Bollywood After 9/11 - The Depiction of Islam and the West in Indian Cinema

Since the dramatic activities of 9/11, Bollywood cinema has shown an unusual interest in the terrorist film style, mainly with regards to worldwide terrorism and international tensions between Islam and the West. Striking examples of this style include Kabir Khan's New York (2008), Karan Johar's My Name is Khan (2010), Rensil D'Silva's Kurbaan (2009) and Apoorva Lakhia's Mission Istanbul, to name some. Films like Anil Sharma's Ab Tumhare Hawale Watam Sathiyo (2004) and Subhash Ghai's Black and White (2008) focus on terrorist problems inside the Indian subcontinent itself. The latter films have endured within the lifestyle of pre Sep 11 terrorist films like Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Mission Kashmir (2000), Mani Ratnam's Dil Se (1998) and Bombay (1995). Ratnam's Bombay treated the devastating Hindu and Moslem riots in 1991, which cost over a a thousand lives. Chopra's Mission Kashmir treated a scenario of nearby terrorist interest in the Kashmir location subsidized through worldwide terrorist cells working from Afghanistan. In this manner the terrorist style isn't a wholly new genre in Bollywood, nor is terrorism an surprising phenomenon within the day after day activities of the Indian subcontinent (the most latest and brutal terrorist attack was the Mumbai massacre in 2008). What makes the latest spate of terrorist movies interesting is that they have got entered the worldwide sphere and have turn out to be element and parcel of a transnational communicate between East and West and Islam and the other.

To make the terrorist genre greater palatable, Bollywood has traditionally spiced up the violence and suspense with the hallmark Bollywood song and dance interludes and nostalgic romantic exchanges between the hero and heroine. Mission Kashmir is notorious for its graceful dances and stirring emotional exchanges between the principle protagonists, played out on the violent backdrop of terrorism in Kashmir. Mani Ratnam's Bombay likewise mixes up the maximum brutal scenes of Hindu and Moslem hatred and violence with scrumptious comedy and a forbidden love affair among a pious Moslem female and a boy from a exceptionally located Shaivite Hindu family. His father is the trustee of the village temple and each the own family patriarchs are violently opposed to the youngsters marrying out of doors their caste and spiritual community.

Karan Johar's My Name is Khan

Following within the Bollywood culture of blending genres (known within the industry because the masala or highly spiced recipe movie), Karan Johar's My Name is Khan blends comedy and romance with the political hot potato of put up 11th of September bigotry and racial hatred within the US. The film's theme of extremely-nationalist extremism culminates in the senseless killing of a young Indian boy Sam or Sameer, who is crushed to dying by youths within the football floor, in element due to the adopting of his stepfather's call Khan. Overflowing gushes of emotion and heart stirring romantic songs, consisting of the combination of the 1960's counter culture anthem "We Shall Overcome" (sung in each Hindi and English), occur in the course of the movie to each lighten the anxiety and to exemplify the presence of light and wish in a world darkened by way of the bitter shadow of worldwide terrorism. The truth that the valuable protagonist Rizvan Khan is a pious Moslem, and politically impartial to the hysteria of the talk, is sizable. Brought up via his mother that there are not any constant labels which include Hindu and Moslem, however simplest right and awful human beings, Rizvan Khan freely practises his religion with identical love and recognize for all other races and creeds, most effective differentiating between what's in the hearts and minds of humans, no longer to what faith they profess, or to what race, tradition and nationality they belong.

My Name is Khan is likewise sizable for Bollywood enthusiasts in that it reunites the most important heart throb couple of Hindi cinema from preceding decades, Kajol and Shah Rukh Khan. The duo changed into previously paired in two of Karan Johar's in advance blockbusters Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1995) and Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham (2001). Both of these films had been sentimental gushy romances, literally overflowing with juicy outpourings of emotion and feeling; a phenomenon that's termed rasa in India. The tune and dance sequences had been also very elaborately staged and blended a balance of the conventional Indian song and dance paperwork (Hindustani track and conventional people dances) as well as modern Western forms. This ensured the movies' mammoth recognition in both India and diaspora countries like Canada, america and the UK.

Karan Johar maintains to utilise the Bollywood masala formulation in My Name is Khan, exploiting a sentimental and now and again drawn out love affair between the autistic hero Rizvan Khan and his eventual Hindu wife Mandira, a proprietor of a a hit hair dressing salon in San Francisco (the "city of affection" which symbolizes the Sixties counter culture motion exploited via Johar inside the "We Shall Overcome" sequence). In the initial scenes of the movie, America is portrayed as the land of freedom and opportunity, the nation in which all races and religions are given the possibility to transport forward and acquire prosperity and happiness in a manner that is seen to be almost not possible in a rustic like traditional India, buffeted as it's far with caste and religious prejudices and between half and two thirds of its population residing in poverty.

For foreign nationals or NRI's (non-resident Indians), but, Sep 11 radically changes this components and shatters the American dream nurtured for many years by means of an Indian diaspora which has merged its Indian cultural roots with American beliefs of character freedom and customer prosperity. According to Johar's movie, that is now the plight of the Khans who, in preference to persevering with to act as absolutely integrated members of the mainstream network, now suddenly discover themselves on the outer edge of a publish-11th of September"us and them" rhetoric, fuelled through an ultra-nationalist Republican President, who perceives the world in black and white realities, that have little to do with the everyday lives of the common man or woman. It is not any accident that it's miles the newly elected President Barack Obama (played by his appearance alike Christopher B. Duncan) who greets Rizvan Khan at the end of the film and applauds him for his faith in God and his humanity and perseverance. For Karan Johar, Obama's election is symbolic of the "us and them" divisions in the US psyche being introduced to a near in conjunction with the healing of the innate ideals for which the American Republic and its human beings stand.

Before the kingdom's divisions are healed, however, the Khan's enjoy intense private hardships because of their ethnicity. These hardships culminate within the tragic death in their teenage son Sameer, beaten to dying in the college gambling discipline with the aid of racist youths. In her grief, Sameer's mother Mandira blames her husband Rizvan, accusing him of the fact that if she and her son had not taken the name of Khan, he would no longer be dead. She then tells him that the handiest way he can make amends for this stigma of being a Khan and, by using implication a Moslem, is to fulfill the United States President (at the time it's miles George W. Bush) and to inform him that: "My Name is Khan and I am now not a Terrorist." This simple word becomes a type of mantra at some stage in the movie, powerfully confronting the viewer's publish-9-11 prejudices with the aid of refusing to hyperlink the two principles of Islam and terrorism collectively: i.E. My name is Khan, therefore I am a Moslem, however at the equal time just because I am a Moslem, does this mean that I am a terrorist? Unhappily, at some point of the hysteria that accompanied within the wake of 11th of September for plenty Westerners the two terms, Moslem and terrorist became pretty a good deal synonymous.

This is a movie therefore which, in contrast to its predecessors, isn't most effective geared toward teaching Indians and West Asians (it broke all data in Pakistan), however is likewise aimed at instructing and enlightening Westerners. This it does in a totally subtle and didactic way, not most effective via its exploitation of familiar West Asian icons, but additionally thru its exploration of subject matters and images frequent to the United States and the West: the 1960s counter tradition, the plight of the coloured people inside the South and references to the civil rights movement through the movie's theme track "We Shall Overcome." This well-known anti-status quo track from Nineteen Sixties while sung in Hindi with the aid of a devout Moslem in a black gospel church offers the audience an almost surreal feeling of both merging and, on the equal time transcending, national, racial and socio-spiritual cultural borders: a route to global brotherhood and harmony which has been courageously expounded via  of the 20th century's fantastic non secular leaders, India's Mahatma Gandhi and America's Martin Luther King.

Karan Johar accordingly attracts upon both the Western beliefs of liberty and individualism, as well as propounding the roots of West Asian non secular piety and communal cohesion. By doing this My Name is Khan proposes an exchange model of global brotherhood and transnational identities and exchanges. This new global version for Johar is one that attracts its notion and ideals from the grass roots level- from the terrible coloureds of Georgia, from the socially ostracised Moslems, and from the autistic and mentally handicapped. All of them are an crucial part of this global humanity and in the long run the determine of Shah Rukh Khan, the most important celebrity inside the global forum these days (including Hollywood), speaks for all of them, whilst he says my name is Khan and I am not a terrorist, not an outcaste and not a risk to the United States or the important values which it seeks to export to the relaxation of the world. Rather, as pious Moslems, the ones like Rizvan Khan have something of value to make a contribution to the USA and the West, and when the ones in energy allow them to accomplish that, the critical values that have made the United States first-rate can't most effective be maintained but elevated and broadened. On the alternative hand, ultranationalist extremist practises will best create more and more hatred and department, so that even the ones who have assimilated the American Dream will develop to come to be its most sworn enemies. This is the main topic of Kabir Khan's New York, which I will in brief discuss in component two of this text.

Kabir Khan's New York

Although no longer as a hit on the box workplace as Karan Johar's blockbuster, Kabir Khan's New York is perhaps a good greater thrilling instance of the transnational fashion within the Bollywood terrorist genre. Released in 2008, New York makes a speciality of the lives of 3 state-of-the-art young Indians studying at New York State University together. The standard Bollywood masala romance dominates the first half of of the movie, focusing on a sentimental love triangle among Maya (Katrina Kaif), Sameer or Sam (John Abrahams) and Omar (Neil Mukesh). Both Katrina Kaif and John Abrahams, as well as Irrfan Khan (playing the FBi agent Roshan) are properly hooked up stars in Bollywood (Irrfan Khan additionally starred as the policeman who interrogates the principle protagonist in Slumdog Millionaire). And the presence of these stars, in conjunction with the solid musical rating and the dramatic love triangle state of affairs, assured the film's fulfillment despite its debatable subject matter. Significantly, Sam and Maya fall in love and shatter Omar's emotional world at across the same time as the two hijacked passenger planes are driven into the Twin Towers. As with My Name is Khan, actual footage of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre is utilised within the movie.

From this point onwards, a movie which has been primarily focused upon a sentimental love struggle between three pals now turns into a political indictment of the Bush administration's publish-11th of September terrorist regulations. Sam, as a part of the FBI's national hunt for terror suspects, is arrested, incarcerated and tortured. These tortures are graphically depicted in the movie and are apparently based totally on proper existence accounts of harmless sufferers, who've been illegally arrested and incarcerated for no other reason than their having the wrong ethnic heritage and spiritual persuasion. During the very last credits a grim be aware to this effect informs the viewers of the information that: "In the days following 9/11 greater than 1200 guys of foreign beginning inside the US had been illegally kidnapped, detained and tortured for as long as 3 years. The government did now not locate proof linking a single one among them to the Sep 11 attack...."

The valuable protagonist Sam or Sameer functions as a prototype for those 1200 guys. Indeed, from being a completely assimilated American earlier than his torture and arrest, Sam now becomes a Moslem Jihadi, fusing his hatred for america with that of terrorist cells in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East. His old pal Omar is recruited by using the FBI to undercover agent on Sameer and his Hindu spouse Maya and to crack open Sameer's links to global terrorist cells. Omar is coerced into betraying his pals on the chance of disappearing into the FBI's custody and being tortured for months on end as Sameer have been. In this manner, even if the film does not actively promote Jihad as a fundamental guiding principle of Islam, it does portray a sympathetic mental profile of the terrorist mind-set. Sameer's friend Omar in the end knows this additionally whilst he is given Sam's tale and the barbaric nature of the ordeals he has had to endure and that have induced him to end up an international terrorist.

Unlike Rizvan Khan, who has no qualms approximately informing the FBI approximately the enthusiast Doctor Faisal's terrorist plot in My Name is Khan, New York's Omar is torn among his sympathies for his pal Sam/Sameer and the USA system of liberty and justice, which he sees as being seriously undermined through George Bush's invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and his repressive home policies within the US, where beneath the Patriot Act fundamental man or woman rights and liberties of American residents are apparently violated for no different cause than that they're of any other ethnicity, subculture and religious persuasion than the mainstream white majority. Omar, because the voice of cause and sensibility in New York, also represents the impartial observer, who is each in the system (he's knowledgeable at New York State University) and is outdoor it (he is an NRI country wide from Delhi residing within the US). He has also been in love with Sam's spouse Maya but has tried to detach himself from these emotions, indeed from feeling something at all. As such his decision to infiltrate his friend's terrorist institution and take part in its Jihad is significant. Omar is an "undecideable"; he is uncertain of his identification, unsure of his ideals and his loyalties. Eventually, he betrays Sam and his institution and communicates Sam's plan to explode the FBI headquarters to the FBI agent Roshan and the relevant authorities.

Despite promises from Roshan and the FBI govt heads, each Sameer and Maya are shot useless by way of FBI snipers at some stage in negotiations for Sameer's give up. According to Kabir Khan's controversial film, this sort of FBI brutality and overkill is symptomatic of the new publish-September 11 extremely-nationalist America which, in its unrelenting quest to punish the responsible, additionally leaves in its wake the bloodied corpses of the harmless: no longer just Maya, but arguably additionally Sam himself. This is a subject which has been taken up courageously and on occasion uncompromisingly via Hindi cinema.

Another effective instance of this uncompromising condemnation of submit-nine/11America occurs in Rensil D'Silva's Kurbaan. Here, in an open dialogue college forum, the primary protagonist Riyaaz condemns US intervention in Afgahanistan and Iraq, claiming that the arena's biggest terrorists are the white first rate powers. Riyaaz informs the ethnic white students present about certain uncomfortable realities in US politics, such as the reality that the Taliban was a introduction of the CIA and that extra than 500,000 civilians were killed in Iraq. Much to the horror and consternation of the scholars gift, Riyaaz concludes his speech via pronouncing that "just because you wear a match and get in touch with yourself President does now not make you any much less a terrorist." This is pretty formidable stuff and seems to be reflective of the developing dissatisfaction of certain Bollywood filmmakers toward a length in history in which the West regarded to move absolutely incorrect taking the downward direction from humanitarian beliefs of familiar equality and democracy to policies of religious bigotry and totalitarianism.

Interestingly, although those themes have additionally been taken up by means of Hollywood, in films including James Cameron's Avatar, they had been depicted in a less direct manner. In Avatar, as an example, the" shock and awe campaign" unleashed upon the indigenous inhabitants of the planet Pandora (really a reference to Bush's surprise and awe marketing campaign towards Iraq), occurs inside the context of an ingenious myth universe, where the brutality of corporate capitalism and US neo-imperialist rules is downplayed in that it no longer simplest happens within the protection of any other continent, as with Iraq and Afghanistan, however takes place on any other planet completely!

The new Bollywood terrorist style is therefore a greater uncompromising and certainly worrying contribution to the worldwide debate than movies like Avatar. This is due to the fact that West Asian directors depict terrorist interest from the current political perspective, together with exploring applicable issues related with the stigmatised cultural and ethnic group, which has been largely denied a voice on this debate ever for the reason that Sep 11 event occurred. As has historically been the case in Indian cinema, the new Bollywood terrorist genre gives the Moslem minorities a voice, telling their tale from the inside, making them concern and not object and narrating the plot from the attitude in their tradition, faith and community base. In My Name is Khan, as an example, Rizvan's sister in law Hasina is persuaded to remove her hijab (head headscarf) after being attacked and having it forcibly eliminated by means of an unknown assailant. Eventually, she restores the hijab to her everyday dress, along with her lecturing process at university. Here she says to her college students: "M y hijab isn't always simply my spiritual identity. It is part of my existence. It is me."

In Rensil D'Silva's Kurbaan, the crucial protagonist Riyaaz is also instrumental in instructing white college college students approximately their preconceptions of Islam as a violent faith and the Koran as a scripture selling Jihad. Riyaaz flatly informs the scholars that the word Jihad is in reality mentioned in the Koran handiest 41 times, however that the time period mercy and compassion is referred to 355 instances. In this way, the film's visitors also are knowledgeable that Islam is predominantly a religion of compassion and peace and not violence and bloodshed, as right wing vested hobby businesses have led us to trust within the past decade or so.

It is these perspicacious insights from inside the socio-religious roots of West Asian culture which makes Indian cinema, often dismissed in the West as sentimental and trivial, the sort of profoundly didactic medium from which audiences, specifically in the West, can increase their scant knowledge about the psychology at the back of Hindu and Moslem icons and non secular practises. In an increasingly international international, wherein these icons and practises are usually crossing over and clashing with Western standards, this information and focus isn't best relevant to us inside the West, it's far fundamental to our very life.