Purdah is trying to figure out ‘the shifting figure of the terrorist in the Hindi language film industry’:

The military events at Kargil in 1999 launched a slew of Indo-Pakistan war films. A few were romance films on patriotic steroids like Anil Sharma’s Gadar: Ek Prem Katha, Yash Chopra’s Veer-Zaara, and Kunal Kohli’s bizarre Fanaa. The majority were action-war films on patriotic steroids like VV Chopra’s Mission Kashmir, Raj Kanwar’s Farz, J. P. Dutta’s LOC Kargil and Farhan Akhtar’s Lakshya.

Perhaps the most bizarre of these testosterone monsters is Rohit Shetty’s Zameen which starts with a historical event: the attack by Islamic militants on the Indian parliament in 2001 but then spirals into the skies and never lands on anything resembling reality. Of course this aerial nature is no coincidence for Zameen is clearly post-9/11 in its obsession with airplanes as weapons. From this point onwards, there was no turning back for the Bombay film industry: terrorists in India=Islamic militants=Pakistani minions.

Very interesting.