Cinema is a fascinating subject but Indian cinema popularly called Bollywood is more so due to the peculiar traits of the folks who watch it. Kashmir as a paradise as evoked in films of 1960’s has in some ways carried over into recent films coping with the Kashmir issue. The historicization of Bollywood’s long Kashmir obsession is thus an exploration of how this obsession fits in to the contested political relationship between Kashmir and the Indian Union.
Films of 1960’s made the Kashmir Valley the area for the expression of a fresh youthful modernity for urban Indians, especially through the technology of color. Pleasures of these films with the synthesis of a modern Indian subjectivity, contrasts these pleasures with the mounting political tensions within Kashmir.
It was in 1964 that Kashmir Ki Kali (K3) hit the cinemas as a salad of music, romance and drama; garnished with fresh sprigs of the Kashmiri locale. Kashmir is kali was a musical that presented a trip to Srinagar on a couch. The era of color had brought sort of vibrancy into movies. Outdoors and their natural colors changed into a rage. The white of snow was much beautiful in a color movie than grey and grey movies. So K3 was a goody to the moviegoers using its beautiful Kashmiri locations.
In 1999, it had been Kargil War that played a distinctive role for making Kashmir central to the definition Indian national unity. The Kargil episode inspired an initial Post Independent India, which had nothing you’ve seen prior stood together, shoulder to shoulder, than it did during and for a short while after the Kargil Episode. Kargil became the USP of film makers. Even though these films didn’t make it big at box office level however they got admiration from all types of people. Advertisement of national pride through films enabled for the first time in 52 years, this nation truly united together, cutting across all barriers of caste, class, creed, and community.
While Bollywood has long projected Kashmir whilst the eroticized landscape of your head in the social imaginary of Indians’ it had been Mani Ratnam’s flamboyant narrative of guns and roses – Roja (1992) – that kick-started a reexamination of Bollywood’s complicity with ‘the key politics of our desires’ ;.Violence and geopolitics have intervened within Kashmir’s cinematic performance and reception. With the emergence of Kashmiri separatism in 1989, the Valley now supplies a theatre for a fresh ‘cinepatriotism’ for the romance of Indo-Pak war as opposed to the battle of the sexes (Kabir, 2004a).
Although numerous films were made on Kashmir; it’s the modicum of films or none of these films that portrayed indigenous cultural space of Kashmir. The celebrated brotherhood between Kashmiri Pandits and Kashmiri Muslims was never tried to be publicized by film makers. It was just in Jagmohan period in Kashmir, the animosity aroused in non-communal Kashmir. The political structures were structured in a fashion that generated communal confrontation in the Valley. Individuals who’d lived since centuries harmoniously became the victims of communal politics thus led them to exterminate each other. This phenomenal catastrophe was portrayed in films in enthusiastically without letting people to question the veracity. bigg boss 6 telugu voting poll In reality it’s only 10 bad films that Bollywood has been able to make on Kashmir after 1990’s. When we analyze these films it generates one clear about how a mainstream media represents Kashmir and Kashmiri people. Almost in most of these films Kashmiri’s are either called terrorists or fundamental Muslim’s whose morals and ethic are pre-modern and doesn’t fit in this western democratic liberal society. There is palpable change in titles itself, how a films related with Kashmir started with titles like Kali, Hena and then transformation of titles to Mission Kashmir, Fannah. The changes in the titles clearly signify the increasing loss of innocence and creation of defective place called Kashmir.