An Indian Muslim in the United States downloads the travel itinerary of President George W. Bush, packs his backpack and arrives at an airport quietly chanting "Allah." As nervous passengers remove their shoes, belts and jackets at a security point, the man is singled out for a search and interrogation.
The scene is from "My Name Is Khan," one of several recent Hindi movies set against the backdrop of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. More than eight years on, films about those cataclysmic events are making a surprising appearance in the song-and-dance world of Bollywood.
The movies -- three in the past eight months -- are in Hindi, run about 150 minutes each, use Indian actors and include several songs as well as a large dose of romance in the Bollywood tradition. But the action takes place in U.S. cities, with cameras panning sprawling green college campuses, cookie-cutter suburban homes and Greyhound buses rolling along open interstates.
"These Indian films set in America show two mirrors: how the two great democracies of India and America play out what it means to be a Muslim, and democracies are presumed to have all the answers," said Shiv Visvanathan, an anthropologist at the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology. "They may be Indian stories, but today America is a canvas that belongs to everybody."
The movies focus on feelings of Muslim alienation, human rights abuses, bigotry and the threat of terrorism -- issues that India is grappling with on its own soil.
Several Indian cities were torn by bomb blasts in 2008, culminating in attacks in Mumbai that killed more than 160 people that November. An uproar about abuse and prejudice soon followed when many Muslims were randomly arrested in a nationwide police crackdown.
So far only one movie about the Mumbai attacks has been released, although others are in production. But most of those are low-budget projects.
Some filmmakers say it is safer to situate plotlines in a land far from India, a multi-religious cauldron that is predominantly Hindu and is home to the world's second-largest Muslim population, amounting to 130 million.
"We are a volatile and vulnerable country. We have to tread the path very carefully here," said Karan Johar, director of "My Name is Khan." "India is a democracy, but creative people often do not feel protected enough to say some sensitive things here."
The first of the Sept. 11 movies was the summer hit "New York."
"My film was about the prejudice and paranoia that became shrill after 9/11," director Kabir Khan said. "Everything that followed is a consequence of that event, even the Mumbai attacks. Nothing is isolated."
"Kurbaan," which dealt with global terrorism, was released late last year.
Critics say the movies underline both the global debate about Muslim identity and Bollywood's global ambitions.
"Why are Indian films obsessed with 9/11 suddenly? It is a way of addressing local fears as well as pretend to be globalized," Nandini Ramnath, film editor of Time Out Mumbai, said in an e-mail. "It's easier and less controversial to talk about global terrorism in the abstract and from a distance than to discuss the motives that fuel similar actions by regional fundamentalist Indians."
But some battles are still being fought here at home.
Shah Rukh Khan, the lead actor in "My Name Is Khan," recently spoke out after no Pakistani cricket players were selected for an Indian tournament. Ties between India and Pakistan have soured since the Mumbai attacks, blamed on a Pakistan-based Islamist group.
A Hindu nationalist party, Shiv Sena, questioned the actor's patriotism. His movie posters were burned, and cinemas showing the film were vandalized.
Fighting back tears, Khan said on television: "I am a good Indian, and I never thought I'd have to say this on a TV channel. That makes me sadder."
In the film's last scene, Khan's character delivers a message to the U.S. president: "My name is Khan. And I am not a terrorist."
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/04/AR2010030405760.html
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