Open Thread– July 5

July 5, 2025July 10, 2025KabirBrown PunditsOpen Thead

Talk about whatever you want

Three articles I found interesting:

1) How Jayaprakash Narayan, hero for the Sangh, pushed for ‘socialist’ to be added to the Constitution

2) ‘Exoticised, alienised, villainised’: A book looks at how Muslims have been portrayed in Hindi films

3) ‘The Hyderabadis: Displacement, broken geographies, and evolving identities in the city’s history

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Kabir

I am Pakistani-American. I am a Hindustani classical vocalist and ethnomusicologist. I hold a B.A from George Washington University (Dramatic Literature, Western Music) and an M.Mus (Ethnomusicology) from SOAS, University of London. My dissertation “A New Explanation for the Decline of Hindustani Music in Pakistan” has recently been published by Aks Publications (Lahore 2024). Samples of my singing can be heard on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/artist/0Le1RnQQJUeKkkXj5UCKfB View all posts by Kabir

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ritesh

13 days ago

2. It is very sad that Indian leftists use all kinds of means and methods to cherry pick what they can to make muslims in India feel that they are victim. There is page named “Gems of bollywood” in which they show clips of how Brahmins and hinduism is demonized in bollywood movies. But leftists as they are won’t write on that. Moreover they pin turkic colonization and moghol colonization on Indian Muslim converts aggravating more problems.

Author

Kabir

13 days ago

Reply to ritesh

Do read her interview. This part is particularly relevant:

More recently, we have Muslims in historical films. In movies like Padmaavat or Chhaava, Muslims are shown as outsiders and villains who want to harm the nation or torture Hindus, who are shown as the original inhabitants of the country.
The older Muslims historicals, such as Mughal-e-Azam and Shah Jahan, glorify and exoticise rulers. This is problematic too. How can an ordinary viewer relate to these films? Jodhaa Akbar in 2008 was the last film where a Mughal ruler was shown in a positive light.
If you must take up social issues, why not subjects that have wider implications in the contemporary societal context, topics that can help us make sense of the larger politics?
Some of these forms of representation have a direct impact on society, such as what happened in the case of Chhaava. There is a definite polarisation. One of my participants said that audiences are learning about history from cinema. That said, cinema isn’t the only culprit – there are larger politics at play.

ritesh

13 days ago

Reply to Kabir

And who is responsible for this polarization ? surely it is mixture of Indian communists, Pakistan and indian muslims themselves. it is better to state historical facts as it is instead of whitewahing them. in internet days it is not possible this leftists have forgotten

Author

Kabir

13 days ago

Reply to ritesh

If we’re talking about Bollywood, the people responsible for the content of the films made are the filmmakers, directors etc. Audiences are responsible as well because film making is influenced by box office returns.

I don’t see what Pakistanis have to do with what gets made in Bollywood.

Author

Kabir

12 days ago

Another interesting piece:

“The BJP’s Push for Hindi in Different States Has a Larger Cultural Agenda Behind It”

Author

Kabir

12 days ago

And a piece from Pakistan:

Smoker’s Corner: A River by any Name (by Nadeem F. Paracha)

Last week, on the social media site X, the former minister of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Fawad Chaudhry was given a rather stern lesson in history by the chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.
In an X post, Bilawal had used the word ‘Sindhu’ for the River Indus, warning that “an attack” on its flow (by India) would not be tolerated. Mr Chaudhry commented that Bilawal should not have used the word ‘Sindhu’. He wrote: “This is an attack on Pakistan, not on Sindh, unless you have also joined Sindhu Desh.”
This was a rather uninformed comment by Chaudhry. Bilawal was livid. He responded by posting that Sindhu is the ancient name of the Indus. He is right. Many folks outside Sindh aren’t aware of this. This is not something that is taught in Pakistani textbooks. So, whenever they hear the word ‘Sindhu’, the first thing that comes to their mind is ‘Sindhu Desh’, a term coined for an independent Sindh by the Sindhi scholar G.M. Syed.

Billu

3 days ago

JP was a hardcore socialist … commie by another name. He wasn’t a hero of sangh; they just had a marraige of convenience which came apart not long after (for god knows what reasons the people who broke the marriage broke it – afterall it hurt them far more than it hurt the BJP in due course, BJP only strengthened gradually as people recognised it cud rule).
The villains almost invariably were banias, pandits et al. I don’t recall any muslim that was in a villanous role in a hindi film (unless all the characters were villains). Kabir wud like to point to examples otherwise.

Author

Kabir

3 days ago

Reply to Billu

There are a whole bunch of Bollywood films in which the villains are either Kashmiri “terrorists” or Pakistanis. More recently there are movies in which the villains are Muslim rulers like Ahmed Shah Abdali or Aurangzeb.