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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

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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 testify resettlement and protection by the Indian state to his ability to endure pain and his (Menon 1993). It thus appears that the willingness to sacrifice for the cause identified Hindutva critique of official historiography as with the nation's fate, namely becoming espousing false, imaginary notions of India's track-and-field champion (Kumar communal harmony is itself based on a 2014, 11). In addition to the fetishisation of selective (re-)imagination of official history. the athlete's hyper-muscular physique by A tension between alternative and official means of close-ups and low angle shots historiographies parallels both films' (Kumar 2014: 11), Milkha's positioning as depictions of masculinity in relation to simultaneously a member of society and the Partition. The emasculation caused by army conflates the subject-positions of citizen Milkha's fleeing from the Punjab and his and soldier. witnessing of his father's beheading is redeemed by his confrontational return to

www.southasianist.ed.ac.uk | ISSN 2050-487X Pakistan. Here, Milkha vindicates himself [Gandhi] is even harder'' than assassinating through the track-and-field victory that his him (Vasudevan 2004: 2924). Vasudevan hyper-masculine endurance and self-sacrifice views this flaw as symptomatic of Hey Ram!’s enables. However, the negative impact of his failure to put Hindutva's alternative historical stint with an Australian lover and his rejection narrative of Hindu loss "into quotation marks, of another female admirer indicate his that is, as something being commented upon dedication to a sexually ascetic lifestyle. As rather than inviting identification" (2004: behooves a biopic, these encounters also 2120). In other words, melodramatic narrative represent a national anxiety about Indian techniques that posit Saket as the 'good guy' identity and culture vis-à-vis the international and Muslims as the bad guys inspire an community in the face of a post-liberation identification with Saket and preclude the entrance of "US values" to the Indian screen "structured distance" that enables the spectator (Kumar 2014: 13). Similarly, Hindutva's to reflect on the presented ideology "political imperatives of self-assertion are (Vasudevan 2004: 2119). (No wonder my channeled through the refiguring of partner was confused.) personality within a new (...) order of This lack of "quotation marks" is especially masculinity" embodied by Saket's departure evident in the film's portrayal of Muslims from his peaceful domestic life as a Tamil during the violence that preceded Partition. Brahmin to join a Maharashtra-based group of The detailed depiction of the attack on Saket’s wronged but resurgent Hindu "warriors" first wife Aparna, the emphasis on the pro- (Vasudevan 2002: 2120). Saket's eventual Pakistan rally that facilitated the rape (Jinnah's admiration for Gandhi, however, suggests a Direct Action Day), and Saket’s friend’s return to the notion of masculinity as "much (Lalwani) emotional account of his departure more cerebral and non-violent than that from his native Sindh conspire to establish a [vengefulness]'' (Online Resource 1999: 76). Hindutva narrative of Muslim aggression and As the former is geographically represented Hindu loss. While Kamal Haasan intends to by an area of India that was relatively critique this alternative re-imagination of "the unaffected by Partition violence, namely the history of the nation-state as a biography of South, Saket's re-adoption of Gandhian [Muslim] murder and [Hindu] revenge,'' masculinity seems symbolic of a desire to Saket's remorse for his acts of murder "hardly overcome of the violent legacy of Partition. neutralizes the [Muslim] bestiality we have The effectiveness of this play with witnessed" (Vasudevan 2002: 2119). masculinity is debatable, as "reconvening him

www.southasianist.ed.ac.uk | ISSN 2050-487X Although rescuing his long-lost friend with Hindutva is wearing thin, it is implicitly Ajmad from a Hindu mob arguably signals an hinted that Muslims are more likely to cause overturning of Saket's resentment towards communal unrest. Instead of restoring a Muslims (Online Resource 1999: 65), the glorified pre-Partition inter-communal scene leaves Vasudevan (2002) unconvinced. harmony celebrated in an early scene Not charmed by Kamal Haasan, he argues that depicting the giddy interactions between passages against Hindutva such as these are Lalwani, Ajmad, and Saket at a party, the the ''more offensive'' ones, as they passage paradoxically reinforces patronizing "unselfconsciously conform to the prevailing stereotypes of Muslims in need of saving from Hindutva ideology that a Hindu nation riots they themselves instigate. provided with a renewed sense of its potency Failing to present a portrayal of Muslims will provide protection to the minority." that fundamentally conflicts with Hindutva (2002: 2120) After Saket's disillusion with perception, Kamal Haasan elucidates a Hindutva affords the viewer some distance congruity between the official historiography from the conviction that India's Hindu espoused by state secularism and its Hindutva majority is victimized by the Congress' critique, namely their patronizing attitude appeasement of Muslims, the portrayal of towards minorities. As such, Ram's Muslims as ''bestial'' makes room for a denunciation of Hindutva ideology may be construction of the minority as a "self-effacing read as mirroring Indian cinema's "return to entity amenable to political assimilation." (...) Nehruvian secular-nationalism" that (Vasudevan 2002: 2124) This submissive and Benegal identifies as developing in response unthreatening Muslim is embodied by Ajmad, to Hindutva-influenced films (2007: 225). who patiently offers Saket to ''vent anger on Garam Hawa, however, epitomizes the new me [Ajmad], not on some Muslim brother" "politics of religious minorities" that Benegal (1999: 65) and to whom Saket eventually argues characterizes New Cinema (2007: relates as a savior. By juxtaposing Saket’s 225). Unprecedented in its depiction of "the aggression and heroism with Ajmad's experience of Indian Muslims in the passivity, the scene thus contrasts Saket’s immediate aftermath of Partition" (Benegal hyper-masculinity to Ajmad's effeteness. 2007, 234), the film aires a perspective that is Notwithstanding this portrayal of Muslims as absent from official narratives of Partition. passive, the Hindu mob is only tipped after In addition to giving a voice to the Muslims Saket's Hindu company is intimated by that remained in India (the story's author, Ajmad's relatives. Even as Saket's infatuation Ismat Chughtai, was one of them herself),

www.southasianist.ed.ac.uk | ISSN 2050-487X Garam Hawa digs up motives for picking a decisions and debates are conventionally "homeland" that are overlooked by official portrayed as shaping the course of history historiography. Whilst Partition is usually (Chaturvedi 2007). "What do they know?" one portrayed as being mostly a religious affair, character asks of Congress politicians, while Garam Hawa highlights the emotional, another points out most of India's Muslim material and often opportunistic incentives leaders have left. Although Hey Ram! touches that informed people's decisions. The on the undercurrent of class dynamics in vehement refusal of protagonist Salim’s communal violence through the tailor's deadly Grandmother to leave the family's ancestral resentment of his customer Aparna, Garam home and her husband's buried bones in Agra Hawa is refreshing in its approach of Partition is emblematic of an emotional and familial and minority relations in terms of class. The attachment to place downplayed by official strike of Mirza's factory workers hints at the narratives, while concerns about property fact that most Muslims who remained in India rights, political gain, potential spouses, were working-class Muslims whose political college degrees and Salim Mirza's business leverage had been compromised by the foreground the (im)practicalities of leaving departure of their leaders (Hasan 1997). India. Panorama shots of the Mughal city Providing this commentary on majoritarian Fatehpur Sikri and a nostalgic stroll past the exclusivity and the struggles of democratic Taj Mahal revel in the irony that M.S. representation, Garam Hawa uses fiction to Sathyu's religious identity compromises his channel a historical narrative that is a sense of belonging ''in a city that abounds with necessary supplement to and critique of Muslim monuments, art and artifacts" that Hindu-centric Indian historiography. More contribute significantly to the nation's pride importantly, it discredits the Hindutva and self-definition (Roy 2013). historiography of a wronged Hindu subject Furthermore, by displaying unemployment entitled to reclaim his nation as a Hindu and exhibiting the distrust Salim faces when homeland - all too convincingly portrayed by trying to take up a loan and renting property, Kamal Hasaan - by narrating Muslim loss and Sathyu challenges the representation of the foregrounding a minority's sense of belonging Nehruvian administration as tolerant and in India. Seeing as Partition violence and its accommodative of minorities in official legacy of communal tension fuel these historiography (Benegal 2007: 227). Indeed, pertinent narratives of loss and national the Mirzas' history is a subaltern one belonging, feature films on Partition are disentangled from the politicians whose especially instrumental as historical resources.

www.southasianist.ed.ac.uk | ISSN 2050-487X Rather than filling a silence on Partition in 2008/06/taming-of-the-unmanned- Indian historiography, the three films elephant.pdf> on 28 October 2014 Kumar, Preeti. (2014) ‘Reconfiguring India: discussed fill silences in official Narrating the Nation through Great Men historiography of Partition - minority Biopics’ in The IAFOR Journal of Media, concerns, Hindutva self-righteousness, diverse Communication and Film 1 (2) motives for claims to national belonging and Prakash, G. (1992). ‘Postcolonial criticism and Indian historiography.’ Social Text: 8- conflicted masculinities undoubtedly being 19. only a few of many silences. Roy, P. (2013) Scorching Winds - A Review of Garam Hava, The Orissa Post (Bubaneshwar), 31 October 2013, p. 14 Vasudevan, R. (2002), ‘Another History Rises References cited to the Surface: ‘Hey Ram’: Melodrama in Benegal, Shyam. (2007). ‘Secularism and the Age of Digital Simulation’ in Popular Indian Cinema’ in Dingwaney Economic and Political Weekly 37 (28): Needham, Anuradha and Sunder Rajan, 2917-2925 Rajeswari (ed.) The Crisis of Secularism Viswanath, G. and Malik, S. (2009), in India, London: Duke University Press, ‘Revisiting 1947 through Popular Cinema: 2007 A Comparative Study of India and Chatterjee, P. (1989). Colonialism, Pakistan’ in Economic and Political nationalism, and colonialized women: The Weekly 44 (36):61-69 contest in India. American ethnologist 16 (4): 622-633. Film Chaturvedi, Vinayak. (2007) ‘A critical theory Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. DVD. Directed by of Subalternity: Rethinking class in Indian Mehra R.O. (12 July 2013); Mumbai: historiography.’ Left History 12 (1) ROMP Pictures Hasan, Mushirul. (1997) Legacy of a divided Garam Hawa. Film. Directed by Sathyu M.S. nation: India’s Muslims since (November 1973); Mumbai: Film Finance independence. Westview Press, Boulder Corporation Just Another Film Critic. (2008) ‘Taming of Hey Ram!. DVD. Directed by Hasaan K. (18 the Unmanned Elephant - An Analysis of February 200); Chennai, Raajkamal Films Kamal Haasan’s Hey Ram (1999)’ International Accessed at