“The Matrix”, essay originally written for Vassar College’s Indian National Cinema course.

1. Attached is the writing sample “The Matrix”, essay originally written for
Vassar College’s Indian National Cinema course.

2. Saul Steeve Roso
Indian National Cinema: Fall 2009
Professor Sophia Harvey
Vassar College
The Matrix
In his article “Our Violence, Their Violence: Exploring the Emotional and
Relational Matrix of Terrorist Cinema”, Vamsee Juluri discusses in depth the
representation of violence in Indian cinema, comparing it to Western views and
representations of violence by means of Ghandi’s views on the matter. Evidently, "our" in
the title refers to Indian and "their" to Western cinematic tradition and culture in general.
In the beginning of the article Juluri's main question concerns the way in which violence is
situated—whether it is considered a part of human nature and thus is naturalized or is seen
as a deviation from the norms of human nature. He expresses that after 9/11, Western
media has started to assert the view that violence is a result of cultural differences, which is
an approach that Gandhi rejected. Violence is also generally naturalized as nature is
presented as innately violent in the West according to Juluri. This is related to the
"technicism" of Western philosophy, while in Gandhian epistemology there is an emphasis
on emotions and ethics. While in the West the critique of media considers violence
primarily as an instrument, from a Gandhian perspective it could be said that it is an
autonomous notion. 1
1
Vamsee Juluri. "Our Violence, Their Violence" in Global Bollywood, ed. Anandam Kavoori, Aswin
Punathambekar (New York: Oxford University Press), 119

3. Juluri further explains Gandhi’s opinion on the matter of violence, which is the
opposite of what Western claims suggest. Rather than violence as a result of cultural
difference, “clash of civilizations” or violence as a part of human nature, the Gandhian
point of view suggests that although violence exists in people’s “thoughts, words and
deeds”, which are aberrations or burdens, it is not an inevitable point of destination. It is in
one’s hands to control one’s business with violence, by fulfilling their duty of overcoming,
minimizing this burden. He suggests that human beings are indebted to society, family, and
nature; the realization that this debt exists directs all human action. The condition for this
action is that human beings perform their lives in a relational matrix, and this adherence to
duty and obligation is fundamentally emotional. Reading the violence in Indian movies, he
does not consider characters who practice brutality as cool, Terminator-like, innately
vindictive individuals but rather individuals who enact decisions related to their current
emotions and feelings. Exploring this idea further, he introduces the “emotional-relational
matrix,” which in Gandhi’s view is the foundation of an individual’s behavior. Juluri states
that one situates him/herself in the relational matrix through the appropriate emotions.2
Juluri then cites Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Mission: Kashmir and Krishna Vamsi’s
Khadgam, suggesting that although they bear an excessive amount of violence, these
movies are closer to a Gandhian conception about universalism, duty, and human nature in
comparison to Hollywood productions. The violence depicted in these Bollywood movies
is singular, diverging from the calculated and professionalized violence inherent in
Hollywood films. He names the three main themes in the stories as universalism, duty and
obligation, and the question of human nature, analyzing these themes thoroughly to prove
2
Ibid 121.

4. his point about the representation of violence in Indian cinema. He claims that these
movies not only refuse that violence is caused by religious differences or Samuel
Huntington’s “clash of civilizations,” but rather the cause is inhuman greed for power and
money, which is something that greatly humanizes the characters. Juluri additionally
claims that the universalist notion of religion in these movies rests on the contention that
religion is a simple guide for moral standards and deeds, instead of a ticket validating
violence. This is evident in the movies’ dialogues as well as narratives. In his opinion, the
characters take religion as a means of escaping a situation ("invalid justification for
violence" that has been set up in the story) in which they are not able to take the
appropriate action.3
In Mission: Kashmir, we witness the protagonist Altaf, whose parents were
murdered by his adoptive father. Upon learning this tragic fact, Altaf runs away to join a
terrorist organization. Towards the end of the movie, Altaf faces a decision between
destroying or saving Kashmir,, which on the surface seems to be a basic, rational choice
between right and wrong—according to Juluri’s Gandhian analysis, however, this decision
actually relies on a more complex judgment. He suggests that these crucial moments in
Indian films are less about general rationality, but more about the “precise balance of gains
and pains” that each character has at that particular point in the plot. In other words, Altaf’s
decision isn’t based on the basic virtue in him, but rather the way he relates the characters
involved in the situation, such as Khan (his adoptive father) or Hilal (a mercenary and
cohort in the operation to destroy Kashmir, who also functions as his new father figure), to
his present emotional state.
3
Ibid 124.

5. This humanizing point of view actually raises interesting questions in the case of
Phoolan Devi, a lower cast ex-bandit from India. Phoolan Devi fought for equal rights and
after her imprisonment became a politician, this time fighting for equal rights on a different
arena. Her connection to the emotional-relational matrix lies upon Shekhar Kapur’s
controversial movie Bandit Queen. When the movie came out, she fiercely protested it,
claiming that the movie reduced her pursuit for social justice to just an angry reaction to
many rapes she experienced (a result that was, important to note, because of her lower
caste). This approach claims that her actions were based on the relationships she had with
her rapists, especially her first husband who raped her when she was only eleven years old.
Her actions were also based on the anger she fostered for those people and how she wanted
to punish them, or the mentality that made them do those things. This method of Shekhar
Kapur’s is nothing different than placing Phoolan Devi in the emotional relational matrix
and thus humanizing her, in my opinion. This approach surely does not change the fact that
she was a heroine who, although in illegal ways, fought for the good and equality of Indian
people, especially those from lower castes; it only further validates that she was a human
being before all else, not a super hero who was created by scientists to be the perfect
fighting machine. Her actions should be considered separate from her sole experiences of
being raped— her movement is not a revenge journey or an endless manifestation of her
anger towards the rapist. This would portray her as inhumane and thus insincere.
Furthermore, her movement proliferated amongst many people, and so allegations that her
movement is more a vendetta than anything else are false. Though I can somewhat relate to

6. Devi’s protest against the movie, I still find what Kapur did right, in terms of his use of the
emotional-relational matrix. 4
Returning to Mission: Kashmir, Juluri suggests that the stories in Indian cinema
reinforce the idea of duty and obligation in order to imply that violence is neither inherent
in a person nor the inevitable product of cultural or religious disparities. Even if there is
violence in a character's life, it has to be stopped right away. In this sense, the author’s
main problem with the Western point of view is the fact that there, violence is seen as a
part of human nature, an essential aspect of human life, and more importantly that violence
is a result of cultural difference, especially after 9/11. This contradicts Ghandi’s
philosophy of violence, Juluri suggests, which does not accept cultural difference as a
cause violence. He furthermore explains that, from Gandhi’s point of view, although
violence exists, it is not a part of human nature, but rather an “aberration or burden” in
people’s minds, and that it is one’s duty to overcome these burdens to successfully co-
exist. This leads us to the fact that human subjectivity is the basis of Ghandi’s views on
violence. It is an autonomous notion according to his philosophy, with which Western
critics apparently disagree, according to Juluri, as they are more concentrated on the
instrumental notion of violence. Though Juluri discusses notions of violence further, the
most important contribution in his work is that of the emotional-relational matrix itself. As
a key structuring device, the emotional-relational matrix helps us understand characters
and where they are placed in terms of their actions and the relationships that affect those
actions. I personally believe the emotional-relational matrix is a valuable tool in
understanding not just notions of violence in cinema, but cross-cultural issues as well; it
4
Leela Fernandes, "India's Bandit Queen: A Trans/national Feminist Perspective on the Discrepancies of
Representation" Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (1999):123-151

7. can be helpful in detecting what the boundaries are between actions determined by culture
and actions determined by a character.