Designing a visual palimpsest through film: A critical examination of Jodhaa Akbar and the nationalist narrative

ABSTRACT

The article critically analyzes how historical narrative redesigns the past to serve the needs of present and construct a palimpsest that is subject to constant erasure and revision. The study chooses Jodhaa Akbar as one of the example to examine whether the cinematic representation is able to fully articulate the historiography of the past on to the postcolonial present and provide a linkage to the audience to identify and personalize the history. The findings graphically summarize the impersonation of the past on the screen by using Atlas.ti; a qualitative data analysis tool that put forth a holistic design of the History film as a mode of historical thoughts which in case of Jodhaa Akbar is attempted in the form of the nationalist narrative and as a measure bridging the communal cynicism.

KEYWORDS:

• Historical Hindi film genre
• palimpsest
• postcolonial
• Hindi cinema
• biopic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Natalie Davis considers historical films a genre which is composed of dramatic feature films in which the primary plot is based on actual historical events, or in which an imagined plot utilizes historical events, making them central to the story.

2. Rachel Dwyer explains the first cycle and second cycle in Hindi biopics in her essay The Biopic in Hindi Cinema.

3. ‘Bazaar history’ is not the official views of history, based on facts and archival data written by historians but instead, it is a kind of history which is based on a popular view of the past whose stories and images derive from epics, poems, theater, and folklores.

4. Historians argue there was no Jodhaa Bai (as there is no mention of her, for instance, in the Akbarnama). Akbar’s favorite queen was, although the Rajput Harkha Bai who converted to Islam and became Mariam-uz-Zamani as mentioned in James Todd’s Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, a century later.

5. Few historians such as Robert Brent Toplin, and R.J Raack have become deeply involved in filmmaking projects. For insight into some of the problems of the historians as a filmmaker, see Daniel Walkowitz, ‘Visual History: The Craft of the Historian-Filmmaker,’1985:53–64.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Reema Chowdhary

Reema Chowdhary (A.K. S Reema Sukhija) is a Doctoral Candidate of School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Discipline of English, at Indian Institute of Technology Indore(IITI) working under the supervision of Dr. Nirmala Menon. Her current research work is on Post-colonial Indian Biopics and has contributed varied papers in similar aspect in journals and conferences. Email: [email protected] and [email protected]

Shaifali Arora

Shaifali Arora is a Doctoral Student in the Discipline of English at Indian Institute of Technology Indore (IITI), India. She is also part of the Digital Humanities and Publishing Research Group at IITI and is currently working on creating a digital archive dedicated to the Bahawalpuri community in India. Her research mainly looks at the 1947 Partition experiences of Hindu refugees from Bahawalpur and examines patterns of identity formations in the post-partition South-Asia. Her broad areas of interests are in postcolonial studies, conflict studies, history, memory, oral history and cultural anthropology. Email: [email protected]

Nirmala Menon

Nirmala Menon is an Associate Professor of English Language and Literature, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Indore. She leads the Digital Humanities and Publishing Research Group at the institute. Menon is the author of Migrant Identities of Creole Cosmopolitans: Narratives of Contemporary Postcoloniality (Peter Lang Publishing, Germany, 2014) and Remapping the Indian Postcolonial Canon: Reimagine Remap and Retranslate (Palgrave Macmillan, UK 2016). She has published in numerous international journals and speaks, writes and publishes about postcolonial studies, digital humanities and scholarly publishing. Menon directs Phd students in their projects and runs DH projects from the research lab at IIT Indore. She is the Project Leader for a DH experiment in Open Access Research Publishing platform KSHIP from IIT Indore, India.

Menon is also on the Advisory Board of the Open Library of Humanities (OLH) and served as Chair, (2016–17) CLCS Global South Forum, Modern Language Association (MLA). She is on the editorial Board of Asian Quarterly, a journal of literature Studies from the University of Pune and serves Article Editor for Sage Publications Cultural Politics in Bombay and Taylor and Francis Journals. Email: [email protected]