Abstract:
For a long time, propaganda has been used in cinema across the world to create and influence public opinion. From Germany to Soviet Russia, and from America to Britain, propaganda cinema has not only helped to formulate mass opinion and to popularize ‘mass cinema’, it has also resulted in creating some of the most historic revolutions in cinematic history. Propaganda has been a common element in Indian cinema as well, in some cases such propaganda has helped educate and inform the masses alongside creating public opinion. But in recent times, it can be noticed that Indian cinema is using images, elements, and concepts that not only have subtle tones of propaganda, but also clear undertones of Islamophobia. This essay intends to explore how contemporary Indian cinema has incorporated nationalist and anti-Islamic concepts in its recent releases like, ‘The Kashmir Files’ and ‘The Kerala Story’. The essay also explores how alternate cinema has included portrayals of Islamic communities, set in Islamic countries and how such depictions of Islam vary from the ones that develop out of Islamophobia.
Keywords: Islamophobia, Propaganda, Propaganda cinema, Indian cinema
Cinema is often believed to be the most modern, the most complex, and the most widely recognized of all media, particularly due to its audio-visual storytelling, its immense capacity of mass appeal, greater reach among audiences, and being a confluence of all forms of creative arts. Cinema is the most effective of all media when it comes to influencing audiences and manipulating public opinion, which has given rise to the genre, named ‘propaganda cinema’. ‘Propaganda’ is a term, with heavy negative connotation, as it deals with the spreading of biased information, which can often be misleading and can impact mass opinion.
The Times earlier...
A deeper and more critical look at the history of propaganda cinema will reveal that propaganda films have played a major role in influencing public opinion and providing one-sided information to the public. Some examples include Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda film ‘Triumph of the Will’, made in 1935 under Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and commissioned by Führer himself. The film is also a documentation of Germany’s rebirth and celebration of the Nazi party, symbolized with the repeated use of images and symbols related to the Nazi regime, such as the ‘Swastika’, the eagle statue, the Nazi flag, and images of Hitler. The film notes Germany’s rise in power and portrays Hitler as the nation's saviour, with the documents of the Nazi Party Congress held in Nuremberg in 1934. The film, though propaganda, is a spectacle itself, as each image of the documentary can be critically studied as a piece of art, which must be referred to by future filmmakers and cinephiles to understand documentary filmmaking. Charlie Chaplin made a satirical response to ‘The Triumph of the Will’ with his famous film ‘The Great Dictator’ in 1940, making a caricature out of Hitler (Ghosh, 2023).
Speaking of propaganda films, the best possible amalgamation of cinema and political rhetoric occurred in Soviet cinema of the 1920s, particularly with filmmakers like Lev Kuleshov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, and so on, which not only led to the birth of montage cinema and the famous ‘Kuleshov Effect’, with a redefined use of juxtapositions of images in cinema but was also a groundbreaking ode to cinema itself (Russell, 2009). Some of the most mention-worthy Soviet propaganda films that were made in the 1920s include Eisenstein’s ‘Battleship Potemkin’, ‘Strike’, ‘October’, Dziga Vertov’s ‘Man With a Movie Camera’, Pudovkin’s ‘Storm over Asia’, and so on. These films bear the mark of a complete turn in terms of filmmaking and editing styles, that can be paralleled to that of a revolution itself, and thus gave rise to an impeccable creative spree in cinematic history. Apart from Soviet propaganda cinema, there were similar categories of films that were made by the Americans (for instance. D. W. Griffith’s ‘The Birth of a Nation’) and the British as means of forming mass opinion, thus popularising the idea of ‘mass cinema’ (Ghosh, 2023).
Earlier Propaganda in India:
In the Indian history of cinema, the Films Division, the filmmaking wing of the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has taken up the motto of producing “documentaries and news magazines for publicity of Government programmes" since post-independence, and legendary filmmakers like Paul Zils, P.V. Pathy, S. Sukhdev, D. G. Tendulkar, and many others made films that were wonderful fusions of aesthetic filmmaking with subtle propaganda messages. Some such films include ‘India’67’, ‘Hindustan Hamara’, ‘India Independent’, and so on.
All the propaganda films that have been done for so long - both in Indian cinema and in World cinema, though they tried spreading biased information, were exemplary works of cinematic excellence and embarked on the zenith of creative filmmaking.
It can undoubtedly be said that the kind of films that India has been producing in recent times are not only lacking enough creativity, let alone visual aesthetics, but these films even fail to take into account the ‘A, B, C, D’s’ of filmmaking itself. Though India has witnessed the making of films like ‘Pad Man’ and ‘Toilet: Ek Prem Katha’ bearing nuanced shades of propaganda related to the Central Government’s sanitation and development projects like ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan’, the recent propaganda films are full-fledged campaigns with a reductionist agenda of forming a one-religion State (Adavi, 2023).
In light of rising nationalist politics in recent India, when the sole integrity of the nation’s ‘Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic Republic’, is under challenge, Hindutva propaganda films like ‘Tanhaji’, ‘Manikarnika’, ‘Padmavat’, ‘Kesari’, and similar ones are proving to be deliberately mortifying Islamic communities in India and tainting the silver screen with suggestive saffron images (Adavi, 2023). The recent release of films like ‘The Kerala Story’ and ‘The Kashmir Files’ seem to fuel Islamophobia even more in the country, as these films use symbols and elements that portray it.
The Kashmir Files:
Vivek Agnihotri’s ‘The Kashmir Files’ is not just another film about the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in the 90s and Hindu genocide in Kashmir, but seems to be a “cheap, hate-ridden propaganda”, that not only got direct endorsements from nationalist leaders in India, but also bagged a National Award (Bhattacharya, 2023). In the midst of controversy, the film gets labeled as ‘vulgar’ and ‘propaganda’ to spike anti-Muslim sentiments in a nationalist India from Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid in the IFFI and thus intends to vilify Muslims and polarize religious communities in an already-disturbed Kashmir.
The Kerala Story:
‘The Kerala Story’ by director Sudipto Sen, is about a girl named Shalini Unnikrishnan, who aspires to become a nurse, has been misled by Islamic extremist groups and is manipulated to join the terrorist group ISIS, and finally, she finds herself captivated in Afghanistan. The very trailer of the film introduces the protagonist, Shalini, as ‘A Hindu, from Kerala’, making her religion, her sole identity. In fact, religion forms a major part of the film’s screenplay. Apart from having technical loopholes in aspects of making the film, ‘The Kerala Story’ labels Muslims as terrorists and reconfirms the nationalist conspiracy theory of India, the ‘Love Jihad’ - a theory that states how Hindu women are captivated by Muslim men and are forced to convert into Islam, trapping Hindus in the Islamic crusade (Bhattacharya, 2023).
Apart from the immense negative publicity created by mainstream media, the film claims that almost 32,000 women from Kerala were forced to convert to Islam and join ISIS, but later it was changed to 3 with further fact-checking (Rajendran, 2023).
Both the films present narratives that are solely confined into portraying religion, and both portray symbols and elements of Islamic stereotypes. The films are more focused in showing religion-based narratives rather than storylines or involve any element that is hardly cinematic. For instance, ‘The Kerala Story’ has included images of typical ‘Afghan landscapes’ and images of a goat being slaughtered (depicting Shailini’s state) and motifs related to terrorism (Ghosh, 2023).
The rampant visuals of death, to say in particular, abuse and deaths of Hindus in hands of Muslims, as shown in both the films can easily remind us of the famous poem by Kazi Nazrul Islam named ‘Kandari Hushiar’ ( Beware, Oh Captain!) that says:
“হিন্দু না ওরা মুসলিম?” ওই জিজ্ঞাসে কোন জন?
কান্ডারী! বল ডুবিছে মানুষ, সন্তান মোর মা’র!"
- which translates to:
“Hindu or Muslims? Who dares to ask?
Captain! Proclaim, Humans are drowning, my Mother’s children”.
Both ‘The Kashmir Files’ and ‘The Kerala Story’, as claimed, have kept hunting ‘truths’, yet neither of them show a humanist approach in their narratives. The films have accounted for the deaths and sorrows of Hindus and terrorism of Muslims, but have not humanised the characters and instead have labelled religions with stereotypes.
The Not-So Propaganda films: Cinephilia and experiences of the real Islam in Cinema
There are films that have been made previously, set in Afghanistan or involve portrayals of Islamic communities and are not propaganda films. Some such films include:
1. ‘The Breadwinner’, an animated film by Nora Twomey, based on the novel of the same name by Deborah Ellis, that narrates the story of a girl named Parvana in a Taliban-dominated Kabul, disguises herself as a boy and takes up all the responsibilities of feeding her family single-handedly, and also decides to fight till the end to rescue her father from the Taliban detention camp. The film, set in Afghanistan shows the social inferiority of women along with the turmoil people in the country are going through. Apart from depicting a country, lacking human rights, ‘The Breadwinner’, unlike Islamophobic and Hindutva propaganda films also has a soft corner for an Afghan man, who risks his life at the end to help Parvana rescue her father from the clutches of Taliban and also notes how the Afghans had once been poets, teachers, and artists, and how people, irrespective of caste and gender have been suffering in a hetero-patriarchal, misogynist, and fascist Afghanistan.
2. ‘At Five in the Afternoon’ by Iranian filmmaker Samira Makhmalbaf, another film set in Afghanistan that narrates the story of Nogreh, who attends school in spite of her father’s disagreement, provides her home as a shelter for refugees, dwells with her sister-in-law and her ailing and hungry baby, and above all, aspires to become the President of Afghanistan one day. The film, almost a visual poetry by the acclaimed Iranian filmmaker, beautifully shows a woman’s ambition and her urge to taste freedom, as she slips into stiletto sandals and opens up her picturesque blue umbrella, or even gets to click photographs for her campaign. The film takes Nogreh to Garcia Lorca’s poem “At Five in the Afternoon,” and ends with a prolific elegy (Young, 2003).
3. ‘Baran’ by Majid Majidi is an auteurically poetic film, with simple storytelling and touching narratives from the Iranian new wave filmmaker. ‘Baran’ tells the story of an Afghan worker called Najaf and his son Rahmat who replaces him after his accident and is made to work for feeding the worker, but Rahmat is later found to be a girl ‘Baran’. This is a film that never intends to vilify any person or the refugee Afghans or any community, but shows the soothing expressions of love and humanity, especially when the film ends with the footprints getting washed away with rainwater.
4. ‘Three Songs for Benazir’ by Elizabeth Mirzaei and Gulistan Mirzaei is a documentary film about Afghan war refugees who are struggling to dwell as displaced individuals in Afghan war camps. The story is about a newly married couple Benazir and Shaista. Benazir, who always keeps a smiling face and Shaista who always has songs for making her smile. The film is an account of the turmoil people in Afghanistan have been going through as they find it difficult to join the Afghan army and suffer from addiction issues after working in opium fields. ‘Three Songs for Benazir’ is a unique poetic documentary film that helps to break all the stereotypes that have been linked to Islamic communities, especially those who reside in Afghanistan, Muslim men, and Islam in general.
References:
