The Resistance Front: A sign of evolved menace

Many Bollywood films made in India targeted the NRI (Non-Resident Indian) audience and the upwardly mobile class with no economic worries.

- RASHEED KIDWAI

Muslims face invisibilisation, otherization and association with crime in popular Hindi cinema, insists a new book titled, "Muslim Identity in Hindi Cinema: Poetics and Politics of Genre and Representation [Routledge]."

Written by Mohammad Asim Siddiqui, Professor of English at Aligarh Muslim University, says the demonization of Muslims began with nationalist and jingoist films of the 1990s and culminating in present day unabashedly Islamophobic films, includes films which twist historical facts and sacrifice nuance completely in the representation of characters.

Prof Asim Siddiqui, who has been a critic, reviewer and translator, points how propaganda films like The Kashmir Files (Vivek Agnihotri, 2022) and The Kerala Story (Sudipto Sen, 1923), presented Muslims as one-dimensional evil figures. These filmmakers used their films as a vehicle for divisive propaganda.

The old and glorious traditions of Bollywood showcasing diversity, secularism and pluralism is now replaced by otherisation of Muslims and their transformation into enemy figures in Hindi films, laments Prof Siddiqui.