ABSTRACT
‘Early films on terrorism in Kashmir,’ argues that the earliest cultural response to Kashmiri terrorism came via the popular Hindi film. Contextualizing the rise of Kashmiri terrorism against the history of modern Kashmir, it addresses the cinematic challenge of representing the changing perception of Kashmir as a romantic setting to a violence-ravaged paradise in the turbulent 1990s. By openly naming Pakistani threat to national honour and integrity, and by emphasizing Kashmir’s integral location in the Indian national narrative in invocations of national engagements like the 1999 Kargil War, a thoughtful postterrorist cinema emerges. Portraying the terrorist both sympathetically and as an out-and-out villain, the postterrorist film also looks to identify traitor-facilitators of terrorist incursions in the state. By now, Kashmiri terrorism is a recognized marketable theme in Hindi cinema, with the Kashmir-based postterrorist film typically taking on the task of both celebrating the beauty and heritage of Kashmir and mourning its violation.
