Cinematic landscapes of Northeast India through an ecocritical lens

Abstract

The exploitation of nature for man’s insatiable desires is analogous to the subordination of ethnic minorities in many third world countries. This has also found resonance in the cinematic representations of the natural environment and the ethnic and racial profiling of people of these countries. The Northeast of India has always found little mention in the dominant discourse of the Indian nation. Along with this, the age-old rhetoric of exploitation of its natural resources and the lackadaisical attitude of the Indian state towards its people has led to a growing sense of alienation among the people of this peripheral Indian land. The matter is further aggravated by the region’s distorted representations in popular Bollywood films. The article offers an ecocritical reading of two Bollywood films about Northeast India to understand how cinematic landscapes can be used to impart ideas about specific places. We argue that the very landscapes the filmmakers use to present ideas about places can be used to highlight the politics of place-based identities and to attempt a critique of their position in the nationalist discourse.