Culture, Empire, Frontiers, Identities, Mirror Worlds, Violence-Conflict

Amitabh Bachchan in Gaza

8 Comments
T shirt from shop in Ramallah. The Arabic text reads, “My life is an Indian film”. Photo by Sunaina Maira.

Radhika Sainath writes:

Palestinians in Gaza love Indians. They love Indian dancing, they love Indian music, they love Indian clothes. Whenever I walk out of the house, someone inevitably asks “hiyya hindeyee?” Is she Indian? ”I knew it!” they say when the response is in the affirmative. “Bheb al Hind,” I love India….

So Amitabh, Abhishek, Aishwarya, Amir, Hrithik, Kareena, Salman, Shahrukh, if you’re reading this, how about a shout out to 1.5 million of your biggest fans in the Gaza Strip? Israel has forbidden pasta, tea, cement and freedom flotillas from entering Gaza, but it hasn’t stopped Bollywood. We watch you under the Israeli drones and the F-16s, after being shot at by the Israeli navy and army while fishing, picking olives or going to school. You bring a sliver of joy to people living under the world’s longest occupation in the world’s largest prison, and for that we thank you.

Read the rest of this post by Radhika Sainath at Notes from Behind the Blockade Life: politics and nonviolent resistance inside the Gaza Strip.

8 thoughts on “Amitabh Bachchan in Gaza”

  3. The writing on the T-Shirt in Arabic just reads ‘Hayati Film’ which may be translated as My Life is a Film. I don’t get why you translate it as My Life is an ‘Indian’ Film. Just saying.

    Like

    Reply

  5. @Shuaib.. that turban guy means sardarji = Indian..it was not hard to understand..so it means My life is an Indian film..

    Like

    Reply

    1. I don’t want to be appear nit-picky or anything, but I can’t resist noting that the caption says ‘the Arabic TEXT reads…..’. An image is not the same as a text, is it? But you made a good observation.

      Like

      Reply

  6. I am not indian, rather i wont to be called indian for what india has done on kashmiris, nagas and tamils. do i have right to support palestnian? since many authentic indians support palestine, they might see me that i am subverting third world alliance against imperialism you see…..

    Like

    Reply

We look forward to your comments. Comments are subject to moderation as per our comments policy. They may take some time to appear.

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s