Ideology and Representation of the Nation: Aggressor and Transgressor in Film Sarfarosh

Abstract

This paper analyses the narrative of Bollywood film Sarfarosh which portrays the ethnic, cultural and religious issues between majority Hindu-minority and Muslim communities in India with projection of identifying politics between India and Pakistan. Further, it t reveals that Pakistan army constitutes spies who are behind the plot of cross border terrorism and supplies of arms through their local agents in the Indian state of Rajasthan. The agents and their activities are projected as the machineries that are firmly responsible for a series of havocs and killings of innocent people in the most of cities and towns within their reach. Through crafting the notions of national (in) securities, the film picks up an Urdu Ghazal singer, the Pakistani who migrated from Rajasthan during the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. The singer as a metaphor of terrorism often sings Ghazals among Indian dignitaries in the front of his weaponry smuggling to India. The paper finds out that the historical traumatic event of partition is used for posing the Muslim minorities, „Other? as cultural methodological device, whereas Pakistanis understood as extremely dangerous enemy of the Indian nation. The identity politics of the film results the conflicting ideologies of Hinduism and Islam. This is due to the cultural industry?s ideological apparatus for making strategies to manage and maximize the profits by seeking wider audiences through its well- established capitalist system. Bollywood cinematic apparatus should be cautious of essentialist form of nationalist narratives and the post partition conflicts should be avoided for authentic peaceful culturalsocial relationships between India and Pakistan.