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The pains of the Partition of India and its legacy can be seen in the Bollywood film

Sardar ka Grandson. Released in 2021, the film features a dying old Hindu Indian woman,

Sardar, who longs to see her home in Pakistan that she and her late husband had built

pre-Partition, but she is banned from Pakistan due to assaulting a Pakistani government official.

Instead, her Indian American grandson, Amreek, decides to pick up the house from its

foundations and deliver it to her home in India. Sardar’s backstory is revealed throughout the

film as Amreek journeys to Pakistan and back. When the narrative of the movie is analyzed, the

film provides a powerful story of a senior Indian family member coming to terms with the

traumas of the Partition through the use of a material object of her old house evoking a closer

connection to her late husband.

The Partition of India took place in 1947 shortly after British India declared

independence from England. However, celebrations quickly were replaced by war and bloodshed

as India, fraught with tension between its two predominant religious communities, split into two

regions: Hindu-majority India and the new country of Muslim-majority Pakistan. The Partition

of India saw a mass migration of millions of people who suddenly found themselves in the

wrong country and the violence that followed on both sides. Even now, Pakistan and India are

constantly on the brink of war, the scars of the Partition ringing loud in the modern day.

In an analysis of the fictional part of the movie, it is clear that Sardar still lives with the

pain of the Partition, even in her old age. Sardar lived in what would become Pakistan with her

husband in a house they had constructed themselves. It is shown to the viewer that Sardar and
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her husband were very much in love as there is a musical number in which they sing to each

other that they will always be there for each other and never leave. In this number, there is a

montage of scenes in which the two of them are engaged in various happy activities, such as

fixing up their new house and building bikes for the company they want to start. All the moments

take place in their home. At one point, the couple embraces on screen while the lyrics “I want to

be yours for the rest of my life/Oh dear, I am only yours” are sung. The music is light and airy

and it is a romantic song. The whole time the couple have content looks on their faces, even if

they are not smiling.

Elements of the scene such as the classical music and the pleasantness shown to be all

encompassing of Sardar and her husband’s life creates a sense of ease in the viewer that they will

associate with the couple. The montage taking place solely in the house draws an emotional

attachment between the happy couple and the house. The song further exemplifies this by clearly

telling the audience verbally that these two are very much in love and intend to spend the rest of

their lives together. Through this, the house becomes a symbol of Sardar and her husband’s love

for each other - they built the house together and started their life in the house. Now that the

audience is attached to Sardar, her husband and the house emotionally through this musical

number, they will be able to feel Sardar’s pain when her husband will be murdered by

pro-Pakistani Muslim nationalists shortly after Sardar gives birth to their first child, breaking the

promise they made earlier of never leaving each other and prompting Sardar to flee the house

and the region and join her fellow Hindus in India where she will be safer. This loss has a
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profound impact on Sardar and even when she is old and dying, she asks Amreek to take her to

Pakistan to see her house once again. Sardar is a weak woman, but she is still willing to make

that international journey just to see a material object that will not bring her husband back from

the dead, but evokes a sense of connection between her and her late groom.

In one of the final scenes of the movie, Sardar is lying on her bed hooked up to a heart

monitor and can barely keep her eyes open. She wears a cap because her hair has fallen out and

she has been wheelchair and bed bound up until this point. Sardar chastises Amreek for being

gone on his “business trip” for so long. Amreek reveals he was in fact in Pakistan and has

successfully brought her and her husband’s home back to India and she is wheeled outside by

Amreek to see the house, where she literally stands up and walks on her own into the house.

When she is inside the house, she sees her younger self crying in the closet that she was hiding in

when her husband was murdered, and an older Sardar cries along. But then, she sees her late

husband standing before her. She asks her husband why he left her and broke his promise from

earlier, and her husband says it was necessary for him to leave so she could start her new

successful life in India. The whole scene is well-lit and the music is quiet but upbeat.

This moment is clearly one of reconciliation for Sardar. Sardar has lived with the grief of

losing both her husband and the home that reminds her of him in a violent manner through the

Partition. However, when the home is delivered to her, she is so moved that she suddenly regains

some strength after being bedridden and wheelchair bound for the vast majority of the film. This

is a moment of her gaining the strength to come to terms with her husband’s death and to walk
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into the house that they built together. In the house, she acknowledges the pain she felt when she

lost her husband, represented by her watching herself cry in the closet. But she is able to have

closure as well when she is able to talk to her late husband one last time. The house evoked a

sense of closeness in Sardar with her husband and she was able to come to terms with his death

and that it was necessary for her to lose her husband to live a successful life in India. For Sardar,

reconciliation of the trauma of the Partition is closure and coming to terms with her husband’s

murder, which would not have been possible unless Amreek had brought her her old home. The

lighting of the scene indicates to the audience that the scene is a happy one as it is well lit and the

music is quiet but upbeat, forcing the viewer to focus on the story line rather than be distracted

by background music but still indicating that this scene is not a tragic one.

However, when one zooms out and considers not just the film itself but its country of

origin, India, and how Pakistanis are represented in the film, it occurs that this movie is flawed

and reflects the fragmented, traumatized mindset of people who have not yet gone through

reconciliation themselves; in other words, this film does not seek to reconcile the Partition. Films

about the Partition created by Bollywood or other South Asian based movie companies are

hardly just films about the Partition itself - ​

Insofar as the 1947 Partition recently appears in this cinema in historical period films, on
one hand, and in the form of its legacy of conflict-ridden India– Pakistan relations, on the
other hand, a closer look at its contemporary inscription as event and discourse reveals
the Partition’s continuing impact on the cultural politics of citizenship in South Asia”
(Daiya 1).
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Take for example one scene in Sardar ka Grandson which takes place during the Partition.

Sardar and her husband are sitting in their home with their son when suddenly, a mob of angry

Muslim pro-Pakistani nationalists chanting “Pakistan zindabad” (long live Pakistan) break down

their front door and attack Sardar’s husband while Sardar and child hide in a closet. Sardar must

helplessly watch as her husband is stabbed and ultimately dies by the hands of the Muslims.

However, there is a peculiar happening that occurs right before his death. Before Sardar’s

husband is stabbed and even while the knife is in his chest, he somehow manages to take down

around five angry men with nothing but his bare hands and the swords he snatched away from

the aggressors. The faces of the Pakistani perpetrators are barely shown on screen but Sardar’s

husband’s face is clearly highlighted. The music is tense and the scene is dimly lit.

The visual aesthetics of a dark action scene combined with the intense music conveys to

the audience that a dramatic turning point in the film is about to be shown. However, the

importance placed on Sardar’s husband exemplifies his humanity and life over the Pakistani

nationalists, who are barely given a second glance by the camera before they are easily

overpowered and murdered. The innocent and helpless woman in the closet must watch the

unprovoked nationalists murder her husband, turning her into a widow. The message is clear to

the viewers - the Pakistani nationalists, portrayed as violent and nothing else, have no regard for

human lives, but they are no match for the strong Indian man who can take them down even

while dying. While this scene is unrealistic and could be dismissed as dramatics done for the

sake of television, one can also analyze the representation of Pakistani Muslims in this moment
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and what it means for modern day India and Pakistan. In addition, the representation of

Pakistanis in this film overall is very negative - most of the antagonists are Pakistani, such as the

government officials who seek to not let Amreek take the house out of Pakistan and back to

India.

Research done into Bollywood films and the Partition reveals that the anti-other

sentiment displayed in this scene and throughout the film is not an uncommon occurrence.

“Portraying the ‘other’ as a ferocious and evil, also serves the purpose of ‘self-glorification’

through creating contrasts between the ‘moral self’ and an ‘evil other’” (Malik 6). In other

words, by portraying pro-Pakistani Muslims as villains and violent but weak strengthens the

representation of Indians in the film by surrounding them with bad-faith actors in the form of

Pakistanis. Bollywood is an Indian based cinema monopoly and will ultimately be loyal to the

country of India. If India is feuding with Pakistan, then Bollywood will demonize Pakistanis and

uplift the people of India. This is the mindset of a nation who is still traumatized by the Partition,

which India is - if the violence of 1947 had been healed, there would be no need to bump heads

with Pakistan. In the film, reconciliation is seen as an act of coming to terms with what has been

lost in trauma and coming to peace with it. However, this can hardly be seen in the modern day

relationship between India and Pakistan as both sides are definitely not at peace with what

transpired during the Partition. Films like Sardar ka Grandson that demonize Pakistanis will also

led to further stereotyping and damage on the perception of Indians towards Pakistanis, pushing

away both sides from the chance of reconciliation: “Such representations gain significance as
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sectarian violence, with its roots in the Partition, continues to affect the populations of India and

Pakistan, and has profound implications for South Asian diasporic communities spread around

the globe” (Parmar 1).

In conclusion, Sardar ka Grandson, when analyzed on the fictional level, is a film about

a woman who has lost much to the international trauma of the Partition of India and with the help

of her loving grandson, is able to come to terms with losing her husband by re-visiting their old

home and in turn, reconcile the trauma she has endured during the Partition. But when the film

itself is judged as a reconciliatory act, one will find it falls short of amending the pains of the

Partition or helping either side come to terms with what transpired in 1947.

Works Cited

Daiya, Kavita. Violent Belongings Partition, Gender, and National Culture in

Postcolonial India. Temple University Press, 2008.

Malik, Ausima. “Role of Cinema in Identity Construction in India and Pakistan after

Partition 1947.” Review of Economics and Development Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, 2019, pp.

521–530., https://doi.org/10.26710/reads.v5i3.660.

Nair, Kaashvi, director. Sardar Ka Grandson. T-Series, 2021.

Parmar, P. Divided land, divided bodies: Representations of nationalism and violence in

literature and films on the partition of India. 2007.

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