Roja, Saira Siraj

Saira Siraj

March 14, 2010

Screening Bollywood

Laura Brueck 

Roja Film Review 

      Mani Ratnam’s Roja (1992) is a movie that is focused mainly on the troubled state of Kashmir. As is common for Bollywood, there is a love story intertwined with the story of terrorists fighting against India. The main characters are newlyweds named Rishi and Roja Kumar, and the story revolves around a project Rishi receives for which he must go to Kashmir. There, Roja wanders off to a temple, and this leads to Rishi’s kidnapping by Muslim terrorists who are trying to free their leader.

      Being a Kashmiri Muslim, this movie was very personal for me, and I disagreed with many of the points brought up in the film. It was very biased and one-sided in many ways. First of all, the fact that the terrorists all had the last name “Khan” gave the film an anti-Muslim tone. To add to this, the terrorists were shown praying every time they were about to murder one or more people. This very obviously suggests that their actions were connected with their religion. To counter the Islamic terrorists, the movie shows law-abiding citizens who are, of course, Hindus. Roja is a very devout Hindu and she goes through the trouble of finding a temple in Kashmir; when she finds one, she also finds the amiable Hindu guide who helps her throughout her stay in Kashmir and her quest for Rishi. Besides these two, there are many other characters (such as Rishi, Roja’s family, the policemen, the army men) who are clearly Hindu and have overall good personalities. Near the end of the movie, many young Kashmiri boys are killed by Pakistani militants; after this, Rishi tries to talk sense into one of the terrorists, Liaquat Khan. He uses the argument that Islam does not teach violence, which was the one positive remark made about Islam in the entire movie; however, it does not have much of an impact on the overall feel of the film, considering this remark was made by a Hindu rather than a Muslim. After Rishi talks to the terrorist, Liaquat takes off his distinctively “Muslim” hat; this could be taken in many different ways, but my first reaction was that the violent, bloodthirsty terrorist was finally humanized by taking away his Muslim identity. The topic of religion is extremely sensitive in India as a whole, not just Bollywood. So, I believe that if Ratnam was trying to show every religion as equal, he should have gone for a more balanced approach in which each side had an equal number of “good” and “bad” characters.

      Aside from the fact that Muslims were unjustly depicted in this film, I was also very offended by the portrayal of Kashmir and the issues its people face. Not once in the movie did Ratnam show how brutally the Kashmiri people are treated by Indian soldiers. Throughout the film, Rishi shows his nationalist pride for India and he attempts to save his country from the violence brought on by the Kashmiri terrorists. He especially shows his devotion to his country in a couple memorable scenes. The first is when the terrorists find out that their request to free Wasim Khan has been rejected and they try to force Rishi to ask the government to help him by releasing Wasim. Rishi, however, does not give in to them, and instead chants “jai Hind” (“long live India”) even while being beaten continuously. The second scene is a little more intense; when Rishi sees one of the terrorists burning the Indian flag, he breaks a window to get out of the shack he is in and runs to the burning flag to put out the fire. His clothes catch fire in his attempt to counter this act of hate against India, yet he continues to fight the terrorists while his pants are aflame. Both of these scenes promote the idea that the solution to all the problems in Kashmir is to first of all accept that Kashmir is a part of India; Rishi even mentions that it is in India in the beginning of the movie, when he says he would never be scared to go there or any other part of his country. These scenes may make Indians proud; Kashmiris, for the most part, have a much different sentiment. From personal experience, I can say that many people in Kashmir want freedom, both from India and Pakistan. The film did not show the fact that they have no say whatsoever in their government. It also failed to tell the stories of countless families who have lost young children in pointless raids by the Indian military. Had these aspects been added in the movie, the actions of the terrorists may not have been justified, but at least explained to its viewers. The blame should not have been put entirely on them; India is at fault for Kashmir’s current condition. This however, would have taken away from the nationalistic view of the film.

      In my opinion, Roja lacked in several areas; the only part that I enjoyed was the soundtrack. Besides A.R. Rahman’s beautiful contribution to the movie, it was biased, hateful, and overall quite insulting for Kashmiris and Muslims alike. As I am a part of both groups, I can say that the film seemed to attack them and promote the ideal Hindu Indian nationalist. This movie was a disappointment due to its portrayal of anyone that did not fit the norm of the Bollywood hero.