INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 2018, VOL. 19, NO. 4, 610–626 https://doi.org/10.1080/14649373.2018.1543287

Screen violence and partition

John HUTNYK Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS Recent film and television treatment of South Asia from UK producers have Partition; colonialism; film; introduced new angles on the violent politics of colonial past, whether this Gurinder Chadha; South Asia; be the activities of the East India Company in the early days of Empire, or media studies about Partition, at the ostensible Raj’s end. The controversy over Gurinder Chadha’s 2017 film Viceroy’s House is taken as an opportunity to consider the new South Asian film and television studies and the emergent scholars that are challenging conventional media studies models. The co-constitution of here and there is given as an analytic lens through which to comprehend representation and stereotyping in films “about” politics in South Asia, and the view taken is that a debilitating divide and rule, via mechanisms of representation, remains strongly in place, despite the fighting efforts of the new South Asian media scholarship.

This essay addresses a flurry of recent commer- an unavoidable ever-present backstory – what cial film and television on British colonial rule imposes itself is an originary violence, so that and the partition of India. Films like Viceroys’s even those films on partition that are not violent House (2017) and television serials like Taboo have avoidance of violence as their mission. (2017) seem to return in only slightly recon- While it would not do to think of South Asia structed ways to the Raj nostalgia of the mid- only in terms of violence, or even violence 1980s, as then exemplified in Merchant Ivory brought from Europe to crush the romantic romances and television serial dramatisations: idyll of pre-colonial times, or the non-violent Heat and Dust (1983) and Jewel in the Crown resistance to that civilisational attack, or even (1984). Yet at a wider level, the essay will also the promises of a successful and shining future be necessarily less about new partition films as beyond violence, all are just too handy not to be such and much more framed by the critique understood and examined as enabling fictions. of division and divisiveness in media and Nevertheless, a second set of questions revolves politics and the need to renew contextual recep- around the issue of who makes films and with tion. However speculative my argument about what intent – the colonial project perhaps con- differing films, genres and formats, the larger tinues even as a new South Asian film and tele- task of making an analysis across multiple vision scholarship is largely overlooked in the divides raises questions that must hold the co- old metropolitan centres. It is, this paper constitution of here and there, now and then, agues at the end, a new scholarship that could together. Forced into continuing historical reas- suggest new and better renderings of film as his- sessments of capital, exploitation, and war – as tory and understand the history of “over there”

CONTACT John Hutnyk [email protected] Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article. © 2018 John Hutnyk. All Rights Reserved. INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 611 as bound up by what was and is going on “over honour of him in London at the London Asia here,” and, in a formula that applies whichever Film Festival in March 2017. His character way the here and now is oriented, back then is leant gravitas to the film in ways to be discussed bound up with us now, just as now is conse- further. Also on the strength of a string of box quent on back then. office hits, now Chadha could negotiate the The attempt to study aspects of Europe and use of prestigious shooting spaces unparalleled South Asia as an intertwined and irrevocably in her previous career. Part of the Viceroy’s interconnected formation seeks out examples of House film was shot at Rashtrapati Bhavan, films or television media that profess a decidedly the Viceroy’s former palace and now official post-colonial perspective. This means choices residence of the President of India. Shooting that may be initially attractive, mixed and hybrid, spaces were also found in period hotels and with a steam-punk aesthetic, which perhaps for palaces in Jodhpur – themselves so atmospheric that reason, also means inevitably suspect. For that a tour company has seen the tie-in poten- example, the BBC television series Taboo on tial: Cox and Kings has set up a guided vintage East India Company activities in the London car tour to the filming locations, with a bonus docks, written by Stephen Knight and Christo- side-visit to the Taj Mahal for good measure pher Hardy, is a somewhat implausible example (full disclosure: I have not had the chance to of how a story has at least two ends. The East join this tour, and patiently await a promotional India Company is portrayed as run, in this per- invitation). iod if not always, as a personal fiefdom by a ruth- I do have a long record of paying attention to less Governor with no scruples, in cahoots with Chadha’s films and to representations of South the back-room operatives of The Palace, and Asia, especially within diaspora, so I feel able to guilty of corruption, and “worse.” In some degree to justify the presumption of the series of course the protagonist, a flawed reporting on the film, making critical com- and tattooed hero, will give them their comeup- ments, and offering a wider contextualisation. pance, and ultimately the moral standing of Brit- Thus, when a filmmaker of Chadha’s stature ish character need not be abandoned because the turns to history, she enters an already existing East India Company was a barrel of bad apples, deep reservoir of images such that emphases deservedly beaten. If this to and fro sounds at and interpretation become issues of evaluation. all familiar, be assured from some perspectives And the interpretations were many; the film was what will be considered a whitewash is a way not everywhere well received. In a heated of selling product as colonial India carries an review, Fatima Bhutto was concerned that the exoticist and fantasy charge to this day. very first scene “opens to the sight of bowing, Raj revisionist films are a genre unto them- preening and scraping Indians at work on the selves, and Viceroy’s House (2017) by the lawns, carpets and marble floors that are to acclaimed British-Asian filmmaker Gurinder greet the last viceroy of colonised India” (Bhutto Chadha is an example worth extended consid- 2017). The hostile tone quickly drew a response eration. Chadha’s previous efforts such as I’m from Chadha. Her film is a personal account, British, But … (1990), Bhaji on the Beach she said, and she had not wanted to show the (1993), Bend it Like Beckham (2002), and fighting that characterises partition in so Bride and Prejudice (2004) form an enviable many other renderings. This is an admirable record for any director. Increasingly command- non-violent move, except it is of course carried ing mainstream attention, she is now able to out with violence, an elision of a very large and cast actors such as the iconic Om Puri, in one considerable body of sensitive visual and textual of his last ever roles. Chadha had known Puri work on partition. Scholarship and research for quite some time and spoke eloquently in programmes abound, as do other films. There 612 J. HUTNYK is much readily available and hugely respected Studying the archives, Chadha came across work by researchers such as Urvashi Butalia confidential government documents that sup- (1998) and Gyanendra Pandey (2002) alongside port a revisionist view of the lead-up to Indian independence, which was finally declared at museums and commemorations in the Red the stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947. Fort, Victoria Memorial and Raj Bhavan, plus The British decision to draw a line through a small private memorial at the Wagah border the whole of south Asia, creating two reli- crossing, though curiously, until the launch in giously defined new nations, was not entirely August 2017 of the Arts and Cultural Heritage forced on them by the warring communities. It was, in fact, an idea hatched by Churchill Trust (TAACHT) of India “Partition Museum” during the war to protect British strategic in Amritsar (see Bhatia 2017), there had been interests. (Thorpe 2017) no significant permanent tribute to victims in Pakistan, India or Bangladesh, prompting ques- The question of whether there was a Churchill- tions as to why partition had not hitherto excited endorsed plan to keep control of Karachi away the same official remembrance as the Jewish from the Soviet-friendly and socialist Nehru fi holocaust (see Parmar 2003). There is much in needs separate con rmation, and it is to Naren- ’ terms of cultural production, plays short stories, dra Singh Sarila s(2005) book, The Shadow of novels and indeed a number of other films, ran- the Great Game, that Chadha directs us. The ging from those that comment profoundly on the discovery then already belongs to Sarila, who aftermath of partition, such as Ritwik Ghatak’s was in a sense on the spot as an aide to Mount- claustrophobic trilogy Meghe Dhaka Tara batten. In a slippery slope of connections and (1960), Komal Gandhar (1961)andSubarnare- coincidences Chadha reveals that while Sarila “ kha (1962) through to popular versions such as was working on another book with an assis- Gandhi (1982) where Ben Kingsley had the tant in the British Library in 1997, he found lead role and including several other prominent documents that prove that early plans for the ” British actors, and the Canadian Partition shape of a future Pakistan were kept hidden (2007), where non-South Asian actors again (as quoted in Thorpe 2017). The version of played the main South Asian roles (particular this discovery offered by Sarila himself is ’ well in the case of Chinese-Dutch Canadian worth consulting. The book s preface reads Kirstin Kruek as Naseem, resplendent in the almost word for word the same as Chadha ’ Mela sequence and love interest for British/ tells it, although in this version Sarila s assistant Irish-Asian Jimi Mistry, as Gian). There are of has disappeared: course also a number of documentaries and While researching on the Oriental and other commentaries, making up a vast archive Indian collection of the British Library, Lon- of texts and debate, with veritable armies of stu- don, in 1997, on another matter, I came dents over the decades pouring through the across certain documents which revealed archival remains of the India Office, now held that the partition of India in August 1947 ’ might not have been totally unconnected at the British Library. Viceroy sHouseis not, to with the British concern that the Great be sure, a documentary, and the criteria for Game between them and the USSR for assessment, and interpretation, must be different acquiring influence in the area between Tur- for imagined history even if many of Bhutto’s cri- key and India was likely to recommence with ticisms demand attention. Chadha instead claims even greater gusto after the Second World War [ … ]. Under the circumstances Britain to have contributed important “new” facts. could ill afford to lose control over the entire In an interview with a Guardian journalist, India subcontinent that had served as its Chadha is said to have made some significant military base in dominating the Indian discoveries: Ocean area. (Sarila 2005,9) INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 613

In addition, Hindus or Sikhs attack Muslims, the sympa- […] a working relationship had been estab- thetic point of contact character for the audi- lished between the British authorities in ence at least survives. Indeed, where Bhutto India and Jinnah during the Second World diagnoses a prejudice there is a strange double War and he was willing to cooperate with Brit- politic. She argues that we do not ever “witness ain on defence matters if Pakistan was created. any violence on behalf of India’s foreign rulers; (Sarila 2005, 10) they are serene and encouraging, weighed down The preface then goes on to document various with the heavy burden of soothing these wild, other collections and library sources, Sarila’s intemperate people.” On the other hand, all role as ADC to Mountbatten in 1948, in that the riots are “caused by Muslims,” even as role his chance to catch “glimpses of some of there are some “brushes with symmetry,” such the players,” and finally a sudden leap to the as when Aalia’s house is burned down and we twenty-first century, the attack on the World fear – soundtrack effects – that her blind father Trade Centre in 2001, the Taliban in Afghani- has been killed. But it is a false alarm: “don’t stan and his problematic view that “many of worry! Her father didn’t die; he’s just sitting at the roots of Islamic terrorism sweeping the a neighbour’s house. No harm, no foul” (Bhutto world today lie buried in the partition of 2017). Similarly, Aalia’s father acts to save her India” (Sarila 2005, 11). Britain’s crimes and from near certain death on the night train to Mountbatten’s negligence notwithstanding, Lahore – Chadha is correct to defend her film this final commentary on terrorism is an extra- from Bhutto’s criticism on this point at least – ordinary claim on several counts that hardly and while we hear no more of Om Puri, that need debate – it can be rebutted that what ter- Jeet’s love interest has survived for Bhutto pro- rorism there is in the world today is not “Isla- vides the essential cover for the otherwise barely mic,” nor in fact is terrorism “sweeping the credible denouement where Nehru is slapped in world,” though certainly in 2005, as now, the public. The slap was perhaps an actual event, scale of Western arms sales, shipment and but why had Chadha not instead recreated the deployment does count as terrifying. Certainly equally fabled story where Nehru stops his also a kind of pantomime paranoia tends to taxi to save a Muslim tailor from a mob in find terrors under every left luggage or freedom Chandi Chowk (see Patel 2015). In a telling petition, but ultimately, if the chain of links that contrast, the Mountbattens are portrayed as bind the Taliban to Osama bin Laden to Jamaat- the epitome of selfless, practical, not Gandhian, i-Islam to Abdul Al Mawdudi to a Sharia- service. inspired war on unbelievers and to the US use Against the charge that she has told the story of the Pakistani military to counter jihadis can from an anti-Muslim point of view, Chadha be taken seriously as a framing context, then (2017) insists “everyone sees history through to suggest this also can simply “lie buried” in their own lens; some only see what they want partition must seem quite a long and detailed to see. My film is my vision of the events leading justification for a bit of cinema entertainment. up to India’s partition.” Claiming the relativist Separate from historical fidelities, it is also interpretive high ground, she insists that she important to consider Chadha’s film as a “took infinite care to show that responsibility polemic open to interpretation and so evaluate for the violence lay on all sides” and that her the critical responses. Bhutto is not the only process was to “share the script and the film one to call out Viceroy’s House as an anti-Mus- with many Muslim, Hindu and Sikh academics lim film, but has a strong point when listing the and historians to ensure that the scenes I numerous scripted, imagined, incidents where depicted were a fair and reasonable representa- Muslims initiate violence, whereas when the tion.” It might be churlish to then complain that 614 J. HUTNYK

“some,” if not all, academics and historians also “Winners” is used instead of “Victors.” Orwell see “history through their own lens” and was the literary editor at the time. “vision,” of course they do, just as much as do These historical squibs and the frisson of British Asians. It is a well-taken point that inter- controversy around Bhutto’s article, besides get- pretations are contested sites, but then it ting the film discussed in a crowded market- becomes difficult to let the significance of the place, which is of course good publicity, are sympathetic Muslim character Ali Rahim also welcome if they serve to raise important Noor played by Om Puri pass without noting issues beyond film connoisseurship. The politics a theme; he is blind throughout the film, a vio- of interpretation between continents with a lent punishment inflicted in a British jail, and in volatile historical charge is no small matter; so the script. It might be interpretive license to it is curious to see insistence that people be cau- look elsewhere in the cinema archive, but it is tious when treating a personal history. Except possible to see this theme in several films in that the history is only rhetorically personal, South Asian cinema traditions. Recall for exam- and in every sense nevertheless prejudiced and ple that in Sholay (1975) Imam Rahim Chacha biased, exactly in its subtlety. For example, the is also without sight. The blinding of the most film hints at a flirtation between Nehru and sympathetic senior political Muslim character Edwina Mountbatten, but does not further in Viceroy’s House is an instantiation of the exploit that sub-plot as Chadha considered it film’s opening epigraph. There is no subtlety less important and anyway “the relationship in the textual declaration that “History is writ- was consummated after this period” (as quoted ten by the victors”–a phrase variously sourced in Thorpe 2017). Melodrama however insists on by historians both to Niccoli Machiavelli and to a love story and so Chadha prefers instead the Winston Churchill. In an interview about the Upstairs-Downstairs side-tale of the viceroy’s film for Desiblitz (2017) Chadha says Viceroy’s valet, a Punjabi Hindu, having an unrequited House is told from a unique British-Asian romance with a Muslim girl, Ali Rahim point of view. It is hard then to square this Noor’s daughter Aalia, who was promised to with comments about what really happened the driver of Jinnah’sofficial vehicle. This dis- and victor-written history. What is sure is placement has many of the features of an only that questions of interpretation are to the often used plot device, such as one that is fore. The epigraph must invite interpretive con- found in Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding fusion, and a challenge. The phrase is also (2001). In terms of overwriting sexuality onto attributed, if not in so many words, to Walter class politics, it is unfortunate that in a discus- Benjamin, who uses it in the context of a sion of Monsoon Wedding, Jigna Desai does more interesting assertion about all documents not push further insightful comments made of culture simultaneously expressing barbarism. about the working class roles, where: In the “Theses on the Philosophy of History” he fi writes: “with whom [do] the adherents of his- The gure of the domestic servant Alice is an incredibly rich site of analysis and investiga- toricism actually empathize. The answer is tion in relation to the issues of gender, sexual- ” inevitable: with the victor (Benjamin [1940] ity, and political economy. The Christian Alice 1968, 256). Of course interpretations will find is depicted in primarily romantic terms. Her other sources. Om Puri may be blind but I ima- sweetness and simplicity render her an idea- gine a grumpy Churchill picking it up from sur- lized and remote subject in relation to the other modern women [ … ]. As the urban reptitious reading of a left Labour Party fi – domestic worker, the lm continually presents newspaper the phrase appears in a 1944 her from the perspective of someone else; George Orwell article in The Tribune (Orwell unlike the other women whose subjectivities 1944), though in this example the word are established through intimate conversation INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 615

with other women, family members, and their folder slapped on the table, passed among the partners, Alice is observed almost entirely key figures and studied by Mountbatten as a from the voyeuristic gaze modulated through kind of final moment of realisation that he Dubey. (Desai 2004, 214) had been the unwitting patsy of it all. In the Unless they battle their way into the action, film it seems as if everyone else was in on the there are few examples of domestic servants secret anti-Soviet plan. Sarila’s archival justifica- granted a significant role or personality in pop- tion is reduced to a few lines on a stage prop, but ular cinema. Credit is due then to the key char- the effect of the director stepping into the narra- acters in the de facto “main” sub-plot of tive in person is to affirm, through escalation Viceroy’s House, and yet in this displacement, since her personal involvement gives the intri- these key relationships are almost always identi- gue the imprimatur or truth, that centuries of fied from the perspective of someone else of great game manoeuvres over Afghanistan are rather more elevated class status, from which the context – and of course, substitution they are rendered as romantic, as fool, or as again, that the duplicity can be explained, via sacrifice, or forsaken. Sarila, as a topical and important directorial The possibility of interpreting a film by intervention. The intrigues of the film can con- opening up the subordinate characters for criti- tribute uniquely to understanding tactical cal attention is a useful strategy. Spivak (1999) approaches to Islam, Soviet history and diplo- does this in literature with Bertha Mason from macy while as allegory, questioning things like Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, discussed in Cri- contemporary investment in the port at Karachi tique of Postcolonial Reason. Considering the with its possible transport route from China to love story of the Mountbattens’ servant however the sea, or the Russian annexation of Crimea is high cliché standard in this respect, and in as an access route via the Bosporus Strait to fact offers up a chain of substitutions that are the Mediterranean. revealingly selective. Picking up an incidental The point about substitution and escalation or seemingly inconsequential moment as a is that in Chadha’s film “partition” becomes a way to unpack the whole works to help under- tool for doing other things, and this is the case stand the interpretive investments. Offering with many examples of overworked and overde- another nuance, somewhat unsubtle but in termined themes. This might be all well and need of explanation, the inter-title near the good if the other parts of the narrative were end of the film modestly refers to the “director” built upon what had already been achieved in without at that moment naming her but insert- historical research and recording. Even better ing her image. The notes explain that the direc- if the scholarship that exists in oral history tor of Viceroy’s House is someone with direct and memory studies from the 1980s onwards family experience in the tragedy of partition, could have been acknowledged. Exemplified in this case through a grandmother and a mur- by the work of Butalia (1998), Pandey (2002) dered aunt. Powerful and heartfelt, but it is a and others, this is material that, along with the curious intervention in the film and works, at many “high politics” studies that go beyond least for this viewer, as a kind of subvention the popular histories produced by Dominique that softens the polemical effect of other Lapierre and Larry Collins (1975, 1983), moments, and especially the reveal of Sarila’s deserves serious attention. Pakistani, Banglade- secret Oriental and India Office “found” docu- shi and Indian study on partition already ments. These documents, central to the duplici- amounts to a vast literature and although also tous diplomacy narrative that has the replete with interpretive variations, it is harsh unpleasant Jinnah character cutting a deal to indeed to be both ignored and to endure the create Pakistan as a buffer state, appear as a suggestion that there were any “victors” of 616 J. HUTNYK partition who could write the history. Yet it is while Chadha’s grandmother was travelling an example to doing other things to see claims the other way in just as grim circumstances, made for the film’s relevance reach directly and while sympathy for the Indian side may into the present political drama. In a milieu have been inherited as family history it could where claims for the significance and relevance also have come from the Lapierre and Collins of one’seffort is not only a publicity anecdote, it (1975) book upon which the film is also avow- is probably only to be expected that most astute edly based. The racial and ethnic valuation commentators, directors and actors would here are marked, but in Freedom at Midnight make associations that stress the allegorical pur- Lapierre was self-confessedly laudatory of chase of their work. Viceroy’s House actors were Mountbatten and ways that betrayed the no different in this regard when in publicity authors’ Eurocentric and rather presumptuous interviews the couple who play the star-crossed approach – travelling around India in a hired lovers – not Nehru and Edwina, but the domes- Rolls Royce to conduct interviews. It is regretta- tics Jeet and Aalia – channelled another current ble that although Lapierre and Collins released contextualisation when the film was claimed as another book, Mountbatten and the Partition relevant to then unfolding events around the of India (1983), that includes the transcripts of election of new US President Trump and his interviews they did, including with Mountbat- anti-Muslim travel bans (Pape 2017). ten, this is from a small subsidiary publisher The film is presented then as a polemic and less likely to be found and therefore not against prejudice and racism, which is stunning so readily available for interested parties to in its condescension, since in telling the story of read and evaluate. Reading that text indicates British duplicity it turns out that each one of the just how strongly the received versioning of par- senior South Asian – representative ethnic pro- tition was promoted in this unofficial main- totype –“negotiators” are unsympathetic. stream colonial justification. The declarations Nehru with his upper Hindu elite “Cambridge of impartiality from the director in this case debating skills” is the best of them; Gandhi, in do not then mesh with the partiality of the the often repeated Churchill slur, is a “half sourced reference to Freedom at Midnight, and naked fakir,” also a vegetarian enthusiast for raise questions that could be articulated in Ben- goat’s cheese and dentally challenged maverick, jamin’s terms where a historian, or filmmaker, which might be true to type or myth but will not risks “becoming a tool of the ruling class” (Ben- please either fans or balance critics of his role. jamin [1940] 1968, 255). If the timing of an Admittedly all the English are cynical except anti-Muslim and anti-Soviet story is considered, the naïve avuncular Mountbatten –“he could the all-too-loving fascination with the silver cut- charm a vulture off a corpse”–and the worthy lery of the Raj must tarnish this project. Chadha charitable “righting wrongs” Edwina. The por- has made better films, usually with songs. trayal that has the unsavoury opportunist Jin- nah, and indeed Churchill and the other Other partitions British tops, playing politics over such tragedy in such a calculated, inhuman way is of course Meanwhile in India, other contemporaneous as horrific as the slaughter of the entire night partition dramas add to a vast archive that train carrying Muslims from Delhi to Lahore. reaches from before Gandhi (1982) and beyond The documents found by Sarila are then work- Jinnah (1998). In Pakistan, viewers apparently ing as a claim to scholarship that must confirm may “prefer” to watch films from the India not only the assertions about Jinnah, but also all side of partition because “Hindi dialogue and the other characterisations of this historical song is more familiar to ordinary citizens than fiction as written by the victors. Of course the increasingly Islamicized official idiom of INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 617 news bulletins” (Ahmad 2016, 472). A separate already seem to know the plot should come as register would be needed to track all the possible no surprise, since the literature on partition is permutations and contradictions in partition also vast and the formula symptomatic. What films in their various significances and details, is curious in this case is how the promoters for example that it was controversial for Chris- have made a virtue of marketing the remake topher Lee to have played Mohammed Ali Jin- as a remake. As a marketing strategy, they nah in the 1998 biopic film. Lee was primarily have staged a debate about who is the better famous for his role as Count Dracula, which Begum out of the two actors and was considered problematic not because he Rituparna Sengupta. A smart promotional was European and playing the secular leader angle is extended with a series of other character of Pakistan, but because of the association of match-ups, and while the trailer for Begum Jinnah with the dead. Casting Lee was an Jaan is dynamic, the one for Rajkahini comes, impressive match in terms of bearing and inevitably, with a Tagore song and the clip looks, and the actor considered it his best ever lovingly follows the studio artists making the role, but at a fundraiser for the film there had record, interspersed with lush images from the been curious comments about the lead, with film. While neither film comes close to the Ben Kingsley also suggested as a possibility in Raj-a-philia of Viceroy’s House, the Hindi terms of balance and prestige with the Shake- effort is focussed more on action while the spearean actor having already portrayed the Bengali one asserts cultural specificity by featur- Mahatma. ing a more contemplative stance. The fireworks Why shouldn’t Chadha add to this archive of both are real, and a cutthroat killing in the and make a partition film, since it seems almost Bengali is not outshone by the pyromaniac skills everyone does? A pity though she did not think of the stunt-person managing to impersonate a to unpack her effort over against the tradition of map of India in flames in the Hindi version. films that broach its never exhausted signifi- What is noteworthy is the duplication, with a cance for the subcontinent as trauma and love few differences, of these stories, and of course story, for example in Mela (1948) starring Nar- the near contemporaneous release of Chadha’s gis and Dilip Kumar as star-crossed lovers, Viceroy. through to Pinjar (2003) which follows the What if Viceroy’s House had been different? I complex dilemmas and experience of kid- mean different from Merchant Ivory-style fan- napped women across the borders. The ways tasy. The film in form and style owes little to new directors add to the ever-burgeoning parti- oral history or to the memory studies that dom- tion film archive deserves attention, for exam- inate partition scholarship and it does not at all ple, two recent contributions are inspired reference films that break with the wholly con- concurrent and obvious alternatives to Viceroy’s ventional formats of narrative realism. That House: the “identical” stories of Chadha includes herself at the end of the film (2017) and Rajkahini (2015). Srijit Mukherji would have been a chance to problematise per- directs both films, and Begum Jaan is the spective, especially at a generation or two Hindi adapted version of the Bengali Rajkahini. beyond the events shown. The generational dis- The repetition here has a secret significance, tance might have been given more space and with much to be said about casting and charac- confirmed the “unique” perspective the director ter – the films tell a well-worn story of sex work- claims to have offered. The generational story ers who fight the prejudices of partition chaos, can have powerful resonances, for example with significant scenes of women wielding where referred or inherited memory exists rifles, firebombing and killing, and triumphant among those giving testimony to oral history survival against the odds in the end. That we projects, for example – the partition scholar 618 J. HUTNYK

Chandrika Parmar told of interviewing a man representation can be extended. He notes a who said he had survived a train attack by hiding specific burden and opportunity: behind his murdered mother’s sari. Only in a fi later interview when he repeated the story did [W]hen we turn to lms marked by their ethnicity – for example, labelled as “black,” it become clear that the man was not old enough “South Asian,”“Intercultural” or “Third ’ to have been there, and was relating his father s Cinema”–concerns over representation, experience as if he believed it was his own (Par- belonging, identity and difference, and so on, mar 2004). What would a film capable of taking frame much of the analysis. Such approaches fi account of this level of interpretive variance look yield signi cant insight, particularly in relation like? The experiments with form that have to the operations of racial ideologies, stereotyp- ing and nationhood. (Sharma 2009,22) addressed such variance have not always been successful, but the question of who writes history The question of historical veracity and who gets implies a much bigger conversation than any to to write the history of the struggles against be had about a specific film made in the UK or racism, stereotypes and nationhood remains a Bengal or Mumbai. contested point. Recent work draws inspiration especially from the ways scholars and film- makers, in the film schools and in regional Popular pleasures and new styles of film traditions, can now think of the near and media studies far together. The burden of representation (Mercer 1990; In what can be considered both a related and Tagg 1984, 1988) also applies to truth, and yet radically different approach to that of Sanjay films made from one place and time must Sharma, the Warwick-based sometimes Lahori carry a context. There is a significant body of music scholar, Virinder Kalra, and his co- work that can provide that context and it author Shalini Sharma (no relation), present would surely seem strange to consider South an excellent genealogical survey of radicalism Asia on screen without reference to such for the Punjab Research Group. They report works. Of British South Asian films such as on that study group’s solution to the dilemma those of Chadha’s early oeuvre, especially of reference in having coined the portmanteau Bhaji on the Beach (1993), Sanjay Sharma phrase “three Punjabs: East, West and the dia- describes them as often primarily concerned spora.” They stress the need for an approach with struggles over the politics of racialised maintaining “a space of analysis in which the representation in a particular way: “this cinema national is also held in question” (Sharma and articulates a range of ‘popular pleasures,’ rather Kalra 2013, 438). Extrapolating the same senti- than operating as formalist pedagogic works ment still wider, not every resident or citizen of that explicitly employ avant-garde strategies, the named countries of South Asia need grasp as found in other Intercultural or black/Third the parameters of multiple designations when Cinema” (Sharma 2009, 22). It is perhaps better all this can be examined together without to recognise a multiplicity of perspectives and homogenising, and still have some echo of a tactics where protagonists do not always agree Global South movement. The space of analysis yet exist in a generally shared community of is a critical and sustaining one that belongs to reference. Sharma’s analysis is focussed upon a long and unevenly reproduced tradition. teaching in the UK “pedagogical” context, but Without romanticising community, since it his points make sense for a wider questioning can also have its reactionary sides, there is a of the sort of things that can be said habit of care in identification with migration. about film, including South Asian film, in gen- In settlement and at home, looking out eral, or globally. His points about race and for village, caste, relatives, region, state, nation, INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 619 cricket team, neighbours, and general outlook the Indian People’s Theatre Association entails a co-constitution of here and there. It (IPTA), the struggle in Bangladesh for separa- means brothers sending cousins abroad, co- tion from Pakistan (see Hood 2015), the workers smoothing the way; as reciprocity is Tamil struggle in Sri Lanka and its musical the essence of sociality, the social reproduction echoes, and theatre traditions such as the of community operates a wide fall-out net to work of Safdar Hashmi or even Badal Sircar support members and associates. This co-con- (see Katyal 2015) as well as the literature of stitution as a movement is conscious by neces- Kashmiri and Punjabi diaspora. In this discus- sity, fighting compromise by context, sion, a follower of the debates need not worry continually subject to capture and recuperation, too much about the precision of who is in and but still something not yet wholly subsumed who out of traditional disciplinary “film stu- under the privatisation and homogenisation of dies,” whether the school is a “coherent” school, the globe. whatever that would mean, or if the authors Such specific work corresponds with media named even recognise each other in terms of studies work in a Global South framing that schools or suchlike affinities. Perhaps what is should be afforded much greater visibility. In refreshing here is that the politics of contextua- the last thirty years questions about knowledge, lisation of these works has already inspired pro- disciplinary focus and reference have been ductive controversy – there is for example by raised and challenged in ways that have not now a well worked debate over what is new yet been read as carefully as their implications screen media: does it refer to film or only hand- might suggest. In South Asia in particular a held devices, is television a new electronic body of work has emerged, ostensibly gathered media, as yet not fully understood; what of the together as film studies and extended to televi- network ontologically? Has satellite trans- sion and other media platforms, that has trans- formed the field of operations that, for a period, formed the possibilities for considering film presented a local – pirate? – dimension in the material in a global context. This work can be activity of illicit cable operators and their an inspiration for thinking generously and criti- embedded community operations? That ques- cally about other media practices and politics, tions about social media, satellite and network both in diaspora and in relation to other aspects structures, big data and language policy, and of South Asia and its dispersals, or potentials. so on, are important should be obvious, and if The new approach inaugurated by Madhava not, Ravi Sundaram’s Pirate Modernity (2009) Prasad’s magisterial Ideology of the Hindi Film provides explanations as to why. Shared discus- (1998) and Ashis Nandy’s The Secret Politics sion in a circuit of perspectives requires risking of Our Desires (1998) came around the same the effort of reading. time controversies over films like Roja (1992, Rajagopal bursts the reflexive indulgence see Gaur 2011), Fire (1996, see John and Niran- with commentary on the December 1992 jana 2000) and (1998) took over pages Babri Masjid demolition. His book Politics in political journals, especially the Economic After Television: Hindu Nationalism and the and Political Weekly but also the less forthright Reshaping of the Public in India accepts not Times of India. Both the new work and the film only a certain newness to news, but more debates of course also traded upon significant importantly sees that: film discussions in a longer tradition that [N]ew electronic media set up circuits of com- would take varied antecedents such as the munication across the realms (of polity, econ- fi work of lmmakers Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal omy, and culture) that [ … ] allow [ … ] Hindu Sen, the communist party in some forms, the nationalism to fashion a range of different Progressive Writers Association (PWA) and rhetorics outside the political sphere proper, 620 J. HUTNYK

and to suggest a homology between forms of spillage beyond media, and beyond discipline- consumption and voting behavior, and between based courses, is a limit and a possibility, with fi cultural identi cation and the requirements of the requirement that practitioners and analysts electoral affiliation. (Rajagopal 2001,2) bring experience and maturity to bear if insight Wanting to extend Bollywood or South Asian is to be developed. screen cultures to a wider social technological With implications for the content of all spread, taking in more and more dimensions media courses, it is possible to point to a reor- of labour, organisation, marketing – an entire ientation that acknowledges the often quite socio-economic cultural-industrial construct – good intentions of those who would search the new South Asian media theorists seem to out an ethical practice in learning to know be driven by an underlying formation that is what others think of themselves and relating not hard to identify: a Marxist training is stan- to them in those terms. While welcoming this, dard in the institutes and histories within which seeing it as a privileged, and insufficient, South Asian film criticism thrives. Even when move, should also be the lesson learnt from making variously grounded or esoteric com- reading South Asian media theory over against ments about the condition of modernity – for the mainstream. European diasporic filmmak- example Ravi Vasudevan (2011, 14) pointing ing is no more immune from exoticist seduc- out that “Bollywood has provided a brand tions in theory and content than any other name for publishers to position their product” modes of creative benevolence. The danger or Ravi Sundaram’s(2009) diagnoses of a here is that benevolent othering makes an exotic “pirate modernity” as a condition without object of that which it uses and appropriates – a respect for origins – the traces and desire for a dubious return, a slippery slope on the way to political impact beyond film studies or media commercial exploitation. A degree of vigilance scholarship is grounded in a foundational nar- must be earned alongside the institutional rative with proper names, heritage and influ- degrees that remain the passport to recognised ences. To understand these as a heritage of participation in knowledge creation – despite Marxism is one perhaps not of the party or the often-mentioned collapse into commercial cadre fold, in the way that IPTA is for the origin training of the university. Spivak also talks of for a certain Bengali art cinema, but identifiable the “new globalisation” of the “Indian migrant nevertheless. [ … ] class heterogeneous migrant subcultures” That a film studies or media course cannot and notes as evidence video hire available in now stick only to media or film studies seems thousands of stores spread across the US, and self-evident. This is acknowledged in all pro- indeed the world, now via YouTube. Here, the grammes that ask their students to pick “space of cosmopolitan diasporic culture” (Spi- “option” courses alongside their film and televi- vak 1996, 260) gives culture mass exposure as a sion “technical” or “theory” modules. This cur- joke circulating the overdetermined sexual pol- riculum arrangement admits that a theory of itics of patriarchy as distribution and commun- media cannot rely upon the media alone. alism. Her modest ambition that cultural Courses in media and politics, media and archi- studies can alert teachers of literature and film tecture, media and anthropology or media with to concerns that disciplinary historians cannot sociology are increasingly common where an is a hope that “decolonisation of the mind” overlap with the visual arts or cultural studies can begin without positing any too easy self– is readily assumed even as it has not yet any other, East–West, North–South split. Why this structural integration. Ashish Rajadhyaksha is important is that if the Global South is con- (2012, 41) is correct to observe that “the legacy ceived as supra-geographical and includes the of our cinema is far more complex.” Indeed, the movement of the global proletariat into the INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 621 metropolitan North, with cultural supports and class emerged willing to shop. While Marxist video-camera-wielding grandchildren ready to orthodoxy in some of the more moribund make radical documentaries on partition, then party forums might not wish to consider consu- this decolonisation is potentially in place, wait- mer society as a viable context for intervention, ing only miraculously to be enacted. within a culture industry and media perspective It cannot be considered unusual that most of it becomes a necessary project to politicise cul- those writing on film and television in South tural production. Asia and across its diasporas are writing about The now burgeoning work on queer perspec- so much more. Rajadhyaksha (1999) writes on tives in South Asia has its own film focussed con- music and London; Abhijit Roy (2014)on“live- tingent, with the excellent work of Gopinath, ness,” Midnapore and the Aum Party; Moinak Desai, Dudrah and others, perhaps working in Biswas (2006) about the declining fortunes of a space initially opened up, to some degree, by the CPI(M); Madhava Prasad (2014a) on sartor- the controversy over Mehta’s film Fire (1996) ial styles of the revolutionary heroes; Tejeswini in which Sita is renamed Nita in Hindi after Niranjana (1999) on feminism and the Shiv the Censorship Board’s order (John and Niran- Sena, closer to film than not; Gayatri Gopinath jana 2000, 371). If there was any doubt that (2005) on desi protest marches; Amit Rai (2009) film has a wider socio-political life, then just a on affect theory; Sunaina Maira (2000)on few words from John and Niranjana’s original henna and hip-hop; Rajinder Dudrah (2006) response to Fire shows how convoluted and on queer political mobilities – all in all diver- obscured things quickly become once the gences from the script of film studies through Board and other interest groups get involved: consumerism, queer and transnational mobili- ’ sations are all very welcome and show an excit- Women s organisations and especially gay and lesbian groups [ … ] raised key issues relating ing and robust promiscuity that cannot only be to questions of obscenity, on the one hand, said to have been prepared in the institutional and gay/lesbian rights, on the other [ … ] how- turbulence of a thriving multi-disciplinarity. ever, these issues tended to get deflected if not In Rajagopal’s Politics After Television, one of lost in the dominant focus on the Shiv Sena his many footnote speculations spills out from attacks. (John and Niranjana 1999, 581) the text proper to permit him to muse on the It is instructive to see how the political debates theme of commodity consumption. He astutely extend beyond the theoretical first moves of film fi relates this to modi cations in the orthodox appreciation and a separate discussion would be Marxist perspective: warranted of the ways Indian cinema, in the Recent historical work has challenged assump- several genres considered together here, have tions about consumption as an activity follow- responded. Significantly Gay, Lesbian, Bi, ing automatically upon the development of Queer and Trans perspectives – it seems unu- industrial production, or about mass consump- sual these days to even spell out LGBTQ – are tion as having a merely emulative quality, as standard in films as varied as Leena Javed’s lower classes enacted their aspirations for the ’ lifestyles of their economic betters. Consump- Parched (2015) and Mukherjee s Gandu tion as a middle-class activity began not in (2010). In Parched, the breaking of patriarchal the late eighteenth, or early nineteenth, or in normative sexualities gives the film a joyous the twentieth century, but in fact appears to and successful escape from poverty and preju- antedate the rise of industrial capitalism and dice. Though despite uplift – mocking on the mass production. (Rajagopal 2001,317) way the trinkets-exotica NGO handicrafts pro- Rajagopal argues that consumption studies ject that brings satellite television to the village gained favour in part because a new middle – the film also shows the practicalities and 622 J. HUTNYK setbacks of informal sector survival in ways that aforementioned three theorists is rather curt, and go well beyond Fire and certainly leave the het- has to do with a filmi-focus which overlooks tele- eronormative frame of Viceroy’s House’s love vision and other screens, such that narrowly, in tangle looking merely frayed. At the end of Vasudevan (2011), only the reach of the mean- Parched however, the characters in a Thelma, ings of the name Bollywood are questioned; in Louise and Lajjoo denouement are still left Rajadhyaksha we deal only with Bollywood as a with nowhere to go but out of the film theatre. “diffuse cultural conglomeration” (Rajadhyaksha Consider then how in Gandu even straight-up 2008, 20); and with Madhava Prasad we see no heteronormative desire gets shaken up in ways further than how “the term itself seems to serve that connect with a youthful alienation and dis- different purposes for different people” (Mad- affection, also strikingly absent in the contrast- hava Prasad 2008, 41). The limits of these demar- ing middle of the road Merchant Irony cations are obvious if you know these authors do stylings of Viceroy’s House. of course write about Hindi film, but crucially It would not be fair to expect a film to be all much else besides, including the new wave art things, but already in the first issue of the Jadav- cinema from Bengal, the regional film traditions pur Film Studies journal, Biswas wrote (1999,9): of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, the star sys- “The increasing circulation/dispersal of cinema tem, representation – darstellen and vertreten in the media field, through video, TV, digital (Madhava Prasad 2014b, 147, 155, following Spi- fares of every variety demands that we develop vak 1988) – regionalism, nationalism, globalisa- a critical framework.” Believing with Desai tion, and so much more. But while a few (2004,7)that“the study of the role of cultural comments should not be levitated to the status politics of film in the production of diasporic of paradigms so quickly, nor short essays be affiliations, identities, and politics is crucial to taken to stand for substantial bodies of work, an understanding of transnationalism and globa- Gehlawat (2015, 12) is correct to note that the lization,” this critical framework tends towards terms used in any demarcation may gather “argu- the universal, even as it is specific, regional and ably disparate films under one umbrella.” This is located-demarcated. Like travel, beyond is the the case, he notes for example, with Joshi’s(2010) code word here. It is not necessarily correct, nor distinction between Bollywood and Bollylite, is it an imperative that escapes structured refer- which refers to US friendly South Asian films ence. The questions to ask have to do with how like Monsoon Wedding (2001) or, we might these theorists frame a critical approach, and to add, Viceroy’s House. M. K. Ragavendra (2012, what, with what extension. Madhava Prasad 31) contends that “the term ‘Bollywood’ may (1999, 39) calls us to move beyond the “political have become a more acceptable label [ … ] communication” model – the idea that “cinema because it does not signify any specific national is used as a transparent medium to transmit mes- identity.” There is no injunction on applying sages and thereby win the hearts of spectators” is demarcations for different media “products” not problematic because there are no messages, under reference to the digital or to the global, but because transparency and a simple message since here the point is that electronic capitalism code model does not account for “the specificity comes both in pirate and corporate forms of the cinematic institution nor the complexity (Kumar 2013, 257). The “public archive of the of political processes.” contemporary” comes as a demonic and manipu- Going beyond conventions of earlier film talk, lated ideological apparatus and as a niche seg- the proliferation of screens and the digital “con- mented one, it is regionalism and identity in vergence” invokes a quiver of enthusiasm. With- slices of time and frequency, and the universal out dismissing innovations in the film technology schedule of programme planning is never inno- field, Gehlawat’s(2010) survey of the work of the cent (Sundaram 2013,3,122). INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 623

The great game Sanjeev Kumar in Sholay – we can see by way of Madhava Prasad’s analysis, a non-diegetic So, how is it possible to best conclude an essay patterning of characterisation and caricature. that has not been only on Viceroy’s House, but This is alternately exotic or demotic, which on the implications of its critics for a wider inflates rates of paranoid xenophobic scaremon- South Asian inflected media studies? I want to gering, even with the proliferation of vernacular do so by recognising how a cultural effort neces- views of the global (Mukhopadhyay 2012)of sarily accompanies the war on terror addressed home movies and camera phone newscasts to global audiences, as Gargi Bhattacharyya uploaded directly to the satellite international (2008, 113) so perceptively said? A film that of Skynet. It will be worth looking again at hides its ideological investments under roman- how often the same actors keep popping up tic orientalist storytelling and the mechanics over and over in films like East is East (1999), of historical edits – not only cut, pan, zoom, Viceroy’s House, and in reimagined period seri- montage, time, audio, narrative – develops a als like Indian Summers (2015). An impressive symbiotic relationship with the alienated but genealogy of retrospectively back-cast “terror- global commodity circuit, enforced by commer- ist” nationalist miscreants are all fathered by cial and military means. We are dealing here Roshan Seth in My Beautiful Laundrette with something that is not only a war scene, (1985), A Passage to India (1984), The Buddha but is also the war of colonialism against itself. of Suburbia (1993) and alongside Art Malik If the multivariant versions of South Asia have yet again, in Indian Summers. Where predict- always been screened in narrowcast terms – a able typecasting is replaced by avoidance, for double play of the good guys – temples, Bolly- example in the darker serialisation of Taboo wood songs and – and the bad on BBC (2017), is it not also all too predictable guys – terrorists, pogroms, Ravana, Gabbar that the East India Company is defeated by the Singh/Amjad Khan, and Sanjay Dutt, today it one good honest but flawed mixed race soldier is moderate Muslims and unknown terror, the hero? In these films and serial fantasies, there double play at work again. In bygone years is no sense in which the black and white synco- Heat and Dust (1983) was the cinematic ver- pation of local and global escapes the play of sion. Art Malik coming to grief in Jewel and mere colour illustration. Subject citizens are the Crown (1984, ITV), and a little later as a corralled from remote to metropole, all gath- goonda in City of Joy (1992) or even more gro- ered together to work the pantomime scene. tesquely, as a Mujahedeen fighter in the Bond In the 1990s the heavy presence of South film The Living Daylights (1987) and at the Asian cinema on very late night British TV bludgeoning hands of Arnie Schwarzenegger was insufficient to disabuse the rest of the Brit- as the hapless terrorist Salim in True Lies ish public of its stereotypes of the violent exotic (1994) repeats the typecasting. Malik himself subcontinent and the threat of otherness. Even as a specialist terror example of where an actor’s the by now standardised choices of “contem- persona across films “begins to communicate porary” British-Asian film did little to clarify – through other channels than the films” and the new programming updates the repertoire even in “parallel to the diegetic content of the with reruns of Bend it like Beckham (2002), narrative” (Madhava Prasad 2014b, 142). but not My Beautiful Laundrette (1985); East Today for Global South Asian star figures – is East (1999) but not Wild West (1992); nor Om Puri, Roshan Seth, Shah Rukh Khan – could it be said that popularity marked out the and we might add the scene of Osama bin parameters of anti-coloniality – Heat and Dust Laden pictured in his blanket in the Abbottabad (1983) but nothing by Ritwik Ghatak. The clarity compound as an inverted echo of Thakur/ of ideological whitewash is evident in the ways 624 J. HUTNYK

“military savagery” trumps the critique of Bhutto, Fatima. 2017. “Fatima Bhutto on Indian par- fetishising exoticism on the part of “rapacious tition film Viceroy’s House: ‘I Watched This ’” corporations” (Maira 2008, 65). It is no longer Servile Pantomime and Wept. The Guardian,3 March. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/ enough to only note that critical analysis of the mar/03/fatima-bhutto-viceroys-house-watched- ways an anti-Muslim pogrom had taken hold servile-pantomime-and-wept. in the wake of 2001, or 7 July 2005, did not dis- Biswas, Moinak. 1999. “Bengali Film Debates: The place that pogrom. The less safe films were on Literary Liaison Revisited.” Journal of the – heavy rotation and box set specials, as television Moving Image 1: 1 13. Biswas, Moinak. 2006. “Early Films: the Novel and celebrates the East India Company in its reno- Other Horizons.” In Apu and After: Revisiting vated form as a kind of steam-punk Taboo Ray’s Cinema, edited by Moinak Biswas, 42–43. (2017) alongside cheap security service-foiled Calcutta: Seagull. plots against airlines or sci-fi scenarios with sui- Butalia, Urvashi. 1998. The Other Side of Silence: cide Jihadists. All the while, in the commercial Voices From the Partition of India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. cinema the Empire image remains intact. Gurin- “ ’ ’ Chadha, Gurinder. 2017. My Film Has Been Wilfully der Chadha s Viceroy s House does little to sug- Misrepresented as Anti-Muslim.” The Guardian,3 gest that Raj nostalgia reruns of comprador March. https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblo complicity and divide and conquer will not still g/2017/mar/03/gurinder-chadha-defends-vicero be the rule for the foreseeable future. ys-house-film-fatima-bhutto. Desai, Jigna. 2004. Beyond Bollywood: The Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film. New York: Notes on contributor Routledge. Desiblitz. 2017. “In Conversation with Gurinder John Hutnyk is the author of several books, includ- Chadha.” YouTube. https://youtu.be/xTO7vQiX ing 1996 The Rumour of Calcutta: Tourism, Charity HDg. and the Poverty of Representation, 2000 Critique of Dudrah, Rajinder. 2006. Bollywood: Sociology Goes to Exotica, and 2014 Pantomime Terror: Music and Pol- the Movies. London: Sage. itics. His book Global South Asia on Screen came out Hood, John. 2015. The Bleeding Lotus: Notions of Nation with Bloomsbury in June 2018. in Bangladeshi Cinema. New Delhi: Palimpsest. Gaur, Meenu. 2011. “The Roja Debate and the Limits of Secular Nationalism.” In Indian Mass Media ORCID and the Politics of Change, edited by Somnath John HUTNYK http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4826- Batabayal, Agnad Chowdhry, Meenu Gaur and – 8949 Matti Pohjonen, 68 91. London: Routledge. Gehlawat, Ajay. 2010. Reframing Bollywood: Themes of Popular Hindi Cinema. New Delhi: Sage. References Gehlawat, Ajay. 2015. Twenty-First Century Bollywood. London: Routledge. Ahmad, Ali Nobil. 2016. “Explorations Into Pakistani Gopinath, Gayatri. 2005. Impossible Desires: Queer Cinema: Introduction.” Screen 57 (4): 468–479. Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Benjamin, Walter. [1940] 1968. Illuminations. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Translated by Hanna Arendt. New York: John, Mary E., and Tejaswini Niranjana. 1999. “Mirror Schocken Books. Politics: Fire, Hindutva and Indian Culture.” Bhatia, Arjun. 2017. “Partition Museum Project: Economic and Political Weekly 34 (10–11): 581–584. Creating a Refuge for the Memories of John, Mary E., and Tejaswini Niranjana. 2000. “The Partition.” South Asia @ LSE, 10 March. blogs.l- Controversy Over ‘Fire’: A Select Dossier (Part I), se.ac.uk/southasia/2017/03/10/partition- Introduction.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1 (2): museum-project-creating-a-refuge-for-the-mem- 371–374. ories-of-partition/. Joshi, Priya. 2010. “Bollylite in America.” South Bhattacharyya, Gargi. 2008. Dangerous Brown Men: Asian Popular Culture 8 (3): 245–259. Exploiting Sex, Violence and Feminism in the Katyal, Anjum. 2015. Badal Sircar: Towards a War on Terror. London: Zed Books. Theatre of Conscience. New Delhi: Sage. INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 625

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