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Time of India

‘Hindi cinema is a major connective space for Indian and Pakistani viewers…Diasporic youngsters watch it together'

'Hindi cinema is a major connective space for Indian and Pakistani viewers…Diasporic youngsters watch it together' Avijit Ghosh TNN Jul 2, 2025, 21:54 IST IST Translator and cultural theorist Meenakshi Bharat taught English at Delhi University. She talks to Avijit Ghosh about her latest book, 'Hindi Cinema and Pakistan', how movies on sensitive themes can become double-edged weapons, they can incense or console Q: Partition scarred India. How does Pakistan appear in the Hindi films of the early post-Independence decades? A: Early post-Independence Hindi films reflected the confusion and disbelief that Partition had indeed happened. Consequently, there is less figuration of Pakistan as a national entity and more focus on the immediate repercussions of the holocaustic event on the common people, as in the break-up of families shown in films such as Firdaus (1953), Dhool Ka Phool (1959), Amar Rahe Yeh Pyar (1961), and the highly metaphorical Waqt (1965), or on the rise of corruption and violence in the mayhem unleashed by the division.