And MS Sathyu's Garam Hawa

Hindu heroes and Muslim others: an analysis of the portrayal of Partition in Kamal Haasan's Hey Ram (2000), Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013), and M. S. Sathyu's Garam Hawa (1973) Cornelis Rijneveld Vol. 3, No. 2 | ISSN 2050-487X | www.southasianist.ed.ac.uk www.southasianist.ed.ac.uk | ISSN 2050-487X • Vol. 3, No. 2 Hindu heroes and Muslim others: an analysis of the portrayal of Partition in Kamal Haasan's Hey Ram (2000), Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013), and M. S. Sathyu's Garam Hawa (1973) Cornelis Rijneveld University of Edinburgh, [email protected] With reference to their portrayals of Partition, I discuss the value of Kamal Haasan’s Hey Ram! (2000), Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013), and M. S. Sathyu's Garam Hawa (1973) as historical resources. I emphasize how the ‘othering’ of Muslims in Hey Ram! and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag finds expression in terms of masculinity and Indian patriotism. Drawing on Vasudevan’s (2002) critique of Hey Ram!, I argue that Kamal Haasan does not offer viewers sufficient distance from the film’s Hindu-extremist protagonist, thus curbing their ability to critique the Hindutva historical narrative portrayed. Further, Haasan’s intended dismissal of this Hindutva narrative of Hindu loss and Muslim murder falls short due to its portrayal of the film’s central Muslim character as relatively effeminate and in need of Hindu paternalism. Similarly, Muslim-Hindu relations (as well as national anxieties about Indian identity and culture) are configured through a play between masculinities in biopic Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, as commented upon by Kumar (2014). Through a track-and-field victory in Pakistan, Milkha redeems the emasculation caused by his flight from the Punjab during Partition. I discuss Garam Hawa as a counterpoint to Hey Ram! and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, both of which I read as mostly congruous with secular official historiography. In addition to presenting the perspective of members of the Indian Muslim minority that stayed behind after Partition, Garam Hawa digs up financial and sentimental motives for belonging in India that are absent from the official historical narrative of Partition. www.southasianist.ed.ac.uk | ISSN 2050-487X his is wrong on so many the nation with reference to heroic masculinity levels," my partner asserted and Muslim "Others''. Also offering a reading “Tduring the access break at a of Partition that is alternative to the Partition screening of Kamal Haasan's narrative of official historiography, Garam Hey Ram (2000), punctuating his expression Hawa additionally presents a valuable of dismay at "Indian culture" as portrayed in counterpoint to the other two films discussed the film with drags from his cigarette. Lacking as it centers a minority perspective absent the knowledge of South Asian history needed from both official historiography and its to contextualize the film's depiction of Hindutva critique. Challenging the patronizing controversial Hindutva perspectives on Indian representations of Muslims in official historiography, my partner read the film as historiography and the Islamophobic bigotry promoting Hindu nationalism and its troubling of Hindutva, Garam Hawa's subaltern notions of gender, Islam, and national historical narrative of a minority's experience belonging. of Partition far surpasses Bhaag Milkha Bhaag I explore the ambiguity that confused my and Hey Ram! in its value as a historical partner so thoroughly by examining the resource. relation between official history (by which I I use ''value'' rather than ''legitimacy'' mean the narrative preferred by the because, as Vishnawath and Malik point out, predominantly Congress-led governments of ''like historical narratives, they [the films in post-colonial India) and the histories narrated question] are embedded in particular in Hey Ram!. Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's ideologies.'' (2009, 66) Their value as Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013), and M. S. historical resources, then, can be assessed by Sathyu's Garam Hawa (1973). I focus unpacking the ideologies that inform their specifically on the depiction of Partition and narratives and evaluating in what ways the its legacy in terms of aforementioned gender films supplement or critique Indian and communal relations to assess the various historiography by amplifying perspectives conceptualizations of national belonging that suppressed or overlooked by the elite political inform the films and official historiography. class who are served by official history To this end, I draw on Preeti Kumar and (Chaturvedi 2007). Analyzing the films in Ravi Vasudevan's analysis of melodrama and terms of masculinity, nationhood and biopics to illustrate why these genres, majoritarianism exposes how both the exemplified by Hey Ram! and Bhaag Milkha fictionalized historical narratives they present Bhaag, lend themselves well to (re-)imagining and the official Indian historiography from www.southasianist.ed.ac.uk | ISSN 2050-487X which they draw and on which they comment freedom movement, it also preserves a are ideologically charged and thus inevitably gendered nationalist notion that casts the constituted by both fictional and historical nation as an embattled female in need of male events. protection (indeed, the image of Mother India Illustrating how divergent representations is simultaneously feminine and patriarchal). of masculinity in Partition narratives signal The public insistence of the Nehru the varying notions of national belonging that government on rehabilitating Hindu woman underpin historical narratives requires a abducted to Pakistan is a case in point of this contextualization of gender in British colonial valorization of heroic masculinity to and South Asian anti-colonial discourses. nationalist ends (Menon 1993). According to Kumar, British imperialists As the two films’ protagonists Milkha and integrated a traditionally valorized Saket illustrate through their navigation of brahmanical ideal of manliness premised on Partition violence and its sectarian echoes, this renunciation and self-control into an tension in official historiography between Orientalist discourse that posits the colonized Gandhian and aggressive forms of masculinity "Other" as effeminate and inferior (2014, 6). is not absent from the narratives presented in While Mahatma Gandhi re-infused this ideal Bhaag Milkha Bhaag and Hey Ram!. As both of the ascetic male with honorability through films draw significantly from the narrative his deployment of non-violent resistance structures of melodramatic biopics, Bhaag (satyagraha) and in fact privileged androgyny Milkha Bhaag and Hey Ram! "disseminate the and femininity over masculinity, "the credo of myth of nationhood" through narrative belligerent masculinity (...) arose as a counter strategies that include a "glorification of narrative to the colonial discourse" for hyper-masculinity." (Kumar 2014: 1) nationalists disenchanted with ahimsa (Kumar Coupling fictionalized biographies with 2014, 7). Building on a tradition of cultural national history, biopics identify the hyper- nationalism that equates the South Asian masculine hero with the nation and render the (Hindu) woman with the nation (Chatterjee hero's achievements symbolic of national 1989), these revolutionaries "reclaim[ed] their successes (Kumar 2014: 2). In Bhaag Milkha manhood" by protecting "Mother India" Bhaag, this moment of identification is rather (Kumar 2014, 7). Thus, while official obviously pronounced when Milkha is clad in historiography glorifies Gandhi's a sports jacket with an ''India'' emblem that "androgynous politics" (Alter in Kumar 2014, has been eyed by him and the camera, as well 9) as determining the course of India's as, even more explicitly, when he declares to www.southasianist.ed.ac.uk | ISSN 2050-487X "have become India". Similarly, Saket's This free-flow of blood and valorization of intertwinement with the assassination of militant masculinity is also central to the Gandhi is sealed when he is handed the gun character development of Saket, who and informed of his mission. While Milkha's subscribes to an aggressively masculine biography has been heavily dramatized and branch of Hindu nationalism following his Saket is a fictional character, I read their lives failure to protect his wife Aparna during the as reiterations and critiques of official communal riots preceding Partition. Seeing as historiographies. Aparna was raped by Muslim rioters, Ram's Although Milkha and Saket embody the sense of emasculation is telling of the hyper-masculinity relied upon so heavily by gendered dimension of cultural nationalism, the biopic genre, both Bhaag Milkha Bhaag and his subsequent revenge (which causes and Hey Ram! insinuate a reconciliation with traumatic collateral death) is symbolic for the or (partial) return to the cerebral renouncer sense of being wronged that informs Hindutva preferred by Gandhi. This mirrors the ideology. Ironically, while the film repeatedly contradicting notions of masculinity that litter airs the Hindutva view that the atrocities mainstream historical narratives and indicates visited upon Hindus during Partition violence an ambivalent relation to official history. As are brushed over by official historiography, Kumar points out, Milkha's injury due to this much of India's early interactions with reluctance to wear running shoes and his Pakistan revolved around this image of the insistence to run a race after having been abused or abducted Hindu woman in need of violently assaulted by his competitors

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