Ways of Remembering: Law, Cinema and Collective Memory in the New India by Oishik Sircar (published by Cambridge University Press) in 2024 challenges the assumed opposition between memory and forgetting by using the example of the memory of Gujrat pogrom, the organized massacre that targeted Muslims western Indian state of Gujarat in 2002. Oishik Sircar argues that the memory of the Gujarat pogrom is not monolithic, and it is shaped by a variety of recollections. Sircar examines how communal narratives are influenced by the state-making and state-preserving rationalization processes, which are often represented in movies and court decisions. It is interesting to read how the author has brought together the two areas of law and cinema shape to explore the collective memory of religious violence. The book emphasizes that secular law is not only seen as a solution to irrational violence against Muslims but also for justifying that violence and maintaining the legal order.

Ways of Remembering: Law, Cinema and Collective Memory in the New India is divided into five chapters, the first two of which discuss the methodological approaches of jurisprudential aesthetics and aesthetics of atrocity. The fields of law and cinematic studies might not be considered as complementary by many scholars, however, Sircar has interestingly combined these disciplines to offer a nuanced commentary on the formation of collective memory. The book begins by highlighting court judgments and Bollywood films as the “two key narratives of India’s secular legal imagination” and “a posteriori sites of collective memory where the contestations about the Gujarat pogrom have been most pronounced” (1). The first narrative is presented through the texts of four judgments related to the Best Bakery case, a landmark criminal trial concerning the massacre of a Muslim family in Vadodara. The second narrative is constructed through the images and sounds of three films about the pogrom: Dev (2004), Parzania (2007), and Kai Po Che (2013). The trial and the films were controversial and attracted the attention of the media because of the issues of witness intimidation, faulty police investigations, and state censorship policies.

One of the most interesting and academically significant aspects of the book is the ops a jurisprudential aesthetic approach that Sircar follows to analyze the selected judgments and films. He utilizes this innovative methodology to discuss the intertextual form of both mediums and establish the implication of suggestive and underlying meanings. By highlighting the aesthetic dimensions in the texts of judgments and the jurisprudential dimensions in the texts of films, this book reflects upon the narrative nature of both genres. Despite their apparent differences, judgments and films both are public sites and records of storytelling, unified by their commitment to narrative as a central organizing principle. The author argues that the jurisprudential aesthetic approach provides a nuanced understanding of the law, viewing it not only as an autonomous body of rational knowledge with its norms, rules, and principles, but also as a field influenced by and influencing aesthetics, including passions, emotions, sentiments, and the senses.

The book offers thoughts and perspectives that are related to the ongoing debates on religious violence and the marginalization of minority communities in South Asia. Sometimes, the argument becomes too slippery, but the author carefully pins it down with extensive supportive examples from the world of law and cinema. For example, a judgment is argued to be an image, even though it is composed of words. So, the application of the jurisprudential-aesthetic approach to the reading judgments will facilitate our understanding of “the visual and aural metaphors and allusions in the texts, and the role they play in the meaning-making activity of legal interpretation.” It is a complicated line of reasoning and Sircar uses references to the judgements, instances from the movie, and detailed theoretical frameworks to scaffold his argument.

The final chapters of the book focus on the interconnected methods of remembering the Gujrat riots through the styles and positions of discourses found in the selective legal and cinematic texts. The analysis of selected films is detailed and duly supported by images. When the arguments become too complicated for the readers, especially in the analysis of the films, the author resolves them with reiterations and detailed explanations. Sircar aims to show that the state-sanctioned memory of the Gujrat pogrom presented in the films “condemns the violence of the pogrom and simultaneously normalises the structural marginalisation of Indian Muslims” (156). The book makes the case that by focusing on the aesthetic aspects of law, one may identify the discursive processes by which secular law both plans out acts of violence and simultaneously presents itself as the antidote to those acts. While discussing the formation of collective national memories, this study does not extensively engage with memory studies, a gap that future research on this distinct combined area of law and cinema can address. Overall, the book provides comprehensive details of the selected judgements and the films, rigorously applies theoretical frameworks, and demonstrates Sircar’s deep understanding of the subject matter.

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Javaria Farooqui is an Assistant Professor of English and Literary Studies at COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus.