On the serene meadows of Pahalgam, where the Lidder River whispers through the valley and the mountains stand in silent grace, 26 civilians were killed in broad daylight on a regular sunny day. The incident shook the nation; then shock gave way to rage; and soon, familiar aftershocks followed. The aftermath seemed to be a déjà vu of seasonal grief, punctuated by state rhetoric and media hysteria.
In the days following the Pahalgam terror attack, grief was once again mobilised as performance. The face of a mourning widow was transfigured into a symbol of national honour, while an entire community was shrouded in suspicion. Then came “Operation Sindoor”—military precision repackaged as the moral clarity of a hypermasculine nation.
In such a gendered and communal landscape, representation is never a matter of inclusion. Rather, it is an orchestration—the ‘good’ Muslim is drafted into loyalty; the ‘bad’ Muslim is either eliminated or aestheticised as a threat. What began as a post-9/11 global security doctrine has evolved into a transnational regime of Islamophobia—one that erases civil rights under the camouflage of the ‘war on terror’. From Ferguson to Fallujah, Arizona to Azamgarh, the collapse of liberal multiculturalism has, over time, revealed a global order where Muslim identity is rendered simultaneously hypervisible as a threat and invisible as lived humanity.
It is in this context that a couple of Bollywood films warrant a re-reading—not just as post-9/11 cultural artefacts, but as cinematic fault lines where Muslim subjectivity contends with a world that demands either total assimilation or annihilation. Watching these films today demands that we confront an unsettling reality: What does it mean to live as a Muslim in a world where the so-called “dream” —whether American, Indian, or diasporic—was never built with the ‘Other’ in mind?
Two Faces of ‘Otherness’
A harrowing truth has been revealed as a response to the above-mentioned question in two
Bollywood films, Kurbaan (2009) and New York (2009): that this “dream” was never intended for those identified by their faith. In their dark and unsettling frames, these films tread beyond storytelling, exposing a graveyard of broken promises, revealing the violence masked by patriotic slogans and the illusion of national harmony.
Kurbaan exposes radicalisation not as pathology but as consequence—a feedback loop shaped by carceral states and imperial violence. New York strips away the illusion of innocence, showing how the state polices not just bodies, but emotions, affiliations, and love itself. In contrast to today’s reductive portrayals of Muslim characters in Hindi cinema—either vilified or sanitised beyond recognition—these films dwell in ambiguity, where betrayal and belonging are entangled in the ruins of a dream that never included them.
In both Kurbaan (2009) and New York (2009), masculinity is not just a gendered performance; it becomes a political burden. Muslim men, in particular, are placed at the centre of the films’ moral, emotional, and national anxieties. They are forced to navigate a world where being Muslim and male is automatically seen as suspicious; where belonging comes at the cost of constant proof. These films reflect a deeper structural fear—the sense that the national body is always almost whole, but not quite. In such moments of imagined incompleteness, minorities are often framed as the reason why wholeness cannot be achieved.
In Kurbaan, Ehsaan (Saif Ali Khan), at first glance, seems to be the ideal modern man—articulate, professionally successful, and culturally adaptable. But from the outset, there are signs that this masculinity is not as smooth as it appears. His relationship with Avantika (Kareena Kapoor) begins with confident flirtation that quickly tips into dominance. When Avantika moves with him to the US, she discovers that the performance was part of a plan. Ehsaan is part of a terror network, and their marriage was a strategy for a legal entry into the country. But this revelation does not reduce him to a one-dimensional antagonist. We learn that his first wife was killed in a drone strike—a detail that lingers at the edges of the narrative. It’s not dwelt upon, but its shadow hangs over his choices.
Ehsaan’s violence is not ideological in the usual sense. It is deeply personal, rooted in unresolved mourning. His masculinity is shaped by a world that made him powerless and asked for compliance. His refusal to kill Avantika once she becomes pregnant muddles the generally palatable, neat binary of a terrorist and a victim. Is this mercy? Love? Or is it the unborn child, the idea of fatherhood, the last thread of belonging he can hold on to? His final act—killing Nasreen Aapa to save Avantika—only deepens the uncertainty. In the end, Ehsaan is less a terrorist than a man undone by a history that denied him mourning.
Ehsaan’s character gains sharper contours when posited against another Muslim man, Riyaz (Vivek Oberoi), whose presence offers a foil. Riyaz’s love was killed in a plane bombing orchestrated by Ehsaan’s group. Unlike Ehsaan, however, Riyaz seeks ‘justice’, not ‘revenge’. He allies with Avantika to expose the terror plot, positioning himself as a moral counterpoint—committed, loyal, and measured.
This contrast isn’t incidental. It stages the binary logic of “good Muslim/ bad Muslim”, which underpins our state policies and cultural imagination. Riyaz is “good” because his grief is acceptable to the state—he channels his pain into cooperation. Ehsaan, by contrast, becomes “bad” because his grief erupts outside sanctioned frameworks. Both have lost loved ones. But only one chooses the path legible to the state. What makes the binary more insidious is how masculinity is framed around utility. Riyaz is allowed moral complexity in denying his responsibility towards his Muslim brethren in Iraq—as shown in his conversation with his father—because he ultimately serves the state. In this contrast, Kurbaan doesn’t just pit two Muslim men against each other. It shows how national narratives cohere by splitting Muslim subjectivity in two—the Muslim who polices himself and the one who must be policed.
In New York, while the characters are recalibrated, the structural gaze of surveillance and suspicion persists. Sam (John Abraham) epitomises the figure of an assimilated Muslim. However, in the aftermath of 9/11, this assimilation proves fragile. He is arrested, detained, and tortured, his citizenship rendered void, his belonging revoked. The post-detention Sam is fundamentally altered. His radicalisation does not stem from religious ideology but from the state’s violent refusal of his claims to identity and dignity. Once marked by charm and acceptance, his masculinity is reconstituted through resistance—a refusal to be erased. His transformation renders him threatening not simply for his actions, but for what he signifies: the failed promise of liberal inclusion, and the high cost of presumed compliance.
Roshan (Irrfan Khan), the Muslim FBI agent who recruits Omar (Neil Nitin Mukesh), functions as Sam’s institutional mirror. Roshan exemplifies the state-sanctioned model of Muslim masculinity—composed, apolitical, and instrumentally loyal. His role is not simply to uphold national security but to perform the state’s investment in pluralism—so long as that pluralism is productive. Roshan’s masculinity is disciplined and non-confrontational. His religious identity is deliberately erased; his authority flows not from community affiliation but from institutional alignment. He becomes the palatable Muslim—one who monitors others rather than questioning the gaze itself. Yet his inclusion is conditional, constantly contingent on his utility to the state.
Omar occupies a liminal space—an ambivalent figure shaped as much by emotional longing as by political inertia. When approached by Roshan to surveil Sam, his initial reluctance signals a residual belief in friendship. But what ultimately sways him is more intimate—his unrequited love for Maya. Omar’s masculinity is defined not by power, but by a quiet desperation to be seen. He is neither the hypermasculine figure of radical defiance nor the state’s compliant actor. Instead, he exists on the margins, relevant only when he can serve a function. His decision to cooperate with the FBI is less a matter of conviction and more an attempt at emotional recognition. The hope is that helping Maya might reconfigure his position in her life as ‘the man’. This renders Omar’s complicity all the more complex.
Gendered Security Narratives
In both Kurbaan and New York, female characters function as pivotal, yet instrumentalised figures. Avantika and Maya are much more than mere love interests; they are the narrative and emotional fulcrums around which masculine performances of Ehsaan, Sam and Omar pivot.
Avantika’s presence becomes the moral test for Ehsaan; Maya becomes the emotional incentive for Omar’s cooperation. Yet, these women are not fully autonomous agents. Their safety, bodies, and affections become the terrain over which male characters negotiate their masculinity, loyalty, and grief.
Kurbaan and New York transform intimacy into a site of state intervention. In the gendered architecture of the modern security state in India—where Muslim masculinity is always already guilty and Hindu femininity is a site to be guarded—Avantika stands in stark contrast to Himanshi Narwal, the wife of Captain Vinay Narwal who was killed in the Pahalgam attack.
Himanshi’s grief, staged in full public view, is sanctified as a performance of ideal patriotic womanhood—bereft yet resolute. Her sorrow becomes an extension of state mourning, allowing her to embody the nation’s virtue and moral clarity. Avantika, with her erotic and emotional investments in Ehsaan—a Muslim man later revealed as part of a terror group—is retroactively seen as national betrayal. While Himanshi’s mourning is framed as sacralised suffering, Avantika’s love is seen as a fall from patriotic grace.
Bollywood Post-2014
It is not accidental that we return to Kurbaan and New York now—films, once debated for their moral ambiguity, that are nearly unimaginable today under the tightening noose of state-sanctioned narratives. In today’s India, where the camera lens increasingly aligns with the barrel of the gun; where dissent is sedition; and love across borders or religions is cast as infiltration; the space for intricate storytelling has all but disappeared. What remains is cinema that shouts slogans, spills blood in high definition, and calls it patriotism.
With the ascendance of the BJP to power in 2014, there has been a remarkable ideological shift within the film industry. The significant surge in the number of films centred on terrorism, glorification of the armed forces and vilification of Muslims often under the guise of historical reimaginings, has become a noticeable trope. The convergence between cinema and ruling ideology is neither incidental nor subtle.
Films such as Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019), Shershaah (2021), Mission Majnu (2023), The Ghazi Attack (2017), The Kashmir Files (2022), and The Kerala Story (2023) present a recurring schema: the celebration of militarised masculinity and the vilification of Muslims, framed within nationalist discourses. Violence, when deployed in the name of the nation, is not only justified but glorified through aesthetics. Characters, who fail to see rationale in state violence, are cast as morally ambiguous or weak, unable to embody the full spectrum of patriotic virtue.
In this context, films like Kurbaan or New York, which foreground moral ambiguity, critique state practices, and disrupt the good Muslim/bad Muslim binary, appear increasingly improbable today. The contemporary censorship regime, coupled with the threat of extra-legal retribution, renders such narratives politically unviable. What these developments signal is the erosion of cinematic space for dissent, nuance, and empathetic storytelling within mainstream Hindi cinema.
Imagining ‘Otherwise’
But what of those who refuse these roles? What of those who love, mourn, and err outside of state-sanctioned scripts? To write this now is not just nostalgic; it is to mark the silences such films leave behind. Like the quiet ache in Omar’s gaze, like the hesitation in Ehsaan’s final act, what lingers is not certainty but the rupture. It is the feeling that something has been lost: not merely cinematic freedom, but the right to imagine ‘otherwise’.
Across continents, Muslim lives are being watched, documented, and disappeared. From Gaza to Kashmir, the body under surveillance is also the body denied grief. We are asked to condemn, to apologise, to curate our rage. But what if we refused to follow the algorithmic mourning? What if we said, we will mourn on our terms, love on our terms, narrate our wounds in voices not tailored for the state’s comfort?
Atul Upadhyay, Research Scholar in Dept of Political Science, University of Hyderabad & Divya Rai, Research Scholar in Centre for Regional Studies, University of Hyderabad.
