THE ILLUSION OF SECULARISM: Mani Ratnam’s Bombay and The Consolidation of Hindu Hegemony Angie Mallhi Department of History in Art University of Victoria 2005 CAPI Essay Competition Winner Occasioanl Paper # 31 February 2006 1 Mani Ratnam “has highlighted the self-defeating nature of extremist thinking and xenophobia and stressed the need to take a more rational approach to the whole question of religious loyalties and ethnic affiliations in the context of multi- racial, multi-religious India.”1 -Wimal Dissanayake & K. Moti Gokulsing “If you make a film about Germans and Jews, and the Nazi party says it is a good film, then there must be something wrong. The movie is the particular view of a benign, tolerant but communal-minded Hindu.”2 -Javed Akhtar These two views are typical of the opposing reactions to Mani Ratnam’s film Bombay (1995). By some it was celebrated for its convincing portrayal of the senselessness of communal3 hatred, while others accused it of being on the verge of fascism. These diverse perspectives have earned Bombay a reputation for being one of the most controversial films in the history of Indian popular cinema, facilitated by the fact that it was banned in several Indian cities and its release was delayed for three months owing to censorship issues.4 While approximately 795 Indian feature films were censored in 1995 alone, this was perhaps one of the most significant cases of censorship in the 1990s.5 The central focus of the film is the communal riots that plagued the city of Bombay following the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, on 6 December, 1992. While the site had been a point of contention between Muslims and Hindus for over a hundred years, rising Hindu fundamentalism in the country led to its final desecration in 1992. The demolition resulted in the worst nationwide bouts of communal violence between Hindus and Muslims since the Partition of 1947.6 While the devastation was in no way comparable to what took place during India’s Independence forty five years earlier, the riots that occurred were nevertheless a crude reminder of the very real tensions and conflicts that remain between these religious communities. Bombay chronicles these events as they unfolded in what was one of India’s most liberal and cosmopolitan cities, where the level of violence and killings by far exceeded those in any other area in India.7 In the retelling of these events, Ratnam’s film certainly can be interpreted as giving 1 Wimal Dissanayake and K. Moti Gokulsing, Indian Popular Cinema – a narrative of cultural change, New revised edition, Stoke on Trent, England: Trentham Books Limited, 2004, p. 28.. 2 Writer and poet, Javed Akhtar in Review, “Lifting the Veil: A Daring Film Explores Hindu-Muslim Relations,” Asiaweek, 1995, Vol. 21, Issue 33 (pp. 30-31), p. 30. 3 For a thorough discussion of the definition of communalism in the South Asian context, see Chapter 9 in Rasheeduddin Khan, Bewildered India: Identity, Pluralism, Discord, New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 1994. 4 Review, “Lifting the Veil,” p. 30. 5 Manjunath Pendakur, Indian Popular Cinema: Industry, Ideology, and Consciousness, Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press, Inc, 2003, p. 25. 6 Partition accompanied India’s independence from British rule, and resulted in the formation of Pakistan and India, divided along religious lines. Riots during the exodus left more than half a million people dead. K.L. Chanchreek and Saroj Prasad, Crisis in India, Delhi: H.K. Publishers and Distributors, 1993. 7 Chanchreek and Prasad, 135. 2 expression to the two divergent perspectives outlined at the beginning of this paper—the first because there are numerous moments that promote communal harmony and religious tolerance, the most obvious example being the representation of an inter-religious marriage; the second because of the Hindu right wing’s approval of and intervention in the release of the film. Based on historical data on the Bombay riots, as well as a close reading of the signifying elements and strategies used in the film, my project here is to contest the first point of view and to expand on the second. By doing so, I shall argue that while the film seeks to promote values of secularism by placing the experience of an inter-religious family at the centre of the irrational violence caused by religious strife, it ultimately undermines this through what is essentially a proclamation of Hindu hegemony. I shall demonstrate the ways in which Hindu hegemony is both covertly and overtly established in the film, the former through the narrative and characters, the latter through its (mis)representation of the riots. My aim, then, is to answer Rustom Bharucha’s call “to work against the grain of [this film] politically, in order to dismantle [its] seemingly ‘secular’ imaginaries, which are, in actuality, soft-Hindutva8 ones couched, disguised, and dissimilated in secularist terms.”9 Thus, while I recognize that Bombay is a fictional narration of historical events rather than a documentary film, I believe it is important to take this extreme view because popular culture, particularly Bollywood films in the Indian context, has the power to disseminate/perpetuate the ideologies and interests of dominant groups by exploiting/misrepresenting those at the margins of that society, in this case, Indian Muslims. PLOT SUMMARY As much as Bombay is a film about particular historical events in India, it nevertheless remains within the mainstream structure of Bollywood cinema through its representation of a love story, a key ingredient to ensure a movie’s commercial success. At the same time, Bombay also subverts certain conventions within this model, specifically through its depiction of an inter- religious romance. These two opposing forces, Hindu and Muslim, are immediately apparent in the first scene, where the hero Shekar (Arvind Swamy) is walking along the jetty upon returning to his village from Bombay, and immediately spots his burqa-clad love interest, Shaila Bano (Manisha Koirala). After several ‘chase’ scenes, the couple’s love becomes mutual. Shekar informs both his and Shaila Bano’s parents of their wish to marry, but both families strongly disapprove of the union. The hero returns to Bombay where he works as a journalist, but continues to write to his beloved. He sends her a train ticket and she runs away from home to join him in the city, where they are married and she eventually gives birth to twin boys. The couple is shown living an idyllic family life, with no apparent religious conflict.10 However, the tone of the film changes with allusions to the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque and when riots break out between Hindus and Muslims in Bombay. The family 8 Hindutva is a doctrine promoted by Hindu fundamentalists, which calls for “the eventual de-secularisation of Indian society and the establishment of an ethnoreligious state.” Harold A Gould, “The Babri Masjid and the secular contract,” in Veena Das, Dipanker Gupta, and Patricia Uberoi, Eds., Traditional, pluralism and identity: In honour of T.N. Madan, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999 (pp. 381-400) p. 395. 9 Rustom Bharucha, In the Name of the Secular: Contemporary Cultural Activism in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 171. 10 There are brief references to religion as pertains to Shekar’s and Shaila Bano’s relationship, all taking place in a song sequence: there is a quick glimpse of Shaila Bano praying at home, which Shekar watches with a content smile, and they are briefly shown taking on one another’s religious ‘codes’: Shekar adorns the distinctly Muslim cap, while Shaila Bano applies a red tikka (dot on the forehead, symbolizing that a Hindu woman is married). 3 is in the midst of the city when this happens, and the twin boys are lost in the mayhem and confusion. They are encircled by a group of unidentified men who douse them in kerosene and almost set them on fire, but their parents save them just in time. Both Shekar’s and Shaila Bano’s parents arrive in Bombay after hearing about the riots. There is a second wave of riots, due to which both Shekar’s and Shaila Bano’s parents die in a house fire. The twins are lost once again and this time they are separated, but eventually find one another in the continued rioting. In the end, the riots are brought to a halt by Shekar and various other people, notably a eunuch and a Muslim woman, who make impassioned speeches to their own religious groups, urging them to stop the violence. The parents are finally reunited with their children, and the film ends with the different communities coming together in peace, as they drop their weapons to hold hands. BOMBAY AND BOLLYWOOD: BREAKING NEW GROUND While my main contention in this paper is that Bombay should in fact be seen as an example of Hindu hegemony in a secular guise, I would nevertheless like to discuss one of the primary ways in which this film is indeed radical, signalling a critical shift in the conventions of Bollywood films. This innovation relates to the representation of love and marriage between a Hindu man and a Muslim woman. Hindu-Muslim relations in general had been dealt with in a fairly consistent manner over the past fifty years: the promotion of “a generic Pan-Indian identity” through the elimination of conflict and an emphasis on ‘communal fraternizing’.11 While the theme of love transgressing boundaries of class and caste had previously been addressed on screen, inter-religious love had never been portrayed in Indian popular cinema before Bombay.12 The film that came closest to the representation of Hindu-Muslim love prior to the release of Bombay is Henna (1991), also a story between a Hindu man and a Muslim woman.