Alia Bhatt in Raazi, Kalank, and Nationhood Anxieties in Bollywood, 2020

Alia Bhatt, the Bollywood actress and “It Girl” known for her ingénue face and dashing style is known for portraying the current struggles of middle class South Asian women. She does not shy away from potentially controversial social issues such as inter-caste dating in 2 States (2014) and seeking treatment for one’s mental illness in Dear Zindagi (2016). She has recently taken upon more historical roles in two well-known films, Raazi (2018) and Kalank (2019); the former became the highest grossing Bollywood film to feature a female protagonist. Both films highlighted the importance of an Indian woman’s contribution towards a collective sense of Indian nationhood. The plots of the films demarcated the gender as well as social boundaries between “Indians” and “others.” While her characters do not explicitly refer to present Indian politics, the structure of the female lead’s love interest in these two Bollywood films successfully addressed anxieties surrounding the nation-state from the 1930s to 1970s.

The two films’ plot revolved around different junctures in South Asian history, one from 1930s to the 1950s, the other covering the period from the mid-1960s to 1971, yet allude to the same anxieties surrounding the “foreign Muslim” of the present. I will discuss the two films chronologically and then move on to comparing both films. Both films have female-centric narratives, which invites audiences to participate in complicated performances of heterosexuality. While moments of the film expose the inner workings of heterosexuality, the endings inevitably affirm the heterosexual female as well as her life choices. In both instances, Alia Bhatt’s characters explorations of her gender roles coincide with the image of the liberal Indian nation-state.

In Kalank (2019), Alia Bhatt plays the newly-wed wife as both a favor for her father’s family friend as well as her family interests in a pre-Partition city. The first wife of a family heir asked Alia Bhatt’s character to be the new wife, due to the first wife’s terminal disease. The film titled which means “blemish,” focused on Alia Bhatt’s character’s purity despite being denied conjugal love (both in as well as outside the bedroom) by her husband, who focused on his first wife. 

Alia Bhatt’s character narrates this story decades later for a historian who wants to recover Partition stories, which has become a recent genre within historical research. The function of print is integral to reconstructing her romantic and “innocent” self, since she also explores the city’s public space as an educated daughter-in-law working for her family’s newspaper. Her gendered innocence is crucial to vindicate “India” from responsibility for partition as well as the newspaper’s uncommitted stance to the politics of their content. An all-male and religiously diverse boardroom discussed heatedly the ads, including those that advertised alcohol, which at times aroused religious sentiments. Alia Bhatt’s character argued from the boardroom’s doorstep that female products could potentially save the day, adding her voice to the newspaper’s future, without showing any explicit “communal” agenda.

In contrast, the film showed that the angry Muslim laborers are first and foremost key to locating “communal” attitudes, a popular trope in history and reports on Partition from post-Partition India. The Muslim illegitimate son, who has little interest in organized politics, attempts to establish a liaison with her to revenge the father who did not give him his due respect. The mother, courtesan, provides a queer space for Alia Bhatt’s character to experience pleasure beyond the domestic realm and train her singing voice. There is a moment of homosocial intimacy between her two love interests at a similarly queer space: the river bank. Under the moonlight, they open up to the perceived stranger about family and love matters, both of immense consequence. Beyond the “serious” boardroom, another kind of inter-religious bonhomie can be established over affections suppressed during the day. 

In the climatic ending, while attempting to board the train to “India” under the heat of the moment, her illicit love interest unfortunately died under the hands of the “communal” Muslims. Alia Bhatt’s character’s innocence in regards to the political aspect of the affair continued over the recorded oral testimonies which will live beyond her own lifetime. While she focused on her personal romantic sentiments, the liberal destination of the India free of “communal Muslims” as a political state is ensured, especially given that her loyalty to her Hindu husband is also preserved. Both endings were crucial to her success as a wife in post-Partition India: she could not be redeemed as an innocent citizen of the new Republic if she either succumbed to the consummation of extramarital love or to communal enmity. The pity of partition was resolved by her ability to articulate through the new state’s language and account for her fallen love’s death, metaphorically and literally. She focused mainly on interpreting her own acts of wifehood-transgressions rather than the broader political anxieties of the 1940s town (qasbah). Yet notably, the patriarch of her family, her husband, is absent during her recounts with the journalist, ensuring a sense of “objectivity” from the female subject. Yet even though the setting is intimate and understanding, Alia Bhatt’s character is aware of the public judgment in the ending’s conclusion, an off-screen voice asked that the people (audience included) can judge whether her story involved a blemish (kalank) or not. But clearly, the question and stake of her purity became connected to the idea of India’s liberalism of the 21st century through the film’s narrative arc.

In the film Raazi, Alia Bhatt’s character is more complex, given her multiple loyalties to the Indian state, to Kashmir’s future, and to her own religious piety. She succeeds her father’s role as a spy for India’s mission, which is poorly defined, but still sustained through spy-centric plot twists. Like her character in Kalank, Alia Bhatt’s character in Raazi similarly outlined the weight of respectability for any daughter-in-law in any middle class South Asian household. The gendered innocence helped her evade most suspicions of espionage, yet it could be argued that this requirement for authenticity and piety on screen is a uniquely post-9/11 phenomena for Indian Muslims. The muhajir servant of the Pakistani military family is the only one suspicious of her “innocence,” since she often usurped his responsibilities while demonstrating loyalty and usefulness within the domestic sphere. It is significant that she ends his life when he discovered her spy identity outside the domestic sphere. 

Soon after Alia Bhatt’s character’s exceptional and murderous act, she frantically searched for her own cover; the thrill of the audience overlaps with the gendered anxiety that the wife of a respectable should not ventures outside her domestic realm. Interestingly, nationalist leader Mohandas Gandhi once argued that ‘Western Civilization’ and capital displace women from their homes into the productive sphere. Alia Bhatt’s character in Raazi similarly has been displaced through her commitment to India’s intelligence gathering. Yet this revolting act by Alia Bhatt’s character of murdering of fellow Muslim could be read as nationalist and thus exorable to prevent imminent war between India and Pakistan. It is interesting to think about how the American TV series Homeland, which also starred a female lead might have influenced the plotline and character development of Raazi.

Alia Bhatt’s character’s acceptance (which is also the meaning of the title, Raazi) as a daughter-in-law is connected to Pakistan elite’s efforts to project their image of themselves as upper-caste sharif persons with respectable families. The Pakistani’s state project consists of promoting their pious self-image at times, which often occurred at the expense of religious minorities and non-sharif citizens. Yet the cinematic subversion of such a publicity project occurred when Alia Bhatt’s character used her Islamic duties, such as prayer, as her cover during her espionage-related activities. She often prayed and completed household tasks during her outings for communicating with her Indian intelligence superiors at the bazaar. Such acts also remind the audience of the potentially unfaithful wife of Kalank who used female-specific tasks as a “cover” to seek out her lover towards the middle of the film. Both films seem to leave the question to their audience: does Alia Bhatt’s loyalty as a wife matter more or does the commitment to the national cause trump “domestic” obligations? Such questions posed by the films are very poignant given the contemporary context: in India, certain Hindutva groups have initiated movements such as ghar wapsi in which women married to non-Hindus are encouraged to “return home” to the fold of Hinduism. The agency demonstrated by Alia Bhatt’s character Sehmat in Raazi contrasts to the thousands of repressed voices of sexual violence survivors against crimes that occurred during the War of 1971, incidentally where the film ends. The editing and promotional process of the film in its Youtube trailer that highlighted the agony of Alia Bhatt lying on the bed, seemed to acknowledge the tensions of sexuality and consent South Asian women face from the beginnings of nationhood to this day.

Sketch of Malden's Minorities

I moved to malden from arlington because I found that there were more non-white people on occasion of visiting a friend around two years ago. He warned me that it might unsafe to travel at night, even though I enjoyed the commuting atmosphere. It is quite interesting to contrast the malden scenery every day with that of my school, both of which are at higher altitudes. I almost feel self-conscious when I press stop on the bus around the private university.

Later I realized that despite the new immigrant population, my new neighborhood that bordered the other town, melrose, still had many white inhabitants. Some may even stretch back to the first white settlers. (Malden's history as a settlers' town precedes Boston.) Many were conscious of their decreasing numbers. They made their presence known by hanging American flags and letting their dogs hover in the backyard; sometimes the dogs barked at me. I also responded sometimes with Arabic slurs. English failed to serve this purpose, since I did not intend to address their owners. Some parked their trucks on the street while others (often new to the neighborhood like me) hid theirs in a car garage. One old white male neighbor parked his brown pickup in a fenced orchard and burned wood during cold days, seemingly defiant of state-owned institutions like National Grid. His American flag even had a post. The fence seemed very sturdy against the encroaching chinese immigrants like me, as well as for the wildlife animals. His wife sometimes opened and closed the gate for him.

I was also defiant because I did not enjoy climbing up the hill to where I lived every day. Still, this regimen helped me from any sickness during my short year stay. My immediate neighbors are also ethnic chinese, but often strove to maintain their superiority in comparison to us female neighbors, due to their male gender. They did not care what I was studying. After learning about fengshui, I begin to understand their attitude more specifically related to the less-than-ideal housing conditions we shared.

Waitts Mount (image from the internet)

I often thought of pulling pranks on the neighbors when I was especially bitter about racial capitalism and the barking dogs. I also muse about who among them own a gun. The nearby settler landmark--waitts mount--is a reminder of how guns established the place and delineated property. I learned at waitts mount that the First Baptist Church has been on the map since the founding in the mid-1600s, and now primarily serves immigrant communities. Americans suffering from homeless conditions also appear during days of food handouts.

Taste of India (image from Foursquare)

We have no immediate black neighbors. One African American family lives at the edge of the hill and is occluded from direct view by a car-path ledge. They also own a small dog that barks. Caribbean stores and the french-speaking seventh adventist church for Haitians also male up for the otherwise lack of black presence. My favorite place to eat--an Indian restaurant--is also nearby. I like it partly because of the food, and partly because the same chef usually plays videos on TV.

Walid has been more mellow than me, even though he also feels tired walking up the hill. He admired some of my neighbors' cars. The flora also adds a beautiful touch this summer, though we are careful to distinguish which flora is of whose private property. 

Ramadan 2019: Day 19-21

Day 19 Friday

Walid visited me but we did not arrive at the same understanding. I lost my temper and said "STFU." He left my place in anger.
In the afternoon, he asked after my wellbeing. I still was not ready for reconciliation, especially given his adamant refusal to clean some areas of his living space. I went to my university and cleared some of my class materials. I met Michael and he complained about his visa application for Russia. A lot of his frustration seemed to stem from his idea that all plans are connected; in my experience, I learned that "real life" hardships imposed by others did not necessarily hinder my scholarly achievements. But perhaps Micheal will only find that part out through his own experience.

Similarly, academic support is only one aspect of success. Academic book acknowledgments sometimes over-do the whole "naming those who have supported me;" it is important to remember that even people who have little or no support from other scholars have also written stellar scholarship. Perhaps a page in a book called "those who have trolled or backstabbed me" would be an even more indicative sign of academic tenacity.

In the evening, I shared some of the electoral successes from Dalit politicians in India on faceb00k, as well as a nice Nipsey Hussle song. The post-production happened after his untimely death.

Day 20 Saturday

I finished Zumba--the first time I went to exercise in the morning, probably since I left India. I felt lightheaded afterward. On my way back, I still had to fight with Walid over when he will clean his living space. He finally conceded to clean it. He also visited me in the evening.


In between our fight, I also snapped and retweeted the following uplifting message:

@Kylo_Reine May 25

Today, May 25th, marks 19 years since the Israeli Defense forces withdrew from Lebanese land after 15 years of terrorising it, marking the end of the South Lebanon conflict (1985-2000), when South Lebanon was finally liberated. Happy Liberation Day!

N, a colleague from my university, visited the big mosque with her friend and recognized Walid from my snaps. Walid joked that he became famous because of me. I was not happy with the new prospects that might involve too much of his energy, but I have gradually realized that his new opportunities are good for both of us.

Day 21 Sunday

Our signs

I called Chiansan in the morning and discussed my concern with my role in America's society. He discussed how to view the legal profession in America anthropologically, which I found to be useful. He also told me about his discussions about property ownership with his colleagues. He found the statement "Rent is theft" not radical enough, since, in his opinion, all property is organized around the right to use violence to defend it. I was encouraged by him to attend a vigil for ICE detainees and started to make signs for both Walid and me.


Walid and I met up at Downtown Crossing. We arrived at Andrew station and walked to the crowd that led the others to protest against ICE detention. During our walk to the site where we could see the non-adult detainees, we talked to a peace activist, Glenda, who asked which church did we belong. I fumbled over the words and finally settled on something like "Muslim organization." I did not find an equivalent vocabulary for "ummah" in English at the time. She then tried to make a freedom song with the Arabic word for freedom, "hurriya," which was nice. When we arrived at the place where we could see the detainees, we made eye contact with them as well as some friendly, non-verbal gestures. We chanted some slogans and posed for some photos. I realized that I had met one of the participants, Zeba, at a previous Taha Collective event.

After the protest ended, Omar, Zeba, Walid and I visited a homeless shelter, probably one of the biggest in Boston. Walid and I had passed by this place on the way; it smelled like piss but many people seemed to like hanging out there. Such presence would have otherwise been seen as loitering by private police, such as mall security. I felt uneasy because, like Foucault said, many modern institutions resemble a prison. We were chaperoned by public health officials, who guarded us with silent amusement. Omar did his best to befriend the guards and maintained social distance from the homeless.

Upon leaving, we met Majid. He exclaimed that the timing was wrong. Omar said it is good that you showed up. We went back to the parking lot and took more pictures. Then we parted ways. Zeba was kind enough to drop us off at the South end Whole Foods. We browsed the large selection of fancy things and I ate sample cheese. Other people soon followed my footsteps in eating the samples. When we exited the store, we realized that we had also fought near this site. Yet this day we were in high spirits.

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6pm, Walid, Michael and I were on the same green line train headed for Riverside. Our classmate S  invited us to dinner at her suburban home. Despite the quiet look, she shared with us some harrowing stories of being surveilled and disturbed by unknown people. After some conversation in the living room, Walid broke his fast with tea and dates in the kitchen. We started watching S prepare dinner in the backyard.

S did not know I was pescatarian so I ended up eating some unwanted meat. Over dinner, Michael bemoaned the state of affairs of the American public, to which I usually found to be elitist. He also said that South Koreans would not grow as tall as they do now if they did not have milk introduced by the American people. I found such imperialist statements nauseating. Otherwise, the night was lovely and we chatted up till 11pm.

Both Walid and Michael appreciated her energetic dog. We had an interesting conversation on women's virtues and dress codes. Michael and S discussed the lack of funding in our department. He tried to dismiss my participation against ICE protests as "activism" that would interfere with "scholarship," a binary that only those with white privilege invoked to discredit others whose life is at risk for not speaking in defense. ("Your silence will not protect you." - Audre Lorde)
Michael also wanted to make a point about Buddhism and its reliance on "magic," which I found to be very self-centered. (His "rational" "secularism" could not explain "magic," and therefore something had to be categorized as "Buddhism" vis-a-vis "magic.") I tried to argue another point, but he found it irrelevant to his concern. After we left, Michael attempted to share impressions about S, to which I found to be a tiring and distrustful exercise. I tried my best to divert such conversations since some infighting between S and others had already occurred prior to Michael's arrival. Yet he somehow wanted to be "in," without even knowing what it means. Walid and I parted with Michael at Park St.

Differently Abled Iraqis in America: On the 16th Anniversary

Sixteen years have passed since America (along with other countries) decided to topple Saddam Hussein and institute their own sectarian-colored government in Iraq. The U.S. move to disband the Iraqi military has also been the primary reason for the rise of armed sectarian conflict in Iraq. This post is a commemoration and acknowledgment of U.S. culpability. It hopes to center the lives of Iraqi people who still bear witness to the evolving events of militarism and imperialism. 

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Today while I was on the 101 bus venturing from Malden to Medford, I saw three Latino men discussing the motherland (pais) fervently in Spanish.  All wore fashionable hats as well as similar clothes. When two of them left the bus at one point, the remaining one joined the male bus driver and switched to converse in English. He remembered his homeland nostalgically as a place where he did not need to pay for juice or fruit. He also recounted how his hard-earned money in the U.S. could enable him to own property in the motherland. They both lamented the disappearance of a nearby Papa Gino's Pizza. The man bragged about his work and salary to the bus driver and wondered "how can someone earn without working?" He soon left after this statement and the driver wished him a good day.

First, I was struck by the capitalist contradiction in which his labor and remittances will contribute to the capitalization of his motherland, which I guess would also wipe out the practice of receiving free juice. Second, I was annoyed by his ableist understanding of survival, which is prevalent among Chinese immigrants as well. The second part took a while for me to digest and verbalize.

Today was also another class with Prof. Kamran Rastegar where we discussed the connections between colonialism and trauma. While the latter's definition has been criticized by some as Eurocentric, I found trauma as a useful concept to understand my own circumstances as well as the Iraqi friends I made in Louisville. One important intervention made by people caught in political events is that trauma is often ongoing. For my experience, the ideal "safe space" for processing trauma is often (sadly) only found in America or Western Europe, since lives of those in such places are placed at a higher value. Many places in Iraq continue to suffer under conflict and private security companies profit from the current scenario.

For many Iraqis, even after they enter the U.S., their trauma often cannot be addressed due to their racialized subaltern statuses. One of the Iraqi friends I met in Louisville, "A," struggles with the ongoing effects of trauma and the same ableist situations as told by the man I heard on the bus today. "A" believed that only work could secure himself a respectable livelihood in America. On the other hand, he also witnessed the demise of Iraqi men who do not become a middle-class family man, either due to their class position (lack of resources for marrying and/or supporting a partner) or due to their estrangement from American society. One of his former friends resisted wage labor and continued to live as a homeless person in Louisville. This former friend's existence calls to question the possibility of rehabilitating people traumatized by American imperialism. Similar to the man on the bus, "A" also acknowledges that "nothing is free in America," yet he also has a certain pride in his ability to work.

from : @johnnyrodgersis

22 hour
Y, a former mercernary and non-Arab Iraqi, found me as an ideal person to discuss his encounters with the American military-industrial complex. He acknowledged his privilege associated with his contribution to the (ever-changing) objectives of American presence in Iraq and how that helped him disabuse any Islamophobic biases from white people in America. He also demonstrated some conflicted feelings over his acts of killing, whether for political or economic gains. His trauma affected him in a negative way. Yet his trauma was not as obviously manifested as trauma of other Iraqis, or me, for that matter.

Others who did not contribute to America's military project had more ambivalent feelings toward their "new" life in America. Many did not relate to their opportunities in America in the same functionalist way as Y did. M, another non-Arab Iraqi, for example, did not adhere to masculine norms of either American or Iraqi standards and did not have the same impetus to integrate into American society as Y. M, as a receiver of unemployment benefits, was seen as less masculine in both Iraqi and American contexts than Y. Thus while America and its capitalism economy is structurally ableist and prefers immigrants with ableist bodies, the need to appear as ableist and available for work also depends on the subjectivity and masculine ideals of each person. Rutgers scholar Dr. Amir Moosavi has also argued that ideals of martyrdom (Shaheed) can be found in literary expressions as well as experiences of Iraqi and Iranian people during and after the Iran-Iraq war. These differences are important for people who wish to decenter white masculinity.

Another case that prompted my thoughts on this subject was the 《和陌生人说话》 interview with former mercenary Bai Xiaobao. One can watch the interview here on Youtube. Originally from a formerly semi-rural background, he achieved middle class status by risking his life in post-2003 Iraq. He leveraged the idea of necropolitics and capitalism to his advantage by serving four years (2012-2016) as a mercenary.

("Necropolitics is the use of social and political power to dictate how some people may live and how some must die.")

Mr. Bai lived precariously along with other non-white mercernaries and prepared for his likely death: he wrote his mother's name as the recipient of the 4,000,000RMB life insurance. bought property near his hometown in China. He reflected how his worldview expanded after his encounter with Beijing and the internet where men discussed mercernary opportunities. Yet my question prompted by experiences of migration and globalization is that Bai Xiaobao's radical reassassessment of his life being more "valuable" in monetary terms in Iraq than in China. While he harmonizes his life choices by promoting China's society as stable and safe in comparison to Iraq, his acts of migration and re-telling can be subversive to China's state project.

Y similarly considered the idea of returning as a mercenary to earn money rather than play it safe with wage labor in the U.S. While ableism allows for some forms of labor, mercenary labor in Iraq has a logic that rejects the state's power of determining life and death. The Chinese and American government continue to profit from migrants in various forms, the former mostly of domestic migrants and the later being mostly migrants of color. Yet the biopolitics of ableism also relies on the idea that one necessarily appreciates one's body beyond all renumeration. If the concern of migrants are predominantly "who will take care of me when I am old," the mercenary (from subaltern backgrounds) has resolved this "money" problem with their own body.

Many of others follow the state logic that they will either die of natural death or state punishment and/or fail the stringent requirements for serving on mercenary forces. The bodies of these people often have to perform labor in order for their survival in America, despite that many aspects of their homeland had been destroyed by war and imperialism. Others, such as South Asian laborers, are exploited as well in Iraq. See: Documents Reveal Details of Labor Trafficking by #KBR Subcontractor in #Iraq.

Due to this reality of the people I know, I am very despondent. There should be more ways in the U.S. that addresse trauma without predicating on the assumption that the person will recover, since recovery is often centered around labor productivity. Centering the trauma of Iraqis should not require more labor from Iraqis, since it is the U.S. that created the dislocation in the first place. Yet there are also other participants in the post-2003 conflict, such as Bai Xiaobao, which complicate the politics of trauma and imperialism.


Further reading:

Achille Mbembe. 2003. Necropolitics.

Antonella Ceccagno. 2017. City making and global labor regimes : Chinese immigrants and Italy's fast fashion industry

Amir Moosavi. 2015. “How to Write Death: Disenchanting Martyrdom in two Novels of the Iran-Iraq War.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, No. 35.

David Isenberg. 2009. Shadow force : private security contractors in Iraq. 

Gracia Liu-Farrer. 2011. Labor migration from China to Japan : international students, transnational migrants. 

Scott Fitzsimmons. 2017. Private Security Companies during the Iraq War: Military performance and the use of deadly force 

Ulrich Petersohn. 2013. The Effectiveness of Contracted Coalitions: Private Security Contractors in Iraq. 

Yun Gao. 2010. Concealed chains : labour exploitation and Chinese migrants in Europe.