Bearing witness representation of communal violence and trauma in select twnety first century Indian cinema

Abstract

This thesis argues that select Indian films offer a nuanced portrayal of communal violence, trauma and posttraumatic growth by representing the trauma of victims, perpetrators, and communities through cinematic techniques and innovative narrative strategies. Drawing on postcolonial theoretical discourses on violence and trauma developed by scholars such as Stef Craps, Irene Visser, and Michael Rothberg, the study investigates how the select films engage with direct, structural and cultural forms of violence, and portray the trauma of victim perpetrators and communities. It offers a comparative analysis of the techniques and strategies used in feature and documentary films to engage with the themes of suffering, resilience and healing. The thesis adopts a qualitative approach to study how these films engage with violence and trauma. Content analysis is employed to trace the patterns of violence and trauma, and close textual analysis is used to analyse these films' techniques, themes, and narrative structures. The corpus of this study comprises four feature films, Firaaq, Parzania, Amu, and Jogi, and two documentaries, Even the Crows: A Divided Gujarat and The Widow Colony: India's Unsettled Settlement, which are set against the background of the Anti-Sikh Riots in Delhi in 1984 and the Gujarat Riots in 2002. The study addresses a gap in existing scholarship by examining trauma suffered by victims and perpetrators in a postcolonial locality. This study's focus on the social and material dynamics of trauma, in addition to the psychological and linguistic, underscores its relevance.