A frantic Amaan rushing towards safety, followed by a blood-thirsty group of rioters, hauled into a speeding car by Murad Khan – a poignant and chilling sequence that captures the essence of Khalid Mohammad’s Fiza, arguably one of the finest films produced by the Indian film industry on the construction of the Muslim identity and terrorism. The fact that following the rescue by Khan Amaan decides to immerse his grief in the humbling stench of burning gunpowder and picks up the gun to avenge his humiliation completes the story of Fiza. The young man sucked into the vortex of terrorism, then trains against a backdrop of fire and grime, only to finish with a bullet in his heart, shot by his self-righteous sister who cannot bear to see her only brother going the wrong way.
After Fiza, in the same year came another Muslim-terrorism flick aptly named Mission Kashmir. Here the allegory focuses on the Muslim’s proclivity to turn anti-national at the first given chance. The protagonist, Altaaf – a wayward Kashmiri youth – trained in Pakistan and crossing over into Indian territory is a sad caricature of an infection attacking the secure body politic of the country – an indistinguishable element of the discourse of terrorism in India. The elimination of Altaaf is akin to cleansing the Indian ethos of all anomalies and inconsistencies propagated by one community alone – the Muslim. The Indian national and the Muslim terrorist represented by Altaaf are locked in a conflict of identities.
Both these films, and John Matthew Matthan’s Aamir Khan starrer Sarfarosh could be termed as the neo-patriotic genre of films that took the industry by storm in the early years of this millennium. They not only represent the growing Hinduization of Indian cinema but also the upper caste tilt that all these films acquired perhaps with the exception of Mission Kashmir in which director-producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra was considerate enough to hand the mantle of the ‘good’ Indian to a Muslim character played by Sanjay Dutt who battles the ‘bad’ Pakistan-trained Muslim youth Altaaf.
This essay would try and bifurcate the essential elements of both Fiza and Mission Kashmir that identify the Muslim as a treacherous and murderous individual creating a false stereotype for the consumption of the masses, a good number of whom have a tendency to move toward Hindu nationalist formations. Cinema has the capacity to mould and fashion stereotypes like no other medium. The construction of the Muslim as a monster has proved to be ominous for the societal fabric that has been torn asunder by frequent conflicts between the Hindu and the Muslim communities, the former harbouring a stereotype about the latter perceptibly created by films like Roja, Fiza and Mission Kashmir.
As Neera Chandhoke (Chandhoke, 1999, 2) notes in her works, the current debate around secularism in India has been sparked off by two explosive political trends: first, the recurrence of communal riots between the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority; and second, the rise and consolidation of what has been referred to as majority fundamentalism or hindutva. Glossing the ideology of hindutva, Chandhoke argues: ‘Cast in the mould of cultural nationalism, majoritarianism calls for the erasure of all specific identities and demands the constitution of a culturally homogeneous nation. And this is cause for concern, for cultural or organic nationalism, as history shows us, is constructed on a ritualized and systematic suspicion of strangers (i.e. minority groups) upon the privileging of one ethnic, linguistic or religious community, and on calls to exterminate ‘impurities' in the organic nation. In India, the project of hindutva does all this. It appeals to the mythic unity of the Hindu people, invokes an ahistorical version of a glorious Hindu past, disparages minority identities, and demands conformity and homogeneity in order to accomplish two tasks’ (Chandhoke, 1999, 9).
According to Chandhoke, the first project of hindutva is to establish the identity of the nation on the basis of a narrow definition of Hinduism; as BJP strongman L. K. Advani put it, ‘ India is essentially a Hindu country. My party emphasizes that India is one nation and not a multinational state’ (Chandhoke, 1999, 10). The second project of hindutva is the systematic and insistent denigration of minority communities. ‘In a tenacious, ordered, and subversive mode, the votaries of hindutva cast suspicion on the moods and motivation of the community against which hindutva is largely defining itself – the Muslims (and now Christians)’ (Chandhoke, 1999, 10).
Contemporary representations of Muslims in Hindi films position specific cultural and religious identities as both necessary and intolerable to the security of the Indian nation. The figures of the radically alienated Muslim, juxtaposed with the patriotic Muslim and Christian citizen, and the dominant, often unmarked Hindu show how difference is crucial to the stability of the Indian nation – but not excessive difference: the militant Muslim is the figure of an intolerable difference (Rai, Summer 2003, 3).
Knitting together the question of community identity to broader economic processes, Arvind Rajgopal has recently argued that negotiating the tensions between national allegiance and other, more local forms of identity becomes increasingly important with the progress of globalization (Rajagopal, March 2001, 273-282). These tensions stem from the resilience of ‘community’ as a locus of affiliation, one that resists the homogenizing impetus of capital by acting as a site of historic memory and a resource for alternative futures. As Rajgopal states, ‘The kinds of rights asserted here are distinct from the chiefly individual character of the rights sought [after] and contested in western society. Classical liberal theory is unable to recognize communities as political actors . . . rendering it incapable of coming to terms with the kinds of developments witnessed in the contemporary world.’
The use of cinema as a means of political mobilisation has long been acknowledged in the West, with the propaganda genre coming into existence before the Second World War and employed with maximum force during that war by both sides to discredit each other (Shukla, 2005). However, its possibility, in explicit terms, in Indian cinema, was never recognised, until recently, because of its rejection, by the critics, as a serious and meaningful medium. Kitsch, melodramatic, repetitive in its themes, Hindi cinema was relegated only to be a mode of popular entertainment. Indian film historian M Madhava Prasad (Prasad, 1998) writes of Indian Cinema as a not-yet-cinema, a bastard institution in which the mere ghost of technology is employed for the purposes inimical to its historic essence. Indeed, Indian films have always been studied for their lack of realism and multiplicity of melodramatic emotions, jovial endings, chance meetings, supernatural interventions, songs and dances.
All criticisms withstanding, it cannot be denied that cinema in India is extremely popular and ubiquitous in nature, which is made apparent, through the music that is played in people's homes, through the clothes worn on streets, weddings or social gatherings, as well as on the hoardings and the posters in the streets, on the magazines, on television and on the internet. Cinema permeates every aspect of Indian culture and is a part of everyday life, part of its habit and speech, dress and manners, background and foreground.
The Muslim as Traitor
One of the most mischievous and dangerous myths that have been actively engendered in India in recent decades is that the Muslim community as a whole is implacably violent, communal, terrorist and anti-national (Mander, 2004). It matters little that the ground realities are painfully different, of a minority community struggling against great odds, battling poverty, unemployment and discrimination, yet inextricably enmeshed in the pluralist socio-economic, cultural and political fabric of the land. The systematically demonised image of the Indian Muslim as jihadi and treacherous has been used as a stunningly effective instrument to manufacture hatred and consolidate the political support of increasing segments of the majority community, by creating and constantly fanning their insecurities. As these poisons of hatred and mistrust seep into more and more hearts, the Muslim community finds itself under siege, alienated, impoverished and in despair. This demonised representation of the Indian Muslim has been aided not just by deliberately distorted textbooks, but also by popular modes of communication, especially cinema. It is not by mere chance that in most Hindi films in recent times, Muslim characters appear mainly as anti-national terrorists, or violent members of the criminal underground.There is peril enough to pluralism truth and justice when these false and inflammatory stereotypes are deliberately fostered by mainstream film directors like Govind Nihalani co-writes and directs Dev, a film that powerfully reinforces each of these stereotypes and what is worse, lends to them a spurious authenticity. In the opening sequences of Govind Nihalini's recently released film, Dev, the lead protagonist, portrayed as a noble, large-hearted and resolutely impartial police officer, sets the tone by advising a delegation from the Muslim community to control madaris, which he alleges teach their students secession and jihad. Most independent investigation maintains the contrary, that whereas the majority of madaris focus far more as religious teaching than modern education, very few propagate violence, treachery or hatred. The film on the other hand, makes no comment on the web of schools fostered by the Sangh Pariwar, especially in rural and tribal regions, that actively foment hatred against minorities. The same police officer, who declares that for him the Constitution of India is his sacred Geeta, condones a police encounter of a kind that continues to recur, most recently in the Ishrat Jahan tragedy, in which an alleged terrorist is gunned down by the police in his home along with wife and infant child. The police officer’s own son is also depicted to have been killed earlier by Muslim terrorists. Nihalini claimed in many interviews that his film was inspired by recent communal events in Gujarat. However actually at every stage, he twists and distorts contemporary history. A large body of independent citizens reports by several of the most credible activists and jurists of India have established that the Gujarat carnage was planned over a considerable period of time by organizations of the Sangh Parivar, with tacit support of the state government. Instead the only build-up to the mass brutality that Nihalini depicts through almost one half of the film is of unscrupulous and manipulative Muslim politicians fostering disaffection and terrorism, leading eventually to the gruesome tragedy. The flashpoint for the carnage in the film, the parallel to the Godhra train incident, the tragic precursor to the communal frenzy that engulfed the north-western state of Gujarat in early 2002, is depicted to be a bomb blast at a Hindu place of worship, killing children and women. Nowhere does Nihalini acknowledge the doubts about how the Godhra train tragedy actually occurred. What is far worse, reminiscent of both Modi and Vajpayee, the large hearted police officer reminds an angry and disillusioned Muslim youth that it was this act of terrorist violence that led to the subsequent communal conflagration. The film fortunately acknowledges that the Chief Minister and senior police officials enabled the mass violence to continue unchecked by wantonly refusing to apply force to control the marauding mobs. However, nowhere is it acknowledged that this was a one sided genocide, targeting almost exclusively the Muslim community. Instead, violence is portrayed from both sides of the communal divide, and not surprisingly the first stone is shown as being cast by the Muslims. It is claimed that five times more Hindus died in police firings than Muslims. Innumerable enquiry commissions have established the reverse, that 70 per cent of people killed by police in police firings are Muslims.Even in the subsequent subversion of the justice system, with parallels to terrorizing of a Zahira Sheikh to not to file her FIR or the first information report and give evidence against the assailants, nowhere is guilt apportioned by Nihalini to the state government. Instead, once again it is the power hungry Muslim politician who pressurizes his own community to keep silent. Nihalini uses the device of ideological debates between two friends, both senior police officers, to examine the causes of communal violence in India. The communal police officer, unrepentant to the end, repeatedly labels Muslims as a 'traitor community' and his comments were received with stray applause in the cinema theatres. Opposition to his views by the principled police officer was muted, with reference to the legal and moral duties of the police officer, never to the fascistic mobilization and impact of Hindu communalism. The film redeems itself belatedly in the closing sequences in which the protagonist courageously defies illegal orders not to use force, and also compassionately gives refuge to a Muslim youth who is alienated and disaffected. To him he says, 'One dies the day that one witnesses injustice and yet does not speak out.'
The constant ‘Other’The careful construction of the Muslim as a traitor and a terrorist lends itself to use within the ambit of India-Pakistan relations. As Gaston Roberge writes, 'History of whatever type is always a vision that bears on the present' (Roberge, 1985, 133). This is particularly true of present relations between India and Pakistan, because they share a common history, especially the history of partition, which not only marked the birth of two separate nations, but, also of the hostilities between the two. Roberge continues, 'Cinema is the great interpreter of the past and constantly programmes the memory of its audience.' Thus, the way partition is remembered in Indian cinema certainly bears upon present attitudes towards Pakistan. The first visual reconstructions of the partition, besides documentaries on television were made by films like the Train to Pakistan, Gadar and 1947 Earth.
Partition and the other events of that period are still being reconstructed through the interpretation of events, sequences, causes and effects. The partition as an event in almost all its cinematic constructions has been portrayed as having two essential features; firstly it was purely a result of the demands of the Muslim League. Secondly, while accepting partition as a sad memory, India has moved on; Pakistan hasn't. Both premises are arguable, and are constructions of just a single perspective. It is these myths that the films now are reinforcing.
Isakaason and Furhammar argue, 'reality is rich enough to provide authentic material for the most disparate interpretations' (Furhammar and Isaksson, 1971, 168). It is just that these films represent only one perspective, which bars a proper understanding of partition and other historical events.
The second premise, that India has moved on although quite accurate, often skips over the reasons for this. It was easy for India to do this compared to Pakistan, because not only did it inherit the majority of resources of the erstwhile British Raj, it also established satisfactory terms by force, as in the state of Hyderabad and in Kashmir, where Nehru got the Maharaja to sign the instrument of access as a condition for military support from India. Pakistan did not have any such neat conclusions to the partition saga. Not only did it struggle with state building with the meagre resources it had, but also its claim to Kashmir, which was ordered by the UN to be put to a referendum was never respected by India. None of this is ever showed in any of the films.
Therefore history has been constructed on the cinema screen through the portrayal of certain selective events. Even if cinema is not the major source of information about history, it definitely influences its audience's perceptions of partition with this single and selective perspective. The second influence that these films can have is on the psychological health of the country. Isakaason and Furhammar write that ultimately propaganda is aided by man's underlying psychological need for moral value judgements in simple black-and-white terms. This need is most apparent in attitudes to political issues which are too complex and too momentous for most people's psychological resources, and which can only be coped with on a much simplified, ritual level.
This need is also apparent equally for complex cross-national issues, of which India has many. The issue of Kashmir itself is quite complicated and has been often simplified in black and white terms: Pakistan claiming it because it is a Muslim majority state, and India insisting on its right based on the Maharaja's instrument of accession. Within these black and white terms, the issue of Kashmiri independence, the involvement of foreign mercenaries and the UN's call for a referendum have been overlooked. These simplifications are reflected Indian films. Thus, most films portray one singular and simple version of India's righteous claim to Kashmir, Pakistan's meddling in the state's affairs and young Kashmiris being misguided.
Thus, the complex issue of Kashmir becomes simple, events like the Kargil war understandable and the Indian army's actions justifiable. These films, therefore, not only provide entertainment, they also satisfy the audience's moral and political desires by providing a tool to makes sense of what is going on and understand the actions of the governments of the two countries.
In the films of the India-Pakistan genre, then, Indians are peace loving, responsible and take a paternal attitude to the actions of an irresponsible, fundamentalist and tactless Pakistan. Thus, the films keep us happy by providing visual pleasures along with psychological satisfaction. This imagery of India versus Pakistan also helps to define India itself. For an ethnically diverse country like India, the lines of the nation do not neatly map on to its territorial borders. It is under such circumstances that the state has to use cultural instruments to symbolise an all-encompassing Indian nation above the linguistic, religious and racial differences.
To the traditional paraphernalia, the national flag, patriotic songs etc., Sumita S. Chakravarty adds the Bombay films, as they also do the ideological work of re-affirming the nation (Chakravarty, 2000, 233). Almost every film in the genre puts forward an idea of India that is deemed acceptable, normal and defines an essential 'Indianness'. Writing on the images of terrorism on Indian cinema, Chakravarty argues: ‘For while it is true that the films under consideration posit Indian terrorism as a futile exercise and show the inherent recuperability of the terrorist, they also refashion the nation-space itself into a liminal space of dreaming.’
Likewise, the films of the India-Pakistan genre, while reflecting upon the essential pointlessness of any of Pakistan's claims, generate a sense of an acceptable national ideology of what constitutes India and its priorities. We can draw a bit from each film and constitute this idea of India. For example, below we take a few dialogues from various films and see how those words sketch some aspects of an acceptable Indian identity (Shukla, 2005).
Maa Tujhe Salaam - Hum jiyo aur jeeno do ke sidhant par chalne waale log hain….Naa hum pehel karte hain, na karenge. (We believe in the principle of 'live and let live'. We have never made the first attack, nor, we ever will.) The Indian is thus portrayed as peaceful by nature.
Gadar - Is mulq se jyada Musalman Hindustan mein hain….aur unke dil hamesha yahi kehta hain,'Hindustan zindabad'. (There are more Muslims in India than this country. Their hearts always say, 'Long Live India'.) The Indian is secular and tolerant.
Pukar - …jung ka ailaan karo…saat din kah khel hai saat din ka. Aathwe din tumhare mulq ka naamo nishan iss duniya se mita denge. (Come on, declare a war!... It is all then a matter of seven days. On the eighth day, we would destroy your country from the face of this earth.) The Indian is a symbol of power and strength.
These portrayals of the nation provide for a common identification with the nation, which is an essential prerequisite for the maintenance of the nation state's unity. This is probably the reason why the problems of Hindu Muslim relations have always been omitted from any film that deals with India-Pakistan relations. While portraying traditional rivalry, there is an essential assumption of Hindu Muslim unity within India.
All this reinforces cultural hegemony, the process by which the audience and thus the people at large are persuaded to acquiesce to a given set of policies, rules, strategies or political consensus. Thus, the media can not only make people identify with certain notions of the Indian state as discussed above, but through the assertion and reassertion of these notions, persuade them to agree over policies, methods and strategies that the Indian state seeks to employ against Pakistan.
Many more films of the same theme have been released, flouting all rules of balanced portrayals. Lakshya (Aim) 2004 (directed by Farhan Akhtar), LoC Kargil 2004 (directed by J P Dutta), Deewar (Wall) 2004 (directed by Milan Luthria), Zameen (Land) 2003 (directed by Rohit Shetty), and Main Hoo Na (I am there) 2004 (directed by choreographer-turned-filmmaker Farha Khan), of which only Main Hoo Na portrayed Pakistan in a positive light, probably because it was released in a phase when India-Pakistan relations had cooled down to a great extent. Since then, here have been friendly initiatives between the two countries like the cricket matches, medical exchanges, release of prisoners of war etc. But, the important point is not whether Pakistan is being portrayed in a negative or a positive light, but that the films in India have come to speak of or influence the political mindset. While this phenomenon has long been acknowledged in the West, primarily due to the Hollywood's propaganda movies of the Second World War, its rise in South Asia is not only discernible, but as we witnessed, alarming.
Fiza: The oft-repeated story of the Muslim jihadi
In Fiza, the closely connected lives of a lower-middle class Muslim family are torn apart by the communal riots that devastated Mumbai in 1993. Widow Nishatbi Ikramullah (Jaya Bachchan) and her daughter Fiza (Karishma Kapoor) witness a Hindu mob attack the son Amaan (Hrithik Roshan) and murder his friends. In the narrative, the memory of the communal riots returns explicitly at least three times: in Fiza's initial narration, in Inspector Shingle's recounting – Shingle, the police inspector, reminds Amaan that since he is a Muslim he should go away to Pakistan and not make the Indian police look after Muslims like him.
It is through Amaan's narrative that we learn how he survived the riots by killing three men, and how he found what Saskia Sassen has called an ‘alternative circuit of survival’ by joining the jihad.
Amaan is recruited by Murad Khan (Manoj Bajpayi), the leader of the militant group struggling against, he claims, both Hindu and Muslim ‘tyranny, injustice and hatred.’ Khan teaches Amaan that far from a life of dignity, a dignified death is not even possible under the current system. The last retelling, filling in the little mysteries of Amaan's flight and Fiza's search, does not serve to suture the narrative, but opens the story to the new traumas that will be visited on the Ikramullah family as Amaan turns more and more to terrorist activities.
About the Mumbai riots, Amaan says to Fiza, ‘Everyone knew what was happening in that city, which everyone calls the most modern. How people were being massacred, how in the name of TADA [Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act] 20 women and old people were being molested and harassed.’ It is as if the horror of the event expands each time, until finally we understand that although still living, Amaan is in some fundamental way already dead. As he says in his final speech, just before he asks his sister to shoot him, ‘I died a long time ago on the streets of Mumbai.’ Amaan ostensibly is a subject haunted by his own ghost.
Trauma sets up the central problem that will be resolved through narrative, a resolution that reconstitutes the nation in the figure of the individualized and domesticated protagonist. In the climax of Fiza, we can see this resolution and reconstitution taking shape through the charged dialogue between brother and sister, Amaan and Fiza. Murad Khan, the militant commander, decides that two Hindu and Muslim political leaders (Singh and Syed) who try to suppress enquiry into the riots must be killed in order to prevent a Muslim-supported, Hindu-dominated coalition government. Khan chooses Amaan for the mission. Amaan trains his body and then kills the two leaders.
But Murad Khan never intended that he survive: as chaos once again engulfs Mumbai, Khan orders his men to kill Amaan. Instead, Amaan kills them. In the last scene of the film, with the police chasing him, Fiza confronts her brother (Rai, Summer 2003, 3).
Fiza: Throw the rifle away, Amaan.
Amaan: What will happen then? Another will pick it up.
F: So much hatred, Amaan? Forget all this. There is still time.
A: This is not hatred. It is a voice raised against hatred. They call those who die fighting in jihad martyrs [shaheed].
F: Jihad means a fight for truth, and the truth is that we are of this country and will remain part of it. Where is it written in the Koran that to win your point you must spill blood? What kind of warrior [mujahid] are you that you can't accept this fact? Right yourself, Amaan. Accept it. Look, only what is right will prevail.
A: What is right? What happened to me six years ago, was that right? Are these Singh and Syed people right? If they wanted to, they could fix all this. But they don't do that. They have power, but with that power they pit us against each other. Separate us from each other so they can retain their own seats of power. If such people are right then I have done no wrong. I am pure [pak]. I didn't take up this rifle as a hobby. It just came to me through a line of fate in my hand.
As the police take their position against Amaan, he begs his sister to shoot him, saying, ‘I died a long time ago on the streets of Mumbai. Let me die with honour.’ Fiza pulls the trigger. In this complex and heart-rending climax, Fiza stands for the assimilated Muslim and Amaan for that trajectory beyond the pale of normality. In their dialogue, honour can be taken ironically to mean both living by the duties of the proper minority citizen and dying with the cry of those who will never be allowed into the nation.
Bollywood’s Mission in Kashmir
Similarly, in Mission Kashmir, the drama centres on the possibility of Muslims being included in the nation. Inspector of Police Inayat Khan (Sanjay Dutt) seeks vengeance for the death of his son, who died due to circumstances arising from a fatwa issued by Islamic militants. Marshalling his police force, he dons the black mask of the militants and let’s loose a hail of bullets that not only kills the militants, but an innocent Muslim family as well. This killing, reminiscent of so much police repression and outright assassination of innocent Muslim peoples, forms the trauma that will return and expand through the narrative.
The only survivor of Khan's killing spree is a twelve-year-old boy, Altaaf, who before fainting from terror glimpses Khan's eyes behind the mask. Altaaf's nightmares keep the past present, as if Khan's eyes were keeping watch over a memory that can only be presented through fragments and repetition.
Trauma gives birth to a character that conflates the present with the past. In one nightmare, Altaaf (now the grown up Hrithik Roshan) blurs the object of his desire, his childhood sweetheart Sufi (Preity Zinta), with the memory of his foster mother, Neelima. In this scene, a dream sequence of the adult Altaaf, a certain struggle over Islam is at stake.
Altaaf: Why did you hang up on me, Sufi?
Sufi: I don't want to speak with you.
A: And so you put a picture of me on TV to get me killed?
S: What of all the people you've killed?
A: Sufi, why don't you understand? I'm doing all this for my religion.
S: I'm a Muslim, too. Islam doesn't permit the murder of innocent people. You're only taking revenge for your parents' death, Altaaf.
[As she walks away, he screams her name, demanding she stop; finally, he shoots her. When he turns her body over, he finds it is Neelima Khan.]
In this dream sequence, the loss of Altaaf's childhood love Sufi not only blurs with a subliminal desire for his foster-mother, but also foreshadows the moment when Altaaf accidentally kills Neelima. In a plot to avenge the murder of his family, Altaaf plants a bomb to destroy Inspector Khan, but it kills Neelima instead. Here, as in other cine-patriotic films, the memory of trauma functions to link the subject beyond the law of the nation to the sentimentalized ties of kinship, and then to rupture those very ties through the fragmentation of narrative.
Inspector Khan and his police force track down the Afghan mujahid, Hilal Kohistani, just in time to discover the real meaning of Mission Kashmir. The militants plan to blow up Hazratbal Masjid – a grand Muslim pilgrim site in Kashmir that houses strands of the Prophet’s hair – and the Shankaracharya Temple – a thronging Hindu religious site, and a pre-produced video tape will fix the blame on Hindu soldiers with the ultimate aim of inciting communal riots throughout India. In the climactic fight scene, Inspector Khan, the man who killed Altaaf's family, convinces Altaaf of the sinister plan.
Altaaf remembers his foster mother's words of love. She had said, ‘In reality, this war is not between you and Khan-saab. On one side is love [mohabbat], on the other side hatred [nafrat]. On one side is compassion [insaniyat] on the other side brutality. Between innocence and guilt, good and evil, and humanity [insaniyat] and bestiality [haivaniat]. What will remain of Kashmir – this is what you, only you have to decide. So think very carefully before firing that gun, Alaaf.’ As if suddenly humanized, Altaaf shoots Kohistani and foils the terrorist plot.
The movie ends with Altaaf, Inspector Khan (who now serves as his re-claimed foster parent) and Sufi reunited and at home. Thus, the trauma that haunted Altaaf is displaced and resolved through the elimination of Kohistani and the integration of a chastened, repatriated Altaaf into a new family structure. We must note the specific role of women, domesticity and humanization through memory and flashback that marks this genre of Hindi film. In a crucial sense, without the figure of Sufi and the memory of Neelima, Altaaf would be lost to the forces of evil.
In Sarfarosh, we find a similar problem and an analogous resolution. The narrative is launched through a trauma of familial violence. The patriarch of an extended Hindu family, on his way to give evidence against atankvadis or ‘terrorists’ is abducted, and the older son is killed. Ajay, the younger son, witnesses it all. The father is tortured and then returned to the family, incapacitated for life.
The complex narrative follows Ajay as he joins the Indian Police Service bureaucracy and goes on to become a feared officer who tortures suspected criminals. Finally, we see Ajay avenge the death of his brother and the maiming of his father by displacing the trauma onto the doomed terrorist Gulfam Hasan, a Pakistani agent posing as an entertainer, who smuggles arms into India trying to foment insurrection. The movie ends with Ajay promising his college sweetheart, Seema, that he'll be home for dinner as soon as he apprehends another insurgent criminal with his Muslim subaltern sidekick, Salim. It is imperative to suggest that all these narratives resolve the individualized memory of collective trauma in terms of the success (Ajay and Salim in Sarfarosh, and Inspector Khan and Altaaf in Mission Kashmir ) or failure (Amaan in Fiza) of reintegrating the liminal subject in the national family (where the family stands in for the nation).
What is also important about these Hindi films is that they show the forces of justice and humanity already blurring into the violence of injustice and inhumanity. As if a breach or gap had opened in the national imaginary, trauma allows for the emergence of a monster, fully formed and ‘incorrigible,’ one whose implacable cruelty will be pitted against all the forces of humanity and justice that the state represents. Indeed, both Inayat Khan, the Muslim Inspector General of Police in Mission Kashmir, and Ajay Rathod, the Assistant Commissioner of Police in Sarfarosh, resort directly to tactics that would otherwise be called terrorist, while Inspector Shingle in Fiza could rightly be said to embody the stereotype of the corrupt and communal cop.
The state thus matches its terrorist double in terms of brutal violence. In that sense we can see that violence is not what separates the state from its other: the means are the same, but the ends (national unity vs. fundamentalist fragmentation) differ. For instance, in Sarfarosh, we see the routine brutality and corruption that mark Ajay's ascent into police stardom. Moreover, in Mission Kashmir, two sequences show an enraged Inspector Khan who resorts to outright assassination after the loss of family members – first his son and then his wife.
In Fiza, however, the critique of the state and the critique of Islamic militancy are tied together in far more explicit ways. Thus, the opportunistic betrayals of elite leaders such as Singh and Syed only mirror the tactics of Murad Khan, the militant leader who draws Amaan into terrorism. Meanwhile corruption, communalism or simple incompetence implicates Inspector Shingle and the Mumbai police in a kind of self-interested passivity. In this example, we can see how even as the monster is severely marginalized, Shingle and Khan present equally moribund options for both Amaan and Fiza.
Hindi cinema thus weaves an image, which coincides a great deal with the construction of the Muslim by Hindu nationalist forces in India. Protagonists like Amaan and Altaf are summarily conflated with the ordinary Muslim on the streets of Delhi or Mumbai, being perceived as a traitor and a terrorist by ordinary Hindus because a certain film portrayed the Muslim as such. The way in which the Muslim is treated in the films makes a quick and lasting impression, creating a jingoist nationalist edifice that finds expression in frequent bouts of communal terror (such as in Gujarat), pushing the community further towards the peripheral margins of Indian society.
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