18 Bollywood and the Indian Diaspora

1.0.INTRODUCTION

Bollywood and the Indian Diaspora today are in a commercial and cultural embrace. For Bollywood, the 26 million strong Indian Diaspora spread over a 100 countries is an important market for its films. Additionally in its avatar as ‘Bollywood’, Hindi cinema, has become more global in its constructs and the depiction of the Indian Diaspora enables it to project a more global image to its audiences both in India and the world. Bollywood also enables the Indian diaspora to retain its Indian values and thereby its Indian identity in a global context. This was in the earlier period done by texts such as the Ramayana as noted in the module on Indian Diasporic Literature in English. In the age of the Moving Image and the Digital Media, it is cinema and its representations on the digital and social media that fulfills this task of retaining the ‘desi’ in the ‘pardesi’ Indians.

2.0. A BRIEF REVIEW OF EARLY INDIAN/HINDI CINEMA

The history of the Indian cinema can be traced back much further than that of the globalizing Bollywood films, right back to the 1890s. As for the tag ‘Hindi’ cinema it came into existence along with other tags like ‘Tamil’, ‘Bengali’ and ‘Marathi’ cinemas only with the entry of sound into Indian films in the 1930s. During the silent era, Indian cinema was already a global construct. The first films shown in India were on 7 July 1896 at the Watson Hotel which still stands in a much dilapidated condition very close to the University of Mumbai’s old campus in the Fort area of Mumbai. By the end of the nineteenth century short films were already being made in India, Flowers of Persia (1898) and Wrestlers (1899). With the first Indian feature film, Raja Harishchandra, made by Dadasaheb Phalke in 1913, the Indian film industry was well under way. So the year 2013-14 was the centenary year of Indian cinema. However not just in the West but also in India, it was marked as the ‘100 years of Bollywood’. A fallacious and misleading nomenclature as in India we have many more cinemas than just the Hindi Cinema, today known as Bollywood.

Between 1913 and 1934 over 1,313 silent films were made in India and many with foreign collaboration and these films were also distributed in a global market. In the 1930s Himanshu Rai who established Bombay Talkies collaborated with the UFA Berlin and a British company to produce several films directed by the German Frantz Osten with Indian and Foreign actors, such as Shiraz (1928) on the construction of the Taj Mahal and the Throw of the Dice (1929) based on the infamous gambling section of the Mahabharata (Rajyadhaksha and Willemann, 1999). These early films introduced certain ‘codes’/’values’ which have stood first Indian cinema and now Bollywood in good stead when it has come to the attraction of not just a regional/national level but also an international audience. I shall elaborate on these ‘codes’ in a later section of this module. Continuing however with the story of Indian cinema which for the purpose of this module from the 1930s is restricted to Hindi language cinema, now Bollywood, one finds that with the coming of sound the appeal of Hindi cinema becomes restricted to the knowers of this language and in a pre-subtitling/dubbing era, deprives it of its global audience. As for the Indian diaspora in the colonial era it was not able to access these films as the overseas distribution and exhibition channels for Hindi or other Indian language films made in India were controlled by British colonial laws and vetted for any anti-imperial content. A few Indian films did slip by into other British colonies as they were categorized as ‘pure entertainment’ (Schafer and Karan, 2013).

It is only in the postcolonial period, in the 1950s that Hindi cinema, once again captured the interest of the world and that of the Indian diaspora. Bimal Roy’s Do Bheega Zamin (1953), inspired by Italian Neo-Realism films, became an internationally lauded film. However it was the Raj Kapoor brand of films in the 1950s such as Shri 420 (1955) and Awaara (1951), firmly rooted in socialist values, due to their scripts written by the Marxist writer K.A. Abbas, but laced with liberal doses of romance and glamour, the forte of Raj Kapoor, that captured audiences around the world. These films made Raj Kapoor and his co-star Nargis household names in countries from the old Soviet Union (including the Eastern European bloc) to the Arab world and Turkey, from the Black African nations to the South East Asian countries. Also fascinated by this cinema were the Indian diaspora and in the U.K. for instance the demand for these films made cinema houses at first show these films in some restricted manner and then with the increasing clout of the diaspora itself, theatres emerged that were dedicated to the exhibition of Hindi films. For the diaspora these films provided role models and reinforced family and social values that might have been lost in the quest of new homelands. These films made it possible for the Diasporics to be Indian as well as British/East African/South African or Canadian. This helped in the evolution of hybrid identities which are today reflected and imaged in the films made by Bollywood. For more information on the subject of hybridity and identities do go to the module on Indian Diasporic Literature in English.

3.0 THE GLOBAL INDIAN IDENTITY AND INDIAN VALUES/CODES:

Raj Kapoor in Shri 420, in his persona of the tramp (inspired by Charlie Chaplin) had belted out the song with which that film begins, ‘Mera Joota hain Japani, Yeh Patloon Inglistani, Sar pe lal topi Russi, Phir bhi dil hain Hindustani’ – my shoes are Japanese, my trousers were made in England, I wear a red Russian cap on my head but my heart is Indian. Raj Kapoor’s tramp was at once Indian and International. He was an early ‘Glocal’ construct. This was freshly minted postcolonial India, striving for its own identity but at the same time embracing the best of the first world (represented by England) and the second/Communist world (represented by Russia). In those post-World War II days of the conflict between capitalism and communism, Nehruvian India though socialist in its leanings, stood firmly with the third world – the non-aligned world. So this film showcased not just India’s ideological independence but also her global consciousness. If you are not familiar with Raj Kapoor’s films do see them. Even if you have already watched them, re-visit them with the mental schema of this module. You are bound to find new meanings in them.

Also foregrounded in Hindi films were the values/codes by which India has lived. What were these codes/values embedded in Hindi and other Indian films too? They would be attractive of course to Indian audiences as the films would provide a kind of self-reinforcement but why would they appeal to the diasporic Indians. Would this be because they would have a mnemonic value of making them recall their roots and the values and codes by which their ancestors had lived in the land from which they had voluntarily or involuntarily moved into their present diasporic locations? What could be these codes?

I have listed them as below:

·       The battle between good and evil

·       Victory of good over evil

·       Validation of family values such as respect for elders and loyalty to one’s family

·       Sanctity of marriage love and respect for one’s spouse and fidelity to him/her

·       Loyalty and Respect for one’s social community

·       Patriotic loyalty to one’s country

·       Secularism and non-Casteism

These values drawn mainly from the Ramayana became the codes for Indian films and had tremendous appeal for the diasporics whose own cult text was the Ramayana which they had carried with them to distant locations across the oceans, even if they had been illiterate indentured labourers (for details see module on Indian Diasporic Literature in English). The last two codes of Hindi cinema owe their existence to the freedom struggle waged by India against the colonial rule of the British where India had in spite of the creation of Pakistan, come into being as a secular nation and to the concurrent Gandhi-Ambedkar inspired campaigns for the abolition of casteism and untouchability, which was then written into the Indian constitution. Vijay Mishra (2002) and Virdi (2003) have a different list for the ‘codes’ of Hindi cinema – such as melodrama, song-and-dance and dharma.

4.0 EARLY DEPICTION OF THE INDIAN DIASPORA IN HINDI FILMS:

The first Hindi film focused squarely on the Indian Diaspora was Purab aur Paschim (1970). This is a film which has a kind of preamble in the years of India’s nationalist struggle against British rule and then continues into the postcolonial period. Large sections of the film were shot on location in Britain. The various tropes one finds in Bollywood films were first available here. You should try to see this film as a kind of forebear to the Bollywood films on the Diaspora of the 1990s and then this century itself. As in some of these contemporary films, the main protagonist is a man from India whose exposure to the Indian diasporic community leads to the reinforcement of his own Indian identity and strengthens the binary oppositions between the value systems of the West and India and the gradual realization of the ‘superior’ Indian values by the diasporic woman who he woos in the film. This has become a time-tested formula in Hindi films first and now has been adopted by Bollywood too in Namaste London (2007). However, while in Purab aur Paschim the Indian diasporic community was almost demonized and only the nationalist hero, eponymously named Bharat, had been validated, this is not the case in Namaste London. The characters played by the 1970s glamorous star Saira Banu and the character artiste Shammi, were shown as shallow, immoral and a trial to their father/husband played by Madan Puri, who still retained traditional Indian values. So the mother and daughter pair were almost always shown with a glass of wine/whisky and cigarettes in long holders in their hands. In traditional Indian society let alone women, even men do not smoke or drink in the presence of their elders, but here both Saira Banu and Shammi blow smoke rings and wave their glasses of alcohol under the nose of the pained and sorrowful patriarch played by Madan Puri. This ‘aberrant’ western behavior is reformed by the patient Indian hero played by Manoj Kumar and the daughter falls in love with him, abandons her golden wigs, wine glass and cigarette holder and becomes a demure Indian girl. The wife too sees the error of her ways. Such a depiction of the diaspora might appeal to Indian audiences and would have appealed to the first generation postcolonial diaspora of the 1970s, but would find little purchase with second generation Indian diasporics or even a globally aspirational Indian audience. So while Akshay Kumar in Namaste London, does at first play the one-dimensional Indian man, the diasporic love interest played by Katrina Kaif, herself a mixed race Indian diasporic, is not at all demonized. She is of course in love with an English man and refuses to marry Akshay Kumar who was chosen for her by her father, but after a series of close calls, the diasporic girl does turn towards the Indian man and the Indian values represented by him, even though the binary oppositions between these values have not been so strongly/ sterotypically etched as in the 1970s film.

5.0 FROM HINDI FILMS TO BOLLYWOOD:

Diaspora Film studies today in the context of Hindi cinema tends to use the term Bollywood thereby referring to the films made from the 1990s onwards which also marks the liberalisation and globalization of the Indian economy. Bollywood thus marks a turning point in Hindi cinema which becomes more unambigiously oriented towards the global Indian, inlcuding both those resdient in India and in the diaspora. Bollywood used to be a pejorative term and was used to indicate the derivative and secondary status of this cinema, in opposition to Hollywood. However, today it is used in a serious theoretical manner and is the subject of courses and research at universities in the West. Books have been authored on Bollywood cinema and even its iconic actors (Dwyer 2002, 2005, 2014 and Kabir 1996, 2005). This shows us that Bollywood has come into its own in the context of global cinema. Yet, it would be useful for you to compare and contrast the Hindi films from the 1950s to the 1980s, with Bollywood films from the 1990s onwards in the context of themes, subjects and settings. You might notice a paucity of rural settings and themes in Bollywood films as well as the focus on the nation. Hindi cinema as well as cinema in other Indian languages in these decades used to construct the nation (see Chakravarty 1998, Virdi 2004), the Bollywood films on the other hand focus on the global Indian, such as the diasporics. Rural Indian subjects have now moved to T.V. series on the various satellite channels.

Bollywood films are generally but not always made by the younger generation of the Hindi cinema film makers often the children of the older film makers such as Karan Johar, the son of Yash Johar (the king of romance and glamour) and Aditya Chopra the son of Yash Chopra and Zohya and Farhan Akhtar, the children of the screen writer and lyricist Javed Akhtar.

Yet these scions of the old Hindi cinema veterans squarely keep in mind that while globalizing India aspires to economic success it wants it on Indian terms, so family values, morality, ethics and modesty and chastity for its women, is generally not sacrificed on the altar of global aspirations. As for the diasporic audience, one needs to remember that for the first generation of the postcolonial diaspora, the old Homeland values and codes are generally fossilized and even where globalizing India might be beginning to accept unmarried, non-virginal daughters (see the film Piku, 2015), diasporic Indians are not ready to accept this (see Bend it Like Beckham, 2002). In Bend it Like Beckham the diasporic Indian community wants only arranged marriages for its daughters who need to be virginal brides and are not easily able to accept the unusual career choice of a professional football-playing daughter.

6.0 CROSS-OVER BOLLYWOOD

The new breed of Bollywood film makers not only set out to make films which would appeal to the globalizing Indian and the Indian diaspora but also to a global audience. As noted earlier Hindi cinema already had its aficionados in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Turkey, the Arab World, Black Africa, South East Asia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, but now these new films, termed cross-over, in the sense of appealing to audiences across cultures and crossing borders, try to capture new audiences around the world (Ghelawat 2010, Kumar 2011 online).

These films still follow the time-trusted ‘codes’ of Hindi cinema which we have already discussed – in fact these depictions of family values and Indian culture are a strong USP (unique selling point) of these films. So films like Dilwale Dulhanya Le Jayenge (DDLJ, 1995), Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (KKKG 2001), Don and Don 2 (2006, 2011), Dhoom, 2 and 3 (2004, 2006, 2013), Kal Ho Na Ho (2003), Zindagi Na Milengi Do Bara (2011), My Name is Khan (2010), to name but a few have garnered new fans for Bollywood icons such as Shahrukh Khan, who has become a household name in countries like Germany where his films enjoy cult status and are dubbed into German for mainstream German TV channels.

Apart from the fact that these films foreground the typical ‘codes’ of Hindi cinema, what also attracts non-traditional audiences across Western Europe, Canada and Australia to these cross-over films is the element of ‘song and dance’. In fact Bollywood style dancing has become popular in Canada and the Bollywood choreographer Shiamak Davar conducts hugely successful Bollywood dance classes at Vancouver in Canada. Dance and music were the staple features of Indian cinema right from the outset and even during the silent era, dances were an integral part of Indian films such as Raja Harishchandra (1913) and the even earlier Pundalik (1912), which pre-dates Raja Harishchandra but is generally not considered to be the first Indian feature film. As for songs and music right from the very beginning music and songs were an integral part of all Indian films. The first Hindi talkie Alam Ara in 1931 had seven songs. Shirin Farhad (1931) had 42 songs. Some of these films are available on YouTube and you can watch them.

6.1 Image of Women in Cross-Over Films:

DDLJ and KKKG are two of the most successful cross-over Bollywood films and you might already have watched these films and formed your own opinion about them. However do ask yourselves about the kind of ‘codes’ and values they showcase and whether or not you think this is the image of India that should be going out to the world or even become highlighted for Indian consumption. In both these films patriarchy reigns supreme. The diasporic girls in DDLJ lead almost double lives, they dress like British teenagers, dance and play Pop music when their father is not at home but as soon as he returns revert to demure shalwar-kurtas and old Hindi film songs. Their mother is with them in this subjection to patriarchal laws. The older girl Simran is emotionally blackmailed into marrying her father’s old friend’s son in India. Her own love for Raj is totally disregarded. Interestingly even Raj refuses to elope with Simran even though the mother encourages it and instead sets out to win over her father. This could be seen as a further reinforcement of the law of the patriarch, to which Raj too as a man is a collaborator. What do you think? In pre-Bollywood Hindi cinema young lovers from the Raj Kapoor-Nargis, to the Rajesh Khanna-Zeenat Aman pair, used to be much more rebellious and flouting paternal authority by young love was a well-established trope. This tradition was ruptured by the mid-1990s, especially in the hugely popular film, Hum Apke Hain Kaun (1994), where the young lovers bow to the wishes of the elders in the family and although love wins in the end it is not because of the resistance put up by the lovers but through the goodwill of the families and the cupid-like antics of the family dog. Even in DDLJ, at the very end of the film, the patriarch as a sign of concession lets go of his daughter’s hand and lets her join Raj on the departing train. This clearly shows that it was not the daughter’s right to choose her own husband but a favour done to her by her father out of the kindness of his heart. In KKKG the patriarch forbids the marriage between his adopted son and the lower class daughter of the nanny to his children. If the issue of lower caste too was at stake, the film is silent on it. His wife and biological son too are forbidden to maintain relations with the pair who take themselves away from India to the U.K. Here the biological younger son finally manages to stealthily establish contact with his half-brother and even falls in love with the rejected daughter-in-law’s sister. Many feminist critics therefore have a problem with the value systems of the Bollywood and cross-over films (see Bharucha 2014, Tere 2012 online, Sherafat 2014 online).

Yet having said this there are a couple of Bollywood films at least – Piku and Margarita with a Straw MWAS– both released in the first half of 2015, that have taken on board the subject of female sexuality and the fact that the female body, as the eponymous protagonist of Piku says, has its needs. The second film MWAS is even more problematic in its message from a conventional viewpoint as the female body in this film is handicapped by cerebral palsy

6.2 Patriotism/Secularism in Bollywood/Cross-Over Films:

Another aspect of cross over cinema often glossed over is that of patriotism and the Indian nation. Here the old Purab aur Paschim was very much open about patriotism for the old homeland and the hero, Mr. Bharat, had sung the rousing number to enthuse his diasporic brethren – ‘Hain preet jahan ki reet sada, main geet wahan ke gaata hoon, bharat ka rahene wala hoon, bharat ke geet sunaata hoon…’ (I sing of that land where love rules supreme, I am an Indian and I shall sing to you songs of my land…). The rejected daughter-in-law too in KKKJ showcases her patriotism at her young son’s English school by getting the whole lot of parents and children to sing the Indian national anthem. These songs whether they exhort the diasporic to return to his old Homeland, ‘Ghar aaja Pardesi, tera des bulaye re…’ – Return home you foreigner, your own land is calling out to you… – from DDLJ. As noted by Sinha (2014:268) these songs are “the pull of the homeland on the heartstrings of the diasporic Indians” and feed into the emotive long-distance patriotism of the diasporic. According to Maithili Rao “the Hindi film is the umblical cord that anchors them[the diasporics] to their past, to Indian culture and its norms” (quoted in Kaur and Sinha, 2009:310).

The construct of the Indian nation as portrayed first by Hindi films and then in Bollywood has been secular in nature and the Hindu protagonist has a Muslim best friend although such films have usually stopped short at a focus on Hindu-Muslim marriages or love affairs. Some Bollywood films such as My Name is Khan do take this step of a Hindu-Muslim marital union and the autistic protagonist ( perhaps inspired by Rain Man 1988 ) does fall in love and marry a Hindu widow with a young child. This happens in the USA though but soon the couple’s union is in trouble as 9/11 happens and the demonization of Muslims takes place in the USA. The young son of Khan’s wife who has taken his last name, is targeted by older children and dies of the injuries they inflict on him. The Hindu wife turns against him and says that her son died only because his name was Khan, a Muslim name. When her husband tries to make her see reason and return to him she tells him that she would do so only if he met the USA President and told him that ‘My Name is Khan but I’m not a Terrorist’. So the autistic hero sets out on his mission and after several adventures, including arrest for alleged attempt on the President’s life, is released and the pair is united. The film did extremely well in the foreign and Indian markets and the secular image of Indian cinema so well-polished during the 1950s, 60s and 70s, received a contemporary burnishing.

As for the code of anti-casteism and the construct of a casteless India, while early Hindi cinema did make entire films based on this issue, such as Bimal Roy’s Sujata (1959), or even the 1970s New Cinema product Ankur (1974) Bollywood hasn’t paid much heed to either the Dalits or the lives of tribals. One of the exceptions to his however is Lagaan (2001). This film is a kind of postcolonial re-telling of colonial rule and uses the trope of cricket as a metaphor for not only challenging imperial might but also for uniting all sections of a village – Caste Hindus, Dalits and Muslims. This film produced by one of the Bollywood Khans – Amir Khan – failed to win a foreign language Oscar for India that year, but was a huge hit in India and abroad.

Yet another cross over film New York (2009), which engaged with the code of secular India was also focused on the post-9/11 demonization of Muslims in the USA and tells the story of how the lives of three Indian students are impacted by this iconic act of terrorism on US soil. New York did not do too well commercially, although it is fast-paced and uses the tropes of Hollywood such as fast car chases and gun fights. This brings us to the question of not just the content of Bollywood films today but also about their form, their technical qualities, cinematography, sound and special effects.

7.0 TECHNICAL QUALITIES OF INDIAN/HINDI/BOLLYWOOD FILMS:

Bollywood films today very often use foreign technicians, such as cinematographers, sound personnel, special effects artistes, stunt men/women to provide a global look to their films for the cross-over appeal. Zindagi Na Milengi Dobara was shot by a Spanish cameraman, Carlos Catalan. The special effects of Ra. One were done by Jeff Kleiser who does special effects for Hollywood Films. The action scenes of the international espionage thriller Ek Tha Tiger were done by Conrad E Palmisano and Markos Rounthwaite who have worked on hits like Rush Hour 3 and Bourne Ultimatum.

Interestingly enough some of the cinematographic and directorial ‘framing’ work were done by Indian cameramen and directors in films like Do Bheega Zamin and Pyaasa (1957). In the former, Bimal Roy’s framing of the early frieze -like shots in the village and then for the rickshaw race shooting by Kamal Bose, have passed into modern film lore. The back lit shots and the magic of low light Black and White photography of Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) by V. K. Murthy and ‘framed’ by the director-actor Guru Dutt, are also modern classics for students of films.

Coming back to contemporary times, it’s not just Bollywood that has begun to more and more utilize foreign technicians but Tamil cinema which has used foreign expertise in films like Rajnikant’s Robot (2010) and the animation film Kochadaiiyaan made by his daughter Soundarya in 2012. This reference to Tamil films is to remind you that it’s not just Bollywood cinema which has acquired a global face today but also other language films in India too are reaching out to the world and to their own language diasporas.

7.1 Projection of India and its Diaspora through Bollywood:

While Indian cinema, including Hindi films, had projected India to the world, the films of Satyajit Ray and Bimal Roy for instance had reinforced the poor, rural India image. This can be seen even in the kind of films that Hollywood and other Western film making centres did on India, which presented ‘the slum’s point of view on Indian politics and society’ (Nandy 1998 online). Even as late as 2008 Danny Boyle had made the ‘poverty porn’ (Miles 2009) film, Slumdog Millionaire, which had once again resurrected the typical tropes of poverty, slums, beggars and squalor which continue to offer a challenge to the glamour and empowerment of Bollywood films. Interestingly enough, tours of Mumbai’s slums by bleeding heart foreign tourists shot up in the wake of this film. Have you seen this film, what do you think of it and its projection of India? Should only a sanitized India be projected to the world? Is the projection by Bollywood an exotic, stereotype too?

7.2. Bollywood in Hollywood

One also should consider the fact that the collaboration that Bollywood has with Hollywood today is fairly reciprocal. We have the global faces of Bollywood acting in Hollywood films, Amitabh Bachan in The Great Gatsby (2014), Aishwarya Rai in The Pink Panther 2 (2008), Anil Kapoor in T.V. series 24 (2010) and Mission Impossible : Ghost Protocol (2011), Irrfan Khan in The Amazing Spider Man (2012), Om Puri in, among many films, Charlie Wilson’s War (2007) , Anupam Kher in, among other films, Silver Linings Playbook (2012) . Priyanka Chopra is slated to be acting in a Hollywood film too. In the past too Indian actors like Kabir Bedi had acted in Hollywood films but had been stereotyped in Indian roles. Today’s Bollywood actors have moved beyond these stereotypes and no more play only ethnic Indian characters and even if they do they are Indians situated in a global context and sometimes in a diasporic situation, thereby providing further global identity markers to both the stay-at-home Indians as well as those in diaspora. The Bollywood director Vidhu Vinod Chopra has directed a Hollywood film, Broken Horses (2015), with a purely American subject and cast.

8.0. SUMMARY

In this module we have cast a critical eye on Global Bollywood and its depiction of the Indian Diaspora. This has included a review of Indian/Hindi Cinema that precedes this cinema so as to provide a temporal and cultural context to our analysis and interpretation of these films. We have also considered the various codes/values enshrined in these films and looked at the way they have depicted women, religious minorities and Dalits. Bollywood films have a global market and project India to the world today and this, given the economic and cultural globalizing forces at work today, is very important if India is to take its rightful place in world economy and politics. So imperfect though Bollywood cinematic texts might be and even if they do indulge in their own brand of stereotyping and are not always gender sensitive, they do have an important role to play and given their commercial global success and the fact that not just the Western cine buff well versed in Satyajit Ray, but the average Chinese, Japanese, German and Canadian young man or woman has India consciousness is in no small measure due to Bollywood films. Also the second and third generation Indian diasporics who were not particularly interested in what they thought of as their parents’ homeland, due to the way Bollywood engages with them also find themselves becoming conscious of their Indian selves and the fact that they too could benefit from the cultural hybridity which comes from ‘diaspora consciousness’.

REFERENCES

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