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The Unlikely Yoke of War and Humour: Understanding the War Comedy War Chhod Na Yaar (Faraz Haider, 2013)

L’Union insolite de la guerre et de l’humour : clés pour comprendre la comédie Chhod Na Yaar
Meenakshi Bharat

Résumés

Alors que la première décennie du nouveau millénaire touche à sa fin, les relations conflictuelles entre l'Inde et le Pakistan, qui se manifestent par des guerres périodiques, font l'objet d'un traitement unique et inattendu par le biais de l'humour. La comédie War Chhod Na Yaar (Faraz Haider 2013) offre une critique irrévérencieuse mais sérieuse de l'idéologie qui sous-tend les guerres, marquant ainsi un tournant dans le traitement de thèmes qui, jusqu'alors, n'avaient été abordés que comme sources d’anxiété. Ce faisant, War Chhod Na Yaar forge une nouvelle forme d’hybridité fructueuse. Cette comédie de guerre en hindi est une satire mordante de l’instrumentalisation de la guerre par des politiciens arrivistes, dont la carrière dépend uniquement de la mobilisation continue des forces armées de leur pays contre l'ennemi déclaré de l'autre côté de la barrière. En mettant en exergue un texte filmique qui n'a pas reçu l'attention qu'il mérite, cet article analyse cette union insolite de la guerre et de l'humour, en s’appuyant sur les stratégies d'interprétation fournies par la critique culturelle, questionnant les paramètres des études de genre et des études régionales, tout en s'en inspirant.

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Introduction: The rise of the Hindi war film

1When, in 1947, freedom from British colonial control came hand in hand with the Partition of the Indian subcontinent and the creation of Pakistan, a new Muslim state, no one could have envisaged the extent of either the immediate or the long-term repercussions of the momentous political decision, despite some Indian and European observers having seen it coming. The unfortunate unshakable historical spinoff of the ill-thought Partition is evident in the ongoing, long-drawn-out, politically motivated tension between the two nations, patently as strong as ever, even seven and a half decades after independence. Over the years, this entrenched India-Pakistan hostility has manifested itself in periodic wars, the first coming close on the heels of the Partition in 1947-48, followed by historically marked field engagements in 1965, 1971, and 1999. The intervening years have not been calm either. Darkened relentlessly by war-threatening skirmishes, the simmer of proxy warring through terrorist incursions and diplomatic flare-ups has added to the open hostility of the major cross-border India-Pakistan confrontations. No wonder that the recurrent use of political strong-arm tactics, and the rhetoric of hate and intrigue have taken up much of the energies of the two nations post-independence.

  • 1 See Meenakshi Bharat, Troubled Testimonies: Terrorism and the English Novel in India, Routl (...)

2Unsurprisingly, Hindi cinema identified the holocaustic 1947 break-up of the Indian subcontinent for attention as early as 1951, in Phani Majumdar’s Andolan. Over the years, the contentious relationship has been treated variously in post-terrorist films, cross-border romances, Partition films, sports films, comedies and spy thrillers.1 But though cultural acknowledgement of this unsettling connection between the two countries has had steady if limited coverage in Hindi cinema, it has been tardy in giving screen space to armed conflict between the two countries. Evidently, the lines drawn by the retreating colonial master with little or no understanding of the cultural commixture of the two major subcontinental religious communities, have consistently marked the squabble for tracts of land near the border with violence.

  • 2 “Hindutva (lit. “Hinduness”) is a political ideology encompassing the cultural justificatio (...)
  • 3 War Chhod na Yaar follows in the wake of films like LOC: Kargil (JP Dutta, 2003), L (...)
  • 4 The Filmfare and National Awards are the premier annual awards for artistic and technical e (...)

3But the brutality and destructiveness of full-fledged armed confrontations took a long time to find themselves on the screen. Hindi cinema has traditionally not been much attracted by the war genre, with stray forays like Haqeeqat (Chetan Anand, 1964) and Border (J P Dutta, 1997) sticking out as pre-turn-of-the-century standalone representatives. Other films like Upkar (Manoj Kumar, 1967) and Prem Pujari (Dev Anand, 1970) had made some screen space for war but this was minimal. But by the turn of the new millennium, fuelled by the current wave of nationalism sweeping across India in concomitance with the rise of Hindutva politics,2 the war film has suddenly come to be recognized as a most hospitable genre for uber-patriotic cinema.3 It is only recently, with the turn of the century that war has gained some popularity as subject matter for Hindi films, with quite a few of them meeting with box office success and garnering Filmfare and National Awards, starting with Pukar (Rajkumar Santoshi 2000) and Lakshya (Farhan Akhtar 2004) down to the more recent Uri: The Surgical Strike (Aditya Dhar 2019) and Shershaah (Vishnuvardhan 2021).4

  • 5 Melvin Maddocks, “Comedy and War,” The Sewanee Review, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins (...)

4Interestingly, almost coterminous with the rising popularity of the war film genre, the end of the first decade of the new millennium saw the problematic India-Pakistan relationship coming in for unique breakaway treatment in Hindi cinema riding the vehicle of humour. Set in motion by the singular path-breaking Tere Bin Laden (Abhishek Sharma 2010), this genre has been consolidated by films like Zed Plus (Chandraprakash Dwivedi 2014), Filmistan (Nitin Kakkar 2014), Bangistan (Karan Anshuman 2015) and Tere Bin Laden: Dead or Alive (Abhishek Sharma 2016). The turn-of-the-century Hindi film comedy thus, became a serious podium for posting cultural criticism, a commingling amply justified by the fact that almost every culture has traditionally backed the synchronicity of comedy with serious art forms: the Greek satyr play combined aspects of both the tragedy and the comedy in the one form; Shakespeare made space for comedy in his tragedies to relieve the solemn atmosphere and to comment on the main action; Sanskrit classical drama depended on the technique of humour to deal with the weightiest issues. Further, Melvin Maddocks, notes the coming together of comedy and war by giving a vocal alibi to war comedy cinema: “…comedy, from Aristophanes on, has stubbornly even fiercely claimed war as its proper subject too; and why not? If the purpose of comedy is to expose the insanity of everyday life, then war may be judged as the ultimate insanity and the comedian’s ultimate challenge.”5 War Chhod Na Yaar is a representation of this hopeful insanity.

5Taking a cue from Tere Bin Laden which focused on the proxy war being waged between the two countries via terrorism through the unstinting lens of comedy, War Chhod Na Yaar (Faraz Haider 2013) brings comedy to the battlefield. The appearance of this war film is significantly in line with the genesis of multiple hybrid formats on the Indo-Pak theme – the Indo-Pak sports film, the biopic, the post-terrorist film and with the proliferation of dedicated Indo-Pak comedies, It steps into this newly opened, promising gateway, to both subvert the relentless posturing of serious war films and to obliquely pitch the idea of a peace-loving nation which respectfully makes space for the Other. The impulse of nationalistic chauvinism is undercut by the satiric pitch and convivial good-humoured badinage that marks this innovative coupling of the war film genre with humour, something never attempted before in Hindi cinema.

6This article will analyze this daring yoking together of war and humour, using the possibilities opened up by the interpretive strategies supplied by cultural criticism, provocatively both questioning the irksome relationship between the two nations, and being informed by the parameters of genre and area studies.

Upturning the nationalistic ideology of war

  • 6 These are only representative examples from different decades to show the steady re (...)

7If the war genre has been popular in the west, the anti-war sentiment too has been strong, both boasting of a long and consistent history. This has enabled many Hollywood filmmakers to present this anti-war sentiment through black humour, satire and parody as in M*A*S*H (Robert Altman 1970), Good Morning Vietnam (Barry Levinson 1987), Tropic Thunder (Ben Stiller 2008), Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino 2009) and the more recent, Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi 2019).6 But in India, where the war genre itself has not had popular currency, this coupling with humour was too long a shot to expect.

8In War Chhod Na Yaar, the India- Pakistan relationship that had hitherto only excited anger and pain comes in for mature handling through the concerted deployment of humour to mount a cinematic text that looks towards hope and acceptance even as it is downright critical. War Chhod Na Yaar shows soldiers and military captains, Rajveer Singh Rana (Sharman Joshi) and Qureshi (Javed Jaffrey), from India and Pakistan respectively, who have become close friends on the border, playing together, sharing jokes, and questioning the idea of war and enmity between the two nations. Rut Dutta, a television news reporter, arrives to make a documentary about the lives of the soldiers on the border. Following the hatching of conspiracy theories by politicians and army generals from both sides, war is declared between the two countries. The friendship between the two sides is tested and the TV reporter and the army men decide to expose the political machinations of the mercenary, selfish political leaders.

  • 7 Ted Cohen, Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters, Chicago: University of Chicago (...)

9Enlisting the services of an unlikely ally in humour, War Chhod Na Yaar bears out Ted Cohen’s insistence that this “joking… needs to be done” (my italics) and the testy issues need to be met head on. If the humour had only been “a kind of avoidance,” it may have been “out of place” but when pointedly used to highlight this fraught relationship as the identifying aspect of subcontinental existence, it becomes necessary. Far from being “a deflection from something else that needs to be done”, the film actually brings a unique insight into the combative relationship between India and Pakistan.7 The pressing need to discover new ways of confronting and handling the antagonism gives a convincing validation to Cohen’s proposal of using the ability to joke, to find humour in places and times that seemingly have no scope for it. Thus, the coming together of war and comedy in a single cinematic text on Indo-Pak interrelations – in all probability, the defining preoccupation of the citizens of the subcontinent – becomes a uniquely appropriate collaborative arrangement for critical engagement.

  • 8 Quoted by Adam Neyman, “‘1917’ and the Trouble With War Movies,” The Ringer, January 20, 20 (...)

10Quite some time ago, in a 1973 interview with Gene Siskel, the French director François Truffaut had acknowledged that he had been considering making a film about the Algerian war but had forsaken the project for fear of glorifying war. He had ruefully gone on to affirm that there was nothing like “an anti-war film,” and he had gone on to lament the fact that “every film about war ends up being pro-war”8 War Chhod Na Yaar roundly gives the lie to this assertion by aiming its barbs at the fast-receding ideological imperatives of armed struggle that normally define nationalistic drives. This comic film turns the nationalistic agenda on its head by spoofing the mindless jingoism that marks the vitriol spewed by both nations. Using the technique of humour, the film subverts the prevailing, deeply entrenched, anti-Pakistan political discourse, demonstrating the gradual but distinct move of Hindi cinema from a Pakistan-obsessed, Pakistan-centric and Partition-related construct of the national self-image to an increasingly reflective one.

  • 9 Wendy Doniger in her Huizinga Lecture delivered on December 14, 2001, at the University of (...)
  • 10 Art Spiegelman’s graphic novels on the impact of World War II and 9/11 used all the (...)
  • 11 In recent years, this constructive role of humour has been acknowledged by even state repre (...)
  • 12 For instance, “[I]n a film that is otherwise a serious film on the cross-border movement of (...)

11Indeed, in the context of subcontinental existence, there has been nothing more important to the idea of selfhood of both India and Pakistan, than the “idea” of Pakistan, the nation carved out of another, a nation that, as it were, had no national precedent. Faced with this problematic existential conundrum, we might well ask the question that Wendy Doniger had asked about the place of humour when dealing with 9/11: “When is it OK to joke?”,9 every time the issue of Pakistan comes up. Does the deployment of humour, of comedy, in dealing with this most important relationship not imply trivialization of the complex issue? Indeed, the growth in the number of comedic takes on the challenging India-Pakistan connection seems to indicate otherwise. If Art Spiegelman could use humour to make sense of World War II in Maus (1980-1991) and of 9/11 in In the Shadow of No Towers (2002-2004),10 if Leonard Benton could identify a unique and effective counterterrorism strategy in humour,11 then why should it not provide a unique angle to understand what binds or separates India and Pakistan? Rather, it is strange that the popular Bollywood film, which has traditionally and routinely included both tragedy and comedy in its format, has taken so long to discover the promise of this space for critical intervention and for understanding the key issue of Pakistan’s place in Subcontinental politics and what Pakistan means to India. Clearly, humour has provided a unique strategy for negotiating these issues and, by marrying it with the war genre, it has yielded noteworthy results. Up until now, mainstream films broaching the troublesome connection between the two countries had only used comedy for the provision of instant entertainment, quite marginal and having little or nothing to contribute to the central concern.12 Now, in War Chhod Na Yaar, humour becomes integral to the motif of war, the backbone of the strident satire against self-seeking leaders from both sides. It laces the benign indulgent banter between the ordinary, common soldiers on the field. Gleefully, the Indian Captain Rana, asks his Pakistani counterpart and across-the-fence-card-buddy, “And what have you got for food today?” knowing full well that the quality of Pakistani rations is deplorable and that the question will rile his friend. Qureshi replies good-humouredly, “It is just by asking this question that you will take my life. You won’t even need to fire a bullet!” This is the tenor of all exchanges between the friends from opposite camps.

12Likewise, the Pakistani officer Qureshi facetiously challenges the notion that there is some noble nationalist ideology behind the war with India:

If bombs are let loose and war continues like this, Pakistan will disappear from the maps. The National Geographic will have a programme titled, “Once upon a time there was a Pakistan.”

13This statement punctures any pretence of national allegiance indicated in each side marking its space with the customary identifiers of the national flag and pictures of political leaders, both on the ground and on television. Each perverts the visual media to serve its own nefarious agenda. “It’s all politics,” bewails the common soldier, a hapless puppet in the hands of the puppeteering superiors. The film also does not lose the opportunity to bandy about the reputation of China as a manufacturer of goods of “inferior quality.” The dud bomb that refuses to go off, fizzles out in a damp phus. This incites the Indian officer, Rana to post a joking comment, “Don’t be afraid. It will not go off… Look!... Made in China!”

  • 13 Taking a lead from Hollywood, Bollywood sprang up as a rubric for Hindi Bombay-based (now M (...)
  • 14 Mirza Waheed, The Collaborator, London: Penguin, 2011, 33.

14As it is, Hindi cinema has been widely remarked for its nation-building, nationalistic drive and character, with critics like Sumita Chakravarty (1993), Ashish Rajyadhyaksha (2003) and Neelam Srivastava (2009) opening the trajectory for critical analysis and approach to “Bollywood” as “national” cinema.13 Even war films that puncture the idea of chauvinistic heroism in war by representing the entailed horrifying, dehumanizing violence in all its shameful starkness, ultimately veer back to the ideology of patriotic nationalism, often resorting to jingoism. But War Chhod Na Yaar makes an incisive intervention by pointedly going against both these grains to mount a sharp critique of the highly politicized impulses to war. It strips nationalist rhetoric of all redemptive attributes and reveals that it is heavily spurred by religious polarization, even as it is deeply and perversely rooted in mercantile capitalism. In fact, the film roundly counters any nationalist polarization by giving equal space to both Indian and Pakistani responses. If Mirza Waheed’s Collaborator in his novel, The Collaborator (2010), bemoans that ‘there is [now] always an Indian and a Pakistani version of everything,”14 War Chhod Na Yaar, embraces and applauds the contiguity and alignment between the two sides.

  • 15 Owen H. Lynch, “Humorous Communication: Finding a Place for Humor in Communication Research (...)
  • 16 Paul Lewis, “Humour and Fear in the Gothic,” Comic Effects: Interdisciplinary Appro (...)

15The deployment of comedy in this film on the India-Pakistan relationship thus emerges as a serious attempt to analyze and satirize the ideologues and the ideological and polemic rhetoric spouted by both sides. Thus, the humour in War Chhod Na Yaar, represents, to quote Owen Lynch, “a dualistic function of both control and resistance,”15 becoming a conscious strategy to organize and direct the most pointed and frontal attacks on misplaced and misdirected nationalism. The upshot is that humour provides an approach that is not at all incongruous with the gravity of these themes. Rather, it serves, in part, to use Paul Lewis’s formulation, as a means of “coping with or minimizing fearful occurrences,” and re-visioning and consolidating critical engagement with the Indo-Pak dynamics.16

Beating the Bollywood Formula

16In the pursuit of bringing together humour and the fraught Indo-Pakistan bond in cinema, War Chhod Na Yaar uses cinematic techniques that have become stock in the contemporary Hindi film on the Indo-Pakistan theme film. True to form, it opens with a solemn dedication to the soldiers. Recalling the Mani Ratnam opening gambit of a dramatic blank dark screen in Roja (Mani Ratnam 1992), the film starts with a completely black frame before lighting on staple screen representations of the border in barbed wire fences and stone boundary markers. The proximity of the Indian and Pakistani war camps on either flank of the border results in the two sides warming to each other to such an extent that they start exchanging gifts. The Indians gift liquor to the Pakistanis, who have no access to this commodity on their side. They play cards, they drink and eat together, even as they have cracks at each other’s side. For instance, in the course of their card game, when a soldier feels the urge to urinate, the Pakistani officer calls out, “Do it on your own side,” to which his Indian counterpart laughingly counters, “Yes, don’t do it on their side lest their country is swept away.”

  • 17 Bhagwan, Mehmood, Mukri, Rajendranath, and Tuntun belonged to this class of actors who sign (...)

17In its steadfast assault on the expectations of Bollywood films, this out-and-out comedy goes past the old Bollywood formula of the “specialist” comedian to give place to a comedy that involves all the cast and specifically places the protagonists at its heart, even as they carry the theme on their shoulders.17 Thus, War Chhod Na Yaar takes the premise of tense subcontinental relations forward by this novel melding of humour and the fraught India-Pakistan bond in cinema. Tapping the war film genre, although never a hot favourite in Bollywood, and combining it with comedy, this lone Hindi war comedy is a sustained satire probing the politicization of war by self-seeking politicos, whose political success solely depends on the continuous mobilization of the defence forces of their countries against the avowed enemy across the fence. The Indian Defence Minister wants the TV reporter Rut Datta to air a report of an incursion from the other side “live,” two days AFTER he visits the border so that it incites battle between the two countries. With an eye towards gaining political mileage, this is aimed at legitimating and consolidating his own position as a minister of Defence. Across the border, the Pakistani Chief of the Army Staff and the minister bickering amongst themselves are admonished by the Chinese General with whom they are video conferencing, “If you keep fighting amongst yourselves here, who will fight on the border? Your father?” Clearly, politicians from both sides (and the Chinese) are invested in the breakout of hostilities.

18Moreover, when contextualized against the amicable repartee between them, the direct references to the “war,” liberally sprinkled in the screenplay, give point to the anti-war satirical push. The dialogic repetitions of the synonyms of “war,” ladai, jung, in the three shared subcontinental languages, English Hindi and Urdu, the references to the declaration of war (elaan) and to the weaponry for battle engagement – bombs, bandook (gun), goli (bullet), are backed by the lyrics of the non-diegetic title song that plays in the background:

Ladaai rok do yaar

War chhodna yaar

War toh bekaar hai

Samjho na yaar

Stop fighting my friend

Stop war my friend

War is useless

Understand that, my friend

19Thus, maintaining an unwavering focus on the central theme of the speciousness and irrationality of war between India and Pakistan, the film moves surely to bringing convivial humour to channel the seriousness of the intent and to slice through the illogicality of the antipathy.

Rapprochement: Accenting shared culture

  • 18 Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear, Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1983, 78.
  • 19 Duncan McLeod, “Culture of Enmity and Unlimited Conflict,” Abstract, India and Pakistan, (...)
  • 20 Though the filmmaker may find general validation for coupling humour and war in these films (...)

20As a consequence of this melding of two genres, War Chhod Na Yaar unexpectedly occasions the adumbration of the shared culture between India and Pakistan. Political scientist and professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics, Barry Buzan’s analysis of Subcontinental relations supports this. As an expert in the conceptual and regional aspects of international security, he says, ‘their historical, geographic and cultural ties do not allow them to ignore each other. but their organization principles pose a permanent threat to each other.”18 Political analyst, Duncan McLeod’s observation that locked in political, diplomatic, military and ideological conflict, the antagonistic sides “remain transfixed by systemic inter-subjectivity,” testifies to the shared perspectives.19 This gives an oblique thrust to the war comedy format of War Chhod Na Yaar which enables the cinematic artist to freely highlight the commonalities between the two sides and to come out in a forthright critique under the cloak of humour. Rather than highlighting the differences and enmity between the two, the film posts an unequivocal indication of cultural oneness. The director Faraz Haider clearly pointed this out when he said, “We have seen aggressive and emotional films made on India and Pakistan. I wanted to make something unique. I thought, I need to change the perspective.”20

21In a year particularly marked by continuous cross-border skirmishes, in a political climate where civilian leaders still have to kowtow to military diktats, this uncompromising satire had an immediate and timely impetus and impact. Ankit Panda’s succinct review of Indo-Pak relations in 2013 in The Diplomat testifies to this relevance:

  • 21 Ankit Panda, “India-Pakistan Relations: A 2013 Retrospective and 2014 Prospectus,” The Di (...)

2013 wasn’t a great year for India-Pakistan relations (few years are). What defined the year was primarily the marked uptick in the number of cross-border skirmishes involving Pakistani and Indian troops. As early as January, India accused Pakistan of intentionally violating the Line of Control (LoC) that demarcates the administrative territories of each state in the disputed Kashmir region. These violations continued throughout the year and drew sensationalist responses in both countries. Other fiascos, such as the death of Indian soldier Sarabjit Singh in Pakistani custody, did little to improve relations.21

  • 22 Slavoj Žižek, “Superstar Communist Slavoj Zizek is The Most Dangerous Philosopher i (...)

22Curiously, this daring yoking together of war and humour has not received its due attention in any reckoning of cinema on this troubling Indo-Pak problematic. The fact that War Chhod Na Yaar does not even feature in online lists of Hindi war films is a pointed revelation of the tilted dominant political ideology of the times in which fervent antipathy to Pakistan underlies the right-wing drive to nationalistic identity. Paradoxically, this slight becomes an oblique validation of what War Chhod Na Yaar is trying to accomplish. The comedic slant in the film turns the critiquing eye on the “state” and the ideology of nationalism. This drive calls up Marxist intellectual and anti-capitalist philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s assertion, in response to why he thought cinema was such an important tool to talk about the world, that cinema supplies the best means for assessing contemporary ideology.22

  • 23 Slavoj Žižek, “Political Correctness Is a More Dangerous Form of Totalitarianism,” Big (...)

23When seen in conjunction with Žižek’s attribution of a unique status to humour – to dirty jokes – in bringing people together, in giving an instinctual “obscene solidarity,”23 the politically incorrect humour of War Chhod Na Yaar provides an invaluable platform and modus for the analysis of this element of latent consanguinity between the two nations. The initial lighthearted, slightly crude exchange at the card session about peeing subtly reveals this comradeship since both sides understand the joke and there is no rancour. The obscenity that underlies other exchanges is immediately comprehensible to both Indian and Pakistani audiences. When his commanding officer, vulgarly scratching his posterior, orders him to report on his findings on his desert recce, Qureshi responds crassly: “With just two bottles of water, one can either drink or wash one’s buttocks. Wiping with sand peels away the skin…” The affinity apparent in these shared jokes is played out in the last frame when both sides sing the same Bollywood song of everlasting amity. The opening exchange between Indian and Pakistani soldiers picks up the friendly call, sounded right at the beginning in the film title itself, “War Chhod Na Yaar,” to “Forget War, Dude” The bonhomie undercuts the very basis of war between the two nations.

  • 24 Ingvild Gilhus, Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins: Laughter in the History of Religion, London (...)

24At this point, it is important to remember that the most important aspect of humour is its cultural-specificity. Cultural appreciation and understanding are severely hampered and much is lost if this cultural vibe is missing. India and Pakistan, for all their antipathies, have a common shared history and culture. Given the fact that to Subcontinentals, the relationship with the erstwhile sibling nation is, to use the words that Ingvild Gilhus used elsewhere in the context of religion, “serious business and no laughing matter,”24 War Chhod Na Yaar comes as a timely reminder to emphasize the pertinence of this common genealogy. It signals that it is only when we are willing to laugh away differences, it is only when we are willing to have our eyes opened to our own limitations that our relations can turn for the better. Humour may not eradicate the tension but it can certainly ease it by drawing attention to the ongoing problem and by showing up this common ground. This Indo-Pak comedy then, as all other Indo-Pak comic ventures, evinces a deep internalization of cultural knowledge on both sides of the line of control, be it of language, of Bollywood or the shared passion for cricket.

Growing maturity in critiquing the India-Pakistan Relationship

  • 25 Meenakshi Bharat and Nirmal Kumar, “Introduction,” Filming the Line of Control: The (...)

25Also noticeable is how easily War Chhod Na Yaar appropriates the contemporary mainstream Bollywood frontal response to Pakistan and turns it to humorous advantage. The earliest post-Partition responses by Indian cinema, driven more by nation-building imperatives, had assiduously avoided direct mentions of Pakistan. But this “initial silence gave way to a discourse of animosity and cultural antagonism which found its way into the cinematic text, manifesting itself in various ways, from cultural shadowboxing to open Pakistan-bashing.”25 These inimical screen face-offs were followed by a new Bollywood development of presenting this relationship in a fair, unbiased manner onscreen, in some well-meaning cinema. By being picked up by this comic war caper, this trend gives a valuable insight into the evolving identities of the two nations and also an indication of the growing maturity of the medium in fielding modified perceptions of the Other, from not mentioning Pakistan, through bashing the “Other,” to an acknowledgement of kinship through the tempering filter of humour. Even as anti-Pakistan sentiment continues to figure in box-office successes like the rabidly hostile Gadar (Anil Sharma 2001) and the uber-patriotic Uri: The Surgical Strike (Aditya Dhar 2019), neutrally poised films like Main Hoon Naa (Farah Khan 2004) with elements of humour have already started appearing. With War Chhod Na Yaar, this neutrality is taken to the other positive extreme of aligning the two nations in a war against the opportunistic drives behind war. If Hindi cinema has set itself up as a cultural barometer for nationalist sentiment, then this comic film is indicative of the complexity that marks cinema as a dynamic agent of the notions of nation and nationhood. War Chhod Na Yaar is a representation of the insanity that colours the troubled relationship between the erstwhile sibling nations.

26Consequently, the disjunction between the weightiness of the pacifist theme and the vehicle of comedy only serves to emphasize the gravity of the appeal. Innovation and experimentation are called up to give punch to the problematic war rhetoric spouted by leaders from both sides. For instance, the unique comic technique of using the same actor to play multiple roles serves to give point to the critical comment. Dalip Tahil plays the politicking heads of state and armies of both the Indian and Pakistani sides: he enacts the roles of both the Indian and Pakistani Prime Ministers and the army generals, all too scared of actually stepping into a war zone themselves. In addition, Tahil is also given the charge of portraying the representatives of war-supplying nations, China and America. This whimsical modus makes for exaggerated portrayals of politicians, presentations of diplomatic mishaps and absurd situations, to pitch effectively the absurdity of the India-Pakistan enmity. The fact that all the generals and leaders, driven by selfishly political and mercenary motives, only interested in the declaration and continuation of war, are played by the same actor, gives an unmissable comic complexion to the war motive. Patently, it is not the common man who wants the war! The choice of Dalip Tahil, a theatre and film artist known for playing serious, meaningful roles, gives an extra punch to this intriguing technique. It, thereby, avoids placing the blame on any one nation, dispassionately and roundly ascribing the fault to base human tendencies. Finally, the film undoubtedly indicates that the only thing that really needs to be critiqued and annihilated is the ignoble ideology of war.

27To accomplish this critique, War Chhod Na Yaar also appropriates the practice of onscreen textual notation that has come to be an identifying attribute of contemporary war cinema and postterrorist films. The first frames identify Pakistani and Indian locations textually as “Border Out Post (Eastern Sector) Pakistan” and “Border Out Post (Western Sector) India” War Chhod na Yaar gives a parodic twist to this authenticating technique: the onscreen text comedically pushes the satire by notifying that the speech exhorting soldiers to a display of patriotic fervour in war has been repeated “1760” times. The sting is sharpened with the revelation of the downright base impulse behind national engagement in conflict. Apparently, Pakistani leaders are using the idea of war to divert the attention of their soldiers who are on the brink of revolt because of the inferior food being supplied to them —their daalgosht (lentil-meat), we are told, has neither daal nor gosht in it. The satiric barbs continue to be hurled in the substance and manner in which Pakistani general threatens the Prime Minister: “Oye, wars are not fought on an empty stomach. These days our soldiers are engaging less in Intelligence work than in passing gas”.

  • 26 The Urdu and Hindi synonyms are indicative of the Pakistani and Indian coverage.
  • 27 The youth sentiment is echoed in the letters written by young Indians and Pakistani (...)

28With corruption rife, leaders from both sides get commissions on all orders for weapons, comically shown up in boxers and underwear flaunting the star-spangled banner drying on the dividing barbed wires and bombs, thus keeping even the First Nation within the ambit of the satire. The final damning critical comment comes from the youth of both sides, connected to each other through the internet. Humorously couched in the language of youth, they expose the hollow principles of self-seeking politicians. The Pakistani Minister had apparently come for the “Aman and shanti thing” (on the peace mission) and that “it’s the same shit.”26 Astutely, they realize that the exercise of each country blaming the other for the onset of hostilities (“Dude, India is blaming Pakistan and Pakistan is blaming India”) is a narrative that has been repeated for the last 65 years. Ironically, by giving the last word to the youth of both Pakistan and India, the script sounds the most serious sounding of a note of hope for a future of “aman” and “shanti” in the subcontinent.27

  • 28 Antakshri (The game of the ending letter) is a popular community, parlour game play (...)

29This Indo-Pak war comedy then, comically appropriates the format and techniques of the serious war film. It milks the use of intermedial spaces (TV and newspapers), of onscreen text announcements of time and place, of a countdown. The use of the camera and the figure of the TV Reporter metatextually turns the cooption of the visual media by political honchos to mount an attack on them and expose their base impulses. The Indian Defence Minister unwittingly gives an ironic testimony to the power of the media when he tells Rut Datta, the reporter, “I hope the camera is not on. I am really afraid of these things…” And so, he should be! As the film goes on to exemplify. The war on battlefields is substituted by a comic war of words and farcical action, as a country mistakenly sets a bomb off on its own space. The ultimate denunciation of the war, that neither the army man nor the common person wants, is inhered in the spontaneous bonding of soldiers from both sides in the fun game of “antakshri” which ends with everyone – both the Indian and the Pakistani – singing the prototypical Bollywood song of undying friendship, “Yeh dosti ham nahin chhodeinge,” (literally, “we will never let go of this friendship,” (Sholay 1975 GP Sippy).28 The camera pitches in to erase all differences by rising so high above the ground that the land, Pakistani and Indian, seems to merge into one single mass. This war comedy film thus interprets the Indo-Pak relationship in a surprising, critical and liberatory manner, and, invigorated by the newness of the foray, creates a space for a healthy, genuine, intellectual dialogue by opening a fresh dynamic entry point into subcontinental relations.

Conclusion

  • 29 Ashis Nandy, “Notes Towards an Agenda for the Next Generation of Film Theorists in (...)

30Propelled by the urge to steer clear of adding to what Ashis Nandy calls ‘the proliferation of insipid, mechanical works on cinema,”29 War Chhod Na Yaar sets up generic expectations only to shatter them at every step. And in so doing, it makes its most profound statement in favour of amity. In this war movie, there are no heroes, only ordinary human beings impelled by human emotions of love and brotherhood. There is a surfeit of villains, though, and their villainy is obviously against all humanity. In this war movie, there is no heroic action. Every operation is a mean, reductive one. Dipping into the intersections of the genres of comedy and war cinema, the film tests the boundaries of our moral response to conflict in general, and specifically to conflict between the two subcontinental sibling nations. By challenging the legacies of genre, this unique serious Bollywood comic configuration conceptualizes a novel format which, by combining the two, sets up a promising new category of subcontinental war comedy, a fresh creative space to broach Indo-Pak relations.

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Bibliographie

BENTON Leonard, “Fighting Terrorism: The Armor Called Humor,” The Havok Journal (online), https://havokjournal.com/politics/fighting-terrorism-armor-called-humor/ 30 January, 2017, accessed 16 January, 2019.

BHARAT Meenakshi and Nirmal KUMAR, Filming the Line of Control: The Indo-Pak Relationship through the Cinematic Lens, London/New Delhi: Routledge, 2008.

BHARAT Meenakshi, Hindi Cinema and Pakistan: Screening the Idea and the Reality, London/New Delhi: Routledge, 2024.

BHARAT Meenakshi, Troubled Testimonies: Terrorism and the English Novel in India, London/New Delhi: Routledge, 2016.

BHARAT Meenakshi, Shooting Terror: Terrorism in Hindi Films, London/New Delhi: Routledge, 2020.

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CHAKRAVARTY Sumita, “Fragmenting the Nation: Images of Terrorism in Indian Popular Cinema,” in Cinema and Nation, Meete Hjort & Scott McKenzie (eds), Routledge, 2000, 209-223.

CHAKRAVARTY Sumita, National Identity in Popular Cinema 1947-1989, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993.

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MADDOCKS Melvin, “Comedy and War,” The Sewanee Review, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, Vol. 112, No. 1 Winter, 2004, 22-34.

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PANDA Ankit. “India-Pakistan Relations: A 2013 Retrospective and 2014 Prospectus.” The Diplomat, https://thediplomat.com/2013/12/india-pakistan-relations-a-2013-retrospective-and-2014-prospectus/, 20 December 2013, accessed 11 April 2023

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Notes

1 See Meenakshi Bharat, Troubled Testimonies: Terrorism and the English Novel in India, Routledge: London/New Delhi, 2015 and Meenakshi Bharat, Shooting Terror: Terrorism in Hindi Films, Routledge: London/New Delhi, 2020, which offer detailed studies of the proxy war being waged under the garb of terrorism as evidenced in novels and Hindi cinema. The latter book traces the portrayal of terrorism from early mentions in films like Karma (1986) and Mr India (1987), through to terror-focused films starting with Roja (1992) down to Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) and Hamid (2019). The 2024 monograph Hindi Cinema and Pakistan: Screening the Idea and the Reality covers almost 100 Hindi films under the various heads of post-terrorist cinema, cross-border romances, Partition films and spy thrillers, and highlights how these categories intersect at various levels. The gamut of films covered starts from the 1951 mention of the Partition in Andolan to Partition-focused films like Garm Hava (1974), Tamas (1988) down to the most recent, Begum Jaan (2017) and Manto (2018); post-terrorist films Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019); sports films like Chak de! India (2007) and Gold (2018); comedies like Tere Bin Laden (2010) and Indoo ki Jawaani (2020); cross-border romances like Veer-Zaara (2004) and Raazi (2018); and spy thrillers like the blockbuster Tiger trilogy (2012, 2017, 2023) and Pathaan (2023).

2 “Hindutva (lit. “Hinduness”) is a political ideology encompassing the cultural justification of Hindu nationalism and the belief in establishing Hindu hegemony within India. The political ideology was formulated by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1922. It is used by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), the current ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and other organizations, collectively called the Sangh Parivar.” Wikipedia.

3 War Chhod na Yaar follows in the wake of films like LOC: Kargil (JP Dutta, 2003), Lakshya (Farhan Akhtar, 2004), Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Sathiyo (Anil Sharma, 2004), Tango Charlie (Mani Shanker, 2005), 1971 (Amrit Sagar, 2007) and Shaurya (Samar Khan, 2008). Post War Chhod na Yaar, more than a dozen war films in Hindi have been made, and a significant number have met with box office success. Films like Uri: The Surgical Strike (Aditya Dhar, 2019) and Shershaah (Vishnuvardhan, 2021) have been runaway successes, the former getting the National Award for Best Film and the latter being adjudged the best film at the Filmfare awards.

4 The Filmfare and National Awards are the premier annual awards for artistic and technical excellence in Indian cinema.  The awards were introduced by Filmfare magazine of The Times Group in 1954, the same year as the National Film Awards. The Filmfare ceremony is one of the most famous annual film events in India.

5 Melvin Maddocks, “Comedy and War,” The Sewanee Review, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, Vol. 112, No. 1 Winter, 2004), 22.

6 These are only representative examples from different decades to show the steady representation of war through the lens of humour. There are many more.

7 Ted Cohen, Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999, 60 and 69.

8 Quoted by Adam Neyman, “‘1917’ and the Trouble With War Movies,” The Ringer, January 20, 2020, https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/1/29/21112768/war-movies-1917-dunkirk-saving-private-ryan-apocalypse-now, accessed 27 March 2023.

9 Wendy Doniger in her Huizinga Lecture delivered on December 14, 2001, at the University of Leiden. “Terror and Gallows Humor: After September 11” is an excerpt from the lecture. https://www.press.uchicago.edu/sites/daysafter/911doniger.html, accessed 13 January, 2019.

10 Art Spiegelman’s graphic novels on the impact of World War II and 9/11 used all the tools of a cartoonist. Maus (New York: Pantheon Books, 1991) first came out as a comic strip between 1980-1991 in Raw a comics magazine anthology edited by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly and published in the United States by Mouly from 1980 to 1991. In the Shadow of No Towers (New York: Viking Adult, 2004), Spiegelman’s reaction to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, was originally serialized as a comic strip in the German newspaper Die Zeit, from 2002 until 2004.

11 In recent years, this constructive role of humour has been acknowledged by even state representatives and government agencies: Leonard Benton, a US military leader talks of “Fighting Terrorism” with ‘the Armor Called Humor” (Leonard Benton, “Fighting Terrorism: The Armor Called Humor,” The Havok Journal, 30 January, 2017. https://havokjournal.com/politics/fighting-terrorism-armor-called-humor/, accessed 16 January, 2019). In 2017 both the US and the Flemish governments, finding humour a unique and effective counterterrorism strategy, separately decided to fund cultural projects that used humour to cut down the online propaganda and leading influence of terror groups like ISIS. the idea being to thwart and undercut the violent radicalization and polarization pursued by such terrorist outfits.

12 For instance, “[I]n a film that is otherwise a serious film on the cross-border movement of arms from Pakistan to India for the purpose of destabilizing the country, the cute “don’t mind” girl of Sarfarosh (John Matthan 1999) played by Sonali Bendre, provides the only light moments of comedy in its focused run [...] This technique of coupling “humour” with romantic interest, another Bollywood staple, makes a reappearance a year later in Pukar (Raj Kumar Santoshi 2000), specifically designed to lighten the atmosphere and to relieve the gravity of the subject.” Meenakshi Bharat, Shooting Terror: Terrorism and Hindi Cinema, London/New Delhi: Routledge, 2020, 131-132.

13 Taking a lead from Hollywood, Bollywood sprang up as a rubric for Hindi Bombay-based (now Mumbai) cinema. This has come to stay.

14 Mirza Waheed, The Collaborator, London: Penguin, 2011, 33.

15 Owen H. Lynch, “Humorous Communication: Finding a Place for Humor in Communication Research.” Communication Theory 12, no. 4, November 2002, 439.

16 Paul Lewis, “Humour and Fear in the Gothic,” Comic Effects: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Humour in Literature, Albany, NY: State U of New York, 1989, 112.

17 Bhagwan, Mehmood, Mukri, Rajendranath, and Tuntun belonged to this class of actors who signaled comedy by their very presence onscreen.

18 Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear, Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1983, 78.

19 Duncan McLeod, “Culture of Enmity and Unlimited Conflict,” Abstract, India and Pakistan, London/Oxford: Routledge, 2008.

20 Though the filmmaker may find general validation for coupling humour and war in these films, he has not acknowledged any direct influence in the making of this film. “Comedy is my weapon: “War Chhod Na Yaar” director,” IANS, IIK Young Reporter, Thursday, 26 September 2013.
https://www.indiansinkuwait.com/news/Comedy-is-my-weapon-War-Chhod-Na-Yaar-director-

21 Ankit Panda, “India-Pakistan Relations: A 2013 Retrospective and 2014 Prospectus,” The Diplomat, December 20, 2013. https://thediplomat.com/2013/12/india-pakistan-relations-a-2013-retrospective-and-2014-prospectus/, accessed 11 April 2023

22 Slavoj Žižek, “Superstar Communist Slavoj Zizek is The Most Dangerous Philosopher in the West,” in interview by Alex Miller of VICE, 11 October, 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?=XS_Lzo4S81A, accessed 3 September 2018.

23 Slavoj Žižek, “Political Correctness Is a More Dangerous Form of Totalitarianism,” Big Think, 14 April, 2015 https://bigthink.com/videos/slavoj-zizek-political-correctness-is-fake, accessed 21 January 2019.

24 Ingvild Gilhus, Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins: Laughter in the History of Religion, London/Oxford: Routledge, 1997, 2.

25 Meenakshi Bharat and Nirmal Kumar, “Introduction,” Filming the Line of Control: The Indo-Pak Relationship through the Cinematic Lens, London/New Delhi: Routledge, 2008, viii.

26 The Urdu and Hindi synonyms are indicative of the Pakistani and Indian coverage.

27 The youth sentiment is echoed in the letters written by young Indians and Pakistanis, compiled by Chintan Girish Modi, ed. Steven Youngblood, “Indians, Pakistanis write postcards for peace,” The PEACE JOURNALIST, Park University Library, Missouri, Vol 6 No. 1, April 2017, 22-23.

28 Antakshri (The game of the ending letter) is a popular community, parlour game played in the Indian subcontinent in which each contestant sings the first verse of a song (often Bollywood songs) that begins with the consonant of the Hindi alphabet on which the previous contestant’s song ended.

29 Ashis Nandy, “Notes Towards an Agenda for the Next Generation of Film Theorists in India,” South Asian Popular Culture, Routledge, Volume 1: Issue 1, 2003, 84. DOI: 10.1080/1474668032000077131a, accessed 23 December 2022.

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Meenakshi Bharat, « The Unlikely Yoke of War and Humour: Understanding the War Comedy War Chhod Na Yaar (Faraz Haider, 2013) »Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [En ligne], vol.23-n°59 | 2025, mis en ligne le 12 mai 2025, consulté le 12 juin 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/lisa/16924

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Meenakshi Bharat



Meenakshi Bharat is a writer, translator, reviewer and cultural theorist, and teaches in the University of Delhi. Her special interests include children’s literature, women’s fiction, and film, postcolonial, translation and cultural studies—areas which she has extensively researched. Apart from numerous articles and essays, she has published The Ultimate Colony: The Child in Postcolonial Fiction (2003), edited or co-edited Desert in Bloom: Indian Women Writers of Fiction in English (2004), Filming the Line of Control: The Indo-Pak Relationship through the Cinematic Lens (2008), Rushdie the Novelist. From Grimus to The Enchantress of Florence (2009), and written a children’s book, Little Elephant throws a Party (2017). Her monographs Troubled Testimonies: Terrorism and the English Novel in India (2016) and Shooting Terror: Terrorism and the Hindi Film (2020) take on the impact of terrorism on contemporary Indian culture. She served as President of the International Federation of Modern Languages and Literatures (FILLM, UNESCO, 2014-2017), as a bureau member of the International Council of Philosophy and the Human Sciences (CIPSH, UNESCO) and as the Treasurer of the Indian Association for the Study of Australia (IASA) from 2012-2016.

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