The Unlikely Yoke of War and Humour: Understanding the War Comedy War Chhod Na Yaar (Faraz Haider, 2013)

Towards the end of the first decade of the new millennium the trenchant India-Pakistan relationship, manifesting itself in periodic wars, comes in for unique breakaway treatment riding the vehicle of humour. This compulsive reflective preoccupation is now drafted in an irreverent yet serious critique of the ideology that underlies the wars, marking a coming of age in handling themes that had till now only been viewed with angst. To take this premise forward, in War Chhod Na Yaar (Faraz Haider 2013), a new fruitful hybrid form is forged. This lone Hindi war comedy comes as a sustained satire against the politicization of war by self-seeking politicos, whose continued political success solely depends on the continuous mobilization of the defence forces of their countries against the avowed enemy across the fence. By identifying a filmic text that has not received its due attention, this article will analyze this daring yoking together of war and humour, using the possibilities opened up by the interpretive strategies supplied by cultural criticism, provocatively both questioning the troublesome relationship and being informed by the parameters of genre and area studies.