a threat to the
possible peace process between India and Pakistan.
Ram’s bickering family unit, a metaphor for the social
condition of the nation, must also be restored through
dialogue and love.4
 Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
47
The depiction of the border features throughout Main
Hoon Na, at crucial points in the development of the main
plot of Project Milaap. The opening scenes of the film take
us into the world of public debate in urban India through
the current affairs programme of Jan Manch (People’s
Voice). A discussion is being filmed in front of a live studio
audience that stands in for sections of the Indian public.
Here, the inception of Project Milaap is being discussed
by the show’s host and the brainchild behind the initiative,
Indian Army General Amar Singh Bakshi (Kabir Bedi). The
merits of small steps towards possible peace are being
discussed. General Bakshi explains the reasons for
wanting to release fifty Pakistani captives in Indian jails,
some of whom have been in prison since 1971 and many
who have accidentally crossed over the Indo-Pak border
looking for water, not realising that they have done so.
As Bakshi says: ‘Our borders are not properly sealed.’
Accompanying this exchange, images of everyday,
ostensibly poor village folk are displayed on the several
television screens in the studio. Stills of men, young and
old, in handcuffs and chains, encapsulated by barbed
wire, and in dark prison cells are shown, accompanied by
an angelic, enchanting musical score. Throughout this
sequence, the camera shifts between General Bakshi and
images of the Pakistani captives on the screens, to a slow
pan-shot across the audience members of the Jan Manch show
—the audience are watching and thinking. Bakshi goes
on to say: ‘…Some of them didn’t even know that they
have crossed the border.… We feel it’s time to send them
back home.’ The studio audience applauds.
This opening sequence, then, is as much a signpost of the
challenges, trials and hopes towards initiating a reciprocal
friendship that await our hero, Ram, as it is a preferred
ideological mediation of the possibility of an enhanced
peace process between India and Pakistan. India is seen as
starting off the steps towards diplomatic friendship, via the
release of captured Pakistanis, and, later in the film,
Pakistan also follows suit with the release of captive
Indian villagers who crossed over its borders. What is
also of significance here is the implicit ideals given to a
version of Indian democracy, in which the main
protagonists are hailed as urban and middle class Indians. In
48 Rajinder Dudrah
the studio, the audience members are all dressed in
cosmopolitan urban western attire—the men wear suits,
shirts and trousers, and the women wear dresses. These
signifiers of a modern and urban Indian setting are
juxtaposed with the images and attire of the Pakistani
prisoners in Indian jails. The captives are wearing white
cotton tunics and everyday basic
 Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
49
village clothing. A polarity is set up in terms of class and
access to power—the poor relatively powerless villagers on
the borders of India and Pakistan, and the middle class city
dwellers who have the cultural autonomy to debate, discuss
and thereby partake in generating ideals of active public
citizenry through the talk-show format. Interestingly, then,
it appears that the urban metropolises of India are where the
fate of the borders and its people are discussed and
decided.
The second point in which the border features in the
film is in the flashback scene as backdrop story to
Raghavan’s formation as the film’s villain. Through
Raghavan’s recollection, the audience views the arrest of
several Pakistani villagers across a nameless desert region of
India, where Raghavan, as an Indian Army officer, is in
charge of the patrol. The Pakistanis have mistakenly
crossed over, looking for water, echoing and making real
the earlier reference to the border from General
Bakshi’s dialogues in the Jan Manch studio sequence.
Raghavan lines up the Pakistanis, telling them that they
are now on Indian soil, misuses his power, and ‘tries’ and
executes them on the spot with a pistol shot to the backs of
their heads. Raghavan is subsequently court-martialled and
dismissed from the army. It becomes clear that
Raghavan’s violent hatred for and mistrust of Pakistanis
comes from the death of his young son, allegedly caused
by Indo-Pak fighting across another border—in the
disputed region of Kashmir. The border and the
consequences of border crossing in this instance are
shown as a literal place of danger, where territorial
control and the possible abuses of its laws and powers lead
to abhorrent executions. The border becomes an ongoing
contested margin, resulting in the fuelling and escalation
of Indo-Pak tension.
It is in the final segments of the film, as it moves towards its
climax, that
the border is actually physically shown for the first time. Of
course, it is a constructed and fictitious border—one that is
never explicitly named or geographically identified. The
border is set amidst a desert landscape, with winds
blowing and sand flying in the air for atmospheric effect.
Through the use of the Indian villagers’ clothing and
appearance, the area might well be considered Rajasthani.
50 Rajinder Dudrah
Project Milaap is about to be realised as Pakistan has
agreed to release fifty Indians. The frame consists of two
large border fences running parallel to each other. In
between is no man’s land. Two gates are strategically
positioned on opposite sides of the fence as the only
official entry and exit points. The gates are the conduits
through which the release and exchange of the Indians and
Pakistanis can take place across the border.
 Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
51
The release and exchange sequence is set amidst another
exchange— an exchange of wits, physicality, and a battle
for life and death as Ram and Raghavan have their final
showdown and fight each other, fist to fist, at a separate
location. The highly stylised and martial arts
choreographed action sequence between Ram and
Raghavan takes place parallel to when Project Milaap is
underway and the two sequences are sutured together
through the film’s editing.
As Ram and Raghavan face each other, white doves
fly around them.5 At the border, the militaries of India and
Pakistan are gathered, as are the families and villagers
from either side to receive their loved ones, and the media
are also present to mark this historical occasion. String
instruments are used to create music of anticipation as
the camera cuts to images of the villagers looking on
over the border fences. Cut to Ram and Raghavan
exchanging blows and kicks. The music here is
electronically generated—synthesised sounds and
electronic drumbeats punctuate the physical offensive of
the two bodies; angelic chanting is laced over the music
as if this attack on each other requires divine
intervention. Cut to the gates opening at the border and
the two generals of India and Pakistan shake hands and
congratulate each other on the success of Project Milaap.
Violin, wind and piano instrumentation builds up to a
triumphant orchestral score as the prisoners from either
side walk across no man’s land together in a line. As they
pass each other they rub shoulders, becoming a single
indistinguishable line of South Asian men on the screen. Their
relatives and villagers clap with joy on either side of India
and Pakistan. Cut to Ram and Raghavan who have now
fought their way on to a rooftop that has been planted
with explosives. An army helicopter arrives to rescue
Ram from the roof; Ram’s brother Lucky is on board. The
roof begins to explode and Raghavan is killed. Ram runs off
the roof, leaps across the air and catches on to the legs of
the helicopter, in the mode of an action blockbuster hero.
Cut to the prisoners reuniting with their families. Cut to
Ram falling on top of Lucky, both embracing each other.
Cut to the families on either side of the border hugging
and physically reconnecting. These scenes are filmed in
52 Rajinder Dudrah
slow motion as if to accentuate the powerful
achievement of the two events: Project Milaap and
Ram’s success after the battle. The families laugh and
cry—universal signs of human emotions across the border.
An Indian man bows down on his knees, picks up sand from
the desert and rubs it across his forehead. A Pakistani in
a similar pose gets down as if he is praying and touches
his forehead on Pakistani soil. Violins and
 Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
53
a bansuri (an Indian flute) play, evoking a reconciliatory
mood: a mood that is almost otherworldly, as if the
angelic, chanting sound from earlier has now turned into
angels sighing with relief. Cut to the helicopter where
Ram and Lucky yell out in joy. The closing shots of this
sequence are of two other brothers on the Indian side of
the border—they hug. One brother picks up the other in
glee.
The final sequences of Main Hoon Na’s finale are a way of
bringing together the disparate blends of the masala genre
(melodrama, action, religious texts in the light of
globalisation, emotive music), and the trials of the hero
as a personal battle that literally becomes a battle for the
sake of national honour and better prospects with
neighbouring Pakistan. The reuniting of Ram and Lucky as
brothers and the coming together of Indian and Pakistani
families both offer an ideologically preferred solution for
the bickering nations of India and Pakistan to resolve
their differences through diplomacy. This possibility is a
cause worth fighting for as exemplified in the personal,
physical and political trials of our hero Ram. The border,
then, is a physical and manmade construction that can
be mediated for means other than the abuse of power
and mindless violence that has been seen in the capturing
of innocent Indo-Pak civilians and Raghavan’s murder of
Pakistani villagers.

Veer-Zaara

If Main Hoon Na extols the virtues of overcoming the border

through diplomacy and personal actions, then a slightly
later film in 2004 (also starring our leading mediating
man Shahrukh Khan) explores the pleasures and trials of
border crossing. Released in the autumn months to
coincide with the religious festivals of Diwali and Eid,
Veer-Zaara was the international Bollywood hit of the closing
months of that year. It is the love story of the Indian male
and Pakistani female protagonists who are separated due
to personal and political hurdles that come in their way.
The story is told predominantly through flashbacks from
the prison cell in Lahore, Pakistan, where Veer is
unjustly held captive. The Human Rights Commission in
54 Rajinder Dudrah
Pakistan appoints Veer a lawyer, Saamiya Siddiqui (Rani
Mukherjee), to argue his case and Veer gradually opens
up to her. They become friends and he recalls his
ordeal: Veer Pratap Singh (Shahrukh Khan) is a
helicopter squadron leader in the Indian Air Force that
operates on the border geographies of India and
Pakistan. On one of his rescue
 Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
55
missions in the mountains, he saves and meets Zaara
Hayaat Khan (Preity Zinta). Zaara has left Pakistan in
order to fulfil the dying wishes of her elderly nanny,
Bebe (Zohra Sehgal). Bebe is a Sikh woman living in
Pakistan since Partition and requests that her ashes be
immersed in the river at the Sikh pilgrimage site of
Kiritpur in Punjab, India. Concerned, that Zaara is a
lone woman traveller, Veer decides to accompany Zaara on
her journey to Kiritpur. At Kiritpur, he invites her to his
village in the Punjab to meet his family and fellow villagers.
Veer and Zaara kindle a strong liking for each other that
slowly develops into love. Zaara returns to Pakistan to
get married but realises that she is in love with Veer.
Veer travels to Pakistan as a visitor in order to win back
Zaara but obstacles are put in their way by Zaara’s
fiancé, at whose behest, Veer is blackmailed and wrongly
imprisoned under espionage charges. Veer spends twenty-
two years of his life in a Pakistani prison and pledges a
vow of silence in order to protect Zaara’s and his real
identity, and hence their love for each other.
Simultaneously with Veer’s decision to stay in the Pakistan
jail, Zaara makes a similar decision. She crosses the
border to the Indian side and spends several years (until
she is reunited with Veer) with Veer’s family in their
village. Saamiya takes Veer’s case to court and, despite
mounting odds, she wins. Veer and Zaara are reunited
and they return to India together as an elderly couple.
The use of the border as a clearly identifiable
representation and
apparatus of state control appears only twice in the film:
once at the railway station of Atari that borders on the
northwest fringe of India’s geography with Pakistan, and in
the final scenes of the film when Veer and Zaara return to
India by walking across the Wagah border from Pakistan
into India. These are two relatively short episodes in the
film’s length of over three hours and we shall return to
their virtues and ideologies in a short while. What allows
the border to manifest itself throughout the film as a
discursive and implicit reference is the diegetic world of
the film where the possibilities and pleasures of border
crossing are more paramount than the border itself.
This is not to offer a reading of Veer-Zaara in terms that the
Indo-Pak border does not matter as a line of control and
56 Rajinder Dudrah
divisive entity (as that it clearly does); rather, the reading
put forward here proposes to account for the pleasure the
film aims to encourage around the idea of the Indo-Pak
border, at the level of plot, dialogue, and audio and
visual style.
The border is implicitly crossed countless times throughout
the film
through the development of its plot (e. g., in the first
instance and as
 Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
57
the opening credits roll, Veer is dreaming a song and
dance sequence of him and Zaara together, which is in
an imagined geography that could be anywhere in India
or Pakistan; Veer’s reality wakes him and us up in a
Pakistani prison in Lahore; Zaara is shown in Lahore with
her family; Zaara arrives in India to take Bebe’s ashes to
Kiritpur, and so on). The plot is audio-visualised as
narrative that is sutured through the continuity edit cuts
that allow the viewers to make sense of the unfolding
story. Even at the level of script, the spoken dialogue by
the key characters, and in at least two songs in the film, the
border is referenced as either crossed or to be
negotiated in terms of a barrier to the lovers meeting (e.
g., the frequent references to ‘sarhad paar’—across the
border). What marks out the pleasures of Indo-Pak
border-crossing, in rich and suggestive ways, are the audio
and visual signatures that the film leaves as impressions
with its viewers, as both invested with transcendental
possibility and the emotional and political strife that
accompanies a mixed-race, mixed-religious (Veer is a Sikh
and Zaara a Muslim), two-nation love, across the Indo-
Pak divide.
The initial reason for a young free-spirited Pakistani
girl to leave her homeland and venture into India for the
first time to fulfil the dying wishes of her Bebe appear to
be bestowed by a certain sense of adventure and
spirituality that are inspired by the character of Bebe
herself. The exact reasons for Bebe to be in Pakistan are
unclear. However, the brief dialogues that Zaara and
Bebe share make clear that Bebe was brought over to
Pakistan by Zaara’s grandfather at the time of Partition
and Bebe had chosen to stay with Zaara’s family ever
since. Whether Bebe had been abducted at the time of
Partition or was in love with Zaara’s grandfather and
came over of her own volition is left unexplained, but
Bebe remains a Sikh woman who visits Nankana Sahib, a
Sikh gurudwara (place of worship) in Lahore, regularly. She
is also considered a part of Zaara’s family and is given
spacious and separate living quarters in the Hayaat Khan
household. Zaara is shown accompanying Bebe to the
gurudwara, and bowing down and praying before the
Guru Granth Sahib (the holy book of the Sikhs);
58 Rajinder Dudrah
afterwards they eat ice cream together and giggle like
two young sisters or close friends. In this way, it is
suggested that Bebe has been a personal and spiritual
guide in Zaara’s life as well as her nanny. The interfaith
aspects of Zaara’s religious openness are referenced and
elaborated on throughout the film, through references to
the different mystic saints in both the Sikh and Islamic
traditions of faith, either pictorially through images,
through song lyrics and
 Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
59
through Sufi shrines that are flagged up at key moments
in the plot development. From the outset, then, with the
introduction of Zaara and Bebe’s relationship and
Zaara’s commitment to the journey to India to deliver
Bebe’s ashes, an audio and visual style of openness is
established that refuses to be pigeonholed as simply and
exclusively as India/n and Pakistan/i; rather, it is one that
reaches across both borders and creates a diegetic
world of fluid exchanges through its sights and sounds.
This becomes the primary pleasure of Indo-Pak border
crossing in the diegetic world of Veer Zaara.
As Veer accompanies Zaara across the fields and
countryside of the Punjab to Kiritpur, then on to Veer’s
village and then to the Atari train station for Zaara’s
return journey to Lahore, they embark on a personal
adventure that slowly brings them closer to each other.
The mise en scène is full of rich textual metaphors of lush
greens, open valleys, flowing rivers, picturesque
mountains, and the meeting and greeting a panoply of
everyday Indian characters that give an added human
dimension to Veer and Zaara’s travels. They move
across rivers together on an overhead pulley crossing,
where Veer carries Zaara in his arms across a river bridge
when she twists her ankle. The music that gives
expression to these actions is composed of playful
shehnaiis a traditional wind instrument associated with
celebration, and string and percussions instruments,
both eastern and western, which are used to signify an
upbeat tempo. Often, when Veer and Zaara are together in
the same frame, the music is signalled neither as Indian or
Pakistani but a mixture, a blend of the two signifiers
being evoked as one through the audio and visual
registers. These registers take on a spiritual and
transcendental quality that is in keeping with the
tradition of the mystic saints in both Sikhism and in Sufi
Islam that profess the oneness of mankind and the
immeasurable sweet pain and longing for a loved one that
is akin to the yearning of the soul’s quest for union with
its divine source.
The uplifting mood of this journey together is both
elaborated further and interrupted when Veer and Zaara
arrive at the Atari train station. As a border station, it is
60 Rajinder Dudrah
heavily policed. Tall metal grilled fencing with barbed
wires is constructed between the two train lines— one set
of tracks operates train traffic within India, and the other
set operates trains from Pakistan into India. It is here that
their friendship begins to explicitly turn into desire and
love for one another. This is especially the case when
faced with the prospect of separation via the
 Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
61
entry of a human division in Zaara’s fiancé, Raza Shirazi
(Manoj Bajpai). The three characters meet on the
platform bridge. Raza is crossing over from the side of
the train’s arrival from Pakistan—he is literally and
symbolically signified as Pakistani and also as the film’s
central negative character, akin almost to that of the
villain’s entry in popular Hindi cinema. He is dressed in a
regal black Pakistani sherwani-style suit and the music
signals him through strings, percussions, and vocal chords
that create associations with Islamic sounds and the stature of
an aspiring mogul (Raza’s political ambitions and his arranged
marriage to Zaara as a political alliance between the two
families becomes apparent upon Zaara’s return to
Pakistan).
Cut to a moment later: Veer and Zaara find
themselves waiting on the platform together—Raza is
away making arrangements for his and Zaara’s return
journey—and Veer confesses his strong liking for Zaara
and his contemplation of a marriage proposal to her.
Zaara is stunned speechless, though not altogether caught
unaware; her feelings for Veer have also been kindled
deeper. Raza rejoins them, and in the verbal exchange
between the two men Veer almost confesses his love for
Raza’s fiancé. During this entire exchange Zaara remains
quiet; she does not utter a word. What is further
interesting is that this scene occurs at the border—a
negotiation is taking place with the woman as the site of
the transaction, yet she is unable to speak or chooses to
remain silent. Rather than cast this encounter at the
border in the film as one where the heroine is simply
subjugated by the authority of the two men, we need to
follow the movement of this scene as it unfolds into a
complex and rich expression of the self through coded
audio and visual registers.
As Veer and Zaara turn their backs to each other to go their
separate
ways, a song begins: ‘Do pal ruka khwabon ka caravan’ (‘For two
moments our caravan of dreams stopped and then moved
on’; playbacked by Lata Mangeshkar and Sonu Nigam’).
The song is filmed as part day- dream sequence and part
magical intervention, as the characters express their true
feelings for each other without letting them be known in
62 Rajinder Dudrah
public: Veer sings to Zaara and Zaara to Veer in an
antiphonal call and response style, yet they both imagine
the other singing; neither sings at the same time in the
same frame. They confess their love to each other
through the use of their imagination. It is here that Zaara
communicates openly and clearly amidst the hustle and
bustle of the border train station. The song sequence is
deployed, in one of
 Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
63
the conventional formats of its usage in popular Hindi
cinema, as a narrative accelerator, to enunciate the
unspeakable in a conservative social setting at a border
crossing.
As the song ends, the action returns to the actual
social world of Veer and Zaara at the train platform.
Zaara has now boarded the train. Veer turns around to
look at Zaara for one final time at this juncture in their
meeting, anticipating a return glance that will confirm her
interest in him.6 Zaara steps back into the frame of the
train compartment’s doorway. She sends a Muslim
greeting of adaab to Veer—she gestures towards her
forehead with a gently bowed head and a slightly cupped
right hand with polite deference and a slightly concealed
smile. As they perform this coded etiquette, the music of
the song is drawing to a close and the two have secretly
confirmed the sentiments of the lyrics—to each other
and to the audience. The pleasures of the Atari train
station scene arise from the impossibility of Veer and
Zaara’s situation, manifested at a border crossing: our
hero and heroine are unable to fully express their true
feelings for each other due to the intervention of Raza; and
their perceived difference in terms of Indo-Pak social
identities is the obstacle. The border crossing is given
added resonance as it creates a moment of exchange, social
danger (the fiancé is nearby, as is the Indian police),
possibility (if only they could speak openly to each other),
longing, and sadness in parting—in accumulation, the scene
bears all the hallmarks of a classic Hindi film’s emotional
and melodramatic moment. The border and the pleasure
and problem of how to overcome and cross it effectively
constructs an intended relationship of affect with the
viewer.
The border features again in the film’s closing scenes.
This time it
is the Wagah border that crosses over from Pakistan into
India, and vice versa, across the divided state of Punjab
in both lands. Filming on this actual location is an
attempt to give credibility to the issue of people and love
being separated by manmade political boundaries in the
film. What is worthy of comment at this border
sequence is the representation of the return of Veer
back to his homeland after over two decades in Pakistan,
64 Rajinder Dudrah
now with Zaara as his partner. Accompanying them to the
Pakistani side of the border is their solicitor and new
friend, Saamiya. They exchange dialogues of thank you
and good wishes. Saamiya presents a small box of sindoor
(red powder used by Hindu married women to adorn
their foreheads), inviting Veer to make Zaara his
forever. Veer completes this predominantly Hindu
wedding ceremony by marking Zaara’s forehead with the
red powder.
 Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
65
Veer says to Zaara, ‘Come, let us go home.’ Veer bows
down and pays respect to the land of India while the
tricolour (the Indian flag) adorns a border gate behind
him in the frame. Veer and Zaara walk over into India,
past a line of border guardsmen. They turn and wave to
Saamiya, who waves back; she turns away from them,
wipes her tears, smiles and walks out of the frame back
into Pakistan.
A dominant reading of this scene, and arguably its
intended effect, is one of an ideological climactic resolve
that goes against the grain of the fluid pleasures of
border crossing and the creation of eclectic borderland
spaces demonstrated elsewhere in the film, as has been
discussed earlier. Zaara is Hindu-ised as Veer’s elderly
bride and they return to the bounded nation identity of
India as their home. Yet, this dominant ideological
conclusion, which lasts for around three minutes, is small
compared to the three-plus hours of border crossing that
the film has just explored. The intended dominant Hindu-
Indian inscription imposed upon the resolution of the
film is at odds with the eclectic cultural, social and
aesthetic exchanges that have been presented earlier in
the film. Thus, the ending is askew and perhaps not the
most remembered or exemplary scene of the film, if it is
one of the scenes remembered at all by the film’s global
audiences. This is an argument that would best be tested
through a qualitative audience study of the film, which is
beyond the remit of this essay. Nonetheless, what is
possible is the speculative conclusion that the episodic
nature of many popular Hindi films, Veer-Zaara as present
case in point, are viewed and engaged with in sporadic
ways, and whose pleasures and possibilities are not
simply curtailed by endings that betray the accumulative
effects and affects that have been set into motion over
the duration of the filmic text.

Conclusion

If borders are a physical construct, then borderlands are

contested spaces of, around and between borders. The
two films studied here present depictions of borders that
the films’ central protagonists need to negotiate and
66 Rajinder Dudrah
overcome, and thereby the filmic texts become attempts at
illustrating borderland spaces through the particular lens of
Bollywood cinema. The films create their own cinematic
borderlands that can be made sense of by deciphering their
audio and visual styles. One of the central aesthetic
pleasures of the films, and especially of Veer-Zaara, is the
emphasis placed on the potentially radical act of
 Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
67
border crossing. As Kalra and Purewal argue, ‘People
who engage in this process are therefore attempting to
overcome the limitations imposed by hegemonic and
dominant forces that construct and maintain socially
congealed difference’ (1999: 55). Furthermore, crossing
a border may cause shifts in its boundaries, as argued in
the analysis of the two films, but this does not necessarily
result in the removal of the border. In both films, the
political border of Indo-Pak is crossed but the border
remains intact and, particularly in the climax scene of Veer-
Zaara, it might well be argued that a preferred ideological
mediation of the nation state of India is attempted. Also, the
ease with which our two protagonists in Veer-Zaara are also
able to move across the border might be a cause for
lament—we never see them having to negotiate the
lengthy procedures and draconian Indo-Pak measures of
having to obtain a visa and then to deal with immigration
officials at the border.7 Nonetheless, this is a minor setback
in the world of Bollywood cinema, as border crossing as
an imaginative and transcending act is given more
credence and is what marks the aesthetic pleasures of
the cinematic borderland spaces of Veer-Zaara. Both films
also avoid replicating easy acts of border aggressions
(attempts at maintaining the sovereign status quo of
borders), and instead aim at being part of the complex
dialogue towards border transgressions (attempts at
overcoming the dominant symbolic expressions of
sovereign borders; see Kalra and Purewal 1999: 56;
Purewal 2003: 547).
A final point for reflection is how the two films, in
terms of their distribution and reception, as part of an
internationalised Bollywood cinema in the contemporary
moment of globalisation, might further add to
understandings of acts of border transgressions. Here,
both films have been viewed and supported, at the very
least, by Indians and Pakistanis and their diasporic
counterparts (for example, in box office returns, and DVD
and video rentals and purchases, and also in the pirated
circulation of DVDs, goods that have also transgressed the
Indo-Pak border). These audiences have interpreted and
made their own readings of the cinematic borderlands of
the two films across the local and global movements of
68 Rajinder Dudrah
planet Bollywood that crosses numerous nation state
boundaries.

Notes
1. Paying attention to audio and visual style in the analysis of film texts is an
established critical and debated area of close textual analysis within
film studies. Focusing on audio and visual style in a film allows us to
decipher and make readings about the
 Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
69
sound and visual components of the image/s as they articulate and
offer meanings of the diegetic world/s being presented. Audio and
visual style refers to aspects such as the overarching musical score,
background music, sound motifs, the mise en scène and their intended
projections as semiotic signifiers of aesthetic pleasure, and particular
kinds of social ideology.
2. For instance, both films were made in the context of developments
after the battle of Kargil in 1999; the 13 December 2001 attack
upon the Indian parliament in New Delhi by Kashmiri separatists; and
the initiation of various bus services between India and Pakistan since
the mid-1990s to improve diplomatic and cultural ties, which have
been suspended and started again according to the political climate
between the two countries.
3. This excellent work builds upon the US-based debates of border
studies of the late eighties and early nineties where academic research has
been largely derived from the US- Mexico border (e.g., Anzaldua 1987;
Chambers 1990; Giroux 1992; Rosaldo 1989). On border theory, see
also Michaelsen and Johnson (1997). According to Purewal, ‘Border
Studies has come to constitute a broad field that attempts to
understand the various processes of power, nationalism, social
relations and culture at the physical and symbolic sites of
international boundaries’ (2003: 540).
4. Both Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara use the star persona of Shahrukh Khan
to good effect. Shahrukh Khan has established himself as the current
international Bollywood box office superstar, through his regular roles
as a character that mediates various kinds of urban and diasporic
Indian trials and desires in popular Hindi cinema. Aspects of his
star persona are also nuanced by instances from his everyday real
life that are regularly reported in fanzines and in the film trade
press. Shahrukh is seen as advocating a genuine vision for a secular
India and a peaceful South Asia in terms of communalism; this is
often developed through his character roles—in these two films he has
to mediate a path of peace and good relationships across the Indo-
Pak border. Although Shahrukh often plays the idealised Hindu Indian
on-screen, in real life he is an Indian Muslim with a Hindu wife, and
he is well known for celebrating and partaking in both Hindu and
Muslim religious festivals as part of his family affairs. On Shahrukh
Khan as an urban Indian and diasporic phenomenon see Dudrah (2006).
5. The white doves symbolise peace—the tryst of Ram and Raghavan
will decide the outcome for the possibilities of peace. Furthermore,
as the director Farah Khan reveals in the director’s audio
commentary of the DVD release of the film, she has deliberately
used the doves not only to make a point about the battle for peace but
also as a quote from and homage to one of her favourite directors and
his films—John Woo’s Face/Off (1997), where white flying doves are
used in the final fight sequence between John Travolta and Nicholas
Cage.
6. This is a stylised reference in Hindi cinema, where the hero and
heroine, upon meeting and in establishing their relationship to each
other, return glances to confirm their liking and, later, love for one
another.
70 Rajinder Dudrah
7. Obtaining a visa to cross the Indo-Pak border is time-consuming and
stressful. It takes at least seven hours to cross the thirty-two-mile
border between Lahore and Amritsar. See Kalra and Purewal
(1999), pp. 62–63.
Borders and Border Crossings in Main Hoon Na and Veer-Zaara
71
56 Rajinder
Dudrah

Drawn Lines
58 Meenakshi
Bharat

4
Partition Literature and Films:
Pinjar and Earth
Meenakshi Bharat

Whenever a film is on a literary subject, it is like watching literature

being murdered.
—Chandraprakash Dwivedi, director, Pinjar, 2003

Literary responses to the drawing of borders in the

Indian subcon- tinent in 1947 have been aplenty and quite
steady in their appearance, starting soon after the act was
perpetrated. Some early writers were
Saadat Hasan Manto, Intezar Hussain and Amrita
Pritam, while more recent authors who delved into the
issue were novelist Bapsi Sidhwa in Ice-Candy-Man (Sidhwa
1988), people’s chronicler Urvashi Butalia with her
collection of individual memoirs, The Other Side of Silence
(1988), a spate of anthologies of Partition stories (Bhalla
1994; Cowasjee and Duggal 1995; Darpan 2000), and a
concerted translation enterprise of Partition-related
literature.1 Literary artists from both sides of the border
have constantly felt compelled to relive their hurt
through a recall of their own experience of Partition. In
the very personal, very unique questioning and analysis
of their predicament, they attempt to take stock of
themselves through their writing, in the context of the far-
reaching repercussions of the division. But strangely, the
visual media had long been chary of handling this
sensitive topic. Despite the rare appearance of a Garam
Hawa (Hot Winds, 1973)2 in the seventies, presenting a
sensitive handling of the nerve-wracking aftermath of
Partition, and a Tamas (Darkness, 1987),3 five-part television
serial of the late eighties, it is only recently, in the wake of
resurgent critical and political interest, that this theme
has found a more continuous and assertive voice.
Mainstream blockbuster successes like Gadar (Tumult,
2001)4 have been backed by other turn of the
millennium responses, in much-acclaimed
60 Meenakshi Bharat

cinematic adaptations of two exploratory literary texts:

Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy-Man, written in English,
cinematically translated by Deepa Mehta as Earth in
1999, and Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar written in Punjabi in
1950 and made into a film with the same name by Dr
Chandraprakash Dwivedi in 2003. In these retakes on
the historical splitting up, both films attempt a serious
appraisal of Partition, patently indicating that the issue
is pertinent even today. But in the interstices between
the two art forms, somewhere on the journey from the
novel to the film, a shift in nuancing takes place. The
complexities arising from this interface, and the underlying
agenda of the adaptive engagement, makes for a vibrant
dynamics that demands thorough analysis.
That the makers of the two cinematic texts are more
than con- scious of the task of adaptation at hand is
abundantly clear. They wilfully, almost compulsively,
draw attention to the original novel. They welcome
questions about this aspect, fielding them with alacrity.
In response to one such poser, Chandraprakash Dwivedi,
the medico turned film director of Pinjar (The Skeleton,
2003), found himself pushed to a corner and forced to
comment that the relationship between literature and
cinema was indeed problematic. He commented:
‘Filmmaking is like giving birth to a child; the memories
will always be painful. Whenever a film is on a literary subject, it
is like watching literature being murdered [emphasis mine]’,
implying that the spirit of the literary artefact apparently
suffers at the hands of the filmmaker. Though this has
been the usual major evaluative stricture passed against
cinematic adaptations whenever they have come up for
assessment, the superiority of the written text most often
being taken for granted, for a director to make such an
avowal when he is himself engaged in the act speaks of
the enormity of the issue. But when the adapted literary
text is located at one of the most harrowing divisive
junctures of subcontinental history, when a line was
unimaginatively and politically etched through the heart of
a people, tearing them apart with unprecedented violence,
the problem becomes even more piquant. So, apart from
the regular issues that cinematic adaptation raises, a
specific dynamic of complex questions is unleashed.
 Partition Literature and Films: Pinjar and Earth
Engagement with 61 this dynamic moves far beyond the
reductive ‘better than’ or ‘not as good as’ yardsticks, far
beyond even the mere establishment of adaptation as an
acceptable and respectable exercise (an exercise that
has met with much resistance from purists) to a direct
face-off between conflict-ridden ideologies in diverse art
mediums.
62 Meenakshi Bharat

Both the novels in question have been written by

women who personally went through the experience of
Partition. Interestingly, both were simultaneously resident
in Lahore at the time when the city burnt in Partition-
ignited rioting. But the one was a grown woman with an
adult female apprehension of the event, and the other
but a mere child: Pritam (1919–2005) was twenty-eight,
married and pregnant at the time and Bapsi Sidhwa only
eight. The former, a Sikh from Gujranwala, now in
Pakistan, was forced into refugee status in India while
the other stayed on in Lahore to grow up in the ‘toddler
nation (Ice-Candy-Man, p. 140).’5 The narrative
perspectives that both use in their novels are
commensurate with this fact: Pritam looks over the
shoulder of Puro, a young adult woman of childbearing
age, and Sidhwa through the innocent, incredulous gaze
of the eight year old Lenny Sethi. In that sense, both
novels have an autobiographical element, though Ice-
Candy-Man cashes in on Sidhwa’s childhood experience in
a more direct, concerted manner. The film Pinjar, for the
most part, broadly carries the narrative’s mono-
perspective with Puro at its centre. Yet, the film
unobtrusively slips into the deployment of multiple
points of view, with part narration focusing on Puro’s
betrothed Ramchand, part on her brother, and part on
her mother. They all have independent stories to tell,
enjoying a space they never had in the written text. But
Earth carries through the narrative direction of the novel
quite faithfully, hemming the relation from the lame
child’s point of view with a voiceover by the character of
grown-up Lenny Sethna.
Written in 1988, at the peak of this latter-day
Partition-related creative activity, Ice-Candy-Man is
written by a Pakistani but not a Muslim. In a theocratic
state, the author’s Parsi identity has significant
reverberations. She occupies, simultaneously, a neutral
position and an outside one, giving her a unique
critiquing vantage. Also, her experience of Partition is
recalled, as was Pritam’s; only, it is much more distanced in
time: Pritam’s book was published within three years of
Partition and Sidhwa’s four decades after. In addition, it is
significant that Sidhwa writes in English, the language of
 Partition Literature and Films: Pinjar and Earth
63
the erstwhile colonisers. Pritam, on the other hand, wrote
primarily in Punjabi, having made a brief beginning in
Hindi. It is but evident that the immediate target
audience for the two was diametrically different. Printed at
a time when the publishing industry was neither as
organised nor as professional as it is today, the original
publication details and dates of Pinjar are difficult to come
by. Moreover, Pritam only reached a wider audience
64 Meenakshi Bharat

after her work was translated. Besides, she has written

much else that has been ranked superior to this novel. In
fact, the making of the film has popularised the novel, the
latest editions openly cashing in on the film by using
pictures of the star, Urmila Matondkar, and the rest of
the cast on the cover. The film has opened the narrative
to a much larger audience simply by virtue of the fact
that it is a Hindi film, by far the most potent art medium
in the Indian subcontinent. What is more, cast in what
has popularly come to be termed the ‘Bollywood’ format,
with song, dance and mainstream actors, it immediately
became a crowd-puller. The interesting fact is that,
considering the seriousness of the subject, the choice of
the Bombay film pattern of colour and song seems
unusual. Translation into another medium, from the
literary to the audio-visual, automatically changes background
texture: the use of colour, sound, song, music, and
dance imbues a larger than life element to the narrative.
The upshot is that Dwivedi brings serious literature to the
common man. Finally, the selection of the film for screening
at international forums has brought the narrative hitherto
unparalleled global visibility.
That does not mean that Dwivedi was not aware of the
special
problems of working on an adaptation. He learnt quickly
enough that organising finance for a film based on
literature was a very difficult proposition because the
success rate of such films was low. His importunities
were met with the response, ‘Why literature?’ Basically,
the highbrow character of literature was not considered
conducive to box office success. So, if a filmmaker wanted
his film to reach the masses, many compromises were
entailed. In part, Dwivedi sought to achieve such success by
the very deployment of the popular, mainstream layout of
Bombay films already talked about: the casing of colour,
song, dance, and romance. Yet, it was essential to
maintain a distance from the formula of commercial
films if a significant comment had to be enunciated.
Predictably then, the novel Pinjar incorporates the format
of successful commercial Hindi films while yet not
emulating them. Actually, just the choice of a literary
artefact, which had the solid credentials of coming from
the pen of the most respected woman writer in Punjabi,
 Partition Literature and Films: Pinjar and Earth
65
who was also the recipient of the highest literary awards of
the country helped establish the seriousness for the project.
6

A similar logic applies to the transformation of Sidhwa’s

novel into
a film. Mehta too, like Dwivedi a few years later, adapted
the novel to this popular Bombay blueprint inasmuch as the
use of song and dance.
66 Meenakshi Bharat

But the treatment of the narrative other than this is totally

western. The fact that the film is made in both Hindi and
English clearly indicates that she had a western audience
in mind from the outset. Once again, this film too is a
brave confluence of the serious and the commercial. Also,
note the astute choice of successful Bombay actor Aamir
Khan to play the ice-candy-man, the Khan known for his
cerebral leanings and repeatedly iterated desire to be
associated with what is termed ‘meaningful cinema.’
It is evident that the personalities of the directors and
the actors have a direct bearing on the finished product.
Deepa Mehta’s western sensibility demands underplaying,
though, even here, viewers have reacted to the un-ayah
qualities of Ayah, with viewers criticising her too-
beautiful sarees. Even though the big draw, the thinking
Khan, Aamir, is in sync with the working ideology of the
director, his ‘Bombay’ presence can never be completely
forgotten. The use of ‘Bollywood’ intrusions like the
mandatory song and dance routine bespeaks some
concessions towards popular viewership. Pinjar, on the
other hand, has been made by an indigenous,
homegrown director, brought up on a diet of Bombay
films. In this case, the popular draw is its heroine,
Urmila Matondkar. Song and dance are an integral part
of the film. Yet, the content and its treatment break away
from the formulaic mould. This dual allegiance is
evident even in the performances. The expressive yet
restrained performance by Manoj Bajpai plumbs depths
beyond the Rashid of the book, managing to garner a
National Award for Best Performance by an actor for
the year. On the other hand, despite an overall commendable
performance, Matondkar’s ‘Puro’ and the director fall
prey to the use of another popular ‘Bollywood’
technique: the use of melodrama. One viewer wishes
that she indulged less in ’huffing and puffing’. Another
feels that her acting is rather loud in parts, as in the scene
when she disguises herself as a khes (cotton rug) seller as
part of the plan to rescue Lajo, her brother’s wife and
Ramchand’s sister.
It follows that the process of adaptation is bound to have
an impact on the carrying over of novelistic concerns
into the audio-visual medium. Since both the protagonists
 Partition Literature and Films: Pinjar and Earth
are females created 67 by women novelists, the gender
question, ‘the woman’s lot’ is never far from the
narrative. In Pinjar, issues like the marriage of girls, their
submerged desires, their aspirations, and their education
are all seen in the light of the gendered views of
contemporary society which, in turn, has its foundation
in the belief of the unequal status of men and women.
68 Meenakshi Bharat

The factors that limit the realisation of Puro’s identity due

to her sex are clearly Pritam’s focus. The underlying and
overt lamentation of the text is:

Is yug mein ladki k¯a janm lén¯a h¯i p¯ap hai.

[It is a sin for a girl to be born in this age.] (Pritam 1950: 83)

and, in the film,

Béch¯ari, mardon k¯i m¯ar¯i.

[Poor thing, accursed by men.] (Pinjar)

Similarly, in Ice-Candy-Man, Lenny ’s Parsi doctor consoles

her mother when the latter voices her worries about
Lenny’s future prospects, saddled as she is with her polio
limp. ‘What about her schooling?’, is the parental
question. He responds in the stock patriarchal manner:
‘She’ll marry—have children—lead a carefree, happy life. No
need to strain her with studies and exams.’
(ICM: 15)

In fact, Lenny is acutely aware of her own position as a

girl, and sensitive to the gendered attitude of the world:
…drinking tea, I am told, makes one darker. I am dark
enough. Everyone says, ‘It’s a pity Adi’s fair and Lenny is
dark. He’s a boy: Anyone will marry him.’
(ICM: 81)

But the critical consideration is whether the films

take up this theme and, if so, to what extent. The male
director of Pinjar does echo some of the concerns of the
novelist in this quarter. He shows his allegiance by
almost taking Amrita Pritam’s words quoted above,
verbatim, and putting them in Puro’s mother’s mouth in the
shape of a plaintive song, ‘Jag mein janam kyon leti hai
beti?’ (Why is a daughter born in this world?) Even so, it
would seem that his main objective is to make a Partition
film, and the gender question remains, at best, a
secondary concern as it never was with Pritam.
Quite surprisingly, the woman director of Earth
decides to give the woman angle shorter shrift than the
author does. Lenny’s gender awareness is not ever
brought up as an issue. The competition between the sexes
 Partition Literature and Films: Pinjar and Earth
69 with by the absolute deletion of the
is totally done away
characters of Adi, her brother and of Cousin.7 It is only
Mother, taking
70 Meenakshi Bharat

off her husband’s shoes and seeing to his immediate physical

comforts, who might throw some light on the skewered
gender equation which is of considerable interest to
Sidhwa. It would seem that the director has decided that if
she has to be faithful to her theme of Partition, and if
cinematic economy and cogency has to be maintained,
she should not stray too far from it.
It is clear that the desire to root the film historically is the
dictating factor in the making of these two films. In the
case of Pinjar, the telescoping of the time period covered
in the novel, roughly 1935 to 1948, to the two years
around the severing moment of Partition signals this
impulse. The film opens with the textual indication that it
is ‘August 1946’ and ends two years later in 1948. The
opening frame of the film is of Partition-associated violence
in Amritsar. A Sikh faction clashes with a Muslim one.
Blood splatters on the camera when a human body is
sliced with a sword. Thereafter, the camera moves to
Puro’s home where it dwells on the family setting,
building up an offsetting picture of happy domesticity.
This microcosmic cosiness is disrupted by the political
division of the subcontinent. The visual narrative
concentrates on juxtaposing this smaller picture with the
macrocosmic upheaval overtaking the nation, constantly
highlighted by numerous references to the larger political
scenario where the struggle for independence is in full
swing. Puro’s brother’s participation in the freedom
struggle, his soliciting of money from his father for his
political engagements, and his participation in political
rallies and demonstrations occupy significant cinematic
space. This development of her brother’s character has
the effect of amplifying the political, historical and
nationalist preoccupations of the film.
Moreover, Dwivedi’s slogan for his title frame is, tellingly,
‘Beyond
Boundaries’. It is clear that ‘mulk ka batwara’, the
division of the nation, is the major focus of the film,
punctuated as it is with patriotic iterations, political
speeches and the strains of ‘Vande Matram’ (Salute to the
Motherland), the nationalist cry of the independence
movement in the Indian subcontinent. The novel, on the
other hand, is never so trenchant in its pursuance of this
theme. Its ultimate appeal is more as a novel that voices
 Partition Literature and Films: Pinjar and Earth
social and feminist71 concerns as they are played out
during difficult times. This slight novel—with the
overriding themes related to women, family, children,
and social divisiveness based mainly on religious
affiliations—cashes in on experiences that the author has
had occasion to see at close hand. Specifically, at that
point of time, Pritam’s main concern was to document
the plight of
72 Meenakshi Bharat

women in Punjabi society, which was ridden with social

schisms and tensions. Written close on the heels of
Partition, she naturally grounds her novel in that troubled
scenario; she presents the fact that there was tension
between Hindus and Muslims even prior to the Partition,
the event being a build-up of earlier social tensions. The
novel spans a period from more than a decade prior to
1947, to just after Partition. It would seem, in a way, the
novel is about Partition. Yet, it is still not a Partition novel
per se, in that it does not focus just on the climactic
historical moment.
Dwivedi’s concerns are obviously wider and more
temporally focused. He reads beyond the written word
to mount characters, frames and stories in a way that is a
departure from the book. Also, in the interest of drama, and
in keeping with the condensed two-year span of the film,
Puro loses a child in childbirth. Even the mad woman’s
son that she nurtures for the first months with such
tenderness and devotion is snatched away by inimical,
unfeeling and divisive social norms. In the book, not only
does she have her own son but she gets to ultimately
keep the other child once he is returned to her. The film
version functions, for one, to concentrate the action
around the year of Partition. Moreover, this works very
well to get audience sympathy for Puro’s plight and also
to give her final decision to stay on with Rashid immense
emotional and moral power. The fact that she has finally
managed to put her past behind her, including her
dreams of marriage to Ramchand, and is able to
unconditionally embrace Rashid for all his love,
understanding and support, is a sure crowd winner. Also,
this and the last show of solidarity between Ramchand
and Rashid is completely in line with the recent friendly
overtures between the two nations. The political goodwill
of the moment, 2003, a crest in the seesaw motion of
Indo-Pak relations, apparently discourages the use of
anti-Pakistani sloganeering and pro-India jingoism, which
was present in many earlier films dealing with cross-border
relations. The release of the music on the Wagah border
enunciated this stand in good measure, with both director
and cast proclaiming it publicly in interviews and in
public forums. The patriotic strains of the song ‘Vatnan
ve o mere vatna ve, bat gaye ve ri angan’ (Oh my nation,
 Partition Literature and Films: Pinjar and Earth
73 too, refers to the undivided original
divided are the homes),
homeland and not to the emergent India or Pakistan. Of
course, Pritam too had no ill word to utter vis-á-vis either
nation or people. But that was because, as has already
been pointed out, she was presenting a realistic picture of the
times, her eyes riveted on social issues. She was making no
‘political’ statement, only uttering a humanitarian lament
for the
74 Meenakshi Bharat

unfortunate turn of events. But Dwivedi, while carrying

forward Pritam’s objective, falls in with the
contemporary political agenda in his adaptation, the
iteration of the desirability of political amity between
two warring nations.
This political alignment between writer and filmmaker is
completely reversed in the relationship between Bapsi
Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy-Man and the film Earth. Sidhwa, Pakistani in
her allegiance and nationality, clearly shows a nationalist tilt
in her novel. Jinnah is ‘our Jinnah Sahib’ but India is
othered by ‘your precious Gandhijee’ (Ice-Candy-Man, p. 91).
Gandhi and Nehru are caricatured into sex maniacs and
‘enema’-fixated individuals. The references to swaraj, the
Quit India movement, the mountbatten plan, and the
Radcliffe Commission unmistakably locate the narrative in
a political and historical matrix. Even the issue of
colonialism is an evident political preoccupation; there is
reference to the British as ‘the goddam English’ who are
held responsible for bringing the scourge of polio to the
subcontinent: ‘Blame the British.’ Sidhwa clearly has an
agenda and does not evade taking sides. The
antagonistic cries of ‘Jai Hind ’ (Hail India) and ‘Pakistan
zindabad’ (Long live Pakistan) rend the skies, aglow with
the hellish fires burning in Lahore. Of course, the novelist
has concerns beyond these limitations. The
misinterpretation and misuse of religion to feed the rift
between different communities is highlighted in every
class. There is narratorial sympathy for Ayah,
metaphorically standing for undivided India, with her
coterie of admirers from every religion, Muslim, Hindu,
and Sikh. In this context, Ayah’s rape and dislocation
becomes symptomatic of the scourge of Partition.
Through all this, Sidhwa’s Pakistani nationality and her
religious and social allegiance to Parsidom are never in
question.
Unlike Dwivedi, who fixes the apolitical original in a
historical- political context, Deepa Mehta waters down the
political affiliations of her author. She becomes a
disinterested documenter of religious and cultural
difference. If she is talking about Parsi culture then it is
merely to present a cultural milieu in as neutral a manner as
possible. She stresses this difference as the reality of the
 Partition Literature and Films: Pinjar and Earth
75
times, a perennial, continuing, iden- tifying condition of the
inhabitants of the subcontinent, of humanity, indeed, of
earth, her chosen metaphor. In adapting a novel written
by a Pakistani, she strips it of the pro-Pakistani tilt and also
assiduously steers clear of veering the other way. Mehta’s
diasporic Indian status (she is based in Toronto, Canada)
may have made this stance easier to adopt since, in a
way, she is an outsider. Despite her emotional and
76 Meenakshi Bharat

cultural allegiance with India, she is able to transcend the

specific to emphasise the general and the human.
An early indication of this impulse can be seen in the title
she gives her film: Earth, subtitled 1947, the particular
partition coming to stand for the general innate
fractiousness of man. It is worth noting that her credits
acknowledge Cracking India as the original of this film, the
title under which Sidhwa’s novel was published in the
Americas. The deliberate naming of the specific political
division of the country, 1947, and her focus on the
common condition of humanity, Earth, makes her
intention abundantly clear. Also, with her first film Fire
(1996), she had already publicised her plan to make a set
of films based on the elements, fire, earth and water,
essential ingredients of human nature.8 With this personal
agenda, she succeeds in departicularising the theme,
imbuing it with a more general colour.
The relationship between the director and the author
is also informative. It is bound to have an impact on the
process of adaptation. When asked about Amrita Pritam’s
reaction to his desire to adapt the book, Dwivedi is
unstinting in his praise for her ‘liberal’ attitude. He says
that she ‘frankly told me her medium is writing novels, stories
and poems while filmmaking is mine. And the two are
totally different. She gave me complete freedom to do
what I want (Verma 2003)’. This ‘complete freedom’ is
what allows Dwivedi to further his agenda. For Pritam, in
1950, barely three years after Partition, it was too early
to posit political amity; she could but lament the division
of a people at the humanitarian level. In a way then, more
than half a century later, the filmmaker could verbalise
the writer’s early unformulated desire, marking the
trajectory of the development of Indo-Pak relations
towards a hopeful coming together of the two nations.
Deepa Mehta has had an even more positive
involvement with the author and the book. Whereas
Pritam had left the director to do his work, this director
kept Sidhwa in the loop right from the beginning,
working closely in tandem with the writer who became
an integral part of the film crew. The degree of
participative commitment is apparent in the fact that the
last frame showing the ‘narrator’ limping away from the
 Partition Literature and Films: Pinjar and Earth
77
camera is that of Sidhwa herself. The short hair and the
polio drag in one leg is unmistakable. Sidhwa, on her
part, was quite taken in with the fact that her book had
been chosen by Mehta. She was quite happy with what
Mehta did with her novel, acceding that an adaptation
meant that a lot would be thrown out. Respecting the
independence of the adapting art form, she comments:
78 Meenakshi Bharat

The movie stands on its own. But it has the voice of the
child and it has the spirit of the book—it has objectivity and
it has the story. A movie is only a two-hour affair. A book is
spread over a wider expanse of time. Deepa had to get rid
of many incidents and characters. I hated the fact that
every time I saw the script it was shorter. Then when the
film was made, scenes were thrown out until something that
seemed very bare to me was left. I realise now that the film
works so excellently because of the cuts. (Rajan 2000)

Mehta loved the book enough to have a script ready

even before a contract was drawn up. Sidhwa was
generous in her applause for the filmmaker. She felt that
Mehta ‘understood every nuance of the novel. She
understood what was very important—the importance of
the Parsi child and her passionate perspective.’ Little
wonder that she immediately ‘told her to go ahead and
make the film’. This mutual admiration is indicative of
the fact that the vision of lost amity was common to
both the writer and the director. There was, therefore,
little call for Sidhwa to interfere with the film. Her
purpose of the ‘recording of a particular history in hoping
that we might learn lessons from that history’ was broadly
maintained by the film. Not only that, Sidhwa recognised
and welcomed an opening out of her own work through
it:
The movie has a totally different audience, a different way of
seeing things. But, the film widens the audience for the
original story. The purpose for writing the story is to reach
an audience, so through the film, that goal was further
achieved. This wider Earth audience may, in turn, learn from
the historical tale told in Cracking India. (Rajan 2000)

Mehta also carries forward Sidhwa’s widely applauded

quality—that of the book being the first Partition
narrative from the Parsi angle. The film takes up
Sidhwa’s dispassionate critique of the ‘bum-licking’9
tendencies of this minority community.
These films, then, appeal to both intellectual and
mainstream audi- ences and, as such, facilitate significant
changes in the attitudes and preferences of the Indian
viewing public. People who earlier could not have
responded positively to such themes are now vouching
 Partition Literature and Films: Pinjar and Earth
79 the fact that, in general, audiences
for them, evidencing
are becoming more discerning, more demanding. The
widening appeal of such films demonstrates a newfound
maturity that allows filmmakers to be more adventurous
in their choice and treatment of subjects. These films also
pave the way for more meaningful and enriching
exchanges
80 Meenakshi Bharat

between the realms of literature and cinema in India. It is

amply clear that there is a larger directing philosophy
that goes beyond these particular texts, literary or
cinematic, to enunciate a shift towards the establishment
of a climate of colloquy between the two nations. These
are the impulses that made Dwivedi pick up a novel
written so long ago. These are the reasons for Mehta
instinctively choosing to adapt Sidhwa’s novel. In fact,
whatever the play in time, whatever the variation arising
from the fact that the writer is reliving a personal
experience and that the filmmaker, at a remove, is
recovering and assessing another’s experience, there is
this common thread of belief in human values that
connects all the four artistic entities.

Notes
Pinjar directed by Chandraprakash Dwivedi, 2003 with Urmila
Matondkar, Manoj Bajpai, Sanjay Suri in the cast. Released as ‘a
human saga set during the Indo-Pak Partition.’ Announced that it is
based on the novel by Amrita Pritam.
Earth directed by Deepa Mehta, 1998 based on Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel Ice-
Candy-Man. Aamir Khan, Maia Sethna, Nandita Das, Kitu Gidwani, and
Rahul Khanna were in the cast.

1. The works of Manto Hyder, Pritam, and Joginder Paul, amongst many.
2. Dir. M. S. Sathyu, with Balraj Sahni leading the cast. Though
initially held up by the censors, the film went on to win the
National Award for its contribution to national integration.
3. The serial aired on Doordarshan and directed by Govind Nihalani, a
stalwart of the parallel film industry, adapting a Hindi novel of the
same name by Bhisham Sahni (1988). See Mazumdar (2005).
4. Gadar—Ek Prem Katha (Tumult—A Love Story), the biggest blockbuster
of 2001, with Sunny Deol and Amisha Patel in the lead romantic
roles, was an out and out Bombay masala film with music, song,
dance, melodrama, and histrionics. This film was clearly anti-Pakistani,
with a great deal of dialogue-shouting aimed at whipping up the
emotions of the patriotic Indian audience.
5. Sidhwa, a Parsi from Lahore, divides her time between Pakistan and
the US and is a US citizen. She makes frequent visits to India.
6. The Sahitya Akademi and Jnanapith awards.
7. The deletion of Adi also implies that the minor theme of colour,
‘whiteness’, as an aspiration of the colonised, does not find place in
the film.
8. The first film of the series was Fire, followed by Earth. With the storm
generated by the controversial theme of lesbianism in Fire behind
her, interest in Earth was certain. Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das
 Partition Literature and Films: Pinjar and Earth
are the protagonists81of Fire.
9. In the film, Lenny’s mother says that the Parsis are called ‘bumlickers’.
In the book they ‘run with the hare and hunt with the hound’.
82 Meenakshi Bharat

5
ÂMillions of Daughters of Punjab Weep
TodayÊ: The Female Perspective in
Partition Films
Claudia Preckel

The Partition of India in August 1947 marked the

creation of the two independent nation states of India
and Pakistan and the end of British colonial power.
Looking at the mere facts of these events,
especially in the Punjab, one can only obtain a tiny
insight into the human tragedies and terrible experiences
which occurred as a result of the violence which ensued:
twelve million people were forced into migration and
millions were killed. Approximately seventy- five
thousand women became victims of sexual violence,
rape and abduction. The wounds of these violent events
have not completely healed even to the present day.
Partition has, in some cases, continued to be a national
trauma and a personal tragedy for some women, one that
still cannot be discussed publicly or in private.
Partition became a focus of major scholarly interest in
1997, the fiftieth anniversary of India’s independence. But
the process of ‘writing history’ in India as well as in
Pakistan has ended up in the creation of an ‘official
history’ of the two nation states. As a consequence, the
positions and experiences of women have often been
marginalised. In 1998, Urvashi Butalia published her well-
received book The Other Side of Silence, in which she
collected memories of female victims of Partition, mainly
from Sikh and Hindu backgrounds. In this work, women
speak, for the first time in forty years, about the violent
events of Partition. This has meant reliving trauma, pain
and anger, and also the start of a necessary process of
introspection, remembrance and mourning (Kabir 2005:
190).
 The Partition became a subject of literature as early as
the 1950s, with several female novelists and writers
discussing the events of Partition quite soon after it had
happened, whereas it remained a strong
72 Claudia
Preckel
taboo in Bollywood cinema until recently. It was only in
1973 that Bollywood first dared to depict the violent
events of 1947 in Garam Hawa (Hot Winds, 1973). In this
essay, I take for analysis three films depicting the events of
Partition. Two of these films are based on novels written by
female authors. They are partly fictional, partly ‘faction’,
meaning fiction based on historical facts. The films—all
of them milestone Partition films—are Gadar (Tumult,
2001). Earth (1999) and Pinjar (The Skelton, 2003). These
have been chosen because, on the one hand, they
present the female view on Partition and, on the other,
they portray the difficult relations between the dominant
religions of the region—Hinduism/Sikhism on the one
hand, and Islam on the other—in the colonial context.

Female Victims? Male Perpetrators? Male Victims?

The common factor in the films mentioned is that they
concentrate on the fate of the female characters—Sakina
(Gadar), Shanta (Earth) and Puro (Pinjar). All are either in
danger of being abducted and/or raped, or endure these
horrific experiences. In the three films, the female
protagonists—irrespective of their religion—are
characterised positively, whereas the men are always
involved in violence. The women in these films become
victims of male violence because men think that this is
the way to humiliate their enemies. It seems to be an
‘easy’ way to destroy the enemy’s honour.
The film Pinjar illustrates that this method of
dishonouring women is not related to the period of
Partition alone. Pinjar is based on Amrita Pritam’s (d.
2005) novel of the same name. It is the story of a Hindu
girl, Puro, played by Urmila Matondkar. On the day
before her marriage to the rich and sensible Ramchand
(Sanjay Suri), Puro is kidnapped by the Muslim,
Rasheed (Manoj Bajpai), who himself is a victim of
circumstances and family loyalties. When Puro
successfully escapes from her kidnapper, her own parents
refuse to take her back. Puro decides to live with
Rasheed, marries him and becomes a Muslim named
Hameeda. Following the events of Partition, Ramchand’s
sister Lajo meets the same fate as Puro. Puro tries her
best to get Lajo released with the help of Rasheed, who
 ‘Millions of Daughters of Punjab Weep Today’ 73
suffers from the guilt of having abducted Puro and her
separating from her family and religion. The families are
finally reunited in a refugee camp on the Indo-Pakistan
border. Puro is asked to return with her family to India
in order to marry Ramchand, but she refuses and
decides to live on with Rasheed.
74 Claudia
Preckel
There is a further twist in this tale of religious divide.
Puro, a former Hindu, finds an orphaned Hindu baby and
wishes to bring it up as her own. Rasheed and Puro are
forced into a decsion to return the child to its own
community where it would be cared for according to the
customs and religion of its own people. This decision can
be seen as a lesson learned by Rasheed that ‘might is
not always right’ and imposing religion or values on
another person is not an enlightened path towards
earning love and respect.
Rasheed eventually comes to realise that in his world,
men are the decision-makers and that these decisions
are taken without any reference to the women’s wishes
or desires. By failing to take their women into
consideration, their world could be considered to be out
of balance. Dwivedi strictly avoids blaming any
community for the terrible events of Partition. This is
illustrated by the fact that the heroine Puro is abducted by
Rasheed because of a family feud, the roots of which were
embedded long before Partition. This also underlines the
thesis that women can be victims any time and in any
place.
The Partition clearly sets new limits and boundaries
for the heroines and their scope of action. This is
impressively shown in the film Earth and the fate of the
female protagonist Shanta. Earth, the controversial film
by Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta also earned
heavy criticism from Muslim communities both within
and outside India. This movie is not a typical Bollywood
product and the message is subtler. Director Deepa
Mehta portrays all religious communities of the Indian
subcontinent, allowing her protagonists to enumerate,
through the dialogue, all the stereotypes and prejudices
they have against the other communities. The story is
based on Bapsi Sidhwa’s (b. 1938) partly
autobiographical novel Ice-Candy-Man (Sidhwa 1990). The
main character of the film is Lenny, an eight-year-old
Parsi girl from Lahore. After having suffered from a polio
infection, Lenny is disabled and has to wear leg callipers.
Like the majority of Parsis in India, Lenny’s family
maintains a neutral stance among the religions of India.
Lenny lives among people who belong to the Hindu,
 ‘Millions of Daughters of Punjab Weep Today’ 75
Muslim, Sikh, and Christian communities—and these
people are friends. One of the most important persons in
Lenny’s life is Shanta, her beautiful Hindu nanny (Nandita
Das). The group around Lenny and her ayah is deeply
confused by the rumours about Partition. During this
situation, the Muslim ice candy man Dil Nawaaz (Aamir
Khan) falls in love with Shanta, but she decides to marry
Hassan, the Muslim masseur (Rahul Khanna). Dil
Nawaaz
76 Claudia
Preckel
feels betrayed, both by the woman he loves and by the
other religious communities in India responsible for
cruelties against the Muslims. The story culminates when
Hassan is killed by his fellow-Muslims and Shanta is
abducted and is never seen again.
Whereas Shanta was free to choose Hassan as her
consort and even had a premarital sexual relationship
with him before Partition, her abduction and (by
implication) rape spelled the end of her control over her
own body and her sexuality. Rape and sexual violence are
symbols of newly created borders and boundaries on the
real landscape. They are signs of forcefully set marks on
the body, separating ‘ours’ from ‘the others.’ By dis-
honouring females of the ‘other’ communities, men are
setting limits to the woman’s free will to choose her own
religious or sexual identity. The motif of sexual violence
against women does not have any religious reason, nor
does it orginate in romantic desire. Rather, the origins lie
in an over-emphasis of masculinity, which is rooted in
the patriarchal system and deeply entrenched notions of
‘manhood’ and the male will to enforce power over
women, who—in their eyes—are the weakest part of ‘the
other’ community.
This message is clearly conveyed in the film Gadar—Ek
Prem
Katha (Tumult—A Love Story, 2001) which deals with the
fate of the Muslim heroine Sakina (Amisha Patel) during
Partition. The story also focuses on the superiority of the
macho hero Tara Singh (Sunny Deol) from the Indian
Sikh community. The male protagonist has to cross the
borders to newly founded Pakistan to rescue his wife
Sakina who is detained in Lahore by her own parents.
The Muslim community in India, comprising about 120
million believers, heavily criticised Gadar, not only because
the film deals with a Sikh-Muslim love story, but also
because Islam is portrayed as a violent and cruel religion.
The film Gadar evoked strong reactions by moviegoers,
which included destroying some movie theatres. It cannot
be denied that the depiction of Islam and Muslims is often
very negative and stereotyped: the Muslim is often shown
as a traitor to Indian interests and as a terrorist; the
Muslim woman is a purdah-clad oppressed subject to
male machismo. However, elements of the film are
 ‘Millions of Daughters of Punjab Weep Today’ 77
somewhat more complicated than this. Sakina, the
Muslim protagonist, comes from an influential Muslim
family of landlords. Her education, however, is not a
Muslim one. Sakina has been educated in a Catholic
convent, largely separated from the world outside.
Before Partition, when her family was still living in
India, it is shown to have adopted western values. This
can clearly be seen when Sakina sings the song
78 Claudia
Preckel
Que Sera, Sera (‘Whatever will be, will be’), sung by Doris
Day in Alfred Hitchcock’s Academy Award-winning film
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956):

When I was just a little girl

I asked my mother, what
will I be Will I be pretty,
will I be rich Here’s what
she said to me.

Que Sera, Sera,

Whatever will be, will
be
The future’s not ours to
see Que Sera, Sera
What will be, will be.

It is very interesting to see this song in the context of a

Muslim family, as it seems that the singer of this song is
at the mercy of her own fate. The ideas inherent in this
song coincide quite neatly with the popular Muslim
belief in kismat, that is the fate of an individual written by
the hand of God. The lines of the song clearly foreshadow
the fate of the heroines of all the three films. Their self-
determined life comes to a sudden and sometimes tragic
end.
The representation of the heroine as a victim of male
violence forms a second level of interpretation. The female
protagonist—especially a mother—can be seen as a
symbol of the nation, as ‘Mother India’. In all three films,
the female characters emphasise the national integrity of
India and do not want the Indian subcontinent to be
partitioned. Instead, the female protagonists support the
view that India is one country where all religions can co-
exist. For example, in Earth, Shanta, meets a group of
people in a local park in Lahore. The men around her
belong to the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communities. When
they start talking about the Hindu-Muslim conflicts, Shanta
stands up and leaves the group, shouting: ‘Unless you
stop talking about Hindus and Muslims, I will not come
to the park.’ When the communal riots break out, Hassan
and Shanta are obviously deeply shocked by Dil
Nawaaz’s hateful speeches against the Sikhs. Hassan
stresses that the Sikhs are bringing Hindus and Muslims
 ‘Millions of Daughters of Punjab Weep Today’ 79
closer. After all, the Muslim Holy Quran is kept in the
Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holy place of the Sikhs.
Sikhs are described as acting as a kind of intermediary
between the Hindu and Muslim communities. This is
exactly what the Sikh protagonist in Gadar does by crossing
the newly created borders between India and Pakistan. He
further crosses the boundaries between
80 Claudia
Preckel
the religious communities, as he falls in love with a
Muslim woman. The sensitive issue of forced conversion
of women will be examined later in this essay.
Even in the choice of their partners, the female
protagonists stress religious harmony and unity. Although
Puro is abducted by Rasheed, a Muslim, she finally falls in
love with him and decides to live with him as Hameeda,
his Muslim wife. In the beginning of the film, however,
Muslims are characterised as a constant threat to the
family ideal of Puro, Ramchand and their families.
Rasheed follows Puro wherever she goes, creating a
dark, threatening and even demonised atmosphere
whenever ‘the Muslim’ appears. Later, Puro/Hameeda
realises that Rasheed is as much a victim of
circumstances as she is. He has been forced by his family
to take revenge for something that happened two
generations earlier. In this respect, Rasheed himself is a
victim, because he does not have the freedom to make
decisions of his own free will. He has been further
forced by his family to hurt the woman with whom he is
in love. When Puro/Hameeda has a miscarriage, Rasheed
interprets this as a just punishment by God. He tries to
obtain forgiveness at the local sufi shrine.
At this point, we see the face of ‘good Islam’, namely
the local
shrine of the Islamic holy man. Although it is a Muslim
shrine, Pinjar shows that access is not restricted solely to
Muslims. It is to be noted that, although the setting of the
shrine is on land which later becomes Pakistan, the scene is
dominated by the Indian national colours, saffron, white and
green. This shows that the shrine neither belongs to India
nor to Pakistan. Further, the shrine is not restricted to
the presence of men alone. Until the present day, women
visit it in search of divine support. The shrine is the only
place for public worship and prayer, as women in South
Asia usually do not pray in mosques. Often, women
receive help in issues of health (e. g., in case of infertility)
or in difficult social situations (e. g., after being divorced
or widowed.) Thus, the shrine—in contrast to the
mosque—becomes a place where female problems are
cared about. It is also a place free from the orthodox
(and allegedly ‘fanatic’) male interpretation of Islam, where
music and dance are prevalent, and ‘good Islam’ is
 ‘Millions of Daughters of Punjab Weep Today’ 81
practised, also by women. The shrine, thus, is a place for
religious as well as gender equality and a place for
public awareness for female problems.
When Rasheed visits the shrine, an inner development
starts.
Whereas earlier, he was not open to Puro’s problems, he
begins to realise that he has done her wrong. His violent
(male) interpretation of law,
82 Claudia
Preckel
custom, tradition, and religion changes to and adopts a
soft (female) attitude towards family, love and religion.
Rasheed’s metamorphosis from the ‘bad’ to the
‘acceptable’ Muslim begins at the shrine, thus
reinforcing the positive notions of sufi Islam in South
Asia.
The role of the sufis as poets and ‘good Muslims’ is also
emphasised at the beginning of the film Pinjar, where the
famous lines of the sufi poet Waris Shah (d. 1798) are
quoted:

I call Waris Shah today:

‘Speak up from your grave,
From your Book of Love
unfurl A new and different
page.
One daughter of the Punjab did
scream You covered our walls with
your laments.’ Millions of daughters
weep today
And call out to Waris Shah:
‘Arise you chronicler of our inner
pain And look now at your Punjab;
The forests are littered with
corpses And blood flows down
the Chenab.’

The lines allude to Waris Shah’s Heer, considered to be

one of the most famous works in Punjabi poetry. A parallel
is drawn between the tragic love story of Heer and Ranjha
and millions of Punjabi women who lost their homes and
families. The poems of Waris Shah are still read and
quoted in both India and Pakistan. The sufi poet—
although a man—is regarded as a ‘chronicler of female
pain’, stressing the sufi responsiveness to female
sensibilities.
The character of Dil Nawaaz in Earth underlines the
view of men as being both perpetrators and victims. At
the beginning of the film, he is seen as a very handsome,
sympathetic and tolerant person. His character is
reflected in his name, ‘Dil Nawaaz’ meaning ‘cherishing
heart’. He does not seem to have any prejudices against
other religions, and falls in love with Shanta, a Hindu
woman. He tries to win Shanta’s heart by playing and
 ‘Millions of Daughters of Punjab Weep Today’ 83
joking around with Shanta’s charge, Lenny. Lenny stresses
that Dil Nawaaz is her personal hero. She especially likes
the sweets and the ice cream that the ‘ice-candy-wallah’
sells. Moreover, both the word ‘ice candy’ and ‘Dil Nawaaz’
evoke positive associations in the spectator.
With the events of Partition, Dil Nawaaz undergoes a
negative change, which is the complete opposite to that
of Rasheed in Pinjar. Whereas Rasheed becomes
understanding, gentle and sympathetic to
84 Claudia
Preckel
the fate of abducted women, Dil Nawaaz becomes more
masculine than ever (both inwardly and outwardly). In the
scene when he stands with Hassan, Shanta and Lenny on
the roof of his house, they watch the beginning of the
religious riots in Lahore. Dil Nawaaz’s character has
completely changed and he watches the death of several
Hindus with great schadenfreude1 and hate. Shanta and
Hassan are deeply shocked by the complete absence in Dil
Nawaaz of humanity and sympathy. In addition to the
change in his character, his masculinisation becomes
obvious in his outward appearance. In the beginning of
the film, he dresses in the traditional Indian Muslim way,
in a pyjama kurta or with a ‘western’ shirt, mostly in bright
colours. In the scene on the roof of the house, his style has
completely changed. His clothes are dark, he has kohl
around his eyes, and he is wearing a muscle shirt. His muscles
(as a symbol of his masculinity) become visible for the first
time at this point in the film. As a result, he clearly
resembles Sylvester Stallone in Rambo. Everything soft
and gentle in his character has vanished, and he looks
like a hard and embittered man.
But Dil Nawaaz is not only a perpetrator, he has also
become a victim of political circumstances. Two of his
sisters have been cruelly killed in the rioting. Before their
death, they have been tortured and their breasts cut off.
Their dead bodies are found in a train arriving from
Amritsar. On seeing them, Dil Nawaaz, traumatised,
wants revenge and it is this feeling that brings about
the negative change in his character.
Hassan, the masseur in Earth, is shown as a kind of
good Muslim counterpart to Dil Nawaaz. He is a very
sensible man who neither wants to kill or to commit
violence against members of other religions, especially
people who have been his friends. Although he can
understand Dil Nawaaz’s wish for revenge, he is not
ready to blame the Hindus or Sikhs for the situation. He
does not want any hate between the communities, and is
even willing to marry a Hindu woman. Shanta, for her
part, is willing to convert to Islam before her marriage
with Hassan. All in all, Hassan is the ‘good Muslim’.
Here again, a gendered approach to the film might be
seen: whereas the character of Dil Nawaaz undergoes a
 ‘Millions of Daughters of Punjab Weep Today’ 85
‘masculinisation,’ the character of Hassan undergoes a
‘feminisation’: the figure denies the value of a male,
muscular aggressive body, but emphasises female
attributes like empathy, love, understanding, and
harmony. Like several of the female characters of the film,
Hassan too is victimised. Battered by his religious and
sexual choices, the metaphor of newly created borders
86 Claudia
Preckel
becomes applicable to his body too, when it is physically
assaulted. The only difference between Hassan and the
women shown in Earth is that he is victimised by his own
community, the Muslims.
Another stereotype of the bad male Muslim is
Sakina’s father in Gadar. As a member of the Muslim
aristocracy, he has access to political circles. Like the
Parsis in Earth, the family leads a bourgeois lifestyle before
Partition. Their good relationship with the British is
shown by the fact that Sakina attends a Christian school
in which British values and culture are taught. After
Partition, the family belongs to the political elite in
Pakistan. Sakina’s father is not willing to accept a Sikh
son-in-law and therefore declares Sakina’s marriage with
Tara Singh to be invalid. In his eyes, Pakistan is an
exclusively Muslim country, which has nothing in
common with India. The family’s lifestyle, seen in the
interior of the house, has now become exclusively
‘Pakistani’. Whereas in pre-Partition India, Sakina’s father
was tolerant in various ways, he develops into a
despotic patriarch in Pakistan. Earlier, he had sent his
daughter to a Catholic school in India; now, he is not
willing to accept a Sikh son-in-law. In India, he had
encouraged his daughters’ freedom and independence.
After the family moved to Pakistan, Sakina’s father is not
open to any kind of opposition concerning the
arrangement of his daughters’ marriages and the choice
of their grooms. He makes it clear to his family that he
will not tolerate any female protest against his decision
to marry his daughters to Muslim husbands.
This new Pakistani identity is challenged by the Indian-
Sikh Tara Singh. Tara Singh is a man who does not force
himself on women and is not personally involved in any
violent activity against them. He has fallen in love with
Sakina a long time before Partition, but has never dared
talk about his romantic feelings towards her. He gives
Sakina all the time she needs and, indeed, she does fall
in love in him. When Tara Singh realises this, he defends
his love against his own parents who want him to marry a
Sikh woman. After his parents accept his choice, the couple
live a happy life in India. Warmed by her love for her
husband, Sakina easily turns into a village woman used
 ‘Millions of Daughters of Punjab Weep Today’ 87
to hard work. Here, the famous film Mother India (1957) is
alluded to: the ideal of an Indian woman is the mother
living in a village and sacrificing herself for her family
and the Indian nation. Sakina comes to embody this role,
leaving behind her aristocratic westernised lifestyle. Her
husband Tara Singh respects his wife as a lover and as
the ideal mother to his children. The film emphasises that,
in the end,
88 Claudia
Preckel
Indian (Hindu-Sikh) moral values and love are superior to the
Pakistani Muslims’ insistence on their Islamic identity.
Pakistani Muslims have to accept the multi-ethnic and
multi-religious state of India in which Islam plays only a
subordinate role.
Gadar depicts the most negative image of Pakistani
Islam and counterpoints it with a positive image of the
Sikh. The protagonist Tara Singh has two sides to his
character. On the one hand, he is a soft and gentle,
interested in art and music. When he meets Sakina for the
first time in the Catholic convent, he immediately falls in
love with her. He gives her a snow globe, which
symbolises her homeland (watan). It is only when he
realises that his family has been killed by Muslims that he
starts killing. Only Sakina’s influence—when she is almost
raped and killed by the Sikh mob—can stop him. The
theme of violence against other religions is continued
when Tara, Sakina and their son escape from Lahore to
India. Tara kills hundreds of Muslim Pakistani soldiers
single-handedly and destroys Pakistani military equipment
such as jeeps, helicopters and a train. The ending of
Gadar puts the film in the category of the action movie, in
which Tara Singh becomes a hero with whom the male
audience can identify. For some sections of the audience,
Tara Singh is the person who takes revenge for the
events of Partition. He is the one to show the Pakistanis
that Indians are superior to them, physically,
psychologically and morally.
Besides the figure of Tara Singh, all three films
enumerate some stereotypes of the Sikh community—
either positive or negative. Gadar implies that the Sikhs will
never belong to Pakistan and can also never be forced to
betray their identity as Hindustanis. In a key scene of
the movie, Sakina’s father wants Tara Singh to convert to
the Muslim faith. Before the conversion is complete, the
Muslim audience of this public ‘event’ wants Tara to
shout ‘Pakistan zindabad! Hindustan murdabad!’ (‘Long
live Pakistan! Death to India!’). Tara Singh refuses and
then the fighting starts. This implies that Sikhs would
not agree to recognise the state of Pakistan, and would
prefer to support (an undivided?) India instead.2
But not a single film blames one or the other
 ‘Millions of Daughters of Punjab Weep Today’ 89
community as ‘being guilty’ for the violent acts
committed during Partition. The victims can be seen on
all sides and in all religions, and in all religions, women are
victimised more often than men.
All films analysed convey the same intention: it is not
religion which causes conflicts, war and violence. Rather
it is the patriarchal system which causes the ‘beast
within’ to emerge.
90 Claudia
Preckel
 In Pinjar, the patriarchal system ‘forces’ Rasheed to
abduct a woman because of a family feud which
started many years before.
 In Pinjar, the patriarchal system ‘forces’ Puro’s father to
send his
daughter back after she manages to escape from
Rasheed who had abducted her. This system ‘forces’
a father to repudiate his daughter in order to guard
the ‘honour’ of all female members of his family.

This behaviour is clearly not based on religion, but on

customs and traditions. Males of a community are under
social pressure from older or more powerful members.
The younger men of every community adhere to male
ideals of masculinity. Whereas their intention is to
protect ‘their own’ women, they do so by dishonouring
the women of the ‘other’ community.

The Great Exception? The Parsi Community

Interestingly enough, the Parsi community in India is shown to

be neither victim nor perpetrator in the Partition. There are
no forced conversions of Parsis to other religions, nor are
there any violent Parsi men. The reason might be seen in
the Parsis’ neutrality in religious matters.
As already mentioned, Bapsi Sidhwa, the author of Ice-
Candy-Man, belongs to the Parsi community of India. The
Parsis, who claim Indo-Aryan origin from Persia, are
Zoroastrians. In India, Parsis are members of the
Zoroastrian religion whose ancestry can be directly
traced from Persia. The word Parsi itself is derived from
the Persian word ‘Farsi’ for ‘Persian’. In Earth, a
traditional story of the Parsis’ arrival in India is
recounted. In the eighth century, a group of Parsi
refugees arrived in Gujarat, looking for refuge from Islamic
expansion in Persia. The ruler of Gujarat refused to give
them refuge and sent a messenger to them with a glass of
milk, thus signalling that the people of India are a
homogenous mixture. In response, the Parsis dropped
some sugar into the glass of milk. They wanted to
illustrate that they would make Indian culture sweeter,
while remaining invisible just as sugar in milk.
 ‘Millions of Daughters of Punjab Weep Today’ 91
The origin of the Parsis as Persian refugees is held
responsible for their neutral stand in religious and political
affairs. In Earth, their behaviour in India is further compared
to a chameleon: it is easy for them to adjust to the situation
in India and to remain invisible in order to survive.
92 Claudia
Preckel
Bapsi Sidhwa claims this neutrality in her own works. As
she herself and her family were directly involved in the
events of Partition, one cannot say that Sidhwa remains
completely neutral. However, due to the Parsis’ neutrality,
some critics think that Sidhwa’s works might be read as
a historical source or as ‘history’. It is furthermore true
that her novels can serve as a personal account of a
female member of a minority community during the time
of Partition. Her account might be regarded as
‘authenthic’, as Sidhwa shares many memories with her
female characters. It might also be counted as an
account of a person who became marginalised in many
ways: as a member of the minority Parsi community, as a
child, as a disabled person, and as a woman author. Not
many female authors have written on the Partition;
Sidhwa’s semi-autobiographical novel might be regarded as
one that gives a voice to women who have, for over forty
years, been silent about their personal experiences
during Partition.
In Earth, the Parsis’ exceptional role among the
religious com-
munities in India is depicted. One essential part of this role
is the Parsi community’s relationship with the British
colonial power. Earth shows Lenny’s parents’ close social
relationship to the British. They invite, and are invited,
for dinner; they dress in the western way and drive
British limousines. The British considered the Parsis to
be a ‘good’ religious community, to whom they gave a
special status during the colonial period (Didur 2006: 60
ff; Luhrmann 1994). The Parsis are shown to imitate the
British and are said to have adopted a certain awareness of
their Indo-Aryan descent. Lenny’s brother is described as
‘white’ and as looking like the British. Parsi familiarity
with western culture is evident in the scene where Lenny
and her mother dance the waltz. Further, it is shown that
the female members of the family are able to enjoy their
upper-class lifestyle (like the British people around them),
whereas outside their windows their world is falling
apart and their country is ‘cracking’. Whereas the
female members of all other religious communities live
under the permanent threat of being harassed, abducted or
raped, the female members of the Parsi community in Earth are
 ‘Millions of Daughters of Punjab Weep Today’ 93
only indirectly confronted with this possibility.
Mehta, following Sidhwa, evokes the impression that
Partition was a fight between the Hindu, Sikh and
Muslim communities that did not afflict the Parsi
community too much. The Parsis were not driven away
from their homes, nor did they suffer from the violence. As
noted above, Lenny’s family is shown to continue their
bourgeois lifestyle even at the time of violence and
murder between ‘the others’, clearly
94 Claudia
Preckel
underlined in the scene showing Lenny and her mother
dancing the waltz while other families start to leave
Lahore. The only effect of Partition on the Parsis might
have been the psychological trauma of seeing other
people suffering, seeing violence with their own eyes. In
Lenny’s special case, Partition marks the end of her
innocence as a child. After she tells Dil Nawaaz and the
Muslim mob where Shanta is hiding, Lenny sides with those
who have suffered from violence, rape and abduction. The
fate of her Hindu ayah is a belated eye-opener to the fate
of hundreds of Muslim women living in a Recovered
Women’s Camp in the very neighbourhood of Lenny’s
home. Lenny had heard about the so-called ‘fallen women’
earlier. When a little Muslim boy tells Lenny that his
mother had been terribly tortured, raped and finally
murdered, Lenny, who is almost speechless and who feels
entirely helpless, invites the boy to have a slice of cake. The
boy replies that he does not know what cake is, almost as
certainly as she does not know what rape is, and the
conversation ends. This scene illustrates again that the
Parsis lead a life which has almost nothing in common
with the hardships and problems of the other communities
in India. Lenny’s mother is never in danger of being
raped or of suffering from other forms of physical
violence—neither is little Lenny. It also seems clear that
Parsis are not involved in the ‘Partition nonsense’, as
Lenny’s mother calls it. They are sure that they can stay
in Lahore and even help their neighbours when they
leave. As almost invisible chameleons (so they describe
themselves), they can live in India as well as in Pakistan.
There is also no necessity for them to change their
behaviour or their beliefs. As mentioned before, the
victimisation of Parsis as shown in the films is more on
the psychological than on the physical basis. Although
being witnesses of hate, murder and rape, the male
members of the Parsi community do not undergo any
masculinisation and do not become any perpetrators.
The women do not undergo ‘feminisation’ nor experience
physical victimisation. The Partition borders do not
concern the Parsis as much as the other communities in
India; one might also say that the borders between men
and women also do not affect the Parsis as much.
 ‘Millions of Daughters of Punjab Weep Today’ 95

Forced Conversions·Conversions
from the Feeling of Love

As a result of the masculinisation of the male

protagonists, women become victims of violence in many
ways: through rape, abduction,
96 Claudia
Preckel
betrayal, and forced conversions, all of which are shown in the
three films. In Pinjar, the Hindu girl Puro becomes the
Muslim woman Hameeda. This is not her own decision.
Her miscarriage, resulting from having been raped by
Rasheed, can be interpreted as a metaphor: the forceful
conversion of women cannot secure the nation. Only the
woman’s acceptance of ‘another’ faith arising from love
for her husband and as a result of free will can be the
basis of a ‘healthy’ nation. Rasheed realises this point
and abandons the path of violent masculinity.
The conversion of women by force is alluded to in the
film Gadar. Tara Singh wants to save the Muslim girl Sakina
from the Hindu-Sikh mob. Thus, he marks Sakina’s face
with a bindi (a vermillion dot on the forehead, traditionally
worn by Hindu and Sikh married women) formed from
his own blood, stressing that she has become a Sikh
now. Marking someone with one’s own blood is a
powerful sign of having inducted someone to one’s
community. The rape of a woman, on the other hand, is a
forced mark to say that she, from that time on, is
dishonoured and belongs to ‘another
community.’Although Tara Singh’s mark on Sakina’s head,
and thus her implied conversion to Sikhism, is not her
own decision, it does not have a negative connotation in
Gadar. This conversion is further sanctified later in the film,
when Sakina falls in love with Tara Singh and becomes
a Sikh during a regular wedding ceremony.
The conversion of men to another religion, however, is
not possible in films. This is amply illustrated in Gadar.
Tara Singh crosses the Indo-Pakistan border. His father-in-
law does not accept his daughter’s marriage with a man
from ‘another’ community and tries to force Tara to
convert to Islam. Tara accepts this condition out of love
for Sakina, but strictly refuses to shout ‘Hindustan
murdabad!’ In this scene, there is an evident connection
between religion and the nation, which means ‘India is
Hindu and Pakistan is Muslim.’ Conversion to Islam—
according to the film—would have meant a conversion
from ‘Indian’ to ‘Pakistani’, which cannot be
countenanced in that film.

Conclusion·Crossing Borders
 ‘Millions of Daughters of Punjab Weep Today’ 97
Bollywood films—some of them based on literature by
female authors—sometimes show female perspectives on
religion, violence and Partition, perspectives that have
been marginalised in previous discourse. It is especially
the experience of physical and psychological violence that
becomes a subject of such films. The reason for the
98 Claudia
Preckel
religious fanaticism and violence is seen in notions of
masculinity, which are prevailing in every community.
The Partition is seen as a terrible event in which men
are setting borders and boundaries for women and
‘other’, ‘weaker’ men. These borders and boundaries are
either real or metaphorical: from childhood to
adolescence, India- Pakistan, Hindu-Muslim, love and
hate, body and mind. All three films analysed show
female protagonists, who, after having painfully
experienced these borders, find the strength to cross
them. They are no longer solely victims of the Partition,
but also active subjects in their newly defined
communities. Some male characters, on the other hand,
are shown as feminised victims of circumstances. The
films clearly show that if men—like the protagonist
Rasheed—are to cross borders to achieve mutual respect
and understanding, they have to feel as women. Thus,
these films might be regarded as catalysts for
discussions about gendered experiences of historical
events and an understanding of processes underlying
terror and violence.

Notes
1. A delight in others’ misfortunes.
2. Unfortunately, the Sikhs became victims of riots in 1984 after the
assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh security guards. Many
people were reminded of the violent events of 1947.
 ‘Millions of Daughters of Punjab Weep Today’ 99

6
ÂBroken Memories, Incomplete DreamsÊ:
Notes towards an ÂAuthenticÊ Partition
Cinema
Savi Munjal

‘For me the idea was to give a piece of life to the

audience, exactly as I see it, exactly as I live with it’.
Sabiha Sumar’s remark about her feature Khamosh Pani
(Silent Waters, 2003) echoes Cezare
Zavattini’s vindication of the Italian neo-realist aesthetic for
bringing the lives of ordinary people on screen, without
embellishment or dramatisation.1Khamosh Pani chronicles
the life of Ayesha, born Veero, kidnapped by Muslims
during the Partition, and saved by one of her abductors
who married her. Stylistic resemblances to Italian neo-
realism, Soviet expressive realism and the early films of
Satyajit Ray are unmistakable in Sumar’s inclusion of
unglamorous actors and the choice of grainy footage to
convey the past. The film operates at two levels—one, as
a powerful social document and two, as a poignant
personal story between mother and son. The social
commitment and humanistic perspective of Khamosh Pani
underlines the fact that Indian cinema banks on realism to de-
centre and displace the dominant discourse of mainstream
melodrama. The contention of this article is that unlike
the West, where realism is inevitably equated with
bourgeois ideology and consequently dismissed for being
complicitous with prevailing norms, realist cinema has
immense potential in Indian cinema and is central to the
process of the writing of history and of nationalist myth-
making. Khamosh Pani serves as the ideologue of a small
family in a small village, and illumines the ill-
documented underside of the political events. It allows
the auteur to grapple with complex issues revolving
around the Partition(s), memory and forgetting, and
arouses the cognitive abilities of the audience into
recognition of the traumatic past.
 ‘Broken Memories, Incomplete Dreams’ 87

The complex interweaving of narrative, war, political

passions, and the multifaceted cultural realities is
evident at the beginning. The establishing shot of
Charkhi and the repeated pan-shots of the village
connote harmony that is ruptured by constant flashbacks.
The grainy black and white footage of the flashbacks
conveys a sense of foreboding and mars the laughter that
characterises the first scene. This sets the tone for the
entire narrative—scenes depicting widowhood are
followed by an enactment of elaborate wedding rituals,
and the turbulent past is juxtaposed against the present
as Sumar’s narrative negotiates with the dialectic
between memory and forgetting. This provides a
contrast to the excessive mis-en-scène conspicuously
oversaturated with glaring colours in films like Main Hoon
Na (Don’t Worry, I’m Here, 2004) and Gadar (Tumult,
2001).2 Khamosh Pani makes a conscious attempt to steer
clear of melodrama as it seeks to convey the socio-
political and religious conflicts of the time. Unlike
jingoist Partition cinema that constantly construes
Pakistan as the spatial other, Sumar uses spaces to convey a
nuanced understanding of national trauma. Spatial dynamics
gain resonance as the mosque, once an apt heterotopic
location for a romantic rendezvous becomes the site for
the propagation of mainstream extremist sentiment
(Foucault 1986: 22–27).3
The subversive, Khamosh Pani seems to insist, cannot be
inscribed in common cinematic language. The static
taxonomy of melodramatic Hindi films, which relies on
oppositions between the good/bad, Indian/Pakistani,
civilised/savage, is rejected for a subtle articulation of
pertinent political and social concerns. The process of
Islamisation and the subsequent breakdown of pluralism in
Pakistan are articulated through multiple indexes. The
incorporation of General Zia’s name in popular culture can
be witnessed through the barber’s joke:
‘Why does Zia sir’s barber always mention elections?
Because the General’s hair stands at the name of elections,
allowing the barber to cut his hair.’

Sumar negotiates, within the realm of humour, with the

suspension of elections during the reign of General Zia-
88 Savi Munjal
ul-Haq in the name of ethnic cleansing and scrutinizing
the malpractices of politicians. Moreover, the insidious
conflation of the axis of politics and religion is betrayed by
the maulvi’s tirade against politicians and their insistence on
faith in the Almighty: ‘The one who does Jihad does not
have any greed or fear.’ Sumar systematically dismantles
the ideological state
 ‘Broken Memories, Incomplete Dreams’ 89

apparatus that perpetrates the internalisation of hegemonic

practices. The essential attempt is to explode what
Walter Benjamin calls ‘the continuum of history’
(Benjamin 1969: 253–64)4 and wring mankind away
from the conformism that threatens to overwhelm entire
civilisations.
Interestingly, retrogressive religious practices are
constantly linked to orthodox patriarchy. Khamosh Pani
provides an insight into Islamic cultural politics in a
faction-ridden and ideologically fragmented society and
raises profound questions about women’s civil rights.
The fundamentalists’ disapproval of love marriages and
dismissal of girls like Zubeida shows how the
misinterpretation of Islam leads to retrogression,
fundamentalism and obscurantism. Photographic realism
aids the director to systematically expose and dismantle power
structures that gained dominance in 1979. A particularly
vocal scene, which underlines the change brought about
in Salim, is when he participates in building a wall around
the school. ‘We will do this for our mothers and sisters, we
will give them the protection of covers and four walls.’ The
examination of links between patriarchy and oppressive
political systems, which lends to Khamosh Pani its
complexity, shows how the sexual identity of the
signatory influences the ideological leanings of the film.
The auteur articulates the debates in favour of purdah with
frightening clarity only to dismiss them within the schema of
the narrative. Sumar does away with the ‘orientalist’
view which homogenises Islam—represents a view that
it as a religion which denigrates women and limits their
freedom. Instead, she constantly foregrounds
alternatives for women’s equality from within Islam:
through Ayesha, who playfully advocates shorter sleeves for
the bride, and through Zubeida, who dismisses Salim’s
religious extremism as ignorance: ‘Salim, even I read the
Quran, but that does not mean I do not think.’
Sumar’s ‘flesh-and-blood’ depiction of women starkly
contrasts with the myriad representations of women in
commercial Hindi films. Women in films such as Border
(1997), which claims to be ‘adapted, dramatized and
fictionalized for the screen from a true happening…the
Battle of Longewala’,5 are limited to playing the roles of
90 Savi Munjal
mothers, wives and sweethearts. In the immense box-
office hit Gadar, Sakina passes from her father to the
hero, back to her father and eventually back to her
husband. A sense of helplessness characterises Sakina from
the beginning of the film to the very end. The dialogues
betray this: ‘I will only wait for him [her husband] … he
will definitely come to
 ‘Broken Memories, Incomplete Dreams’ 91

take me.’ Be it Amisha Patel in Gadar or Sushmita Sen in

Main Hoon Na, cinema represents women as fetishised
objects to satiate the male gaze. As opposed to the
representation of women as objects of desire, a tendency
that promotes what Laura Mulvey calls erotic scopophilia,
Khamosh Pani breaks away from the paradigm of the male-
hero-agent. Ayesha builds a life for herself and fiercely
clings to her independence till the very end: ‘I made my
own life without all of you … this is my life and my
house.’ Khamosh Pani draws attention to the doubly
victimised stature of women during the Partition—
victimised by the enemy as well as by their own
community: ‘We got our wives killed…but we did not let
them get to the hands of the Muslims.’ The
historiological narrative draws attention to the
exploitation of women in the name of honour. Driven to
suicide by the members of her community or abducted
by the members of other communities, the woman
occupies a problematic position within the self/other
binary—she is destined to be neither with the ‘self’ nor the
‘other’. Her quest for identity is constantly marred by denial
or, worse still, erasure: ‘There is no woman like that.’ The
body of the abducted woman, Veero, provides the site
for mapping these anxieties. The process of rehabilitation
becomes especially important as, what Foucault calls ‘the
techniques of power and … discourse’ (Foucault 1980:
98) collude in the attempts to use women to reaffirm the
idea of a nation. Construed as a passive victim by her
brother and ostracised as an outsider by the Muslim
community, Ayesha occupies the proverbial no man’s
land. The fraught topos of Samar’s feminist historiography,
which vocalises the trauma of women, marks a self-
conscious move away from the totalising potential of
mainstream melodrama. Ayesha’s stoic turning away of her
brother and her angry retort: ‘He [her father] wanted to kill
me for his own peace … and what heaven is left for me—
of the Sikhs or Muslims’ goes a long way in depicting
the split, indeed, the schizophrenic subjectivity of the
women who survived the violence. The film serves as a
unique imagistic site that allows the director to articulate,
as Butalia specifies, ‘their speech, their silences, the half-said
things, the nuances’ (Butalia 2000: 100).
92 Savi Munjal
Sumar’s characters depict the national psyche at a
moment when Pakistan was undergoing Islamisation
under General Zia-ul-Haq. Stark photographic realism is
deployed to foreground analogies between the traumatic
events of 1947 and Bhutto’s execution in 1979. The
political partition of India is at once a distant reality as
well as something that paradoxically feeds into communal
politics as late as
 ‘Broken Memories, Incomplete Dreams’ 93

1979. Khamosh Pani insistently asks the audience to think

about the presence of antagonism and communal rivalry
despite the passage of time. This analysis gains resonance
within the contemporary context, for, India too witnessed
communal riots against the Sikhs in Delhi in 1984, and
against the Muslims in Bhagalpur in 1989. Despite its
obvious political engagement, the film constantly
focuses on the individual and the repercussions of
political events on the filial unit. The emphasis is
constantly on what Eric Auerbach calls ‘daily life,’6 the
everyday business of living (Auerbach 1953).
Salim changes from being a cheerful Romeo to a
heedless zealot but the change is never chronicled in
shades of black and white. It is the subtle shades of grey
that the narrative seeks to present. Samar’s vocabulary
chronicles his descent into fundamentalism in the name
of vindicating his nation, his qaum, but there is a
conscious shift away from ‘authoritarian certitudes and
monumentalist hierarchies’ (Stam 2000: 19)7 central to
the melodramatic schema. A correct aesthetic
understanding of social and historical reality becomes
the precondition of Sumar’s obvious cinematic
sophistication. Despite his descent into fundamentalism,
Salim is painfully aware of what he has lost as he locks
away pictures of his childhood in a trunk with his
mother’s belongings. At another point, he gives his
mother’s locket away to Zubeida. The extreme poignancy
which characterises this scene betrays an immensely
nuanced understanding of character.
The avoidance of melodrama is nowhere more evident
that in the screen space provided to Ayesha’s suicide.
Ayesha’s action proves to be the point of culmination for
a series of close-ups of the well, interspersed
throughout the movie. With the recurring snapshots of
the well, the structuring leitmotif of Khamosh Pani, time
makes a prominent appearance in the cinematographic
image. A variation of the Deleuzian opsign, (Deleuze 1986),8
the pure optical image signified by the constant close-ups,
the well seeks to chronicle layers of time—past, present
and future, in order to show the analogous nature of
political events spanning decades. The nature of
exploitation meted out to women remains the same—
94 Savi Munjal
repeated close-ups of the well juxtaposed against the
building of the well, and retrogressive dialogues of the
fundamentalists show that there has been no change, no
apparent progress in the position of women. Precisely:
there is no progress; the journey is aimless,
characterised by a dearth of alternatives for women. Yet
Ayesha’s suicide, the action that ties all narrative strands
together, is represented within a split second. Ayesha
dies, but the
 ‘Broken Memories, Incomplete Dreams’ 95

movie does not end—Khamosh Pani ends with Zubeida’s

musings. Zubeida, like thousands of women all over
Pakistan, is fleshed out as an agent, while still being a
victim—she is not ignorant but chooses to remain silent.
Khamosh Pani seeks to give a voice to the marginalised
‘other’ and provides multifarious and reflexive ways of
understanding women. While this cinematic exposure of
power systems successfully conveys the perils of
patriarchy and religious extremism, it does not pose a
solution to the problem.
The film ends ambiguously. Women like Zubeida have
not triumphed; they are still on the sidelines waiting to
be heard. Gadar and Main Hoon Na, on the other hand, revel
in closure, which seeks to unify the narrative. Sakina’s
father undergoes a sudden change of heart, which leads
to the metaphorical ‘happy ending’ in Gadar. Moral
disarray is ameliorated through utopian clarity at the
end. This unification provides a point of commensurability
of radical and reactionary cinema. Despite their
‘emancipatory’ politics, films like Main Hoon Na retain the
segregationist logic of jingoist cinema and rely on
defamiliarised caricaturisation. Main Hoon Na is palimpsestic;
it bears the impact of earlier films and traces of neighbouring
discourses. This circulation of stereotypes as signs shows how
the reactionary intent of the film is an effect of its aesthetic
language and generic affiliations. This is what leads us to
conclude, using Stephen Neale’s words, that ‘even
positive images can be as pernicious as degrading ones,
(Neale 1993: 41–47, 163).9 Melodrama irrespective of its
radical/reactionary bent, revels in the formulaic—a
dangerous tendency Deleuze sums up as ‘nothing but
clichés, clichés everywhere’ (Deleuze 1986: 212).10 I call it
‘dangerous’ because the threat of popular cinema has
become more pertinent in recent times, with globalisation
allowing unprecedented opportunities for the
dissemination of mass forms. Mainstream melodrama,
which relies on stark binaries, propagates jingoism and
incorporates non-diegetic song-and-dance sequences, has far
more takers in the West’s media bazaar than realistic
cinema. Ironically, it is the discourse of nationalism that is
central to the popular appeal of melodramatic films.
The discourse of nationalism becomes especially
96 Savi Munjal
important as it throws light on the position of the auteur.
Viewing nation as narration, Homi Bhabha elaborates on
how ‘nation’ is articulated in language, signifiers and
rhetoric. A reflection of Bhabha’s parameters can be
witnessed in archetypal melodramatic cinema, which takes
recourse in rhetorical strategies that rely on inciting
preconscious apprehension
 ‘Broken Memories, Incomplete Dreams’ 97

within the audience. Gadar, for instance, reiterates the

ideological concept of fixity through its construction of
Pakistan as the ‘other’. Bollywood melodrama
repeatedly glosses over difference and ‘ventriloquises’
for whole nations and peoples in a monolithic voice.
Khamosh Pani, on the other hand, does away with
preconceived visual cues that are used to apprehend
reality within melodramatic cinema. It disrupts
universalising and hegemonic narratives and relies on
apertures to convey a complex sense of multiple realities.
Sample the exchange between the barber and the Sikh
gentleman visiting Pakistan two decades after the
partition:

Sikh gentleman: ‘I was staying here till

1947.’ Barber: ‘I came here in 1947.’

The narrative constantly seeks to underline the

heterogeneity of the population. The forceful statement,
‘The question is whose voice is Zia-ul-Haq’ interrogates
the lawful hanging of an elected Prime Minister by a
military dictator. The popularity of Bhutto’s Pakistan
People’s Party (PPP) in West Pakistan, especially Punjab,
is brought to the fore alongside Sumar’s ideological
affiliations. Clearly ‘realism’ is a precarious concept—all
cinematic renditions of history seek to forge a narrative,
which is mediated by the consciousness of the director of
the film. The auteur’s subject position gains importance as
she seeks to reconstruct ‘facts’ about the Partition from
memoirs, testimonies and stories not from lived
experience. However, despite the continuous
entanglement of ‘event’ and ‘interpretation’, Sumar’s
focus on the filial unit allows for a personal engagement
with history. There is a constructive, purposive and
political dimension to the plot in Khamosh Pani. This political
and historical engagement aligns Sumar’s ‘fictional’
reconstruction to a historians ‘factual’ rendition of a
historical event. As a range of contemporary philosophers
have shown, ‘real’ history can no longer be construed as
a separate epistemology based on empiricism (White
1973: 51).11 Sumar resorts to emplotment, argument and
ideological mediation in order to stress on the
moments of overlap between the micro and the macro
98 Savi Munjal
narratives of history. Her prioritisation of individual
histories and private memories directs the focus on issues
which purportedly ‘objective’ renditions of history gloss
over. Sumar, akin to feminist historians like Urvashi
Butalia (Butalia 2000),12 seeks to highlight the
marginalised aspects of political events—how families
were divided, women raped, murdered, exploited and/or
silenced, how the experience of dislocation and
 ‘Broken Memories, Incomplete Dreams’ 99

trauma shaped their lives, and determined that of the

cities, towns and villages they settled in—issues which
find little reflection in written history. Khamosh Pani then
needs to be understood as ‘historiophoty’ (Rosenstone
1988; White 1988)13: the veracity of the representation
and the accuracy of detail allow Samar to fashion a
distinctly imagistic filmic discourse which questions
patriarchal representations of partition by
foregrounding an alternative historiography. The film
succeeds in the resignification of norms outside the
epistemological given, and fashions a counter-discourse
that manages to convey the gendered ramifications of the
apocalyptic Partition in a way far more nuanced than in
melodrama.
The stress on the ‘individual’ as opposed to the
‘general’ offers an alternative historical view and echoes
Gyanendra Pandey’s debunking of master narratives as
fraudulent. According to Pandey, a self- conscious,
‘fragmentary’ approach to writing historical narratives is
an attempt to address these contradictions, gaps, and
silences. The merit of the ‘fragmentary’ point of view ‘lies
in this, that it resists the drive for a shallow
homogenization and struggles for other, potentially richer
definitions of the ‘nation’ (Pandey 1991: 559). It then
becomes important to examine which version of history is
visualised on screen by a particular genre.
The choice of the genre inevitably colours the politics
of films on the Partition. Melodramatic films rely on a
‘characteristic ensemble of manicheaism, bi-polarity, the
privileging of the moral over the psychological and the
deployment of coincidence in plot structures’ (Vasudevan
2000: 131),14 which generates vicarious pleasure in the
symbolic triumph. Gadar homogenises whole peoples
and relies on stark juxtaposition between the ‘good’
Sikh (Sunny Deol) and the tyrannical, venomous
Muslim (Amrish Puri). Khamosh Pani, like Pandey’s
‘fragmentary’ historical narrative, displaces this margin/
centre paradigm in favour of a nuanced polyvocality. The
film steers clear of comforting truisms and deconstructs
polarisations to reveal the fractured fabric of post-Partition
society. In contrast to the totalising methodology of
mainstream melodrama, Sumar’s fragmentary
100 Savi
Munjal perspective stresses the multi-dimensional nature of
political events.
Filmmakers such as Sumar, then, assume the function of
intellectuals as they confront not only extremist ideas and
ideologies, which operate at the level of ‘common sense’,
but also the social forces behind them (Gramsci 1996:
48).15 Melodrama renders history manipulable to the act
of constitution. It tends to foreground a single
authoritative
 ‘Broken Memories, Incomplete Dreams’
101
version of history while open-endedness allows for a
multiplicity of responses to co-exist. Khamosh Pani finally works
as a text that is fraught with ambiguity. It succeeds in creating
a space which allows the audience to examine personal
histories and ‘unheard’ stories. Eventually, it functions
as a communicative act, which initiates a dialogue with
the reader/spectator. Will women like Zubeida get to voice
their dilemmas? Or is Ayesha’s end the only route to
‘freedom’? Will women like Ayesha and Zubeida be able to
envisage other alternatives for themselves? These are
questions the audience must answer for themselves.
Clearly then, both form and content feed into one
another in order to make Khamosh Pani doubly disruptive,
the ideological lynch-pin for buttressing dissenting
sentiment. Signification operates through social consensus
and the lack of adherence to traditional signification
accounts for its ‘alternative, liberating newness against the
absorptive capacity of … established discourses’ (Terdiman
1985: 13). Deploying images as a principal medium of
discursive representation, Khamosh Pani offers a powerful
visual-auditory account of the trauma that haunts the
survivors and descendent generations decades after the
political partition of India. The film bespeaks the
energies of avant- garde innovation and an enthusiastic
embrace of ambiguity, thereby recreating the cinematic
edifice to provide the most fitting rendition of the
twentieth century experience of the Partition.

Notes
1. Pacifici 1956: 50–51. Zavattini, a theoretician and screenwriter,
was actively involved in the production of Sica’s The Bicycle Thief
and Umberto D. He coined the slogan ‘today, today, today’ and also
claimed that the ‘true function’ of ‘cinema [was] not to tell fables’
but to ‘tell a reality as it were a story’, so that there was ‘no gap
between life and what [was] on the screen’.
2. I will take Main Hoon Na as symptomatic of radical and Gadar as
representative of reactionary melodramatic cinema. While there can
be analogies and disanalogies between radical and reactionary
melodramatic cinema, it is the commensurabilities I am interested in.
Despite the semantic rejection of jingoism, films like Main Hoon Na
resonate with the power of earlier stereotypes and narrative
tropes. The reannexation of tropes leads to syntactic similarity.
This, coupled with the representational-compositional context
within which the film is produced, allows for a comparison of the
102 Savi
two kinds of films.
Munjal
3. Foucault defines heterotopia as the space which allows for the
articulation of counter-hegemonic sentiment. Heterotopias,
according to Foucault, are ‘something like counter-sites, a kind of
effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real
sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously
represented, contested, and inverted’.
 ‘Broken Memories, Incomplete Dreams’
103
4. Benjamin proposes a non-teleological reading of history, which can
‘blast open the continuum of history’. He insists that this explosion
of conventional history is characteristic of all revolutionary classes,
irrespective of their spatio-temporal location.
5. The battle of Longewala (5–6 December 1971) was part of the
Indo-Pakistan war of 1971, fought between Indian and Pakistani
forces in the Thar Desert of Rajasthan (India).
6. In the first chapter of Mimesis (‘Odysseus’ Scar’), Auerbach uses the
term ‘daily life’ to connote realistic depiction as opposed to a sublime
style. It is used to compare the Greek and the Hebrew ways of
writing.
7. The ‘villians’ in Gadar and Main Hoon Na, played by Sakina’s father
(Amrish Puri) and Raghavan (Sunil Shetty) respectively, serve as
points of contrast to Sumar’s delineation of Salim (Aamir Ali
Malik).
8. Opsign refers to the pure optical which breaks the sensory-motor links,
overwhelms relations and no longer lets itself be expressed in
terms of movement, but opens directly on to time.
9. Steve Neale insists that the radical/reactionary intent of the text is an
effect of its aesthetic language and formal features and not simply
a matter of narrative.
10. Deleuze uses the phrase while discussing the usage of generic
tropes and conventional processes of identification in prototypical
Hollywood cinema.
11. Plot is not a structural component of fictional or mythical stories
alone; it is crucial to the historical representations of events as
well’. White offers a deconstructive approach to history in his
books titled Metahistory and Tropics of Discourse. He believes all
histories are embodiments of particular historiographical tropes
and insists that a historian answers questions by using three
different types of explanations: emplotment, argument and
ideological implication.
12. Butalia’s project in The Other Side of Silence, like Sumar’s in Khamosh
Pani, is to focus on the collection of memories, individual and collective,
familial and historical, which, according to her, make up the reality of
Partition. Those are, she insists, the history of the event. Similarly,
historiographer Gyanendra Pandey’s ‘fragmentary’ approach to
writing historical narratives suggests promising ways of
recuperating ‘truth’ from individual rather than grand historical
narratives.
13. Historiophoty is a neologism coined by Hayden White in response to
an essay by Robert Rosenstone to describe the representation of
history in filmic discourse.
14. This is evident in the multiple coincidences which colour the plot of
Gadar—Tara’s presence amidst the crazed mob out to kill all Muslims
residing in India, Sakina’s discovery of her father’s musical watch,
which convinces her of his death, and Sakina’s discovery of her
family in Pakistan are all ploys which deploy coincidence to carry
the story forward
15. Common sense in Gramsci’s schema is used to describe the ‘natural’,
taken-for- granted knowledge which protects the interests of the
104 Savi
bourgeoisie as natural and inevitable, while the proletariat ‘consent’
Munjal
to domination. Internalisation assures that revolution is prevented
and the social order is maintained.
 ‘Broken Memories, Incomplete Dreams’
105

7
Partitioned Memories: The Trauma of
Partition in GhatakÊs Films
Kamayani Kaushiva

Only through remembrance can painful memories be forgotten

—Edward Said

The decade of the 1940’s was the era of two major historical catastrophes,
the Second World War with the Holocaust in Europe and the
Partition in India. The experience shaped the consciousness of several
generations both in Europe ... and in India.
—Margit Koves, ‘Telling Stories of Partition and War’ 1997.

Public memory is the fundamental mechanism via which the

collective identity of society is constructed. In India, there is
no ‘public memory’ of Partition, although it survives as
private memory in the lives of
millions, even decades later. There is no institutional
memory of Partition: the state has not seen fit to construct
any memorials, to mark any places—unlike in the case of
Holocaust memorials or memorials for the Vietnam war.
Nothing at the Indo-Pak border marks a place where
millions of people crossed borders of newly formed nations,
no plaque or memorial at any of the sites of the refugee
camps, nothing that marks a particular spot as a place
where Partition memories are collected. Rather, the
traumatic experience of Partition has been relegated to
the realm of collective amnesia. Post-Partition public
memory is shaped by a paradoxical dichotomy—the victims
are caught between ‘Silence and speech. Memory and
forgetting. Pain and healing’ (Butalia 1998: 356). Any
attempt to express the agony of Partition has been so
fraught with anxiety: ‘…is it better to be silent or to
speak.?’ As Claude Markovits states,
 Partitioned Memories: The Trauma of Partition in Ghatak’s Films 97

Initially, indeed, a heavy silence prevailed...the violence

that went with Partition was largely concealed in public
discourse, and its memory remained confined to realms of
private pain. (Markovits 2003: 58)

Though historical and literary work on the trauma of

Partition gradually emerged, yet cinema, as an important
document of cultural memory, was prominent by its
absence. Barring a few imaginative endeavours, such as
M. S. Sathyu’s Garam Hawa (Hot Winds, 1973), Partition in
cinema seemed to have been avoided rather than confronted.
Commenting on the silence that defined post-Partition
trauma, Mahey points out:

If nations could suffer trauma, the Partition certainly ignited

one in both India and Pakistan. And, as in some traumata,
the victims dissolved into catatonic shock that displayed itself
as silence. For a number of years after the event, no writer of
any renown on either side of the new border rescued an
adequate sense of lucidity to approach the issue. Something
had been permanently lost and the inadequacy of mere words
was discerned…[as] an understood code of silent mourning.
(Mahey 2001: 138)

This ‘silent mourning’ was, however, broken by the epic

vision and sublimity of Ghatak’s movies, whose three
films—Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-capped Star, 1960),
Subarnarekha (The Golden Line, also a river in Jharkhand;
1962) and Komal Gandhar (E-flat, 1961) unwittingly form a
trilogy and are a scathing indictment of the mindless act
of Partition. His films address the trauma of Partition
from a victim’s perspective; they enquire into Partition as
a continuing experience, as Butalia views it, the continuing
presence of the past in our lives today, a history which
refuses to fade away and whose dark shadows of pain and
trauma still define our ‘present’. It is this sense of
hollowness that Ghatak’s films strive to portray. Within a
rich tapestry of images and motifs, his films encapsulate
the intensity of human agony that Partition generated.
Ghatak addressed the predicament of homeless refugees
for whom Partition did not end in 1947, for whom,
rather, its consequences had just begun to shape their
lives.
Besides being an event whose consequences had just begun
98 Kamayani Kaushiva
to unfold, Partition was problematic in another respect—it
created two flanks, West Pakistan and East Pakistan,
which were immensely different in their cultural affinities
and orientations. In addition, the impact of Partition on
the two regions was drastically different. While, in both
cases, Partition generated mass exodus and communal
violence, in Punjab the escalation in violence, although
grisly and acute, was
 Partitioned Memories: The Trauma of Partition in Ghatak’s Films 99

primarily a one-time affair. It was temporally sealed.

After a span of few years, the issue got settled (in terms
of exchange of population). However, for Bengal, ‘the
influx of people brought down to the status of refugees,
displaced persons’, by the political game, still continues.
As has been rightly observed:
… the Partition of Punjab was a one time event with mayhem
and forced migration restricted primarily to three years
(1947–50), the partition of Bengal has turned out to be a
continuing process. (Bagchi and Dasgupta 2002)

The exchange of population also differed: while in the

context of Punjab it was swifter, in the case of East
Pakistan/Bangladesh it is still continuing. Thus, as has
been often stated, the story of the Bengali refugee did
not end with the 1947 partition. Rather, it continues like
an unending tale of long suffering migrants, spanning
decades.
This suffering is what Ghatak strove to capture.
Fundamentally, his films revolve around two central
themes: the trauma of being uprooted from the idyllic
milieu of East Bengal and the cultural trauma of the
Partition of 1947. Partition was, for Ghatak, a shattering
experience because his roots were in that part of Bengal
which now fell under foreign territory. Memories of an
undivided Bengal pervade his films. He turned a searing
gaze at the displaced middle classes. In his vision, elements
of grand political tragedy are found in the abject compromises
made by decent ordinary people in their desperate search
for comfort and security in a profoundly inhospitable
world. His innovative films record the trauma of change
and the desperation of the rootless and deprived
refugees from East Bengal.
After Partition, Ghatak felt both restless and rootless
and his films became an expression of his anxiety to find
root, to find a refuge: As Ashish Rajadhyaksha points
out:
The initial question of the split of Bengal was to become for
him a larger quest—an attempt at portraying the relationships
between the new classes formed by the process of
urbanization and the machine-revolution and their old
traditions. (Rajadhyaksha 1982: 82)
100 Kamayani
The question led him to take a look at the whole issue of
Kaushiva
rootlessness afresh, as the search of the refugee for a new
identity. For him, this identity had links directly with the
past, the centuries old cultural heritage of our ancient
societies, wherein lay the unifying forces of the present.
As another critic observes:
 Partitioned Memories: The Trauma of Partition in Ghatak’s Films 101

Ghatak was profoundly affected by the partition of India that

came with independence in 1947, ceding the land of his
birth to the newly created Pakistan. Indeed, nostalgia for the
once undivided Bengal and the traumas emanating out of
dislocation and loss of home are basic to almost all his films.
(Hood 2000: 20)

Further, the richness of the aesthetic culture of

Bengal was lost beyond recovery, the acute loss of which
haunts Bengal until date, as Bagchi and Das Gupta write:
‘Partition was an ever-unfolding story of the abduction of
this young mother from which there was no recovery…’
(Bagchi and Dasgupta 2003: 2).
Another point of divergence between the experience of
Partition trauma in West and East Pakistan was that
while the atrocities that marked Partition in the context
of West Pakistan and received (comparatively) ample
literary historical documentation, the same is not true for
Bengal. As Butalia has stated (during a seminar in 1994):
‘A serious gap is the omission of experiences in Bengal
and East Pakistan (Bangladesh).’
Ghatak, however, stands apart in his aesthetic attempt
to wage a relentless war against a degenerate reality: a
reality that severed man’s natural roots from his traditional
and culturally harmonious past, a reality that pushed
people into a politics of destruction and deceit. His films
serve as a metaphor for the violent uprooting of the
Partition that figuratively crippled and ultimately orphaned
a population. He spent his entire artistic life condemning
how ‘Partition struck at the roots of Bengali culture’ (O’
Donnell 2005). As Goswami observes, his

… was a rare mind. It assimilated the rare spectacle of the

partition of Bengal, the bleak memory of refugee camps, the
degradation of rootlessnes, the dehumanization of the
alienated…. Ghatak externalized his private anguish into a
global perspective. This heightening of sensibility annealed his
heart into a language which could be understood in distant
Punjab and the rest of India, in Poland, Germany, Korea,
Vietnam, Palestine, any country which had been sundered
by the trauma of separation and the bleeding scar of an
overnight border. (Ibid.: 86)
102 Kamayani
Kaushiva Meghe Dhaka Tara

Ghatak’s intense, searing pain found enduring and

aesthetically sublime expression in his extremely sensitive
film, Meghe Dhaka Tara. One of Ghatak’s most powerful
and innovative melodramas, the film
 Partitioned Memories: The Trauma of Partition in Ghatak’s Films 103

examines the socio-economic implications of Partition,

reaching out to the audience with its directness,
simplicity, and its unique and stylistic use of melodrama.
The film revolves around Nita, a woman who sacrifices
her life to rebuild her family shattered by the effects of
Partition and the subsequent exodus. Nita’s family is a
family of refugees from the partition of Bengal; they live
in a shanty town near Calcutta, surviving on her meager
earnings. Nita is addressed by Sanat (her lover) as ‘Meghe
Dhaka Tara’, an embodiment of perfect woman marred by
the dark enveloping clouds of untoward circumstances.
Sanat is a scholar in pursuit of higher ideal, who, instead of
earning his livelihood, often looks towards Nita for financial
assistance. Eventually, however, with the tacit
encouragement of Nita’s mother, Sanat marries Geeta, a
sensuous, selfish woman, a usurper. Nita’s acceptance of
her fate is remarkable until she falls terminally ill and, after
having sacrificed her best years, she finally cries out into the
silence of the mountains her will to live. Her cry, ‘I want to
live’, ricochets through the trees as her brother watches
helplessly. It is perhaps the most intense moment in the
history of Indian cinematic art.
The film opens with an apparently interminable shot of
a tree,
beneath which we see the protagonist Nita standing. The
serenity and compassion that marks Nita’s face as she sees
her Dada (older brother) rehearsing (in pursuit of his
dream to become a classical singer, he is oblivious to his
duty to provide financial assistance to his family) tells us
about the beautiful relationship they share. The next scene
reveals the dire economic crisis Nita’s family is facing;
the grocer accosts Nita, urging her to pay the bill
overdue for two months. The scene is very poignant for it
serves to highlight the socio-economic plight of Nita’s
family. The next scene is integral to the film; Nita’s
sandal breaks and comes undone. This motif, also like
that of the tree, runs right through out the film. The
resigned, uncomplaining attitude with which Nita accepts
her fate, picks up the sandals and walks barefoot on the
gravel serves to accentuate the poverty and pathos of her
situation as well as her courage and power to endure.
This is brought out in stark contrast to the coquettish
sister Geeta, whose image is first seen in a mirror against
104 Kamayani
a background of thatched wall, where she is insolently
Kaushiva
brushing her hair and singing. The image artfully builds
upon us the impression of an unscrupulous woman, as she
eventually proves to be. Geeta hands over to Nita a letter
from Sanat. The scene that ensues shows Nita reading
the letter in her room. It is in this letter, Sanat
addresses his beloved as Meghe Dhaka Tara. The title of
the
 Partitioned Memories: The Trauma of Partition in Ghatak’s Films 105

film echoes the inhospitable economic plight that

plagued millions uprooted due to Partition. Parallel to the
love theme of Sanat and Nita, Ghatak introduces the
beautiful relationship of Nita and her Dada, the only
relationship that endures the test of time. While reading
Sanat’s letter, Nita accidentally strikes against the
photograph of her and Dada taken in the hills during one
of her childhood visits. She smiles lovingly and longingly
as she balances the frame, perhaps, dreaming of her
intense desire to return to hills, a desire that the
intervention of fate tragically fulfills, as she breathes her
last in the sanatorium in the hills. The scene in which
Dada comes in and snatches the letter in a playful manner
is a parallel to the way in which he will eventually snatch
the blood-stained handkerchief from her. Their roles, by
that stage, will have undergone a drastic change; Dada,
now the butt of bitter diatribes from his mother, the
grocer and the world at large, will return to his family
after becoming a successful singer, only to find a selfish
mother now entreating him to build a two-storey house
for her. His beloved sister Nita has, by this time, entered
into a self- imposed exile, in an advanced stage of
tuberculosis.
The scene where the family learns of Nita’s tuberculosis
reverberates with intensity. The scream of the father, ‘I
accuse’, without acknow- ledging his own capability in
annihilating the life out of Nita, is remarkable. The
disease-ridden body of Nita is now of no use to her
parasitic family. The father urges Nita to leave home for
her breath now is laden with poison and she is now a
burden for the family. Betrayed and forsaken by those
very people whom she nurtured and sustained by
bartering away her happiness, Nita runs out in the dark
night, confronting the storm, clutching to her bosom the
photo of her childhood as she runs into Dada who has just
returned from making arrangements for her in the
sanatorium. The near mad state in which Nita leaves her
home is heightened by the song refrain ‘Ai go Uma Kole
loi’. (Come to my arms Uma, my child). The refrain
moves the film into the realm of myth, where Nita is
portrayed as an embodiment of Goddess Durga.
The final dialogue between sister and brother is an
intensely poignant scene; ironically, fate has ultimately
106 Kamayani
fulfilled Nita’s cherished desire to visit the hills. The scene
Kaushiva
shows Nita sitting and reading Sanat’s letter, as in the first
scene when we saw Dada snatching the letter; breathing
the last of her life gone waste, she suddenly cries out, with
searing and heartrending agony, her will to live: ‘I want to
live. Tell me just once that I will live.’ The cry, along with
the helplessness of Dada who knows that it is too late,
embraces Nita as the camera pans across
 Partitioned Memories: The Trauma of Partition in Ghatak’s Films 107

the landscape resonating with her endless moaning.

Nita’s scream is a moment of perfect unity, a moment of
complete understanding of all the forces which forged
her destiny. The final sequence applies this lesson to the
society beyond Nita. She is dead and her sacrifice is
over, but its lessons need a final rooting in society to
have a real effect. The film ends on the scene where its
theme had actually been initiated, the broken sandal
which, emphasises Nita’s poverty-ridden existence. We see
Dada seeing another girl whose profile resembles Nita,
who also picks up her broken sandal in her hands and
walks on gravel with a stoicism which reminds us of
millions of such women whom fate has forsaken. Nita,
thus, is an embodiment of the travails and misery that
played havoc in the lives of unaccountable millions whose
lives changed beyond recognition in the post-Partition
scenario. The film elucidates how family mores and ethics
are torn to shreds in the face of dire poverty induced by
forced migration due to Partition. The mother’s anxiety
and her dread at becoming homeless yet again drives her
insane to the point that she sacrifices Nita’s aspirations to
fulfill her own selfish ends. The scene wherein the mother
asks Dada (whom she earlier used to degrade) to build her
a house of two storeys is symbolic of the pain of losing
one’s home. Ghatak’s film reveals how Partition ate into the
very entrails of society by the massive dislocation it
generated; the economic hardships it sponsored created
a society where relationships no longer had any
relevance.

Komal Gandhar

In Komal Gandhar, Ghatak addresses the problem of

refugeehood, of being torn from one’s roots and the pain
it incites. The film opens with a play being enacted; the
theme of this play is the theme of the film— the
protagonist of the play is lamenting the partition of
India, expressing his pain at becoming a refugee. The
first dialogue uttered in the film is in the play and that
sets the tone of the film. ‘Why?’—this question echoes
the dilemma of millions whose lives were transformed
beyond recognition by the politically motivated
108 Kamayani
Partition, leaving them with pain, memories and the
Kaushiva
eternal quest for a new homeland. The protagonist of
the play woefully asks why he should leave the country
of his birth. He reiterates, ‘Why should I leave this lovely
country, my river Padma?’ The film is an expression of the
horror of being reduced to the status of a refugee, an
ignominy borne by millions who had no say in the
political game, a game that
 Partitioned Memories: The Trauma of Partition in Ghatak’s Films 109

raped them of their nationality and sense of belonging;

the character in the play calls himself ‘accursed’ for
being, ‘a homeless refugee’. As Syed Sikander Mehdi
writes: ‘Once a refugee, always a refugee. Like death,
the memory of uprooting, flight, refuge, return….’
(Mehdi 2003: 85) are ever-present in refugee
consciousness.
There is no escape from this past, it has to be lived and
relived…. Post- partition refugee life for millions of Hindus,
Sikhs, and Muslims living in India and Pakistan is no
different. They live in memory and memory lives in them.
The bitter past is always there with them. In the process the
memory of refugeehood has become concretized,
structured, and rooted—making healing very difficult. It is,
after all, not easy for the victims to forget the bleeding past
and forgive those who looted and plundered, committed rape
and murder of near and dear ones, and inflicted forced
migration. (Ibid.)

The film elucidates the bitterness that claimed millions. It

enquires into how Partition continued to make its presence
felt in innumerable ways.

[T]he major legacy of Partition was the identity based rift

which came about in the lives of millions of individuals suddenly
torn from their familiar frame of life, their lands (the majority of
displaced persons were peasants), and their ancestral homes
in the name of an utterly abstract principle: the principality
of nationality…. (Markovits 2003: 56)

When Ghatak started making his films, he did not have a

deliberately designed trilogy which dealt with the Partition
issue. While in Meghe Dhaka Tara and Subarnarekha he brings
forth the degeneration, in the Partition milieu, of morals
and ethics, in Komal Gandhar he went further—he enacted
the politics of Partition vis-à-vis the theatre group that once
had been a unified, whole, and eventually became
embroiled in ugly politics and faced division and
acrimony. As he observes,
In Komal Gandhar I had to face the problem of operating at
different levels. I wanted to draw simultaneously on Anasuya’s
divided mind, the divided leadership of the People Theatre
movement of Bengal, and the pain of divided Bengal.
110 Kamayani
(Ghatak 1975)
Kaushiva

As the film progresses we see the two rival theatre

groups being brought on a common platform by the efforts
of Anasuya. This rivalry can be seen as an allegory for the
division of India.
The most intense moment of the film is when the rail
track is shown and the train running on it abruptly comes
to a halt, the track
 Partitioned Memories: The Trauma of Partition in Ghatak’s Films 111

barricaded, for it marks the border. One of the

characters remarks that he finds it incomprehensible that
trains which are meant to unite are here representing
separation. Anasuya’s searing cry, imbued with intense
and piercing agony, echoes in the background as the
train rushes towards the dead end.
The film reverberates with an old folksong—‘Aey paar
paddaa o paar paddaa/Moddi khaaney chaur/Tahaar moddeye
bosheye/Aachen shibo saudagor’ (On this bank is the river
Padma/On the other bank is the Padma too/And an island
lies between them/Where lives Lord Shiva/The trader
great)—which voices the agony of millions who were
perplexed by the division of their land. A heart-searing
scene in the film is where Anasuya is looking across the
flowing Padma, where she can see her home, which they
had to abandon, a hearth now occupied by strangers. The
agony of being able to see your badi (home) within, and yet
out of reach, is beyond our imagination.
The film is also replete with wedding songs from East
Bengal— Aam tolaaye zhumur zhaamur/Kaula tawlaaye biyaa/Aayee
lo shundorir zhaamaayee/Mukut maathaye diyaa (A stirring of
breezes cool in the mango grove/A wedding blessed by
the auspicious green plantains all around/Comes now the
groom for the beauteous bride/Wearing chivalry’s
glorious crown). The song metaphorically suggests the
desirability of a union between separated lands.
As Ghatak himself wrote,
…wedding songs are profusely scattered throughout Komal
Gandhar. I desire a reunion of these two Bengals. Hence the
film is replete with songs of union. (Ghatak 2000a: 50)

and

The main note of my Komal Gandhar was set on the unification of

the two Bengals. Hence, throughout the film we played the
tunes of old wedding songs, with the same note of concord
playing over the scene of a harsh separation. (Ghatak
2000c: 75)

This pain of partition finds sublime expression in his film

Subarnarekha, where he expresses the eternal quest for a new
homeland, the quest of millions reduced to the status of
refugees.
112 Kamayani
Kaushiva Subarnarekha
Subarnarekha is about rational elements like history, war and its
aftermath, mass displacement and loss of an old habitat and
hence roots on the one
 Partitioned Memories: The Trauma of Partition in Ghatak’s Films 113

hand, and irrational entities like destiny and fate that are not
supposed to but do affect human beings and their conduct to alter
their lives irreversibly on the other. (Partha Chatterjee 2003)

One of Ghatak’s most impressive and complex films,

made in 1962 but released in 1965, Subarnarekha tells of
Ishwar Chakrobarty and his young sister Seeta, who are
living in a refugee camp after Partition. It is a poignant
portrayal of the economic and socio-political crisis
destroying the very existence of partitioned Bengal. The
film opens with a stark portrayal of inhumane socio-
economic conditions, amidst which people are struggling
to find their moorings in a refugee colony, ironically
named ‘Navajeevan’—new life—a satire directed upon
the hopes of people engaged in the futile pursuit of a
new homeland. The hardship thus faced by Ishwar and
Seeta is symbolic of the plight of faceless and nameless
millions who, like them, became victims of a politically
motivated decision to divide the country. The naïve yet
persistent manner in which Seeta keeps asking her
brother, Ishwar, about her (nutan badi) new home, is
extremely sensitive and focuses on the problem of
rehabilitation being faced by victims of Partition.
Ishwar’s sole purpose in life is to provide a ‘sense of
belonging’ to his orphaned sister, to provide for her a
nutan badi. His transition from an intellectual to a factory
manager is a comment on the compromise that Partition
wrought upon innumerable lives. Harprasad, the
schoolmaster who has nurtured the new home of his
fellow unfortunates, accuses Ishwar of being a coward and
denounces him for thinking only of his own welfare and
not that of the others around him. Ishwar meanwhile,
adopts Abhiram, a destitute, proving that he is a man of
honour; hence the degenerate state to which fate
eventually reduces him is extremely poignant.
The film has some extremely beautiful moments with a
sensitive portrayal of the relationship between Seeta
and Abhiram. Ishwar’s refusal to Seeta and Abhiram’s
marriage is the pivot on which the story now enfolds.
Seeta’s elopement and her betrayal breaks the spirit of
Ishwar, who wanders aimlessly for six years and is on the
verge of suicide when the most powerful scene of the film
114 Kamayani
unfolds.
Kaushiva Harprasad, whose pursuit of ideals ends in severe
disillusionment, returns now, where Ishwar, disillusioned
and bordering on insanity, is trying to take his life.
Harprasad had, decades earlier, abandoned his friendship with
Ishwar; he had seen Ishwar’s decision to fulfill his duty towards
Seeta rather than fight for the rights of homeless people as
a betrayal of the ideal.
 Partitioned Memories: The Trauma of Partition in Ghatak’s Films 115

Now, upon his return, when he sees Ishwar on the verge

of taking his life, he rescues him by quoting from
Tagore’s Shishu Tirtha. He then takes Ishwar to Calcutta
where the degeneration of Ishwar begins in earnest.
Meanwhile, Seeta has been reduced to prostitution after
the tragic demise of Abhiram. The scene where Ishwar
enters Seeta’s room in a drunken state, taking her to be a
prostitute is one of the most powerful scenes in the film.
The grotesque manner in which Seeta embraces death
and Ishwar’s heart-rending cry are haunting. The film
concludes with Ishwar, endowed with the responsibility
of bringing up the son of Seeta and Abhiram, dreaming,
like Seeta, of his nutan badi. The final scene, heart-
breaking and of immense beauty, focuses on Ishwar and
Binu, the orphaned little son of Sita and Abhiram,
walking away towards a craggy landscape with the
horizon far in the background, accompanied by the
choral chanting of the ‘Charai betiye’ mantra on the
soundtrack, in search of a new life. It sums up the forced
political displacement of millions, in our own times and
earlier, of people whose only crime was that they had
sought a little peace, dignity and happiness in their
lives.
The film, thus, is a comment on the havoc wrought
upon millions; it is a testimony of how an entire culture
became victimised because of a political decision to
divide a homeland. Ghatak has tried to encapsulate how
the partition of India affected the psyche of Bengal and
how, though decades have passed since this unfortunate
tragedy happened, it continues to cast its dark shadows on
the lives of millions in unaccountable ways. Ghatak
himself comments on the vision that informs his films:
We were born into a critical age. In our boyhood we have
seen a Bengal, whole and glorious…. This was the world that
was shattered by the War, the Famine, and when the
Congress and the Muslim League brought disaster to the
country and tore it into two to snatch for it a fragmented
independence. Communal riots engulfed the country. The
waters of the Ganga and the Padma flowed crimson with the
blood of warring brothers…. Our dreams faded away. We
crashed on our faces, clinging to a crumbling Bengal,
divested of all its glory. (Ghatak 2000a: 49)
116 Kamayani
This trauma informs almost all Ghatak films. He
Kaushiva
acknowledges that it has been difficult for him to forget
the pain of Partition, an enduring trauma which ‘cannot
be frozen in the past’ (ibid). This task of acknowledging
and chronicling the saga of pain that millions underwent is
perhaps best documented through films. Films are akin to
 Partitioned Memories: The Trauma of Partition in Ghatak’s Films 117

memory; as David MacDougall observes, ‘Films have a

disconcerting resemblance to memory … an intimation of
memory perfected’ (Macdougall 1998: 231). Thus films
bestow a ‘kind of immortality’ on a subject. Hence,
perhaps, no more suitable medium can be found for
articulating the pain of Partition. Indeed, artists and
filmmakers have, of late, responded and the last decade
has seen several instances of aesthetically powerful films
made on the tragedy that defined India in this century—
Partition.
108 Kamayani
Kaushiva
Rapprochement
110 Sunny
Singh
 8
Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric
Post-globalisation Self in Hindi Cinema
1996–2006
Sunny Singh

Studio Logo and Pre-credits

The past decade has seen dizzyingly spectacular

changes in Indian society, politics and economy, at a pace
that rivals a classic Manmohan Desai production. The key
reason for these changes is primarily a
demographic transformation which has ensured that
over seventy per cent of the Indian population is under
the age of forty.1
Not only does this demographic transformation impact
the country’s exploding work force and aspirational
challenges, it has also required a colossal shift in the
popular national narrative, as can be evinced by the past
ten years of Hindi films. While much is made of the ‘rise
of Hindu nationalism of the early 1990s’ in Hindi cinema,
less attention has been paid to a generation coming of age in
an increasingly maturing democracy, where the one-party
rule of generations gave way to a series of coalition
governments. The years between 1995 and 2005 have
also been marked by a second round of nuclear tests in
1998, a low-intensity border conflict with Pakistan in Kargil
in 1999, economic sanctions from the US and EU countries
that barely made a dent in the country’s growing
confidence, and, finally, an increasing economic and
international political clout. Since 2001 and the
international events following the attacks of 9/11, the
country has also benefited from the shifting set of geo-
strategic priorities of various global powers.
Set against the backdrop of such rapid historic changes,
Hindi cinema
110 Sunny
Singh
has followed its historical role of engaging with events and
reflecting as well as anticipating the nation’s discontents
(Prasad 1998; Vasudevan 2000). In the past decade, the
Hindi film industry has attempted to both reflect and
construct an adequate, the national self-image as well
112 Sunny
Singh
as an appropriate national discourse for these changes.
This process has seen various guises and stages, but this
essay will focus on the following:

1. The naming of and focus on Pakistan as a major of

source of terrorism and internal unrest, with a
simultaneous blaming of a feeble, ineffective or
oppressive state.
2. The transformation of India’s Muslim minority from
apparent susceptibility to Pakistan to citizens of the
contemporary nation- state.
3. The construction of contemporary national identity
through an ‘independence’ narrative that sidelines
and ignores the Partition of 1947 as a keystone of
the formation of national identity.

Drawing on films as different as Border, The Legend of Bhagat

Singh, Gadar, Phir bhi Dil hai Hindustani, Sarfarosh, Lakshya, Main
Hoon Na, Rang de Basanti, and Fanaa, among others, this
essay explores the above mentioned issues through
readings of the film-texts and how they mediate, legitimise
or, indeed, subvert entrenched Pakistan-centric political
discourse through the use of content, theme, star-power,
or indeed auteur-intent. I also attempt to demonstrate the
gradual but distinct move by Hindi cinema from a Pakistan-
centric and Partition- related construct of the national
self-image to an increasingly self- reflexive and self-
reflective one. These films are not necessarily chosen for their
alleged ‘quality’ or theme, but instead for their self-
professed commercial intent.

Flashback

Representations and constructions of the national

identity, as well as representations of Pakistan in Hindi
cinema have long been a subject of personal interest,
perhaps because my own identity has long been linked to
both of the above, and far too often Hindi cinema has
been the only medium of constructing and articulating
that identity.
The first time I realised I was Indian was in 1980. Before
that year, being Indian meant very little more than
 Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation 113
march-past ceremonies in school on 15 August and 26
January.
In 1980, we moved to Islamabad, Pakistan; the move
was linked to my father’s job. The Indian government
felt that its efforts to promote ‘people-to-people’ contacts
were best served by educating
114 Sunny
Singh
the children of embassy personnel in local schools. That
of course meant that we were bussed off to the
Rawalpindi cantonment every morning, to attend ‘pre-
approved’ schools. My first experience at the Rawalpindi
school was of being abused and beaten up for precisely
a part of my identity I had never considered before—my
nationality. There was little recourse: the school
authorities preferred to ignore what they classified as
schoolyard spats and often teachers took a hand in
penalising the handful of Indian students. The situation
was complicated further with my clear realisation that
complaining at home would have meant being sent back to
live with relatives in India. The choice—rather heroically
conceived with a healthy dose of Amitabh films—was
between staying with parents and fighting alone in the
schoolyard, or returning to India and losing parental
presence.
Little wonder then that those years in Islamabad were
marked by obsessively watching Amitabh Bachchan films,
partly for moral support and partly to learn the actor’s
fighting techniques. On the daily drives to school, the
popular song from Lawaaris (1981): ‘Jiska koi nahin uska to
khuda hai yaaro’ (‘Those who have no-one have God’)
became an anthem, allowing an identification with the
relevant film-text/star-text so painfully acute as to be self-
definitive.
In the years following those spent in Islamabad, I have
watched the Hindi cinema industry attempt to alternately
profess peace that would ‘unite’ the two countries based
on linguistic or ethnic similarities, or pin the blame for
all national discontents on our troublesome neighbour.
Perhaps the films have merely reflected the Indian polity’s
own obsession with Pakistan, as well as of the inability
of the Cold War-era superpowers to de-hyphenate and de-
couple their relationships with the two countries.
Simultaneously, an overwhelming nostalgia by
filmmakers who came to Mumbai after Partition and a
generation of Independence-linked nationalists ensured
this Pakistan-focused cinema remained in these two
well-established grooves.

Credits
 Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation 115
However, the first clear inkling of change came with the
release of Maachis (Matchstick) in 1996. Made by the
renowned auteur Gulzar, the film unflinchingly takes up
the issue of Punjab militancy in the 1980s. The film
places the responsibility for the ‘making of terrorists’
squarely on an unjust, corrupt and oppressive state that
scapegoats innocent civilians, who are then forced to
take up weapons. At the
116 Sunny
Singh
same time, Gulzar also does not flinch from referring to
Pakistan’s role in supporting the militancy as well as
arming the movement. In a telling scene, the militant
commander Sanatan (Om Puri) explains that the group
must wait for the rocket-shooter (Veeran, played by
Tabu) to show up after receiving training across the
border. With this throwaway dialogue, Gulzar
acknowledges the role played by Pakistan in arming and
training militants, without ever removing the focus from
the narrative that asserts that internal conflicts are solely
responsible for the violence. However, it is important to
note that, here, all mention to Pakistan is covert, with
Sanatan referring to the shooter as travelling from
‘across the border’.
Like many other films that have preceded it, Maachis also
chooses
to leave the neighbouring country unnamed. However,
with that film, Hindi cinema takes the first step into
simultaneously identifying Pakistan as the source of the
weaponisation of militants as well as holding the Indian
state responsible for the citizens’ discontent that forces
them to take up arms. Other films that follow have taken
one or both of these trends to their logical conclusion.
Further elucidation of the themes outlined for this essay
requires some initial discussion of the films that reflect
the trends. As mentioned earlier, these films have not
been selected for their quality, but for their commercial
intent and relative success.
First, the increasing focus on Pakistan as a major of
source of terrorism and internal unrest reaches its height in
the years of electoral turbulence in India, especially
between 1995 and 1999. Among the films discussed as
part of an evolving continuum of the Pakistan- centric
discourse are Border (1997), Sarfarosh (The Martyr, 1999),
16 December—All Forces Alert (2002; henceforth 16 December),
The Hero (2003), Main Hoon Na (Don’t Worry, I’m Here,
2004), and Lakshya (The Objective, 2004). They all identify
Pakistan overtly as an enemy nation, although the last
two begin to move beyond the combative debate to begin
reflecting on the national self in relation to the enemy,
rather than directing the national gaze solely outwards.2
At the same time, Hindi commercial cinema has not
 Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation 117
minimised the role of the Indian state, often depicted as
corrupt and repressive. This facet is most clearly seen in
representations of the Muslim minority in cinema. Along
with Sarfarosh, films such as Mission Kashmir (2000), Fiza
(2000), Khakee (Uniform, 2004), and Fanaa (Annihilation,
2006) take up the role played by the Indian state that
exacerbates the marginalisation of Muslim citizens of the
country as well as the
118 Sunny
Singh
violence experienced internally. As Hindi cinema moves
away from a primarily Pakistan-centric threat to the
national fabric, the films also show a dramatic change in
the representation of the Muslim minority in the country.
From a marginalised, supporting role in Sarfarosh to the
central space in Fanaa, the de-centering of Pakistan from
the national psyche is accompanied by a transformation in
the status of the Muslim characters. The films increasingly
reduce their marginalisation and susceptibility to oppression
by providing the Muslim characters with agency in the
narrative. While a simplistic reading may lead one to
assume that the agency can only be exercised for the
preservation of the hegemonic state, the recent
portrayals of Muslims in commercially successful films
seems to signal a move away from the dichotomous
Hindu/ Muslim and Indo/Pakistan discourse that has
plagued the region for the past century.
This marginalisation of Pakistan in the national
discourse has also led to a (re)visioning of the
independence struggle that allows a view of the colonial
past and the freedom struggle that is not hampered by an
automatic discussion of the Partition. Films such as
Lagaan (The Tax, 2001), The Legend of Bhagat Singh (2002),
The Rising— Ballad of Mangal Pandey (2005; henceforth Mangal
Pandey), and Rang de Basanti (Colour Me Saffron, 2006)
construct a pluralist, secular vision of colonisation and
subsequent decolonisation that seems to signal a trend
for future productions.

Cut to the Present (1996–2006)

The early turbulent years between 1996 and 2006 also

saw the first ‘war’ film hitting the Indian screens in
decades, with Border raking in record collections in 1997.
The film fictionalises the battle of Longewala during the
1971 Indo-Pakistan war along the western border. The
historical situating of the film allows director J. P. Dutta
to name the ‘enemy’ state within the film text. However,
despite the martial narrative, the director cannot avoid
an apologist note by including a final lament against war
with the final credits rolling to the tune of the song: ‘Mere
dushman, mere bhai’ (‘My enemy, my brother’). The final shot
 Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation 119
of the film is a rather artificially inserted image of the
flags of India and Pakistan unfurling side-by-side. Border is
perhaps the only war movie in the world to include the
‘enemy’ flag as its last visual sequence.
120 Sunny
Singh
Curiously enough, the 2004 release, Veer-Zaara, also
reverts to this historical past in order to stage a trans-
border love story. The film’s romantic narrative is
nominally set in the past—ostensibly twenty years
before the present—which allows the love to flourish
between the Indian air force officer Veer (Shahrukh
Khan) and the Pakistani politician’s daughter Zaara
(Preity Zinta). When the film jumps to the present,
despite its ostensible message of ‘peace’ read out in the
courtroom by an emotional Veer, it appears to suggest
that cross- border distances are unbridgeable in the
present, except by political and human rights-linked
actions. There can be no Veer-Zaara-style love story for the
present generation on the subcontinent, as represented by
the young Pakistani lawyer, Saamiya (Rani Mukherjee),
whose travels across the border to India have no
ostensible impact on her.
If Border names Pakistan in the context of the 1971
war, India’s unequivocally ‘good’ war in the national
narrative, it requires a film linking the Mumbai
underworld, drug and weapons trade, and home-grown
militancy to identify Pakistan as a source of continued
national instability. Sarfarosh is groundbreaking not only for
its overt identification of Pakistan, both on maps used in
the narrative and in dialogue, it also weaves into the
narrative a number of real-life events, including the links
between Mumbai underworld dons and Pakistan’s ISI,
weapons-smuggling and, finally, the complicity—willing
or unwilling—of Pakistani artists. Drawing on a host of
press, police and intelligence sources, director John
Mathew Matthan constructs a complex tale where art,
law-enforcement and international crime converge to
build a fast-paced action film.
Sarfarosh, like many other films before and after,
represents the Muslim minority in India through the
marginalised figure of Inspector Salim (Mukesh Rishi). His
personal isolation is acutely and poignantly highlighted.
While the police establishment doubts his honesty in
arresting Muslim criminals, the hardline elements within
the Muslim community also mock his allegiance to Islam.
Salim’s character, however, is also representative of the
economic underclass, denied access to the higher ranks
 Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation 121
of the police as represented by the Indian Police Service
(IPS) officer, ACP Ajay Singh Rathod (Aamir Khan). At
the same time, his class origins allow him access to the
underbelly of Mumbai city in a way that his social and
professional superiors do not have. Salim’s isolation can be
interpreted as the general condition of the Muslim minority
in the country, which feels its loyalty questioned by the
majority community on the one hand and its religious
dedication
122 Sunny
Singh
doubted by hardline international and domestic Islamists on
the other. At the same time, Salim’s own agency in
choosing his loyalties can be read symbolically as a
choice available to the minority population, complete
with the necessary consequences.
The film also tangentially includes a mirror-reflection
from across the border, in identifying and discussing the
conditions of the mohajirs, or those who migrated from
India—primarily Uttar Pradesh and Bihar—to Pakistan
during Partition. Initially, at least, there seems to be
symmetry in Salim’s anguish at the doubts regarding his
national loyalties with the anger shown by Gulfam Hassan
(Naseeruddin Shah), a famed Pakistani ghazal singer. The
film, in extending the dominant nationalist discourse,
shows that Hassan lacks the possibilities of acceptance
open to Salim, despite sharing his religion with his
compatriots. While Saleem is not only accepted and
apologised to by Rathod (as the stand-in for the Indian
state), Hassan, in turn, is betrayed and abandoned by the
ISI officer. The implicit message, then, is that despite
differences in religion, Salim—and therefore the Indian
Muslim—has a greater role and choice in the national
enterprise than ethnic-minority Muslims across the
border.
National passions whipped up by the Kargil war in 1999
seemed to put a temporary freeze on the construction of
Pakistan-based debate, as few films addressed the issue
during that year. At the same time, the war in the mountains
provided India with its first televised war, with the
emotional reactions and outpourings giving proof to the
power of the cinematic images. However, 2000 marked a
clear shift in the Pakistan- centric rhetoric in commercial
Hindi cinema, with the release of Mission Kashmir and Fiza
within months of each other. Both films starred the light-
eyed, ‘foreign-looking’ Hrithik Roshan, his exotic looks
helping in the construction of the marginalised Muslim
youth in both films.3 While Fiza presents the Muslim
marginalisation and militarisation within India as being a
result of the rise of Hindu nationalism, in specific
pinning the blame on the Mumbai riots of 1992–3,
Mission Kashmir sets its tale in the more complex backdrop of
Kashmir militancy in the 1990s, where state oppression—
 Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation 123
deliberate as well as unwitting—leads a young orphan to
militancy.
Fiza ends on a tragic note—both narratively, with the
protagonist’s death, as well as thematically, with the
overwhelming message seeming that there is no valuable or
positive space for the Muslim minority in India. The film
is a complex articulation of Indian-Muslim fears
regarding its minority status, which lead Amaan (Hrithik
Roshan)
124 Sunny
Singh
to take up arms to ‘protect’ his people, while his apparently
moderate sister, the eponymous Fiza, rejects any
possibility of joining the national (Hindu) mainstream by
rejecting the marriage proposal from Anirudh (Bikram
Saluja). Perhaps unwittingly, the director falls into a trap
of his own making when Fiza is shown as incapable of
separating the state—ostensibly defined in the film as
Hindu and anti- Muslim—from the majority population.
Angered by the injustice that she sees meted out to her
brother, she rejects her suitor Anirudh, who has remained
steadfast, loyal and supportive all along. Her apparently
irrational decision, and the director’s depiction of it,
may also be interpreted as the minority community’s
capricious exploitation of the majority community’s
assistance and patience. For the director, the only choices
available to India’s Muslim minority seem to be death,
with a detour through militancy, perpetual
marginalisation or, even more frighteningly, absorption
into the Hindu majority. Politically and thematically
caught in a bind, the director has little recourse but to
revert to a reactionary community identity that can only
reject contemporary society.
In the same year (2000), Mission Kashmir, on the other
hand, took
up the issue of national identity through the prism of the
unrest in Kashmir. Locating the conflict within the
family, the film plays out the traditional Hindi cinema
tropes of identifying the family as the nation (Gokulsingh
and Dissanayake 1998; Virdi 2003, and others), and
constructs the ideal Kashmiri (thereby Indian) family,
formed by Neelima (Sonali Kulkarni), a Hindu woman
married to Inayat Khan (Sanjay Dutt), and a Muslim police
officer, whose son is an unwitting casualty of the rising
Islamist tensions in the state. In their grief, the couple
adopts an orphan, Altaaf (played as an adult by Hrithik
Roshan), whose parents have been killed in a police raid led
by Inayat Khan. On discovering Inayat’s involvement in
his family’s death, the child runs away and grows up a
militant. His attacks against the state pit Altaaf against
Inayat, leading up to an action-packed finale, where the
father-son pair must confront each other before uniting
against the ‘enemy’.
The entire family, and thereby the nation, is not only
 Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation 125
traumatised
by nominally religious extremism but also caught in a
cycle of reciprocatory violence throughout the film, a
situation that must be resolved by uniting in the face of
external threats. Not surprisingly, the film relies on the
image of the Hindu mother as the symbol for the nation,
a fact underlined by Neelima’s declaration: ‘No matter
who fires the shot, the bullet shall only hit my breast.’
126 Sunny
Singh
However, within the discursive evolution, the film also
signals a subtle shift. In a series of references that
appear prescient from our perspective today, Mission
Kashmir includes the shadowy presence of a figure eerily
reminiscent of Osama bin Laden. Within the narrative, this
figure is the puppet-master, the overlord of the Pakistan’s
ISI as well as a non-state actor whose loyalties are with no
particular nation- state, including the one that temporarily
serves his/her interests. With this figure, Mission Kashmir
heralds the gradual shifting of focus from a Pakistan-
centric source of instability to globalised Islamist terrorism
as a growing threat to the Indian nation-state, where
the country’s western neighbour is merely a pawn in the
larger geo-strategic game. Moreover, a further shift in
the politics of naming the enemy also specifically
identifies Pakistan’s shadowy ISI as an agent and player in
this international federation of destabilising terrorist
forces.
The theme of linking Afghanistan-based Islamist terror
networks with connections to Pakistan’s ISI is furthered
with films such as 16 December and The Hero—Love Story of a
Spy (henceforth The Hero). The former also introduces a
new plot element to commercial Hindi cinema—the
threat of the use of a nuclear weapon by rogue non-state
elements. Curiously enough, as a corollary to the globalisation
processes, both films also included NRIs (non-resident
Indians) in far corners of the globe as potential patriots
whose intrinsic loyalty to the ‘homeland’ could be
counted on for national enterprises. In Hindi cinema
then, not only did the terrorist threat go global in the
post-9/11 scenario, but so did the country’s ability to
mobilise its resources transnationally to act against that
threat.
Returning however, to the filmic introspection of the
nation-state, numerous recent films have dealt with
contentious themes like the state’s role in marginalising
the minority community, and the doubts embedded in the
majority community regarding Muslim loyalty to the
nation-state. The most obvious amongst these are Khakee
and Dev (2004), dealing with the issue of choices (or the
lack thereof ) available to the minority community. The
issue of the state repressing the population and silencing
 Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation 127
dissent is reflected clearly in Khakee, where an alleged ‘ISI-
agent’ Dr Iqbal Ansari (Atul Kulkarni) is found to be a
loyal citizen framed by politicians for his refusal to assist
corruption. Dev, in turn, explores the role of the state
further, setting the narrative in the backdrop of
communal riots and increasing intercommunal
suspicions. The political establishment is shown to place
its own interests above that of the nation, as well as to
exploit communal rivalries and suspicions to its own
advantage.
128 Sunny
Singh
However, it is important to note that (re)presentations and
(re)visions of the minority community are in flux and new
possibilities have been presented by recent releases,
most notably by Fanaa (2006).
The marginalisation of Pakistan in the discussion of
Hindu-Muslim relations within the contemporary nation-
state reached a new high with the release of Fanaa (2006).
Once again set in Kashmir, this film returns to the issue of
transnational nuclear terrorism, this time devoid of any real
religious grounding and played out entirely by non-state
actors with little or no community, religious or national
ties. It also revisits the motif of family as nation, this
time setting the narrative within an entirely Muslim
social and familial context. Referring constantly, visually
and thematically, to earlier nationalist cinematic texts
such as Mother India (1957), the film places the Kashmiri
Muslim woman, Zooni (Kajol), at the centre of the
narrative. Physically blind from birth, her trip to Delhi
brings her in contact with the tour guide/ terrorist Rehaan
(Aamir Khan) and, quite literally, ‘opens’ her eyes. The
shot of a terror attack by Rehaan on the President’s
residence is rapidly cut to a scene of Zooni in the
hospital, regaining her eyesight after surgery.
The second half reveals Rehaan’s identity as a terrorist
on a mission to secure nuclear parts for an unidentified
‘Kashmiri liberation’ group. Like Radha in Mother India,
Zooni is ultimately faced with the choice between her
nation and her lover, constructed here as the choice
between her son and her husband. The last scene also
echoes Mother India Rehaan; runs with the electronic
device he has stolen, reminding the viewer of Birju’s
riding away with Champa. To allow the men to escape
with their ‘stolen’ prize would mean giving up on the
village’s honour (Mother India) or its safety (Fanaa). Like
Radha, Zooni too calls out for Rehaan to stop. And like
Radha in the earlier movie, Zooni must also shoot and
kill Rehaan in order to secure the national narrative. Her
physical stance, clutching the pistol in both hands, legs
apart, also echoes Nargis’s bounty-hunter posture from
the earlier film (Chatterjee 2002).
Despite the similarities with the earlier film, Fanaa does
not shirk from contemporary complexities, either of the
 Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation 129
nation-state or of the delicate balance needed to place
the Kashmiri-Muslim mother at the centre of the national
narrative. Immediately following Zooni’s first shot,
Rehaan turns to fire back, his physical reaction a result
of instinct and training. Yet the camera remains on his
face as his expression changes from rage to confusion and
finally sad acceptance
130 Sunny
Singh
of inevitability. The director then pulls out for a long shot
of the two lovers set against each other in a Mexican stand-
off, their pistols pointed at each other. It is Zooni who
finally pulls the trigger, making her act seem deliberate
and considered than that of Mother India’s Radha, who pulls
the trigger in extreme rage. Zooni, after all, is no
mother killing her son in an extreme rage. She is a
single mother, who has broken earlier taboos to follow
her own life, and her decision to kill Rehaan is no less
considered or decisive.
Not surprisingly, the final sequence of Fanaa also refers
to Mother India, as Zooni and her son lay flowers on two
graves, one possibly of Zooni’s father and the other of
Rehaan. Yet, this is no enfeebled tragic mother
inaugurating a dam that fills the fields with water tinged
with metaphoric blood. Zooni’s task isn’t over as she
prompts her young son to offer his respects and then
gently guides him away from the graves. The final image
is not one of the price of sacrifice but of the continued
resilience that allows Zooni to claim her rightful place in
the centre of the national narrative.
In stark contrast to Fiza, the final frame of Fanaa leaves
open a multitude of possibilities for the Muslim
minority’s role in the nation-state, delinked from
memories of Partition and of suspected ties to Pakistan.
Not surprisingly then, religion has little space in the
discourse of Fanaa, and Pakistan is merely another nation
to be ‘informed’ of political and military developments.
In the film, the Indian defence minister merely informs
his Pakistani counterpart of the ‘developments’. There is
no recrimination, suspicion or even accusation in the
discourse. As the Indian Muslim takes centre-stage in the
narrative of national identity-building, Pakistan is finally
marginalised, and eventually excised from the picture.
Before moving forward to discussions of recent
(re)visionings of history and thus (re)definitions of the
nation-state, two films deserve a mention in the evolving
discourse on Hindi films’ representations of national
selfhood. Lakshya and Main Hoon Na, both released in 2004,
were works of a new generation of directors. Farhan
Akhtar and Farah Khan, their respective directors,
represent the generation defined not by memories of
 Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation 131
colonialism or the Partition, but instead brought up in
the 1970s. Not surprisingly, the definition of the nation-
state for both these directors is quite startlingly different
from that of the earlier generations.
Lakshya, ostensibly set in the backdrop of the Kargil
war, explores the coming of age of a spoilt young man
with no apparent ambition.
132 Sunny
Singh
Despite the war rhetoric and the spectacularly shot action
sequences, the film is relentlessly self-absorbed. The
‘enemy’ is merely a distant, nameless force whose only
role is to function as the opposition against which the
nation-state defines itself. The protagonist declares on first
looking at the border guarded by Pakistan’s outposts, ‘For
the first time I know what it means to be an Indian.’ The
borders thus become the defining space for identity,
regardless of what lies beyond. Curiously enough, the
statement also sets to rest residual nostalgia about re-
unification (as was the case, for example, in the films of the
1960s and 1970s, which reached their pinnacle with Amar
Akbar Anthony (1977). Not surprisingly, the lakshya (goal)
that the young protagonist finds is achieving control of a
ruthless mountain-top, similar to Tiger Hill. The narrative
plays itself out by his effacing the ‘enemy’ and turning
the war action into a bildungsroman for the protagonist.
The second film, Main Hoon Na by Farah Khan, reflects
the sensibilities of a generation whose first memory of
historical events is the Emergency. Inspired by the Nasir
Hussain and Manmohan Desai brand of extravagant
spectacle, the film recuperates the lost-and- found metaphor,
although this time in order to resolve intranational
differences, with the family once again serving as the
metaphor for the nation. The brothers, born of different
mothers and the same father, must resolve their
disagreements overcome, past hurt and injury, in order to
face the current destabilising threat. In this case, the
threat is from an internal source, from a group of former
army officers who can neither forgive past atrocities nor
move forward, and therefore will hold the nation hostage
to their radical agenda.
The film also marks the completion of the
transformation of Shahrukh Khan’s star persona, with
meta-textual links to Rama, a process that follows the
trajectory of the past decade (Singh 2005). If the
turbulent 1970s had required a martial narrative of the
embattled hero, personified by Amitabh Bachchan’s
Mahabharata-linked star persona, the post-liberalisation,
globalised India identified more closely with the
Ramayana narrative, where war must be waged as a
necessity, and stability and prosperity are the primary
 Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation 133
goals. If the earlier generations required change to be
brought about by constant strife and cataclysmic violence,
the current generation places greater importance on
responsible behaviour and change brought about
gradually and, if possible, without violence. Not
surprisingly, the imaginary Ramarajya, personified by
Shahrukh’s star persona of the good son (Dilwale Dulhania
Le Jayenge, 1995 (The One with
134 Sunny
Singh
the Heart will Take the Bride), Mohabbatein, 2000 (Love)),
the good friend (Dil to Pagal Hai, 1997 (The Heart is
Crazy)), the good father (Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, 1998
(Something Happens)), and the just ruler (Asoka, 2001)
find their apogee in Main Hoon Na. His character is named
Ram, the righteous warrior who suffers familial exile, yet
makes peace with his stepmother, winning his half-
brother’s loyalty, and finally rescuing his chosen mate—
along with other hostages—from certain death.
Although Main Hoon Na contains ostensible references
to peace talks with Pakistan, oppositions to the peace
negotiations as well as the conflicting views regarding
Pakistan are depicted as entirely internal to India.
Pakistan’s reactions, or indeed actions, are of secondary
importance in achieving a national stance.

Post-interval: (Re)visioning the Past

Perhaps there ought to be no surprise that the marginalisation

of Pakistan in popular discourse and imagination has a
corollary: a view of the history of decolonisation that
takes no cognizance of the rancorous history of events
leading upto Partition. In (re)constructing a history that
can be entirely self-focussed and reflective, recent
cinema has begun reverting to not only pre-Partition
figures such as Subhash Chandra Bose, Mangal Pandey
and Bhagat Singh, but has also begun imagining (and
imaging) a mythical past free of the stain of Partition. In
films ranging from Shaheed Udham Singh (2000) to Rang de
Basanti (2006), there is an emerging trend of viewing
history as de-coupled from Partition and Pakistan.
One aspect of this trend has focussed on (re)covering
and (re)presenting leaders and activists of the
independence movement through bio-pics such as Shaheed
Udham Singh, The Legend of Bhagat Singh and Bose—The Forgotten
Hero (2005) who are represented as more than simply
members of the Indian National Congress, and are also
removed from the events leading up to Partition in
1947. However, a more interesting trend has been of
films depicting both colonial history and resistance through
narratives that marginalise the Partition as an event while
engaging directly, and without mediation, with the
 Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation 135
colonial experience. These films include Lagaan, Mangal
Pandey and, far less successfully, Kisna (2005). While the
trend is still at an early stage, these films have thrown
up interesting postcolonial issues: the intersections of
gender, race, desire, and power, which indicate a
136 Sunny
Singh
new willingness to engage with the colonial experience,
revealing a growing sense of self that allows such a
direct engagement with the former coloniser.
Mangal Pandey presents a complex vision of the colonial
past. However, it also simplifies one aspect of that past:
the dissensions and conflicts between Hindu and Muslim
communities within the country and the ensuing
competition for power. By setting its narrative in 1857,
the film attempts to erase the taint of Partition and
revert to a mythical past where Indians could join a
national cause, regardless of their religious affiliations.
This revisiting and revisioning of the colonial past is
crucial to the growing national narrative that considers the
1947 borders as the defining boundaries of the modern
Indian nation and chooses to ignore and erase narratives
that challenge that view. This growing view is linked
intimately with the demographic, political and economic
changes of the past decade and can be see as a process of
constructing a contemporary, self-reflective identity to account
for the changes and experiences of the nation.
However, the exigencies of identity-creation mean that
(re)visioning
history cannot be limited to the distant past. Clear links must
be forged to the presence and potential future of the
nation. While Mangal Pandey and Lagaan portray the past in
a heroic light, allowing it to function as contemporary
national myth, other films have attempted to link the
past to the present, articulating popular fears and
discontents. Films such as 16 December and Tango Charlie
(2005) attempt to apply the post-Independence history of
India to contemporary conflicts and thus to threats and
challenges facing the nation. However, Rang de Basanti,
the last film under discussion in this essay, meshes
India’s colonial memory with contemporary reality to
construct a contemporary nationalist discourse. More
importantly, perhaps, the film is the first attempt at moving
beyond Fanonian ideals of postcolonial relationships to an
uncharted space where the former colonised and
colonisers may meet in equality, with mutual respect and in
recognition of a shared past.
The film brings together Sue (Alice Patton), the
granddaughter of a British colonial jailor, James
 Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation 137
McHeneley (Steven Mackintosh) to India with a group of
young university students in Delhi. Sue, a filmmaker, is
looking for the ‘third kind of man’, which her grandfather has
described in his diary when referring to the garam dal (hot
headed) revolutionaries of the Independence movement.
She plans to film their story, although her own channel in
the UK has cut the budget for such
138 Sunny
Singh
a film, suggesting that she focus instead on Gandhi
because ‘Gandhi sells’. In India, she begins filming on a
shoestring budget and with a group of reluctant actors.
Slowly, through shared experiences, the Indians, as
represented by the group of students, and the British, as
symbolised by Sue, also begin to communicate across the
faultlines of history, sharing both guilt and pleasure, and
a closely bound past.
More relevant to our discussion is the marginalisation and
erasure of memories and discussions of the Partition from
the narrative. Although the contentious position of the
Muslim minority in India is indicated by the film, with
Aslam’s father demanding that he retain no contact with
the majority population, and his brother hinting at an
extremist hate-filled form of Islamism, Aslam’s desire to
fully participate in the nation is privileged as the dominant
image. His talent as a poet and his ‘secular’ clothing of jeans
and loose shirts are indicators of an ‘educated’ Muslim who
can participate fully in the nation’s destiny. The contrast is
clearly established with his brother and father, who are
depicted as ‘old-fashioned’ or uneducated and, in both
cases, marginalised from the destiny of a post-
liberalisation, globalised India. Of course, DJ’s family is
also similarly marginalised, while Ajay’s is marked by the
absence of a father ostensibly sacrificed at an earlier
date for the benefit of the nation-state. This link is not
incidental, as the film very clearly centralises and
privileges the aspirations and challenges facing a nation
where more than half the population is under twenty-
five years of age.
However, the film also establishes the idea of national
identity
as a constantly renewing process rather than a fixed
ideal, where all extremes are not only unacceptable but
also detrimental to the integrity of the nation. Laxman
Pandey (Atul Kulkarni) is initially shown as a passionate
Hindu fundamentalist, active in politics and fighting
against the apparent ‘Western corruption’ of Indian
values. His devotion to the nation is never in doubt,
although his definition of the nation in fanatically narrow
terms is posited as dangerous and self-destructive. His
increasing awareness of the complexities of politics and his
eventual overcoming of hatred for Aslam as a Muslim are
 Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation 139
at the heart of the self-reflexive national identity offered
by the film. Laxman begins by calling Aslam a
‘Pakistani’, an idea that is echoed by Bismil suggesting
that Ashfaqullah would be safer in Afghanistan amongst
his ‘own people’. The journey of both Laxman and Bismil
to finally recognising the Muslim minority— symbolised by
Aslam—as an integral part of India’s reality and future is
foregrounded repeatedly.
140 Sunny
Singh
The joint deaths of Ashfaq and Bismil by hanging, and of
Laxman and Aslam, are crucial to this ideal of a national
identity as a constant process requiring joint sacrifices
from both majority and minority communities. The
director chooses to focus on Laxman’s and Aslam’s joined
hands in the moment of their deaths, reinforcing the
sacrifices needed from both communities for the nation’s
changing needs.
Rang de Basanti makes a clear correction between the
past and the future, where the two can never be entirely
delinked. As DJ says, India’s trouble is ‘having one foot
in the past and the other in the future’. However,
(re)visioning and (re)presenting can allow for
alternative views of history, and therefore alternative
ideals for the future. The future, the film suggests, lies in
picking up passions and ideals from the past while
adapting them to new realities. The initial shot of Bhagat
Singh reading Lenin is cleverly echoed by Karan’s
disdainful distribution of his father’s wealth, just as Bismil’s
religious fervour is reflected in Laxman’s early
passionate activism for the Hindu fundamentalist cause.
The past shall influence our present, the film asserts,
but we can draw what we need from it to shape our own
future.

Closing Credits: Conclusion

Commercial Hindi cinema has long played the role of

popular historian and narrator for the country, constructing
images that affirm, challenge and subvert hegemonistic
discourses offered by the state, the majority community
and the socioeconomic-political elite. In negotiating this
space, Hindi cinema has attempted to represent and
decipher historical changes for the masses, as well as
anticipate them. This role has required popular cinema to
address issues of internal dissent as well as external
threats, especially the historically traumatic and
contentious relationship with Pakistan. Over the past
sixty years, Hindi cinema has careened between
extremes of xenophobic and aggressive nationalism,
especially in times of war with that neighbour, and a
paternalistic pacifism that appears to deny that neighbour
 Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation 141
state its validity as a separate nation. Popular Indian
discourse on Pakistan has been perceived by that nation
as an Indian refusal to accept its identity as a separate
state. At the same time, attempts to maintain peace
within the borders have meant that all discourse on
Hindu- Muslim relations within India have been
consistently tainted with memories of the Partition.
142 Sunny
Singh
Recent cinema, however, reflects a dramatic shift in
discourse, reaching instead to an earlier past as well as
reflecting upon a post-Independence reality to construct a
national identity that does not include references to
Pakistan. Thus, Hindu-Muslim relations within the country
can be framed in an internal context. The positive aspects
of this development are easy to see. However, this trend in
popular discourse-making does risk erasing a traumatic
element of the country’s history.
Yet, perhaps, it is time, sixty years after Partition, to
move beyond its imprisoning discourse. With a growing
population that has no direct memory of either colonialism
or Partition, the needs for national histories and myths
have also changed. For identities to be relevant, histories
must be (re)covered, revised and (re)presented. At the
same time, the process of a constantly self-renewing
popular discourse on national identity(-ies) must be
considered a maturing, a true coming- of-age for both the
nation and popular Hindi cinema.

Notes
1. Extrapolated from figures at
www.cia.gov/publications/factbook/geos/in.html. Accessed 11 June
2006.
2. A corollary of the Pakistan-centric discourse in Hindi cinema has been
the Partition- based films, of which Gadar (2001) was the most vocal
representative. A full discussion of these films is beyond the scope of
this essay. However, it must be noted that an ideological shift has also
occurred in the (re)presentation and (re)vision of this event in Hindi
commercial cinema.
3. Further discussion would be necessary regarding the differences in
subjectivities reflected in films made by Muslim filmmakers like
Khalid Mohammad (Fiza, 2000) and primarily Hindu ones like Vidhu
Vinod Chopra (Mission Kashmir, 2000).
 Defining a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-globalisation 143

9
ÂKaisi Sarhaden, Kaisi MajbooriyanÊ:1 Two
Countries, Two Enemies, One Love Story
Nirmal Kumar

Hindi films are all love stories, especially those made

with the box office in mind, so much so that there is a
joke going around that even if Star Wars or ET were to be
made in India, they would have love
stories along with song and dance injected into them.
This idea is most inextricably associated with highly
successful filmmakers like Raj Kapoor and Yash Chopra,
both masters of their craft, both having defined
filmmaking in India. So, when these two filmmakers came
to make films on Pakistan, they had to be love stories.
Both filmmakers are Punjabis and had been affected by the
partition of India in more than one way. For anyone
connected with what is Pakistan today, making a film
with Pakistan as the location of the story is not
emotionally easy, nor is it easy to get acceptance from the
audience. Yet both took calculated risks, both going a
step ahead of other filmmakers in not allowing bad
political relations between the two countries to affect
either the narration or the characterisation. Considering
the big names, these films create immense hype even while
they are being made. So, while the fact that Raj Kapoor
was planning to make a film on Pakistan made great news,
his casting Pakistani actor Zeba Bakhtiyar made headlines
and received huge media coverage, a successful publicity
ploy to lure viewers to cinema halls.
Despite similarities—both films are made by Punjabis, on
love stories between Indian and Pakistani protagonists—
there are substantial differences in the cinematic handling
of the tales, vastly dissimilar style and content. While
Kapoor had a background in meaningful cinema,
sometimes called parallel cinema, and had been associated
with films like Jaagte Raho (Keep Awake, 1956), Jis Des Mein
Ganga Bahti Hai (The Country where the Ganga Flows,
1960) and his most famous film, Awara (The Vagabond,
1951), Chopra is an out-and-out
 ‘Kaisi Sarhaden, Kaisi Majbooriyan’ 129

commercial filmmaker with a line-up of multi-starrers

like Waqt (Time, 1965), Deewar (The Wall, 1975), Kabhi
Kabhie (Sometimes, 1976), and Dil to Pagal Hai (The Heart
is Crazy, 1997). Ultimately, for both Kapoor and Chopra,
the prime concern was the commercial success of their
films and for this the ‘family’ as audience had to be kept
in mind.
With these credentials, it took great courage to
attempt to make a film with Indian and Pakistani
romantic protagonists when, after the 1971 war, the
relationship between India and Pakistan had taken a turn
for the worse. The war had widened the chasm between
the two countries because the breaking away of Muslim
East Pakistan from Pakistan had effectively negated the
viability of the concept of new religious states (Zakaria
2003) and had created unprecedented anti-Pakistan
sentiments in India. It was easy to bash Pakistan and
meet with box office success. A Pakistan-positive film in
India is a commercial risk. Pakistan generates passion,
especially in North India where Partition has not been easily
forgotten. Of course, love stories per se are market
favourites and the surest way to make money. But with
so much hatred between the two nations, rapprochement
needed both time and great filmmaking. It took the great
filmmaker Raj Kapoor to muster the courage, and to
combine it with commercial vision and cinematic
excellence; to think of a Henna, which was finally made by
his son in 1991. This gambit was followed years later by
Yash Chopra, who made Veer-Zaara (2004). Interestingly, the
gamble paid off both times and set the cash registers
ringing.2
Evidently, commercial success has to be seen in the context
of social acceptability, the prevalent social values and the
political climate. The market reinforces the political
discourses but does not create them. They might just
reflect the political reality. In a sense, the films in
question are verifiable social documents, having passed
the crucial test of popular taste and acceptance. In this
sense, popular films are affirmations of our beliefs and
demands, which then get mass approval. Parashar makes a
telling comment on this count: ‘On a common playground
whose levelling function comes from the screen, the audience
130 Nirmal
for popular
Kumar Hindi films are carnival goers turned
consumers. Here a unified national identity can
apparently be represented through synchronization of
image and narrative. Indianness is a constant, is a
construction, one of the many we juggle as we absorb our
own images from the reflecting pool of popular culture
(Parasher 2002: 15).
 ‘Kaisi Sarhaden, Kaisi Majbooriyan’ 131

Moreover, a unique feature of Indian cinema is that the

family as an audience has shaped commercial cinema,
though, in the West, where the audience comprises
individuals, cinema is not a family outing nor the only
source of entertainment. In India, and much of South
Asia, watching films is a family ritual. This weighs heavily
on the minds of filmmakers, financiers and distributors. Post-
2000, with the emergence of multiplex cinema, this may be
changing, but earlier this was the touchstone of a film,
making for commercial successes or failures. Even so, a
film’s acceptability to the family audience is still the
prime market truth. Major filmmakers who have stuck to
this formula have tasted unprecedented successes at box
office. In this sense, such films become powerful social
discourses. To qualify as family films, the films need to
follow certain norms: no sex, limited violence, limited
political statements, and lots of song and dance and
family melodrama.3 The films under scrutiny here,
despite taking the bold step of showing normal human
emotions across the line of control, strive to qualify as
family films even as they present troubled love stories
against the political saga of Partition. Also, both have very
popular music to attract this segment of the audience.
In the Punjabi-dominated film industry, any subject with
Pakistan
as the theme becomes instantly popular. As already stated,
making a film ‘soft’ on the enemy country Pakistan was a
great risk in 1991 when relations between the countries
were at their worst Somehow, Raj Kapoor knew that the
time had come for a thaw (Khubchandani 2002), to talk of
love and dialogue between the two countries. By con-
ceptualising this film, he laid the ground rules for making
a film with Pakistan as the subject, rules which have
been generally followed till now.
This film is a story of an Indian Chander, played by
Rishi Kapoor, who falls in love with a Pakistani woman
Henna, played by a Pakistani actor Zeba Bakhtiyar. In Henna
(as in Veer-Zaara) the male protagonist is a Hindu, a rich
timber merchant of the Baramulla district in Indian
Kashmir. He is engaged to a woman whom he loves very
much. On his way to his ring ceremony, he has a car
accident and is swept across the line of control to the
Pakistan side of Kashmir. He loses his memory and the
132 Nirmal
film
Kumarreinvents him as Chand. In this reinvention is implied
a transformation from Hindu to Muslim, from Indian to
Pakistani, a possible enemy to a stranger who has lost his
memory and needs rest and medical attention.4 The
delicateness of the situation is not lost on the audience.
The message is loud and clear: that India
 ‘Kaisi Sarhaden, Kaisi Majbooriyan’ 133

occupies the chauvinistic position, while the ‘other’

nation is the ‘junior’ and the relationship needs the
serious and ‘loving’ attention of political doctors. The
feminine Pakistani hand that cures Chand is the
behaviour that dominant India expects from the smaller
polity of Pakistan, behaviour of service and servility. This
traditional fraternal relationship typical in the South
Asian situation is a reminder of the mythical sacrifices of
the younger brother Lakshman in the service of his elder
brother and lord, Ram. These ideals of brotherhood
have inspired many narratives and have influenced the
discourse of social and even the political relationship.
It is to be noted that in both films and also others with
Pakistan as the theme, the man is always from India and the
woman from Pakistan. The underlying discourse is that the
Indian-Hindu-male sexuality must appropriate the Pakistani-
Muslim-female sexuality. This narrative attempts to echo
the military conquest of Pakistan where India came out
victorious every time, and such stories thus became an
extension of the military engagements between the two
countries. Anil Sharma’s Gadar (‘Revolution’, 2001) was the
crudest and most emphatic assertion of this military-
culture continuum. Here, the male Indian protagonist
plays the ‘macho’ lover-rescuer to the beleaguered
Pakistani female protagonist.5 The working assumption
is that the predominantly Indian-Hindu audience in India
would not be able to accept a story where the Pakistani-
Muslim man sexually annexes an Indian woman. Since
Hindi films are made primarily for an Indian audience, they
can ill afford to reverse this chauvinistic storyline and male-
female equation. However, in other significant ways, the
two films under review here have refreshingly not taken
recourse to prevalent populism. Kapoor and Chopra
went ahead of their times when they made these films,
foreseeing love and not war between the two nations.
When no one could even remotely predict a thaw in India–
Pakistan relations, these films predicted just that—one
started the trend, the other completed it.
The thirteen-year gap between the two films is also of some
interest
to both the student of history, and of political science and
international studies. The relationship between the two nations
underwent tremendous changes in the intervening years.
134 Nirmal
From
Kumar outright identification as the enemy country in
Henna in 1991, Pakistan has moved to being seen in a
more congenial light. In 2004, both countries were trying to
shed the baggage of Partition and the bitter memories of
the wars fought, Kargil notwithstanding. This is
reflected in Veer-Zaara. The film is candid about the
antagonistic political reality of the two nations. Yet,
 ‘Kaisi Sarhaden, Kaisi Majbooriyan’ 135

through all the formalities of law courts and advocates,

the film talks of rapprochements and the need to build
bridges, with the younger generation taking charge,
represented by the young woman lawyer Saamiya
(played by Rani Mukherjee). The onus of bringing change
is on the post-Partition generation who is ready to
forgive and forget, for whom the Partition is a historical
fact and nothing more. Moreover, despite being an Indian
Air Force officer, Veer Pratap Singh (Shahrukh Khan) does
not talk of war, does not carry weapons, and mouths none
of the usual anti-Pakistan slogans. Two recent
reinforcements of this argument have come from widely
reported media reports: one, from Akshay Kumar, a major
Indian male star (also a Punjabi) refusing to mouth anti-
Pakistan dialogues in his films, on the grounds that he
has fans across the border too; and two, from the portrayal
of the two countries in Main Hoon Na (I am There for You,
2005), a major box- office success directed by a Muslim.
The latter breaks the stereotype of the ‘Muslim-terrorist-
Pakistani’ of Hindi films. Here the terrorist is a Hindu and
Pakistan is shown to be keen to take some positive steps
towards improving the India-Pakistan relationship. Let us
also not lose sight of the fact that the director of the film
is a modern, young Muslim woman. Such a development
would not have been possible but for the bold step taken
by Raj Kapoor in Henna in 1991.

A Pakistan without Terrorism

Henna is remarkable on many other counts. Despite having

Kashmir as the stage for the story and almost the entire
film being based in Pakistan, it has no terrorism in it.
Although there is hatred and mistrust between the two
nations, they are not engaged in armed hostility. The villain
or the bad man is the evil policeman, who could as well be an
Indian or a Pakistani, although, in this case, he is
Pakistani. There is no AK-47-wielding terrorist waging a
war in the name of Islam. Henna is a story of simple
people divided by Partition. Fate brings the two
protagonists together in love, forcing them to confront
the fact of politically divided but culturally similar countries.
The jihad for Kashmir is yet to start, though Henna’s brother
136 Nirmal
does use the ‘Indian spy’ expression for Chand (or Chander);
Kumar
the phrase refers to those Indians who cross the border in
a suspicious manner and then feign amnesia to disguise
themselves. But there are no cries for azadi (freedom). Pakistan
Occupied Kashmir (POK) is shown as living a normal peaceful
existence. Chander (Rishi Kapoor) is a successful Hindu
businessman from Baramulla,
 ‘Kaisi Sarhaden, Kaisi Majbooriyan’ 137

living in a palatial house, driving without fear, and openly

meeting his beloved in a park. There are no gunshots in
the background. Recent films like Fanaa (Destruction,
2006) and Sheen (2004) show such situations, with
Kashmiris having picked up guns and shouting azadi, and
Kashmiri Pundits (Hindus) being displaced and brutalised.
Gunshots are as much a part of the backdrop as the songs.
The Kashmir of Henna is nestled in snow, where love
songs are not drowned in gunshots and where the simple
life of the poor but loving Kashmiris has not been
politically loaded with the jihad war cry of the fanatics.
In Veer-Zaara, too, Chopra has steered clear of any
hate-filled situations; Pakistan is accepted as a legal entity.
The male protagonist is a Hindu air force officer from
Punjab. Significantly, Chopra relegates the Partition and
attendant bitterness to the sideline. He ignores the two
decades of violence in Kashmir. When Zaara, a
Pakistani Muslim, meets Amitabh Bachchan, a rustic
Punjabi farmer, he betrays no bitterness or hatred for the
country of her origin and welcomes her warmly. Her
Pakistani origin is just a footnote, mentioned but neither
despised nor questioned. This acceptance of Pakistan as
just another country shows maturity on the part of the
Indian filmmaker, who has been able to overcome the
phobia of Pakistan. Along with Main Hoon Na, which is one
of the most positive film on issues related to Pakistan,
Veer-Zaara, too, shows ungrudging acceptance of Pakistan
as a separate entity.
A significant part of Veer-Zaara has been shot in a
Pakistani jail and law court, both spaces arms of the
Pakistani state. While Henna is primarily filmed in open
landscape Veer-Zaara is shot mostly in closed spaces,
perhaps emphasising that it is people who make and
mark differences. The setting, in Henna, of the open
fields of POK, with village people referring to religion
straight from heart and responding to the state in an
unencumbered manner is replaced by the official,
urbane, educated, professional characters of Veer-Zaara. So,
while Khan Baba speaks of Chander’s release into India
without giving thought to the legality or illegality of such
action, Saamiya speaks of freedom for Veer Pratap Singh
in terms of rules, constitutional and human rights, and
138 Nirmal
the complex relations between the two states. While, in
Kumar
Henna, Henna’s brother dies in the process of helping
Chander cross the border, in Veer-Zaara Saamiya tries the
same but through the due process of law.
By 2004, both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers,
and have fought three full-scale wars and one minor one
in the Kargil sector.
 ‘Kaisi Sarhaden, Kaisi Majbooriyan’ 139

The urban classes of both India and Pakistan have accepted

the political reality of two independent nations, as have, in
Veer-Zaara, the Indian Air Force officer and the rich and
powerful Pakistani family of Jahangir Hayaat Khan.
Obtaining visas and visiting the other country is no
problem. The film highlights the middle-class urban
values of state, the political power play and the legal
manipulation. State intervention is most visible in Veer-
Zaara in the shape of police officers who arrest Veer
Pratap Singh, the Pakistani jail, the lawyers, and the
courts. It is to be noted that the senior advocate Zakir
(played by Anupam Kher) defends the constitution and
rights of the Pakistani state. The now soft, now hard jail
officer is forced to assert and agree with Zakir’s
contention that the interests of Pakistan are supreme, though
the same officer had earlier testified in the case of Veer
Pratap and pleaded that he be freed on humanitarian
grounds. Interestingly, at the end of the courtroom
drama, the Pakistani advocate Zakir admits defeat. He says,
‘But now I understand that the future of these countries is
in the hands of youngsters like you, who do not measure
humans as big and small, man or woman, Hindu or
Muslim, who do not rake up bitter memories of the wars
of 1947, 1965 and 1999 at every pretext, who wish to
address the future with the truth and only the truth. And
there is no stopping a country where truth prevails.’
These words are a direct condemnation of the political
processes on both sides. The states have failed to
measure up to the expectations of the people by forcing
Veer Pratap Singh to fight for his identity (Saamiya
declares that her legal battle is not to prove or disprove
whether Veer Pratap Singh is a spy, but to restore his
real identity). Therein, lies the crunch: the political states
of the two sides have failed to deliver. The people, who
are culturally one, feel cheated by their states. The feeling
is echoed in no uncertain terms by Veer Pratap, when asked
by Zaara’s mother if all sons in Hindustan are like him.
Veer replies, ‘I don’t know, but all mothers are like you’,
affirming the oneness of the cultural associations with
motherhood across the border.

A Gendered Discourse
140 Nirmal
Both films have shown women as a strong sex. No doubt
Kumar
the two directors are known to have packaged their
women dramatically and sensuously (Dwyer 2000: 143–
59). But, at the same time, their women are portrayed as
having strong internal convictions. Varsha Joshi has
shown that domestic women in royal Rajput houses, though
 ‘Kaisi Sarhaden, Kaisi Majbooriyan’ 141

unseen in public, could play very important roles in the

public realm (Joshi 1995); the apparently domesticated
woman can actually play a very prominent role. Henna
decides to tend to an unknown male, even expressing her
love for him. Later, when it is discovered that her man is a
Hindu and an Indian, she takes the bold step of getting
him across the line of control. In 1991 the film was not
ready to let her cross the line of control; she dies in the
crossfire between Indian and Pakistani armed forces.
But, by 2004, much water has flown down the Sutlej and
Beas rivers and Chopra is able to make his heroine fairly
easily cross the line of control a couple of times. Zaara is
made to appear a typical woman from any patriarchal
South Asian family, where her destiny is determined by
her family. She agrees to all till she discovers herself and
her love; then she becomes assertive. Zaara, the caring
submissive daughter, effortlessly crosses over to the Indian
side to fulfill the wishes of her Sikh nanny and, later, crosses
over again to help with the school set up by Veer’s uncle
in the Indian Punjab village. Her last act of submission to
the memory of her love (she does not know that he is alive
in a Pakistan jail) is the most courageous assertion of
her choice.
This highlights the fact that the major similarity between
the two
films is the presence of strong women characters who
know their minds and who can take decisions despite their
oppressive patriarchal families. They dare to think
independently, almost rebelliously, such as the
characters of Bibi Gul and Henna in Henna, and of Zaara,
Shabbo and Zaara’s mother in Veer-Zaara. Exemplary
courage and human qualities are shown by some of the
lesser characters whom no one expects to stand up for any
cause and who are fully domesticated. Bibi Gul (Farida
Jalal) makes pots to earn a living and lives all alone,
doubling as the village doctor and standing up against all
the villagers when the matter of Chander being Indian
and Hindu comes to light. Similarly, the remarkable
characters of Shabbo and Zaara’s mother stand out;
Shabbo helps Zaara with money for her to travel to
India, then she keeps Veer Pratap in her house in spite of
the risks in doing so. Zaara’s mother, though fully
domesticated, shows her strong will and her streak of
142 Nirmal
independence when she visits Veer Pratap at the bus
Kumar
station on his way back to India, to say that she wishes
that Zaara be his in every life, giving him an amulet for
protection. For an elite Pakistani woman, whose daughter
is engaged and is to marry soon, to support her
daughter’s relationship with another man, and that too
an Indian and a Hindu, is an affirmative action. Her
 ‘Kaisi Sarhaden, Kaisi Majbooriyan’ 143

signalled dissent against the will of her patriarchal

family is no less than rebellion for her.
Above all, both Henna and Zaara are strong female
protagonists. They may not wield guns or utter patriotic
dialogues, but they show strength. Women of typical Hindi
films are often spoilt rich brats, and are supposed to do
nothing more than sing and dance and get married in the
end. Here, the two women are strongly domesticated to
start with. Henna is illiterate and lives in a family
dominated by strong men. Her sole act of independence
is when she takes the cattle for grazing and sings in the
beautiful POK valley. She wears the hijab but no purdah.
But when she finds Chand (Chander) downstream, she
brings him home and nurses him to health. She, her
family and her village consider her interaction with a
stranger normal.
Zaara too is quite independent, even though she is
fully aware of the fact that as a woman she has only one
fate: ‘To get married and bear children.’ Yet, she can
take a decision to travel to India, without the permission
of her parents, to immerse the ashes of her Bebe. Her
behaviour and body language, especially with Veer Pratap, do
not betray any subordination. She knows her mind, does not
mind the company of a man, has very definite views on
women’s education, which she articulates to Veer’s uncle,
ideas that she later makes genuine efforts to realise by
running the school in Veer’s Indian village for twenty-odd
years, leaving behind her family, country and an arranged
marriage. Zaara, by the end of the film, appears to be a
completely liberated woman, even her love for Veer
acquiring a constructive edge.
The fact that Zaara chooses to leave her family and
engagement in Pakistan to come to India to run the
school for girls set up by Veer’s uncle is the filmmaker’s
attempt to forge an accepted independent sexuality
which is yet domesticated and close to the ideal of
Indian womanhood—the adarsh bhartiya naari—reinforced
time and again throughout the film. She allows herself
to be dressed for participation in the Lohri festival of the
village, thus enabling Veer’s uncle to conjure an image of
her as the (Indian) daughter-in-law, her Pakistani identity
notwithstanding. Towards the end, when she finally comes
144 Nirmal
back to India with Veer, Saamiya offers Veer a box of
Kumar
sindoor (vermilion powder, applied in the hair parting by
Hindu women as a mark of marriage). With that her
Hinduisation or appropriation by the subsuming Indian
religion is complete. The conquest of a Pakistani
sexuality had been accomplished by her Lohri participation
and reinforced by her acceptance of sindoor in her hair.
If in Henna
 ‘Kaisi Sarhaden, Kaisi Majbooriyan’ 145

the Muslim-Pakistani female protagonist dies in no-man’s

land, then the inference is that there was no final conquest
of Henna’s sexuality, but to do this, death seems to be the
only way out. In Veer-Zaara, in Zaara’s coming to India
and her eventual marriage with Veer, the sexual
overtones of a political conquest are unmistakable. Like
Zaara, Pakistan had to be assimilated and conquered.
This may well be one of the reasons that the film was so
well accepted in North India.
The subplot in both films is regional nationalism—one
about Kashmir and another about Punjab, about
Kashmiriyat and Punjabiyat, a regional-cultural discourse
about uniqueness, which comprises language-religion-
literature-food and a shared historical-cultural complex.
Such cultural concepts often help transcend political
borders and blur bitter historical memories. They help in
creating a wider community with trans-political loyalties
and help evolve cultural linearity. The artificial line of
control that divided India and Pakistan at the national
level, and the irrational partition of Kashmir and Punjab,
are transcended by a regrouping of people as one
community across two political formations. Henna is about
the love between two Kashmiris and Veer-Zaara between
two Punjabis. This makes the Line Of Control (LOC)
enigmatic and romantic at the same time. This can be
seen in the cultural behaviour of the diaspora trying to
connect to their own subnational-regional moorings. The
cultural complex, real or imagined, helps foster a sense of
community, the shared suffering itself becoming the
grounds for a feeling of oneness, enabling divided people to
come out of serious social crises. Seen in this light,
these films would seem to be creating a borderless
community of suffering, longing, love, and shared
historicity.
While Chander has no difficulty in understanding the
culture, language and songs of Henna’s village, Zaara
too has no problem participating in Lohri festivities and
the culture of sarhad paar (across the border), and in later
running the girls’ school at Veer’s village. The
underlying strong currents of subnationalism are in the two
films help cut across religions and through the fragile
146 Nirmal
political
Kumar situation. Normally, subnationalism is often to
hype negative attributes and is pitted against the idea of
nation, but in these films the theme has been used to
reinforce nationalism. Kashmiriyat and Punjabiyat are
highlighted, without being named as such. The opening
songs and scenes extol the beauty of Kashmir and Punjab;
this utopian reference helps forge easy bonds among the
characters.
 ‘Kaisi Sarhaden, Kaisi Majbooriyan’ 147

Both films have the male Indian Hindu leading men

caught in Pakistan and dubbed as ‘Indian spies’,
reflective of the deep mistrust and enmity that had crept
into the minds of the people across the border. In Veer-
Zaara, the court scenes allow the lawyers to foreground
serious debates about the discourses of nationalism,
patriotism, and so on. Again, though made by Indians, the
films, interestingly, reveal good faith in the political and
judicial setup of Pakistan. In Henna, it is the intervention
of a Pakistani senior police officer and the foreign
department that helps prove that Chand/er is not a spy but
actually an accident victim from India. Likewise, in Veer-
Zaara, it is the Pakistani court which dispenses justice to the
victim, Veer, actually apologising to Veer on the behalf of
the Pakistani state.
The filmmakers’ faith in the legal and administrative
setup is easily explained. First, blaming the lower officials
and exonerating the higher ones ensured that the films
would not be banned in Pakistan. Also, cinematically,
with the creation of a co-operative top bureaucratic and
political echelon, there is a reassurance that someday
things will be fine again, that order will be restored.

Conclusion

Thus, the two films, though mainly intended to be love

stories, go far beyond the limitation of the rubric. Made
by successful filmmakers of Hindi cinema, they are
studies in contrast with reference to the trajectory of the
India-Pakistan relationship. In this context, the love
stories become merely the backdrop. But to my mind,
the makers want to make a political statement. In Henna,
the aim is to highlight the Kashmir before terrorism and
to bring people’s attention to the region. The second film
tries to revisit the partition of Punjab at various levels— of
India-Pakistan, of the two Punjabs, of Hindu-Muslim, and of
man-woman. The aim is to uncover the underlying
Kashmiriyat and Punjabiyat which ties the peoples of the
two countries. These two films are potent celebrations of
the independent political existences of the two countries,
underlining the ‘love approach’ in smoothing ruffled
feathers, even if the cause of bitterness cannot be
148 Nirmal
removed. In this sense, the two films call for a third
Kumar
track of India-Pakistan diplomacy—love between Indian
and Pakistani youth, holding out an olive branch, a
hope. Henna and Veer-Zaara, moving away from Pakistan-
bashing, can be said to have started a wave of Pakistan-
positive films, backed by love and political amnesia.
Avoiding divisive
 ‘Kaisi Sarhaden, Kaisi Majbooriyan’ 149

memories of Partition, terrorism and the many wars

between the two separated and bitter nations, they
sugarcoat issues to make films that mend wounds.
Sometimes, by ignoring we heal.

Notes
1. ‘Alas, these borders, this helplessness’; phrase from a song in Veer-
Zaara.
2. These films were not made for the film festivals or the arty circuit.
These two films are out-and-out commercial films, both in treatment
and in success, made by two commercial directors with the primary
aim of raking in money. Naturally, this implies that the themes, the
treatment and conclusion were popular in their appeal. While Henna
made Rs 3,25,00,000, and was declared a hit, Veer-Zaara grossed
over Rs. 41,00,00,000! Source:Box OfficeIndia. com.
3. Karan Johar used this tag line for his film Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham
(2001).
4. Indian films, and now TV serials, are known to create situations
where characters have lapses of memory (‘yaddasht kho gayi hai’); this is
used to make dramatic, even melodramatic twists in the story which
otherwise would have been difficult.
5. To quote the maker of Sheen, ‘All these...movies are primarily love
stories with India-Pakistan thing only as their background. In no way
did the movies propagate brotherhood between both the countries. It
just so happens that the male and female protagonist happen to be
from the two countries. Further, he states, ‘In Bollywood, ninety-nine
per cent of the movies have a terrorist as the hero and his acts are
glorified. In Sheen the main protagonist was the victim’. Still, the
Pandit does not believe in Pakistan-bashing. My aim was not
Pakistan-bashing. Sheen highlighted sponsored terrorism and its
after-effects on the Kashmiri Pandit. It was not a figment of my
imagination.’
 10
My Brother, My Enemy: Crossing the Line
of Control through the Documentary
Aparna Sharma

Introduction

Tpeople
he view has considerable currency that at a people-to-
level, the Indo-Pak hostilities fizzle out. On both
sides of the India-
Pakistan border, people have the urge to reach out and
share in the cultures of the two nations. Cinema has
been one agency through which this urge has
crystallised to an extent and some simmering emotions
have acquired utterance. While the determined attempts of
mainstream industrial cinemas on either side of the border
have been worthy—though often melodramatic and
sentimental—they have reduced the complexity
embedded in people’s experiences and world views. In
such representations, the forces and pathways of historical
circumstance remain distanced, if not fully abstracted, from
the fabric of everyday life. History textbooks are now
written and strategic analyses formulated into concrete
policy—yet memories, anger, affections, indeed the very
materials of the experience of Partition are seldom heard.
The generation that migrated across the newly drawn
borders is steadily declining. Three wars and a
consistent, cold stand-off, complicated by the distinct
approaches to nation-building on both sides, tend to
eclipse emerging possibilities with antagonisms and idle
jingoism that have proven to be more burdensome than
useful during the six decades after Partition. Mainstream
cinemas and media generally have often fashioned patriotism
by reducing the ‘other’ across the border to the ‘enemy’,
the object of hostility and hate. Against the backdrop of
such highly charged antagonisms, it is hard to revisit
history and confront it in all its complexities. My Brother,
 ‘Kaisi Sarhaden, Kaisi Majbooriyan’ 151
My Enemy (2005) is a rare film by two young filmmakers
from the subcontinent, a film that critically revisits
pervasive world views, uninterrogated bitterness and
resentment, by tracing some uncharted histories.
 My Brother, My Enemy 141

In this essay, I will closely analyse the ways in which this

ethnographic documentary complicates and
problematises neat categorisations through engagement
with some personal narratives as sites where competing
impulses and emotions intersect.
In the subcontinent the term ‘documentary’ often
conjures up an image of the ‘real’, that which is distinct
and opposed to the fantasy play of fictive cinema.
Deploying the methods of ethnographic cinema, My Brother,
My Enemy formulates a more sophisticated conception of the
documentary that clearly bears subjective experiences,
distinct from any aspirations for objectivity, thereby
presenting a sophisticated take on the question of the
‘real’ as something whose complexity evades
rationalisations of any kind.
My Brother, My Enemy is a ‘border film’, in that its ‘plot
involves significant journeying and border crossing [,]
and [the] use of border settings’.1 The film enables us to
confront the borders on humane terms, where the
memories, angers and losses of the past co-mingle with
the inquisitiveness, biases and a frail, rather vulnerable
sense of cohesion performed in the present. In order to
exposit this, I will commence by unpacking the film’s
narrative and settings, through which the film manifests
sociocultural intricacies embedded in its encounters that
are not structured under the formal aegis of a cultural or
peace initiative.
The essay will then engage specifically with the
camerawork of this film. The camera’s choreography,
including its framing of subjects in conversations,
expositions of locations, and reliance on the telephoto lens, 2
all contribute in making the film a cinematic intervention
whose form actualises its discourse. The visual construction of
the film pursues exposition while privileging a
deterritorialised haptic and textural experience. A very
fluid and fragmentary camera vocabulary features in the
film. This fluidity, I posit, becomes a mechanism to counter
the identity categorisations and positions in relation to
nation and religion that the film is interrogating. So while
this film, the testimonial of two youngsters for whom the
anxieties of the past are not a first-hand encounter, does
not posit any clear reconciliations, what it achieves is a
142 Aparna
laying
Sharma bare of existing mindsets that on occasions get
reaffirmed and on others, collapse through the
encounters that the film sets up.

Interrogating Borders

My Brother, My Enemy, is set against the backdrop of the

Samsung India-Pakistan Cricket series of 2004. The film
arose from British
 My Brother, My Enemy 143

Pakistani3 Masood Khan’s instant friendship with Delhi-

based cinematographer, Kamaljeet Negi, when the two met
while attending film school in London three years ago. In
his voiceover, Kamal acknowledges: ‘We met at film
school in London. We could not have met otherwise….’
This serves as a framing device for the film; it is clear
that the collaboration of the two filmmakers cannot be
separated from the landscape in which they met. In a
multi-ethnic and advanced capitalist location outside the
subcontinent, more urgent disparities of, say nationality,
(here Indian and Pakistani), or religion (here Hindu and
Muslim) promptly recede and possibilities of transgressing
socially normative behaviour and nationally determined
thought materialise.4 One immediately questions whether
and how such a collaboration would have materialised if
both filmmakers were still situated in their respective
‘nations’. Once Masood and Kamal met, they were keen
to extend their friendship into their creative
occupations. The cricket series became an occasion and
a dramatic background to make a film.
The project marked by uncertainties from the start;
Masood and
Kamal had no script for this piece, only a general idea of
possible scenes. But they knew, no matter what they
filmed, it would be historically significant. Masood and
Kamal are themselves the characters who the film
follows. Their experiences, anxieties, hopes, and
expectations are the ingredients for the film’s narrative.
The decision to locate the filmmakers as the key
characters of the film is bold, difficult and, as the film
testifies, lends to the piece complex relations and
meanings. Both Masood and Kamal travel to each other’s
country, interact with each other’s families and, under the
pretence of the cricket series, conduct spontaneous
conversations with common persons such as cricket
fans, vendors, shop owners, and rickshaw pullers on the
streets of the cities they visit. Most of the film is steered
through these conversations and interviews; however, a
voiceover narration has been included to more fully
exposit the emotions that surface through the various
encounters of the film. This voiceover is not used in the
conventional documentary modality of the ‘voice of God’,
but is instead personal
144 Aparna
and conversational.
Sharma
The film commences with Masood’s first trip to India
where Kamal’s family welcomes him. There are some
sensitive and conversations here. A pregnant quietude
pervades Masood’s first few moments at Kamal’s home. The
very first meal Masood has at Kamal’s, touches upon a tough
cultural distinction. Kamal asks his mother if the meat
that is being
 My Brother, My Enemy 145

served is ‘halaal or jhatka’ (different methods, Muslim and

Hindu, of killing the animal). Kamal’s mother is instantly
evasive, though Kamal’s incessant probing finally rests the
tensions. A few minutes into the film, we are confronted
with an issue that evokes a history going back to the
mutiny of 1857, when Hindus and Muslims were pitched
against each other by the British colonisers, who
misinformed both communities that the hand grenades
they were going to use in revolt had been conspiratorially
lined with the fat of pigs and cows, animals considered
sacred by both—Muslims are forbidden to eat pork and
Hindus to consume the meat of cows. This moment sets up
and indexes the deep-seated and intertwined cultural and
historical disparities that are likely to surface during
Masood and Kamal’s journeys.
The remainder of Masood’s interactions with Kamal’s
family are lighthearted, peppered with humour and familial
hospitality. In their conversations, Masood and Kamal’s
family share their reactions when their teams win and
lose; they talk about their homes and how they have been
conditioned to perceive the ‘enemy’; and they share
cultural niceties such as the exchange of sweets and shagun
(offerings) when they meet and part. This prompts
Masood to reflect upon the perceived hostilities he has
been warned against by family and friends from Pakistan.
This reflection is furthered in a finely designed sequence
comprising some evocative locations, when Masood
travels through the lanes of the religiously and politically
sensitive old Delhi near Jama Masjid. Here, Kamal and
Masood find themselves in a neighbourhood where Hindus
and Muslims live and exist in close proximity. As they see
them ‘getting on with their daily lives’, both start to
transmigrate each other’s identities, suggesting that the
political borders that supposedly divide them are
perhaps not so total.
Masood walks into a horse-shed where he gets into
conversation
with some ‘idle’ youth. The ensuing dialogue is rigorous.
Though some of the characters here are clearly speaking
under a narcotic spell, they are certain that the Indo-Pak
issue is the making of politicians seeking an electoral base
by deflecting attention away from more urgent issues in
their respective countries. The sequence has political
146 Aparna
implications— these are views from the city streets, of
Sharma
masses who constitute the citizenry, not the analysis of
the socially and economically mobile elite, or the English-
speaking intelligentsia, including strategic, political and
defence analysts. On the whole, the sequence at Jama
Masjid bears a sense of movement that arises from the
intercutting of hand-held mobile images and static close-
ups using the telephoto lens. This sense
 My Brother, My Enemy 147

of movement complements the characters’ experience of

liminality and crossing between positionalities; it is a
formal strategy through which the film starts to indicate
its discursive stance that is clearly interrogative of the
determinations underpinning ‘national’ identity as defined
in relation to the other, the ‘enemy’. Repeatedly, Masood
comments in his voiceover, ‘There is hardly any
difference between here and there.’ He is puzzled when
he sees a Pakistani national flag atop a residential
quarter in the area; and when a rickshaw puller warmly
engages with Masood and expresses that his poverty far
exceeds his understanding of the hostilities between India and
Pakistan, the film starts to inject complexity into the
subject of national hostility. The conversations in this
entire sequence make for a political intervention as the
debate on the Indo-Pak conflict gets democratised,
resuscitated from the experts and news media and situated
in the ordinary spaces, routines and textures of daily life.

Reflecting the Self

In cinema historically, self-reflexivity5 has been a valued

mechanism to instil awareness that the film text is
constructed through the intricate processes of
cinematography, editing and projection, thus countering
the effacement of the filmmaker/apparatus and the
disavowal of the complex filmmaking processes—an attitude
that pervades mainstream cinema. In recent years, there has
been dissatisfaction with the physical presence of the
filmmaker on the screen as limiting, foreclosing his/her
positionality. Unpacking the filmmaker as a subject
constructed socio- historically and culturally and linking
that definition pertaining to the filmmaker’s subjective
stance to his/her aesthetic strategies contributes to better
identifying and appreciating the ideological
positionalities underpinning the work.
This imperative has been particularly pursued and
argued within anthropological and ethnographic
filmmaking. In these practices, the subjective stance of the
filmmaker and his/her relationship with the subjects within
the film are deliberated more consciously than in other forms
of documentary filmmaking, which, in claiming objectivity,
148 Aparna
are oblivious
Sharma to the inescapable implication of the
filmmaker within the film. Ethnography, most
pronouncedly, problematises the position of the
filmmaker, drawing attention to the power equations
and transactions between subjects, and between filmmakers
and subjects in the process of filmmaking. More recently, as
the claims for subjectivity
 My Brother, My Enemy 149

have gained credence within the social sciences,

ethnographic and anthropological films have been
increasingly drawn towards confronting and confusing
the conventional disparity between object/ observed and
subject/observer, without necessary resolution, and the
emphasis has started to shift from films that describe,
towards those that make central the very eliciting
discourse and exchanges between filmmaker and the
film’s subjects.
My Brother, My Enemy is rich in its attempts to indicate the
filmmakers’ subjectivities and the relationships they forge
through the film. The economic background of the two
subjects is apparent—they both belong to urban and
educated middle class6 families with aspirations towards
being upwardly mobile. Despite initial hesitation in
confronting their families with the camera, hinted at in both
filmmakers’ conversations with family members, the
location and decor of their homes in India and Pakistan,
their neighbourhoods, the languages and accents of
family members’ speech and their codes of dress, become
indices through which we are able to position the
filmmakers in relation to class and socio-cultural
dynamics.
More importantly, history is a key thematic as the film
consistently raises the subject of Partition. By doing this, it
reveals that the characters we are interacting with in the
film do not exist in an ahistoric vacuum, untouched or
unmarred by the forces of historical circumstance.
History is confronted frontally in the narrative pertaining to
Masood. The first reference is made when, from Delhi,
Masood travels to Punjab, to the village from where his
grandparents hailed prior to Partition. He meets his
family’s old acquaintances. In this sequence we are
witness to a verification process—the persons Masood
meets recollect and determine whom, among their peers
from a lost era, Masood is related to. Memory and
emotion are the principle agents in this scene, the
spontaneity and edginess of which could perhaps never
be encapsulated in a fictive script. Masood is welcomed,
and his grandparents’ old acquaintances describe how
agonising it was to, first, lose childhood friends and then
wait in the hope that they would return some day. Masood
150 Aparna
even
Sharmagoes to the house where his family had once lived. It is
occupied by a Hindu family, one that was ousted from
Pakistan during Partition. Masood reflects that theirs is the
‘same story’ as his family’s, ‘mirrored’, ‘reversed’.
All throughout his stay in India, Masood is filmed by
Kamal. From
Punjab Kamal and Masood travel to Pakistan. The
positions of the characters in relation to the camera now
switch. Kamal is the subject
 My Brother, My Enemy 151

of the lens, while Masood its operator. There is a visible

distinction in how each filmmaker frames the other that is
both impulsive, in keeping with the documentary
circumstance of the piece, yet subtly subjective, as if,
through the camera, the two friends were themselves
addressing one another. Masood comes across as an
extrovert, informal and conversational. This effect is
achieved through very mobile and tentative hand-held
camera images that lend him the persona of a face amidst
a crowd. Kamal, on the other hand, is mostly seen from a
low-angle position. This does not glorify him in any way
as authoritative—an understanding commonly linked to
the effect of a low-angle image. Rather, the low angles
complement his calm and contained persona, testified to
in his responses to queries he is confronted with. In this
disparity of framing, the camera emerges as a responsive
entity, one that is sensitive to spaces and the relations being
forged between characters. Consequently, our awareness
of the film/text makers is not purely technical; they are
not merely filmmakers operating video equipment. They
emerge as agents effected by, and involved in, the
process of unpacking socio-historical and cultural
intricacies. They surface, as embedded in the filmmaking
process, politically and socio-culturally, in a manner
wherein they are engaging with and interrogating their
identities, which is indicated aesthetically. Since we engage
with them on rather emotional terms, their ideological
stances too do not command rhetorical authority. This is
a rich possibility because we are not situated in or
given a predetermined ideological position within the
text; rather, we participate in the evolution of the
filmmakers’ stances
through the course of the film.

ÂBeing withÊ: The Scope of Camera Choreography

Throughout the film, the camera is largely hand-held. This

makes it a fluid presence and through it the screenplay
assumes a strong tendency for spontaneity. The shakiness
and tentativeness of the hand-held camera parallels the
film’s approach towards its subjects. The film is a not a
meta-commentary on Indo-Pak relations. It is not a
152 Aparna
conventional
Sharma documentary that seeks exposition or
argument through the triadic structure of ‘for’, ‘against’
and the detached/objective commentator, a structure that
pervades broadcast journalism and sections of television
documentary. The filmmakers have not engaged with
experts, activists or commentators of any kind. This is the
film’s mechanism for resisting, indeed undermining any
totalising or authoritative perspectives that would, by their
nature, be partial and reductive. The innocuous experience
 My Brother, My Enemy 153

of everyday life—where it is difficult to disentangle past

and present—is the richly textured backdrop for the film.
The only opinions we engage with, besides family, are in
impulsive conversations with ordinary persons on streets,
in market places and shopping malls, and outside venues
where a game of cricket is being played. The result is a
variegated palette of people’s sentiments and biases in
the social psyche start to surface. What is most lasting
through these conversations is the volatility of human
sentiment. Also, the filmmakers are not overly
concerned with displaying political correctness while
editing some of the comments they have garnered.
After India wins a match during the series that
Masood has been watching in a plush shopping mall on the
outskirts of Delhi, he is cornered by a crowd that stresses, in
rather aggressively celebratory terms, how India has
defeated Pakistan. When Masood reveals he is Pakistani, the
aggressive and jingoistic stance almost melts, making way for
apologies that very soon crystallise into a moment for a
nostalgic snapshot. Masood is given reassurances by
members of the crowd that he should not feel alienated or
isolated, and is invited to feel at home. In this shot that
lasts nearly a minute (fifty seconds approximately) the
camera first follows Masood. Then, as Masood is joined by
youngsters drawn towards him being a Pakistani, the
camera retreats to accommodate more members of the
crowd, until finally, Masood with Kamal facing him are
both encircled by a huge crowd. At this moment, Kamal
lifts the camera, losing Masood in the frame, and makes a
circular panning movement to reveal all faces that have
suddenly been provoked by the presence of the camera. This
is a very hypnotic movement, as the camera ‘becomes’ an
entity both provocative and responsive in the scenario:
characters within this image are drawn towards the
filmmakers, while the camera’s movement itself
acknowledges the crowd that has formed in response to it.
As everybody breaks into celebratory cheering and
laughter, it becomes apparent that it does not matter to the
crowd what the film is about. The camera is a magnetic
pull for the crowd and its concerns matter little.
Kamal’s experience in Pakistan is distinct and the camera
emulates
this. On the occasions when he is cornered after a game, the
154 Aparna
conversations are more politically sensitive, often slipping into
Sharma
the subject of Kashmir. He acknowledges that he feels
confronted on the subject of Kashmir and has to, without
his wanting to, defend his posture as an Indian. While all
conversations are polite, some are clearly underpinned by the
mechanisms of blame and confrontation. Some of Kamal’s
roadside
 My Brother, My Enemy 155

interactions also reveal how much India impregnates the

Pakistani imagination. In some, vox-pops the fascination
with Bollywood is revealed, in some, anger towards the
Gujarat riots, and in yet others, a sense of appreciation
towards India’s rising economic status in Asia and the
global economy generally. Throughout, the interviewees
furnish uneasy differences and disparities between the
economic and socio-cultural fabrics of the two nations.
On these occasions, the camera remains largely static,
facing the interviewees from a frontal position. This
static and frontal address corresponds with the
confrontational and fixed positionalities the filmmakers
encounter as subjects express rather rigid and antagonistic
mindsets. The stasis of the camera on these instances
contrasts with the largely fluid movement in the remainder
of the film. It parallels the frustrations that Kamal
expresses in his voiceover and further, though subtly,
reinforces the distinction between the worldviews of the
filmmakers, who are engaging with identity as being
constructed, as they collide with the identities of their
subjects.
Kamal and Masood have very clearly derived from the
traditions of cinema verite.7 The ‘normal’ domestic spaces
of both their homes have been accessed; family members
interact not in formal interview situations but amidst their
day-to-day activities. The framing of each person within
the domestic spaces complements their characters. This
aspect is crucial. The camera has here not positioned
itself directly as if adopting a questioning stance in
relation to the subjects. Neither is it trying to empathise
with them, by replicating their point of view8 or by
developing a viewing position proximate to theirs. What
the camera is seeking is to get ‘near’ the interviewees.
At no instance do we have a full view of any member.
Their bodies are fragmented and the families are never
encountered as collectives. Through this attempt at
nearness and fragmentation, the camera is acknowledging
the disparities between the subjects such that the
impossibility of a coherent communitarian stance is
indicated, but without undermining particular
subjectivities.
Further, the nearness of the camera is a double
articulation of subjectivities, that of the characters and
156 Aparna
subjects
Sharma within the frame and those behind the lens. This
nearness evokes the ‘being-with’ that French philosopher
Giles Deleuze has indicated with relation to the
perception image.9 Deleuze develops his discussion from
Jean Mitry’s text, Esthetique et psychologie du cinema, II. ‘Being-
with’: [The camera] no longer mingles with the
character, nor is it outside: it is with him (Deleuze 1986:
72).
 My Brother, My Enemy 157

Deleuze explains ‘being-with’ in relation to how such

a camera attends to the enunciation of subjects within and
without the frame, deriving from linguist Bakhtin’s
conceptions in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (1973).
Deleuze (1986: 73) states:

There is not a simple combination of two fully-constituted

subjects of enunciation, one of which would be reporter, the
other reported. It is rather a case of an assemblage of
enunciation, carrying out two inseparable acts of
subjectivation simultaneously, one of which constitutes a
character in the first person, and the other which is present at
his birth and brings him to the scene. There is no mixture or
average of two subjects....

The most poignant and enduring impression arises in

Masood’s conversation with his grandmother in her
kitchen. She is cooking chapattis (unleavened bread) for
dinner. Between attending to the stove and rolling the
chapattis, she recalls with an anger that exceeds yet
maintains her consciousness towards the camera, the
bloody and horrific murders of her relatives during
Partition. Her comments include recollections of the
bloodshed and horror when neither man nor animal were
spared in the violence. She wishes Allah never shows those
times to anyone ever again. The antagonism in her voice
contrasts sharply with the action of domesticity we find
her engaged in. In this instance, the camera is static and
placed low, viewing Masood’s grandmother from a side
angle; she references both the camera and Masood, who,
it appears, is not positioned directly behind the camera.
The static camera contributes to the catharsis in this
sequence and facilitates in revealing fully the ironies that
impregnate the scenario. Masood indicates that this
narrative has never been shared with him before; and
even though he has returned from India questioning the
antagonisms and enmity at home, he too feels, as his
grandmother speaks, an anger raging within him. In
textual terms, this sequence is tough because it is allows
us a dialogue between the subjects within the frame and
behind the lens, a dialogue that is emotionally charged
and full of with contrary feelings. The intensity of
Masood’s grandmother’s account aside, the self-
158 Aparna
referencing
Sharma within the sequence by acknowledging the
complex imbrication of past and present by Masood
problematises any prompt resolution within the film and
thereby within the discussion of Indo-Pak ties.
This sequence is a close record of history in the voice of
a subject
who has participated in its movement. Masood’s
expression of his discomfort upon hearing his
grandmother sets up the cinematic
 My Brother, My Enemy 159

apparatus as attempting nearness with the subject

without fully attempting her viewpoint in a manner that
echoes the discursive stance of anthropological
filmmaker, Trin T. Minh-Ha in her 1982 film, Reassemblage,
which arose from her ethnographic field research in Senegal.
In the voiceover to the film, Minh-Ha (1992: 96) states:

Scarcely twenty years were enough to make two billion

people define themselves as underdeveloped.
I do not intend to speak
about Just speak near by

Minh-Ha has been one of the key figures in recent

discussion surrounding the scope and extent of
ethnographic documentation. In her practice, we
encounter a profound muddying of the categories of the
‘observer’ and ‘observed’. She has critiqued
conventional ethnographic film practice in terms of the
‘division of the world into those ‘out there’ (the subjects
of ethnography) and those ‘in here’ (in the theatre, looking
at them) (Russell 1999: 4). She asserts a more fluid conception
of ethnographic practice that assumes particular significance
with respect to third world subjects, for her intervention
initiates the scope of engaging on more competing and
problematising terms that both confront and endanger
perceived power equations and stereotypes.
In this respect, there are two other sequences within My
Brother,
My Enemy that furnish a complexity in the experiences of
the film’s principal characters, the filmmakers. The first
involves Kamal’s meeting with Masood’s family; the second
is an earlier sequence when the filmmakers cross the
Indo-Pak border at Wagah, Punjab. Masood tells us in
his voiceover that he had not informed his family he
would be accompanied by Kamal on his return from
India. In a very lucidly edited segment of the film
towards the close, we see Masood informing his
grandparents he would like them to meet Kamal.
Masood’s grandfather is unwelcoming and assertive in his
rejection of Hindus. Meanwhile, we follow Kamal through
the streets of Lahore and Rawalpindi, receiving that
warm hospitality Pakistan is known for. The drama peaks
as Kamal arrives at Masood’s home. There is a tension at
160 Aparna
this moment, for we are aware of Masood’s grandparents’
Sharma
animosity. Kamal is welcomed into the family. We see
this in the very subtle body gestures and demeanour of
all characters within the scene. As a mark of respect,
Kamal touches Masood’s grandfather’s feet. In return, he
receives warm blessings. This is perhaps the most
 My Brother, My Enemy 161

moving moment of the film. Masood, in his reminiscent

voiceover, says that something ‘had changed’ at that
moment. As these words arise, the camera recedes from
the scene, as if acknowledging the emotional intensity of
the moment and according it a dignity that the camera’s
presence and literal visualisation would shatter.
Throughout the film, we have found Kamal and Masood
accessing liminal spaces, where the antagonisms and
disparities between India and Pakistan seem challenged if
not fully overcome. The sequence in Old Delhi and the
domestic spaces of both filmmakers’s homes are key in this
respect. Towards the middle of the film, when the
filmmakers cross the Indo-Pak border to enter Pakistan, we
are transported to the flag changing ceremony at the
Wagah border. The filmmakers cross the border—this is
depicted through a brief fade to a black screen, after
which the colour palette on the screen is visibly distinct. In
place of the Indian tricolour, we see the green Pakistani
flag being hurled in celebration. On the soundtrack the
music pitches high and the sloganeering from the crowds
at the ceremony includes cheering for the Pakistani nation.
Just as we are absorbing the disparity between the two
tightly defined and culturally inscribed landscapes,
Masood critiques the absent-minded jingoism displayed at
this scene. This is the most critical and direct address
within the film. At this instant, the film fully articulates
and delivers its position with relation to the border and
Indo-Pak hostility. The filmmakers belong to a generation
that is sensitive to the concerns and experiences of the
generations before them, but through this sequence both
filmmakers, indeed as the ideological apparatus, exhibit their
dissatisfaction with the summarily reductionist propaganda
their nations and communities adopt and exhibit in
relation to one another.

Through the Telephoto Lens

Throughout the film, both filmmakers have consistently used

the telephoto lens10 on the digital video camera. This
facilitates their complex take on national identity. The
premise of the film, the encounters it conjures and the
worldviews it exposits have all been edited in a fashion
162 Aparna
that suggests an interrogative stance towards defining
Sharma
national identity in opposition to the ‘enemy’. The
suggestion is clear: such a reductive take on a perceived
enemy is oversimplified. This understanding situates the
filmmakers’ experiences beyond national or spatial
definition. They have attempted to unpack identity as fluid,
volatile and complex, operating
 My Brother, My Enemy 163

within history, politics, propaganda, and memory, and

certainly not limited within jingoistic nationalist
sentiment.
The liminality and fluidity that the filmmakers have
encountered deterritorialises the filmmakers. Imagery
arising from the telephoto lens serves to deterritorialise
viewing positions within the film, departing from a naturalist
perception that obscures depth of field, and often
fragments subjects, lending a softness in focus to them.
Thus, the imagery, in its form, parallels the filmmakers’
stance. It manifests fragmentation, exaggerated camera
movements and close texture. It provides an advanced
perceptual experience wherein our engagement with the
image does not pertain to it being visual evidence that
solely corroborates the film’s encounters.
The camera provides us with candid images of
subjects, haptic reflections of locations, surface textures,
and mobile encounters that lend a sense of rhythm to the
piece. The editing of the film, which finely mixes the
telephoto images with wide-angle long and medium shots,
makes our engagement with the film visually lyrical and
rhythmic. In this sense, the camera choreography assumes
a poetic dimension and the apparatus emerges as not
subservient to the film’s occupation, verifying and
thereby reinforcing the confrontations encountered. Our
engagement is extended to another realm, beyond political
argument and towards a perceptual dimension.
Though the two filmmakers are never revealed
engaged in cinematography, their presence in aesthetic
terms cannot be evaded. The film surfaces as not only
articulating subject positions but, as ideology and
aesthetic coincide, the film itself is pushed away from a
purely content-based occupation, towards form. This is
useful cinematically, for now the camera apparatus is
not simply a means of recording or visualising; rather, is
an entity in itself. This stance towards form, whereby the
work emphasises the apparatus, parallels the conception
of the ‘free indirect subjective’ that Deleuze evokes in
relation to Italian filmmaker Pier Pao Pasolini’s cinema,
where he notes that the camera:
does not simply give us the vision of the character and of
his world; it imposes another vision in which the first is
164 Aparna
transformed and reflected. This subdivision is what Pasolini
Sharma
calls free indirect subjective…it is a case of going beyond the
subjective and the objective towards a Pure Form…. It is a
very special kind of cinema which has acquired a taste for
‘making the camera felt. (Deleuze 1986: 74)
 My Brother, My Enemy 165

The telephoto lens within My Brother, My Enemy has been

specifically employed to develop close-ups and proximate
imagery. The close- ups themselves are deterritorialising
for they serve in abstracting the subjects from any space
or time coordinates. Bela Balazs, deriving from Henri
Bergson’s analysis of time and duration, has noted that
the close-up serves in opening up the experience of film
viewing into more dimensions:
The facial expression on a face is complete and
comprehensible in itself and therefore we need not think of
existing in space and time. Even if we had just seen the
same face in the middle of a crowd and the close- up merely
separated it from the others, we would still feel that we
have suddenly been left alone with this one face to the
exclusion of the rest of the world…the expression and
significance of the face has no relation to space and no
connection with it. Facing an isolated face takes us out of
space, our consciousness out of space is cut out and we find
ourselves in another dimension. (Braudy and Cohen 2004:
316)11

Long and medium shots have been injected to not only

contribute towards orientation within space and
contextualisation,12 but also as a mechanism to create
breathing space in the consistently close imagery, engaging
with which can turn visually straining, and to insert a subtle
lyricism in the visual assembly of images. In this, the
filmmakers have attempted to inject dynamism by
exploring disparate heights and angles that result in
variegated positions of viewing. The camerawork emerges
as not approximating the perspective or position of
viewing of the/any human eye. In this way, the film averts a
naturalist-humanist representation, even though it is
engaging with some very close human encounters. The
departure from a naturalist perception brings the work very
close to the constructivist discourse within film theory
and the constructionist discourse within social
anthropology. The multiple positions of viewing within
the film remind us of Soviet filmmaker, Dziga Vertov’s
declaration that the kino-eye (camera eye) is distinct from
the human eye.13 Further, in anthropological terms, we
are able to view identity and subjectivity as being
constructed, formulated in historical encounters and not
166 Aparna
innate
Sharma or given. The constructivist and constructionist
stances within the film help undermine the tendency to
equate distinctions between India and Pakistan in
reductivist terms based on originary notions pertaining to
religious and racial opposition, which posit Hindus and
Muslims as eternally antagonistic.
 My Brother, My Enemy 167

Conclusion

My Brother, My Enemy provides us with some complex

moments that reveal the volatility of identity. While the
film does not arrive at a resolution, it leaves us with a
people-to-people encounter, wherein national identity
and its claims in relation to a perceived enemy are
complicated, if not totally collapsed.
In the last scene of the film, we see Kamal leaving on the
train back for India. When the credits roll later, there seems
no certainty gathered from the film. With the injection of the
filmmakers as the key characters of the film we are, in any
case, aware that the film is from a subjective position. The
camera choreography, its spontaneity and impulsiveness
complement only the subjectivities we are engaging with.
The film has attempted to contextualise the filmmakers
for us without resolving their subject positions in any
conclusive or assertive terms; at the same time, we are
aware that their subjectivity is not uninterrogated or a
randomly constructed personal narrative. The two
filmmakers express their dissatisfaction with the borders
between the peoples of the two nations. At the same
time, they return to their respective spaces.
Consequently, the film steers away from any rhetoric or
assertion.
The camerawork within the film is responsive to space
and relation dynamics. This, in itself, re-situates the camera
as more than merely an expository device, thus questioning
the view of the documentary image as objective, as
evidence. The deterritorialisation of viewing positions
complements the film’s attempt at confusing the fixed
positionalities pertaining to nationality and religion
evoked through borders. The film starts with the two
filmmakers stating they belong on either side of a
border. Through the film, that border is repeatedly
crossed and rendered unclear. Though the film does not
have a conclusive resolution, it provides us with a richly
textured view, and sentiments that indicate how difficult it
is to disentangle politics, propaganda and history, indeed,
the past and the present.

Notes
168 Aparna
1. Hamid Naficy uses Norma Iglesias’s formulation that he has ‘modified
Sharma
considerably’. (Naficy 2001: 313, endnote 10.)
2. The specifics of this lens are discussed later, in the concerned
section of the essay.
3. The film does not provide us with any indication that Masood is
British Pakistani. In a conversation with the author, Masood stated
that it was a deliberate decision
 My Brother, My Enemy 169

not to include that information, for with that definition the film’s
claims might have been readily challenged.
4. This instance in the film reminds one of Vijay Mishra’s discussion
surrounding the use of foreign landscapes in Bollywood cinema.
Mishra, through textual analysis, observes how diasporic spaces
and foreign landscapes are generally complex locations for
transgressing social norm, performed in Bollywood with relation
to romance. (For a detailed discussion see, Mishra 2002: 235–69).
My Brother, My Enemy posits the friendship between the filmmakers as
both problematical in India, which can be appreciated in view of
their social and cultural background as discussed below, and as a
transgression, given the memories and experiences of Masood’s
family from the Partition.
5. Self-reflexivity is the technique of acknowledging the nature of the
filmmaking process. It often involves the presence of crew and
camera within the image. ‘This style of filmmaking which draws
attention to its own process is often termed “self- reflexive”’
(Nelmes 2003: 414).
6. Masood is British Pakistani; it was his parents who migrated to the
United Kingdom. Through interaction with his family in Pakistan, it
can be gauged that his family belongs to the middle class of
Pakistan.
7. The origins of cinema verite are in the Soviet documentary style that
emerged after the Revolution in the 1920s, exemplified in the work of
Dziga Vertov. Vertov was the documentarist for the Soviet newspaper,
Pravda (truth). The filmed edition of the paper, which Vertov
developed, was termed Kino-Pravda (film-truth). Vertov
characterised his cinema as one where ‘there were no actors, no
decors, no script and no acting’. The style later influenced French
cinema, particularly the cinema of Jean Luc Godard in the 1970s, and
ethnographic filmmakers Jean Rouch (Dixon 1997). Susan Hayward
notes that Rouch initially termed his ‘objective’ style as ‘cinema
direct’, where there was ‘no staging, no mise-en-scene and no
editing’. In the 1960s he shifted away from this purist style
towards ‘a more sociological investigation’ where he staged shots
and edited his footage. This style he termed as cinema verite. ‘Less
objective, but no less real, cinema verite attempted to catch reality on
film. Ordinary people testified to their experiences, answered
questions put by Rouch or his colleagues.’ (Hayward 2001: 58–59)
The earliest and most poignant remains Rouch’s Chronique d’un fíté.
In My Brother, My Enemy, all conversations are completely
spontaneous.
8. The point-of-view in cinema is related to the notion of the subjective
camera. It
is usually a shot that represents the point of view of a character,
looking at what the character sees (Dick 2002: 61).
9. As the term indicates, the perception image pertains to
perception. However, Deleuze discusses the perception image as
being distinct from the ‘nominal definition of “subjective” and
“objective”’. He holds the perception-image as being ‘semi-
subjective’, in which camera-consciousness takes an extremely formal
170 Aparna
determination (1986: 76).
Sharma
10. The telephoto lens magnifies distant objects and has a narrow
angle of view. In this measure its mechanism is often compared to
that of a telescope. Unlike the wide-angle lens that emphasises
perception of depth and often distorts linear perception, the
telephoto lens suppresses depth perception. Masood and Kamal
used a Panasonic DVX 100, a digital video camera with a zoom
lens that has a variable length, ranging from wide-angle to the
telephoto (Monaco 2000: 80).
 My Brother, My Enemy 171

11. While Balazs concentrates on the face in close-up, Deleuze has stated
that the affect of a close-up need not be limited to the face only. ‘And
why would a part of the body, chin, stomach or chest be more partial,
more spatio-temporal and less expressive than an intensive feature
of faceicity or a reflexive whole face?’ (1986: 97).
12. For a detailed discussion of the long shot in terms of its
anthropological qualities of establishing relationships with and
within space, see Collier and Collier 1948.
13. For Dziga Vertov, the camera, which he termed kino-eye, was
distinct from the human eye. It could move freely and access that
which was not readily available or could be missed by the human
eye. In WE: Variant of a Manifesto, the kino-eye is defined thus: ‘I am kino-
eye, I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world as only
I can see it. Now and forever, I free myself of human immobility, I
am in constant motion, I draw near, then away from objects, I
crawl under, soldiers, I fall on my back, I ascend with an airplane,
I plunge and soar together with plunging and soaring bodies. Now
I, a camera, fling myself along their resultant, manoeuvering in the
chaos of movement, recording movement, starting with movements
composed of the most complex combinations. Within the chaos
of movements, running past, away, running into and colliding—the
eye, all by itself, enters life. I climb onto them. I move apace with
the muzzle of a galloping horse, I plunge fullspeed into a crowd, I
outstrip running (1984: 17).
172 Aparna
Sharma

11
Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine
Critiques: Young Hindi Film Viewers
Respond to Violence, Xenophobia and Love
in Cross-border Romances
Shakuntala Banaji

Tarang (twenty-two, a Hindu assistant pharmacist, London,

2005): I’ve watched Hindi films all my life. My mom and nani
[grandmother] made me when I was little, to learn Hindi. I
saw all the old films with the Kapoors and Mr Bachchan, and
all Shahrukh-Kajol, Aamir-Juhi love stories, but I never
watched the ones on India-Pakistan. I mean I liked them very
much for the songs, but that is all.
Shaku: The songs? Are there any in particular?
Tarang: So many! (Pause.) Every song in the film Main Hoon
Na is just great! But that isn’t truly one of ‘those’ films. Few
years back we watched Gadar—maybe a movie not many
people here would see. I cried in front of my mom when they
are driving in the truck, you know? He is taking her to the
border. It was so sad, like when my mom takes my nani to the
airport and we all feel we may not see her again. The songs
were sad, colourful and...er...full of passion. But the film
was bad. It really made me angry. Stirring up bad feelings
on all sides like Fox News! Just ridiculous.
Shaku: Where are your parents from, actually?
Tarang: They were from Pune, you know. But before that my
mom came from Lucknow and that’s where my nani lives.

The most disturbing fragments are those that resist the hegemony of
any clearly articulated text.

—Bharucha, The Politics of Cultural Practice, 2001

158 Shakuntala
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Introduction

In relation to the line running between India and

Pakistan, Hindi films have, for decades, been dipping first
their toes and more recently their entire limbs into
imaginary waters on the other side of the border.
Hindi film critics have long complained that many films
appear to do this explicitly to bolster a sense of (fictional)
patriotic Indian identity in opposition to that which is
Pakistani and ‘other’, and that they do so in the service of
a xenophobic ruling ideology that serves the interest of a
corrupt and highly authoritarian political elite (see Prasad
1998; Vitali 2000). However, do such critiques—however
powerful and legitimate—actually reflect the ways in
which viewers ‘read’ and respond to the invitations of
these films? What kinds of satisfactions and anxieties
might the films speak to that are not articulated in day-
to-day life? And, equally significantly, if there are some
viewers who are prone to respond to certain filmic
invitations more powerfully than to others because of their
experiences and backgrounds, how do these responses tie
in with existing politics and political situations in South Asia
and the diaspora? Using a case-study approach, via young
people’s comments as well as through existing critical
literature, this essay articulates some controversies
surrounding the films Gadar (Tumult, 2001) and Veer-Zaara
(2004), which take as their subject matter cross-religious
or cross-border romances set against the backdrop of a
fragmented and fictionalised history of the relationship
between India and Pakistan. I will especially look at the
way in which issues of social class, national identity,
diaspora, and religious affiliations in the films resonate
differently with viewers from different backgrounds and
locations in India and the diaspora.

Hindi Film Studies: Questioning Theoretical Borders

Concern with the possible negative ‘effects’ of Hindi films

on audiences is not new: in fact it continues to haunt
those writing on the subject (see Chatterji 2003;
Dasgupta 1993; Mathur 2002). In one example, Srividya
Ramasubramaniam and Mary Beth Oliver argue that ‘the
 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 159
idea that heroes would be shown engaging in sexual
violence is cause for concern, as social learning
perspectives suggest that when likable, attractive
characters such as heroes perpetrate sexual violence on
screen they are more likely to be imitated by viewers’
(2003: 334). In another instance, Arti Shukla (2005),
discussing films that invoke images of
160 Shakuntala
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the Indian nation in contrast to Pakistan, refers
continually to what the populace might be making of
these films. She argues: ‘These films…provide not only
entertainment, they also satisfy the audience’s moral and
political desires by providing a tool to make sense of what
is going on and understand the actions of the governments
of the two countries.’ Fareed Kazmi’s Gramscian
conclusions quite moderately sum up a number of
anxieties about the ‘dangers’ of Hindi films:
Conventional films do not simply reflect the social world,
but actually construct a coherent version of social reality
within which ideological tensions can be contained and
resolved.… In other words, through highly complex and
devious means, it [the conventional film] privileges ‘preferred’
meanings over ‘excluded’ meanings, thereby reinforcing the
‘given’ of the system, and absorbing or referencing out all
potentially oppositional connotations. (Kazmi 1999: 215–16)

In all these examples, connections between viewers’

actions and film narratives are drawn hypothetically,
based not on actual instances or accounts but on
perspectives from social psychology and textual
analysis. Despite a few studies of Hindi film audiences
(Bhattacharya 2004; Derné 2000; Dudrah 2002), there are
a number of reasons why the view of Hindi films as a
closed and coherent system of representation and
reception has remained prevalent. Quite particularly,
growing unease about the increase in religious fascism
and xenophobic nationalism in India (Bharucha 1998;
Bhatt 2001; Mankekar 2000), its witting (or unwitting)
support from the diaspora (Bahri 2001; Mishra 2002;
Rajagopal 2001) and horror at the social practices of
religious, gender and sexual violence (Pushkarna 2001;
Sarkar 2002) appear to emphasise the need for an
understanding of links between viewers’ national,
gender and ethnic identities, and their spectatorship. In
the opinion of numerous critics, (Kazmi 1998; Valicha
1988; Vishwanath 2002), viewers uncritically watch films
that seem at best to ignore and at worst to encourage
authoritarian beliefs and circumstances, such as the
xenophobic hatred between India and Pakistan. Of course,
some textual theorists discussing Hindi films have
 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 161
summarised their assumptions about audiences in
relation to the pleasures of spectacle and emotional
excess, an avowed ‘need’ for tradition in a threateningly
modern world, and the potential of films to shore up a
sense of personal and group identity. As with all primarily
theoretical accounts of film, this collective picture tells,
however, far from the whole story.
162 Shakuntala
Banaji
While, superficially, each of the textual accounts of
Hindi films appears accurately to encompass some aspects
of the films, the nature of the assumptions about audiences
raises a series of problematic questions. Are all the
narratives, romantic sequences, music, costumes, dialogues,
lyrics, and other aspects of Hindi films equally ideologically
‘suspect’ and the pleasures they bring to viewers
morally ‘dubious’ by virtue of their connection to an
authoritarian ideology and an oppressive society? What
of viewers such as Tarang, quoted at the beginning of
this chapter, who find pleasure in films, aspects of whose
narratives they clearly despise? Just how do young viewers
interpret the visual and verbal discourses of gender,
nation and ethnicity in commercial Hindi films in the light
of their perceptions of their own national, ethnic, gender,
and sexual identities? If a viewer’s identity may be
shaped by intersecting, and contingent, aspects of
history and experience (Ghosh 2002; Staiger 2003), then
to what extent do varying class, religious, geographic,
national, community, and home environments alter,
influence and/or counterbalance conceptions of gender
and national identity read into Hindi films?

Methodology

My fieldwork comprised mixed methods and a wide

variety of data which was analysed both individually and
comparatively. I carried out much of the fieldwork in
London and Bombay over a period of two and a half
years, between 2000 and 2003, during which I took
extensive notes on the home lives, cinema environment
and popular film consumption of young Hindi film
viewers. The bulk of the data in this chapter is based on
extended in-depth interviews with forty viewers between
the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. The interviews were
constructed in a semi-structured manner, lasting
between one and four hours, which were then analysed
thematically in the light of forms of discourse analysis
stemming from social psychology (Hollway 1989; Potter
and Wetherell 1987). Thus, although aspects of viewer
identity such as class, gender and religion are seen as
being significant in shaping experiences of life and film,
 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 163
interviewees’ accounts are presented as part of a
snapshot of Hindi film viewing rather than as being
representative of entire communities’ viewing positions.
A participant observer at over eighty Hindi film
showings, I kept a
field diary and took dozens of photographs of cinema halls
and viewers; I visited some of my interviewees at home or
college, went shopping
164 Shakuntala
Banaji
with others, or to the cinema, and discussed Hindi films
extensively, all activities which I recorded in the field diary.
In addition, I examined articles on Hindi films and stars,
sexuality, ethnicity, gender and race from popular film
magazines, newspapers and the internet, and watched
Hindi films on DVD and VHS, which formed part of the
context for film appreciation and consumption amongst my
sample. An additional two months of interviewing in 2005 in
both cities for a related project enabled me to revisit some
of the issues raised by interviewees in my initial sample,
with a new set of viewers and some more recent films, of
which Veer-Zaara was one. Rather than coming from a
selected list, all the films discussed either happened to
be showing when I undertook the research or were
specifically chosen for consideration by the young people
I interviewed.

Forced Crossings and Techno-memories?: Gadar and

its Mixed Reception
In this section, through a case study of responses to the
film Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (Tumult—A Love Story, 2001) I
examine the notion, put forward by Sumita Chakravarty
(2002: 224) that ‘the institution of narrative cinema in its
mainstream forms may actually be resistant to nationalist
imaginings, given that the nation is always mediated by its
fragments, that is by individuals whose particularities of
dress, speech and life-style locate them within specific
regional, social and cultural configurations’. Of course,
this notion does not exist in isolation or simply in relation
to the ‘imagined communities’ of cinema and fiction put
forward by Benedict Anderson (1983). Its context is, in
fact, far more mundane and can be summed up in the twin
concerns of critics:
a) the images of Hindi cinema articulate and encourage
widespread jingoism amongst the Indian populace and
in the diaspora; and b) such film propaganda has actual
psychic and social consequences, from the masking of
opportunist anti-Pakistani stances taken by the
government when they wish to start a war or encourage
ethnic and religious violence, to the promotion of smug self-
satisfaction on the part of the Indian viewer and
 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 165
government and, ultimately, the deepening of divisions in
South Asia, which have long-lasting effects on the life of the
region.1
Opening to an extended and brutal sequence of post-
Partition violence by Muslims against Sikhs in India, Gadar
purportedly tells the story of a Sikh truck driver who saves
a middle-class Muslim girl from
166 Shakuntala
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gang-rape and death after her family flee to Pakistan. He
waits until she has fallen in love with him to marry her and
start a family with her, only to have his idyllic life thrown
into a maelstrom of angst when she visits her family in
Pakistan and is held prisoner by them. The hero’s trip
with his little boy to Paksitan to ‘recover’ his wife takes
up the second half of the film, which depicts Pakistan as
highly repressive, fundamentalist and full of hatred for
India, and most Pakistanis as pawns in the hands of
their evil leaders. The brief happy ending, in which all
are reconciled, only follows an extended sequence in
which the hero single-handedly destroys swathes of the
Pakistani army.
At the time I was conducting out initial interviews,
Gadar was sweeping across belts of India, to all intents
and purposes a ‘super- hit’, but struggling and failing to
emulate success of Lagaan (The Tax, 2001) in other
countries. Both were, avowedly, ‘fictions’ of history; but
in the press, much was made of the fact that one (Lagaan)
harked back to a utopian pre-Independence arena in
which a nationalist message had the power to unify people
across class, gender, caste, and religion, while the other
(Gadar) was causing actual fracas between sections of the
populace (see ‘Sena terms Muslim protestors of Gadar
anti-national’, 2001; and ‘Storm over partition love
story’, 2001). Young people I interviewed outside cinemas
were fiercely divided in their assessment of the film; some
thought it was a splendid romance or reminder of history;
others asserted that they simply didn’t care what the
film was about, it was a must-see because it ‘looked big’;
yet others asserted categorically that they had no wish
to see a film that ‘caused religious divisions’. During
private in-depth interviews, however, a number of more
detailed and clearcut viewing positions were clarified.
Bhiku was one of the first viewers I spoke to, who
consciously constructed himself not as a fan of Hindi films
but as a ‘thinking viewer’, someone who wanted to know
more about the world. In this sense, his commentary on
Gadar is crucial, because it shows just how far the
blurred boundaries between fiction and history appeal to
those who most wish to distance themselves from what
they see as the romanticism or escapism of Hindi films.
 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 167
Bhiku (a twenty-three year old Hindu shop assistant, Bombay):
In Gadar they show people’s anger towards Pakistan. After
many years all the anger is in the people’s minds and some
of the dialogues pinch Pakistan, so people—the audience—
get happy.
168 Shakuntala
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Shaku: So, in the theatre where you saw it, people liked those
anti-Pakistan speeches?
Bhiku: Yes. Because people feel helpless to do anything against
Pakistan, but when this dialogue is delivered they are
showing what is there inside.
Shaku: Do you think similar things are shown in Pakistan?
Bhiku: Yes, why not? On both the sides the media has put a
lot of anger in people’s minds. Common people should have
common sense.
Shaku: But do they? (Both laugh. Long pause.)
Bhiku: One thing I like in Gadar is that it has at least shown
the pain that people face when leaving their roots, the
trouble they would have faced in leaving that place. The
cruelty which both sides committed...they have tried to show
the pain…I couldn’t even imagine the pain, that of people
who lose their relatives at that time. Their Muslim priests
are publishing it more as Muslims versus other communities.
Some of the acts of some Muslims that have made the
majority (Pause.) and the government’s acts also—the
government has tried to be neutral, to show themselves
neutral, but they have done injustice to the other—the
Hindu community.

In analysing a piece of talk such as this and the ones

which follow, it is important to chart the shifts and
movements, the withdrawals, emphases and patterns in
the context of other information about the intersecting
identifications and experiences of the speakers (Barker and
Galasinski 2001; Potter and Wetherell 1987). In the first
section of this segment, Bhiku speaks first of the film as
a text, albeit one with a popular edge, showing this
awareness in his mention of ‘dialogues’ that self-
consciously ‘pinch’ Pakistan. Later he moves to his sense
of the film as a political vehicle for supposedly
‘authentic’ frustrations about ‘political/religious
favouritism’,2 which to him explain the popularity of the
film with Hindu audiences in India and of films similar to
this with Muslim audiences in Pakistan. Bhiku’s expression
of his enjoyment of the film as turning on a need to be
informed about the brutal realities of Partition and of
finding such information in the film, are a worrying
confirmation of the fact that such films do get used, in
some viewers’ minds, as replacements for ‘real’ histories
 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 169
of Partition. As psychoanalytic theorist Sudhir Kakar
explains, ‘Cultural psychology in India must necessarily
include the study of the psychic representations of
collective pasts, the ways the past is used as a
receptacle for projections from the present’ (1996: 12–
13). Bhiku moves from speaking of his enjoyment of
Gadar, and that of others in the theatre where he viewed
it, to the brutality and violence
170 Shakuntala
Banaji
of Partition, to the inflammatory speeches of ‘their’
‘Muslim’ priests (on both sides of the border). This
process strikes me as extremely political and far from
disinterested. As I have argued elsewhere (Banaji 2006),
this can be read in the light of a trend towards the
erasure of secular histories of India in the past decade and
their replacement by fictions of Hindu fascist provenance
(Bhatt 2001: 92–94, 206–207;
Butalia 1995: 58–81; Sarkar 2001: 268–88).
Yet a range of different existential and political
frameworks do exist amongst viewers, and these appear
to alter the reading of meaning radically, intriguingly
suggesting, perhaps, that where Hindi films attempt to be
most didactic, they may fail most consistently with a whole
range of viewers who do not already share their primary
ideological outlook. Ismail, a young working-class Muslim
in Bombay and Jatin, a middle-class Hindu in London,
both exemplify this notion, while Neetu and Neha
engage with other aspects of the film, suggesting that
even strongly nationalist films leave room for multiple
readings. I quote at length to give a sense of these
viewers’ differing contexts and concerns.
Ismail (a nineteen year old Muslim sales representative,
Bombay): (Unclear sentence). You know the disturbing things,
like the Shiv Sena Chief, Bal Thakaray.
Shaku: Yes?
Ismail: So many of his statements are against Muslims. But the
government can do nothing to him. Why can’t they? He
should be in jail. This is what you have to ask. He has had
case after case made against him, but nothing touches him.
And, with such anti-Muslim sentiments around, how do
people expect the Muslims in this country to feel that India
is our country?…And then, the dissatisfaction [of a few
Indian Muslims, regarding their status in India] being
expressed by the gesture of supporting the Pakistan cricket
team is interpreted by most Hindus as a signal of allegiance
to Pakistan.[…]You have all sorts of communication
technologies at your command, like internet and computer
and phone. But if you had nothing then the films would be the
best way for you to find out what is going on in the city next
to yours. It may be a one-sided picture, but who says you
have to accept only that picture? At least it is some sort of
news. People have to think for themselves, whether something
 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 171
is right or wrong[….] And films like Gadar, Border [1997]—the
film producer is just trying to make money so in India he will
praise India and elsewhere—well (pause) have you seen the
VCD version? They’ve cut out many of the anti-Pakistani
dialogues because they want to be financially successful
overseas, even in Pakistan. So they’ll do that. Again, take
the movie Sarfarosh (The Martyr, 1999), they showed the
whole of it on
172 Shakuntala
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Zee but on the VCD they simply cut out the bits that made
sense in the plot. So as not to offend certain groups....

Ismail uses Gadar, Mission Kashmir (2000) and Border,

which he has been describing to me prior to this point,
to springboard into a discussion of his feelings about
being a working-class Muslim in India. His comments
detail and challenge the supposedly commonsense
insistence—among the middle-class Hindu public and
implicit in films such as Sarfarosh—that all those within the
nation must prove their loyalty to India in overt ways in
order to retain the right to remain on national soil. In
doing so, Ismail constructs national identity both on and
off-screen as far more a matter of justice and dialogic
loyalty than birth or ethnicity—the Indian nation must
include, acknowledge and protect Muslims, both
psychologically and legally, if it is to receive the ‘love’
demanded. Towards the end of the discussion, however,
he returns to the issue of films as a means of
‘information’, but with a twist. Rather than seeing them as
wholely retrograde fictions of history that inflame anti-Muslim
and anti-Pakistani feelings, he explains that, for viewers like
himself, particularly those unlike me ‘(you have all sorts of
communications technologies at your command…’),
such films are necessary interventions, a means of tracking
changes in the public sphere, or finding out about a
‘neighbouring city’.
As if exemplifying Ismail’s point that having access to
a range of communication technologies allows one the
luxury to view such films as fiction rather than as information,
Jatin, a highly educated viewer, draws on his knowledge
of history and of film to critique Gadar:

Jatin (a twenty-four year old Hindu trainee professional,

London): …I actually got irritated with Gadar. That Sunny
Deol film.
Shaku: Why was that?
Jatin: Well, he’s Sikh, but he calls himself a Hindu all the
time. And I thought—’He says, ‘We Hindus, we don’t buckle
down to you Muslim people’, and it’s just basically him
destroying Pakistan on his own. (Laughs.) And it’s like a Sikh
marrying a Muslim, but it’s like she becomes virtually a
 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 173
Hindu! So you can see the BJP funda values coming out
there. (Laughs.) It’s set in 1947 and they’ve got these Apache
helicopters coming down on this train and Sunny Deol just
gets his gun out and shoots it down. It’s very over the top….
Shaku: If you had a choice, where would you live?
Jatin: I wouldn’t go back to India—I wouldn’t fit in there...I
think of myself as Asian, not completely British, maybe,
British Asian.
174 Shakuntala
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Obviously, the fact that some people do not have
access to trustworthy information about history and
politics does not excuse directors who deliberately
misrepresent swathes of history in the service of fascist
ideologies and militaristic policies. However, for those
interested in the cultural aspects of media viewing, one
has to ask what censorship of such films would actually
achieve. Regardless of the intentions plausibly attributed
to the directors (Chatterjee 2003; Gahlot 2001; Prasad
1998), it is obviously not the case that all viewers come
away from these films spouting jingoistic rhetoric. Could it
not be the case that debate and critique may, in fact, be
opened up by the most apparently ‘closed’ films? For
instance, focusing on the romance that twines itself
around politics throughout Gadar, Neetu, a school, girl
discusses her belief in the ‘power of love’ to bring forth
the humanity in people who are otherwise divided by
their religious or national affiliations:
Neetu (a sixteen year old Sikh, Bombay): The main thing I
don’t like in India and in Pakistan is that they are very
religious and they say you have to follow this religion only….
Here there are many people who are very close-minded….
Now Hindi films are pushing towards an open-minded point
of view... and Gadar, even though that is an action movie, it is
very touching how she comes into his religion and all, like
how she follows it and how she sacrifices and how Sunny
Deol is going to sacrifice and even he is ready to take over the
Islam religion. That is a good thing that even he is willing to
take on her religion. I think such relationships can work
across religions. That was very touching to me.
Shaku: Oh Yes?
Neetu: Yes. Because nowadays there are many Hindus
marrying Muslims and Muslims marrying Christians and all.
It can work. (Very vehement.) I agree with those things. I believe
in those things because I believe in love. Even we have to
sacrifice and even they have to sacrifice.

Ignoring completely many of the sequences in the film

that appear to denigrate Pakistan and Pakistanis, Neetu
emphasises the importance of the scenes where the heroine
‘becomes’ Sikh and the hero agrees to become a Muslim, if
this will allow him to live peacefully with his wife and child
in Pakistan. Herself from an immensely restrictive
 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 175
family, and engaged in a clandestine relationship with a
man from another community, Neetu interprets the film as
encouraging gender equity in terms of the construction of
cross-religious relationships. While this is hardly the most
apparent reading of the film, it is obviously significant for
some viewers and should not be dismissed out of hand.
176 Shakuntala
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One of the only viewers I spoke to in London to
mention Gadar in a positive light, Kalpesh echoes both
Bhiku’s sense of the film as a reminder of ‘history’ and
Neetu’s pleasure in it as a romance that challenges
religious prejudices.

Kalpesh (an eighteen year old Hindu, London): I like those

sorts of [realistic] stories where there’s a Hindu and a
Muslim and they fall in love, you know? Because that’s what’s
actually happening in our real life. The communities are
mixing. And, umm, the thing that I don’t understand, yeah, is
that our parents love these movies, and yet they don’t let us do
it. (Emphatic.) When it comes to the crunch they wouldn’t let us
do anything like that. No way.

Like Jatin, Neha critiques the modality of the violence

depicted in Gadar, refusing the film’s framing of the
Indian hero versus the Pakistanis on these grounds, but,
like Kalpesh and Neetu, she accepts the romance as
psychologically compelling:

Neha (a twenty-three year old Jain housewife, Bombay): …In

this Gadar, there is this hero who can kill so many people at a
time. (Laughs.) This is not possible. After watching this we
say, ‘Let Bobby Deol, Dharmendra and Sunny Deol go to the
border and border forces come home. (Laughs.) These three
could protect the whole border!’

Shaku: Yes, I see what you’re getting at.

Neha: At least in English movies, with Arnold and all, we can
see their muscles and at least we can see the reality in it….
(Laughs.)
Shaku: So which do you prefer?
Neha: Fights, violence in Hollywood
films. Shaku: But?

Neha: The romance, in Hindi films. Without doubt.

Clearly, even if one accedes to the view of a film as

something that contains ‘messages’, rather than as a
multilayered audiovisual represen- tational medium with all
kinds of possibilities for pleasure and commu- nication, film
‘messages’ are not as straightforward as some textual
accounts (see Nandy 1996; Valicha 1988) might
 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 177
suggest. While the young people in these interviews
overtly invoke understandings of modality and
experiences of ethnicity as their grounds for rejecting
some of the xenophobic politics they read into Gadar and
other films like it, their comments imply that they see
these films as playing a range of social and economic
roles on both sides of the border that
178 Shakuntala
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are not always coherently linked to their ideological
frameworks. The same film that, for Bhiku and Jatin, is
primarily about the wrongs—in one case imaginary—done
to the Hindu populace and the nature of Pakistani/Indian
nationalism, it can also be read as providing the spur for
debate in an information-deprived populace, affirming a
belief in love and friendship between communities, and
asserting the need for men and women who marry into a
different community or nation to make equal sacrifices in
terms of their identity. It is interesting that the very
textual accounts that most poignantly show films such
as Gadar ‘othering’ Muslims or Pakistanis, are
systematically ‘othering’ the people who watch these
films, constructing them as absolutely different,
unsecular, xenophobic and vulnerable to the films’
supposed effects, thus decreasing the potential for
constructing bridges across various divides. However,
could it be possible that, as Ismail explains, when it comes
to films, just as with news programmes, viewers who do
not already arrogantly believe that they know the ‘truth’
have to be given a chance to make up their own minds,
to sort right from wrong?3 The following section examines
the narratives of viewers who have watched a number of
cross-border romances, and explores their changing
feelings for Pakistan and India based on their reponses
to some of these films, notably Veer-Zaara, which tells the
story of an Indian man and a Pakistani woman who fall in
love when she is on a trip to India, and when denied a
chance to marry by the girl’s politician father, they first
agree to sacrifice their love and then, betrayed by the
‘villain’, they endure decades of personal suffering, exile
and loss of identity in order to remain true to each other
and themselves.

Veer-Zaara: Bollywood Sentiments or a Political

Change of Heart?

Engaging with the convoluted interstices of communal

subjectivity in the Indian subcontinent (Kakar 1996;
Sarkar 2002), and with the increasingly opaque and
fragmentary responses these have engendered across
theatre and popular culture in India, Rustom Bharucha
 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 179
asks whether ‘the construction of somebody’s other [can]
be dismantled through a blurring, if not dissolution, of its
polarities’ (Bharucha 2001: 131). With precisely the
question of such a ‘dismantling’ and ‘blurring’ of
oppositions in mind, this section investigates the
possibility that Hindi films dealing with cross-border
romances contribute not to a static and fixed nationalist
ideology but to a range of meanings with
180 Shakuntala
Banaji
regard to borders and belonging, the national self and the
‘other’. Much of the press coverage of Yash Chopra’s
latest hit Veer-Zaara centred both on the love story
between the protagonists and on the fact that half of it
was set across the border in Pakistan. Generally this film
was viewed as representing Pakistanis in a slightly more
balanced light than a number of other recent films (see
Deshmukh 2004; Hoffheimer 2005). Discussions with
viewers in Bombay and London aimed to assess the
actual ways in which the film was perceived.
Kumkum, a nineteen year old UP-born Hindu check-out
assistant in Bombay, gives an account that segues into
this discussion of Veer- Zaara because it suggests answers to
a number of questions about the connections between
audience politics and film discourses:

Kumkum (Bombay, 2005; in Hindi): I love Preity in Veer-

Zaara, how she does care about the honour of her family but
puts her honesty and love above religion and above her
country, Pakistan. Shahrukh also puts his love above India….
They have sacrificed for each other and they have been like
heroes for others to see this is what matters, not the land or
the border. You know I listen to the songs and I feel, ‘Haan,
woh bhi hamara desh hai, yahan bhi unka desh hai’ (Yes, that is our
country too, this is their country too).
Shaku: Do you know many people who believe this, the way
you think?
Kumkum: Why not? All my friends. Even my brothers and
my parents. Only media and governments create divisions in
India-Pakistan. Veer-Zaara is only speaking what is in many
people’s hearts.
Shaku: Earlier you told me you enjoyed watching Sarfarosh and
also Gadar. Aren’t those films strengthening the divisions you
dislike?
Kumkum: So? You must have also enjoyed those movies—the
songs are very good, the story is surprising, the acting is
nice…I did not watch them and think ‘Haan, woh log Pakistani
hain, hum log Indian hain’ (Yes, those people are Pakistani, we
are Indian); I thought about the choices that humans come
face to face with in our life. Gadar is only just one film. But it
has many different messages for many different people. If
another Gadar is made, I will still go to watch. Yes.

Kumkum eschews patriotism in favour of romantic and

 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 181
personal loyalty. She praises Veer-Zaara for its egalitarian
gender relationships and emphasises its (didactic and
sentimental but humane) penultimate message, which is one
that encourages the breakdown of cross-border suspicion
and the acceptance of the ‘other’ as akin to the ‘self ’.
Most saliently, Kumkum’s response to my question about
the politics of
182 Shakuntala
Banaji
Sarfarosh and Gadar, two films she mentioned liking,
confirms the notion outlined in the previous section that
even films with apparently tightly closed ideological
frameworks do hold a—albeit limited— number of
alternative viewing positions that are not rejected by all
viewers. Openly anti-xenophobic, Kumkum’s insistence
that she will continue to watch apparently propagandist
Indian films precisely because these are media texts with
pleasurable storylines, actors and songs serves as a
corrective to the view that such films are enjoyed or act
merely as vehicles for particular partisan messages.
Kumkum clearly resents the notion that she can’t make
up her own mind. But what of viewers who do appear to
accept the politics of such films as a basis for their view
of Pakistan?
Neela, a seventeen year old, lower middle-class Hindu
schoolgirl befriended me outside a cinema hall in
Bombay at the showing of another movie and was eager
to discuss her interest in romantic films, an interest that
also had a political edge.

Neela (in English): When I was little my feelings were all

against Pakistan. No doubt. (Pause.) Mummy-Papa felt very
strongly on the terrorism issue. They felt Pakistan was a place
where it is one way only, the Koran and all that is being put
forward. You must be knowing this? (Pause.) Even in the last
few years I had seen many Hindi movies that show Pakistan
as such a place, where you do not dare to say anything
against your father or your country or your religion; even
love is not accepted.
Shaku: Really? (Pause.) Such as?
Neela: Pukar [The Call, 2000], Sarfarosh, you must be
knowing…. In Gadar it ends with a happy story. After all
villains... Pakistani villains get killed by the hero, even India
is happy and even Pakistan. I mean the families. Other films, I
remember the stories and sometimes not the names. But in last
two years my feeling has started to change towards
Pakistan. (Long pause.)
Shaku: You changed your mind after…?
Neela: …Just a few months back I watched Veer-Zaara in the
theatre with my friends and I was crying so much. Boman
Irani was a strong character. Priety was a strong character.
Shahrukh was a strong character. Watching them I
 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 183
understood that India-Pakistan are like two friends who
have quarrelled for so many years. Both will not bow the head.
But the children have decided, ‘Dosti karenge, pyaar karenge’ (We
will be friends, we will love one another). This war must end.
When Shahrukh was speaking in the court, everyone in my
group clapped. If Mummy-Daddy came with me, I could not
be clapping! (Laughs.)
184 Shakuntala
Banaji
Neela is a viewer who openly discusses her family’s
politics vis-à-vis Pakistan in relation to Hindi films.
Unprompted by me—and unaware of my political views—
she introduces the films that she has watched over the
years and charts her changing feelings on the subject of
India’s relationship with Pakistan. She speaks of ‘war’ and
cross-border ‘terrorism’, although Veer-Zaara is overtly
about no such thing, and her commentary suggests that
media products such as films, while also reinforcing some of
the beliefs she has acquired from her parents, are the
means by which she ultimately comes to question those
beliefs. As such, sequences in these films provide her with
alternative imaginaries to those she might otherwise inhabit.
From her testimony it is possible to conjecture that
censorship of particular films might be both futile and
potentially dangerous in that, on the one hand, it would
fail to deal with the context producing the
representations and, on the other, it would provide an
authoritarian solution to an authoritarian problem. Having
discussed this issue with various respected secular and
gender activists, I am aware that this will not be a
popular view. However, based not only on Neela’s
description of her own and her friends’ reactions to
Shahrukh’s speech at the end of the film but also on her
humorous assertion that had her parents been there she
would have had to censor her response—‘I could not be
clapping’—it is worth recollecting that while we continue to
call for censorship in situations such as violent ethnic
conflict, more often than not media censorship serves the
interests of those who do not wish to break down
barriers, engage in self-critique or blur boundaries.
It cannot be forgotten, however, that assertions about
audiences and their meaning-making may prove
contradictory. An interview with Sheba, a twenty year old
British-Pakistani teaching assistant whom I met through
my work in London, illustrates that, even in contexts
other than the already ethnically charged and xenophobic
atmosphere of urban Indian in the last decade, the
rhetorical construction of Pakistan as ‘other’/‘enemy’ can
hold damaging and hurtful meanings that don’t
necessarily result in a rejection of the films per se:
Sheba (in English): Even though we enjoy all Pakistani serials,
Hindi films not Lahore films have always been very special for
 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 185
me and my mother and my sisters. But sometimes we did get
the feeling that it was like a crime to be Pakistani. I mean!
You’ve seen the way they suggest things, I mean,
like in that old movie Border, the absurd things they tell us,
‘It is okay to help a Pakistani.’ In Gadar, maybe one or two
Pakistanis might friendly but the others are just thick and
act like dogs and they get chopped by the hero. Remember
that scene with the water pipe?
186 Shakuntala
Banaji
Shaku: The pump? Yes. (Pause.) Have you seen any films that
do not make you feel like this?
Sheba: No, not really. Pinjar [The Skeleton, 2003], that was
interesting. Maybe a more neutral film. But (pause) it had this
atmosphere that most Pakistanis are cruel, not having
compassion, except maybe one or two. (Pause.) Veer-Zaara is
the only one I can think of that made me feel that actually
Pakistanis, Indians, these are the same blood, and in both
places you can have bad people and good people. It was
simple. But it was powerful for us. I enjoyed so many scenes
in that film, not just because of the India-Pakistan friendship
message....
Shaku: You say it wasn’t ‘just because of the message’. Why,
then?
Sheba: Because it is a beautiful romance. I mean, it shows that
passion and love can start in a few days and can last a
lifetime. It shows the strength of women, how they work
together, how men should take them more seriously. And it
allows you to feel the dignity of people in Pakistan; that is rare.
Compare it to the family scenes in Gadar and you know what
I mean.

Sheba, who has grown up in London in a Pakistani

family watching Hindi films, deliberately uses the
language of ‘self’ and ‘other’ in her discussion of films
about Pakistan and, not necessarily as consciously,
discusses the films as interventions in subcontinental political
mindsets. Her memory of the scene in Gadar where the
hero massacres scores of unknown Pakistani
‘aggressors’ may be in contrast to her use of the word
‘neutral’ about Pinjar, but her sense of the overwhelming
narrative construction of Pakistan as a horrible place to
be and Pakistanis as generally ‘cruel, not having
compassion’ tie in with many critical readings of these
films (Fazila-Yacoobali 2002; Sethi 2002; Vasudevan
2000). Sheba confirms that simple assertions about viewers
‘making up their own minds’ are inadequate in discussions
of media representation. Clearly, viewers may well make
up their own minds in the end, but what about the
psychological damage that occurs when those being
‘othered’ watch this process day after day? And equally
pertinently, given various concatenations of history and
politics, when does textual propaganda, however diversely
 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 187
framed and interpreted, count as incitement to
communal hatred?
Sheba articulates her critique of propagandist cross-
border films in media terms, comparing sequences of
Pakistani family life in Gadar, where evil is basically
motiveless, with those in Veer-Zaara, where even unjust
family authority in Pakistan is given emotional and
psychological depth and rationale. However, the fact that
one major depiction is better than the other should not
prevent one from asking
188 Shakuntala
Banaji
questions about other representations in Veer-Zaara. Mohsin,
a fifteen year old British-Asian student in London says,
‘Why is the Indian family in Veer-Zaara so much fun and so
loving and the Pakistani one so strict and unhappy? Who
causes all the problems in the film?’ So, one is prompted
to ask, when will we see a Hindi blockbuster where the
secular, modern hero’s family is Pakistani and Muslim,
and the loyal heroine a devout Hindu girl from this side of
the border resisting her authoritarian village?
However, in honour of the melodramatic and sentimental
pleasures made possible by these films, I close this section
with a brief quote from Firdos, a twenty-one year old
rickshaw driver in Bombay, with whom I got chatting as
we listened to film music. It is fitting that in his last
sentence he conflates the actors and their characters,
implying perhaps that by playing characters who blur
exclusive nationalist constructions, these two stars
contribute to changes in off-screen politics:
Firdos (in Hindi): It was all about humanity [insaaniyat]. For
me the best films, like Veer-Zaara, they tell something not
about men or women, not about money, but about humanity.
After I watch such a film, I do not feel inferior that I never
went to school. I do not cry everyday because my mother and
my father are dead. I feel like any person can make a
difference in this world, like Shahrukh and Priety.

Conclusion

Nations and boundaries dominate the imagination, even

the modern, supposedly globalised imagination of the
‘transnational’ intelligentsia. For some, thinking of
themselves as belonging not to a tribe or a territory, a
religion or a nation can be destabilising—even impossible.
For others, the mention of borders, whether real or
symbolic, always conjures an urge to step across and
explore. This is as much the case with sexual and ethnic
identity as it is with national identity and films may provide
a safe yet exciting mechanism for such imaginary journeys.
Viewers responding to Veer-Zaara and Gadar don’t simply
move backwards and forwards along a spectrum in terms
of their thinking about themselves and the ‘other’, Indians
 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 189
and Pakistanis, ‘back home’ and the UK, but actually move
unexpectedly and tangentially as if in a web of ideas,
constructing as well as expressing their identities through
talk. Within this context of constant positioning and
repositioning vis- à-vis the interviewer and the films, many
associations made by viewers
190 Shakuntala
Banaji
do appear, as Chakravarty conjectures, to use the films as
imaginary contexts or pretexts in ways that resist, ironise
or deconstruct as much as they acknowledge, and shore
up ‘nationalist imaginings’. As usual, however, there
appear to be some aspects of these films that do not
yield themselves up easily to playful deconstruction.
At a textual level, it should be noted that, even at their
best, certain sequences in a number of Hindi films dealing
with India and Pakistan invite some viewers to think of
themselves as ‘other’ in order to keep watching with
pleasure; while, at their worst, they have to be
understood, among other things, as contributions to
authoritarian or ethnic supremacist ideologies which, off-
screen, have resulted in violence and death. Nevertheless,
all the viewers interviewed negotiate meaning from an
intersection of identity positions, via myths and
experiences, calling on their own knowledge, beliefs,
understanding of family or community opinion, and media
consumption. Some of them do use Hindi film imaginaries
as invitations to nationalist, fascist or humanitarian
sentiment. As such, they use them as a means for shoring up
pre-existing beliefs and worldviews, confirming or
undermining suspicions about ‘the other’. Other viewers
use these same sequences as a means for critiquing and
challenging current social norms and contexts, and
therein lies much of their enjoyment as fans. Yet others
engage pleasurably in multimodal aspects of films such as
music, dance and romance, while remaining aloof from
narratives that implicitly construct some religions or
nations as ‘other’. In this context, it is important to ask
what censorship or banning of these films hope to
achieve, and whether censorship is indeed the right
path to take.
Finally, then, following the questioning of the theorising
of meaning as transparent, unitary and immanent in cross-
border Hindi romances, some tentative answers have been
offered. Contradicting a view of the cinema-going public as
basically apolitical and interested in ‘mindless
entertainment’, Veer-Zaara, Gadar, and other films on
terrorism or national security such as Sarfarosh, Mission
Kashmir and Border, are frequently introduced by young
viewers in the context of discussions of modern politics.
 Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 191
Based on evidence gathered through extended
conversations and interviews with viewers of these films
in two countries, this chapter has argued the need for an
understanding of Hindi film spectatorship as being
heterogeneous, psychologically contradictory and
always emotionally engaged—whether through
individual or altruistic fantasies and critiques. Such
spectatorship is also always built around the potential of
texts to be read as fragmentary
192 Shakuntala
Banaji
and internally divergent, articulating radical positions at
odds with their own (frequently socially retrograde)
dominant discourses but also inviting complex—and
threatening—pleasures through fleeting or more extended
participation in compelling ‘reactionary’ ideological
positions and equally compelling ‘anti-authoritarian’
personal ones. Nevertheless, just because restricted
textual representations and discourses do not force or
entail psychic closure for audiences does not mean that
we should not call for meanings to be more open, for
commercial Hindi films to cover a greater range of
imaginaries and possibilities, and for them to incorporate
the critiques of viewers from a range of perspectives.

Notes
1. In The Hindustan Times (20 November 2003) Saibal Chatterjee writes,
‘It is no coincidence that all these films deal…with the perfidies of
Pakistan while singing paeans to the courage and commitment of
India’s brave young soldiers…. A pliant mass media is exactly what
the purveyors of Hindutva [the then BJP government and their allied
organisations] or an intolerant, exclusivist line of thinking—need, to
propagate their world view and keep hatred and distrust of Pakistan
on the boil.’
2. This notion that the government ‘favours minorities’ is a common
complaint made by ‘common-sense’ sympathisers of the Hindu right
with regard to Muslims and the lower castes in India.
3. However naïve it may be to imagine that all viewers struggle to find
balanced political outlooks and information about society from the
films they watch, it is equally absurd and politically reactionary to
think that a majority simply acquiesce to propaganda without
questioning it. Scepticism may not lead to radical political action,
but my research suggests that amongst working-class viewers, as
Ismail implies, it is at least as prevalent as jingoistic patriotism.
Fascist Imaginaries and Clandestine Critiques 193
176 Shakuntala
Banaji

Interviews
178 Interviewed by Arshad
Amanullah

12
Aijaz Gul on Cinema in Pakistan: History,
Present Scenario and Future Prospects
Interviewed by Arshad Amanullah*

[Hailing from a family of film exhibitors, Aijaz Gul is the leading

film critic and historian of Pakistan. He has been writing on films for
the last eighteen years in the Pakistani as well as foreign media, and
has three books on cinema to his credit. Gul was the last managing
director of the now defunct government-run National Film
Development Corporation of Pakistan. The interview took place on
the sidelines of the recently concluded Osian-Cinefan Film Festival,
and has been edited for the purposes of this book.]

A rshad Amanullah: Why is Lollywood, Pakistan’s once

thriving film industry, now in terminal decline?
Aijaz Gul: Well, the Pakistani film industry has enjoyed a
boom after Independence. The fact is that the film industry
in Lahore didn’t come into being in 1947. Lahore was a
thriving capital of films, especially Punjabi films, and
many notable filmmakers were working there before
1947. Pakistan’s first film, Teri Yaad, actually started
before Independence but was released in 1948. It was
directed by Dawood. It was a very bad film but it made
the beginning. There were so many people who
sacrificed their glowing careers in Mumbai in late forties
and migrated to Pakistan. Some of the notable people
who came from Mumbai to Lahore were Noorjahan,
Shaukat Hussain Rizvi, Sohan Lata, Nazeer, and Nisar
Bazmi. Likewise, many people left Lahore for Mumbai. So,
that was the eventuality of Partition. After the
independence of Bangladesh in 1971, cinemas that were
in what we used to call East Pakistan are of course not
with us anymore. Cinemas in Pakistan, at least in metros,
are located at the very choicest places.
180 Interviewed by Arshad Amanullah

So, with the passage of years, the value of property has

increased. And with alternatives like cable, DVDs, CDs,
and amusement parks, people now have other options.
So cinema-going is facing a crisis. We now have about
500 cinemas and almost half of them are not working
regularly. Piracy has no limits. Indian films are
sometimes available here even prior to their release in
India. You know, today’s Hindi is very close to Urdu. So
when you have so many Indian films in a language that is
spoken in Pakistan, Urdu films have suffered. But
interestingly, twenty-five Pashto films were produced last
year, more than the average of ten to twelve earlier.
Maybe the reason is that India [laughs] has not produced
Pashto films. There is a saying that if Americans spoke
Spanish, Britain would have a film industry, and I say, if
India spoke Persian, Pakistan would have a film
industry.
AA: Why does Lollywood, in terms of technology and
expertise, lag behind Bollywood?
AG: When the times were good, people invested in film-
related activities. Now, when we are facing a lean time,
obviously the people who are in the film trade have shied
away. The tragic part is that all those people who took the
industry across decades after Independence have passed
away. So when the production rate is not very high and
the box-office ratio is very poor, then, of course, there is no
investment in equipment.
AA: But where is the new generation?
AG: The new generation is definitely there but I just want
to mention some very notable directors like Anwar Kamal
Pasha, who was a total filmmaker. He was the first
filmmaker in the early fifties who directed, produced and
scripted films like Do Aansu, Gumnam, Qatil, and Anarkali. He
was, in a way, the first Pakistani director. Then, there
were rebellious filmmakers like Riaz Shahid and Khalil
Qaisar, who made films against British imperialism.
AA: Rebellious in what sense?
AG: Khalil Qaisar was rebellious because he was against
corruption in the political system, whether it was the
 Aijaz Gul on Cinema in Pakistan 181
British Raj or the Pakistani government. Riaz Shahid was a
writer and also became a director but essentially he was
collaborating with director Khalil Qaisar. Tanveer Naqvi
was their lyricist, Faiz Ahmed Faiz their poet and
Rasheed Attre their music composer. So it was a whole
team. Riaz Shahid
182 Interviewed by Arshad Amanullah

kept on writing against the vices of the system and the

curruption in the establishment.
AA: They used different countries as the background of
their films? AG: Yes. They took the subject of Palestine,
Andalus, Kashmir. Shaheed
deals with British corruption in the Middle East. Khalil
Qaisar did not
live long. He made Shaheed, Farangi, Nagan, Haveli, and two
or three more films, and passed away in a very tragic way.
So, Riaz Shahid took over and did continue with his
revolutionary scripts and films. His film Zarqa deals with
the independence of Palestine, Gharnata with Muslims in
Spain and Yeh Amn with Kashmir. He died in 1972. As he
had to face serious problems with the censor board, many
people think that he died becaue of the system. His son
Shaan, who is now a leading man in films, says: ‘Mere
baap ko cancer ne nahin, censor ne maara’ (My father was killed
not by cancer but by the censor).
AA: Would you say that they wanted to glorify the Muslim
past?
AG: In a way, yes. Riaz Shahid wanted to do that time and
again. But he also made films like Gunahgaar, which takes
place in Pakistan. It deals with treason and corruption.
AA: How did he deal with ordinary people, the masses of
Pakistan?
AG: Well, Clerk would be a good example of a film that
deals with the poverty of an ordinary clerk who resists
corruption, bribery and palm- greasing, and who lives by
his own rules. But he is consistently bugged by his wife
who wants more and more material goods; eventually he
develops tuberculosis. That was a good subject, but
didn’t do very well at the box-office because it was very
sad and grim.
AA: How did the ban on Hindi films in Pakistan affect
Lollywood?
AG: There was a time when over a hundred films were
produced in Pakistan and were doing very well. Indian
films were being released every month. Cinemas in
 Aijaz Gul on Cinema in Pakistan 183
Pakistan were enjoying the boom in the sixties. Shortly
after the second Indo-Pak war, Indian films were banned
in Pakistan. Cinema owners didn’t raise their voices
against the ban because they benifitted economically and
Pakistani films were doing very well then. All the filmmakers
who had laid the foundation of Pakistani cinema, and their
patrons, have now passed away, the number of films has
reduced and the quality has gone down. Only twenty-five
Urdu and Pujabi films were produced last year; so the
cinemas are
184 Interviewed by Arshad Amanullah

falling short of films. Thus, the exhibitors are right in

asking to lift the ban. I think umbrella protection has
had its ill-effects.
AA: There is tremendous demand for Indian films in
Pakistan. So why does the government of Pakistan not
lift the ban?
AG: You do know that filmmaking is not just art and
technology. It’s also a big business. The government of
Pakistan knows this, and wants to make it as a part of
trade or maybe is waiting for still better times when
people are even closer.
AA: Is there any chance of collaboration between
Bollywood and Lollywood?
AG: The prime minister of Pakistan met the members of
the film industry on 13 June and said that he was all for
collaboration between India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran,
Nepal, and Sri Lanka. I think India and Pakistan are joining
hands indirectly. Some of the good Pakistani films that
have been produced in recent years have collaborated
with India for their production and post-production. They
have used Indian singers: Udit Narayan, Kumar Shanu,
and Kavita Krishnamurthy. For choreography, Indian art
directors have been hired. So I think co-production,
collaboration, is already taking place.
AA: What similarity do you find in the cinemas of India
and Pakistan?
AG: In India, there are Hindi films and there are regional
films. I’ve been enjoying art films by directors like Shyam
Benegal and Satyajit Ray. But films which are being
produced today in Mumbai, many of them are banal:
they lack subtlety and common sense, their scripts are
weak, so is their imagination and their aesthetic values.
An educated and intelligent person looks for these things
in a good film. However, Bollywood movies are rich in
music, production values, cinematography, and editing.
They are big in terms of budgeting and casting. because
superstars have their own appeal. Average viewers are
carried away by all these gimmicks. They do not go into
the script ki baarikiyaan (nuances of the script), but just
 Aijaz Gul on Cinema in Pakistan 185
enjoy the music, the actresses and the witty dialogues,
and like to forget their troubles for those two and a half
hours. Interestingly, Bollywood flicks are more popular in
Pakistan than Lollywood productions, because Hindi films
are technically superior to their Lollywood counterparts.
Another reason is that cinemas of both countries have the
same ingredients of
186 Interviewed by Arshad Amanullah

dance and song, comedy, marriage, parents, the system, and

the police. So, like an Indian viewer, an average Pakistani
also gets pleasure from these melodramatic contents.
AA: How will the exchange of artists shape the film
industries of both countries?
AG: There is a fear in Pakistan that if Pakistani artists
go to work in Bollywood, they will be swallowed by the
industry and will lose their identity, their star value, and
hence their bargaining power. But I don’t subscribe to
the opinion, because, for one thing, its true that Sawan
Kumar gave a very small role to Talat Hussain in Sautan
Ki Beti. Likewise, Manoj Kumar invited Zeba and
Muhammad Ali to Mumbai to work in his production
Clerk, and their roles were very brief. But these are petty
matters and we should not be talking about them. Hats
off to Mahesh Bhatt because Meera is seen in Nazar from
beginning to end. In fact, I would say [laughs] Mahesh
Bhatt should have reduced her role. However, it’s a very
average film and the subject is not very original. I think
nobody should worry about small roles or insignificant
contributions. Let’s make a beginning.
AA: How has Lahore reacted to the anti-Pakistan films
churned out by Bollywood?
AG: Well, this reminds me of President Musharraf, who, in
one of his interactions with journalists from India and
Pakistan, said [laughs]: ‘No more entire Pakistani films. I
expect that you would not make those films anymore.’ But
India, as an independent country, has the right to make the
kinds of films the filmmakers want to make. However,
they should care about their customers and audiences in
Pakistan, and they should start making films differently
from what they have done in LOC—Kargil, Gadar, Maa Tujhe
Salaam, etc. Pakistan has also made India-negative films
like Tere Pyar Mein, Ghar Kab Aaoge and Ladki Punjaban.
Neighbouring country bashing might momentarily get
cheap claps from the front-benchers but it’s friendship
which helps in long run. We have to live together as the
former prime minister Vajpayee said; you can change
friends but you can’t change neighbours. So, we must work
together into the future.
 Aijaz Gul on Cinema in Pakistan 187
AA: What are the stereotypes generally seen in Pakistani
cinema?
AG: There are many hackneyed characters. There are
stereotypical mothers, fathers and dialogues, also
found in Indian films, like:
188 Interviewed by Arshad Amanullah

‘Ye shaadi nahin ho sakti (This wedding cannot take place).’

There are stereotypical, formulaic situations.
Stereotypical lawyers, judges and courts. I was
impressed by Yash Chopra in Veer-Zaara. I applaud him
for making this film, the right move at the right time. But
there were certain things, especially the climax sequence
which unfolds in the court, which could have been done
differently.
AA: Does Lollywood have stereotypes along ethnic lines?
AG: Yes, speaking of the North-west Frontier Province,
there is an actor called Badar Muneer who has been
working in films since 1970; he just could not step out of
what he has been doing for the last thirty- five years.
Sometimes he is brought into Urdu films as a Pathan who
speaks Urdu and, of course, with his own accent and
delivery. So we have those stereotypes.
AA: To what extent can the Kara International Film
Festival, which has already seen four successful years,
contribute in creating a quality film culture in Pakistan?
AG: There are upcoming filmmakers who are making films
on digitals. Hassan Zaidi, Bilal Minto, Faisal Rehman,
and Mehjabeen Jabbar are just a few names. Their
works Javed Champu, Raat Chali Jhum Ke, Beauty Parlour, etc.,
stand testimony to the fact that these new filmmakers,
are the future assets for Pakistan. n spite of having budget
restraints, they are making good films. The Kara Film
Festival, Which has been held every December for the last
four years, has been providing them a platform to show
their work, and let me tell you that the Festival has been
making maximum efforts to bring in Bollywood celebrities.
In future, it would be a joint launching pad for Indian and
Pakistani filmmakers.
AA: Do you have magazines that publish serious stuff about
cinema?
AG: Yes, we have specific film magazines and we also have
film editions in very distinguished national dailies. Dawn,
News and Nation have weekly film supplements. All major
Urdu dailies like Nawa-e-Waqt and Jung, and then weeklies
like Akhbar-e-Jahan have film sections. Noor Jahan and Nigar,
 Aijaz Gul on Cinema in Pakistan 189
both from Karachi and Filmi Parcha edited by Tariq Lodhi
from Lahore are weekly magazines that deal exclusively
with films. But serious film criticism is lacking and we
need to work on that. Just anyone with a degree in
journalism is not necessarily qualified to write on films. I
think you should be thoroughly trained
190 Interviewed by Arshad Amanullah

in film history and film appreciation and only then should

you write on films.
AA: What concerted efforts are being made to promote a
vibrant film culture in Pakistan?
AG: Well, in the last three years, there has been a
revolution in the media. New TV channels and radio
stations are coming up in the private sector. There is a
mass communication department in Fatima Jinnah
University for women. These young ladies are making
short films on very challeging subjects as part of their
curriculum. Geo Television of Jung Group, the National
College of Arts and many other institutes are coming up
in Lahore and Karachi, with courses in films. So a
beginning has already been made. Students are already
making films with very modest budgets. Hopefully, in
two or three years, they will be in the market and will
be shown in festivals.
 Aijaz Gul on Cinema in Pakistan 191
* This is an edited version of the interview. For the original, see
http://osdir.com/ml/ culture.india.sarai.reader/2005–08/msg 00112.html
 13
Guftagu:
M.S. Sathyu, Javed Akhtar, Mahesh Bhatt
Interviewed by Tavishi Alagh

[Tavishi Alagh, a young filmmaker who has recently made a film on

Bombay cinema, the critically acclaimed Bollywood Crossings, met three
of the most significant names in Hindi cinema who have been
associated with the country across the LOC. M. S. Sathyu, the maker of
the poignant Partition film, Garam Hawa; Javed Akhtar, articulate
scriptwriter and lyricist for many a ‘border’ film; and Mahesh Bhatt,
filmmaker with ties of blood and soul with Pakistan, all come out
with their innermost responses to the issue of ‘Pakistan’ in Indian
films.]

M. S. Sathyu

Tavishi Alagh: How has the presence of Pakistan

changed in Hindi films? Is it typically a backdrop?
M. S. Sathyu: Minorities in Hindi films are caricatured, be they
Marwaris, Sindhis, Muslims, Christians, Parsees,
foreigners, Pakistanis. Very occasionally, we do have
films that look at minority communities in a real and
holistic way, treating them as normal people—good and
bad with their own distinct customs and culture, but
typically they are caricatured. There is some attempt to
change this attitude, let’s see what happens….
In the nineties, when the communal party was in power
[the BJP], there were a series of disturbing films. Films
like Gadar, Border, Refugee, and Sarfarosh were highly
prejudiced and especially disturbing because, in the guise
of being patriotic, they were anti-Pakistan. In the process
they also become anti-Muslim. This is a big distortion
being purported by these films. They condemn Muslims.
 Guftagu: M.S. Sathyu, Javed Akhtar, Mahesh Bhatt 187

There is a large communal element in our film industry,

even though it may not seem so outwardly. People see that
so many big heroes are Khans, many of the big Muslim
stars are married to Hindu girls or Hindu stars married
to Muslim girls. So while it’s great that there is an
acceptance of all of that, that fact is not enough in itself.
Sometime back someone wrote that they were disturbed
by the name Gauri Khan. Nowadays, due to the open
communal agenda, Muslims are also becoming more
fundamentalist even in India. The Hindu majority is a
reality. We have to learn to live together, minorities
cannot stay aloof and apart from the majority; we must
live together in mutual respect and our films should
reflect that.
The largest population of Muslims in the world lives in
India, over thirteen crores. India was ruled by the Mughals
for over six generations. Many Hindus converted because
it was politically expedient and beneficial to do so. In
Kerala, the population is equally divided between Hindus,
Muslims and Christians. Traders brought Islam to Kerala
but it came in a peaceful way.
TA: Are you saying there is another reality that is not
being exploited?
MSS: Yes. There is a people-to-people reality. In Madras,
there was an India Pakistan match. Pakistan won the
match. One Pakistani player broke a cricketing record—
the entire stadium stood up, to applaud him. This is also
a reality. Why don’t people talk about this? To me,
Pakistan is a very friendly nation. I only wish sometime India-
Pakistan- Bangladesh are re-united. I know it’s a dream,
but then we would be the most powerful country in Asia.
TA: I think that the Pakistanis see it differently…
MSS: Well it’s a nation without democracy, where you
have the rule of the army. They have not grown, we
have, they are not self reliant, we are. We are an
indigenous economy…
TA: Which is changing…
MSS: Yes, the politicians today are without any
imagination. We became a nation because of the vision of
188 Interviewed by Tavishi
leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, who thought thirty years
Alagh
ahead and focused on self-reliance. We have taken to the
American way of hire-purchase—you pay but you don’t
own. You buy without cash in hand. We have not put in
money into public transport, into infrastructure to
support these cars that it’s
 Guftagu: M.S. Sathyu, Javed Akhtar, Mahesh Bhatt 189

become easy to buy. I remember in Mysore, when I was

growing up; apart from the king, three families owned
cars.
TA: Tell me about Garam Hawa. What was the journey you
were trying to weave? The fact that there is a political
impact to your work? Does it change your journey?
MSS: Since 1947, for almost twenty-five years, no one
attempted a movie on this subject. There were people in
the film industry, refugees who were rehabilitated in
India, but they did not make any film or Partition,
probably because it hit a raw nerve.
Partition did not touch my life. I was a student in
Mysore at the time, I had just finished school. I had no idea
of the widespread trauma. Partition was an artificial division,
a few feudals and some misguided leaders took this decision.
It was a theoretical division of India, it did not take into
account real human beings, families whose lives
changed radically due to this division. The Muslim family
in my film is shown to have been destroyed through
Partition.
Earlier films located themselves in the world of the
aristocracy, with Mughal kings or feudal landlords.
Ordinary Muslim reality was not represented. As a
community in a democracy, Muslims have their own way of
living. Some of our best craftsmen are Muslim, some of
our best mechanics are Muslims from Hyderabad.
I do attribute a lot to a certain political philosophy. I
have been with the left movement in India, with the
Indian People’s Theatre Association for over thirty years.
I am a Hindu by birth, my wife is a Muslim by birth and,
though I am an atheist, we celebrate all festivals equally,
Diwali, Eid or Christmas.
Shama1 wrote the screenplay for the film. However,
Kaifi Saab2 made a vital change, he introduced the whole
business of shoemaking. In the state of Uttar Pradesh, in
towns like Agra and Kanpur, Muslims ran a flourishing
leather industry, pre-Independence. Hindus wouldn’t trade
in leather, only untouchable Hindus would work with
leather, so the protagonist’s business was shoes. Kaifi
Saab had worked with labour unions in Kanpur and he
gave another dimension to the whole story. Balraj Sahni
was so enthused by the end of the film that at the
190 Interviewed by Tavishi
conclusion of shooting he organised a strike among the
Alagh
shoe factory workers of Agra demanding better wages.
I made the film accidentally. I did not make the film
with a target audience in mind. I had given in another
idea that was rejected. However, NFDC agreed to this
idea. I made the film with 2.5 lacs. It was hard shooting
the film in UP, the atmosphere there is very volatile
 Guftagu: M.S. Sathyu, Javed Akhtar, Mahesh Bhatt 191

and the crowds disturb you very easily. This is as true

today as it was then. Look at what happened to Deepa
Mehta’s film Water. Today, when the nation is so
confused, people get swayed by elements that create
mass hysteria. When shooting on location in Agra, we
were so harassed by bystanders, we had to divert them
with a fake second unit using an unloaded camera!
We shot the film in a Hindu house but we changed it into
a Muslim house.
TA: Talking about changes, could you tell me a little about
them?
MSS: A lot had to be changed to create the ambience of
a Muslim home. The colours that are used are brighter,
the vessels are made of aluminium as opposed to brass,
the shapes are different, the sheets have different
designs, the colours are different, and wooden chics are
used—that little bit of purdah. Also Muslim homes have a
paandaan and ughaal daan.3 With actors, I underplay, I try to
see each character inwardly, and my actors are never
loud. So, I believe, they are more effective emotionally.
TA: How was the film received?
MSS: The film was held up at the censors for eight
months due to its politically sensitive theme. Then the
film was first released in the South. Indira Gandhi [the
prime minister of India in 1974], said let the opposition
not think that we are trying to influence the Muslim
vote, so we delayed the release of the film in the North. It
was received very well. It got great reviews and was a
commercial success at the box office. A lot of people from
Pakistan also really appreciated the film, and it was often
invited overseas as well. I travelled with it to France,
twice. It was also nominated for an Oscar, but I couldn’t
go as I did not think it right to approach Air India again
for a third free ticket.

Javed Akhtar

Tavishi Alagh: Do you feel the representation of Pakistan

has changed in Hindi films?
192 Interviewed by Tavishi
Javed
Alagh Akhtar: I think Prem Pujari4 (1970) is the first film
that touched the subject but it did not go down well with
the audiences. People associated with the film needed to
pin down a reason for the failure of the film and they
wrongly attributed it to Indian Muslims
 Guftagu: M.S. Sathyu, Javed Akhtar, Mahesh Bhatt 193

not liking Pakistan-bashing! This was an incorrect

analysis; and this was proven by the success of Haqeeqat
and, more recently, Border. It takes more than the subject
of a film to dictate its success or failure. The treatment
of that subject, good music, good acting, a good
screenplay is what determines its success. However, that
unfortunate overlap started way back then. I never felt the
slightest resentment in the Muslim audience after Prem
Pujari.
In some films, Pakistan and Muslim identity do
overlap. Gadar (2001) is a good example of that.
Implicitly, Hindu identity and Indian identity are seen as
one and the same thing. That is a very limited
articulation of Indian Identity. In the nineties, a difficult
time communally, some films were very careless, and
preached a wrong morality. Three things were happening:
some filmmakers were making mistakes—unintentionally.
Some were very careful about the times and took care
not to step into areas that could create trouble, and then
there were others who were deliberately stoking a
certain kind of religious/jingoistic passion.
Today, our audiences have matured. Today, you
cannot win an election based on people’s religious
affiliations. Indians do not want their sentiments to be
exploited for communal gain.
TA: In what ways do your personal experience, your
identity and your artistry overlap?
JA: Language is very powerful in creating an identity,
more so than religion, because while religious identity
may define you when you are awake, language stays
with you in your dreams; it defines your unconscious,
stays with you even when you are sleep. I would say
language is a defining marker for a writer, a poet.
However, you are always a collage of different identities.
Loyalties are very interesting in that way, they have
layers. You might criticize your city amongst your own,
but if an outsider says something about Mumbai it hurts.
You have multiple affiliations, no one has a single-point
identity. I am from Lucknow, I am Urdu-speaking, I am
writer, I am an Indian, I am Muslim, I am from Bombay.
As a North Indian Muslim, an Urdu-speaking writer
194 Interviewed by Tavishi
from Lucknow, I identify more closely with an Urdu-
Alagh
speaking person from that region, say, a Ramesh
Srivastava, a Hindu from Awadh than with a Muslim
from Tamil Nadu or an Arab Muslim.
Ironically, riots take place because there is not enough
communalism,
in that there is not enough of a sense of difference
between people,
 Guftagu: M.S. Sathyu, Javed Akhtar, Mahesh Bhatt 195

so riots are engineered, to create that sense of difference

and bracket people. It’s an attempt at a narrower recasting.
When there is a threat of violence against you because you
belong to one or the other community, then in sharing the
same threat an identity is engineered and created. In that
moment of experiencing a threat, you become limited to
a single identity.
Over the last sixty years, we have created an Indian
identity. I feel proud when someone from Bengal or
Assam gets the Nobel Prize. If a person from India is put
down in a foreign country I feel angry. Ultimately, it’s
because we have internalised this identity. I was in
Pakistan in 1999 and I met with a Mr Bhagawandas, a
member of the national assembly there. And it’s strange but
I felt very protective and concerned about him, I sought
him out, feeling, ‘I hope he is doing well, I hope he is all
right over there.’ So it’s complicated.
In Lakshya we had the character of Major Jalal Akbar,
an Indian Muslim officer who intercepts a call by a
Pakistani officer who tries to get friendly with him
through their shared religious identity; and the Major
responds with ‘Tumhare liye main sirf ek hindustani hoon’. (For
you, I am only an Indian).
TA: Would you speak more about Lakshya?
JA: When I went to Ladakh and Bada Ladakh, I met the
soldiers on the front and I was moved by their
experiences. I found powerful stories, real life stories of
courage and human endeavour. I was really very
impressed by the dedication and focus of the men and
women on the front. Then, I would see upper-middle-class
youth in the metros, are they aware that there are duties,
responsibilities as citizens? Through the film I wanted to
bring them face to face with the soldier on the front.
Why should we not tell the stories of our brave young
men and women who retrieved a stolen front by making
themselves cannon fodder because the enemy is Pakistan?
You should not have to doctor a true story in order to be
politically correct.
In the army they say if the enemy is at a height then the
advantage is completely with the enemy. It was a vast open
196 Interviewed by Tavishi
landscape with no cover. A soldier is visible from four miles.
Alagh
Our soldiers could be successfully shot at from a distance
of two miles. In that situation how do you retrieve lost
ground? Kargil is a true story, it happened, bunkers were
captured, we did find artillery and weapons. It’s also a
fact that the bodies found there, were disowned by the
neighbouring country.
 Guftagu: M.S. Sathyu, Javed Akhtar, Mahesh Bhatt 197

Writers and poets are inspired by the world around

them. War is a part of history and as such finds
reflection in art and literature. Sadat Hassan Manto
wrote a lot of short stories about prostitutes and a few
times they brought him up on charges of spreading
immoral writing…he said why don’t you eradicate
prostitution. So if people don’t approve of war stories,
eradicate war. When there is even a remote hope of
reconciliation, common markets and open borders, such
films are not made. Cease hostilities, and the treatment of
Pakistan in our films changes.
TA: Does the language change when you write for
Pakistani characters?
JA: The Pakistani characters in Lakshya were supposed to
be mainly from Punjab, so they speak Urdu with a Punjabi
accent. I am familiar with that Urdu, and so I maintained
that diction. I did not use the Urdu spoken in Lucknow,
which is distinct and different in terms of accent and the
usage of certain words.
TA: Tell me a little about the experience of writing for a
film like
Veer-Zaara.
JA: If you write for Yash Chopra then that is a different
experience because he has an ear for poetry and a sense
for Urdu and language. So whether it was Veer-Zaara or
Silsila, the songs were more poetic than what I would
have written for the average Hindi film. After all, you
must remember, Mr Chopra is also from Lahore.
(Laughs.)

Mahesh Bhatt
Tavishi Alagh: How has the treatment of Pakistan
changed in Hindi films? Is Pakistan merely the Other in
Hindi cinema?

Mahesh Bhatt: We are trying our best to call them the

Other but in fact there is no dissimilarity between us.
We belong to the same racial stock, we are the same
people—it was just a family quarrel that turned into a
bloodbath of gigantic proportions. Fifty-nine years,
198 Interviewed by Tavishi
maps
Alagh are redrawn, the Line of Control is lit up, you have
demonised the neighbour, and the war industry is
flourishing, yet in spite of the incessant war-mongering, you
have failed to create distance of the heart, the people on
both sides have the yearning to drop their guard. Some
Pakistani films demonised us as well, but then some people
love Indian products; their songs—their music—becomes
more successful when
 Guftagu: M.S. Sathyu, Javed Akhtar, Mahesh Bhatt 199

routed through India. My film Zakhm was hugely popular

there. Our stars like Shah Rukh Khan are hugely popular.
The twenty-eight-year- old Pakistani TV icon, Ali Begum
Nawazish, says he owes everything to Bollywood films.
All their entertainment inputs are from India. Our
cultural products have saturated their terrain, including
our television. And this is because they relate easier to
our TV products. So entertainment products reveal
much more, they articulate the aspirations of the
people.
Today, it’s not possible to go back to some unbroken
time in the past, but while maintaining a separation, we
should stress on our similarities. When a Hindu classical
‘raag’ is sung by a Pakistani singer, it sounds the same.
When Indian actors portray Pakistani characters you
cannot tell the difference, and that is because the
differences are cosmetic. There have been some
associations that are limiting and faulty. For example,
India/Bharat is equal to Hindu is equal to Hindi. Or that
Pakistan is equal to Islam is equal to Urdu.
TA: Is their any slippage between your personal
experience and your artistry?
MB: I went to Pakistan post-9/11, and post-Godhra and
the Gujarat riots. I found it an exhilarating experience,
as I was able to connect with a part of myself. I guess I
have always been more of a mother’s child, so my
Muslim self found an Islamic resonance, so that I truly
got to enjoy in Pakistan. The Muslim, the world over, is
stifled. The Indian Muslim was living frightened,
terrorised deep within himself after Godhra. There [in
Pakistan] he is a man in his own home. You can tell from
the body language. It is different. We are an aspiring
secular country. They are an aspiring Islamic country.
Pakistan is still struggling to be born. It is the cursed child.
[In India,] we do not have inclusive growth. Muslim identity
cannot be severed from India; they scream out, we want
our share of the sun, we want representation. The
government has failed the Muslims. It hasn’t delivered
what was promised. Muslims need to be given what was
promised.
I love Karachi; I felt a great sense of ease, an extraordinary
200 Interviewed by Tavishi
emotional
Alagh high. One cannot claim the whole of oneself
while denying a part of oneself. There is a Hindu in
every Muslim and a Muslim in every Hindu. This region
has been a melting pot through time so there is a
mimetic learning, and it shows in the similar body
language and nuances. I have great personal friends there,
Hamid Haroun, the CEO of Dawn, is a great friend. A part
of me that is stunted and stifled
 Guftagu: M.S. Sathyu, Javed Akhtar, Mahesh Bhatt 201

here is in full bloom there, yet that part of the whole is

poorer for it doesn’t have the presence of Hindu cultural
influences. My Muslim part is impoverished over here.
TA: What are you doing to bridge this gap?
MB: We are trying to create a mood, an environment for
people to step forward, I spur people to change. We need
a private moksha [spiritual liberation], we need Buddhist
ideology, we need social concern, a concern for social
suffering. I am doing a lot of work with Pakistan. I am a
regular visitor to the Kara film festival, I think of myself
as a self appointed ambassador. I want to work with like-
minded people, to help people in Pakistan who have
talent to access larger markets, education, and
infrastructure.
The intellectual community in Pakistan is ready for a
major leap. I am working on a film with all Pakistani
actors and technicians, to give a voice to Pakistan in the
world!

Notes
1. Shama Zaidi, noted screenplay writer, is also married to the
filmmaker. They have two daughters.
2. Kaifi Azmi, the poet and lyricist. Father of well known actor Shabana
Azmi.
3. Spitoons
4. Dev Anand’s directorial debut, the film shows Dev Anand as a man
who abhors violence and initially refuses to join the armed forces, but
has to bow to his father’s wishes. He finds himself in the thick of
things, when he sees the enemy working against the country’s
interests. Leaving his beloved, Waheeda Rehman, behind, he goes
abroad, to unveil the conspiracy and befriends Zahida, the enemy’s
moll. Waheeda follows him but is dejected seeing him with Zahida.
In time, Dev also comes back and is engulfed in a full scale war to
defeat the enemy.
202 Interviewed by Tavishi
Alagh

Filmography

16 December—All Forces Alert (2002)

Producers: Anjali Joshi and
Arunima Roy; Director: Mani
Shankar; Cast: Danny
Denzongpa, Gulshan Grover,
Milind Soman, Dipannita
Sharma,
Shushant Singh, Aditi
Gowitrikar.
A couple of Indian military
officers are removed from
service for killing a corrupt
officer among them. They are
later requisitioned by the Indian
army to trace the transfer of
millions of dollars with
security implications. It comes
to light that the money is being
transferred to a terrorist
organisation which is helping
Pakistani officers who were
unhappy with Pakistan’s decision
to surrender in 1971, and who are now plotting revenge
by exploding an atom bomb. The Indian military officers
(the protagonists) work overtime to save India from that
catastrophe.
Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Sathiyo
(The Nation in Your Hands)
(2004) Producer and
Director: Anil Sharma; Cast:
Amitabh Bachchan, Akshaye
Kumar, Bobby Deol, Divya
Khosla, Sandali Sinha.
The film is about Kunal
(Bobby Deol), the grandson of
 Amitabh Bachchan, an army
officer whose son (again, Bobby
Deol) had died fighting in the
Indian army. When Kunal wants
to leave the army to go
abroad and
earn lots of money, his father is disheartened. Kunal falls
in love with a woman who is already married to an army
officer missing in action
196 Filming the Line of
Control
and held in Pakistan as a prisoner of war (Akshaye Kumar).
The story then moves towards Kunal’s heroic efforts to
get Rajeev (Akshaye Kumar) back to his wife.
Amar Akbar Anthony (1977)
Producer and director: Manmohan
Desai; Cast: Amitabh Bachchan,
Vinod Khanna, Rishi Kapoor, Parveen
Babi, Shabana Azmi, Neetu Singh.
A typical Manmohan Desai film,
with a lost-and-found plot. A criminal
on the run is separated from his wife
(who becomes blind); their three sons
are adopted and reared separately by
a Hindu, Muslim and Catholic
Christian. They meet as adults after a
series of incredible plot twists.

Asoka (2001)
Producers: Shahrukh Khan and Juhi
Chawla; Director: Santosh Sivan;
Cast: Shahrukh Khan, Juhi Chawla,
Kareena Kapoor, Milind Soman.
A fictional story of Asoka, a great
Mauryan ruler of ancient India. In the
film, Asoka falls in love with Princess
Kaurwaki. When he believes her dead,
he goes on a bloodthirsty rampage,
becoming a brutal conqueror. Around
the same time, he has married a
Buddhist healer, who
plants in his mind the seeds of his eventual conversion to
Buddhism.
Awara (The Vagabond) (1951)
Producer and director: Raj Kapoor;
Cast: Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Prithviraj
Kapoor, K. N. Singh, Leela Chitnis,
Shashi Kapoor.
The first Raj Kapoor film to feature
his trademark Chaplinesque
persona, to be repeated in almost all
his subsequent films. Raj (the
protagonist) has grown up on the
 Filmography 197
streets. His mother was evicted from
her home (on mistaken suspicion of
infidelity) by her rich and short-
tempered judge husband (played by
198 Filming the Line of
Control
Prithviraj Kapoor, who is also Raj Kapoor’s real-life
father). Raj falls in love with his childhood sweetheart
who is now under the legal guardianship of his own
father, who does all to separate the lovers. Roaming the
streets like a vagabond, he finds shelter with a criminal
(K. N. Singh), who he later discovers is responsible for
his mother’s misfortune. So Kapoor kills him and (booked
for murder) is produced in his own father’s court. His
love interest Rita (played by Nargis) defends him as his
lawyer. Raj is sent to jail and Rita decides to wait for
him.
Border (1997)
Producer and director: J.
P. Dutta; Cast: Sunny Deol,
Jackie Shroff, Akshaye Khanna,
Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Pooja
Bhatt, Tabu.
The film focuses on the
Battle of Longewala on the
Indo-Pak border in Rajasthan,
during the India–Pakistan war of
1971. A small contingent of
120 troops, led by Sunny Deol,
guards the Indian border
against the mighty Pakistani
attack led by tanks. The
emphasis in the film is on the
futility of war.

Bose—The Forgotten Hero. See

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose—The
Forgotten Hero.

Chameli (2004)
Producer: Pritish Nandy
Commu- nications; Director:
Sudhir Mishra; Cast: Kareena
Kapoor, Rahul Bose.
When Rahul Bose loses his
pregnant wife in a car crash, he
gets depressed and resorts to
 Filmography 199
smoking and drinking. One
night he meets a hardened and
wronged prostitute Chameli,
and they
make efforts to help each other recover from the mess they
are in.
200 Filming the Line of
Control
Deewaar (The Wall) (1975)
Producer: Gulshan Rai; Director:
Yash Chopra; Cast: Amitabh
Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor, Parveen
Babi, Neetu Singh, Nirupa Roy.
This iconic film is about two
brothers, one a smuggler and
another a police officer, who clash
because of they are on opposing
sides of the law. While the smuggler
(played by Amitabh Bachchan) is
fighting to avenge the humiliation
suffered by his trade-unionist father,
the police officer brother (played by
Shashi Kapoor) bats for morality. It
is the
access to their mother that is hyped in the film and the fact
that, despite being wronged, the mother sides with the
law-abiding son.
Deewaar (The Wall) (2004)
Producer: Gaurang Doshi;
Director: Milan Luthria; Cast:
Amitabh Bachchan, Akshaye
Khanna, Sanjay Dutt, Amrita Rao.
Thirty Indian POWs (prisoners of
war,
along with their commanding
officer Amitabh Bachchan) are in a
Pakistani jail since the 1971 war.
Some thirty-three years later,
Amitabh’s son Akshaye Khanna
decides to rescue his father and the
others. He goes to Pakistan and is
helped in this mission by Khan, an
ex-prisoner, played by Sanjay Dutt.

Dev (2004)
Producer and director: Govind
Nihalani; Cast: Amitabh Bachchan,
Om Puri, Kareena Kapoor, Fardeen
Khan.
Based during the Gujarat riots,
 Filmography 201
this film is about the exploitation of
Muslims at the
hands of politicians and police officers, who are shown
either casual or communal. When Fardeen Khan’s liberal
Muslim father and believer in non-violence is killed by
police officer Dev (Amitabh Bachchan), Fardeen is goaded
by a corrupt minister to incite communal violence. A love
story with Kareena also unfolds alongside.
202 Filming the Line of
Control
Dil Chahta Hai (The Heart Desires) (2001)
Producers: Javed Akhtar and Chandan
Sindwani;
Director: Farhan Akhtar; Cast: Aamir
Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Akshaye Khanna,
Priety Zinta, Sonali Kulkarni, Dimple
Kapadia.
A film that is unapologetic about the
wealth and upscale lifestyle of India’s
upwardly mobile business class. Three
guys have fun and live life to the fullest.
Saif plays a character who falls in love
with every girl he meets, Aamir believes
in
changing girlfriends every two weeks or so, and
Akshaye does not believe in love. Eventually, all fall in
love and how! One of the love stories in the film is very
rare in Hindi films—a younger man falls in love with an
older woman.

Dil to Pagal Hai (The Heart is Crazy)

(1997) Producers: Yash Chopra and
Mahen Vakil;
Director: Yash Chopra; Cast: Shahrukh
Khan, Madhuri Dixit, Karisma Kapoor,
Akshaye Kumar.
A dance extravaganza and love story
woven together. Dancer and
choreographer Rahul (played by
Shahrukh Khan) considers Nisha
(Karisma Kapoor) to be the best dancer
of his troupe and they are preparing for
a great show.
It is then that Nisha injures herself and
Rahul has to look for another girl dancer. In the process,
he finds Pooja (Madhuri Dixit). While Nisha secretly
loves Rahul, he and Pooja fall in love during the
rehearsals. Unfortunately, Pooja is engaged to Ajay
(Akshaye Kumar), whose loving family had given her
shelter when her parents had died in a car crash. Finally,
Nisha and Ajay gracefully withdraw in order that Rahul
and Pooja can become a couple.
 Filmography 203
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The One with
the Heart will Take the Bride) (1995)
Producer: Yash Chopra; Director:
Aditya Chopra; Cast: Shahrukh Khan,
Kajol, Amrish Puri, Anupam Kher, Farida
Jalal, Himani Shivpuri, Mandira Bedi,
Parmeet Sethi.
This film started what we call now
NRI (Non- Resident Indian) films, made
to appeal to the nostalgia of Punjabi
NRIs. It is the stuff peppy
204 Filming the Line of
Control
romances are made of. Raj (played by Shahrukh Khan)
and Simran (played by Kajol) are Indians living in UK;
they go separately on a Europe tour by rail, meet on the
way and fall in love. But Simran’s conservative father
has already fixed her marriage to a village lad in Punjab;
he insists on her travelling to Punjab with the family, so
that the wedding can take place there. Raj too reaches
the Punjab village and manages to win her father over
by his charming ways.

Earth 1947 (1988)

Producer: Anne Mason and Deepa Mehta;
Director: Deepa Mehta; Cast: Aamir Khan,
Rahul Khanna, Nandita Das, Shabana
Azmi, Maia Sethna.
Based on an English-language novel (Ice-
Candy- Man) written by Pakistani woman
writer Bapsi Sidhwa, this film looks at
Partition and religious fanaticism through
the eyes of an eight year old Parsi girl,
Lenny. Two Muslim boys, Dil Nawaz
(played
by Aamir Khan) and Hasan (played by Rahul Khanna)
love Shanta, a Hindu woman who works as an ayah in
Lenny’s household, but the Partition and the bitter and
violent Hindu–Muslim riots shatter all that. The film
focuses on the way in which ordinary people can be
transformed by brutal historical events.

Fanaa (Annihilation) (2006)

Producer: Yash Raj Films; Director: Kunal
Kohli; Cast: Aamir Khan, Kajol, Rishi
Kapoor, Kirron Kher, Jaspal Bhatti.
A hard-hitting film about a hardcore
terrorist assigned to create trouble in
India by his Pakistani masters. The film
highlights the clash between his allegiance
to the cause of Kashmiri separatism, and his
love for his wife and son. The film directly
mentions
Pakistan as the country sponsoring terrorism in India
Fire (1996)
 Filmography 205
Producers: Bobby Bedi and Deepa Mehta;
Director: Deepa Mehta; Cast: Shabana
Azmi, Nandita Das, Kulbhushan
Kharbanda, Ram Gopal Bajaj, Ranjit
Chaudhary.
A strong cinematic statement in favour of
women’s right to express their sexuality,
through the story of
206 Filming the Line of
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two women and their covert subversion of an orthodox
Hindu family structure. Sita (played by Nandita Das) is
married to a person who is in love with another woman
and does not care for her. In the same family, the elder
brother’s wife, Radha (played by Shabana Azmi) is
childless and feels sexually irrelevant after her husband
loses interest in sex. The two female protagonists become
attracted towards each other, get sexually involved and
have to leave the family when their relationship is
discovered.
Fiza (2000)
Producers: Anjan Ghosh, Sanjay
Bhattacharji, Pradeep Guha; Director:
Khalid Mohamed; Cast: Hrithik Roshan,
Karisma Kapoor, Neha, Asha Sachdev,
Bikram Saluja, Isha Koppikar, Dinesh
Thakur, Johnny Lever.
The film talks about the alienation of
the average Muslim youth, who takes to
the gun to
snatch justice from the Indian state. Taken to be killed in
the Mumbai riots of 1993, the young man’s sister, after
six years, suddenly sights him alive. She sets out in
search of him, only to realise that he has become deeply
involved in Pakistan-backed militant activities.
Gadar—Ek Prem Katha (Tumult—A Love
Story) (2001)
Producer: Nitin Keni; Director: Anil
Sharma; Cast: Sunny Deol, Ameesha
Patel, Amrish Puri.
A major hit, this film is very loud in its
opposition to the creation of Pakistan.
This is the story of the love between a
Sikh–Indian man and a Muslim–Pakistani
girl. It highlights the problems faced by the
couple when they meet with active
opposition from the girl’s father. This
film is loaded with anti-Pakistan
dialogue.
Garam Hawa (Hot Winds) (1973)
Producers: Ishan Arya, M. S. Sathyu
 Filmography 207
and Abu Siwani; Director: M. S. Sathyu;
Cast: Balraj Sahni, Farooq Shaikh, A. K.
Hangal, Gita Siddharth, Shaukat Azmi,
Jalal Agha.
One of the most poignant films to be
made on India’s partition, and perhaps
the first Hindi film to tackle this sensitive
subject in a direct and
208 Filming the Line of
Control
realistic manner. It portrays the effects of Partition on
an ordinary Muslim family—the family of a middle-aged
shoe manufacturer in Agra, whose family, like many other
Muslim families, has been in the leather business for
generations. This is set against the background of the socio-
economic changes that are the outcome of the division of
the country. It highlights the emotional trauma of losing
one’s roots and also the complete social and economic
devastation that follows.
Ghulami (Slavery) (1985)
Producer: Sajid Nadiadwala; Director:
J. P. Datta; Cast: Mithun Chakravorty,
Dharmendra, Mazhar Khan, Bharat
Kapoor, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Smita
Patil, Raza Murad, Reena Roy, Anita Raj,
Naseerudin Khan, Om Shivpuri.
A story of a low-caste man, cruelly
treated by the village zamindar (landlord) and divested of
his land. He returns to team up with Kulbhushan
Kharbanda and Mithun Chakravorty (an ex-army man)
to fight a fatal but successful battle against the
zamindar. A saga of caste, untouchability and the
marginalisation of the underprivileged, set in rural India.
Haqeeqat (Reality) (1964)
Producer and director: Chetan Anand;
Cast: Balraj Sahni, Vijay Anand,
Dharmendra, Priya Rajvansh.
Widely acknowledged as the first war
film in Hindi, set against the backdrop
of the 1962 India–China conflict. It talks
of the brave sacrifice of a small army
contingent, led by Dharmendra,
surrounded by the Chinese army.
Henna (1991)
Producer: R. K. Films; Director: Randhir
Kapoor; Cast: Rishi Kapoor, Zeba
Bakhtiyar, Ashwini Bhave, Farida Jalal,
Kiran Kumar.
The film highlights the artificiality of the
division brought about by the line of
control between the people of India and
 Filmography 209
Pakistan, emphasising that people on both
sides of the line are really one. It tells the
story of an Indian man who accidentally crosses into Pakistan-
occupied Kashmir and then falls in love with a Muslim
girl there.
Hero. See The Hero.
210 Filming the Line of
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Hindustan Ki Kasam (Swear by India)
(1973) Producer: Ravi Anand;
Director: Chetan
Anand; Cast: Raj Kumar, Chetan Anand,
Priya Rajvansh, Balraj Sahni, Parikshit
Sahni, Vijay Anand, Padma Khanna,
Amjad Khan.
Made in the aftermath of the India–
Pakistan war of 1971, it tells the story of one battle
where the Indian Air Force (IAF) scored over the
Pakistani Air Force. When an IAF air base is raided and
lives are lost, a pilot, played by Raj Kumar, swears revenge.
The film is about the superior air-strike force of India, and
has some commendable dogfights by real IAF pilots. It
was the first film made in Hindi that talked of Pakistan by
name; until then, naming Pakistan as the enemy nation
was not allowed by law in India.

Jaagte Raho (Keep Awake) (1956)

Producer: Raj Kapoor; Directors: Amit
Mitra and Sombhu Mitra; Cast: Raj
Kapoor, Nargis, Motilal, Pradeep
Kumar, Daisy Irani, Sumitra Devi,
Sulochana Chatterji, Smriti Biswas.
The story of a peasant who comes to
a big town and is thirsty. When searching
for water, he unwittingly enters an
apartment and is taken to be
a thief. On the run from one house to another, he comes
across many vices that rather respectable people
commit at night.

Jhankaar Beats (Musical Beats) (2003)

Producer: Pritish Nandy
Communications;
Director: Sujoy Ghosh; Cast: Juhi
Chawla, Sanjay Suri, Rahul Bose, Rinke
Khanna, Shayan Munshi.
Two friends work for an advertising
agency and share a passion for music.
They participate in an
R. D. Burman competition for two years
 Filmography 211
and fail. One’s wife is pregnant and
another’s has started a divorce petition.
It is then that the advertising
agency entrusts them with the job of coming up with
catchy lines for a condom ad. A modern day musical with
new trends in marriage and family thrown in.
212 Filming the Line of
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Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai (The Country
where the Ganga Flows) (1960)
Producer: R. K. Films; Director:
Radhu Karmakar; Cast: Raj Kapoor,
Padmini, Pran, Lalita Pawar, Tiwari,
Sulochana.
Raj Kapoor produced the film for
his longstanding cameraman Radhu
Karmakar, who made a poignant film
about violence in society,
arguing that people on both side of the law can be
either good or ruthless and society must be reformed to
solve the problems. Raj Kapoor plays a poor musician who
gets trapped among dakus (dacoits) and is made to believe
that dakus were fighting for socialist ideals. But then Raj
Kapoor sees the violent side of the dakus and the police
alike and decides to set the world right.

Kabhi Kabhie (Sometimes) (1976)

Producer and director: Yash Chopra;
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Shashi
Kapoor, Rakhee, Neetu Singh, Rishi
Kapoor, Waheeda Rehman.
The story of the love between the
poet Amit (Amitabh Bachchan) and his
female fan Pooja (Rakhee). But through
a fateful turn of events, she gets
married to Vijay (Shashi Kapoor). Amit
then marries Anjali (Waheeda Rehman)
and turns a successful builder. Anjali had
a daughter from
her earlier boyfriend; the girl has been brought up in
another family. When the daughter (Neetu Singh)
discovers that she has another birth mother, she sets out
to search for her. In the process, the older generation
revisits their wounds and love. Amit meets Pooja and
Vijay suspects them to be in love. Vijay and Pooja’s only
son (Rishi Kapoor) goes to be with his beloved (Neetu
Singh), when, in a fire, both families save each others’
kin and live happily ever after.

Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (Sometimes

Happiness, Sometimes Sorrow) (2001)
 Filmography 213
Producer: Dharma Productions;
Director: Karan Johar; Cast: Amitabh
Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan, Jaya
Bachchan, Kajol, Hrithik Roshan,
Kareena Kapoor.
This is a film mounted on a massive
scale by director Karan Johar. It is about a family where the
patriarch, Amitabh
214 Filming the Line of
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Bachchan who adopts Shahrukh Khan as a son and then has a
biological son (Hrithik Roshan). But when the grown-up
Shahrukh falls in love with a middle-class girl (Kajol), the
father throws him out of his rich household. Later, the
second son grows up and decides to locate his elder
brother and his family.

Khakee (Uniform) (2004)

Producer: D. M. S. Films; Director: Raj
Kumar Santoshi; Cast: Amitabh Bachchan,
Aishwarya Rai, Akshaye Kumar, Ajay
Devgan, Tusshar Kapoor, Tanuja, Jaya
Prada, Atul Kulkarni.
Amitabh Bachchan plays DCP
(Deputy Commissioner of Police) Anant
Srivastava who has been assigned the task
of escorting a dreaded terrorist from
Chandigarh to Mumbai; he sets
up a team of officers comprising Shekhar Sachdev
(Akshaye Kumar) and recent recruit Ashwin Gupte
(Tusshar Kapoor). Yashvant Angre (played by Ajay
Devgan) is leading a team of terrorists to free the
terrorist. The terrorists set a mole in the shape of
Mahalakshmi (Aishwarya Rai), but Yashwant Angre is
arrested, sentenced and, later in a staged encounter, shot
dead.

Khamosh Pani (Silent Waters) (2003)

Producer: Vidhi Films; Director:
Sabiha Sumar; Cast: Kirron Kher, Amir Ali
Malik, Arshad Mahmud, Salman Shahid.
Made by a Pakistani woman director,
the film tells the story of a Sikh woman
who defies death at Partition, marries a
Muslim, practises Islam, and settles down
to an outwardly contented existence
in what becomes Pakistan. Her past and present collide
in tragedy when her brother comes looking for her and
her son takes to Islamic fundamentalism.
Kisna (2005)
Producer and director: Subhash Ghai
(Mukta Arts); Cast: Vivek Oberoi,
 Filmography 215
Antonia Bernath, Isha Sharvani, Amrish
Puri, Om Puri, Harshita Bhatt.
In the late colonial period, that is the
1930s, a young woman Catherine, daughter of the
ruthless British Collector meets and falls in love with an
Indian village lad Kisna, but the girl’s
216 Filming the Line of
Control
parents are vehemently against the match. The situation
turns ugly and she is sent to England. Years later, she
comes back again and both have not forgotten each other.
But this time, Kisna’s uncle and brother oppose the match.
To complicate the matter, Kisna is now engaged to an
Indian woman and one wily Indian prince has taken a
liking to Catherine. Kisna manages to rescue her and reach
her to the safety of the British High Commission.

Komal Gandhar (E-flat) (1961)

Producer: Chitrakalpa; Director: Ritwik
Ghatak; Cast: Abinash Bannerji, Abhi
Bhattacharya, Bijon Bhattacharya, Satindra
Bhattacharya, Debabrata Biswas, Salil
Choudhuri, Supriya Chaudhury.
The film questions the logic of Partition and
expresses a burning desire for reunification.
Its abundant songs
are replete with the nostalgia for the past, pervaded with
memories of undivided Bengal. The most intense scene
in the film is the rail track that ends abruptly at the
border, symbolising the rupture and the pain for those
who can see their homes across the border but can no
longer return to them.

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Something Happens)

(1998) Producer: Dharma Productions;
Director: Karan Johar; Cast: Shahrukh
Khan, Kajol, Rani Mukherjee, Anupam
Kher, Himani Shivpuri, Farida Jalal.
Rahul (Shahrukh Khan) is best friends
with the tomboyish Anjali (Kajol). Enter
Tina (Rani Mukherjee); Rahul falls in
love with her and Anjali (who secretly
loves Rahul) is shattered. She leaves town
and Rahul and Tina marry. Tina dies
soon after childbirth, but before that, has written
several letters to her newborn child, to be opened on
each of her birthdays until she is eight. She tells her
daughter about Anjali and asks her to help Rahul reunite
with Anjali. The little girl creates situations which enable
the two to meet again. But Anjali is already engaged to
Aman (Salman Khan). However, Aman soon realises the
 Filmography 217
love between Anjali and Rahul and sets up their
marriage.
218 Filming the Line of
Control
Lagaan (The Tax) (2001)
Producer: Aamir Khan Productions;
Director: Ashutosh Gowarikar; Cast:
Aamir Khan, Gracy Singh, Rachel
Shelley.
Set in colonial times, the film tells the
story of a poor village which is not doing
well, because its colonial masters have
doubled the village tax (lagaan). When
the villagers learn of this they are
devastated. Accidentally, the villagers
get to glimpse a cricket match being played
by the British
officers; the nasty British officer offers to waive the
village tax for three years if the villagers defeat the
British team in a cricket match. Bhuvan (Aamir Khan)
accepts the wager, much to the disapproval of the
village, whose residents have never played cricket. The
British officer’s gentle-hearted sister, who loves Bhuvan,
helps the villagers learn the game of cricket. Bhuvan
conjures up a team with most unlikely players, who
eventually win the match.

Lakshya (The Objective) (2004)

Producer: Javed Akhtar; Director:
Farhan Akhtar; Cast: Amitabh
Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, Preity
Zinta, Om Puri, Sharad Kapoor, Sushant
Singh.
A film about a confused rich young
man who has no goal in life. He decides
to join the army, but soon runs away
from training. Taunted by his
girlfriend, he joins back and becomes a brave officer who
tastes war in the India–Pakistan conflict in the Kargil
sector.

LOC—Kargil (2003)
Producer and director: J. P. Dutta;
Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Ajay Devgan, Saif Ali
Khan, Suniel Shetty.
Made by war film veteran J. P. Dutta,
 Filmography 219
the film is based on the 1999 war in the
Kargil sector between India and
Pakistan, which saw the two nations
come close to nuclear war. As is usual with
Dutta, the film has many big stars and good music.
220 Filming the Line of
Control
Maa Tujhe Salaam (Salute to My
Motherland)
(2006)
Producer: Mahendra Dhariwal; Director:
Tinnu Verma; Cast: Sunny Deol, Shilpa
Shetty, Tinnu Verma, Arbaaz Khan.
A story of illegal infiltration from
Pakistan, from the hilly and snow-bound
region called Zohanabad.
When army intelligence officer Shilpa Shetty comes to
know of it, Sunny Deol, an army officer, is sent to deal
with Lala (Tinnu Verma), who is the kingpin of the whole
immigration racket.
Maachis (Matchstick) (1996)
Producer: R. V. Pandit; Director: Gulzar;
Cast: Tabu, Chandrachur Singh, Om Puri,
Kanwaljit Singh, Kulbhushan Kharbanda,
Jimmy Shergill.
The film traces the rise of Sikh militancy in
India, after the storming of the Golden Temple,
the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the
ensuing anti-Sikh riots. It also
talks of the Pakistan link with the Sikh militant
movement in India. The story is about the co-option of
innocent individuals into terrorist cadres in retaliation to
police atrocities in rural Punjab.
Main Hoon Na (Don’t Worry, I’m Here)
(2004) Producer: Red Chillies
Entertainment; Director:
Farah Khan; Cast: Shahrukh Khan,
Sushmita Sen, Suniel Shetty, Kirron Kher,
Zayed Khan, Amrita Rao, Nasiruddin Shah,
Kabir Bedi, Bindu, Satish Shah.
A 1970s style story of an army major
who goes to a residential college to protect
the daughter of an army general, combining
it with his search for his long- lost step-
brother. With the enunciation of a political
idea such as ‘Project Milap’, it is probably
the most
positive film made till date about the changing attitude to
 Filmography 221
Pakistan.
Mammo (1994)
Producer: NFDC; Director: Shyam
Benegal; Cast: Farida Jalal, Surekha
Sikri, Amit Phalke.
A story of two sisters divided by the
line of control. The film follows the travails
of the sister on the Pakistani side who has
no one to stay with and decides to come
to India and stay with the Indian sister
and her son. This story about the
needless
222 Filming the Line of
Control
partition of families shows how Partition continues even
decades after the event.
Mangal Pandey (full title: The Rising—Ballad
of Mangal Pandey) (2005)
Producer: Bobby Bedi (Kaleidoscope
Enter- tainment Pvt. Ltd); Director:
Ketan Mehta; Cast: Aamir Khan, Rani
Mukherjee, Ameesha Patel, Toby
Stephens, Kirron Kher.
The story of an army mutineer in
1857 called Mangal Pandey, who led the
revolt that shook the British Empire for
a few months. The film begins with the
friendship between Mangal Pandey
(Aamir Khan) and Gordon (Toby Stephens), a friendship
that cuts across rank and race. But soon the
introduction of a new cartridge laced with pork and beef
angers both Hindus and Muslim soldiers, and a revolt
follows. Woven into the story is Gordon’s rescue of a
widow from the funeral pyre, with whom he falls in love,
and Mangal Pandey falls for a prostitute Hira (Rani
Mukherjee). But the revolt is suppressed and all
mutineers, including Mangal, are either gunned down or
sentenced to death.
Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-capped
Star) (1960)
Producer: Chitrakalpa/Ritwik Ghatak;
Director: Ritwik Ghatak; Cast: Supriya
Choudhury, Anil Chatterji, Niranjan
Ray, Gita Ghatak, Bijon Bhattacharya.
The film exposes the economic upheaval
caused by Partition, which subsumes the
morality and ethics of a middle-class family.
Neeta, the sole earner in a refugee family,
eventually becomes a victim
of the gnawing lust of a family driven to poverty.
Mission Kashmir (2000)
Producer and director: Vidhu Vinod
Chopra; Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Sonali
Kulkarni, Hrithik Roshan, Preity Zinta,
Jackie Shroff, Puru Rajkumar.
 Filmography 223
The story of a young Kashmiri–Muslim
boy Altaf, who sees his parents and family
being killed by a masked police officer.
Ironically, he is adopted by the same
police officer, who is also Kashmiri–
224 Filming the Line of
Control
Muslim, married to a Hindu. When Altaf (Hrithik
Roshan) comes to know the identity of his adopted
father, he runs away and joins the militant rank to take
revenge on the killers of his family. The film clearly
identifies Pakistani agents as inciting innocent but
disgruntled Indian–Muslim youth to the path of
militancy.
Mohabbatein (Love) (2000)
Producer: Yash Chopra (Yashraj
Films); Director: Aditya Chopra; Cast:
Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan,
Aishwarya Rai, Uday Chopra, Kim
Sharma, Jugal Hansraj, Preeti Jhangiani,
Shamita Shetty, Jimmy Shergill, Anupam
Kher.
Narayan Shankar (played by Amitabh
Bachchan) runs his residential college
named Gurukul with an iron hand and
forbids any show of love or affection on
his campus. His own daughter had
loved Raj (Shahrukh Khan) and was denied permission to
marry him. She committed suicide. The same Raj joins
the college as Aryan, a music teacher. He encourages
three young students to love. Dramatic conflict is created
when Narayan Shankar’s anti-love principles clash with
Raj’s romantic ones. In the end Aryan has his way.
Mother India (1957)
Producer and director: Mehboob
Khan; Cast: Nargis, Sunil Dutt, Rajendra
Kumar, Raj Kumar. A rural classic which
depicts the vicious cycle of debt and
poverty in Indian villages. When Radha
(played by Nargis) marries Shamu (played
by Raj Kumar), his mother takes a loan
of Rs. 500 for the ceremony, and the
film shows the crushing effect of the
machinations of village moneylenders on
poor farmer families. Raj’s hands are
crushed
under a stone boulder and, unable to earn, he runs
away. Radha is shown toiling to raise her three sons,
while fending off the sexual advances of the moneylender.
 Filmography 225
Her youngest son Birju (played by Sunil Dutt) grows up to
be an angry young man, because of the injustice he sees
around him. He kidnaps the moneylender’s daughter to
avenge his poverty. Radha protests against what she sees
as an injustice against a woman, and in the confrontation
with her son, shoots him dead to rescue the kidnapped
girl.
226 Filming the Line of
Control
My Brother, My Enemy (2005)
Documentary. Producers and directors: Kamal Negi and
Masood Khan. No poster available.
A short ethnographic documentary in which two young
filmmakers, one from India and one from Pakistan, visit
each other’s countries and homes. The journeys they
undertake reveal old memories and existing mindsets of hate
amongst the two nations. The filmmakers question these and
hope that with their generation, those antagonisms will
reduce.
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose—The Forgotemten Hero
(2005)
Producer: Raj Pius; Director: Shyam
Benegal; Cast: Sachin Khadekar, Kulbhushan
Kharbanda, Rajit Kapoor.
The film deals with the last five years of the Congress
leader and freedom fighter Bose, the enigmatic leader
whose death is a mystery India still engages with.
Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani (Yet the Heart is
Indian) (2000)
Producer: Dreamz Unlimited; Director: Aziz
Mirza; Cast: Shahrukh Khan, Juhi Chawla,
Paresh Rawal, Johnny Lever.
The film is centred around the TV rivalry
between two news channels. One has a
celebrity reporter Ajay (Shahrukh Khan)
and another has Riya Bannerji
(played by Juhi Chawla). The story takes a turn when
Mohan Joshi (played by Paresh Rawal) is arrested for
murder. He escapes and is branded a terrorist. In
hiding, he meets the two reporters and tells them that the
man he killed had raped and killed his teenage daughter. The
confession is taped but vested interests put all kinds of
hurdles in its airing and Joshi is sentenced to death. On
the day of the hanging, thousands of people, led by the
two reporters, march to the jail and rescue Joshi.

Pinjar (The Skeleton) (2003)

Producer: Lucky Star Entertainment;
Director: Chandra Parakash Dwivedi; Cast:
Urmila Matondkar, Manoj Bajpai, Sanjay
 Filmography 227
Suri, Sandali Sinha, Isha Koppikar, Lillete
Dubey, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Priyanshu
Chatterji.
228 Filming the Line of
Control
A story set against the Partition, about a Hindu
woman Puro forced into marriage by a Muslim man
Rashid. She finally accepts him when her own family
deserts her. She retains a soft corner for her family and
her erstwhile fiancé. After Partition, she risks her own
and Rashid’s life trying to rescue her fiancé’s sister from
the clutches of a Muslim family.

Prem Pujari (Priest of Love) (1970)

Producer: Navketan Films;
Director: Dev
Anand; Cast: Dev Anand, Waheeda
Rahman, Shatrughan Sinha, Zahida,
Prem Chopra, Sajjan, Madan Puri.
The film traces the story of a young
man, played by Dev Anand, whose
father wants him to join the army. He is
not keen on this because
he is against violence, but finally he is forced to join it.
Later, he gets involved in foiling a plot by the enemy
against India in the course of which he has to befriend
Zahida, an enemy moll. This creates a
misunderstanding with his girlfriend. Ultimately, he
succeeds in defeating the enemy and regains her
affections.
Pukar (The Call) (2000)
Producer: S. K. Films Enterprises;
Director: Raj Kumar Santoshi; Cast: Anil
Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit, Namrata
Shirodkar, Om Puri, Rohini Hattangadi,
Farida Jalal, Danny.
Two army men rescue a politician from a
dreaded terrorist. Interwoven with this
plot is the love
triangle between Anil Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit and Namrata
Shirodkar. Madhuri loves Anil and Anil loves Namrata;
fuelled by jealousy, Madhuri conspires to make trouble for
Anil Kapoor, and inadvertently facilitates his being branded
as a traitor, court-martialled and dismissed from the army.
Anil Kapoor fights back to save his honour.

Rang De Basanti (Colour Me Saffron)

 Filmography 229
(2006) Producer: Flicks Motion
Pictures Co. Pvt.
Ltd.; Director: Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra;
Cast: Aamir Khan, Soha Ali Khan,
Sharman Joshi, Atul Kulkarni, Alice
Patten, Madhavan, Waheeda Rehman,
Kirron Kher, Om Puri, Lekh Tandon. A
British filmmaker Sue (Alice Patten)
comes to India to make a film on the
lives of
230 Filming the Line of
Control
revolutionary leaders of the Indian freedom struggle,
like Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar, Rajguru, and
Ashfaqullah, and in her search for suitable actors, meets a
bunch of aimless guys led by DJ (Aamir Khan). While
they research and rehearse for their roles, they begin to
understand and internalise the commitment and passion of
those historical characters. So, when air force officer
Ajay Rathod (Soha’s fiancé) dies in the crash of a defective
MIG war plane, the four protest against the political
corruption that has led to his death. Vested interests
amongst politicians unleash violence on them. Finding no
legal redressal, the young men kill the defence minister and
take over a radio station to publicise the injustices in the
system. The state shoots them dead; in this way the film
links the stories of the freedom fighters with the modern
tale of the young martyrs.

Refugee (2000)
Producer and director: J. P. Dutta;
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Kareena
Kapoor, Suniel Shetty, Saif Ali Khan,
Pooja Bhatt.
Probably the only film that talks of
the lives of people living close to the
border, and their having to eke out a
living even if it means helping
illegals to cross into the country
across the border from Pakistan. The
storyline revolves around a Bihari
Muslim family, abandoned by all
states, wanting to go to a ‘Muslim’
homeland but forced to attempt it
illegally since they are officially refused
asylum.

Roja (1992)
Producers: Mani Ratnam and K.
Balchander; Director: Mani Ratnam;
Cast: Arvind Swamy, Madhoo, Pankaj
Kapur.
This film is about newlyweds Arvind
Swamy and Madhoo, who go to Kashmir
 Filmography 231
after their wedding. The husband is
kidnapped by Pakistani terrorists and
Madhoo goads the system to work for
his release. The film highlights the
direct involvement of Pakistan in the
terrorism
in Kashmir. By making the story revolve around a South
Indian couple, the film brings home the fact that
terrorism is a pan-Indian problem.
232 Filming the Line of
Control
Sarfarosh (The Martyr) (1999)
Producer: Cinematt Pictures;
Director: John Mathew Matthan; Cast:
Aamir Khan, Nasiruddin Khan, Sonali
Bendre, Mukesh Rishi.
A story of Pakistan-sponsored
terrorism and a young police officer’s
efforts to wipe it out. The film talks
about Pak infiltrators, the illegal arms
sale, and the problematic relationship
amongst the Muslims themselves, the
mohajirs and the Pakistani Muslims, and
between Muslims and Hindus, in a
patriotic face-off in favour of the Indian nation.

Sarhad Paar (Across the Border) (2006)

Producer: Nimbus Motion Pictures;
Director:
Raman Kumar; Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Tabu,
Mahima Chaudhary, Rahul Dev.
When an army man Ranjit Singh
(Sanjay Dutt) comes back from Pakistani captivity after
years of having been taken for dead, the lives of his wife
and sister change. Ranjit has no memory save that of one
face, the face of terrorist Bakhtawar (played by Rahul Dev).
All try to bring him back to normal but in vain.
Meanwhile, Bakhtawar plots revenge.

Shaheed Udham Singh (2000)

Producer: Surjit Movies; Director:
Chitrath; Cast: Raj Babbar, Gurdas Mann,
Shatrughan Sinha, Amrish Puri, Tom Alter,
Barry John, Juhi Chawla.
It tells the story of Udham Singh who,
during the British Raj, had shot dead
General Dyer, the man who had ordered
the killing of thousands of men at
Jallianwallah Bagh at Amritsar.

Sheen (2004)
Producer and director: Ashok V.
Pandit; Cast: Raj Babbar, Sheen, Tarun
Arora.
 Filmography 233
A film about the forced eviction of
Kashmiri Hindu Pundits by Pakistan-
supported Muslim terrorists of Kashmir.
The film was sold with the cover write-
up, ‘A refugee in my own country’.
234 Filming the Line of
Control
Silsila (Continuity) (1981)
Producer: Yashraj Films; Director:
Yash Chopra; Cast: Amitabh Bachchan,
Shashi Kapoor, Rekha, Jaya Bachchan,
Sanjeev Kumar.
Amitabh Bachchan is compelled to
marry his brother’s fiancée (Jaya)
because of his brother’s (Shashi Kapoor,
an air force officer) death in a crash.
But he cannot get his ex-lover (Rekha,
now married to Sanjeev Kumar) out of
his life and mind. The ex-lovers meet
again and old love
is rekindled creating problems in their relationships.
Subarnarekha (The Golden, Line; also the
name of a river in Jharkand) (1962)
Producer: J. J. Films; Director: Ritwik
Ghatak; Cast: Abhi Bhattacharya,
Madhabi Mukherjee, Satindra
Bhattacharya, Gita De.
The film enquires into the far-
reaching consequences of Partition. Its
theme—the search for a nutan badi (new
home) highlights the pain of having
been uprooted, of being doomed
to the status of a refugee in perpetual search of a
homeland. Extreme poverty, a consequence of Partition,
forces Seeta into prostitution, while Ishwar’s tragic
encounter with Seeta towards the end is Ghatak’s
comment on the degeneration of scruples, an enduring
legacy of partition which, for him, ate into the very
entrails of our society.
Swades (Homeland) (2004)
Producer: Ashutosh Gowariker
Productions; Director: Ashutosh
Gowariker; Cast: Shahrukh Khan,
Gayatri Joshi, Vishwa Badola, Kishori
Ballal, Daya Shankar Pandey.
The film traces the journey of self
discovery by an NRI Mohan Bhargava
(played by Shahrukh Khan) who has come
 Filmography 235
from abroad to an Indian village to search
for his childhood maid who had raised him
after the death of both his parents. He
observes
firsthand the abject poverty and deprivation of people in
the villages, and decides to set up a power plant, during
which he falls in love with a woman with whom his maid
was staying. He eventually comes back permanently to the
village, leaving his well-paid NASA job.
236 Filming the Line of
Control
Tamas (Darkness) (1987)
Producer: Blaze Entertainment;
Director: Govind Nihalani; Cast: Om
Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Saeed Jaffery,
Amrish Puri, Deepa Sahi, Dina Pathak,
A. K. Hangal, Bhisham Sahni.
A six-part TV drama based on the
acclaimed novel of the same name by
Bhisham Sahni, which highlights the
violence and heartburn behind the
holocaustic division of the nation. It tells the
tale of
a Sikh family, and the trauma of Partition and communal
violence.

Tango Charlie (2005)

Producer: Gaurav Digital; Diretor:
Mani Shankar; Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Suniel
Shetty, Ajay Devgan, Bobby Deol,
Tanisha, Sudesh Berry.
It is about a soldier Tarun Chauhan
(code named Tango Charlie, played by
Bobby Deol),
who is posted in the North-East, then in Andhra and
finally at Kargil to fight battles for the country. In the
process, the film exposes both the insurgents and Indian
armed forces.

The Hero—Love Story of a Spy (2003)

Producer: Nanjibhai Shah; Director:
Anil Sharma; Cast: Sunny Deol, Preity
Zinta, Priyanka Chopra, Amrish Puri.
Arun Khanna (Sunny Deol) is an undercover agent
who goes to Kashmir to uncover Pakistani secret
service’s dangerous plans to seize Kashmir. He seeks
help from a local village girl Reshma (Preity Zinta), who
soon becomes a part of his network. They fall in love but
an accident separates them. Arun continues his spying,
befriending the daughter (Priyanka Chopra) of an ISI
accomplice. He pretends to be a nuclear scientist to crack
the ISI plan of launching a nuclear bomb.
The Legend of Bhagat Singh (2002)
 Filmography 237
Producer: Tips Films Pvt. Ltd; Director:
Raj Kumar Santoshi; Cast: Ajay Devgan,
Sushant Singh, Amrita Rao.
The film traces the story of well known
freedom fighter Bhagat Singh, who
believed in violent means to achieve
freedom from the British and differed with
Gandhi on the means to attain freedom.
238 Filming the Line of
Control
Upkar (The Favour) (1965)
Producer and director: Manoj Kumar;
Cast: Manoj Kumar, Asha Parekh, Pran,
Prem Chopra. Manoj Kumar was
nicknamed ‘Mr Bharat’ (Mr India;
implying a patriot) with this film. Two
sons of a widowed mother live in a village.
Bharat (played by Manoj Kumar) sacrifices
his education and career, working in the
fields so that Puran (played by Prem
Chopra) can study abroad. But once
back from abroad, Puran wants a share
in
the property so that he can live comfortably. Bharat’s
love interest is a village doctor played by Asha Parekh.
Pran (who was until then usually used to playing negative
characters), is, for the first time here, cast in a
sympathetic role.
Veer-Zaara (2004)
Producer: Yashraj Films; Director:
Yash Chopra; Cast: Shahrukh Khan,
Preity Zinta, Rani Mukherjee, Amitabh
Bachchan, Hema Malini, Kirron Kher,
Manoj Bajpai, Boman Irani.
A love story between an Indian Air
Force (Shahrukh Khan) officer and a
Pakistani girl (Preity Zinta), who run into
hurdles to their union because of her
orthodox Muslim father and her
unyielding fiancé. They have to wait for
twenty-
two years before they are united as a result of the
untiring efforts of a feisty woman lawyer of Pakistan (Rani
Mukherjee). The film has used music by the well-known
Madan Mohan, decades after his death.
Waqt (Time) (1965)
Producer: B. R. Chopra; Director:
Yash Chopra; Cast: Balraj Sahni, Sunil
Dutt, Raj Kumar, Shashi Kapoor, Sadhna,
Rehman, Shashikala.
The film traces the fortunes of the
 Filmography 239
family of a rich businessman Lala
Kedarnath (played by Balraj Sahni) who has
three sons. He scoffs at the idea of
destiny, and believes in free will. But
then an earthquake transforms his life and
separates his family from one another. The
rest of the film moves through romantic and
dramatic twists and turns towards the
ultimate reunion of the family decades
later.
240 Filming the Line of
Control
Zakhm (Wound) (1998)
Producer: Pooja Bhatt; Director:
Mahesh Bhatt; Cast: Ajay Devgan, Pooja
Bhatt, Sonali Bendre, Kunal Khemu,
Nagarjuna, Ashutosh Rana, Saurabh
Shukla, Sharat Saxena.
An autobiographical film by Mahesh
Bhatt, it explores the tragic life of a
Muslim woman played by Pooja Bhatt in
love with a Hindu film director.
The differences in faith come between them, making them
move away from each other. She goes on to live as a
Hindu with a Hindu man but yearns to be recognized as
a devout Muslim. Her now grown-up son played by Ajay
Devgan buries her like a Muslim on her death, finally
getting her real peace.
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About the Editors

Meenakshi Bharat is Reader at the Department of English,

Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi. She is a
translator, reviewer and critic. She is especially interested in
children’s literature, women’s fiction and English studies —
areas which she has extensively researched. She has
published three books: The Ultimate Colony (2003), Desert in
Bloom: Indian Women Writers of Fiction in English (2004), and
recently, a new edition of George Eliot’s The Mill on the
Floss. Currently, she is engaged in translating a volume
of Hindi short stories, and is also editing an anthology of
Indo-Australian short stories. She has delivered a number of
lectures on films in several universities in Australia and
the UK. At present, she is exploring diasporic responses
to Indian films in the UK (as Charles Wallace Fellow),
and elsewhere.
Nirmal Kumar is Reader at the Department of History, Sri
Venkateswara College, University of Delhi. He has
worked on gender history of the eighteenth century and
is in the process of editing a book on Muslim identities in
Hindi films. Two of his edited volumes are forthcoming:
Essays in Medieval Indian History and Essays in Early Modern History
of India. He has been Associate Fellow at the Indian
Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla; Visiting Fellow at
the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, Leeds; and
Fellow, Royal Asiatic Society, London.
 Notes on Contributors

Adrian Athique works on transnational media reception in

Asia and Australasia, digital environments for teaching
and research, and the sociology of the cinema in India. In
his Ph. D. thesis, ‘Non-resident Cinema: Transnational
Audiences for Indian Films’, he reconsiders the formulation
of the movie audience as a social body and as a subject of
social analysis, under the impact of media globalisation.
Adrian has also been active as a practitioner of
photography and digital design, and has previously
worked as a learning and teaching technologies officer at
the UK Open University. Adrian is currently researching
the multiplex cinema in India.
Aparna Sharma is an independent, experimental filmmaker and
cultural theorist studying at the Film Academy,
University of Glamorgan, UK. She has recently been
filming in the American southwest and interacting with
native Indian tribes such as the Hopis.
Arshad Amanullah is a media practitioner and researcher
based in New Delhi. He has studied the madrasa media as
well as mainstream media with special reference to
Muslim issues in India. His writings include ‘Media Aur
Musalman Azadi Ke Baad’ (Media and Muslims since
Independence, 2003). He blogs at
http://madrasa.wordpress.com/. Before joining Jamia Millia
Islamia, New Delhi, where he studied Mass
Communications for his Masters degree, he spent nine
years at Jamia Salafia, an Ahl-e-Hadis madrasa situated in
Varanasi, to study Muslim theology and philosophy.
Claudia Preckel has studied Arabic and Islamic studies, and
pedagogy at the University of Goettingen and Bochum.
In 1997, she obtained her M. A. degree from Bochum
University, on the Begums of Bhopal. Parts of this work
has been translated into English, published as The Begums of
Bhopal by Roli books in Delhi. She is currently working
on her Ph. D. on Islamic scholarly networks in
nineteenth-century Bhopal.
232 Filming the Line of Control

Kamayani Kaushiva is a research scholar in the

department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian
Institute of Technology, New Delhi. Her area of research
is postcolonialism, with particular reference to Partition
literature, with special focus on the works of Salman
Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and Bapsi Sidhwa. She has
worked on the theme of trauma as represented through
the cinematic mode, with reference to films on the
holocaust (Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah) and Partition.
Kishore Budha is actively engaged in research in film
theory, film history and the film industry, and
production, focusing on com- munication technologies,
visual culture, and broadcasting and media production. He
teaches at the University of Leeds and is currently engaged in
a doctoral programme.
Rajinder Dudrah is Senior Lecturer in screen studies at the
University of Manchester. His academic interests are
Bollywood cinema, black British representation, popular
music, diasporic and transnational media, television
studies, cultural theory, and qualitative research
methods as applied to popular culture. He is one of the
founders and co-editors of the internationally peer-
reviewed journal South Asian Popular Culture with Routledge
publishers. He is also a script reader and adviser for
Maverick Television, Birmingham.
Savi Munjal is currently pursuing her M. Phil. in English
literature. She teaches undergraduate students at the
University of Delhi. Her areas of interest include visual
culture, the history and theory of the representational
apparatus in world cinema, and the interdisciplinary
aspects of eighteenth-century British print culture and
literature.
Shakuntala Banaji is a researcher at the Centre for the Study
of Children, Youth and Media, Institute of Education,
University of London. She has taught English and media
studies and lectured on Hindi film, taught on the media
and society B.Sc. at South Bank University, and now
teaches film theory in Media Culture and Communication at the
Institute of Education and for the British Film Institute.
She has worked as a researcher on the project ‘After
September 11th: TV News and Transnational Audiences’, and
has an abiding interest in disaporic relationships to national
and international media. The main findings of her
doctoral research into the meanings made by young
viewers from representations of sex, gender and ethnicity
in Hindi films may be found in Reading Bollywood: The Young
Audience and Hindi Films, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Sunny Singh, born in Varanasi, India, and educated in
various parts of the world, teaches creative writing at
the London Metropolitan University. She has worked as a
journalist, teacher, and management executive for
multinationals around the globe, finally giving up the
corporate life for writing. Sunny is involved with several
non-profit organisations like Club Masala, a Barcelona-based
organisation for the promotion of South Asian culture. She
is the founder of the Jhalak Foundation, an organisation
that funds pediatric cardiac surgery for underprivileged
children in India. Besides writing plays, she has just
published a novel, From Krishna’s Eyes.
Tavishi Alagh is an independent filmmaker. She has
worked on the production and direction of ten films and
programs in India, the US and other countries. She has
delivered a series of lectures to the US State
Department’s Foreign Service Institute about Hindi film
and Indian social and political issues; she has also organised a
seminar series on Bollywood cinema with leading
American universities. Her most recent article on Hindi
cinema, ‘Dreaming the Nation’, appeared in The Routledge
Journal of South Asian Popular Culture. She is working on a
script for a feature with noted filmmaker Sudhir Mishra
as well as developing a screenplay for her own features
project.
 234 Filming the Line of Notes on Contributors
Control 233

Index

16 December 114 66, 69,

1947 vii, xii, 30, 31, 59, 66, 71, 70, 86, 90, 91, 94, 129, 130,
72, 131
85, 112, 123, 124, 134, 179, Auteur, auterism xi, 15, 16, 86,
188 88, 91,
see Partition 92, 112, 113
1999 134, 191 see Kargil Awara 128
Aamir Hussain 3
Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Saathiyon Bagchi and Dasgupta 98, 99
11, 195–96 Bajpai 63, 70, 72
Abhishek Bachchan 29
Aesthetic of realism 4, 5, 14, 15,
16, 19
Aesthetics 4, 15
Ahmed 10, 30
Akshaye Khanna 23
Alexandre Astruc 16
Altman 5
Amar Akbar Anthony 122, 196
Amitabh Bachchan 113, 122, 133
Amrita Pritam 59–62, 65–68
Ananya Bharati 6–7 see Pratibha
Advani Anil Sharma 131
Ansari 9, 11, 13
Anti-Pakistan/i viii, 9, 11, 16, 29,
37, 43,
129, 132, 129, 132, 161, 163,
164,
165 see Pakistan
bashing Anu Malik 23,
28
Anupam Kher 12, 31, 134
Anupama Chopra 13
Anzaldua 42,
55 Ashis
Nandy xiv
Asoka 123,
196
Atari 48, 50, 52
Audience xi, 3, 4, 5, 11,12, 13,
14, 16,
17, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 25, 32,
38, 39,
41, 45, 52, 53, 54, 61, 62, 63,
Bakhtin 149
Bangladesh 30, 31, 35, 98, 179,
182
Bela Balazs 153, 156
Benedict Anderson 161
Bhabha 91
Bhalla 59
Bhawana Somayya 15
Bhupen Hazarika 17
Bihari Muslim 30
Bildungsroman 122
BJP 6–7 see Pratibha Advani, L.
K. Advani, Ananya Bharati,
right-wing ideologies
Bollywood xi, 41, 43, 47, 53,
54, 55 see mainstream,
typical, formula,
conventional
Border x, xii, 6, 15, 16, 19, 21–
39, 88,
112, 114, 115, 116, 164,
165, 172,
174, 190, 197 see border,
Dutta (J.P.)
Border vii, ix, x, xi, xii, xiii, xiv,
7, 11, 14, 19, 21, 22, 23,
24, 25, 26, 27,
27, 28, 29, 30, 40–55, 59, 66,
72,
74, 75, 78, 83, 84, 85, 96,
97, 99,
104, 111, 114, 116, 117,
122, 124,
126, 132, 133, 134, 137,
138, 139,
140, 141, 143, 150, 151,
154, 157,
158, 164, 168, 169, 171,
173, 186,
192 see Border
Bordwell 4
Bose-The Forgotten Hero
122 BSF 23, 32, 35,
36, 37
Butalia 59, 71, 96, 97, 99 see The
Other Side of Silence

Cahiers du Cinema 3
Censor, censorship 4, 10, 19, 38,
166,
171, 174, 189 see Central
Board of Film Certification
Central Board of Film Certification
9, 12
see censor, censorship
 Index 235

Chaman Nahal vii 154, 171

Chameli 17, 197 ET 128
Chetan Anand 6
Christian 73, 79, 187 Fanaa 112, 114, 115, 120–21,
Communalism 187, 190 133,
Conventional 52 200
Conversion 83–84 Farah Khan 43, 55, 122
Cracking India 69, see Ice-Candy-Man,
Sidhwa
Cricket 164

Darrell William Davis 3

Deepa Mehta 60, 62, 63, 67–70,
73,
189 see Earth
Deewaar 12, 129, 198
Deleuze xiii, 90, 91, 95, 148,
149, 152,
155, 156
Deregulation 3, 5
Dev Anand 12
Dharma Productions 13
Dialogue 24, 26, 34, 40, 45, 48,
49, 52,
54, 88, 90, 94, 101, 102, 114,
116,
132, 182, 183
Diaspor/a, /ic ix, xiii, 42, 54, 55,
158,
159, 161
Didur 82
Dil Chahta Hai 13, 198
Dil to Pagal hai 123, 129, 199
Dilwale Dulhaniya le Jajenge 122,
199–200
Dutta, J.P. x, 6, 7, 21, 25, 29,
37, 38,
39 see Border
Dwivedi 59, 60, 62, 65–68, 70
Dziga Vertov 153, 156

Earth 1947 xi, 59–61, 64, 67–

70,
72–73, 75, 77–79, 81–83, 200
see Deepa Mehta
East Pakistan 24, 30–31, 97–98,
129,
179
enemy viii, 8, 15, 72, 89, 114,
115,
118, 119, 122, 130, 143, 144,
151,
236 Filming the Line of
Fareed
Control Kazmi 159, 160, 161 142, 143, 145, 150, 153, 163,
Farhan Akhtar 11, 13 164,
Feminist historiography 89, 92 165, 167, 168, 173, 175, 187,
FICCI 11 189,
Film Producers Guild of 190, 193, 194
India 9 Firoze Hindustan ki Kasam vii, 203
Rangoonwalla 6 Hindustan Times 12
Fiza 114, 117–18, 121, 127, Hindutva 28, 175
201
see terrorist
Formula 62, 63, 184 see masala
film, typical Bollywood,
Bollywood format
Frontline 12
Fundamentalism/t 88, 90, 125,
126,
187

Gadar viii, xi, xii, 11, 43, 59, 70,

72, 73,
74–77, 79–81, 84, 87, 88, 89,
91,
93, 95, 112, 127, 131, 158, 7,
158,
161–74, 183, 186, 190, 201
Gandhi vii, 67
Garam Hawa xiv, 59, 72, 97, 186,
188, 202 see M. S. Sathyu
Gelder 8
Gender xii, xiii, 8, 19, 63, 64,
65, 76,
78, 85, 161
Ghar Kab Aaoge 183
good muslim 28, 37
Goswami 99
Gowarikar 16–17
Gramsci 93, 95, 159
Gulzar 113
Gurudwara 49

Haqeeqat 6, 15, 16, 18, 190, 202

Heer 77 see Waris Shah
Henna xii, 129–33, 135–39,
202
see Raj Kapoor
Henri Bergson 153
Higson 3, 4, 18
Hindu 28, 66, 67, 71, 72, 73, 75,
77, 78,
80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 115, 117,
118,
120, 124–27, 130–32, 134–36,
138,
 Index 237

history 3, 4, 7, 10, 12, 14, 16,

18, 22, Jagte Raho 128 see Raj
23, 27, 28, 39, 42, 46, 71, 72, 82, Kapoor Jain 8
85, Javed Akhtar xiv, 23, 28, 186,
86, 88, 92–93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 190–92
104, 111, 121, 123, 124, 125, Jean Mitry 148
126, Jha 29, 38
127, 137, 140, 143, 145, 149, Jhankaar Beats 17, 203
152, Jingoism/istic 5, 8, 11, 13, 16, 29,
154, 161, 163, 165, 166, 167, 38,
172, 87, 91, 94, 140, 147, 151, 152,
179, 183, 192 161,
Hollywood 3, 4, 9, 14, 23 166, 175, 190
Holocaust 96 Jinnah 67
Hostility 140, 144, 151 Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai 128 see
Hrithik Roshan 40 see Fiza, Raj Kapoor
Lakshya, Mission Kashmir

Ice-Candy-Man 59–61, 63, 64, 67,

70,
73, 77, 81 see Sidhwa
identity viii, xii, 22, 26, 36, 38, 39,
48,
52, 53, 74, 79, 80, 88, 89, 129,
136,
141, 144, 158, 159, 160, 165,
168,
173, 174, 190, 191, 193
Ideology 4, 5, 6, 10, 13, 16, 17,
18, 41,
44, 47, 48, 53, 54, 55, 60, 63,
86,
158, 159, 160, 164, 166, 168,
170,
174, 175
India–Pakistan matches 8, 187
India–Pakistan War of 1948 vii
India–Pakistan War of 1965 vii,
26, 134 India–Pakistan War of
1971, Longewala
vii, viii, 11, 23, 24, 30–31, 44,
88, 95,
115, 115, 116, 129, 179
India Today 12
Indian Army 7–8
Intezar Hussain vii,
59
Islam/ist/ic 49, 50, 51, 72, 74, 76,
77,
78, 80, 81, 84, 116, 117, 118,
119,
125, 132, 187, 193
 238 Filming the Line of
John Mathew Mattan 36, 116
Control M. S. Sathyu xiv, 97, 186–89 see
see Sarfarosh Garam Hawa
Journalistic criticism 5–14 Maa Tujhe Salaam 11, 12, 183, 207
Maachis xii, 113–14, 207–8
Kabhi Kabhie 129 Macdougall 107
Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham 139 Madhava Prasad 4, 10, 18
Kabir 71
Kakar 163, 168
Kalra 42, 54
Kara Film Festival 184, 194
Kareena Kapoor 30
Kargil vii, 8, 9, 13, 21, 40, 41,
111, 117,
121, 133, 191 see 1999
Kashmir/i/yat 21, 45, 55, 130,
132, 133,
137, 138, 139, 147,
181
Khakee xii, 114, 119,
204–5
Khamosh Pani xi, 86–94, 205 see
Sabiha Sumar
Kisna 124
Komal Gandhar xi, 97 , 102 – 4
,
205–6 see Ghatak
Komal Nahta 9, 15,
20
Koves 97
Kucch Kucch Hota Hai 123, 206

L.K. Advani 8
Ladki Punjaban 183 see Pakistani
films
Lagaan 11, 124, 162, 206
Lakshya xi, xii 11, 12, 13, 40–41,
112,
114, 121–22, 191, 192, 207
Lal Bahadur Shastri
viii Lata
Mangeshkar 33
Lawaaris 113
LOC (Line of Control) 40 see
border, Radcliffe Line
LOC: Kargil 8, 15, 19, 20, 21,
183, 207
Lollywood 179, 180, 181, 182,
184
Longewala see India–Pakistan
War of 1971
Luhrmann 82
Luthria 12
 Index 239

Mahesh Bhatt xiv, 5, 11, 186, 126, 186, 187

192–94 Mirani 8
Mahey 97 Mis-en-scene 50, 55, 87
Main Hoon Na viii, xi, xii, 40, 42, 43– Mission Kashmir 12 , 114, 117, 118–
47, 19,
87, 89, 91, 94, 95, 112, 114, 164, 165, 170, 174, 209
121, Mitu Varma 6
122, 123, 132, 133, 157, 208 Mohabbatein 123, 209–10
mainstream cinema, mainstream Mohajir 117 see refugee,
Hindi film/blockbuster xi, 38, migrant Mohit Suri 13
59, 62, 63, Mosque 76
66, 69, 140, 144 Mother India 120–21, 210
Mangal Pandey or The Rising: The
Ballad of Mangal Pandey 115, 124,
208–9
Mani Shankar 13
Manmohan Desai 111, 122
Manto vii, 59, 70, 192
Maoism 17
Marginalisation 71, 82, 85, 91,
92, 114,
115, 118, 120, 124, 125
Markovits 96–97, 103
Masala genre, masala film,
convention, Bollywood, 43,
47, 52, 55 see formula
Mass appeal 15
Mass media 6
Matondkar 62, 63, 70, 72
Meghe Dhaka Tara xi, 97, 99–102,
103,
209 see Ghatak
Mehdi 103
Melodrama/tic xi, 43, 52, 47, 52,
63,
70, 86, 87, 89–94, 99, 130,
140,
173, 183
Memory 86, 87, 96, 98, 99, 102,
103,
107, 138, 139, 145, 152, 161,
172
Migrants, migration, refugee 30,
72, 81,
98, 100, 103, 117, 140, 155, 179
see
mohajir, refugee
Militancy 113–14, 116, 117, 118
Minority/ies 28, 82, 112, 114,
115,
116–17, 118, 119, 120,
121, 125,
 240 Filming the Line of
Mukta
Control Arts 13 Pakistani films 179, 180, 181,
Multiplex exhibition 14, 183,
130 Music see 23 songs 184, 192
Muslim 6, 8, 28, 30, 31, 32, 36, Parsi 61, 64, 67, 69, 70, 73, 79,
37, 38, 81–83
39, 40, 43, 49, 52, 55, 61, 65, Partition, 1947, The Partition vii,
66, xi, xii, xiv, 22, 30–31, 39, 42,
67, 72–80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 89, 90, 48, 49, 59–70,
93, 71, 72, 74, 75, 77, 79–81, 83–
95, 112, 114–21, 124–27, 130– 85, 86,
34, 87, 89, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96–107,
137, 138, 142, 143, 153, 161, 112,
162, 113, 115, 117, 121, 123,
163, 164, 165, 166, 167–68, 124, 125,
173, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131,
175, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 132,
193, 134, 137, 139, 140, 145, 149,
194 see religion 155,
My Brother, My Enemy xii, 210 161, 162, 163, 164, 179

Nation,/al/ist/ism, mulk, nation-

state national, nationalism
viii, ix, x, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, 3–
20, 22, 25, 28, 29, 30, 34,
36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 49, 61,
65, 66,
67, 68, 70, 71, 75, 76, 79, 84,
86, 87,
89, 91, 96, 97, 103, 111–27,
129,
131, 132, 134, 137–39, 140,
141,
142, 144, 151, 152, 154,
162, 164,
165, 168, 173, 174, 187, 189
National cinema, national film
industry 3, 4, 5, 6
Navtej Purewal 21–22, 25, 33,
42,
54, 55
Naxalism 17
Nehru, Nehruvian vii, 16–17, 67,
187
Nikhat Kazmi 6
Nitin Manmohan 11

Observer 12
Onir 13
Oscar 189

Pak Bashing 129, 190

Pakistan/i film industry
xiv, 10
 Index 241

Patriarch/y/al 64, 74, 79, 80, 81, 96–105,

88, 91, 188
93, 135, 136 Refugee, x, 21, 22, 29–37, 38, 39,
Patriotic, Patriotism vii, 4, 6–9, 11, 188,
19, 212
25, 28, 65, 66, 70, 136, 138, Religion, religious xi, 7, 8, 43, 47,
140, 49,
158, 169, 175, 186 55, 65, 67, 72, 73–77, 78, 80, 81,
Pendakur 4, 10, 15, 18, 84,
19 87–89, 91, 117, 121, 129,132,
Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani xii, 136,
112, 211 137, 141, 142, 143, 153, 154,
Pinjar xi, 59–65, 67, 70, 72–73, 162,
75–77, 163, 173, 190, 191
81, 84, 172, 211 see Amrita Remi Fournier Lanzoni 16
Pritam, Dwivedi RGV (Ram Gopal Varma)
Popular Hindi cinema 41, 43, 51, 19
52, 53,
55, 62, 63 see mainstream,
masala, Bollywood
Pratibha Advani 6–7 see Ananya
Bharati
Preity Zinta 48, 116, 169, 173
Prem Pujari 189 190
Propaganda 12
Pukar 170
Punjab/i/yat xii, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27,
48,
50, 52, 60, 61, 62, 66, 71, 77,
97,
113, 128, 130, 132, 133, 135,
137,
138, 145, 150, 186, 192

Quran 88 see Muslim, religion

Radcliffe Line 21, 24, 67 see

border
Raj Kapoor 128, 129, 130, 131,
132
Rajadhyaksha 98
Rajasthan/i 23, 24, 27, 28
Ramayana/Ramrajya 43, 122, 131
Rang De Basanti 13, 112, 123,
124,
126, 212
Rani Mukherjee 47, 116, 132
Realism 86, 88, 89, 92
Reassemblage 150
Reconciliation 141
Refugee 31, 33, 61, 72, 81,
 242 Filming the Line of
right-wing
Control ideologies 5, 6–12, Songs, music 23, 28, 41, 44, 46,
16–18, 47,
19 see BJP 50, 51, 52, 55, 62, 63, 64, 66,
Right-wing politics 5–9, 11 70,
Riot/ing 61, 78 74–75, 76, 80, 91, 101, 104,
Ritwik Ghatak xi, 96–107 see 113,
Komal Gandhar, Meghe Dhaka 115, 128, 130, 137, 139, 157,
Tara, Subarnarekha 169,
Romance xi, 23, 30, 32, 34, 137, 170, 182–83
168, Star Wars 128
170, 174 Stephen Neale 3, 5, 10, 12, 91, 95
Rustam Bharucha 157, 159, 168

Sabiha Sumar 86, 87, 89, 90, 92,

93, 95
see Khamosh Pani
Saibal Chatterjee 13, 17
Said 96
Sanjay Chaturvedi 22
Sanjay Dutt 11
Sarfarosh xii, 36, 112, 114,
115,
116–17, 163, 164, 165, 169,
170,
174, 186, 213 see Mattan
Sarhad paar 11,
213
Satyajit Ray 182
Saving Private Ryan 9
Schatz 5, 10
Sexual/ity 71, 74, 78, 88, 131,
136–37,
158, 159, 160, 161, 173
Shaheed Udham Singh 122, 213–14
Shahrukh Khan 43, 47, 55, 116,
122,
132,157, 169, 170, 171, 173,
193 see
Main Hoon Na, Veer-Zaara
Shedde 17
Sheen 133
Shishu Tirtha 106
Shiv Sena 8
Shyam Benegal 182
Sidhwa 59–61, 63–64, 67, 70, 73,
81–82
see Ice-Candy-Man
Sikh 23, 28, 48, 49, 50, 61, 65,
67, 71,
72, 73, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 82,
84,
85, 135, 161, 166
Silsila 192
 Index 243

Stereotype 73, 74, 79, 80, 91,

94, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali 36
183–84 Veer-Zaara viii, xi, xii, 42, 47–54,
116,
Subarnarekha xi, 97, 103, 104–6,
129, 130, 131, 133–35, 137–
214
39,
see Ghatak
161, 168–69, 170, 171, 172,
Sudhir Mishra 17, 18 173,
Sudip Talukdar 5, 14, 15 174, 184, 192, 216 see Yash
Sufi 50, 76, 77 Chopra, Shahrukh Khan
Sumita Chakravarty 161, 174 Vidhu Vinod Chopra 12
Suneil Shetty 23 Vietnam War 9, 96
Sunny Deol 11, 43, 93, 165, Viewers 41, 49, 52
166, 167 Vijay Anand 12
Swades 16–17, 214 see Gowarikar Violence vii, xiii, 8, 39, 42, 44, 47,
60,
Tagore 106 see Shishu Tirtha 65, 71, 72, 74, 75, 78, 80, 82,
Tamas 59, 215 83,
Tango Charlie 14, 124, 215 114, 115, 117, 122, 130,
Tere Pyar mein 183 see Pakistani 157, 158,
films Teri Yaad 179 see Pakistani 159, 161, 163, 167, 174
films Terror/ism/ist 7, 8, 30, 34, voiceover 30, 61, 142, 144, 150,
36, 43, 112, 151
113, 114, 119, 120, 132,
138, 139 Wagah border 22, 25, 48, 52, 150,
The Hero 43, 114, 119, 215 151
The Hindu 12 Waqt 129, 216
The Indian Express 12 War film 3–20, 23, 129, 38
The Other Side of Silence 59, 71 War vii, viii, 14, 15, 16, 23, 25,
see 26, 27,
Butalia 30, 35, 171, 192, 194
The Times of India 5, 11 Waris Shah 77
Water 189 see Deepa Mehta,
Trin T. Minh-Ha 150
Typical Bollywood film 12, 14,
62, 63, Xenophobia 157, 158, 159,
167,
73, 136 see masala film, genre
170, 171
Unnithan 7, 16
Yash Chopra viii, 128, 129, 131,
Upkar viii, 216 133,
135, 169, 184
Vande Matram 11 Yashraj Films
Variety 12 13
Vasudevan 111 Yogesh Oza 15

Zakhm 193
Zavattini 86
Zia 87, 89, 92
Zohra Sehgal 48