Absence of the ‘un-exchangeable’ monument: Cinematic design and national identity in a time of partition

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the 1954 film Jagriti, a train-trip to the historic sites of the recently-formed Indian nation erases Islamic monuments. A similar sequence enfolds in the 1957 Pakistani film Bedari, which mimics Jagriti. It ignores Pakistan’s shared Islamic past with India. In this absence of Islamic monuments, I argue, lies the potential to question the nation-state’s homogenizing tendencies. I analyze these patriotic films in the context of post-colonial nation-building that was haunted by the trauma of Partition. If the Partition was a time when national identity was created through exchange, potential to challenge that came precisely from that which could not be exchanged – the historic monument. If the monument is central to the formation of the nation’s identity then what are the implications of an Indian film erasing Islamic monuments; and if Pakistan’s very identity depended on it being Islamic, then why must its Indo-Islamic monuments be absent from this film?