This anthology of essays and interviews dealing with Indo-Pak relationships in Cinema attempts to demonstrate the ‘gradual but distinct’ move by Hindi cinema from a Pakistan centric and partition related construct of the national self-image to an increasingly self-reflexive and self-reflective one. This, according to the anthology, is due to the improved relations between the two countries. The editors suggest therefore that from blatantly Pak-bashing films like Border and Gadar, ‘Hindi Cinema’ has moved towards more conciliatory themes in later films like Veer Zaara and Mein Hoon Na. The book has four broad sections titled ‘Negotiating the Border’ (comprising three essays by Kishore Budha and Adrian Athique), ‘Drawn Lines’ (four essays by Meenakshi Bharat, Claudia Preckel, Savi Munjal and Kamiyani Kaushiva), ‘Rapprochement’(four essays by Sunny Singh, Nirmal Kumar, Aparna Sharma and Shjakuntala Banaji).
In addition to the eleven essays the last section contains interviews with M.S. Sathyu, Javed Akhtar, Mahesh Bhatt and Aijaz Gul the cast from Pakistan. The introduction states that the essays in the book will ‘help trace the historical trajectory of these relations: how films are reflective of these tensions that simmer along the line of control and how cinema ultimately becomes a means to understand the complex agenda of forging a sense of “nationality” and the concept of nationhood in films and how it sometimes moves away from political rhetoric to reiterate the need to maintain links of love and common heritage’.