Popular Culture and Mediatic Islamophobias: A Decolonial Reading of Exodus and Bharat Eik Khoj

This paper seeks to evaluate the claims of two very influential movements, Zionism and Hindutva, in the context of Palestine and Kashmir. An objective understanding of the world’s geopolitics allows us to understand the implications of films like Exodus (1960) and programs like Bharat Ek Khoj (1988), which have played a pivotal role in shaping our view of recent history. These two celluloid depictions serve as primary sources for study in this research, whereas other mediatic depictions serve as secondary sources. Building an argument about the growing exploitation of the native populations of these two regions, this work attempts to theorize about the Zionist and Hindutva apologia in contemporary times as an “implonialism”: a phenomenon comprising elements of colonialism, imperialism, despotism, and fascism. I further argue that these chronicles, manifested in the politics of film and narrative media, are post-truths that need to be investigated to understand the implicit Islamophobia in these mediatic encounters and, in so doing, to decolonize our minds. Therefore, engaging with Andrew Shryock’s theorizing in his edited book Islamophobia/Islamophilia: Beyond the Politics of Enemy and Friend (2010) and John L. Esposito and Ibrahim Kalın’s edited book, Islamophobia: The Challenge of Pluralism in the 21st Century (2011), this research is a decolonial reading of Zionist and Hindutva apologia that exhibit Islamophobic/Islamophilic implonialism.