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mainly as regards to international terrorism

worldwide tensions between Islam and the West. Striking examples of this style encompass Kabir Khan's New York (2008), Karan Johar's My Name is Khan (2010), Rensil D'Silva's Kurbaan (2009) and Apoorva Lakhia's Mission Istanbul, to name a few. Films like Anil Sharma's Ab Tumhare Hawale Watam Sathiyo (2004) and Subhash Ghai's Black and White (2008) consciousness on terrorist problems in the Indian subcontinent itself. The latter films have continued inside the subculture of pre 9-11 terrorist movies like Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Mission Kashmir (2000), Mani Ratnam's Dil Se (1998) and Bombay (1995). Ratnam's Bombay treated the devastating Hindu and Moslem riots in 1991, which value over a one thousand lives. Study in Canada after Graduation Chopra's Mission Kashmir dealt with a situation of neighborhood terrorist activity inside the Kashmir location sponsored by global terrorist cells operating from Afghanistan. In this manner the terrorist style is not a wholly new style in Bollywood, nor is terrorism an strange phenomenon in the day to day sports of the Indian subcontinent (the maximum current and brutal terrorist assault was the Mumbai bloodbath in 2008). What makes the current spate of terrorist movies thrilling is that they have entered the global sphere and have emerge as component and parcel of a transnational talk between East and West and Islam and the opposite.

To make the terrorist style extra palatable, Bollywood has traditionally spiced up the violence and suspense with the hallmark Bollywood music and dance interludes and sentimental romantic exchanges among the hero and heroine. Mission Kashmir is infamous for its swish dances and stirring emotional exchanges between the primary protagonists, played out on the violent backdrop of terrorism in Kashmir. Mani Ratnam's Bombay likewise mixes up the maximum brutal scenes of Hindu and Moslem hatred and violence with scrumptious comedy and a forbidden love affair between a pious Moslem woman and a boy from a highly positioned Shaivite Hindu circle of relatives. His father is the trustee of the village temple and each the family patriarchs are violently opposed to the youngsters marrying out of doors their caste and non secular community.

Karan Johar's My Name is Khan

Following inside the Bollywood lifestyle of blending genres (known inside the enterprise because the masala or highly spiced recipe movie), Karan Johar's My Name is Khan blends comedy and romance with the political hot potato of post Sep 11 bigotry and racial hatred inside the US. The film's theme of ultra-nationalist extremism culminates in the senseless killing of a younger Indian boy Sam or Sameer, who's overwhelmed to dying with the aid of youths within the soccer ground, in part due to the adopting of his stepfather's name Khan. Overflowing gushes of emotion and coronary heart stirring romantic songs, inclusive of the integration of the 1960's counter tradition anthem "We Shall Overcome" (sung in both Hindi and English), arise at some point of the film to both lighten the tension and to exemplify the presence of light and hope in a global darkened with the aid of the bitter shadow of world terrorism. The truth that the imperative protagonist Rizvan Khan is a pious Moslem, and politically impartial to the hysteria of the debate, is considerable. Brought up by using his mom that there aren't any constant labels including Hindu and Moslem, however best good and bad human beings, Rizvan Khan freely practises his religion with identical love and admire for all other races and creeds, simplest differentiating among what is within the hearts and minds of humans, now not to what religion they profess, or to what race, culture and nationality they belong.

My Name is Khan is also considerable for Bollywood fanatics in that it reunites the most important heart throb couple of Hindi cinema from preceding decades, Kajol and Shah Rukh Khan. The duo was previously paired in of Karan Johar's in advance blockbusters Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1995) and Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham (2001). Both of these movies had been sentimental gushy romances, literally overflowing with juicy outpourings of emotion and feeling; a phenomenon which is termed rasa in India. The song and dance sequences were also very elaborately staged and blended a stability of the traditional Indian music and dance forms (Hindustani tune and traditional folk dances) in addition to contemporary Western forms. This ensured the movies' immense reputation in both India and diaspora countries like Canada, the USA and the UK.

Karan Johar continues to utilise the Bollywood masala formula in My Name is Khan, exploiting a sentimental and once in a while drawn out love affair between the autistic hero Rizvan Khan and his eventual Hindu spouse Mandira, a proprietor of a a hit hair dressing salon in San Francisco (the "town of love" which symbolizes the 1960s counter lifestyle motion exploited through Johar inside the "We Shall Overcome" sequence). In the preliminary scenes of the movie, America is portrayed because the land of freedom and opportunity, the nation wherein all races and religions are given the opportunity to move forward and gain prosperity and happiness in a way that is visible to be nearly not possible in a rustic like conventional India, buffeted as it's miles with caste and non secular prejudices and between half of and two thirds of its population living in poverty.

For overseas nationals or NRI's (non-resident Indians), however, Sept. 11 radically adjustments this formulation and shatters the American dream nurtured for decades by using an Indian diaspora which has merged its Indian cultural roots with American beliefs of person freedom and patron prosperity. According to Johar's film, this is now the plight of the Khans who, instead of persevering with to act as fully included contributors of the mainstream community, now find themselves at the outer edge of a post-9-11"us and them" rhetoric, fuelled through an ultra-nationalist Republican President, who perceives the sector in black and white realities, that have little to do with the ordinary lives of the average character. It isn't any accident that it's miles the newly elected President Barack Obama (played by means of his appearance alike Christopher B. Duncan) who greets Rizvan Khan on the quit of the film and applauds him for his faith in God and his humanity and perseverance. For Karan Johar, Obama's election is symbolic of the "us and them" divisions within the US psyche being delivered to a close in conjunction with the restoration of the innate beliefs for which the American Republic and its people stand.

Before the nation's divisions are healed, however, the Khan's revel in intense non-public hardships due to their ethnicity. These hardships culminate within the tragic death in their teenage son Sameer, overwhelmed to death in the school playing field by way of racist youths. In her grief, Sameer's mother Mandira blames her husband Rizvan, accusing him of the truth that if she and her son had not taken the call of Khan, he would now not be dead. She then tells him that the handiest way he can make amends for this stigma of being a Khan and, by means of implication a Moslem, is to fulfill the United States President (at the time it's miles George W. Bush) and to inform him that: "My Name is Khan and I am now not a Terrorist." This easy phrase turns into a form of mantra throughout the film, powerfully confronting the viewer's post-September 11 prejudices by way of refusing to link the two standards of Islam and terrorism together: i.E. My call is Khan, therefore I am a Moslem, however on the identical time just because I am a Moslem, does this mean that I am a terrorist? Unhappily, for the duration of the hysteria that followed inside the wake of September 11 for many Westerners the two terms, Moslem and terrorist became quite plenty synonymous.

This is a movie consequently which, in contrast to its predecessors, isn't always simplest aimed at teaching Indians and West Asians (it broke all data in Pakistan), however is also geared toward teaching and enlightening Westerners. This it does in a completely diffused and didactic way, no longer simplest thru its exploitation of acquainted West Asian icons, however additionally thru its exploration of issues and photographs established to the USA and the West: the 1960s counter way of life, the plight of the coloured people in the South and references to the civil rights movement through the film's subject matter tune "We Shall Overcome." This well-known anti-establishment song from Sixties when sung in Hindi via a religious Moslem in a black gospel church offers the target audience an nearly surreal feeling of each merging and, at the equal time transcending, national, racial and socio-spiritual cultural borders: a direction to global brotherhood and solidarity which has been courageously expounded via of the 20th century's brilliant non secular leaders, India's Mahatma Gandhi and America's Martin Luther King.

Karan Johar therefore attracts upon both the Western ideals of liberty and individualism, as well as propounding the roots of West Asian non secular piety and communal solidarity. By doing this My Name is Khan proposes an alternate version of worldwide brotherhood and transnational identities and exchanges. This new worldwide model for Johar is one that attracts its notion and ideals from the grass roots level- from the terrible coloureds of Georgia, from the socially ostracised Moslems, and from the autistic and mentally handicapped. All of them are an integral a part of this international humanity and in the end the parent of Shah Rukh Khan, the most important megastar in the worldwide forum today (such as Hollywood), speaks for all of them, when he says my call is Khan and I am not a terrorist, now not an outcaste and now not a hazard to the US or the crucial values which it seeks to export to the relaxation of the sector. Rather, as pious Moslems, those like Rizvan Khan have some thing of value to contribute to america and the West, and while the ones in strength allow them to do so, the vital values which have made the US excellent can no longer most effective be maintained however extended and broadened. On the other hand, ultranationalist extremist practises will handiest create increasingly hatred and division, in order that even the ones who have assimilated the American Dream will grow to come to be its maximum sworn enemies. This is the main topic of Kabir Khan's New York, which I will briefly discuss in part of this article.

Kabir Khan's New York

Although now not as a hit on the box workplace as Karan Johar's blockbuster, Kabir Khan's New York is possibly an even more exciting example of the transnational trend in the Bollywood terrorist genre. Released in 2008, New York makes a speciality of the lives of three brand new young Indians analyzing at New York State University together. The usual Bollywood masala romance dominates the first 1/2 of the movie, specializing in a sentimental love triangle between Maya (Katrina Kaif), Sameer or Sam (John Abrahams) and Omar (Neil Mukesh). Both Katrina Kaif and John Abrahams, in addition to Irrfan Khan (gambling the FBi agent Roshan) are properly installed stars in Bollywood (Irrfan Khan also starred as the policeman who interrogates the primary protagonist in Slumdog Millionaire). And the presence of these stars, along with the solid musical score and the dramatic love triangle situation, assured the film's success despite its debatable subject. Significantly, Sam and Maya fall in love and shatter Omar's emotional world at around the same time as the two hijacked passenger planes are driven into the Twin Towers. As with My Name is Khan, real pictures of the terrorist attack at the World Trade Centre is utilised in the film.

From this factor onwards, a film which has been mainly concentrated upon a sentimental love conflict between three friends now becomes a political indictment of the Bush administration's post-9/11 terrorist policies. Sam, as part of the FBI's nationwide hunt for terror suspects, is arrested, incarcerated and tortured. These tortures are graphically depicted within the film and are apparently primarily based on actual life debts of harmless victims, who have been illegally arrested and incarcerated for no other purpose than their having the wrong ethnic historical past and spiritual persuasion. During the final credits a grim word to this impact informs the visitors of the records that: "In the days following 9-11 greater than 1200 guys of overseas origin within the US had been illegally abducted, detained and tortured for as lengthy as three years. The government did not discover proof linking a unmarried one among them to the 11th of September assault.