While the cries of war echoed, some people started spreading propaganda and fake news about India’s military action and Pakistan’s military action, some started asking for diplomatic measures to reduce tension and find a solution. But there are some who got busy in exploiting the tension between the two countries for the sake of earning and profit. Within 24 hours of the launch of ‘Operation Sindoor’ by the Indian Armed Forces against Pakistan, Reliance Industries Limited filed a trademark application on the name Operation Sindoor for ‘entertainment purposes’. Following the nationwide uproar over this controversial move, the company issued a statement saying that the application had been ‘inadvertently submitted by a junior without permission’ and had been withdrawn. It is also reported that more than 30 applications have been received by the Indian Motion Pictures Producers Association, Indian Film and Television Producers Council and Western India Film Producers Association to register the titles of films based on Pahalgam attack along with Operation Sindoor by Aditya Dhar, Madhur Bhandarkar, Vivek Agnihotri, Sunil Shetty and many other personalities from the industry.
This trend of film industry earning money from war is not new. After the Pulwama terror attack in 2019 and the retaliatory Balakot air strikes, there was a similar race among Bollywood filmmakers to register with IMPPA for a title to make a film based on that incident. The history of the Indian subcontinent has been full of war wounds since the partition in 1947. This enmity between two neighbors often becomes a successful dramatic plot for Hindi films. However, in early Hindi cinema, war often formed the background of social stories. With a few exceptions such as Chetan Anand’s Haqeeqat (1964), war genre films were not common. War was a box office risk due to the heavy costs and expensive location shoots, which most filmmakers were unwilling to undertake before the era of liberalization.
But in 1997, JP Dutta’s Border ushered in a new era in the Hindi film industry and war films began to be considered commercially viable. In these films there was only one enemy, Pakistan. There was no need to tell people about it separately. In the subsequent period, filmmakers made the enmity between the two countries a means of earning money, especially during the Kargil conflict in 1999 and thereafter. However, after a few films, the on-screen frenzy over Kargil subsided and the political atmosphere changed in 2004, the genre took a back seat again. The late 2000s brought popular films like Main Hoon Na (2004) and Veer-Zaara (2004), which tried to show a friendly equation with Pakistan after the ceasefire along the Line of Control.
The era of war genre films in Bollywood returned with a bang after the right-wing government came to power in the country in 2014. Newly, the collective anger in Bollywood films started turning towards Muslims in general and Pakistan in particular. Although some films in the last decade have tried to highlight the fundamentalist hysteria and human tragedy of war, the ideology of the current regime continues to be reflected in Bollywood and war genre films. In this new phase of war, let us look at some major films of the last three decades in which India-Pakistan wars have been depicted:
Border (1997)
The film was a dream project conceived by director JP Dutta as a tribute to his brother Squadron Leader Deepak Dutta. He waited many years for this. The film was based on the 1971 Battle of Longewala in the Thar Desert, in which 120 Indian soldiers, with active support from Indian Air Force aircraft, took on more than 2000 Pakistani soldiers, who had about 40 tanks. Border was the highest-grossing film of 1997 and received accolades for its production. However, some of the surviving heroes of the Battle of Longewala expressed unhappiness with their characters being killed off in the film, which suggests that the aim of the film was more to present the war with exaggerated drama than to provide a credible perspective on historical events.
LOC: Kargil (2003)
After the success of Border, JP Dutta decided to move into the war genre and the Kargil war was his next subject. Similar to Border, LOC: Kargil was a multi-starrer war film based on the 1999 Kargil conflict between India and Pakistan. In this film, Dutta shot it with real locations, real weapons and live ammunition to make everything look as it was. However, the film flopped at the box office due to its long, boring storyline and unnecessary subplots. Another reason for the failure could be that the Kargil war was fresh in people’s minds, the scenes of which were seen live on TV.
Lakshya (2004)
The second film made under the direction of Farhan Akhtar on the background of Kargil war was completely different from the war films of Lakshya Dutta brand. With balanced drama and restrained emotion, Lakshya is the story of the inner turmoil of an army officer Karan Shergill (illuminated by a brilliant performance by Hrithik Roshan) during the Kargil war. The film was not successful at the box office, but received praise from critics and achieved classic status a few years later.
Kya Delhi Kya Lahore (2014)
Actor Vijay Raaz’s directorial debut Kya Dilli Kya Lahore was a war genre film, which was promoted by its makers as India’s first “anti-war film”. Set in 1948 after Partition, the film is about two soldiers from across the border who get caught in a strange situation. He is sent by his superiors to an army post in the No Man’s Land area to bring back some files. The conversation between the two soldiers shows what a huge price the common people of both the countries had to pay with their lives for the partition.
The Ghazi Attack (2017)
The Ghazi Attack film, directed by Sankalp Reddy, is the Hindi version of the Telugu film Ghazi, starring popular Telugu actor Rana Daggubati. Billed as India’s first “underwater war film”, The Ghazi Attack is based on a fictional confrontation between Indian and Pakistani submarines in the Bay of Bengal to prevent a Pakistani attack on INS Vikrant, India’s only aircraft carrier during the 1971 Indo-Pak war. The Telugu version of the film received the National Film Award for ‘Best Feature Film in Telugu’. Its earnings were average and many critics criticized it for its disappointing script.
Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019)
Aditya Dhar’s directorial debut Uri was based on India’s response to the 2016 terrorist attack on an army base in Uri, Jammu and Kashmir. With its fusion of fact and fiction and technical prowess, the film played a key role in the BJP’s election campaign during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and many people questioned the timing of its release. It was a huge hit and was famous for its popular dialogue “How’s the Josh?” It took Vicky Kaushal to every home.
Raazi (2018)
Harinder S. Inspired by true events. Meghna Gulzar’s Raazi, based on Sikka’s 2008 espionage novel Calling Sehmat, is one of the finest films in the war and espionage genre, staying away from blind nationalistic frenzy. Based in the period before the 1971 war between India and Pakistan, this film is a sensitive story of a spy. A stellar performance by Alia Bhatt depicts the impact of war on a young Kashmiri Muslim woman and her family. This film is also different in the fact that generally in Hindi cinema, no female character is seen in war stories. Raazi stood the test of both critics and commercial. It is one of the highest grossing films, especially as a female-oriented film.
Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl (2020)
Apart from Raazi, Gunjan Saxena is the only other war-set film in recent times that maintains a balanced approach towards nationalism. The film is a biography of Indian Air Force officer Gunjan Saxena, who was a young flying officer during the Kargil war and helped evacuate the wounded during the war. Director Sharan Sharma has also tried to show that during the training, Saxena is discriminated against and teased by her fellow male officers, due to which the film had to face a lot of criticism. Despite not being released in theaters due to the Covid pandemic, the film was praised for presenting the story of a woman officer during the Kargil war without nationalistic fervor.
Shershaah (2021)
In Tamil director Vishnuvardhan’s first Hindi film Shershaah, Siddharth Malhotra played the role of Captain Vikram Batra, who was martyred in the Kargil war. The film is the story of Batra’s life and his significant contribution in recapturing the areas occupied by Pakistan in Kashmir during that time. Like Gunjan Saxena, Shershaah also could not be released in theaters due to the Covid pandemic and had to be released on the OTT platform. Although Amazon Prime claimed that it has become the most watched film on the platform, some critics did not like its script.
