With partition drama "Pinjar" being adjudged the Best Film on National Integration and Manoj Bajpai's portrayal in the film getting the special jury award for Best Actor, a new chapter has opened in Hindi cinema's tryst with patriotism.

The National Awards were announced Saturday on the eve of India's 58th Independence Day and are the country's highest film honours.

"Pinjar" is based on the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. The moderately budgeted Urmila Matondkar-starrer with its strong message of unity and harmony and Bajpai's portrayal of a Muslim who kidnaps and marries a Hindi girl to spite her family delivers a stronger message than scores of films on India-Pakistan animosity.

Critical acclaim for "Pinjar" and the commercial failure of films like "LOC: Kargil", "Lakshya" and the latest "Deewar: Lets Bring Homes Our Heroes" seems to point to an end of the era of Pakistan-bashing films and the beginning of a new phase.

Indeed, this was a rare Independence Day Week when no jingoistic dramas vied for release to cash in on heightened patriotic fervour among the people.

Says actor Vivek Oberoi: "We've had a surfeit of patriotic dramas, most of them jingoistic, in recent weeks. They've turned people off the genre."

Sign that the genre was dying were evident when director J.P. Dutta went to great lengths to deny that his magnum opus "LOC: Kargil" was launched to cash in on patriotic fervour.

Attempts to cash in on a heightened sense of nationalism are nothing new.

Bollywood producers have always been on the look out for a killing. And one cannot quite forget Karan Johar's not-so-subtle bid to evoke patriotic sentiments in his family drama "Kabhie Khushi Kabhie Gham".

In the 1990s, the frequent exhortations against Pakistan's "cross-border" terrorism contributed to the jingoistic atmosphere that got reflected in Hindi cinema as well as on television.

Even so, this was not a new phenomenon. In the aftermath of India's humiliating defeat at the hands of China in 1962, Indian directors had responded by making films detailing the country's anguish at this apparent perfidy.

However, most - if not all - "patriotic" films have come a cropper at the box office, with audiences quick to realise that something more than loud sloganeering and in-your-face flag-waving is needed to make a film worthwhile.

In all this, only southern powerhouse Mani Ratnam has managed to present a brief peek and possibly a justification of anti-India activities in films like "Roja" and "Dil Se."

At the bottom line, what this means is that the clichéd and formulaic approach of the average Bollywood filmmaker is not enough to satisfy a jaded audience.