Haider: Muslims vs. Hindus

Haider is a deep and meaningful adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The movie revives Shahid Kapoor’s acting career, but most importantly pushes the boundaries for what is shown in Indian cinema. The big issue I want to focus on is why wasn’t this film banned in India and what that ultimately means for Bollywood?

One of the big controversies of this film is the way it portrays the Indian Army. It shines an extremely barbaric and negative light on how the Indian army practices. Haider highlights that the army uses medieval forms of torture, and even one point shows an army officer bragging how the army is one of the best at interrogation. Another way the Indian army was negatively shown was its fighting methods. They went all the way to blowing up the house of the doctor in order to kill the terrorist, destroying the memories and home of the Meer family. The final damaging characteristic of the Indian army that was shown was the general lack of respect for human life. Hundreds and thousands of men were taken from their homes in order to weed out who was a potential terrorist, all in the name of protection and safety. Clearly the army was going to be depicted as extreme, senseless, and too powerful when the director chooses to highlight a terrorist witch-hunt.

All of these criticisms of the Indian army should be shown in the movie, as they promote activism and discussion in the community, but I think the way Haider attempts to contrast the Indian army with the Muslim population is wrong. The feeling that I got was that the Indian army was portrayed as Hindus, but the general population that suffered from the army was Muslim. This movie becomes a time bomb just waiting to explode, especially in all of India. This is why I think this movie was so controversial, is because of the Hindu versus Muslim fight and the overall negative undertones present towards Hindus.

Religion is a big part of India, and a lot of that comes because of struggle and hardship that the general population has to face. Religion is a form of escapism that people turn to, and when that pathway is criticized then there will be backlash. Most recently, look at the movie PK. That movie did not just attack one religion, but the idea of religion as a whole. Haider had a lot of backlash, primarily relating to religion and nationalism controversies, but at the end of the day wasn’t banned. Why? I believe that this movie wasn’t banned because the Muslims in the movie were shown in a much more negative tone than the Hindus.

Haider, a Muslim, is shown to be avenging his father, a terrorist to the state. His father’s ghost and the coalition that he is part of are all Muslim terrorists. The terrorist at the beginning of the movie that the father is housing is also a Muslim. This is why the movie did not get banned, because for however crazy the Hindus were shown, Muslims were shown to be even crazier. The plot and story revolved around Muslims more.

Even though this might seem somewhat evil and sadistic, I still think this is a step in the right direction for Indian cinema. It shows that the Indian population and movie industry are willing to show some of the more controversial issues of society and bring to light the inappropriate practices of the government.