The screams of the fighting echoed, some people started spreading the ill-treatment of India’s military action and Pakistan’s military action and spreading fake news, some diplomatic measures started asking to reduce tension and find a solution. But there are some who got involved in the tension of tension between the two countries for earning and profits. Within 24 hours of the launch of ‘Operation Sindoor’ of Indian armed forces against Pakistan, Reliance Industries Limited filed a trademark for ‘entertainment motive’ named Operation Sindoor. On this controversial act, there was a huge uproar across the country, the company issued a statement that the application was ‘unknowingly put by a junior without permission’ and has been withdrawn. It is also reported that the Indian Motion Pictures Producers Association, Indian Film and Television Producers Council and Western India Film Producers Association have reached more than 30 arranges for the film Sindoor on Aditya Dhar, Madhur Bhandarkar, Vivek Agnihotri, Sunil Shetty and many other celebrities of the industry as well as operations on the Pahalgam attack.
This nature of earning from the film industry from war is not new. In 2019, there was a similar competition in IMPPA for the title to make a film based on the incident between Bollywood filmmakers in 2019 and Balakot airstrikes. 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 dramatic plot for Hindi films. However, war in early Hindi cinema often prepared the background of social stories. Apart from some exceptions like Chetan Anand’s reality (1964), the films of war genre were not common. The war was risky at the battle box office due to heavy costs and expensive location shoots, which most filmmakers were not willing to lift before the era of liberalization.
But in 1997, JP Dutta’s border started a new era in the Hindi film industry and war films were considered commercially practical. In these films, the enemy was only one, Pakistan. There was no need to tell people separately. In the subsequent era, filmmakers made the enemies of both countries a means of earning a lot, especially in 1999 Kargil conflict and after that. However, after some films, Kargil decreased on the screen and in 2004, the political fizz changed, this style went back again. In the late 2000s, popular films like Main Hoon Na (2004) and Veer-Jara (2004) have come, which tries to show a friendly equation with Pakistan after a ceasefire along the Line of Control.
Films of war genre in Bollywood returned with a fanfare since the right-wing government came to power in the country in 2014. In renewed Bollywood films, the mass resentment in Bollywood films usually started to be towards Muslims and especially Pakistan. However, in the last decade, some films have tried to highlight the human tragedy of radical disagreement and war, but the ideology of the current rule seems to be continuously reflected in Bollywood and war genre films. In this new Fiza of Jung, we look at some major films in the last three decades which depicts Indo-Pak wars:
Border (1997)
The film was a dream project, which was presented by director JP Dutta tribute to his brother squadron leader Deepak Dutta. For this, he waited for many years. The film was based on the Battle of Longewala in the 1971 Thar desert, in which 120 Indian troops were ironed by more than 2000 soldiers of Pakistan with active help from Indian Air Force aircraft, which had about 40 tanks. Border was the highest grossing film of 1997 and also received accolades for production. However, some living heroes of Longewala’s battle had expressed unhappiness with their characters being killed in the film, which shows that the purpose of the film was more to present war with exaggerated dramaticness, less to see historical events from a reliable perspective.
LoC: Kargil (2003)
After the success of the border, JP Dutta decided to move forward in the war genre and Kargil’s fight was his next theme. Like the border, LoC: Kargil was a multi-starrer war film based on the Kargil conflict between India and Pakistan in 1999. In this film, Dutta filmed it with real location, real weapons and live ammunition to show everything the same. However, the film was a flop at the box office due to the long, boring plot, unnecessary subplot. The second reason for the failure could also be that the battle of Kargil was fresh in the minds of the people, whose live views on TV.
Target (2004)
On the backdrop of Kargil’s battle, the second film, directed by Farhan Akhtar, was completely different from the war films of Lakshya Dutta brand. The target of balanced dramatic and restrained judge is the story of the inner feelings of Karan Shergill (Roshan with a brilliant performance of Hrithik Roshan) during the Kargil War. The film could not succeed at the box office, but was appreciated by critics and achieved classic status after a few years.
What Delhi Kya Lahore (2014)
The first film directed by actor Vijay Raj was the film of Kya Delhi Kya Lahore War Journalist, which was promoted by its producers as India’s first “anti -war film”. After the partition, the film, which is on the backdrop of 1948, is about two soldiers from across the border, who get caught in a peculiar situation. He is sent to the army post in No Mans Land area to bring back some files by his senior officials. The conversation between the two soldiers shows how much the common people of both countries had to pay their lives by giving their lives.
The Ghazi Attack (2017)
Under the direction of Sankalp Reddy, The Ghazi attack film is the Hindi version of Telugu’s Ghazi, starring the popular Telugu actor Rana Daggubati. The Ghazi Attack, promoted as India’s first “Underwater War Film”, is based on a fictional confrontation between Indian and Pakistani submarines in the Bay of Bengal to prevent Pakistan’s attack on INS Vikrant, the only vessel of aircraft for India during the Indo-Pak war of 1971. The Telugu version of the film received the National Film Award for ‘Best Feature Film in Telugu’. His earnings were average and many critics criticized for disappointing script.
Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019)
The first film directed by Aditya Dhar was based on India’s retaliation after the 2016 terrorist attack on the army’s hideout in Uri, Jammu and Kashmir. The film played an important role in the BJP’s election campaign during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and many people raised questions on its release time during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. It earned a lot and his popular dialogue “House the Josh?” Vicky Kaushal was taken from house to house.
Raazi (2018)
Harinder S. inspired by true events. Sikka’s 2008 detective novel Calling Agreed Meghna Gulzar’s resentment war and detective genre is one of the wonderful films that are away from blind nationalist defense. This film is a sensitive story of a detective based in the 1971 war between India and Pakistan. Alia Bhatt’s best performance depicts the impact of the war on a young Kashmiri Muslim woman and her family. This film is also different in the case that there is no woman’s character in the story of war in the story of the war in Hindi cinema. The agreed critics and commercial criteria stood up. It is especially one of the highest grossing films as a female dominated film.
Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl (2020)
Apart from Raji, Gunjan Saxena is the only second film with a background background in recent times to maintain a balanced attitude towards nationalism. The film is a biography of Indian Air Force officer Gunjan Saxena, who was a young flying officer at the time of Kargil’s battle and helped to protect the injured during the war. Director Sharan Sharma has also tried to show him very strongly that Saxena is discriminated against fellow male officers during the training, due to which the film had to face a lot of strength. Despite not being released in theaters due to the Kovid epidemic, the film was also appreciated for presenting the story of a female officer during the Kargil War without a nationalist opinion.
Sher Shah (2021)
In Tamil director Vishnuvardhan’s first Hindi film Sher Shah, Siddharth Malhotra played the role of Captain Vikram Batra, who was martyred in the Kargil war. The film is a story of Batra’s life and his significant contribution in regaining regions occupied by Pakistan in Kashmir during that time. Like Gunjan Saxena, Sher Shah also could not be released in theaters due to Kovid epidemic and had to release on OTT platform. Although Amazon Prime claimed that it has become the most seen film on the platform, some critics did not like its script.