The Indian Partition and the Making of a New Scopic Regime in Bengali Cinema

Abstract

Invested in a mimetic approach, scholarship on Partition narratives in Indian cinema rarely addresses the films in terms of the body of culture memory they produce. In addition, it often disregards popular cinema. Thus, while the films of Ritwik Ghatak have been widely discussed, they have rarely been considered alongside popular Bengali cinema of that decade, films which often refer to Partition within the broader framework of popular melodrama. This article will read the two ‘rival’ bodies of work for their potent engagement with the production of memory within the cinematic poetics of partition. In relation to images of the city as a cinematic trope, this essay aims to offer fresh insights into Partition within the broader scopic regime of visual modernity.

Keywords:

• Partition
• Calcutta
• Bengali popular cinema
• Ritwik Ghatak
• cinematic city
• postcolonial
• cine-poetics