The violence that unfolded throughout the Radcliffe Line was a civilisational fracture. Neighbours was adversaries, properties into reminiscences, and reminiscence into an inheritance of ache. In such a second, the simpler path for a newly impartial nation would have been to retreat into the consolation of majoritarian certainty, to outline itself in opposition to the “different” that Partition had so violently produced. India, after all, selected in any other case.
The management of the liberty motion—figures like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad, and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel—understood that the true take a look at of Independence lay within the moral creativeness of the republic. They envisioned India as a dialog amongst diversities, not a fortress of identification. Secularism, on this sense, was a necessity. It was a political articulation of a civilisational behavior of coexistence.
But, concepts don’t survive by proclamation alone. They require cultural reinforcement, a steady retelling throughout mediums that form public consciousness. This, amongst others, is the argument Benedict Anderson makes in Imagined Communities. Within the many years instantly following Independence, Indian cinema arose to this duty with outstanding sensitivity. It didn’t shrink back from the injuries of Partition however refused to show them into spectacles of hatred.
Allow us to contemplate Dhool Ka Phool (1959), the place a toddler born out of wedlock turns into the positioning of a profound ethical inquiry. The enduring line: “Tu Hindu banega na Musalman banega, insaan ki aulaad hai, insaan banega [You shall become neither Hindu nor Muslim, you are born of a human, and a human you shall become],” was a philosophical assertion of the primacy of humanity over imposed identities. In a nation nonetheless reeling from the aftershocks of Partition, such narratives supplied a vocabulary of therapeutic, a method to think about coexistence past inherited divisions.
Or take Garm Hava (1974), a quiet but deeply affecting portrayal of a Muslim household navigating the uncertainties of post-Partition India. The movie resists grand declarations. As an alternative, it dwells in silences, within the hesitant footsteps of its protagonist, within the pauses that carry extra weight than phrases, within the unstated anxieties of belonging. It reminds us that the trauma of what historians have known as “The Lengthy Partition” seeped into the textures of on a regular basis life, shaping choices, distorting certainties, and recasting hope itself.
Even Mom India (1957), typically learn as nationalist epic, is basically a narrative of ethical resilience. It constructs the nation as an moral excellent, one which calls for sacrifice, justice, and compassion. The “mom” right here just isn’t exclusionary; she embodies a collective conscience. These movies, amongst many others, held collectively a fragile social material by reminding audiences of a shared ethical universe. They acknowledged variations however resisted the temptation to weaponise them. Briefly, they sought to heal, not reopen wounds.
When movies repeatedly body sure communities as threats or others as perpetual victims, they reconfigure the ethical creativeness of the viewers. Right here, a theatre in Delhi screening The Kashmir Information, on March 21, 2022.
| Picture Credit score:
Sajjad Hussain/AFP
It’s in opposition to this backdrop that the modern cinematic panorama invitations nearer scrutiny. Lately, we have now witnessed movies similar to The Kashmir Information, The Kerala Story, and Dhurandhar, every claiming to current a sure “reality”, a corrective to what’s perceived as historic silence or distortion. The difficulty, nevertheless, just isn’t whether or not cinema ought to have interaction with troublesome or contested histories, which it should. The urgent query is the way it chooses to take action and the way the language of cinema is mobilised: is it mobilised as a software of inquiry or of persuasion?
The previous as a settled ethical verdict
What distinguishes many of those latest productions just isn’t their material however their narrative intent. Complexity is usually changed with certainty, and nuance yields to assertion. The previous just isn’t explored as a terrain of competing reminiscences however introduced as a settled ethical verdict. On this course of, historical past dangers being diminished to a script, selectively curated to evoke rage, consolidate identities, and affirm preconceived narratives.
Take The Kashmir Information, as an illustration. The tragedy it invokes is simple and calls for acknowledgement. But, the cinematic therapy has been critiqued for collapsing a deeply advanced historic context right into a binary ethical body. Struggling, as a substitute of turning into a website for empathy throughout communities, is mobilised to bolster division. Equally, The Kerala Story operates inside a framework that blurs the road between illustration and exaggeration. By amplifying selective narratives with out sufficient contextual grounding, it dangers remodeling particular person experiences into generalised suspicion. The consequence just isn’t larger understanding however heightened polarisation.
The latest Dhurandhar collection unambiguously situates itself firmly throughout the terrain of latest political contestation, the place storytelling more and more dangers mirroring energy reasonably than questioning it. In such narratives, cinema seems to float towards alignment with dominant currents, privileging affirmation over inquiry and spectacle over vital engagement. Eroded on this course of is the capability of artwork to face aside from its second, to query it, unsettle it, and maintain a mirror that doesn’t flatter however reveals.
Let me make clear: the priority right here is neither censorship nor the policing of creative expression. At stake is one thing much more foundational. It’s the recognition {that a} vibrant democracy derives its energy from the coexistence of a number of narratives, together with those who unsettle, query, and problem dominant views.
Nevertheless, when a discernible sample begins to emerge the place a big strand of cultural manufacturing repeatedly gravitates in the direction of a singular, majoritarian creativeness, it compels us to pause. Such a development just isn’t merely an aesthetic shift; it’s a commentary on the state of our public discourse. For when storytelling turns into unidirectional, it dangers narrowing the house for dissent, flattening complexity, and, within the course of, eroding the fragile structure of plurality and shared existence that sustains the thought of India. Cinema, in spite of everything, just isn’t a impartial medium as a result of it shapes perceptions, influences feelings, and, over time, constructs what a society comes to just accept as “frequent sense”. When movies repeatedly body sure communities as threats or others as perpetual victims, they reconfigure the ethical creativeness of the viewers.
That is the place the distinction with earlier cinema turns into instructive. Movies like Garm Hava didn’t deny ache; they contextualised it. They invited viewers to inhabit the lives of these completely different from themselves, to recognise shared vulnerabilities. In doing so, they expanded the boundaries of empathy and compassion. In the present day, a lot of what passes for “realist” or “truth-telling” cinema dangers doing the other by narrowing empathy, confining it throughout the boundaries of identification, and, in excessive instances, remodeling it right into a software of exclusion. The “different” is not a fellow citizen with a unique story however a perpetual adversary in an ethical narrative.
When cultural narratives undermine plural ethos of India
The implications of this shift lengthen past cinema, touching upon the very concept of India. The republic was envisioned as an area the place a number of identities may coexist with out concern and the place citizenship was not contingent upon cultural conformity. This imaginative and prescient is enshrined within the Structure, a doc that displays each the trauma of Partition and the willpower to transcend it. When cultural narratives start to undermine this ethos, they actively take part in its transformation. The hazard lies not in any single movie however within the cumulative impact of many such narratives, every reinforcing a worldview by which coexistence seems fragile, and suspicion turns into normalised.
There may be one other dimension to this reckoning that calls for consideration the place cinema can be about projection, in each senses of the phrase. It initiatives pictures onto a display, however it equally initiatives a picture of a civilisation outward, onto the world. Bollywood has lengthy been one in every of India’s most consequential devices of sentimental energy, one of many largest centres of cultural manufacturing on the planet, reaching audiences throughout South Asia, the Center East, Africa, and past. For many years, it projected an India that was plural, romantic, contradictory, and irrepressibly alive. It’s a nation that the world genuinely loves. However what picture are we projecting now? Is it not one in every of insecurity, suspicion, and communal grievance? The results are already seen: a few of these movies have been banned in a number of nations that we name our allies.
A nonetheless from Garm Hava (1973), a quiet but deeply affecting portrayal of a Muslim household navigating the uncertainties of post-Partition India.
| Picture Credit score:
The Hindu Archives
There’s a deeper anxiousness right here that I discover troublesome to dismiss. In our eagerness to inform sure tales, are we engaged in a type of self-orientalism, confirming to the world the very stereotypes it has lengthy held of the World South as a spot convulsed by non secular fanaticism, ethnic violence, and irredeemable division? The West, after all, carries no spotless document on this regard. In these occasions of resurgent aggression and open struggle, it has turn into simpler to know the harm Hollywood has inflicted throughout generations by repeatedly representing whole peoples as lower than absolutely human, a representational violence that, as historical past has proven, could make precise violence really feel not solely permissible however righteous.
In such a second, it turns into crucial to return to the foundational query: what sorts of tales can we want to inform ourselves? Tales that reopen wounds or that acknowledge them whereas searching for therapeutic? Tales that simplify historical past into binaries or that embrace its complexity? The reply will form not solely our cinema however our collective future. I’m among the many hundreds of thousands of Indians who consider that the thought of India has all the time been an unfinished undertaking. It can’t be sustained by nostalgia alone, nor can it survive on denial. It requires a steady engagement with each reminiscence and morality.
World historical past affords a sobering lesson: reopening wounds is straightforward; it calls for little greater than selective reminiscence and amplified grievance. Therapeutic, nevertheless, requires creativeness, ethical braveness, and an unwavering dedication to the concept that variety just isn’t an issue to be solved however richness to be cherished.
It’s on this context that our tales purchase significance past their frames. They don’t seem to be remoted acts of creation; they’re interventions in how a society remembers, relates, and finally reimagines itself. The query, subsequently, just isn’t merely what we select to relate, however how and to what finish. Do our tales nonetheless carry the braveness to heal, or have they begun to seek out consolation in reopening what historical past had hoped to fix?
Manoj Kumar Jha is a member of the Rajya Sabha from the Rashtriya Janata Dal.
Additionally Learn | Manufactured fame, manufactured consent
Additionally Learn | Slick fascist flick
Leave a Reply