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THE theme of terrorism has found much favour with filmmakers. The films emphasise how some disgruntled elements indulge in subversive activities. A recent film Subhash Ghai’s Black & White is off the beaten track. Prof Rajan Mathur (Anil Kapoor) lives with his family in the thickly populated Chandni Chowk locality. He meets a young boy Numair Qazi (Anurag Sinha) who tells him that he had been a victim of communal riots in Gujarat. Numair is a suicide bomber who has been commissioned by a fundamentalist organisation to blast a bomb near the Red Fort on August 15. It shows how a Muslim girl Shagufta, professor’s wife Roma, a Sufi pop singer Rahat, 84-year-old patriotic Gaffar Miya and fun-loving Sardar Kirtan Singh cast their influence on Numair. Another story on this theme was Khalid Mohamed’s Fiza (2000), the story of Fiza (Karisma Kapoor) in search for her young brother Amaan (Hrithik Roshan) who had gone missing during the 1993 communal riots. Seeing her aged mother (Jaya Bachchan) make daily rounds of the police station for any news of her missing brother, she goes out alone in search of Amaan to lay uncertainty to rest. On being traced, Amaan admits that he had joined a terrorist group after the riots. Shocked with the events, his mother commits suicide. He leaves home and Fiza again tries to find him. He is to assassinate two powerful politicians. When he succeeds in his mission, his own terrorist group tries to kill him. He escapes and Fiza follows him. They confront each other and with the police closing in on him, he pleads with his sister to kill him, as he does not want to die at the hands of the police. After much persuasion, Fiza kills him.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Mission Kashmir (2000) shows how terrorism creates a wedge between a son and his foster father. Inayat Khan (Sanjay Dutt) is a Kashmiri cop whose only son accidentally falls off from the second-storey window. No doctor is willing to treat his son for the fear of fatwah issued against the cop by a terrorist Malik-ul-Khan. Eventually, the boy dies without being treated. When Khan raids a house where Malik-ul-Khan was reportedly staying, all terrorists and family members in the house are shot by the police. The only survivor was 10-year-old Altaff (Hrithik Roshan) whom Khan adopts. His apprehension that some day Altaff will find the mask which he had used while carrying out the military operation comes true. Altaff joins the group of Mujahidin Pathan, a radical terrorist named Hilal (Jackie Shroff) for a secret mission code-named Mission Kashmir. Hilal picks up Altaff to murder Inayat Khan. John Mathew Matthan’s Sarfarosh (1999) exposes Pakistan’s ISI waging its proxy war in India through terrorists. ACP Ajay Rathod (Aamir Khan) is a fan of Gulfam Hasan (Naseeruddin Shah), ghazal singer from Pakistan. During his investigation, he finds Gulfam is the enemy’s agent in India. Govind Nihalani’s Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa (1997) was based on the theme of rebellion and repression of the Naxalites in Bengal during the 1970s. Sujata Chatterjee (Jaya Bachchan) has three children, one of them is Brati, a student. One night she gets a call from the police asking her to come to the local police station. She is told to identify the mutilated body of her son (body no 1084) among the bodies in the morgue. She was in a dilemma so as how a boy who seemed so balanced became a terrorist. Her quest takes her into the slums of Kolkata where Brati found many revolutionary companions who were unable to accept the social and political inequalities. R.V. Pandit and Gulzar’s Maachis (1996) is set in the days of terrorism in Punjab. The film delved into the reasons why young men were taking to terrorism. Chandrachur Singh played Kirpal/Palli whose innocent brother is picked up by the police suspecting him to be a terrorist. When the brother does not return home, he takes recourse to arms. Egged on by cynical Sanatan (Om Puri), he decides to wage war on the state. Mani Ratnam’s Bombay (1995) was inspired by the inter-communal riots between the Hindus and the Muslims that shook Bombay during 1992-93 after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. It was the story of Hindu journalist Shekhar (Arvind Swamy) and his Muslim wife Shakeela Banu (Manisha Koirala), who settle in Bombay incognito after escaping the reprobation of their communities. The birth of their two children brings them closer to their respective families. But the riots erupt in Bombay and their children barely escape being burnt alive by the rioters who order them to state their religion. Mani Ratnam’s Roja (1992) was the story of a computer engineer Rishi Kumar (Arvind Swamy) who is to decode messages of the terrorists in Kashmir for the Indian Army. He is kidnapped by the terrorists. When the terrorists burn the Indian flag, the hero, who hands are all tied-up, jumps out of a window to extinguish the flames with his body. The scene was the hallmark of the patriotic fervour.
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