Fire’s Queer Anti-Communalism

While many critics have pointed out how Fire’s (1996) reception reveals much about the Hindutva agenda of fundamentalists and their use of women as symbols for the nation, no one has traced the critique of fundamentalism embedded in the film itself in the haunting figure of the Hindu–Muslim union that is visible, and, in fact, audible throughout. Two of the songs in Fire come from Bombay (1995) and reference that film’s allegory of an inclusive, secular India. In contrast to other critics who focus only on Fire’s reception, I read scenes such as the ones featuring the Bombay score in order to show how a number of interrelated fundamentalist debates are alluded to in the text itself.