How Gadar 2 Shows Pakistanis
Occasionally jingoistic and relentlessly patriotic, Gadar 2 is also unabashedly progressive where it counts. All its sloganeering is done using the Urdu word “zindabad”, and the controversial “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” isn’t uttered by anyone on screen. Even the film’s depiction of Pakistanis is significantly better than what we’ve seen of late (remember the wonder that was Mission Majnu, for instance?). While Hamid Iqbal is loathsome and poisonously anti-Hindu, other Pakistanis are not. There are instances of rabble, who have clearly been roused to go on a rampage by power-hungry moulvis, but all it takes to have them scrambling in the opposite direction is the sight of Tara Singh reaching for a hand pump. (Those concerned about Pakistan’s civil infrastructure will be happy to know that this time, the handpump survives its encounter with Tara Singh.)
Countering the hatred embodied by mobs and the Pakistani Army are regular Pakistanis. The woman that Tara Singh’s son falls in love with is not an exception. From her family to the nameless aunty who helps Tara Singh’s son when he’s on the run, there are more instances of brave and kind Pakistanis than there are examples of the Pakistanis as the villainous other in Gadar 2. “Pakistan toh mera naunihaal hai,” says Tara Singh’s son at one point, reminding the audience that this hero’s mother is Pakistani, and linking to Pakistan the tenderness traditionally associated with the maternal grandparents’ home. For Gadar 2 to hold forth such sentiments in the current climate is unexpectedly brave.
And this is the film that has broken the record for the fastest Rs. 450 crore earned by a Hindi film (in just 17 days).
The Audience and Its Expectation
Conventional wisdom tends to suggest that the ‘masses’ of India are conservative in their thinking and this guides their spending at the box office. The failure of films like (2023) and (2023) are considered to be indicative of the cinema-goers’ unwillingness to engage with anything progressive. Yet the Hindi films that have done well in 2023 suggest Bollywood’s audience deserves more credit than it’s being given. Take a look at the year’s biggest hits so far and see how (2023) stands out as an exception (both for its vile bigotry and for how inept its filmmaking is).
So far, the year’s biggest commercial failures include (2023), which was a blatant attempt at cashing in on the politically-backed craze for Ramayana; (2023), which took a sympathetic view of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse; and (2023), a remake of the Tamil film(2019), but with some dashes of Shiva-related imagery.
