Chak De! India Essay -- Film Review

In Shimit Aman’s film Chak De! India, we examine the impact of India’s socio-political condition. In result, Aman’s film brings to light the political anxiety of post-colonial India. Furthermore, we are able to determine how the boundaries of Indian nation-states have an impact on the construction gender, sports, and space. Sports are dependent indicators of the socio-political atmosphere in India. It has become an emblem of Indian nationhood, dominated by males the practice of a national sports is the country’s symbol of the evolution of Indian modernity. Appadurai states, â€Å"The means of modernity contained in cricket require a confluence of lived interests where cricket producers and consumers can share the excitement of ‘Indiannes’ without its many divisive scars† (Appadurai, 179). Like Cricket, Field Hockey introduced to India by the British during the colonialism of the Indian empire. Thus, in the Indian context these sports produce an unexpected light on the relationship between nationhood and empire (Appadurai, 32). India has developed a collective identity of ‘Indianess’ through the vernacularization of these sports. The relationship between sports and politics is on the oldest pervading examples of the interaction of the institution and nationhood (Heitzman and Srinivas, 140). Sports become a lens in which the outsider can view the socio-political stratum. Within the beginning of the Film, the audience becomes aware of the importance of the Field Hockey match between India and Pakistan. Through this match, the space of Indian Muslim identity is hostile and prejudicial in the face of India. The match magnifies and politicizes the experience of the match while simultaneously being apart of a larger discourse of nationa... ...53). Furthermore, the Girls hockey team broke the gender stereotype by dominating a male domain, by performing bodily practices that ignore the differences of their nation-states. In one scene of the movie, when hockey officials decide not to send the girls team to Australia for the World Cup, the coach makes a deal in which the girls would challenge the men’s team in hopes of making it. The girls unite to put on a fierce match, and by competing in a male domain, they are rewarded with the opportunity to go play in the world cup. Moreover, they learned to reconcile religious discrimination for national sentiment through sports performance. In contrast to cricket, Appadurai states, â€Å"In the case of cricket in India, the key to the complex flows that linked cricket, class, and race in the colonial ecumene was the story of patronage and coaching in India†(Appdurai, 45).