While the Sept. 11 attacks shocked Americans, widespread violence has wracked India’s political landscape for decades. As expected, the theme of persistent violence haunts recent Indian movies and literature, visiting Prof. Vrinda Nabar told about 70 people at Harris Hall Tuesday evening.
Nabar, who has taught at Northwestern several times since 1997, spoke on “Books, Bombs, Bollywood: The Many Faces of Indian Democracy” in a lecture organized by the gender studies department. She described the close connection between terrorist attacks, literature and movies. Even though the situation in India contains both positive and negative aspects, the West does not always report on the progress and compromise in the country, Nabar said.
“The present scenario in India today is a mixed one,” she said. “It is more and more evident that we live in an interconnected world.”
Nabar said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks evoked memories of the 12 bombs that exploded in Bombay in 1993. She also cited examples of other attacks Indians have faced in past years. Although violence has been in the background of Indian politics for two decades, the Sept. 11 attacks have deepened the divide between “those who were with the West and those who were with the terrorists,” Nabar said.
Nabar said terrorism and conflict in India in recent years have been prevalent themes in books and Bollywood, the Indian version of Hollywood. The tension between Pakistan and India also has been a highly contentious and prominent topic.
“Those of us from the subcontinent know what India and Pakistan really mean,” Nabar said. “It is hardly surprising that partition had been a sustained theme.”
A visual symbol of the relationship between India and Pakistan is the train. Nabar cited several examples of novels that have featured trains arriving with corpses. In the nonfiction realm, the closing of a train between India and Pakistan produced a powerful emotional response when it was used in a television program, she said.
“I think there wasn’t a dry eye watching Indian television that night because it really was a poignant moment,” Nabar said.
Although she said the portrayal of terrorism is often overly simplistic, Nabar said movies in the past five years have highlighted Bombay’s association with international terrorist networks. These movies include “Maachis,” “Border,” “Mission Kashmi” and “Gadar.”
“(Bollywood) has always held up a mirror, if a highly distorted one, to the times,” Nabar said. “It always does initiate a lot of debate.”
Nabar, a visiting fellow at Hobart House, spoke about her memoirs at a dorm fireside last week. Medill freshman Anna Weaver said she attended Tuesday’s talk because she wanted to hear more about Nabar’s ideas.
“It was kind of interesting to hear her speak about the connection between Bollywood and the political situation,” Weaver said. “I’ve become interested after some of the firesides in our dorm.”
Weinberg freshman Hannah Phinney said she gained more insight into the political life in India from Nabar’s talk.
“(Nabar) said politics wasn’t influenced by Bollywood, but culture does influence politics,” Phinney said. “They play off each other.”
