(Mis) Representations of Liberation War of Bangladesh in Bollywood Films

Abstract

This paper examines how Bollywood films represent the Liberation War of Bangladesh. It also attempts to understand how the dynamics of the war has been reflected in the Bollywood films to convey the messages to its audiences. The film is one of the powerful media of modern epoch for the development of a particular nation’s identity, culture, and politics. Considering the large audiences and influences of Bollywood across the world, it is important to know how its movies represent the history of Bangladesh. Through the lens of representation theory, this study attempts to conduct a content analysis on eight Bollywood films made with a backdrop of the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971. It is found that all of the Bollywood films except one fail to represent the truth in order to convey the real history. Although a film represents the bona fide history of the war, it mainly focuses on the humiliation of the women in the war.