Muslim Historical Genre and Muslims in Historical Genre

Abstract

In this chapter, the recent genre of Historical films represents Muslim rulers through the prism of aggressive Hindu nationalist discourse. The chapter discusses and critically look at the sharp distinction between representing Muslims in the Historical genre and in the Muslim Historical genre. Most of the Muslim Historical films in the post-Independence period (the 1950s and 1960s)—the so-called Nehruvian era—were based on the secular Mughal rulers and focused on the exoticism of those rulers. The films in this genre and the participants of my empirical study hint that Muslims were positively stereotyped at this time. Contemporary historical films are inspired by iconic Muslim historical figures, myths, and events to create ‘enemy images’ of ‘outsiders’ who have been marked with specific ‘political signs’. This chapter argues that by adopting an anti-Islamic stance, contemporary historical films in Bollywood have become a valuable tool for propagating the idea of nationalism. It shows how the most recent Bollywood films such as Panipat (2019), Kesari (2019), and Tanhaji (2020) are suitably aligned with the saffronized version of historical narratives. This chapter critically investigate the representation of Muslims in historical cinematic text in two categories: (1) Muslim Historical films from the 1950s to 2000s and (2) Muslims in Historical films from 2011 to 2019.