ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the questions of consent, war, and espionage in Meghna Gulzar's directed film Raazi (2018). The story is set in the preluding times of the 1971 India–Pakistan war and the formation of Bangladesh. Sehmat, played by Alia Bhatt is an undergraduate Kashmiri Muslim, studying at Delhi University, who agrees to marry a Pakistani Army officer in order to spy on Pakistan's officials to get crucial information for the Indian intelligence bureau. Strategically selected discourses of history are regularly employed within the arena of popular cinema as instruments that can moderate the failures of the present and pitfalls of the fascist government. This chapter attempts to look at the genre of adaptation and historical fiction while examining the question of women's bodies in the service of the nation and how gender identity is instituted through a stylised repetition of acts.
