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image of Reel Mughals: Medieval themed films as mediatized rituals building collective antagonistic memory

Abstract

The historiography or phrasing of history remains contentious in India, where the medieval past is seen as dubiously peppered with multiple foreign aggressors and usurpers. Increasingly, films have begun to play the role of palimpsest in rewriting history, often compromising historical facts by crediting myths, rumours, bazar gossips and motivated propaganda. While Hollywood films have used the rhetoric of terrorism to otherize Muslims post 9/11, Bollywood has equated invader–tyrant–terrorist with Mughals, Muslims or Pakistan in its narratives. Employing Gillian Rose’s visual research method (VRM) and Van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis on two select Bollywood films, (2008) and (2020), as case studies, this article flags the anti-Muslim rhetoric as a performed in recent Bollywood films. Unlike several past works focusing only on representation or thematic analysis, this article applies VRM on , colour, lights, mannerism, gaze and salience of characters on select shots of these two films to situate the anti-Muslim rhetoric representation of Mughals as villainous in the contemporary Bollywood films. The article thus foregrounds these antagonistic representations as a mediatized ritual performed in recent Bollywood films. These rituals negotiate with the popular imaginations to align with the dominant political ideology of the state by continuously omitting, trivializing and condemning the Mughals and other Islamicate rulers. The systemic use of visual and cinematic Mughalo-Islamophobic and dehumanizing imageries in mobilizing the collective memory of hate discourse of insider/outsider, Indigenous/invader, benevolent/despot and tolerant/barbaric tropes in filmmaking has the potential to further cement the anti-Muslim hate among the majority community in India, culminating in hate crimes and mob lynchings.

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2025-12-15
2026-04-17

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/content/journals/10.1386/jammr_00119_1
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Reel Mughals: Medieval themed films as mediatized rituals building collective antagonistic memory
Intellect ; https://doi.org/10.1386/jammr_00119_1
/content/journals/10.1386/jammr_00119_1
/content/journals/10.1386/jammr_00119_1
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  • Article Type: Article
Keywords: Mughal ; Bollywood ; palimpsest ; Indian films ; mediatized rituals ; visual communication ; Muslim historical

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