Exploring the ‘Other’: inter-faith marriages in Jodhaa Akbar and beyond

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore Hindu–Muslim relations through the cinematic register of on-screen inter-faith marriages, and critique the undercurrent of ‘Otherness’ that undergirds most of these narratives in the post-Hindutva milieu. Since the Hindu female embodies the (Hindu) nation in popular imagination, Muslim males gain access to Hindu females only within narrations of perfidy and ‘inappropriate appropriation’, signifying their perceived ‘Otherness’. The cohabitation of the Muslim female with a Hindu male, on the other hand, is framed within quotidian love narratives and marks her homecoming or gharwaapsi. Even as it offers national integration as its central motif, Jodhaa Akbar (JA) offers a narrative in which Akbar must be sufficiently indigenized and homogenized to merit absorption into the nation. JA both participates in and responds to the construction of this ‘Otherness’, as I shall demonstrate. While charting a new cartography of cinematic terrain where the faith of a minority group occupies the centre stage, JA nevertheless presents a Hindutva polemic aware of accusations of self-aggrandizement and thus amenable to hegemonic concerns.

Keywords:

• Muslim Social
• Other
• Hindi cinema
• Islamicate culture
• Jodhaa Akbar

Notes

1. For an overview of women as marginal subjects of the British Empire, see Sen (2002), Ramaswamy (2003), and Forbes (2005).