Explorations in History, Films and the Nation: A Study of the Representations of Kashmir Insurgency in the Hindi Mainstream Cinema

Abstract

This paper engages with the politics of framing to explicate how Bollywood has framed the political, material and ideological compulsions of Kashmir insurgency, nation-formation, and citizenship in India. Moving beyond traditional readings, I will focus on the multiple ways in which the images of Kashmir's conflict in the past and present are communicated to, and shared in, the popular culture, highlighting the importance of “remembering” certain segments of the past and “forgetting” or ignoring others. This paper deals with the cinematic images that seek to challenge and renegotiate modern, political, and ethical dilemmas by exploring the constitutive tension, aporias, perplexities and paradoxes between— “man” and “citizen,” the principle of universal human rights and that of state sovereignty, the growing problem of statelessness, and biopolitical humanitarianism.