Abstract
Vytautas Magnus UniversityThe article discusses a film by Deepa Mehta, a filmmaker who is a part of the so-called Indian Parallel Cinema, and a critic of Indian culture and society. The main argument of the article is that in the landmark film Earth, Mehta portrays a character to personify the idea of Mother India. Mehta’s vision of Mother India is rendered psychoanalytically as being raped by her sons—something that had started during the partition of India and continues till our times. The article introduces and re-thinks categories of Indianness, rape, alienness, which are vital to our understanding of contemporary Indian culture and society. One of the main operating categories of the article is identity—what it means in our modern times, and what it means to lose it—something that happened in 1947 during the partition, and is still continuing. The article also stands in opposition to the traditional understanding of the Mother—in contemporary times, as it is argued, Mother is not cherished by her Sons, instead, she is raped and mutilated, as a consequence of ontological insecurity and desire for identity.
Highlights
This is the story of India—of India being mutilated, raped and being slowly stripped of its children. This is the story of Mother India through the eyes of Deepa Mehta, a visionary filmmaker and her film Earth
The film discussed in this essay is by an Indian—Canadian director Deepa Mehta, who is regarded as being one of the leading Indian diasporic filmmakers while at the same time, criticized in India for her critical attitudes towards Indian culture and politics
Deepa Mehta’s film Earth is a highly metaphorical example of what happened to India in 1947
Summary
This is the story of India—of India being mutilated, raped and being slowly stripped of its children. What we see in the movie is the intersection of three categories—wholeness, oneness and alienness, and in this discourse only alienness has a chance to survive, for oneness and wholeness both belong to a time when two separate discourses of tradition and modernity existed. This is a story both of losing identity and trying to retain it at all costs. This is a story of three lives that intersect, that affect one another and in the end get lost between the discourses. The film discussed in this essay is by an Indian—Canadian director Deepa Mehta, who is regarded as being one of the leading Indian diasporic filmmakers while at the same time, criticized in India for her critical attitudes towards Indian culture and politics
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