Seite - 87 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 06/01

One final tidbit about the plot and nationalistic symbolism bears mentioning: the characters Amar, Akbar, and Anthony were separated from each other as children (and thus united with their new adoptive families) on August 15, that is, Indian In- dependence Day. Much has been written about this film.37 For the purpose of this essay, it is signifi- cant that each protagonist represents a kind of ideal type. Each is likeable and some- how necessary for the country in his own way as Hindu, Muslim, and Christian. The message is clear: without their life-blood (that unique signifier of human and nation- al identity), Mother India will die. Amar, Akbar, Anthony presents a religiously har- monious ideal in 1970s India. It is an attempt to summon viewers out of amnesia, to remind a country of a pluralist secular India whose cords appeared to be fraying. It is as if to say, “Underneath all our external differences flows the same Indian blood.” There was a time, prior to that heady decade of the 1990s, when we could leave it at that. The rise of Hindu nationalism and two electoral victories for the BJP, however, require some re-engagement. Then this scene reveals problems and contradictions of Indian secularism that have long been present if held at bay. I am speaking of the common elision or interchangeability of Indian with Hindu identity. So, we note that even with this particular secular vision of Amar, Akbar, Anthony, what is shared is in fact “Hindu blood”, since the boys were born to a Hindu family prior to its heart- breaking disintegration. This follows a common historiography in which religions born outside of India (Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam) are treated as foreign spe- cies, mere implants in a common Hindu soil. The implication is that adherents of these traditions are denuded Hindus, even as their “blood” or genetic structure is South Asian. Lost in this representation is that “Hindu” as a singular religious iden- tity is a growth of the ages, originally a geographical signifier used by Persians then Greeks then Muslim Central Asians to cover a multitude of religious beliefs and prac- tices, and congealing as a singular religious identity in relation first to Islam and later to Christianity.38 The words Hindu and Hinduism, by extension, collapse the panoply of sectarian differences existing under these abstract socio-religious signifiers. This Indian=Hindu elision is a common one, proffered (often) unwittingly by secular na- tionalists and explicitly by Hindu nationalists. And, it is undeniably true that Hindu traditions form the dominant religio-cultural matrix on which religious minorities dwell in India, as I hope the preceding discussion of dharma and some if its atten- dant characteristics reveals. Yet to equate Indian with Hindu and vice versa is to overlook the degree of pluralism so characteristic of South Asia, where “religious” 37 See Elison/Novetske/Rotman 2016. 38 See San Chirico 2021. 86 | Kerry P.  C. San Chirico www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 73–102