Friday Times

Date:N/A

Source: Friday Times

The film is about an Indian Punjabi called Veer Pratap Singh (Shahrukh Khan) who falls in love with a Pakistani called Zaara Hayat Khan (Preity Zinta). Veer is from a village in Indian Punjab, while Zaara is from Lahore. The two meet by chance... fall madly in love and then proceed to make sacrifices for each other that are necessitated by the oppressive boundaries of nation-states. Veer ends up in a Lahori jail and Zaara in his Indian village...

Veer Zaara is a brave film. It pursues tolerance and forgiveness from start to finish. It insists that love is a force that binds more strongly than hatred divides. it is beautifully shot, has nice songs, and often moves you to tears. Sometimes it even makes you want to pray. It is ruthlessly optimistic... but it also suffers from laziness, a terminally Indian view of Pakistan, and a muddled value system. And these are not good things.

The film laziness will be immediately evident to a Pakistani viewer. Half of Veer Zaara is set in Lahore, but Mr. Chopra couldnt be bothered (or simply couldnt) to go to the great city for landscape shots... as a result, the Lahore” we see is one of embarrassing, two-dimensional stage sets and kitschy watercolor window views... If Mr. Chopra couldnt come to Pakistan, fine; but this is what Mr. Chopra lack of research, at least, says: Munhall architecture is sufficient to evoke Lahore, even if it really showing you Delhi.

And that brings me to my next issue with the film, which is its terminally Indian view of Pakistan... the India we are shown in Veer Zaara is lush. It is the Punjabi countryside in all its verdant glory. We are shown vast fields and small villages where big-hearted philanthropists set up schools for the poor. It is an India of trees and tractors, at one with its agrarian roots and industrialist aspirations. Lahore, on the other hand, is a Kafkaesque funny house packed with jails and the gaudy, ostentatious mansions of rich politicians. India is outdoors, Pakistan is indoors. In India, poor people sit atop trains and sing paeans of patriotic love for the motherland. In Pakistan, the poor either sweep the floor in jails or sweep the floor in mansions. In India the poor are citizens, in Pakistan they are servants. The India of Veer Zaara is vibrant and multicultural, where Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs mingle with ease and are in fact indistinguishable from one another. The Pakistan of Veer Zaara, on the other hand, is a rigidly monolithic country, crawling with rich politicians and their families, who greet each other by raising a cupped hand to their forehead in what is supposed to be the traditional adaab gesture of north Indian Muslims. Zaara villainous fianc, despite being a Punjabi politician, speaks the most highfalutin Urdu and wears exquisitely embroidered Nehru jackets. In other words, the Lahore of the film is really Hyderabad Deccan and its Punjabis are actually mohajirs... the India of Veer Zaara is not just Gandhi an, it is Nehruvian in its appeal; there are no dalits or harijans in this India. This India is miraculously free of BJP-style Hindu nationalists. It is secular, progressive, squeaky saffron clean. The country that lurks to its west, however, is garish and nightmarish. It is a country where all the men look like Liaqat Ali Khan and all the women look like Fatima Jinnah. It is populated by politicians and policemen, and has giant murals of Mohammed Ali Jinnah pinned to its walls.

This is what I mean by a terminally Indian view of Pakistan. Mr. Chopra, despite his good intentions, suffers from a pakophobia that has plagued India since independence. He is evidence of the fact that for many Indians indeed, for many educated, wealthy and creative Indians the Pakistani clock stopped ticking in august 1947. India has lived for sixty years with a frozen image of Pakistan as a tragedy in India history, orchestrated by a group of elite, Urdu-speaking, Indian politicians. A modern Pakistani identity that is different from India’s Muslim sub-identity is therefore inconceivable for the Indian mind. Hence the Nehru jackets and Liaqat Ali khan clones...

We could stop here and start weighing the scales. But we shouldnt, for we have yet to identify the most serious and insidious of Veer Zaara indiscretions. Islam is used as a motif in Mr. Copras film. But when it appears in the form of human beings, they are invariably women; all the Pakistani female characters of Veer Zaara cover their heads. Even Saamiya Siddique, the character modeled on Aasma Jehangir, is shown to be guided by some higher religious cause... now it is worth pointing out that Asma Jehangir doesnt cover her head and neither do most of her colleagues at the human rights commission of Pakistan. They believe in human rights, but not via an Islamic moral apparatus. Why, then, does Veer Zaara feel compelled to Islamize its Pakistani women?

Bollywood has always treated women as repositories of honor and culture. They sing, they dance, they cook and are faithful to their lovers. When they are mothers they are Devi, and when they are lovers they are Radha. Even when vamps, they appear in dark temples next to snakes a la kali. (The same goes for mainstream Pakistani cinema, except that here the bulky damsels of Punjab and Peshawar are almost always reduced to symbols of fertility. they flutter their eyelashes, they thrust their hips. but they don’t do much else.) for Veer Zaara, ...Pakistani women end up embodying what Mr. Chopra believes to be Pakistan’s cultural identity: not Muslim, but Islamic.

It is shameful when, after three hours of homilies on the need for women rights, the hero and heroine are united in a Hindu marriage ceremony. Zaara Hayat Khan is hinduised by the vermillion powder applied to her hair parting. The hero transforms her into a Hindu bride and takes her to India. That is how the film ends. In doing so, it feminizes Pakistan, feminizes Islam, and carries them off into an Indian sunset. (It works both ways; in last years biggest Pakistani hit, larki Punjab an, the boy is Muslim and the girl Sikh.) It is a cheap tactic, a shortcut that reeks of sub continental sexism.

What, for instance, would happen if Veer decided to stay in Pakistan with Zaara? What if the marriage between Veer and Zaara were to be conducted by a mullah, with a proper nikah ceremony? What if Veer hadn’t been Veer and Zaara hadnt been Zaara if their religious and national identities had been reversed? its easy to feminize and conquer your enemies, but would an Indian audience be able to handle an Indian Hindu woman going away with a Pakistani Muslim man?...