Yeh mulk hamara ghar : The 'national order of things' and Muslim identity in John Mathew Mattan's Sarfaroosh

Abstract

The present paper examines the Bollywood film Sarfaroosh , which became a box-office hit in the summer of 1999 amidst the Kargil War. It argues that the film is important not because it is an exposéof Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence operations in India, but rather because of how it establishes a 'national order of things' through the metaphor of ghar (home) such that all identity and culture can only be naturally located in a territorially rooted homeland. It is in this ordering of identity that Sarfaroosh raises some heart-wrenching questions about the place of Muslims in India: Do Muslims have a home in India or in Pakistan? If they had a home in India, can they belong in Pakistan? Can anyone have a home in both India and Pakistan? The paper argues that the answers that the film offers are deeply troubling, for Sarfaroosh proposes a resolution to Partition's legacy in which those who do not comply or submit to this national order of things become unnatural and dangerous. Thus, the paper urges that the representational order of the film be reversed, the national order of things be denaturalized, and affective ties of home be rescued from the politics of homeland.

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