Bollywood
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Bollywood calling Pakistan. Again.
RecoveringNewsJunkie reacts to a Hindi film trailer set among Karachi’s Lyari gang wars, finding it unoriginal. He doubts the cultural appropriation charge but sees a missed chance for Pakistani actors…
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Homebound with Ishaan Khatter
Reviewing the film Homebound, India’s Oscar submission, the author asks whether casting privileged actors as a Dalit and a Muslim amounts to Dalit-washing, and whether Western praise rewards poverty as…
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Partition Never Ended: We Just Stopped Talking About It
X.T.M argues that the India–Pakistan conflict is also civilisational: each side knows little of the other, with Bollywood and state narratives supplying caricatures, while real conversations across the border turn…
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Addendum: On Labels, Nations and Misunderstandings
X.T.M adds that Indians and Pakistanis misread each other’s vocabulary and media, with India seeing itself as civilisational and Pakistan as ideological, and argues that curiosity rather than suspicion would…
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Zohran Mamdani and the Question of Civilizational Belonging
X.T.M answers Kabir’s comment on Zohran Mamdani, arguing that speaking Hindi-Urdu and quoting Bollywood are surface markers, that Indian identity is anchored in Dharma, and that Mamdani therefore reads as…
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From Yohani to Nora: How Bollywood Mughalizes Everything
Using Royals and the Manike Mage Hithe remix, X.T.M argues that Bollywood ‘Mughalizes’ regional inputs, so India kept the composite culture without religion while Pakistan kept the religion but lost…
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Let Pakistan Throw Stones. India Should Build the Skyline.
Argues that India should answer Pakistan by outgrowing it, as South Korea treats North Korea, rather than retaliating conventionally. The author says conventional retaliation restores a false parity, feeds Pakistan’s…
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Hindi Cinema As Visual Political Narrative
The author traces four phases of social change in post-independence India through Hindi films, beginning with the late 1950s to 1970s era of socialism, industrialisation and urbanisation, and arguing that,…
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Browncast: Subcontinent and Movies
Omar Ali and Maneesh Taneja talk with Gaurav about movies of the Indian subcontinent in the twentieth century, with recommendations ranging from Tamil and Marathi films to Hindi comedies and…
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Book Review: Shrayana Bhattacharya’s Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh-India’s Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence.
Maneesh Taneja reviews Shrayana Bhattacharya’s Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, which uses the film star’s fandom to tell the stories of lonely young Indian women with limited income and agency. He…
