India’s New Independent Cinema: Rise of the Hybrid 2016003977, 9781138184626, 9781315645018

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Figures
List of Interviewees
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Setting the Stage
PART I: Enter India's New Indies
1 Bollywood and the Cinemas of India: The Story so Far
2 The Meta-Hegemony: Leviathan Bollywood and Lilliputian Indies
3 The Anatomy of the Indies
4 Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition
5 Interstitial Indies Interrogating India's Double Narrative
6 Running with Scissors: Censorship and Regulation
PART II: Case Studies
7 Rapping in Double Time: Gandu's Subversive Time of Liberation
8 Dhobi Ghat: The Marginal in the Mumbai Mainstream
9 Peepli Live: Neoliberal Capital, Media 'Knowledge' and Political Power
10 All the World's a Ship: Broken Binaries and Hyperlinked Heterotopias in Ship of Theseus
11 A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation: Harud, Haider, The Lunchbox and I Am
Conclusion: Charting the Ship's Course
Index

Citation preview

India’s New Independent Cinema

This book breaks new ground in what has become a field of cliché: Indian Cinema. It is an insightful peek into what Parallel cinema in India has evolved into. A must read for anyone studying the subject, or just passionate about cinema. —Renji Matthews, University of Sharjah, UAE

This is the first-ever book on the rise of the new wave of independent Indian films that is revolutionising Indian cinema. Contemporary scholarship on Indian cinema so far has focused asymmetrically on Bollywood, India’s dominant cultural export. Reversing this trend, this book provides an in-depth examination of the burgeoning independent Indian film sector. It locates the new ‘Indies’ as a glocal hybrid film form – global in aesthetic and local in content. These films critically engage with a diverse socio-political spectrum of ‘state of the nation’ stories: from farmer suicides and disenfranchised urban youth and migrant workers to monks turned anti-corporation animal rights agitators. This book provides comprehensive analyses of definitive Indie New Wave films, including Peepli Live (2010), Dhobi Ghat (2010), The Lunchbox (2013) and Ship of Theseus (2013). It explores how subversive Indies, such as polemical postmodern rap-musical Gandu (2010), transgress conventional notions of ‘traditional Indian values’ and collide with state censorship regulations. This timely analysis shows how the new Indies have emerged from a middle space between India’s globalising present and traditional past. This book draws on in-depth interviews with directors, actors, academics and members of the Indian censor board; it is essential reading for anyone seeking an insight into a current Indian film phenomenon that could chart the future of Indian cinema. Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram has a PhD from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. He is currently Programming Adviser for the London Asian Film Festival (LAFF) and Creative Director of the festival’s expansion to other cities in the UK.

Routledge Advances in Film Studies For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com.

18 European Civil War Films Memory, Conflict, and Nostalgia Eleftheria Rania Kosmidou 19 The Aesthetics of Antifascist Film Radical Projection Jennifer Lynde Barker 20 The Politics of Age and Disability in Contemporary Spanish Film Plus Ultra Pluralism Matthew J. Marr 21 Cinema and Language Loss Displacement, Visuality and the Filmic Image Tijana Mamula

25 Crossover Cinema Cross-Cultural Film from Production to Reception Edited by Sukhmani Khorana 26 Spanish Cinema in the Global Context Film on Film Samuel Amago 27 Japanese Horror Films and Their American Remakes Translating Fear, Adapting Culture Valerie Wee 28 Postfeminism and Paternity in Contemporary US Film Framing Fatherhood Hannah Hamad

22 Cinema as Weather Stylistic Screens and Atmospheric Change Kristi McKim

29 Cine-Ethics Ethical Dimensions of Film Theory, Practice, and Spectatorship Edited by Jinhee Choi and Mattias Frey

23 Landscape and Memory in Post-Fascist Italian Film Cinema Year Zero Giuliana Minghelli

30 Postcolonial Film: History, Empire, Resistance Edited by Rebecca WeaverHightower and Peter Hulme

24 Masculinity in the Contemporary Romantic Comedy Gender as Genre John Alberti

31 The Woman’s Film of the 1940s Gender, Narrative, and History Alison L. McKee

32 Iranian Cinema in a Global Context Policy, Politics, and Form Edited by Peter Decherney and Blake Atwood

41 The Western in the Global South Edited by MaryEllen Higgins, Rita Keresztesi, and Dayna Oscherwitz

33 Eco-Trauma Cinema Edited by Anil Narine

42 Spaces of the Cinematic Home Behind the Screen Door Edited by Eleanor Andrews, Stella Hockenhull, and Fran Pheasant-Kelly

34 American and ChineseLanguage Cinemas Examining Cultural Flows Edited by Lisa Funnell and Man-Fung Yip 35 American Documentary Filmmaking in the Digital Age Depictions of War in Burns, Moore, and Morris Lucia Ricciardelli 36 Asian Cinema and the Use of Space Interdisciplinary Perspectives Edited by Lilian Chee and Edna Lim 37 Moralizing Cinema Film, Catholicism and Power Edited by Daniel Biltereyst and Daniela Treveri Gennari 38 Popular Film Music and Masculinity in Action A Different Tune Amanda Howell 39 Film and the American Presidency Edited by Jeff Menne and Christian B. Long 40 Hollywood Action Films and Spatial Theory Nick Jones

43 Spectacle in “Classical” Cinemas Musicality and Historicity in the 1930s Tom Brown 44 Rashomon Effects Kurosawa, Rashomon and Their Legacies Edited by Blair Davis, Robert Anderson and Jan Walls 45 Mobility and Migration in Film and Moving Image Art Cinema Beyond Europe Nilgün Bayraktar 46 The Other in Contemporary Migrant Cinema Imagining a New Europe? Guido Rings 47 Horror Film and Affect Towards a Corporeal Model of Viewership Xavier Aldana Reyes 48 India’s New Independent Cinema Rise of the Hybrid Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram

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India’s New Independent Cinema Rise of the Hybrid

Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram

First published 2016 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Taylor & Francis The right of Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Devasundaram, Ashvin Immanuel. Title: India’s new independent cinema: rise of the hybrid / by Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram. Description: New York: Routledge, 2016 | Series: Routledge advances in film studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016003977 Subjects: LCSH: Motion picture industry—India. | Independent films— India. | Motion pictures—India. Classification: LCC PN1993.5.I8 D485 2016 | DDC 791.430954—dc23LC record available at HYPERLINK “https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/ lN5JBRUazbLgum” http://lccn.loc.gov/2016003977 ISBN: 978-1-138-18462-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-64501-8 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

For John, Mum, Dada, and Family

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Contents

List of Figures List of Interviewees Acknowledgements Introduction: Setting the Stage

xi xiii xv 1

PART I

Enter India’s New Indies 1 Bollywood and the Cinemas of India: The Story so Far

15

2 The Meta-Hegemony: Leviathan Bollywood and Lilliputian Indies

32

3 The Anatomy of the Indies

60

4 Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition

80

5 Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative

109

6 Running with Scissors: Censorship and Regulation

125

PART II

Case Studies 7 Rapping in Double Time: Gandu’s Subversive Time of Liberation

149

8 Dhobi Ghat: The Marginal in the Mumbai Mainstream

180

9 Peepli Live: Neoliberal Capital, Media ‘Knowledge’ and Political Power

201

x Contents 10 All the World’s a Ship: Broken Binaries and Hyperlinked Heterotopias in Ship of Theseus

226

11 A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation: Harud, Haider, The Lunchbox and I Am

250

Conclusion: Charting the Ship’s Course

271

Index

279

List of Figures

2.1 ‘Vamp’ Helen in the 1970 film, The Train. 44 2.2 Katrina Kaif’s item number, ‘Chikni Chameli’, in 2012’s Agneepath. 44 2.3 Miss India training session. 46 2.4 Marc Robinson examines ‘hot legs’. 47 3.1 The Ship of Indian Cinemas. 63 7.1 The vox populi. 151 7.2 Scrolling subtitles. 171 7.3 Gandu and Ricksha’s POV. 173 7.4 View of Q filming. 173 7.5 Second camera revealed. 174 7.6 Mise-en-abyme diptych. 174 7.7 Las Meninas, by Diego Velázquez, Prado Museum. Source: Google Earth. 176 8.1 Shai’s wide shot of windows in Dhobi Ghat. 185 8.2 View from Jeff’s window in Rear Window. 185 8.3 Shai’s ‘stakeout’. 186 8.4 Her object of scrutiny – Arun. 186 8.5 Arun looking into the camcorder while playing Yasmin’s video diary. 187 8.6 Shai interrupted by a phone call from her father. 187 8.7 Shai spying through her camera. 188 8.8 Jeff indulging in the pleasure of looking. 188 8.9 Arun: seeing himself in the other. 190 9.1 Natha and Budhia: Isolated long shot. 204 9.2 Rakesh’s encounter. 217 9.3 The vacant pit symbolising Mahato’s absence. 217 9.4 Mahato in the midst of the media circus. 218 9.5 Ineffectual offerings: The Lal Bahadur Shastri hand pump and untouched television. 220 10.1 Butades’s ‘blind tracing’ of her lover. Source: Joseph-Benoît Suvée, Invention of the Art of Drawing (1791) © Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Image appears in Blocker, J 2007. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis. 233

xii  List of Figures 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6

Spiritual and material in Mumbai. 239 Karma and commerce in contemporary India. 239 Through winding alleys. 240 The museum-cinema heterotopia. 244 Heterogeneous assemblage: The organ recipients. 244 Looking into time. 246 Presence and absence coterminous in the cave. 247 Boy frisked during stop-and-search. 252 Haider frisked by security forces. 257 Army audience reterritorialises Faraz cinema. 259 Bollywood ‘applauds’ hegemonic power. 259 Confronting the wall of the past. 263 Police officer’s assault on Jai, with Indian flag in the background. 264

List of Interviewees

Bashir, A. 2013. Interviewed by Ashvin Devasundaram [in person], Mumbai, 18 July 2013. Belawadi, P. 2013. Interviewed by Ashvin Devasundaram [in person], Bangalore, 28 July 2013. Bhaskar, I. 2013. Interviewed by Ashvin Devasundaram [in person], New Delhi, 30 June 2013. Bose, R. 2013. Interviewed by Ashvin Devasundaram [in person], Mumbai, 17 July 2013. Ghosh, S. 2011. Interviewed by Ashvin Devasundaram [in person], London, 21 ­October 2011 Kumar, P. 2013. Interviewed by Ashvin Devasundaram [in person], Bangalore, 2 August 2013. Nag, A. 2013. Interviewed by Ashvin Devasundaram [in person], Bangalore, 5 July 2013. Nambiar, B. 2013. Interviewed by Ashvin Devasundaram [in person], Mumbai, 23 July 2013. Onir. 2013. Interviewed by Ashvin Devasundaram [in person], Mumbai, 12 July 2013. Q (Qaushiq Mukherjee). 2013. Interviewed by Ashvin Devasundaram [in person], Mumbai, 27 July 2013. Raghavendra, K M. Interviewed by Ashvin Devasundaram [in person], Bangalore, 2 July 2013. Rao, K. 2013. Interviewed by Ashvin Devasundaram [in person], Mumbai, 20 July 2013. Ravindran, N. 2013. Interviewed by Ashvin Devasundaram [in person], Bangalore, 5 July 2013. Rizvi, A. 2013. Interviewed by Ashvin Devasundaram [in person], Bangalore, 29 June 2013. Swaroop, K. 2013. Interviewed by Ashvin Devasundaram [in person], Mumbai, 20 July 2013.

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Acknowledgements

This book started its life cycle as doctoral research conducted in 2011–2014 at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, in the Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies. I was ever mindful that I was embarking on a corpus of work that would entail the first published academic work on new, independent Indian cinema. This ethos has informed the book at every milestone of its development and metamorphosis into the monograph you now see before you. I am very grateful to Maggie Sargeant and Chris Tinker at Heriot-Watt University for their help and support. Interminable thanks to my family for always being a bastion of strength: my mother and father for being a perennial source of inspiration, my sister Bina for animating my love for reading, and brother Avinash for his abiding support. Most of all, I am grateful to my creative muse John Field for ‘being and being there’. I am thankful to everyone in Bangalore and Mumbai who supported me through the fieldwork journey I am especially grateful to Suneil and Kiran Ramakrishna for their indefatigable and unwavering assistance during the Bangalore segment of my research. Thanks to Sukhbir Kalsi and Steve Lewis for their help in connecting Edinburgh to Bangalore and Mumbai. I  am  grateful to all the respondents in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai and elsewhere who gave graciously of their time despite their busy schedules: Aamir Bashir, Kiran Rao, Onir, Anusha Rizvi, Q, Rahul Bose, Prakash ­Belawadi, Pawan Kumar, Kamal Swaroop, Ira Bhaskar, M K ­Raghavendra, Arundhati Nag, Suman Ghosh and Nirmala ­Ravindran inter alia. I am particularly thankful to the managers and agents of the filmmakers and actors interviewed for this book for their help with consent forms. I am deeply grateful to Professor. Renji Mathews, Head of Digital Media at the College of Fine Arts and Design, University of S­ harjah, for his wonderful design and creation of a state-of-the-art Ship of C ­ inemas diagram. Thanks to Shreya and Ria Mathews for designing the website linked to the book. I would like to acknowledge Media in Australia journal (MIA) for permitting the use of sections from a previously published article. I am also thankful to The South Asianist: Journal of South Asian Studies, University

xvi Acknowledgements of Edinburgh, for granting permission to re-use excerpts from one of my articles. All film still images used in this book are screenshots. Thanks to Taylor & Francis for allowing use of a previously printed image. I am very grateful to Felisa Salvago-Keyes and Nicole Eno at Routledge for their assistance and support through the editorial process.

Introduction Setting the Stage

I want this to be mainstream. I want the frivolity, the silliness, the ­regressiveness to be alternative. —Anand Gandhi, on new independent Indian cinema (Naqvi, 2013)

Indian cinema is undergoing a foundational transformation through the emergence of a new wave of urban independent films since 2010. The growth and development of this new filmic form, currently alluded to as new Indian ‘Indies’, is raising fresh awareness of Indian cinema in the public sphere. The paucity of directly related academic literature on this contemporary form of independent cinema also presents an opportunity for this book to question a majoritarian bias in scholarship. Contemporary critical writing on Indian cinema has so far focused on Bollywood, India’s dominant cultural signifier. The absence of a comprehensive, dedicated and up-to-date analysis of the new Indian Indies appears all the more anomalous in light of their burgeoning popularity. The credo of this critical analysis is to address this key knowledge gap. In this regard, this book constitutes the first comprehensive academic investigation of the ongoing cinematic phenomenon that is new independent Indian cinema. As an au courant analysis, this book will adopt a multi-angle, pluralistic and intercultural approach, featuring a diversity of voices and perspectives. As part of this strategy, I have undertaken in-depth interviews in three Indian cities, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, with several independent film directors and actors, whose works are either analysed at length in this book, or have played pivotal roles in the ascendancy of the new Indies. In a bid to address the predominantly northern Indian focus of academic literature on Indian cinema, I have incorporated a broad-sweep approach that includes voices from Bangalore, Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi. Interview respondents include renowned independent cinema actor, Rahul Bose, acclaimed independent directors Kiran Rao, Anusha Rizvi, Aamir Bashir, Onir, Kamal Swaroop, Bejoy Nambiar, Pawan Kumar, Prakash Belawadi, Suman Ghosh and Q (Qaushiq Mukherjee). This book is also informed by interactions with ­former members of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) (some are anonymised), leading film scholars and representatives from the

2 Introduction arts, culture and journalism spheres in India. These include Ira Bhaskar from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; M K Raghavendra; Arundhati Nag and Nirmala Ravindran from Bangalore. The importance of a timely scholarly study of the new Indies is emphasised by these films intertwining with metamorphosing Indian socio-political structures. The nation is currently undergoing a tumultuous neoliberal restructuring characterised by a commitment to consumer capitalism, foreign multinational investment and an inexorable thrust towards a global free market economy. These liberalisation-induced vicissitudes in the Indian nation-state are punctuated by a paradoxical retrenchment of right-wing Hindu religious and nationalist ideology. It is therefore pertinent that this book is born into an extant socio-political Indian milieu that is fraught with escalating intolerance towards rationalism and increasingly inimical to secular and libertarian free expression, particularly concerning the creative arts. This is attributable in large measure, as Diana Dimitrova (2014: 86) cogently points out, to the obsessive thrust by religious nationalist power structures towards a return to ‘Aryan roots’ and the idea of a ‘modern Hindu-Indian nation from which Muslims, other religious minorities, women’ and Dalits are excluded. In this milieu of undecidability, the new Indie films with their topical narrative themes and issues constitute intersectional sites of contemporary Indian discourse. They appear to reflect multifarious dimensions of the above-mentioned fractures and socio-economic schisms in multilayered modern Indian society. In essence, the new Indies narrate micro-narratives – the minority and alternative stories of nation excluded from Bollywood film representations. An examination of the new Indies, therefore, will reveal the discursive contexts and subjective voices in contemporary India, largely elided in academic literature’s preoccupation with the majority narrative of Bollywood. Recent literature, such as Beyond the Boundaries of Bollywood (Dwyer & Pinto 2011), alludes to non-Bollywood Indian cinema, but either fails to affirm these films as a distinctive and de facto modern Indian cinematic discourse or obviates the specificities and nuances that are integral to the individuality of new independent Indian cinema. Adrian Athique has conducted erudite and percipient analyses of one important facet that influences new Indie cinema – the growth of The Multiplex in India (Athique and Hill, 2010). Monika Mehta’s Censorship and Sexuality in Bombay Cinema (2011) extends an insightful perspective on censorship and regulation, albeit focusing on Bollywood. New Indian Cinema in Post-Independence India (Needham, 2013) presents a rigorous appraisal of 1970s and 80s Parallel cinema auteur Shyam Benegal’s oeuvre. Despite the book’s title – New Indian Cinema – its content exhibits the common symptom of scholarship on Indian film studies. This involves the seemingly inevitable recasting and reinscribing of dominant paradigms, such as Bollywood, or a restriction of research focus to 1970s and 80s Parallel Indian cinema. In general,

Introduction  3 academic engagement largely continues to either perpetuate the dichotomy of Bollywood/Parallel, or nostalgically recall hoary historical achievements in a unilinear, uncritical and often mythologised construction of Indian cinema historiography. Indeed, some contemporary scholars go so far as to invest Bollywood with ‘divine’ authority, seeing in the commercial film industry a new-age avatar of ancient mythological texts. They proclaim ‘Bollywood cinema has assumed the mantle of upholding a distinct moral code, just as the pauranic kathas [ancient Hindu mythological stories] once did’ (Kishwar, 2013: 95). These scholars extend an undifferentiating adulation predicated on the notion that Bollywood has been ‘obsessive in teaching young people the value of sacrifice, commitment to family well-being and respect for elders’ (ibid., 97). Such expressions are symptomatic of current transdiscursive attempts to formulate a ‘constructed notion of history that can be traced back from the present day to the Vedic age in one continuous unbroken line’ (Dimitrova, 2014: 86). This book momentarily halts this linear national narrative in its tracks, stopping to consider whether there is space left for alternative voices and counter-narratives in the seemingly all-encompassing brand-building exercise of bolstering the myth and monolith of nation. Whilst the transglobal perpetuation of Bollywood as shorthand for Indian culture ostensibly augments India’s ‘global street credibility’, it arguably obfuscates the nation’s current socio-cultural and religio-political frictions. These tensions are exemplified in escalating levels of religious intolerance, violent attacks on minorities, and transgressions on freedom of expression, all largely met by the ruling state’s policy of silence. India’s current global image has been corroded in relation to a raft of incidents involving religious antagonisms and the suppression of expression. Prominent among these events was the recent Hindu mob lynching of a Muslim man over his alleged consumption of beef, which is forbidden in the Hindu religion. The nation is also countenancing an assault on expressions of free speech and rationalism, with three prominent proponents of rationalism and science murdered by religious radicals in different regions of the country. In light of these events, it could be stated that the nation’s outward-facing narrative of economic ascendency appears antithetical to this tumultuous internal geopolitical configuration. This is magnified in recent events, where Bollywood star Aamir Khan was pilloried for publically expressing his apprehension about rising intolerance in India (‘Aamir Khan’, 2015). A barrage of vituperation from the religious-­ nationalist domain of the political and public sphere followed Khan’s statement, including abusive directives urging him to convert to Hinduism or relocate to Pakistan with his filmmaker wife, Kiran Rao (Bhatia, 2015). These events could be perceived as a predictable iteration of earlier bellicose reactions to other high-profile individuals from the arts and culture spheres, including Bollywood’s Shah Rukh Khan, upon vocalising similar concerns. In this environment, myopically laudatory academic analyses that

4 Introduction shore up the majoritarian national status quo, as cited earlier, are prototypical of the reluctance displayed by several sections of Indian scholarship to be perceived as ‘disloyal’ to the nation-state. It could be argued that the refusal to acknowledge and address endemic socio-political issues for fear of being labelled ‘anti-national’ panders to the uncontested ratification and reproduction of hegemony. There is a growing mobilisation of the Indian intelligentsia and the arts and culture community, manifested in the returning of national awards by prominent Indian writers, artists, filmmakers, historians and scientists. In this germination of a collective counter-narrative spearheaded by artists, liberals and the progressive-minded, it is worth locating and interpreting the role of alternative narratives cinematically and self-reflexively emerging from the new Indies acting as specular interrogative instruments of India’s ongoing transformations. Analysing the emergence of this new independent Indian cinematic form that at present is marginal to Bollywood and represents alternative socio-­ political micro-narratives necessitates the adoption of congruent philo­ sophical and theoretical frames of reference. It will be demonstrated that a postcolonial, postmodern and poststructural approach that problematises grand narratives, such as Bollywood, and facilitates the emergence of multiple subjectivities, is appropriate to this book’s main arguments. In addition, my theory of a ‘meta-hegemony’ forms one of the core contributions of this book on the new Indian Indies. I have devised this paradigm to explain the historical hierarchy of dominance in Indian cinema. Examining the inner workings of Bollywood’s meta-hegemony within Indian cinema will assist in contextualising the emergence of the new Indies, mapping their quest for representative space and their thrust towards a dedicated ‘Indie’ funding and distribution infrastructure in India’s Bollywood-dominated cultural domain. Concomitantly, this book seeks to ascertain whether the Indies’ divergence from Bollywood’s representations of a normative patriarchal national metanarrative could be indicative of an urban Indian socio-cultural and cinematic ‘time of liberation’ in a ‘time of cultural uncertainty’ (Bhabha, 1995: 155). In this context, I will address the important question of whether the Indies constitute a counter-narrative to Bollywood’s appropriation of the nation’s cultural narrative. Expanding on the conceptual framework, this book locates the new Indies in a median space that signifies the nation’s ‘agonistic’ (Bhabha, 1994: 38, 41) dialectical arbitration between its traditional national past and neoliberal present. One of the main aims is to ascertain how the Indies negotiate and frequently destabilise this national binary whilst diverging from dominant Bollywood norms in terms of form, style and content. In view of their rising popularity, particularly in the urban space, it is worth examining whether the hybridity of the Indies, their positioning in an ambivalent interstitial space and their alternative narration of nation can be posited as a cinematic narrative of resistance to mainstream socio-cultural and political discourses.

Introduction  5 At this stage, it is worth mapping the main themes that will serve as guidelines for this exploratory journey into the heart of new Indian Indie cinema. In this regard, I pose several questions. How are the alternative narratives emerging from the interstitial representative space of New Wave independent films influencing a current transformation in Indian cinema? What modes and strategies do the new Indies use to represent alternative articulations and marginalised narratives of the nation? How do their discourses evoke censorship and address the dominant national metanarrative in a changing socio-political landscape? What is the historiographical context of the emergence of the Indies? That is, are they fundamentally a ‘glocal hybrid’ of India’s mainstream and marginal cinematic forms? How do the New Wave Indie discourses address the existing hegemonic Bollywood superstructure? Stemming from these questions, the book’s various chapters will examine to what extent the new independent films amalgamate heterogeneous cinematic influences and are glocal in their ‘globalisation of the local and the localisation of the global’ (Marramao, 2012: 35). In essence, I raise the proposition that the new Indies combine a universal aesthetic with locally specific stories, circumventing ubiquitous Bollywood ‘song and dance’ sequences and stereotypical storylines. This study also considers whether the new films draw from India’s multiple contemporary socio-political realities to espouse everyday human narratives, often focussing on marginalised individuals and communities. In this regard, I will appraise a variegated array of seminal independent films, including Gandu (2010), Dhobi Ghat (2010), Peepli Live (2010), The Lunchbox (2013), Harud (2010), I Am (2010) and Ship of Theseus (2013) – all films that represent themes and issues that discursively engage with the contemporary ‘state of the nation’. The main focus, therefore, is on how the emergence of the Indian Indies from an in-between space enables them to represent alternative stories whilst simultaneously gaining popularity in urban India. This middle Indie space could be located between the two enduring Indian cinema traditions, Bollywood and Parallel arthouse, and in India’s current tryst between globalising modernity and traditional past. The book is divided into two parts. Part I presents a background insight into the emergence of the new Indies, appraising their characteristics, modes of dissemination and delving into the socio-political discourses that inform these films’ thematic content. Part II undertakes a practical casestudy approach through close textual readings of the aforementioned independent films. Data from fieldwork interviews, evaluations of news articles and reviews in the public sphere and the case-study film analyses will be examined through the lens of existing theoretical frameworks and the self-devised model of a meta-hegemony expounded in this book. The intention of this syncretic paradigm is to bring a refreshing and revitalising perspective to the broader realm of modern Film Studies and World Cinema(s). My aim is to widen transdisciplinary horizons in an effort to

6 Introduction decompartmentalise and destabilise parochial borders that have often resulted in self-contained or repetitive epistemological and philosophical approaches to Bollywood-dominated scholarship. Breaking these barriers, I will deploy an intercultural approach, one that does not recoil from drawing on a global palette of analogies or cognate disciplines. This comparative pan-global frame is commensurate with the network society in which we find ourselves inextricably immersed; constantly colliding in a sea of cultural and information interflows. The book’s first chapter traces the evolutionary timeline of new independent Indian cinema. It maps the genealogy of the new Indies, ostensibly as a hybrid ‘mutant’ synthesis of their cinematic ‘parents’, Bollywood and Parallel arthouse cinema, but revealing numerous other cinematic overlaps and influences. Reiterating the diffuse composition of the Indies as an amalgamation of various Indian (and, as detailed in later chapters, global) cinemas, this chapter traces the Indies amorphous antecedents, subsequently dismantling the binary conception of Indian cinema as either Bollywood or Satyajit Ray. Encapsulating a post-independence timeline, this overview charts the influences of other cinemas on the current Indie New Wave, including urban ‘Hinglish’ cinema – cosmopolitan films with a mixture of Hindi and English dialogue. Chapter 2 explicates my theory of a ‘meta-hegemony’, which is one of this monograph’s original contributions to scholarship. This paradigm has been devised to explain the historical hierarchy of dominance in Indian and global cinema and how this impacts the new Indies. The concept asserts that Bollywood dominates Indian cinema and culture whilst being subservient to a larger global Hollywood hegemony. In the context of this study’s focus on new independent Indian cinema, the paradigm of a global meta-hegemony will focus on its Indian inner-workings – Bollywood’s hegemony in modern Indian cinema in relation to the new Indies. The meta-hegemony has three distinctive facets within the contours of Indian cinema. The first feature is Bollywood’s monopoly over the Indian film industry’s modes of production, distribution, exhibition and capital generation. In this regard, Bollywood films largely dominate Indian urban multiplex cinema screens, leading to the new Indies being locked in a disproportionate struggle for space and having to seek alternative avenues of exhibition. The second facet is Bollywood’s ideological propagation of a post-globalisation master narrative through its role as national cultural signifier of India’s neoliberal economy. This section contends that Bollywood has melded neoliberalism, patriarchy and religion in its articulation of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ national narrative. It argues that several mainstream Bollywood films validate a majoritarian ethos, both in terms of the state’s thrust towards market liberalisation and a standardisation of ‘traditional’ Hindu values and ideology. This proposition is contextualised through the new Indies’ divergence and contestation of normative national discourse, often through polemical, self-reflexive and sometimes transgressive narratives. This segment of the chapter also looks

Introduction  7 at Bollywood’s narration of a patriarchal, postcolonial, national narrative through gendered and stereotypical representations of women. It inspects Bollywood’s ‘gendering of the nation’, particularly through the industry’s normalisation of sexualised song and dance sequences known as ‘item numbers’. Bollywood’s patriarchal representations of gender seem amplified in comparison with the increasing number of female directors and strong female roles in several new independent films. The third dimension of the meta-hegemony is the state’s endorsement of Bollywood as an instrument of soft power, signifying Bollywood’s branding as a national and global commodity. Soft power, a term coined by Joseph Nye (2004), is a strategy for nations to gain global influence through cultural and political ‘attraction’ rather than military ‘coercion’. This portion of the chapter argues that the state and Bollywood fold into the new Indian neoliberal national narrative, and their political and cinematic discourses converge in the rhetoric of soft power. Demonstrating how Bollywood is validated at the highest levels of executive power, this section contextualises the arrival of the new Indies and the challenges they face in the subsuming discourse of Bollywood’s soft power. Following Chapter 2’s contextualisation of the Indies’ emergence in a Bollywood meta-hegemony, Chapter 3 presents an overview of the new Indies’ general characteristics. It details attempts to define and classify them and the features that distinguish them from the mainstream. Presenting the new Indies as a postmodern hybrid film form emerging from a middle ‘third space’, this chapter effectively dismantles the longstanding Bollywood/­ Satyajit Ray binary model perpetuated both in Film Studies scholarship and in mainly Western perceptions of Indian cinema. This section investigates whether the blanket-term ‘Indie’ can be superimposed on the new wave of independent Indian films, acknowledging the American associations of this appellation. I consider whether it is more accurate to perceive the Indian Indies as a glocal mélange of heterogeneous Indian and global cinematic influences hybridising under the monolith of Bollywood’s meta-hegemony. I use an inventive diagrammatic model of the Ship of Theseus, (an ancient Greek philosophical paradox and title of a globally successful Indian Indie), in order to trace the evolution of the Indies from a ‘Ship of Indian Cinemas’. Exploring the various modes of defining and categorising the new Indies, this section therefore constructs a template to chart the course of the Indies in their attempt to create a new cinematic space. This sets up the next chapter, which will elucidate the channels of dissemination available to the new Indies. The fourth chapter analyses the practical mechanisms of proliferation available, afforded or accessed by the new Indies. It delves into the Indies’ paradoxical reliance on Bollywood producers, stars and corporate production houses for funding, distribution and exhibition. In this regard, the Indies’ alternative content often proves an Achilles heel whilst sourcing mainstream funding and exhibition opportunities. This chapter reveals

8 Introduction alternative mechanisms adopted by young Indie filmmakers to either mitigate or circumvent reliance on Bollywood infrastructure. These include international co-productions, social media and the Internet, ‘instant cinema’, video on demand, film festivals and crowdfunding. Importantly, this segment analyses the growing migration of urban film consumption to pirate spheres, where young urban Indians gain free access to new Indie films through torrent downloads on peer-to-peer file-sharing websites. This displacement to cyberspace is largely a legacy of the Indies struggling to find mainstream space in overpriced Bollywood-dominated multiplexes, as mentioned in Chapter 2. It was mentioned in Chapter 4 that the Indies’ unconventional content entails limited avenues of funding, distribution and exhibition. Acting as a bridge to Chapter 6, which is on censorship and regulation, Chapter 5 deals with the Indies challenging the status quo of Bollywood’s linear narration of nation. The Indies exhibit postmodern traits in their sometimes controversial representations of India’s socio-political tryst with tradition and modernity. Indie films often feature fragmented time and space, non-linear narratives, cultural heterogeneity, stylistic hybridity and pastiche. Locating the Indies in a hybrid, in-between space, this chapter reveals how the Indie New Wave raises questions about India’s progression into postmodern connectedness and consumer hyperreality whilst the nation holds on to tradition and religiosity. Presenting this as the ‘double narrative’ of nation, this portion of the chapter argues that the Indies subvert Bollywood’s normalised meta-hegemonic homogenisation of an integrally heterogeneous nation. The Indies perform this function cinematically by splitting this grand unifying master narrative to reveal multiple layers in India’s current navigation of spiritualism and materialism, neoliberalism and nationalism. Chapter 6 examines how the new Indies are often subject to stricter censorship and regulation parameters than Bollywood, owing to their critical representations of topical themes and national issues. This section presents an incisive argument, drawing from the views of former representatives from the CBFC, commonly referred to in India as the Indian Censor Board. In the past, scholarship has been preoccupied with sex and violence in relation to censorship in India. Often the focus has been on Bollywood films. This chapter centres on the new Indies, adding a third dimension to the examination of censorship – films representing contemporary political discourse. This portion of the book reveals the Indies’ navigation of a discrepant state-controlled censorship system prone to nepotism and bureaucracy, largely bereft of systemic guidelines and codes of practice. In this configuration, the state either directly or by proxy of the CBFC, encroaches frequently on free filmic expression of political commentary or censure. One of the propositions of this chapter is that the Bollywood meta-hegemony largely bestows on the mainstream industry’s mainly non-polemical films the ability to surmount censorship hurdles with greater ease than Indies. This chapter suggests however, that censorship in India transcends top-down government

Introduction  9 control, unveiling the practice of moral policing by extreme religious fundamentalist and political groups, who frequently turn to vigilantism in their role as self-appointed censors. Providing topical examples, this chapter demonstrates how several Indies have been prescribed cuts, denied a certificate of exhibition (Gandu, for example, based on profanity) or have been banned outright (Kaum de Heere, Unfreedom) because of ‘taboo’ topics relating to traumatic episodes in India’s national narrative. Themes include state complicity in the 1984 anti-Sikh killings (Amu, Kaum de Heere), the 2002 state-supported massacre of Muslims in Gujarat (Final Solution), caste-based oppression of minorities (Papilio Buddha), far-right Hindu religious fundamentalism (The World Before Her) and same-sex relationships (I Am, Unfreedom). The aim is to demonstrate how independent Indian films have consistently evoked turbulent debates with right-wing religious groups and state censorship. As mentioned earlier, Part II of the book is dedicated to film case studies and provides in-depth close readings of several ground-breaking new Indie films, from multiple analytical and epistemological perspectives. The case studies commence with a close reading of Bengali Indie Gandu (‘Asshole’, 2010), an explicit, controversial and iconoclastic Indie rap-musical set in Kolkata, with themes of urban decay, alienated youth, drug abuse and repressed sexuality. I argue in Chapter 7 that Gandu’s defiant questioning of Indian ‘traditions and values’ signifies a post-liberalisation rupture in the linear narrative of nation. Mentioning the absence of a popular youth counter-culture in post-independence urban India, this section argues that Gandu epitomises the globalisation-induced mosaic of modern urban youth culture. Exploring the film’s cinematic attributes, this analysis contends that Gandu typifies the Indies as ‘hybrid mutants’, with its experimental postmodern pastiche of film form, style, music and mise-en-scène. Framing Kiran Rao’s Dhobi Ghat as a postmodern ‘city film’, the next case study (Chapter 8) examines the film’s juxtaposition of a local Mumbai context with global cinema audio-visual codes. This chapter demonstrates how Dhobi Ghat’s triple-narrative, multi-strand story reveals hierarchical layers in urban Indian society, foregrounding the metropolis’s marginalised, including migrant workers, whose contribution to the city’s construction is often left out of the neoliberal master narrative of progress. Dhobi Ghat’s representations of marginality and alterity will be examined in relation to the thesis of fragmentary narratives and cultural difference emerging from an interstitial space. This case study will also incorporate the implications of globalisation on India’s changing cultural, socio-economic and spatio-temporal constellation. In this regard, this close analysis of Dhobi Ghat will evaluate inter-relations between the nation’s transformations, subaltern figures, cultural difference and the urban space as a site for postmodern intersections. Chapter 9 provides an analysis of Peepli Live, directed by Anusha Rizvi, and one of the pioneering films of the Indie New Wave. This close textual analysis

10 Introduction delves into the film’s themes of farmer suicides and media misrepresentation, revealing wider contexts of India’s transition from past social democracy towards present free market system privileging multinational corporate investment. Observing the ternary convergence of capital, knowledge and power, this study reveals that Peepli Live’s indictment of post-liberalisation state apathy towards farmer suicides has intertextual links to previous post-independence Indian art films and classical Hindi literature. Chapter 10 contains a critical analysis of Anand Gandhi’s Ship of  Theseus, widely acknowledged as a watershed in Indian cinema and included in a global list of life-changing films by the Critics Circle UK. Scrutinising the glocal elements in the film’s diegesis, including transnational co-operations in the film’s sound design, music, dialogue and locations, this study sees Ship of Theseus as blurring India’s binary between ancient religious ritualism and postmodern urban hyperreality. This chapter reads this portmanteau film’s multi-linked narratives as a representation of the nation, not as a binary, but as a heterotopia, which is a syncretic space where majority and minority discourses coexist, comingle and confront each other on a daily basis. The final chapter, Chapter 11, presents an anthologised analysis of four Indie films with similar and different themes, all invoking past events in India’s national trajectory that still haunt its present. Aamir Bashir’s Harud and Haider, directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, engage with issues of alienation and territoriality in the volatile Kashmir region. Onir’s film, I Am, is a fourstory anthology dealing with women’s rights, child abuse, Hindu-Muslim discord in Kashmir and criminalised same-sex relationships in India. This chapter also looks inside The Lunchbox (directed by Ritesh Batra), which evokes themes of memory and nostalgia for India’s unified socialist narrative prior to 1990s globalisation, unpacking the state of a nation as it rapidly transits from tradition to cosmopolitan post-modernity. Summarising the main points raised in the book, the Conclusion raises ramifications of the Indies’ advent in a cultural landscape overshadowed by Bollywood’s meta-hegemony. It presages future scenarios where the Indies establish an autonomous space or create a fusion with Bollywood. The Conclusion foresees more Indie international co-productions, alternative arenas of Indie exhibition and increased Indie presence on the global cinema circuit. The closing segment of the Conclusion also identifies strategic and logistical changes that may be necessary to envision an independent infrastructure where the Indies could avail themselves of funding, distribution and exhibition avenues, decoupled from the strictures of the current system. Overall, the book’s Conclusion boldly augurs the new Indies as future bellwethers of Indian cinema. As mentioned in the above chapter summaries, this book is dedicated to the formulation of a holistic, intertextual and intercultural analysis of a new filmic phenomenon that is transforming contemporary Indian cinema. Ultimately, the book endeavours to tread the unbeaten path, making first steps into a cinematic terrain that could well chart the future course of Indian cinema.

Introduction  11

Note For more information and more images, visit the website www.IndianIndieCinema.com.

References ‘Aamir Khan Joins “Intolerance” Debate, Says Wife Even Suggested Leaving India’ (2015). NDTV.com, 24 November. Available at: http://www.ndtv.com/indianews/aamir-khan-joins-voices-against-intolerance-says-wife-even-suggestedleaving-india-1246725 [Accessed 26 Nov. 2015]. Athique, A. and Hill, D. (2010). The Multiplex in India. New York: Routledge. Bhabha, H. (1994). The Location of Culture, London: Routledge. Bhabha, H. (1995). ‘Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences’, in Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. and Tiffin, H. (eds.). The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 155–157. Bhatia, I. (2015). ‘Aamir Khan Should Either Convert or Go to Pakistan: Hindu Mahasabha’, The Times of India. Available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ india/Aamir-Khan-should-either-convert-or-go-to-Pakistan-Hindu-Mahasabha/ articleshow/49908845.cms. [Accessed 15 Nov. 2015]. Dimitrova, D. (2014). The Other in South Asian Religion, Literature and Film. Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Dwyer R. and Pinto, J. (2011). Beyond the Boundaries of Bollywood: The Many Forms of Hindi Cinema. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kishwar, M. (2013). ‘Bridging Divide: The Triumph of Bollywood’, in Balslev, A. (ed.). On India. New Delhi: Sage. Marramao, G. (2012). The Passage West. London: Verso. Mehta, M. (2011). Censorship and Sexuality in Bombay Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press. Naqvi, S. (2013). “No, I want this to be mainstream. I want the frivolity, the silliness, the regressiveness to be alternative”. Hard News. 2 August. Available at: http:// www.hardnewsmedia.com/2013/08/6007 [Accessed 26 Nov. 2015]. Needham, A. (2013). New Indian Cinema in Post-independence India. London: Routledge. Nye, J. (2004). Soft Power. New York: Public Affairs.

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Part I

Enter India’s New Indies

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1 Bollywood and the Cinemas of India The Story so Far

Bollywood says you don’t have your own identity – it shows the psyche and inferiority complex of our film industry. For decades we were content just making films for our own audience. That’s why the current changes are looking really promising and exciting. —Irrfan Khan, on Bollywood (Verma, 2013)

Indian Cinema is a growing global phenomenon, particularly as a resilient competitor to Hollywood (Raghavendra, 2009: 15). Originating in Mumbai, commercial Hindi cinema, better known as Bollywood, is the most widespread proponent of Indian Cinema. Bollywood has emerged as a syno­ nym for Indian culture, with financially successful proliferation around the world. These films are popular not just in India, but amongst the South Asian diaspora in the UK, US, Canada and Australia (Gowricharn, 2003; Mishra, 2014: 196). India contains the world’s largest film industry (Shoesmith, 2011: 246; Thussu, 2008: 98). Jyotika Virdi (2003: 1–2) deems Bollywood the nation’s most dominant cultural commodity, serving as a medium of entertainment to a primarily but not exclusively urban audience. Although Virdi consi­ ders Bollywood to be the predominant form of entertainment in terms of market share, it accounts for only around a third of the total number of films made in India (Raghavendra, 2009: 15). In a polyglot milieu of more than 22 national languages, ‘local and vernacular-based industries compete in a highly regionalized market’ (‘Can the Indian Film Industry’, 2011). ­Bollywood accounts for only about 200 of the 1,000 films produced annually, the rest emerging from ‘regional or non-Hindi productions’ (ibid.). However, Bollywood’s dominance in terms of reach and revenue is reflected in a statement by Jehil Thakkar, consulting firm/consultancy group KPMG’s Head of Media and Entertainment, noting that Bollywood generates 46 percent of the total Indian film industry revenue (ibid.). Selvaraj Velayutham (2008) highlights the often-overlooked diversity of Indian cinema, attributing this to a general preoccupation with Bollywood. Velayutham extends this proposition to academic scholarship, which he argues, is discrepantly orientated towards ‘Hindi cinema / Bollywood’, underscoring Bollywood’s ‘cultural dominance and hegemony’ that has obliterated

16  Bollywood and the Cinemas of India the ‘rich complexities and ethnolinguistic-specific cinema traditions of India’ (Velayutham, 2008: 1). A Bollywood-centric approach has largely contri­ buted to the preclusion and elision of several alternative forms of Indian cinema in academic literature (Gokulsing and Dissanayake, 2009: 10). The most conspicuous absence in recent scholastic appraisal relates to the lack of a comprehensive and dedicated analysis on the emergence of a new wave of independent Indian cinema – a gaping hole that this book intends to fill. Despite Bollywood’s cultural and commercial pre-eminence, the heterogeneity that ‘Indian Cinema’ traditionally entails causes Gokulsing and ­Dissanayake (2009) to consider the alternative term, ‘Cinemas of India’, a more suitable moniker for the encompassing Indian film industry (ibid.). As a first foray into a blossoming field, this book’s focus is firmly fixed on the emergence of new independent Indian films since 2010, from the aforementioned diversity of the Cinemas of India.

The New Urban Independent Films since 2010 Rahul Verma states that ‘a new wave of Indian independent film is breaking the all-singing, all-dancing stereotype of Bollywood via low-cost, offbeat movies and edgier subject matter’ (2011). Many consider 2010 to be a watershed year for independent Indian cinema. Verma observes that the new ‘Indies’ broke into the mainstream, with films such as LSD (Love, Sex aur Dhoka [‘Love, Sex and Double-Cross’]) and Peepli Live, featuring in India’s top ten most profitable films of 2010. Other new independent films, such as Dhobi Ghat (2010) and the satirical comedy Tere Bin Laden (‘Yours Bin Laden’, 2010), received critical acclaim and box-office success in the nation’s top five metropolitan cities (ibid.). The growth and development of these new independent films have been significant enough to galvanise various forms of the media to herald their arrival and underscore their propensity to catalyse debate in the public sphere. For example, expanding awareness of the new Indies informs an article in the Hindu that states: The first half of 2011 saw filmmakers trying new themes, focusing on fresh issues without pandering to the box office demands. With the audience becoming highly stratified, very few are targeting a family entertainer. Till last year, who thought a Hindi film with two female actors can score at the box office, but Raj Kumar Gupta’s ‘No One Killed Jessica’ shattered the long-standing stereotype that you require a male star to draw the audience. If Kiran Rao’s perceptive ‘Dhobi Ghat’ showed Mumbai in a new light … Onir impressed with his measured audacity in ‘I Am’ … Similarly ‘Shor In the City’ nailed the cacophony of corruption. It is no longer about, hero, heroine, villain and five songs. (Kumar, 2011)

Bollywood and the Cinemas of India  17 This increasing cognisance of the independent new wave is not restricted to the Indian cinematic domain. The World Cinema Film Festival 2011 in Amsterdam adopted a ‘Soul of India’ theme, including ‘eighteen Indian features, short and animation films, that focused on independent films, rather than Bollywood’; amongst these were the Indies Peepli Live, Gandu (‘­Asshole’, 2010) and Dhobi Ghat (‘Peepli Live’, 2011). Cary Sawhney, director of the London Indian Film Festival (LIFF), describes the focus of the festival in 2010: Rather than the standard Bollywood audiences across four generations, we’re aiming for the younger generation, who are disenfranchised by [the] Bollywood of their parent’s era and want something more cutting-edge. (Verma, 2011) Suman Ghosh, director of the Bengali film Nobel Thief, screened at the London Film Festival 2011, echoes Sawhney’s emphasis on ushering in a new generation of Indian cinema. Ghosh is of the opinion that the recent films are a new development in terms of identity and socio-cultural perception. They are ‘packaged differently, combining mainstream Bollywood and Parallel arthouse production values’ (Ghosh, post-screening conversation and e-mail correspondence, 2011). He considers this ‘a good way forward for Indian cinema’ (ibid.). This assertion of the new Indies’ concatenation of formal and stylistic attributes from India’s two enduring film traditions raises the notion of hybridity in the new wave of Indian Indies. The corollary would be to ascertain to what extent these contemporary non-mainstream films delve into topical social, cultural and political issues and themes that are analogous to earlier postcolonial Indian arthouse and Parallel films. It would also be pertinent to investigate how the new Indies engage with socio-political themes whilst relying on their being saleable through contemporary Bollywood production, distribution and marketing channels. Ravi Vasudevan’s (2000: 40) assertion that for the most part several perspectives in the study of Indian cinema remain unidentified and unexcavated is attributable to the rapid reorganisation and reorientation of the modern Indian cinematic domain. Arguably the labile nature of the contemporary Indian cinemascape resonates with broader transformations in the socio-­ economic, geopolitical and cultural Indian landscape. In this shape-shifting environment, postmodern simulacra, media hyperreality, sexual liberation and middle-class consumerism are becoming increasingly pervasive (Mishra, 2014: 195–197). The immediate manifestation of this postmodern milieu is an accentuated awareness and wider involvement amongst digital citizens in the Indian public sphere, concomitant with greater access to technology and communication, particularly social media (Devasundaram, 2014: 109). In order to understand the current metamorphosis in modern Indian ­Cinema and its relation to the nation’s transforming socio-cultural and

18  Bollywood and the Cinemas of India political discourse, it may prove useful to contextualise the rise of the new wave of independent Indian films through some of the nation’s earlier cine­ matic traditions that contain genealogical, morphological and temporal links to the new Indies.

Postcolonial Social Realism 1947–1960: India’s Early Art Films Indian cinema is often dichotomised into its main enduring traditions – the popular (Bollywood) and the art film (Kabir, 2001: 5). Art films made between the 1940s and the early 1960s were trenchant expositions on social issues and themes. These included the exploitation of farmers by landlords (Do Bigha Zamin, 1953), destitution and privation in the metropolis (Boot Polish, 1954), untouchability (Sujata, 1959), the urban-rural schism (Shree 420, 1955) and materialism against destiny (Pyaasa, 1957). These films exhibited a complexity of plot, character and content that set them apart from commercial Hindi cinema (Hood, 2009: 4–5). The art films made immediately after India’s independence were significantly influenced in form and style by Italian neorealism and the French New Wave (­Shoesmith, 2011: 251). Filmmakers like Satyajit Ray in particular drew inspiration from the works of neorealist European directors such as Vittorio De Sica and Jean-Luc Goddard, with Ray distilling these influences into realist hermeneutics of postcolonial rural India in films such as Pather ­Panchali (‘Song of the Road’, 1955) (Majumdar, 2012: 179; Shoesmith, 2011: 251). Contrary to the bewildering Western reduction of all non-commercial Indian cinema to the works of one director (Satyajit Ray) – a convenient, stand-alone signifier – post-independence art cinema was populated by a plethora of influential directors, including Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen. A reincarnation of India’s post-independence art cinema of the 1940s and 50s subsequently appeared in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s as ‘New Indian cinema’, better known as ‘Parallel cinema’, which also derived inspiration from a neorealist ethos (Ganti, 2013: 25).

Parallel Cinema: 1970s and 80s Sumita Chakravarty (1993) describes the emergence of Indian ‘Parallel cinema’ in the late 1960s as a reaction by filmmakers and critics to ‘contest the hegemony of a commercially based, profit-driven, popular cinema’, and to establish an alternative cinema (Chakravarty, 1993: 235). Parallel cinema was largely a continuation of the art films of the earlier 1940s and 50s, albeit with the explicit and overt intention of forming a concerted and orga­ nised socio-political film movement (Needham, 2013: 2). This alternative cinema was referred to interchangeably as ‘Parallel cinema’, ‘art cinema’, the ‘Indian New Wave’ or simply ‘regional cinema’ (Chakravarty, 1993: 235–236; Hood: 2009: 5). Brian Shoesmith (2011) observes that ‘this

Bollywood and the Cinemas of India  19 alternative cinema, often called Parallel or art, defined itself in opposition to Bollywood’1 (Shoesmith, 2011: 251). The raison d’être for this inchoate movement was to develop a ‘new tradition of filmmaking’; to construct ‘authentic’ portrayals firmly grounded in the credo of realism (Chakravarty, 1993: 236; Vasudevan, 2000: 123). One of the first films in the Parallel cinema movement was Bhuvan Shome (1969), directed by Mrinal Sen (Gopal, 2011: 8). This film and others, including M S Sathyu’s Garam Hawa (‘Scorching Winds’, 1975) and Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti (‘A Day’s Bread’, 1970), were showcased under the aegis of the Indian government (Chakravarty, 1993: 236). In general, the Indian government financially backed this attempted thematic and stylistic rejuvenation of earlier post-independence Indian art cinema of the 1940s through the 1960s (Athique and Hill, 2010: 192). Parallel cinema in India was generally targeted at an educated, ­middle-class, urban viewership. The Parallel wave was decidedly not monolithic and was textured with varying gradations. On the outer precincts of the Parallel was ‘middle cinema’, synonymous with directors, such as G ­ ulzar, Basu ­Chatterjee and Hrishikesh Mukherjee (Donner, 2011: 189). This group of films sought to forge a middle ground between populist appeal and social realism in contrast with the more radical, firebrand end of the Parallel spectrum, epi­ tomised by Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani. Overall, the new crop of Parallel films continued the tradition of earlier art cinema, adopting storylines that mirrored social conditions prevalent at the time (Hood, 2009: 5). In stark opposition to commercial Hindi cinema that sought to homogenise and fantasise depictions of India, Parallel films were ‘India’s purest forms of Third Cinema’ and were streamlined towards highlighting the diversity in region, culture, language and customs (Guneratne, 2003: 21). Several of these films were made in regional languages and received financial support from the government-run National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) (Athique, 2012: 46). Philip Lutgendorf perceives Parallel Indian cinema as heralding the arrival of directors like Shyam Benegal, whose films Ankur (‘The Sprout’, 1974), Nishant (‘The Calm’, 1975) and Manthan (‘The Churning’, 1976) grappled with themes of subaltern oppression and the rural-to-urban exodus (Lutgendorf, 2007: 20). Parallel films were labelled by urban critics at the time as worthy proponents of an Indian ‘New cinema’ (Athique and Hill, 2010: 192) for abjuring the clichés and romanticism of commercial Bombay Hindi cinema (later popularised as Bollywood) (Desai and Dudrah, 2008: 10). The cinematic Parallel New Wave dispensed with song and dance routines (Chakravarty, 1993: 239) and engaged with a ‘progressive leftist’ perspective of social issues through realist representations (Lutgendorf, 2007: 20). The ‘middle-cinema’ appellation was applied to Parallel films at a later stage in the 1980s (Guneratene, 2003: 21), largely due to these films continuing to forge a middle path between entertainment and the avantgarde whilst targeting an educated urban middle class (Lutgendorf, 2007: 20).

20  Bollywood and the Cinemas of India However, by the mid-1980s, it was evident that the majority of Indians preferred big-budget Bollywood melodramas, leading to the marginalisation of the Parallel movement (Athique, 2012: 46, 47; Athique and Hill, 2010: 192; Lutgendorf, 2007: 20). Concurring with Chakravarty, Vasudevan attributes the Parallel c­ inema movement’s provenance to the post-independence film society and art cinema cognoscenti, such as the Calcutta Film Society and film critic C ­ hidananda Das Gupta. These groups expressed their vehement preference for an alternative cinema with its foundations rooted in realist themes and authentic representations of Indian culture (Vasudevan, 2000: 7). Although deeming this an ‘elitist’ stance, Vasudevan concedes that the Parallel movement, while it lasted, exerted a persuasive and prominent influence in ‘public discourses’ and government policies (ibid.). Vasudevan’s acknowledgement of the socio-political discourse raised by earlier Indian Parallel cinema serves as a useful point of comparison, despite his coeval allegations that these films constitute an ‘elitist’ mediation of Indian ‘authenticity’ by the art cinema literati. This is with regards to ascertaining the hybridity and the discourse-generating aspects of the new wave of independent Indian cinema since 2010. In other words, it is worth considering whether the new Indies manifest some atavistic traits of their Parallel cinema predecessors.

Hinglish Films: The 1990s and Early 2000s The vestigial remains of Indian Parallel cinema are intermittently identifiable in India’s post-globalisation 1990s and early 2000s, in low-budget independent urban films labelled ‘Hinglish’, owing to their combination of English and Hindi dialogue (Roy, 2013: 27, 28). These films were limited in their success and largely confined to sporadic exhibition (Dwyer, 2006: 364) in India’s main cosmopolitan cities. Hinglish films such as English August (1994; Jury prize, Torino International Film Festival), Split Wide Open (1999), Mr and Mrs Iyer (2002; Best Film at the Hawaii International Film Festival), Everybody Says I’m Fine (2001) and Being Cyrus (2005), despite being moderately well received in a few Indian metropolitan centres and the overseas film festival circuit, were perceived as the preserve of the English-speaking Indian elite (Roy, 2013: 28, 29, 31). This is reminiscent of the compartmentalisation and rejection faced by earlier Parallel cinema as elite middle cinema for the middle class. Identifying characteristics (albeit in a variant form) of earlier Indian cinematic genres, including Hinglish films, in the current new wave of Indies, bolsters perceptions of hybridity in the Indies. For example, several new Indies use a combination of Hindi and English dialogue amongst other languages. The Indies also broach similar topical themes and issues promi­ nent in Hinglish films, such as the Mumbai water riots and child prostitution, explored in Dev Benegal’s Split Wide Open, and fragmented urban

Bollywood and the Cinemas of India  21 identities in Rahul Bose’s Everybody Says I’m Fine. This thematic influence, to a degree, is reflected in 2010 Indies Peepli Live and Dhobi Ghat. The major distinguishing factor between the current Indies and their Parallel and Hinglish forebears is that the latter genres remained at the periphery of Indian cinema, debilitated by the lack of an ‘alternative exhibition infrastructure’ (Athique and Hill, 2010: 192) and eclipsed by commercial Hindi cinema that would eventually become rebranded as Bollywood. In general, Parallel and Hinglish cinemas’ relegation to the margins was largely due to the films being seen as catering to a niche audience, having low-budgets, containing region-specific characteristics and having restricted distribution (being urban-centric in the case of the Hinglish films). These were overall symptoms of a limited national market. In contrast, the New Wave Indies, since 2010, have relied on ‘different packaging’ (Ghosh, post-screening conversation and e-mail correspondence, 2011) and better marketing strategies in order to ensure commercial success and wider audience reception. Consideration of the Indies’ ‘different packaging’ also leads to considering whether a hybrid amalgamation of form, style and content equips the new Indies with the ability to attenuate an imaginary yet widely perceived ‘high’ and ‘low’ art schism that previously prevailed in the form of a Parallel/ commercial Hindi cinema binary (Chakravarty, 1993: 242). This dialectic has enduringly typified conceptions of Indian films, particularly in the West, eventually resulting in the simplistic and restrictive classification of Indian cinema as Bollywood/Satyajit Ray (Harper, 2001: 181). The growing popularity of the current Indies (Francis, 2014) could be one of the factors facilitating the Indies’ erosion of the established high/low art antinomy. Changing social attitudes, especially in urban India, sets the new Indies apart from earlier esoteric Parallel cinema. The assertion that undifferentiating Indian audiences jettisoned ‘serious’ Parallel cinema in preference for popular melodramas is incompatible with the current scenario, where contemporary urban Indian viewers exhibit heterodox cultural tastes and are largely governed by a wider globalisation-induced access to media (Devasundaram, 2014: 113). The failure of 1970s and 80s Parallel cinema to assimilate a broader audience and its consequent marginalisation by the masses in favour of Bollywood emphasises the new Indies’ heuristic adoption of available resources and strategies to ensure the avoidance of a similar predicament. Confronted by the lack of an autonomous ‘Indie infrastructure’ to facilitate production, distribution and exhibition, several new Indies, such as Peepli Live, Dhobi Ghat and The Lunchbox (2013), have aligned with mainstream Bollywood producers (Aamir Khan, Karan Johar) and corporate production houses (UTV Motion Pictures), suggesting an anomalous interweaving of the mainstream and marginal in modern Indian cinema. Summing up the above points, a blurring of boundaries between earlier Parallel cinema and mainstream Bollywood is perceivable in India’s new

22  Bollywood and the Cinemas of India independent films and necessitates a re-imagining of established norms of classification, content and audience reception. The box-office success of several of these new films, including Peepli Live, The Lunchbox and Ship of Theseus (2013) (Khanna, 2014) suggests a swing in socio-cultural attitudes and entails a break from the Parallel cinema past. This is significantly attri­butable to the disjuncture of India’s early 1990s globalisation (­Appadurai, 1990), its reverberations swelling to the current crescendo of hyper-­connected, consumer-driven cosmopolitan urbanscapes. These propo­ sitions present an intriguing area for further analysis in subsequent stages of this book, reinforcing the notion of the new wave of Indian Indies as a hybrid cinematic form.

Rise of the Hybrid Mutant S Sharma, J Hutnyk and A Sharma (1996) locate hybridity as the wellspring of new and dynamic cultural forms. This could be related to the new wave of Indies as a ‘hybrid synthesis’ of India’s two main cinematic traditions – Bollywood and Parallel (Ghosh, post-screening conversation and e-mail correspondence, 2011). Independent filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia notes that several new Indian Indies, located in a space between the Parallel and the commercial, can diverge from and subvert the two cinema traditions (­Ahluwalia, 2014). With the new Indies’ situated in this in-between space, it could be argued that their hybridity stems from their heterogeneous global and local cinematic influences (see Chapter 3), as well as their ability to encapsulate divergent content in commercially marketable films. In this context, the new Indies could be figuratively termed as ‘hybrid mutants’ that breach several genre conventions epitomised by their cinematic ‘parents’. Such subversions of ‘filial’ morphology exhibited in several Indies include the jettisoning of ubiquitous Bollywood song and dance sequences and the propagation of topical content with the paradoxical adoption of exoteric and aggressive Bollywood-style marketing strategies. This amalgamation of polemical and popular – socio-political themes in films that are often marketed and distributed through mainstream channels  – is a distinctive feature of the new Indies. Tejaswini Ganti (2004: 84) considers songs to be a vital constituent of Bollywood films to ensure their popularity and marketability. She argues that a film bereft of song and dance is indicative of its positioning outside the mainstream Mumbai film industry (ibid.). In marked contrast to Ganti’s assertion, several new Indies have been commercially successful despite dispensing with de rigueur song and dance sequences. In this regard, Rahul Verma (2011) cites the film LSD’s titular allusion to both sex and drugs as confronting quotidian notions of Indian cinema as ‘tear-jerking’ Bollywood song and dance routines. LSD also had several scenes excised by the Indian censoring authority – the CBFC (Central Board of Film Certification) – including some containing explicit sex and a reference to the Indian caste

Bollywood and the Cinemas of India  23 system (ibid.). At the outset, this scenario significantly gestures towards the larger propagation of divergent and often polemical content by several new Indies. Despite the above impediments, LSD made £1.25 million from its small, £200,000 budget and opened the first London Indian Film Festival in 2010 (Verma, 2011). Low-budget political satire Peepli Live – the first ever Indian film to be screened at the Sundance Film Festival (Times of India, 2012) – received both commercial and critical acclaim, being screened at 600 cinemas in India and 200 abroad, with a worldwide gross box office of around £9 million (‘Peepli Live’, 2011). Promotion and marketing across diverse media platforms, specifically targeted at a social media–savvy young Indian demographic (especially within the growing middle class), has contributed to the increasing mass appeal of these new films. Gangs of Wasseypur (GOW, 2012) and Paan Singh Tomar (2012) are recent film examples of multimodal and multi-platform marketing strategies. Paan Singh Tomar premiered in 2010 at the BFI (British Film Institute) London Film Festival, but was only released in 2012, in India. This delayed domestic release was due to production house UTV’s marketing strategy of initially focusing on Paan Singh Tomar’s exhibition at international festivals, capitali­sing on the overseas appeal of main actor Irrfan Khan (The Namesake, 2006; A Mighty Heart, 2007; Life of Pi, 2012) (Dutta, 2012). Subsequently, a 2011 release was deferred due to the prospect of competition raised by the simultaneous exhibition of several commercially successful Hindi films in India that year (ibid.). Following its late release, the film was a national box office success, making 384 million rupees (around £ 4 million) from its 80 million rupees (around £850,000) budget (Times of India, 2012). The above points emphasise the thesis that although the Indies perpetuate socio-­political themes, they seek a wider audience, often through an assiduous focus on promotion and marketing. In this context, Ghosh considers the patronage of Bollywood stars like Aamir Khan and the financial investment of corporate media and entertainment companies to be important factors in the dispersion of new Indies (Ghosh, post-screening conversation and e-mail correspondence, 2011). A good example of these two factors is Aamir Khan’s capitalisation on his Bollywood star status to rigorously promote Peepli Live, eventually ensuring its commercial success, both in India and abroad. The film’s marketing strategy in India ran the gamut of advertising across TV, print, radio, social media and reality shows (Shah, 2010). This included a 45-second teaser aired on television and in cinema halls, lampooning the film’s own promotional tactics (Rizvi, personal communication, 2013; Shah, 2010). Steve Rose’s (2013) article in The Guardian notes Gangs of Wasseypur’s innovative and effective marketing, declaring it a successful ‘anti-Bollywood film’ and positing director Anurag Kashyap to be ‘leading India’s rising indie movement’ (Rose, 2013). In the article, Kashyap expresses to Rose his view that Bollywood’s opiate effect on the Indian masses is ‘part of India’s inabi­ lity to deal with its reality’ (ibid.). Kashyap’s assertions did not hinder him,

24  Bollywood and the Cinemas of India however, from soliciting the marketing power of Viacom 18, one of the first studio-model production companies in India and a distributor of several mainstream Bollywood films. A 2012 article in the Times of India commences with an insight into the conventional perception of Bollywood marketing: We are all familiar with the over-the-top promotions that precede the release of a Bollywood film – stars making multiple public appearances, life-sized movie posters hung everywhere, umpteen media interactions and, of course, rumours of the lead actors being linked. (Budhraja, 2012) The above summation of Bollywood marketing strategies again magnifies the notion of hybridity in the new Indies. A case in point is the association of Kashyap’s violent and unflinching GOW, about gang warfare in the rural Indian heartland, with Viacom 18, a production-house better known for Bollywood blockbusters such as Jab We Met (‘When we Met’, 2007) and Namastey London (2007). Whilst exemplifying the notion of the new Indies as ‘hybrid mutants’, films such as GOW, with their commercial and corporate allegiance, exhibit an ambiguity of classification. As will be examined at a later stage, this syncretism often can be a characteristic feature of the new wave of independent Indian cinema. At this preliminary stage, suffice it to say that clues to deciphering complexities in the categorisation of the new Indies could lie in case-specific hybrid strategies deployed in the film-making process. Vikram Malhotra, founder of Viacom 18, describes the marketing approach used for Anurag Kashyap’s film: With GOW we have stayed completely true to the fact that the film is unconventional, its storytelling is of a very different nature. We knew we could not reach out to millions in a conventional manner because this movie doesn’t have big stars or candy floss visuals or any of the trappings of a conventional Hindi film. (Times of India, 2012) Unconventional marketing ploys included a team of dancers in ethnic garb taking to the streets after the film’s screening at the Cannes Film Festival, the publication of an ersatz online newspaper called the Wasseypur Patrika (‘Wasseypur News’) and promotional wall paintings across twenty cities (ibid.). Commenting on how the film’s overseas reception overrode national concerns about the film’s visceral and graphic content, director Kashyap reflects that the reception at Cannes and social media played a prominent role in shaping public opinion (Dhaliwal, 2012). He claims these factors assisted in silencing ‘the moralists’ and highlights how ‘social media has brought a lot of things out into the open in India’ (ibid.). Ravi Vasudevan (2011) perceives a shift in modern Indian cinema, where even established art film directors from the heyday of Parallel cinema

Bollywood and the Cinemas of India  25 such as Shyam Benegal and Sudhir Mishra have turned towards corporate production houses such as Pritish Nandy Communications (PNC) and Sahara (Vasudevan, 2011: 345), usually associated with the production of ­Bollywood films. The interfusion between Bollywood and Parallel, commerce and art, in the context of the new Indies, emphasises a blurring of boundaries. Similarly, Suman Ghosh comments on the transforming terrain of Indian cinema, where established veteran arthouse directors associate with Bollywood distributors: You see, in the 70s and 80s even when arthouse cinema in India was at its zenith, I thought there was a distinct lack of production values. But recently there is an interesting trend, namely the infusion of people like Aamir Khan and the corporate houses into so-called art house cinema. Thus, we see that UTV [Motion Pictures] is producing Shyam Benegal films and other films under the banner of UTV Spotboy, and of course, Aamir Khan is producing films like Peepli Live and Dhobi Ghat. So I think this is a healthy amalgamation that is taking place. Previously a lot of the arthouse cinema was state-sponsored and thus they lacked such infusion. (Ghosh, post-screening conversation and e-mail correspondence, 2011) These alignments with the corporate mainstream appear obligatory in the absence of a dedicated Indie funding, distribution and exhibition infrastructure. However, later chapters in this book will reveal how several independent films, despite associations with corporate companies, are endeavouring to include topical and sometimes controversial content in a style that entertains. In essence, several Indies attempt to strike a balance between corporate funding and unconventional content in order to facilitate distribution and enhance the likelihood of wider visibility and commercial success. One of the key contentions discussed in this book relates to how the new Indies through self-reflexive representation are enmeshed in discourses relating to censorship, sexual liberation and political corruption. Importantly, the New Wave films signpost the subaltern condition – minority groups marginalised and pushed to the periphery by dominant discourses and power structures. In summary, it could be argued that emerging Indian Indie filmmakers are consciously creating a hybrid juxtaposition of social realism and entertainment, forging a dynamism that appeals to a broader demographic whilst simultaneously addressing the ‘state of the nation’.

The New Political and Sexual Liberation Indian films that are overtly political in content, offering critiques of politi­ cal leaders or systems, are rare, given the censorship imposed by the state-­ controlled censoring authority, the CBFC (Bhowmik, 2013; Mehta,  2011).

26  Bollywood and the Cinemas of India There are numerous other restraining forces inhibiting the exhibition of certain films, including socio-religious strictures, right-wing fundamentalist politi­cal groups and the police (Pendakur, 2003: 79). An example often cited in academic literature on Indian cinema is the destruction by right-wing Hindu political party activists in 1998 of cinemas screening the film Fire, which portrays a lesbian relationship (Vasudevan, 2011: 346). The new Indian Indies constitute a much more recent constellation that consistently bears the brunt of a discrepant and often tendentious censorship system, one that often turns a blind eye to Bollywood whilst directing a steely intolerant gaze towards expressions of socio-political critique in non-mainstream Indies. As mentioned earlier, an engagement with socio-political issues is one of the conspicuous features of new independent films, such as Peepli Live (about farmer suicides) and Jayan Cherian’s Papilio Buddha (2013) (addres­ sing the marginalised Dalit community struggling against the caste divide). The ongoing cinematic engagement with the Indian political arena is again reminiscent of earlier Parallel cinema. This link to a Parallel cinema past underpins the notion of the emergence of a hybrid cinematic form from a historiographical evolutionary pattern, inclining towards a ‘return to roots’ of socially conscious post-independence arthouse and Parallel cinema, albeit with ‘new packaging’. In this context, it is pertinent to set the stage for a more thorough later examination of how the new Indies’ polemical and alternative content often interrogates the normative national narrative and sometimes invokes discourses of state control through censorship. Ravi Vasudevan (2011: 345) sees censorship as ‘a crucial regulatory drive’, arguing that Indian films with trenchant socio-political narratives have been the greater focus of regulation rather than commercial films engaging with lurid representations of sexuality. Vasudevan highlights thematically leftof-centre films: Zakhm (‘Wound’, directed by Mahesh Bhatt, 1998) for its commentary on the Hindu right; Black Friday (directed by Anurag Kashyap, 2007), about the Mumbai bomb blasts in 1993; and the documentaries, War and Peace (directed by Anand Patwardhan, 1998) on India’s nuclear bomb and Final Solution (directed by Rakesh Sharma, 2004), about lethal attacks in 2002 on Muslims in Gujarat by right-wing Hindu groups (ibid.). Far from diminishing over time, the censoring of films with political content appears amplified in the current context of new Indies such as Papilio ­Buddha, Gandu and Kaum de Heere (‘Diamonds of the Community’, 2014). Gokulsing and Dissanayake (2004) emphasise the vagaries of an irresolute CBFC that has attained notoriety in India for ‘double standards’ and for assuming the role of moral police (ibid., 124). The authors castigate what they consider the board’s duplicity, where ‘lascivious, lewd song and dance sequences and gratuitous violence in Bollywood films routinely escape the censor’s scissors, and Hollywood offerings with torrid sex scenes get the Universal or U rating’ (India Today, 2002: editorial cited in Gokulsing and Dissanayake, 2004: 124.). This statement and Vasudevan’s earlier assertion about Bollywood films with sexual content largely escaping excision evokes

Bollywood and the Cinemas of India  27 ramifications of the aforementioned discrepant censorship parameters on the Indies in light of their ascendency since 2010. The paring faced by LSD is only a drop in the ocean of proscription faced by a multitude of other Indies. As will be shown in later chapters of this volume, these scenarios serve as touchstones to further scrutinise the inconsistencies and vagaries of the CBFC, which have sometimes become intertwined with religious nationalist politics. To illustrate the historically retrenched nature of the reactionary policies of the ruling right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) towards non-mainstream arts and culture, I allude to their previous stint in power. In 2002, the incumbent CBFC chair, BJP MP Arvind Lankesh, stated that he was deeply invested in preserving the ‘sanctity’ of Indian culture, asserting ‘films are our Gangotri (holy river Ganges); don’t soil them’ (­Martyris, 2002). With a more contemporary outlook, the question to be raised is whether new independent urban films like Gandu (screened at the London Film Festival 2011, but not certified for general release in India), with often politically and sexually explicit content, are subversive signifiers contesting religious, social and cinematic norms in India. Gandu’s rapid proliferation in India across the Internet through ‘BitTorrent’ (peer-to-peer file sharing) downloads and YouTube (Devasundaram, 2014), prompts further exploration pertaining to the efficacy of film censorship and regulation in the face of new media. An excerpt from an interview with Qaushiq Mukherjee (known as Q), director of the controversial Gandu, throws more light on this area. Q states: Two days back, I found that a preview copy [of the film] had got leaked online. It’s a miracle that we have been able to contain the leak till now despite people in India wanting to watch it for so long. We are lucky that our fans are mature and hadn’t uploaded it earlier. Legally, we can’t do a thing about this leak. We have tried our best to conform to rules even while knowing that they are so draconian. We have faced many roadblocks while screening this movie in India but as responsible producers, we have not broken any laws. Now that the movie is available online, I only hope that it doesn’t become just another film that can be downloaded and watched. One has to keep the idea of protest alive. (Dasgupta, 2011) Wider issues of censorship stemming from Gandu were debated on a primetime television talk show, We the People, on India’s premier news channel, NDTV, under the theme Love, Sex and Cinema (referencing the Indie film, LSD) (Dhingra, 2011). The programme involved a cross-­representational panel from the Indian cinematic sphere, including directors, actors and academics who fielded questions from the public. To some degree, this reflects the exigency of the discourses emerging from within new Indian cinema.

28  Bollywood and the Cinemas of India Prominent amongst these is a sexual consciousness amongst the young urban Indian middle class that is often muffled and undercut by the subordinating spread of nationalistic religious fundamentalism in modern India. Q comments on the broader representation of sexuality in Indian cinema: Cinema is seen as a commodity. I am seriously scared of the kind of movies that are being made. The idea of cinema as a capitalist tool is that it should not provoke the audience, but just provide entertainment  … [about representations of sex] What is there to deal with homosexuality? It’s not something different. Every one of us is polysexual. It is in our culture. Take Kamasutra, Upanishads, Vaishav Bahabali, Shaivak logic, sexuality is mellifluous … the sexual movement has to start rolling again. (Shetty-Saha, 2011) Contrary to the conservative views expressed by the BJP politician mentioned above, open depictions of sexuality and socio-political critique in new urban independent films could themselves be cinematic indicators of a wider new urban social consciousness. To a large degree, the Indies as representative and interpretive filmic intermediaries attempt to address the sexual repression, pre-eminence of political power and censorship that have persisted in Indian cinema and culture. To a significant extent, this assertion resonates with one of the book’s main themes about the Indies’ discourses deviating from the Bollywood norm, often contesting the traditional national narrative and hence evoking censorship. Re-orientation of Indian socio-cultural mores, increased participation in the public sphere, the Indies’ espousal of libertarian narratives that ultimately fall foul of censorship and Bollywood’s overarching omnipotence are all interpenetrating themes that this book will now proceed to examine at length.

Note 1. Bollywood as a term had not yet come into being during the 1950s and 60s. What Shoesmith refers to is actually commercial Hindi cinema which would later become popularised as Bollywood in the post-liberalisation early 1990s.

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30  Bollywood and the Cinemas of India Kabir, N. (2001). Bollywood. London: Channel 4 Books. Khanna, P. (2014). ‘The Brave New World of Indie Films’. ­Hindustan Times. 8  ­December. Available at: http http://www.hindustantimes.com/brunch/thebrave-new-world-of-indie-films/story-WCxWo5GFhiEbedltqs61eM.html [Accessed 8 Aug. 2014]. Kumar, A. (2011). ‘Are You Ready for Change?’ The Hindu. 30 June. Available at: http://www.thehindu.com/features/cinema/are-you-ready-for-change/­article214 7948.ece [Accessed 28 Nov. 2014]. Lutgendorf, P. (2007). ‘Bending the Bharata’, in Pauwels, M (ed.), Indian Literature and Popular Cinema: Recasting Classics. Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Majumdar, N. (2012). ‘Importing Neoliberalism, Exporting Cinema’, in Giovacchini, S. and Sklar, R (eds.) Global neorealism. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Martyris, N. (2002). ‘Films Are Our Gangotri, Don’t Soil Them. Times of India. Available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/stoi/deep-focus/Films-are-ourGangotri-dont-soil-them/articleshow/17288305.cms [Accessed 20 Nov. 2014]. Mehta, M. (2011). Censorship and Sexuality in Bombay Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press. Mishra, V. (2014). ‘Bollywood’, in Thrift, N., Tickell, A., Woolgar, S. and Rupp, W. (eds.) Globalization in Practice. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Needham, A. (2013). New Indian Cinema in Post-independence India. London: Routledge. ‘Peepli Live Scores High at World Cinema Amsterdam, Narrowly Misses Parool Audience Award’ (2011). Economic Times: Entertainment. 27 August. Available at: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-08-27/news/29934945_1_ peepli-live-indian-films-independent-films [Accessed 19 Nov. 2014]. Pendakur, M. (2003). Indian Popular Cinema. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Raghavendra, K M. (2009). ‘Local Resistance to Global Bangalore’, in Gokulsing, M. and Dissanayake, W. (eds.). Popular Culture in a Globalised India. Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Rose, S. (2013). ‘Anurag Kashyap: Bollywood Is to Blame for India’s Inability to Deal with Reality.’ The Guardian. 28 February. Available at: http://www.­guardian. co.uk/film/2013/feb/28/anurag-kashyap-gangs-of-wasseypur [Accessed 19 Nov. 2014]. Roy, G A. (2013). ‘The Politics of Hinglish’, in Wee, L, Goh, R and Lim, L (eds.), The Politics of English. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamin Publishing Company. Shah, K. (2010). Aamir Goes Good Wit Hunting. Times of India. 1 July. Available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/bollywood/news/ Aamir-goes-good-wit-hunting/articleshow/6113549.cms [Accessed 5 Dec. 2014]. Sharma, S., Hutnyk, J. and Sharma, A. (1996). Dis-orienting Rhythms. London: Zed Books. Shetty-Saha, S. (2011). ‘Kaushik Mukherjee: All of Us Are Polysexuals.’ Mid-day.com. 14 July. Available at: http://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/2011/jul/140711Gandu-Kaushik-Mukherjee-Polysexuals-controversial-film.htm [Accessed 19 Nov. 2014]. Shoesmith, B. (2011). ‘Film Industry’, in Kaminsky, A. and Long, R, (eds.) India Today: An Encyclopaedia of Life in the Republic (Vol. 1). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Bollywood and the Cinemas of India  31 ‘Small Budget Movies, Big Box Office Collections’. Times of India.17 December. Available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/bollywood/ news/Small-budget-movies-big-box-office-collections/articleshow/17652606.cms [Accessed 1 Dec. 2014]. Thussu, D. (2008). ‘The Globalisation of “Bollywood”’, in Kavoori, A. and ­Punathambekar, A (eds.). Global Bollywood. New York: New York University Press. Vasudevan, R. (2000). Making Meaning in Indian Cinema. New Delhi: Oxford ­University Press. Vasudevan, R. (2011). The Melodramatic Public. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Velayutham, S. (2008). Tamil Cinema. New York: Routledge. Verma, R. (2011). ‘Beyond Bollywood: Indian Cinema’s New Cutting Edge’. The Guardian. 23 June. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jun/23/ india-independent-cinema [Accessed 19 Nov. 2014]. Verma, R. (2013). ‘Irrfan Khan: Indian Audiences Want Deeper Cinema, Not Massala Films’. Metro: Entertainment. 15 July. Available at: http://metro. co.uk/2013/07/15/irrfan-khan-a-growing-indian-audience-wants-deeper-cinemanot-masala-films-3880411/ [Accessed 14 Oct. 2014]. ­ niversity Virdi, J. (2003). The Cinematic ImagiNation, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U Press.

2 The Meta-Hegemony Leviathan Bollywood and Lilliputian Indies

This chapter introduces an original system that will be referred to as a ‘meta-hegemony’, with the aim of facilitating a deeper understanding of the underlying historical hegemony involving Bollywood, other forms of Indian cinema, such as the new Indies, and Hollywood. One way to interpret the concept of a meta-hegemony is to imagine a hegemony within a hegemony. This proposition is conceptualised through the assertion that Bollywood dominates Indian cinematic culture whilst itself being subservient to a larger global Hollywood hegemony (Hirji, 2005, 2010). Hollywood’s ownership of close to 90 percent of the films exhibited across the globe underpins its pervasive power as a dominant proponent of globalisation (Jess-Cooke, 2009: 118). Bollywood, often considered a ‘Third World imitation’ of H ­ ollywood, has witnessed enhanced levels of global visibility through corporate branding strategies (R Roy, 2011: 99). Alessio and Langer (2010) argue that Bollywood is currently contesting Hollywood’s homogenisation and hegemony of ‘cinematic production, both economically and ideologically’ (Alessio and Langer, 2010: 168). Adrian Athique considers Bollywood’s new corporate model to be ‘still well short of anything comparable to a Hollywood studio’ (Athique, 2012: 141). However, Bollywood’s growing global influence is characterised by accentuated exoteric marketing strategies that incorporate new agreements with Hollywood. This includes the sharing of filming locations and co-productions, suggesting augmented co-operation between these two global cinema industries (‘Hollywood, Bollywood’, 2010; Thussu, 2013: 146). The investment of $500 million by Indian industrialist Anil Ambani’s company, Reliance Entertainment, in Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks – a partnership that co-produced 2012 Oscar-winner Lincoln – reflects increasing Indian corporate investment in Hollywood (Thussu, 2013: 147). Hollywood’s intensifying interest in the Indian market is visible in Sony Pictures and ­Warner Bros recent investments in Bollywood (‘Hollywood Meets’, 2009). These vicissitudes in the ongoing Hollywood/Bollywood arbitration, manifested in contestations and collaborations, forms the outer layer of the meta-hegemony. In the context of this book’s focus on new independent Indian cinema, the paradigm of a global meta-hegemony will focus on its Indian inner workings – Bollywood’s hegemony in modern Indian cinema.

The Meta-Hegemony  33 The Indian dimension of the meta-hegemonic configuration has evolved historiographically over India’s postcolonial cinematic timeline, with Bollywood gaining pre-eminence in the post-globalisation Indian cinemascape. As mentioned above, the outer layer of meta-hegemony involving Hollywood and Bollywood is undergoing a transformation due to current reorientations and intensifying interrelations between the two industries against the backdrop of globalisation. The meta-hegemony’s inner contours – Bollywood’s dominance over other forms of Indian cinema – is also in a contemporary state of flux. The emergence and growth of the new Indies since 2010 in the Bollywood-dominated terrain (Verma, 2011) forms the linchpin of this realignment within Indian cinema. The Indian context of the cinema meta-hegemony contains three dimensions. The first aspect is Bollywood’s monopoly of the Indian film industry’s modes of production, distribution, exhibition and capital generation. This monopoly has occurred with the marginalisation of other alternative forms of Indian cinema, including the new Indies. The second feature implicates Bollywood in the ideological propagation of a monolithic post-­globalisation national master narrative of consumer capitalism and affluence whilst ­retaining gendered roles and ‘traditional Indian values’. This juxtaposition of globalisation and tradition is commensurate with Bollywood’s role as national cultural signifier of India’s neoliberal turn. The third facet of ­Bollywood’s role in the meta-hegemony is its validation as a state-endorsed instrument of national soft power, signifying Bollywood’s branding as a national and global commodity. In relation to the first feature of meta-hegemony – the dynamics of funding, exhibition and economic returns – Bollywood generates almost half of all capital revenue in India’s filmmaking industry (see Chapter 1). This is despite the relatively small proportion of Bollywood releases in comparison with the multiple regional vernacular film industries in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala (Kaminsky and Long, 2011: 247–248). Bollywood also monopolises the urban multiplex cinema space (Athique and Hill, 2010: 203) constricting the pathway to exhibition of independent films. Bollywood’s strategic alliances with multinational media production houses (Athique, 2012: 141) such as Viacom 18 and Fox Star Studios, indicates the mainstream film industry’s greater access to and mobilisation of capital. These factors demonstrate Bollywood’s dominance, particularly in light of the industry’s concentration within the contours of one city (Mumbai), and its exclusive use of the Hindi language (in a polyglot nation), a strategic ‘political statement’ in line with ‘Nationalists committed to Hindi as a national language’ (Kaminsky and Long, 2011: 247). The cultural composition of the Indian national metanarrative is largely framed by Bollywood, in contrast with the often polemical and multifarious content of the Indies. This configuration involves Bollywood’s adoption of audio-visual strategies containing ideologies of ‘nation, communalism,

34  The Meta-Hegemony religion, gender and sexuality’ (Dudrah, 2012: 7) that has intensified in the face of the dominant industry’s post-globalisation focus on cultivating the interest of diasporic Indians (Gopal, 2011b: 18). Bollywood’s ascendancy and, ultimately, its apotheosis have occurred in conjunction with and often at the behest of state-sanctioned neoliberal strategies. The Indian state in its thrust towards a free market economy has perceived the capital-generating potential in Bollywood’s global branding and affirmed the industry as an ambassador of Indian cultural soft power (Thussu, 2013: 131). In elucidating the Indian cinema context of the meta-hegemony, it is possible to start with an ostensibly rudimentary, yet perennial, source of polemic – the antecedents of the term ‘Bollywood’ itself.

Melding Neoliberalism and Religion in the National Narrative The genesis of the term Bollywood continues to constitute a site of conflicting views, opinions and debate. Bollywood can be broadly described as Hindi films targeted at the ‘commercial mass-market and produced in Mumbai’ (Alessio and Langer, 2010: 168). Several scholars concur that ‘Bollywood refers to the popular Hindi film genre associated with the now-globalised Mumbai’s Hindi film culture industry’ (Desai and Dudrah, 2008: 2). Although the moniker ‘Bollywood’ has traditionally been co-opted to refer to popular Hindi cinema, it is suggested that ‘Bollywood’ has actually delinked from serving ‘as a reference to Mumbai cinema’ and instead ‘has almost universally been adopted as a convenient label’ to refer to the entirety of Indian cinema (A G. Roy and Chua, 2012: iv). Florian Stadtler (2014: 10) contends that ‘Bollywood’ is commonly used ‘as a blanket generalisation’ to subsume the multifarious forms of other Indian film, including ‘arthouse, regional and middle cinemas’. Satellite television channels aimed at the Indian diaspora disseminate the term ­Bollywood, as do terrestrial television channels, such as the UK’s Channel 4, in its annual Indian film season (ibid.). Contemporary scholars of Indian cinema suggest that this umbrella use of the term as a metonymic reference to the multiplicity of Indian cinema has since been superseded and ­Bollywood now encompasses the Indian entertainment and media industries as a whole (Dudrah, 2012; Rajadhyaksha, 2003). This contention confirms ­Bollywood’s current dominance in the field of Indian entertainment and indeed in national culture. As mentioned earlier, the establishment of Bollywood’s supremacy, cementing its position as national cultural arbiter, has been concurrent with Bollywood’s articulation of the national narrative, particularly its conspicuous role in the scripting of a post-liberalisation paradigm. For the sake of clarity, this book locates the term ‘Bollywood’ as emerging concomitant with India’s 1991 shift towards neoliberalism, primarily because this period witnessed the permeation of ‘Bollywood’ into common parlance (Gopal, 2011a: 14).

The Meta-Hegemony  35 Dudrah (2012: 5) observes that Bollywood’s enunciation of ‘Indian c­ ultural nationalism in and through entertainment’ intensified in the post-­ globalisation milieu, reaching a crescendo in 1998 when it received official industry status from the Indian government. Ashish Rajadhyaksha (2003) cites ‘Bollywoodization’ as a significant development in the transitional ­process of India’s globalisation during the 1990s, through which popular Hindi cinema gained predominance as the hegemonic epicentre of Indian ­cinema. A term now used transglobally to signify the national cinema of India, Bollywood represents a mode of cultural production across the national and international contexts that is ‘inextricably linked to the Indian nation-state and the postcolonial economy of liberalization’ (Dudrah and Desai, 2008: 2). The state’s incorporation of Bollywood as an ally in the thrust towards a capitalist economy signifies the state’s perpetuation of a ‘pedagogical mission’ (Rajadhyaksha, 2003: 36), a proposition that resonates with the thesis of a homogenising pedagogical narrative of the nation. Rajadhyaksha, with some percipience, presages a sustained neoliberal cinematic turn. He describes the profusion of product placement in post-globalisation Bollywood films in the 1990s as a harbinger of future funding strategies and multinational corporate alliances in commercial Indian cinema. Rajadhyaksha states: the range of consumables increasingly visible on film screens – Stroh’s beer in DDLJ, Coca-Cola in Taal, Swatch watches in Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani – are symptomatic of the nature of funding that the cinema increasingly depends upon. If so, it would be the final irony of the Bollywoodization of the Indian cinema that the very demand that the industry has sought for from the government for so many decades could be the reason for its demise. The arrival of corporate-­ industrial-finance capital could reasonably lead to the final triumph of Bollywood, even as the cinema itself gets reduced only to a memory, a part of the nostalgia industry. (Rajadhyaksha, 2003: 37) Whilst the legacy of the above events elaborated by Rajadhyaksha has not entailed the annihilation of Indian cinema per se, it has significantly led to Bollywood becoming indistinguishable from the brand it has come to represent. Therefore, the neoliberal project endorsed by India’s post-­globalisation governments has segued into the successful commodification, branding and global franchising of Bollywood itself as India’s predominant cultural export. Rajadhyaksha perceives the post-liberalisation Bollywood narrative as the enduring articulation of the postcolonial Indian nation-state and its grand narrative. He discerns ‘ghosts of past trends’ in modern Bollywood blockbuster narratives with their ‘claims of commitment to family values’ and ‘feel-good-happy-ending’ romance that carries the tag of ‘our culture’

36  The Meta-Hegemony (Rajadhyaksha, 2003: 36). In this context, the hegemonic dominance of commercial Hindi cinema traces back to the Bombay film studio productions in the 1950s, with films underscoring the ‘authenticity’ of culturally specific, indigenous, socio-religious tropes. Popular Hindi cinema has traditionally propagated nationalist ideology (Alessio and Langer, 2010: 168), from films such as Awara (1951) and Shri 420 (1956) to Mother India (1957) (Chakravarty, 1993: 134, 149, 152). Faiza Hirji (2010: 14) argues that the nationalist discourse in early Indian popular cinema largely remains intact in contemporary popular Indian films. Whilst concurring with Hirji’s assertion, it could be argued that there has been a reconfiguration of the postcolonial nationalist narrative’s traditional or indigenous focus mentioned above to accommodate India’s neoliberal turn of the early 1990s. This transmuted traditional-neoliberal narrative combines nationalist Hindu ideology and consumer capitalism; legitimised and proliferated in several Bollywood film representations. In effect, the nation’s current neoliberal national narrative is a legacy of the 1990s globalisation-induced disjuncture, a fissure that also punctuated and realigned Bollywood’s narrative towards the neoliberal. India’s ­current dyadic traditional/neoliberal national narrative reflects contradictions produced by the globalisation template of ‘American-style cultural imperialism’  – open market economy and democratic rule (Lechner and Boli, 2010: 415). These co-existing components of liberalised free market and democratic governance ‘[encourage] the unregulated pursuit of self-interest’, and simultaneously ‘[stress] deliberate collective control of social affairs’ (ibid.). In India, the democratic state’s uniform application of a neoliberalising agenda through deregulation and exhortations to foreign multinational investment has spilled over into the common social goal of urbanisation, enterprise and economic mobility. Essentially, the dichotomising effect of globalisation in India into domains of the ‘material and spiritual’ (Chatterjee, 1993: 5) characterises Bollywood’s shift from ‘postcolonial form’, articulating national values and traditions, to its current role as transglobal emissary of India’s ‘new consumer community’ (V. Mishra, 2014: 198). This cinematic shift is coterminous with India’s journey from postindependence Nehruvian socialism to present Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of neoliberalism. Rini Bhattacharya Mehta, (2011) states that mapping the forty years of postcolonial India’s construction of nation presents a labyrinthine proposition. She broadly traces the shifting dynamics of nation building, from the purportedly socialist credo of the postindependence Nehruvian era that nevertheless suppressed calls for land reforms and the equitable distribution of resources, to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian quelling of leftist movements in northeastern states like West Bengal in the late 1960s and early 1970s (R B Mehta, 2011b: 4). The preclusion of India’s constitutional postcolonial socialist ideals reinscribed a legacy of alterity, marginalisation and disparity in Indian society.

The Meta-Hegemony  37 This was manifested in the economically impoverished ­‘lumpenproletariat’ in rural and urban areas, subaltern farmers and in general those at the bottom rung of the caste system, including the tribal Adivasis and Dalits (R B Mehta, 2011: 4; Rycroft, 2012: 257). These groups and their concerns remained largely unaddressed by the nation’s investment in economic ­liberalisation in the 1990s, owing to the state’s tendentious privileging of the entrepreneurial elite and the ascendency of an Indian bourgeois consumer class. Narrative themes portraying the socio-economic divide pervading ­various sectors of Indian society were a characteristic feature of the Parallel cinema of the 1970s and 80s. Commercial Hindi cinema in the 1970s and 80s that would later become popularised as Bollywood occasionally attempted to couch portrayals of marginalised individuals contesting unjust systems in the grammar of entertainment, encapsulating all the human emotions and providing ‘value for money’. For example, the ‘angry young man’ personified by Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan (Schaefer and Karan, 2013: 93) in films such as ­Deewar (1975), Zanjeer (1973) and Coolie (1983) represented main characters or ‘heroes’ whose low income and social anomie precipitated sometimes ­violent and radical action against the system and its injustices. These films often represented disenfranchised maverick, working-class crusaders whilst sanctifying and nurturing a national narrative that preserved a traditional Indian moral and value system. Hirji points out that whilst Bollywood films may occasionally engage with socio-cultural concerns, these issues will almost always be resolved without jeopardising ‘the societal status quo’ (Hirji, 2010: 30). Hirji’s observation of the genre’s sustenance of status quo alludes to the ideological dimensions of Bollywood’s meta-hegemony. An addendum to Hirji’s assertion is that Bollywood, whilst reiterating the status quo, simultaneously fortifies the status quo ante. This is in terms of some Bollywood films’ invariable restoration of a hoary ‘historic’ shared value system steeped in mythologised traditions and family values that are encoded into neoliberal lifestyles, particularly in post-liberalisation films such as Hum Aapke Hain Koun …! (1994) and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayega (DDLJ, 1995), popularly known as HAHK and DDLJ (Ganti, 2013: 100). This imagined historic commonality could be related to Bhabha’s mythic time or to the pedagogical shared narrative of the nation’s past. Bollywood, in its meta-hegemonic role, also reinforces pedagogical nationalist ideology through a cinematic conventionalising of patriarchal, heteronormative and gendered idioms. Components of this national narrative include the fetishisation of partisan nationalism and adherence to traditional ‘rules of Indian/Hindu culture’, such as deference to parents and elders and the primacy of marriage and family (Hirji, 2005, 2010). Hum Aapke Hain Koun …!, one of the most successful Bollywood films of the globalisation decade of the 1990s, is a case in point. Patriarchal dominance is uncontested and formalised in the film, whilst aspirational, opulent consumer lifestyles are upheld as the benchmark for the average urban Indian

38  The Meta-Hegemony family (Hirji, 2010; Chatterji, 1998: 6). In films such as Karan Johar’s Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham (2001), diasporic Indian identities collapse into Bollywood’s representations of inviolate Indianness. Raminder Kaur (2005: 326) argues that Bollywood propagates the notion of India as the hegemonic nucleus of ‘authentic’ Indian identity, where the ‘metalanguage’ of Bollywood is imperative in identity formation. India then assumes the form of an all-encompassing central figurehead – the fountainhead of all Indian identities – where diasporic Indian is subservient to ‘authentic’ Indian (ibid.). This leads to the reestablishment of orientalist hegemonies that in this instance are the result of an overarching self-­orientalising (Kaur, 2005; 324; Mazzarella, 2003: 138, 178), under the meta-hegemonic Bollywood superstructure. India’s tryst with globalisation in 1991 marked a transformative transition in the trajectory of commercial Hindi cinema, with Bollywood’s focus shifting from aam aadmi (a common person) to amir aadmi (a rich ­person) – a member of the aspirational, affluent Indian middle-class. R B Mehta argues that Bollywood redefined its narrative, aligning itself with this period of neoliberal economic expansion, ‘naturalising the free-floating non-resident Indian (NRI) as an essentialist cultural signifier’ and disseminating ‘various capital-driven phenomena in India’ (including basketball and Valentine’s Day). (2011: 4–5) In effect, the Bollywood prototype of traditional ‘Indian’ morals and values transmogrified into a conduit for the celebration of nouveau riche ostentation and opulence – a new global Indian identity. Globalisation in the 1990s witnessed the denationalisation of Indian television and its hitherto sole representative, the state-run TV channel Doordarshan. The democratisation of the Indian airwaves in the early 1990s led to an inundation of corporate-owned satellite TV channels (Punathambekar, 2013: 94). At the forefront was Rupert Murdoch’s STAR TV network, ushering in an era of CNN and Fox TV in India that according to R B Mehta led to the ‘drowning of legitimate political discourses on the ground’ (2011: 5). This deluge of media overwhelming urban India and either suppressing or misrepresenting marginal narratives is a theme broached in Peepli Live, one of the independent films analysed in this book (See Chapter 9). Some scholars suggest that capital interests, particularly those of corporate TV news channels, precipitate skewed representations that appease political and elite classes, consequently smothering dissent by creating ‘a niche where anti-government, or anti-populist may actually mean anti-people’ (ibid.). Bollywood emerged in recent years as a strong ally of corporate media such as Sony, Fox and Star (Kaur, 2005: 326). Alongside alliances with multinational corporates, in a preponderance of post-globalisation Bollywood films ‘affluence rising out of globalisation and India’s presumed role in it became the diegetic signifier for national value or pride’ (R B Mehta, 2011: 5). This incipient prosperity for privileged sections of Indian society lay in stark contrast with the spiralling socio-economic disparity evident in the lack of basic amenities, access to drinking water and crumbling infrastructure, leading

The Meta-Hegemony  39 to the further degradation of an already impoverished Indian underclass (Gokulsing and Dissanayake, 2009: 4; R B Mehta, 2011: 4). Whilst elucidating Bollywood’s collaboration with corporate media and the former’s encomium of India’s burgeoning bourgeoisie affluence, it is important to note that this engagement with capitalism is at the behest of and in collusion with political and ideological power structures (Kaur, 2005: 326). Concurrent with India’s engagement with globalisation in the early 1990s was an upsurge in Hindu nationalism, particularly with the growing prominence of the right-wing Hindu nationalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party). Ideological adjuncts to the popular rise of right-wing Hindu politics included the twin notions of Hindutva (Hinduness) and ‘Hindu rashtra (nation)’ (Rycroft, 2012: 256). These propositions justify Étienne Balibar’s assertion that ‘nationalisms of liberation’ have transformed into ‘nationalisms of domination’ (Balibar, 1991: 46). Relating Balibar’s proposition to the historiographical context of this study, the ‘nationalism of liberation’ accompanying India’s post-independence nation-building exercise has transformed into the present post-globalisation domination of Hindu nationalist ideology, neoliberalism and Bollywood. Mita Banerjee (2011) argues that Bollywood is a ‘deeply Hindu scenario’, aligning itself with the majority Hindu ideology and propagating an almost fundamentalist Hindu vision of nationalism. This has transpired under the thinly veiled ‘lip service’ to the ‘idea of India as a multi-ethnic society’ (ibid.). For example, the Bollywood science-fiction film Koi Mil Gaya (‘I Found Someone’, 2003), strategically conceived to contest Hollywood’s hegemony of the sci-fi genre in India, was also a vehicle to promote Hindu iconography and ideology, underscoring the theme of India’s unadulterated Hindu identity (Alessio and Langer, 2010: 168). According to Alessio and Langer, Koi Mil Gaya ‘openly celebrates the country’s indigenous Hindu identity – at the expense of other imported religions such as Islam and Christianity – and depicts the image of an advanced, middle-class and prosperous India’ (ibid.). This assertion captures the general mainstream cinema milieu in post-­globalisation India, where films articulate a national identity that is predominantly ‘uppercaste, upper-middle class, Hindi-speaking, and Hindu’ (Hirji, 2010: 31; Alessandrini, 2003: 323). The above arguments and assertions encapsulate Bollywood’s conjoining of majoritarian religio-economic interests. The mainstream cinema industry’s alignment with Hindu nationalist ideology and politics was marked by the association of several Bollywood stars with the BJP and the extreme-right Shiv Sena in the late 1990s (Alessio and Langer, 2010: 164; Banker, 2001: 68; Gangadhar, 1999). Banerjee (2011) mentions the ambivalent dilemma faced by the traditionalist Hindu right, under the banner of the BJP, of negotiating the proliferation of ‘profligate’ yet lucrative ‘Western capitalism’ in India, but still preserving the notion of Hindu national purity. This quandary resulted in the Hindu political right perceiving the economic benefits of this late capitalism and undertaking a ‘wooing’ of diasporic or ‘non-resident Indian’ investment, although still

40  The Meta-Hegemony preserving the notion that diasporic or NRI investment, in general, was ‘contaminated by the West’ (Desai, 2004: 184). Irrespective of polarised perceptions, the liberalisation of the 1990s ­witnessed a plenitude of NRI investment in the Indian economy, with net ‘NRI inflows rising from 1.5 billion dollars in 1990–1991 to 3.6 ­billion in 2003–2004’ and ‘total NRI deposits at 33 billion in March 2005’ (Nayak, 2008: 156). Bollywood in tandem with presiding political forces capitalised on the commercial possibilities in this ambivalent zeitgeist of consumer capitalism and cultural conservatism. Bollywood accomplished this by crystallising narratives that posited an inviolate and unadulterated Indian authenticity as emerging from within the geographical demarcations of India, and through the privileging of ‘Hindu’ as metonymic of India. Bollywood’s role as cinematic motor for nationalist narratives is concomitant with the broader, post-liberalisation rise of religio-political interventions in cultural production. Desai (2004) observes that although the mainstream Hindutva political groups, such as the ruling BJP, perceived monetary advantages in their dalliance with globalisation and late capitalism, several of the BJP’s hard-line fundamentalist ancillaries adopted a more virulent and incendiary anti-liberalisation and anti-Western posture (Desai, 2004: 182–183). The BJP’s intransigence is pertinent to new independent cinema, particularly in relation to their evoking discourses of regulation and censorship. Also relevant is the vigilantism gratuitously exercised by organisations such as the aforementioned far-right Shiv Sena, who act as moral police, incorporating violent methods to proscribe cinema they deem contrary to Indian values (Desai, 2004: 151; Gopinath, 2005: 130). Echoes of past incidents, such as the disrupted screenings of Fire, a film depicting a lesbian relationship, reverberate in the recent banning of films, such as Unfreedom (2015), also portraying lesbianism, Papilio Buddha (2013), about the Dalit minority community, and disrupted public screenings of Gandu (2010) (see Chapter 6). Even Bollywood’s meta-hegemony is not immune to internal divisions commensurate with the current upsurge of religious nationalism under the Modi government. A case in point is the vituperation directed at Aamir Khan and his wife, Kiran Rao, by senior Bollywood BJP affiliates such as the actor Anupam Kher in reprisal for Khan’s public expression of concern about rising intolerance in India. In addition to the abuse Khan received from conservative political parties and right-wing Bollywood figures, the aftermath of his statements saw a call amongst sections of the public to boycott online e-commerce web portals and products endorsed by the actor. This could be seen as a form of capitalistic retribution against a figurehead of the commercial Indian cinema industry. During an NDTV live debate, prominent writer Shobha De classified this economic ostracism of Aamir Khan as ‘commercial terrorism’ (Dutt, 2015). This imbroglio is highlighted by the almost instantaneous political and public denunciation of Aamir Khan, irrespective

The Meta-Hegemony  41 of his status as Bollywood brand ambassador for the Indian government’s international Incredible India tourism campaign. Current divisions within Bollywood can be framed by the sudden drawing of differentiating lines around Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan, two Muslim actors, as a reaction to their public expressions of uneasiness about rising intolerance. These events may prove a litmus test of the veneer of neutrality and masquerade of apolitical benignity that Bollywood seems compelled to adopt in the face of its larger capital interests. The ascendancy of Hindu nationalism also has a correlation to the ­suppression of female subjectivities in film representations (Gopinath, 2005: 130). This is particularly the case in the arena of lesbian identities that are subsumed in a general normativising of women in Bollywood’s ‘sanitizing of “home” space’ (Gopinath, 2005: 130).

Gendering the Nation This section argues that Bollywood has inscribed its meta-hegemony through reductionist representations of women and patriarchal imaginings of nation, which seems in accordance with the state agenda. Bollywood’s patriarchal imaginings of gender emphasise the new Indies’ divergence from normative/heteronormative representations and, by that token, their deviations from the national narrative. They also highlight the prominence of female directors and film protagonists in the Indies, most recently in Leena Yadav’s Parched (2015) and the first all-female ‘buddy’ film, Angry Indian Goddesses, directed by Pan Nalin (Aigthefilm.com, 2015). In this context, the directors of two key Indie films, Dhobi Ghat and Peepli Live (analysed in Chapters 8 and 9 of this volume), are women. Faiza Hirji (2005, 2010) analyses the gendering of roles for women in Bollywood narratives. She argues that this gendered imagination of the nation restricts women to the function of marriage, childbearing and the imparting of national ideals and traditions to offspring (Hirji, 2010: 15). Hirji identifies the trope of the ‘Mother figure’, and sees Bollywood’s strategy of reinforcing the deification of the Mother and the ‘protection’ of women in general as symbolic of the nation as ‘feminine’, thus creating a space for ‘inevitable return’ (ibid.). ­Hirji’s reading of the Mother as metaphorical of India is reminiscent of a similar theme in Mother India (1957), often cited as ‘India’s most revered film’ (Creekmur, 2007: 178). Mother India’s title character, eponymously inspired by Hindu mythological mother goddess ‘Radha’, is figurative of the newly liberated Indian nation (ibid.). Affixing a monadic, intemerate Hindu identity to an originary point or logos of newly emerged nation is baseless, incompatible and ­incongruous with the integrally heterogeneous composition of pre- and postcolonial India. Hirji cites Shahnaz Khan’s (2009: 87) assertion of a general ‘linear narrative of Hindu supremacy’, which Hirji argues is perpetuated by Bollywood in effacement of ‘India’s historic pluralism’ (Hirji, 2010: 14).

42  The Meta-Hegemony Nandini Bhattacharya (2012) also perceives the coterminous presence of patriarchal primacy and Hindu fundamentalist ideology in post-globalisation Bollywood films. She observes a ‘violently gendered Hindutva’, paradoxically steeped in India’s neoliberal consumerism that has shaped a modern Hindu identity – one that functions as the engine for Bollywood’s globalisation aesthetic (Bhattacharya, 2012: 136). Bollywood’s gendered design appears congruent with the state’s larger patriarchal imagining of nation and India’s current socio-political entrenchment in a dominant, right-wing Hindu identity. The trope of traditional rectitude manifested in the sexually pure and morally inviolable Indian woman – the personification of ‘Mother India’ – continues to be articulated in several modern Bollywood films, including Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (‘Run Milkha Run’, 2013), a biopic about Olympic athlete Milkha Singh. Monika Mehta (2011) points out a dual dilemma, asserting that Bollywood’s perpetuation of sexualised and objectified women disguises the equally disconcerting, yet often overlooked portrayals of ‘the good self-­sacrificing wife, the long-suffering mother or the dutiful daughter’ (M. Mehta, 2011: 55). This contention is perceptible in Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, where female characters either represent paragons of Indian virtue or s­ exual objects – obstacles for the film’s hero to hurdle in his unswerving path towards attaining athletic apotheosis for the nation. M Mehta perceives in the retrenchment and recurrence of implicit stereotypical representations of dutiful women the designs of the postcolonial state in encouraging the ‘reformation of patriarchal alliances in the Indian nation-state’ (M Mehta, 2011a: 55–56). This strategy was amplified during the post-globalisation period, ‘when the Indian family was assumed to be under threat’ (ibid.). The state’s ‘hidden agenda’ of normalising patriarchy is explicitly articulated in the Bollywood family sagas of the 1990s mentioned earlier. It is also embedded in Bollywood’s enduring credo of providing ‘wholesome family entertainment’, despite the prevalence of violence and sexuality, that is visited particularly on women in popular films (Hood, 2009: 4). The significance of Bollywood’s rendering of patriarchy folds into the tripartite facets of Bollywood’s meta-hegemony. Bollywood’s maledominated narrative is particularly relevant to the industry’s mirroring of the state’s pedagogical national narrative, in addition to the two other features of meta-hegemony: the state’s validation of Bollywood as soft power, and the mainstream industry’s monopoly of entertainment in India.An on-screen privileging of masculine roles co-exists with Bollywood’s disparate remuneration system (Hirji, 2010: 27), where female lead actors receive a tenth of the fee commanded by Bollywood’s male stars (‘Bollywood Women’, 2014). Such systemic irregularities aside, the female figure (the female body, not the female pay-scale) has undergone a makeover, congruent with the uninhibited proliferation of consumer capitalism.

The Meta-Hegemony  43 Female ‘heroines’ appeared in obligatory sexualised song and dance sequences in several Bollywood films in the 1970s and 80s, including Zeenat Amman in Qurbani (1980), Parveen Babi in Shaan (1980) and Rekha in Jaanbaaz (1986) (S. Mishra, 2013: 185). Lead actresses (heroines) who featured in sexually suggestive sequences retained their moral legitimacy by dint of their association with an incorruptible male hero. A heroine’s momentary indulgence in such forms of moral turpitude as the song and dance routine was exculpated in the minds of the audience by her eventual return to the sanctum sanctorum of ‘traditional’ Indian purity and moral probity. This was a distinction not afforded the femme fatale or ‘vamp’ figure – the stylised seductress who, along with the ‘heroine’, populated song and dance set-pieces of pre-globalisation popular Hindi cinema. Smeeta Mishra asserts that the ‘vamp’ in Bollywood cinema often embodied the somatic ‘site for stereotypical portrayal of minorities, especially minority women’, reflecting Bollywood’s orientalist othering of its own minorities (2013: 185). Mishra foregrounds this contention with the example of Bollywood’s enduring ‘vamp’ – the actress Helen, who appeared in several Bollywood films as a perpetually exoticised figure – the archetypal ‘vamp’. Mirroring her own hybrid Anglo-Indian parentage, Helen’s onscreen personae were invariably ‘outsiders’ from India’s marginal communities  – tribals, Christians and Anglo-Indians (ibid.). In this regard, vamps were often named Rosie or Mary and prominently displayed dissolute ‘Western vices’ of sexual promiscuity, smoking and drinking (Gokulsing and Dissanayake, 2004: 79). Early commercial Hindi films’ vamp/heroine dichotomy concealed ideological bifurcations, where the female body became the battleground of virtuous ‘Indianness’ versus Westernised vice (Mazumdar, 2007: 80; S.  Mishra, 2013: 182;). The transformative potency of India’s neoliberal turn in the 1990s is epitomised by the refashioning of the earlier vamp trope into an updated readjustment to match India’s globalising, capital-oriented milieu. In effect, the faultlines of India’s liberalisation spawned the metamorphosis of the pre-globalisation vamp into the post-globalisation ‘item girl’. It turned earlier commercial Hindi cinema’s cabaret- style song and dance sequence (Gopal, 2011a: 40) into the modern pièce de résistance ‘item number’. The item number is a sexualised stand-alone musical set-piece, largely unrelated to the film’s plot and primarily aimed at arousing the male voyeuristic gaze (S. Mishra, 2013: 185–186; A. G. Roy, 2011: 42). Conventions of the item number position the hypersexualised item girl as the centre of attention, encircled by a plethora of men. The item girl’s body is strategically located as the sexualised object of an exclusively male scopophilic desire (see Figs. 2.1 and 2.2).

44  The Meta-Hegemony

Figure 2.1  ‘Vamp’ Helen in the 1970 film, The Train.

Figure 2.2  Katrina Kaif’s item number, ‘Chikni Chameli’, in 2012’s Agneepath.

In essence, the transition from risquée vamp to hypersexualised item girl – femme fatale to female sex object, involved the repackaging, productification and subsequent showcasing of the female form. A. G. Roy (2011) argues that the item number is Bollywood’s strategy to capitalise on latent prurient desires ‘to generate publicity, to guarantee the film’s box office

The Meta-Hegemony  45 success and [to] ensure repeat viewings’ (A. G. Roy, 2011: 42). This agenda has resulted in the item number becoming an obligatory and indispensible facet of modern Bollywood. In an interview, independent filmmaker Onir problematises Bollywood’s current fetishisation of the item number, perceiving it as a manifestation of the nation’s entrenched misogynistic attitudes towards women (Onir, personal communication, 2013). He questions the normativisation of Bollywood’s item numbers in a nation beset with the problems of rape and violence against women and argues: In India there are societies where a woman’s only job is to dance at weddings and then they are raped. So what is shown in an item number is actually the profession of those women. So this furthers the notion that women are meant to be items for money, to be dancing like that … you throw money and touch them whenever you want to, and an 8-year-old boy or girl seeing this grows up accepting that as the norm. (Onir, personal communication, 2003) Onir’s assertion carries the undercurrents of a national discourse surrounding the spate of recent rape cases in India. This in turn implicates the commercial cinema industry’s passivity towards the reality of rape, elided by larger capital interests (Mangalwala, 2013). This preoccupation with economic and entertainment interests encompasses social attitudes. Prominent Indian film critic Rajeev Masand extolled hit item number Shiela ki Jawani as ‘a sight to behold’, whilst leading daily The Times of India conferred on it the ‘hottest item song of the year’ award, based on 343,000 readership votes (S. Mishra, 2013: 187). A recent worldwide UN study on women in popular cinema places Indian films at the top of a global list in terms of representing ‘attractive women’, out of which 35 percent are depicted with ‘some nudity’ (Singh, 2014). The study also indicated magnified levels of popular Indian films exhibiting sexualised female characters, contrasted with diminished depictions of ‘women in significant speaking roles and as engineers and scientists’ (ibid.). Bollywood’s lack of proportional female representation is in sharp contrast with several new Indies, including I Am, Parched, Ship of Theseus, Dhobi Ghat and Peepli Live, with prominent female roles. Inferring from the above points, the commercial value of the item number seems to take precedence in Bollywood. This can be calibrated by this musical motif’s reception amongst national and diasporic Indian audiences as a celebratory gesture of ‘Indianness’. This laudatory reception has largely contributed to the serialisation of the item song in contemporary Bollywood films. The new Indies’ circumvention of the item number is a relevant feature of their positioning in the interstices, outside some of the obligatory cinematic conventions of the mainstream.

46  The Meta-Hegemony The Bollywood phenomenon of (product) placing exoticised female figures on display, folds into the metanarrative of neoliberal consumerism. The item girl in her encompassing item number appears to be packaged and propagated as a globalised product. Recent films have augmented the marketability of item numbers, enlisting the services of Canadian-Indian pornographic film actress turned Bollywood star, Sunny Leone, in item numbers such as ‘Pink Lips’ from the film Hate Story 2 (2014). Recent big-budget blockbuster Dhoom 3 (2013) features a pole-dance by British-Indian Bollywood star Katrina Kaif in an item number entitled ‘Kamli’. Kaif performs the sensual pole-dance, incrementally divesting herself of her clothe, and pleasuring the male gaze in the form of actor Aamir Khan’s character, seated directly in front of the dancing Kaif (Fig. 2.3). Canadian-Indian filmmaker Nisha Pahuja’s documentary, The World Before Her (2013), could be adopted as a touchstone to compare the prolific supply of Bollywood item numbers proportional to the demand for sexualised female representations from Indian audiences. One sequence in The World Before Her portrays a group of young urban middle-class ‘Miss India’ beauty pageant contestants at a boot camp in preparation for the final event. Pageant director Marc Robinson reveals how he has nurtured an enduring ‘vision of putting cloaks on women, so we can’t see their faces and only their legs and then decide who has the best pair of legs’. Fulfilling his fantasy, Robinson presides over the ‘hot legs’ training session, where he commands the Miss India contestants to show off their legs. The subsequent shots capture the women with heads and torsos covered in linen sacks, leaving only their legs exposed, as they ‘catwalk’ down the ramp for Robinson’s viewing pleasure (Figs. 2.4 and 2.5). One of the girls makes an ironic remark about ‘escape from the Taliban’, referring to the participants’ shrouded faces.

Figure 2.3  Miss India training session.

The Meta-Hegemony  47

Figure 2.4  Marc Robinson examines ‘hot legs’.

Robinson’s misogynistic objectification of the female participants reflects the wider prevalence of a patriarchal psyche. The endemic commodification and sexualisation of women in Indian popular culture blurs the distinction between representation and reality – between the Bollywood item number and the stark actuality of gender-based repression in India. In order to infuse a transglobal exoticism to the item number, Bollywood has solicited guest appearances from global artistes such as Samantha Fox, Denise Richards and Kylie Minogue (Ramesh, 2009). Overall, it is fair to state that the female figure in modern commercial Hindi cinema, like Bollywood itself, appears suspended in a limbo, between materialism and tradition. The discussion thus far has related to the theoretical proposition of a totalising pedagogical national narrative that marginalises the mosaic of multifarious other discourses in India. The arguments raised up to this point implicate Bollywood’s role and indeed its complicity in reinforcing a homogenising master narrative. Recent developments, including Bollywood’s investment in several new Indies, suggest Bollywood is shedding the skin of its enduring monolithic form and is hybridising itself in order to present an au courant commercial package, commensurate with its broader global/local industry ambitions. This thesis seems plausible, considering statistical extrapolations of the burgeoning Indian media and entertainment industry, which stood at 584 billion rupees in 2008 and was forecasted to grow at 12.5 percent to reach 1,052 billion rupees in 2013, according to a media and entertainment industry joint report (‘Hollywood Meets’, 2009), prepared by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and KPMG, a consultancy group. In this context, Bollywood’s involvement in the new, independent Indian Indie sector indicates the mainstream industry’s forays into emerging prospective capital markets.

48  The Meta-Hegemony

Bollywood and Other Stories of Soft Power Bollywood’s contemporary fortunes could be mapped in terms of the industry’s entwinement with the Indian state’s entry into the free market system and subsequently the state’s valorisation of Bollywood as an instrument of national soft power. It is within this ambit that India’s cinematic metahegemony continues to reverberate, with state conferment of soft power constituting an important dimension whilst addressing the new Indies’ quest for space in the Bollywood superstructure. The legitimisation provided by state authority to Bollywood must not be solely, and therefore simplistically, conflated with and restricted to the deterministic directives of the state apparatus per se and Bollywood’s responsive underwriting of it. The ‘new’ authority gestures towards the Indian state’s capital agenda, its investment in the national neoliberal project, which has become the reified form of state authority. Bollywood’s enduring articulation of the national narrative collapses into the proposition that ‘parochial content is actually subservient to neoliberal practice’ (Blum, 2007: 48). Therefore, both the state and Bollywood are co-opted in the new neoliberal national metanarrative and their political and cinematic discourses converge in the rhetoric of soft power. Bollywood is endorsed at the highest level of executive power as an uncontested manifestation of Indian cultural soft power. Soft power is a term coined by Joseph Nye, Harvard academic and former Assistant Secretary of Defence in the Clinton administration. Nye broadly defined soft power as a strategy for the United States to gain global influence through ‘attraction rather than coercion’, integrating the soft approach of ‘culture, political values and foreign policies’ with the hard power of military force, to legitimise America’s policies across the globe (Nye, 2004: x). International relations and coeval disciplines of scholarship have been punctuated by the discourse of soft diplomacy. In an Indian context, Congress party leader Shashi Tharoor has been a particularly vociferous political proponent of Indian soft power (Schaefer, 2013: 66, 82). Tharoor’s bombastic expositions on the benefits of Bollywood’s ‘soft power’ appear to be an emulation of Joseph Nye’s prior bestowment of global soft power status to Hollywood. This reinforces the proposition of Bollywood’s secondary status within the global political dimensions of meta-hegemony. Daya Thussu (2013: 148) observes that the Indian government includes Bollywood in its diplomatic relations strategy to forge stronger bonds with the United States in a bid to ‘benefit India’s creative and cultural industries’ (ibid.). This observation recalls then-incumbent BJP Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting Sushma Swaraj’s follow-up to her government’s conferral of industry status on commercial film production in 1998. Swaraj declared her party’s unbridled solicitation of diasporic Indian capital investment, positing ‘each entertainment and media icon of the Indian diaspora’ as India’s ‘unofficial ambassador abroad’, promising policies beneficial to the interests of these ‘overseas emissaries’ (‘Ethnic Media’, 2003). Erstwhile

The Meta-Hegemony  49 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s acknowledgement of Bollywood as an implement of India’s soft power in ‘foreign policy’ (Athique, 2012: 115; Thussu, 2013: 134) was stimulated and underwritten by the mainstream film industry’s capital-generating potential. It could be argued that the Indian state’s promulgation of Bollywood as soft power implies the consolidation of Bollywood, both as hegemonic national cultural arbiter and as global cinematic agent of India’s neoliberal turn. Aswin Punathambekar (2013) astutely traces the Indian state’s agenda in strapping Bollywood onto the bandwagon of its national journey from social democracy to neoliberal free market economy: Bollywood’s presence in settings such as the World Economic Forum and Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (Day of the Diaspora) was not just a reflection of the growing economic importance of the culture industries. Rather such events reveal that the transformation of the Bombay Film industry into Bollywood was caught up in a larger process of the state realigning its understanding of ‘culture as resource’ away from well-worn developmentalist paradigms towards meeting the demands of new circuits of capital. (Punathambekar, 2013: 49) In essence, Bollywood’s narration of new neoliberal discourse gains legitimacy through the sanctioning imprimatur of Indian state authority. Bhabha’s notion of ‘authority’ being normalised through homogenising cultural icons and signifiers (Bhabha, 1995: 206) could be reconceptualised in light of the contemporary constellation of Indian culture and cinema dominated by Bollywood stars. The integration and normalisation of Bollywood into the Indian socio-politico-cultural fabric is manifested in the pervasive presence of Bollywood personalities in politics, advertising and nation branding. Athique observes Bollywood’s multinational sponsorship and its profusion of global product placements, including Coca-Cola and Mercedes, highlighting Bollywood’s blurring of boundaries between advertising and entertainment (Athique, 2012: 112). The standardisation of Bollywood is also exemplified in the showcasing of its stars at the 2010 New Delhi Commonwealth Games, as well as Bollywood actors doubling as quasi-official ­politico-cultural representatives during state visits by foreign dignitaries (‘Aamir Khan Meets’, 2013). The imperative of capital has led to global cinematic leviathans ­Hollywood and Bollywood being ratified by their respective nation-states as almost self-contained agents of soft power. This suggests a postmodern reinscription of homogenising grand narratives on the transglobal neoliberal canvas that now seems to subtend cultural production. Joseph Nye’s prescription of soft power as an alternative approach to the overt aggression of military might and economic dominance belies the deceptive benignity he affords to the ‘soft power’ of dominant cultural products. Nye displays

50  The Meta-Hegemony a startling naïveté in stating ‘soft power does not depend on hard power’ (Nye, 2004: 9). It is possible to contest Nye’s assertion, raising Antonio Gramsci’s notion that coercion and co-optation are mutually inseparable, and as such, soft power is a surreptitious device to ‘sustain hegemonic domination’ (Hayden, 2012: 39). Propagating Bollywood indiscriminately as soft power fails to acknowledge its innate power/economics relationship, where enterprise and economics conjoin with state power to construct a realm of capital-based ideological dominance. This is in congruence with Martin Jacques’ observation that emerging global powers such as China and, in this book’s context, India, could use their ascendant economic power to attain ‘political, cultural and military ends’ (Jacques, 2009: 12). Arguably, this is already visible in current assertions of ‘a golden age for Chinese cinema’, with Chinese films starting to ‘tell a universal story’ and the Chinese government seeking ‘to renew its film industry to challenge Hollywood’ (Yueh, 2014). These scenarios could ultimately lead to the hegemonic systems envisaged by Gramsci, where coercion and co-optation combine, America being the archetypal contemporary example of this fusion of military force and consumer culture. The soft power rhetoric privileging dominant cultural products such as Hollywood and Bollywood to the exclusion of others thrives in the oxygen of pervasive universalising neoliberal systems. The legitimisation afforded Bollywood by state power, in line with the putative primacy of capital in the nation’s current free market system, has leveraged Bollywood’s cultural hegemony and concretised its custodianship of the Indian cinematic superstructure. This proposition is important whilst considering the ramifications for the new Indies in terms of envisioning an autonomous space or an ‘Indie’ infrastructure independent of Bollywood. Adrian Athique observes that India’s new ‘globalized social imagination’ is mirrored in a ‘pluralized mediasphere’ which seems equipped to transcend ‘ethnocultural barriers as well as state authority’ (Athique, 2012: 130). However, Athique soft-pedals on nationalist elements of the state, vehemently proclaiming Bollywood’s soft-power credentials. He attempts to downplay Bollywood’s politico-ideological associations by labelling the dominant cultural form an innocuous ‘choice of entertainment’ or a ‘source of gratification’ (Athique, 2012: 130). In the process, Athique inadvertently naturalises the state-sanctioned Bollywood grand narrative as purportedly anodyne and benign entertainment for the ‘masses’ – an essentialising metanarrative that for the most part has been legitimised and reinscribed in previous and current academic engagement with Indian cinema. In so doing, Athique fails to acknowledge the continuing symbiotic relationship between the nationalist state and Bollywood at the deeper structural level, unveiled in this study’s concept of meta-hegemony. This relates to the state and Bollywood’s ideological and economic intertwining under the banner of neoliberalism. John Hood (2009) illustrates the short-sightedness of banalising Bollywood as lucrative mass entertainment that is ‘only giving

The Meta-Hegemony  51 the ordinary people what they want’ (Hood, 2009: 4). He claims that ‘successful capitalist marketing thrives by creating a popular need and cultivating a belief in people that that, in fact is what they want’ (ibid.). In addition, Athique, like the majority of scholars on Indian cinema, appears not to have accounted for the rapid recent realignments in modern Indian cinema, with the new Indies at the vanguard of this reconfiguration. In actuality, the new Indies are more apropos candidates for Athique’s notion of the new globalised Indian mindset ‘transcending state authority’, if the examples of polemical Indies Harud, Gandu and Papilio Buddha are anything to go by. Overall, it seems fair to state that the trivialisation of Bollywood films as emissaries of entertainment paradoxically falls prey to the universalising strategies utilised by hegemonic structures to legitimise and sustain their dominant metanarratives. Richard Devetak (1996) argues that a postmodern approach in international relations exposes strategies (such as those of the neoliberal Indian state and Bollywood) through which ‘a perspective produces representations which attain dominance and monopolise legitimacy by marginalising ­others’ (Devetak, 1996: 185). The above elucidation directly informs the proposition that the unisonant affirmation of Bollywood as soft power by the Indian state is exercised in conjunction with the disavowal or exclusion of other heterogeneous Indian cinematic forms, such as the Indies. Extending Devetak’s above assertion, Bollywood’s meta-hegemony could be viewed through a postmodern genealogical perspective. The genealogical form of history is invested in ‘writing counter-histories’ revealing ‘processes of exclusion’ and domination that construct the illusion of history as being a single linear narrative (Devetak, 1996: 184). To a significant extent, this ­volume already adopts the historiographical approach whilst locating the Indie interstitial space and its alternative narratives in Bollywood’s larger dominant field of a linear national narrative. Delving into the power/knowledge nexus, a genealogical paradigm attempts to dismantle the unified grand narrative of history, revealing an underbelly of multiple, suppressed other stories (Devetak, 1996: 185). This proposition could be applied to Bollywood’s enduring articulation of mythic time and its homogenising national narrative as an undifferentiated through-line of historical traditional (Hindu) ‘Indian’ values – mentioned ­earlier as a ‘linear narrative of Hindu supremacy’ (Khan, 2009: 87). Bollywood, since India’s globalisation of the 1990s, has transmogrified this linear traditional narrative into the neoliberal grand narrative, one that collapses ‘traditional’ Indian probity and rectitude into the more i­mmediate and urgent pursuit of capital assets. This is the process of exclusion and dominance mentioned above that overwrites multiple narratives in the scripting of nation. In this regard, the meta-hegemony is sustained by economic and ideological networks of state power that are themselves compliant to a universalising neoliberal system. Thussu argues that with Bollywood’s current globalised focus, representations of India’s huge demographic of impoverished people are mediated by

52  The Meta-Hegemony ‘a Westernized sensibility and aesthetics, reinforcing a reconfigured h ­ egemony that legitimizes the neoliberal agenda’ (Thussu, 2013: 148). Thussu mentions Slumdog Millionaire as an example of Western patronisation, where this small-budget film with Bollywood codes only gained a theatrical release through an alliance with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation affiliate, Fox Searchlight. (Thussu, 2013: 148–149). Following its rich dividends at the box office, the film’s subsequent designation as a template for further commercially successful film strategies has been attributed to Bollywood’s soft power, despite polarised views amongst Indian audiences and scholars (ibid.). Slumdog Millionaire’s global success, attained through marketing it as a Bollywood film, precipitated Indian ‘scholars and public intellectuals’ to exhort the government towards an intensified exploitation of ‘softpower potential’ (Schaefer, 2013: 72). Slumdog’s capital gains also spurred Bollywood filmmakers to design similar content, appealing to the overseas Bollywood soft-power stereotype (ibid.). This is indicative of the orientalist zeal with which Bollywood willingly absorbed Slumdog Millionaire’s reductionist rendering of its own codes and emulated them. Bollywood’s mimicry is the counterpoint of a ‘continuing cycle of orientalism’ witnessed in the Western repackaging of commercial Bollywood films such as Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge (2001) or Slumdog Millionaire’s bowdlerised refashioning of Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay (1988) (Athique, 2012: 123). In essence, globalisation’s influence on the meta-hegemony is perceptible in its effects on Bollywood’s modes of cultural signification. David Schaefer’s (2013) in-depth research into popular post-globalisation Hindi cinema between 1991 and 2007 notes an increase in what he terms ‘exogenous predictors’ or ‘cinematic references that emphasize non-Indian socio-cultural-political themes and traditional practices’ over ‘indigenous predictors’: cinematic signifiers that engage with national classical, traditional and culturally specific themes (Schaefer, 2013: 69–70). Schaefer considers whether the shift within Bollywood towards exogenous strategies is designed to appease westernised audiences. He analyses future ramifications of this shift on Bollywood’s soft-power credentials if this trend is accompanied by a declension in indigenous content. Schaefer’s study, intensive in its quantitative depth and positivist precision, asserts that Bollywood’s paradigm shift towards Western modes could ‘serve the needs of multinational corporations rather than the Indian government’ (ibid.: 75). This is pertinent to the earlier mentioned accentuated levels of Bollywood branding in commercial advertising and the suffusion of product placement in films. The latency in Schaefer’s 1991–2007 research timeline axiomatically entails the non-inclusion of key developments from 2007 to the present. In addition to this time lag and despite its erudition and insight, the research’s sole focus is on popular Hindi cinema or Bollywood. Again, this is symptomatic of Bollywood’s pervasive (meta)-hegemonic presence in academic scholarship on Indian cinema and scholarly literature’s reciprocal overemphasis on Bollywood, with the marginalisation of India’s cinematic others.

The Meta-Hegemony  53 It must be mentioned that Schaefer acknowledges that his research does not include alternative forms of Indian cinema. In this regard, one of his claims is pulled sharply into focus: that his research has provided ‘empirical evidence that filmmakers have developed and deployed a successful, hybridized model of presentation that holds indigenous content while simultaneously increasing exogenized elements, thus inviting Westernized awareness of Bollywood and Indian culture’ (Schaefer, 2013: 76). This is incontrovertibly true of Bollywood’s attempts to articulate the nation’s neoliberal national narrative whilst sanctifying mythic traditional ‘Indian ­values’, which is explained in this book as the double time of the nation (see ­Chapter 5). The absence of new independent Indian cinema is starkly evident in Schaefer’s inference, although he could hardly be held accountable for not presaging their emergence. That said, there were several intermittent ‘predictors’ of the new Indies during the 2000s, with notable films, such as Amu and Firaaq (2008) – precursors to the comprehensive pullulation of Indie films since 2010. The new Indies also satisfy Schaefer’s above-paradigm, in that they are increasingly visible in India and abroad, as well as being hybrid in Schaefer’s sense of coalescing exogenous and indigenous, albeit in divergent modes from Bollywood. The main limitation of Schaefer’s research is its restriction to Bollywood and its reliance, by its own admission, on ‘binary-style dialectics’, exogenous and indigenous, to map Bollywood’s concerted thrust towards exogenous strategies (Schaefer, 2013: 72). Schaefer extends the binary paradigm presenting a case scenario that is antithetical to the above proposition of Bollywood’s outward projection. He theorises that growing ‘glocalisation’ may precipitate Indian audiences to ‘demand more localized fare to balance the perceived foreign influence of external content, leading to a counter-­ indigenous wave’ [emphasis mine] (ibid.: 72). Within the larger context of this study, it is fair to state that Schaefer’s use of the term ‘counter-indigenous wave’ more aptly describes the 2010 emergence of the new wave of Indian Indies. This is to a significant degree, a discerning extrapolation of future trends, and an accurate prognostication within the constraints of Schaefer’s 1991 to 2007 temporal specificity. However, Schaefer’s retrenched binary modes remain inconsistent with a poststructural emphasis on multiplicity and difference. Again, Bollywood’s folding of binaries into its cinematic narrative relates to Partha Chatterjee’s notion of the postcolonial Indian nationalist narrative endeavouring to stimulate modernisation whilst retaining tradition by mixing materialism and spirituality (Chatterjee, 1989: 623). However, the exogenous and indigenous domains cited by Schaefer, two terms largely interchangeable with Chatterjee’s materialism and spirituality, are not mutually separated realms. Instead, they are overlapping matrices influenced by the global economy’s ‘increasing stream of new technologies, unfettered market competition and weak or fractured social institutions’ (Gray, 1998:76).

54  The Meta-Hegemony A splintering of the exogenous/indigenous divide is perceived in the new Indies that have significantly broken this binary by presenting multiple overlapping contexts and heterogeneous narratives. In essence, the Indies resonate with Bruce Bennett’s reading of Rancière (2006: 22), which maintains that by ‘focusing on subaltern figures or on border spaces that are typically excluded from view or at the blurred peripheries of our vision’, alternative films can ‘contest dominant aesthetic regimes’ by constructing multiple imaginings or narratives of resistance (Bennett, 2014: 1). The alternative discourses emerging from the new wave of Indian Indies in an interstitial third space are characterised by the imbrication between exogenous and endogenous elements. The larger point to emphasise is that the Indies reflect multifarious contemporary Indian narratives through the very lens of ­globalisation-induced hybridity. However, the Indies are less constrained in comparison with Bollywood’s ‘duty’ to the double dimensions (modernity and tradition) of the national neoliberal metanarrative. In this regard, the Indies are better equipped to enunciate multiple hybrid dimensions. Summing up the above points, the Indies manifest two core elements of Schaefer’s thesis. They are exemplars of the glocal, through their ‘globalisation of the local and the localisation of the global’ (Marramao, 2012: 35). The Indies are a ‘counter-indigenous wave’, exhibiting exogenous global aesthetic influences, modes, idioms and indigenous local content expressed through multiple, heterodox narratives. Could these dual attributes of the Indie New Wave prescribe realignments in the internal dimensions of Bollywood’s meta-hegemony?

Metamorphosis in the Meta-Hegemony The arrival of the Indies since 2010 has necessitated change in the inner dynamics of the meta-hegemony. The growing popularity of ‘localised fare’ encapsulated in hybrid productions such as The Lunchbox and Ship of ­Theseus problematises Bollywood’s monopoly. In general, the era of globalisation has decentred ‘dominating or controlling’ centres in current times leading to a more intersectional network, encompassing diverse nodes of media production in a relatively egalitarian and reciprocal exchange of such ‘media artefacts’ (Sparks, 2012: 240). Arjun Appadurai in ­particular dethrones the US’s dominance as the ‘puppeteer of a world system of images’, reassigning America as one of many sites in the crisscross of transglobal exchange (Appadurai, 1996: 31). The above transformations open up a complex set of propositions for the meta-hegemonic structure, with contradictions that are symptomatic of and endemic in both the neoliberal project as well as globalisation per se. As Colin Sparks argues, there is no single unifying commonly accepted theory of globalisation (Sparks, 2012: 238). Hannerz (1996 cited in Sparks, 2012: 240) asserts that rapid advances in technology and communication have facilitated a world that is currently ‘one single field of persistent interaction and

The Meta-Hegemony  55 exchange’. In reality, this global field is splintered into ­multiple ­geopolitical contexts and sites of overlaps and contestation in a universalising globalisation that ‘is a domestic as well as a transnational and international process’ (Cerny, 1996: 91). Constantly expanding networks of commercial collaborations are exemplified by the 2010 co-operation pact signed between Hollywood and Bollywood with the objective of annealing commercial links between the two industries (‘Hollywood, Bollywood’, 2010). It may be fair to argue that although ‘hegemony’ in the form of overarching structural and economic dominance remains an integral principle of the current global cinematic meta-hegemony, the tectonic shifts of globalisation have necessitated reorientations and overlaps, such as the above-mentioned Hollywood/ Bollywood co-operation pact. In this context, it may be useful to consider Bollywood’s future ascendency as a global Indian franchise rivalling Hollywood. This might not seem as inconceivable as it did decades ago, with Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan recently surpassing Tom Cruise as the world’s wealthiest actor (Ellis-Petersen, 2014), also pulling into focus the heterodox market shares Bollywood possesses, particularly in Africa and the Middle East. These changes are symptoms of India’s ‘new role as a democratic, modernizing, capitalist society amenable to incorporation into a new world order’ (Athique, 2012: 113). The above scenarios involving Hollywood and Bollywood also reiterate that global metanarratives are rescripting themselves under the auspices of nation-states invested in neoliberal capital interests. Globalisation – unpredictable, indefinable and multifarious in its transformational effects – is affecting an interpermeation in the cultural domain between hitherto definable, distinct and often stereotypical global genres of cinema, such as Hollywood and Bollywood. One of the most important de facto effects of globalisation on Indian cinema within the boundary of nation is a complex realignment, a continual hybridity in the Indian cinematic superstructure. The rise of the independent Indies, since 2010, is an example of this process of hybridisation, where the Indies themselves are hybrid filmic ‘mutants’, partly through their financial and artistic ­dialogic with Bollywood. Dominant Bollywood in turn, is witnessing its own market-­ driven makeover in terms of audio-visual filmic attributes. In this milieu, it is fair to infer that the meta-hegemony itself seems to be undergoing a process of hybridisation, moulding itself according to the neoliberal mechanisms that legitimise and sustain it.

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58  The Meta-Hegemony Khan, S. (2009). ‘Nationalism and Hindi Cinema: Narrative Strategies in Fanaa’. Studies in South Asian Film and Media (1)1, pp. 85–99. Lechner., J F. and Boli., J. (2010). ‘World Culture, Origins and Consequences’ in Ritzer, G. and Atalay, Z. (eds.) Readings in Globalization. Chichester, West ­Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Mangalwala, O. (2013). ‘Item Songs and Flirting with Danger’. Express Tribune Blog. 15 February. Available at: http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/16099/itemsongs-and-flirting-with-danger/ [Accessed 13 Oct. 2014]. Marramao, G. (2012). The Passage West. London: Verso. Mazumdar, R. (2007). Bombay Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mazzarella, W. (2003). Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mehta, M. (2011). Censorship and Sexuality in Bombay Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press. Mehta R (2011) ‘Bollywood, Nation, Globalization: An Incomplete Introduction’, in Mehta, R B and Pandharipande, R. (eds.), Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora, London: Anthem Press. Mishra, S. (2013). ‘Negotiating Female Sexuality’, in McDonald, C. and ­Sellers-Young, B. (eds.) Belly Dance Around the World. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company. Mishra, V. (2014). ‘Bollywood’, in Thrift, N., Tickell, A., Woolgar, S. and Rupp, W. (eds) Globalization in practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nayak, S. (2008). Globalisation and the Indian Economy: Roadmap to a ­Convertible Rupee, Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Nye, J. (2004). Soft Power. New York: Public Affairs. Punathambekar, A. (2013). From Bombay to Bollywood. New York: New York ­University Press. Rajadhyaksha, A. (2003). ‘The “Bollywoodization” of the Indian Cinema: Cultural Nationalism in a Global Arena’. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 4(1), pp. 25–39. Ramesh, R. (2009). ‘Kylie Does Bollywood: Stars Go East to Beat the Hollywood Crunch’. The Guardian. 13 March. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/ film/2009/mar/14/bollywood-kylie-minogue [Accessed 2 Jan. 2014]. Rancière, J. (2006). The Politics of Aesthetics. London: Continuum. Roy, A G. (2011). ‘Is Everybody Saying ‘Shava Shava’ to Bollywood Bhangra?’ in Mehta, R. & Pandharipande, R. (eds.) Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora. London: Anthem Press. pp. 35–50. Roy, A G. and Chua, B H. (2012). ‘The Bollywood Turn in South Asian Cinema: National, Transnational, or Global?’, in Roy, A G. and Chua, B H. (eds.) Travels of Bollywood Cinema. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Roy, R. (2011). ‘Bollywood and the Mumbai Underworld’, in Basu, P. and Chanda, I. (eds.), Locating Cultural Change. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Rycroft, D. (2012). ‘Beyond Resistance’, in Das Gupta, S. and Basu, R. (eds.). Narratives from the Margins. New Delhi: Primus Books. Schaefer, D. (2013). ‘Box Office and “Bollywood”: An Analysis of Soft Power ­Content in Popular Hindi Cinea’, in Schaefer, D. & Karan, K. (eds.) Bollywood and ­Globalization: The Global Power of Popular Hindi Cinema, Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Schaefer, D. and Karan, K. (2013). Bollywood and Globalization: The Global Power of Popular Hindi Cinema, Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge.

The Meta-Hegemony  59 Singh, Y. (2014). ‘Indian Films High on Sexualisation of Women: UN Report.’ ­Outlookindia.com. Available at: http://www.outlookindia.com/news/article/­IndianFilms-High-on-Sexualisation-of-Women-UN-Report/861077 [Accessed 27 Oct. 2014]. Sparks, C. (2012). ‘What’s Wrong With Globalization?’, in Thussu, D. (ed.), International Communication (Vol.1). London: Sage Publications. Stadtler, F. (2014). Fiction, Film, and Indian Popular Cinema: Salman Rushdie’s Novels and the Cinematic Imagination. New York: Routledge. Thussu, D. (2013). Communicating India’s Soft Power: Buddha to Bollywood, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Verma, R. (2011). Beyond Bollywood: Indian Cinema’s New Cutting Edge. The Guardian. 23 June. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jun/23/ india-independent-cinema [Accessed 19 Nov. 2014]. Yueh, L. (2014). ‘Is It a Golden Age for Chinese Cinema?’ BBC News. 30 October. Available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29834530 [Accessed 24th Nov 2014].

3 The Anatomy of the Indies

This section presents a general appraisal of the new Indies, touching on attempts to define and classify them, mechanisms of funding, distribution and exhibition and the content that distinguishes them from the mainstream. Whilst exploring the various modes of defining and categorising the new Indies, this chapter also constructs a template to chart the course of the Indies in their attempt to create a new cinematic space. One of the fundamental areas this book addresses is the problem of identifying and classifying new Indies in the existing hermetic categorisation of Indian cinema. In this contemporary analysis of new Indian cinema, the goal is to destabilise the old binary mode of reducing Indian cinema to Bollywood and Satyajit Ray. Therefore, the focus is on avoiding rigid compartmentalisation and formulating a more flexible signification template – an adaptable classificatory scheme. In this regard, a perpetuation of existing classificatory dualisms, such as Bollywood and Parallel, which have been normalised in a significant proportion of scholarship on Indian cinema, would be antithetical to the postmodern philosophical basis of this study. In the restrictive dyadic breakdown of Indian cinema, legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray stands in as shorthand for various terms and categories, such as Parallel, arthouse, middle, regional and vernacular cinema, to name a few (Hood, 2009: 5). This ossified and reductionist morphology seems anachronistic in light of the current transformations in new Indian cinema. Bollywood has broadened its influence, particularly since the inception of liberalisation and market deregulation in 1991. Through its meta-­hegemony, Bollywood is now a unitary connotative term that not only circumscribes all forms of Indian cinema but also subsumes the general terrain of the Indian media and entertainment industries. A good practical example of this is the 11 July 2014 screening of the independent Tamil language Indie Ilai (‘Leaf’) in a Cineworld multiplex cinema in London as part of the London Indian Film Festival (LIFF) 2014. Ilai (‘Ilai’, 2013) is a small-budget independent production from the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The film is far removed from Bollywood in its portrayal of an impoverished little migrant girl who arrives in a metropolis and seeks out similar young displaced subalterns in order to survive. Cineworld’s website, which provides screening

The Anatomy of the Indies  61 details for Ilai, cites the film’s genre as ‘Bollywood’ (Cineworld, 2014). This lumping of new, amorphous forms of Indian cinema into Bollywood, especially when they are shown in the West, demonstrates the overriding symbolic capital and ideological dominance of the commercial Hindi film industry in India and abroad. Sangita Gopal (2011) observes that ever since film historian Ashish ­Rajadhyaksha’s tongue-in-cheek division of all Indian films into the Bollywood/ Ray binary, this dichotomy has engendered several reinterpreted neologisms ‘by the popular press, and by fans and bloggers’, such as ‘hat-ke’ versus KJo (Gopal, 2011: 15). Hat-ke literally means ‘off-center’ and KJo’ is short for Bollywood director Karan Johar’, who is synonymous with sweeping Bollywood blockbuster melodramas, such as Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (‘Some Things Happen’, 1998) and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (‘Sometimes Happy, Sometimes Sad’, 2001) (Gopal, 2011: 16). The persistence of the binary in Indian cinema has accompanied Bollywood’s post-liberalisation ascendency, albeit in new typologies, such as the above hat-ke (from the non-mainstream) and KJo (from Bollywood). In particular, Karan Johar’s diasporic family sagas dominated the cinematic timeline of India’s post-globalisation 1990s, propelling forward the term Bollywood as shorthand for the entirety of Indian cinema. Gopal observes that these were a part of ‘seismic changes that the Indian film industry has been undergoing since the 1990s – changes that have led to the transformation of popular Hindi cinema into Bollywood’ (Gopal, 2011: 16). The problem of binary classification is re-emphasised by the emergence of new independent cinema since 2010. The Indies’ internal diversity stresses the need to regard them as a multilayered cultural entity. It also entails taking into account their relative positioning in relation to Indian cinema’s most puissant proponent, Bollywood. Situating the Indies in their larger landscape must also acknowledge the growth of other regional and vernacular cinemas of India, particularly the prolific independent sectors of the Tamil and Marathi film industries (Belawadi, personal communication, 2013). It may prove useful to use the title and theme of Indie film Ship of ­Theseus (2013) as a self-referential touchstone to frame the relative positioning of the new Indies in the broader bulwark of Indian cinema in general and dominant Bollywood in particular. This analogy directly relates to the premise of the Indies’ emergence from the interstices and their possible creation of a new space. In this regard, the insertion of the interstitial Indies into the current Bollywood-dominated Indian cinematic space resembles Foucault’s notion of ships as heterotopia. A heterotopia could be described as a space where parallel discourses and the dominant superstructure are contiguous and the former ‘constantly unsettles an acceptable spatial ordering’ of the latter (Thacker, 2003: 29). Therefore, the heterotopia’s spatial (re)configuration opens up the possibility of affirming difference and articulating multiple identities. Anand Gandhi’s film Ship of Theseus takes its premise from Greek historian Plutarch’s conundrum: does a ship retain its authenticity if its old,

62  The Anatomy of the Indies rotting constituent parts are incrementally removed, and replaced by new ones? This motif permeates the minutiae of Ship of Theseus’s narrative construction and informs the film’s three perceptibly self-contained stories that are ultimately interlinked. Postcolonial Indian cinema, akin to the Ship of Theseus, was set afloat on the currents of newly gained independence in 1947 and faced the choppy waters of imagining a new national cinema. The ‘planks’ that comprised this cinematic ship were multifarious, including the post-independence art cinema stalwarts Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak. Popular Hindi cinema concurrently gained momentum in the 1950s and 60s with directors such as Raj Kapoor (Mishra, 2002: 105). The late 1960s saw the emergence of Parallel cinema with its main proponents, Mani Kaul, Shyam Benegal and Kumar Shahani. Various regional vernacular cinema industries that had their own Parallel cinema movements were intrinsic to the composition of the Indian cinematic vessel. This was particularly the case in South India, where art cinema in the state languages – Malayalam (Kerala), Tamil (Tamil Nadu) and Kannada (Karnataka) – flourished in the 1970s (Shoesmith, 2011: 251). By the early to mid-1970s, Parallel cinema was upended by commercial Hindi cinema, granting the latter pre-eminence amongst the cinema-viewing Indian populace. The watershed of India’s globalisation in the 1990s steered the Ship of Indian Cinemas into the mainstream, where the growing Bollywood monolith transformed the ship from its diverse composition – the Cinemas of India – into a Bollywood Behemoth. This Bollywood Behemoth is still comprised of different parts; the aforementioned original ‘planks’ have been present since the ship’s 1947 inception. In other words, the Bollywood Behemoth consists of components integrated into the ship’s bulwark along the diachronic evolution of Indian cinema since independence (see Fig. 3.1). This condensed historiography of Indian cinema, from its postcolonial roots to its present manifestation as dominant Bollywood, undergirds the ship’s complex construction over the years. All the individual composite parts of the ship for the most part occupy peripheral spaces in the superstructure of the current Bollywood Behemoth that now constitutes and represents the various cinemas of India. This cinematic allegory of the Ship of Theseus paradox raises questions about what happens to the current Bollywood-dominated superstructure when new individual parts, such as the post-2010 Indies, are introduced into the Bollywood Behemoth in the form of the Indies’ hybrid collaborations with the mainstream. What occurs when the Indies start to expand in an attempt to gain more space in the ship’s superstructure or endeavour to extricate themselves from the Behemoth and demarcate a more indigenous space? In a similar vein, are the Indies drawing from a plethora of Indian and global cinematic influences to espouse a glocal, hybrid form, style and content? Are they in the process relying on the Bollywood superstructure as a springboard to launch themselves into the wider public sphere?

The Anatomy of the Indies  63

Parts within the Superstructure

1 Post 1947 Art FilmsSatyajit Ray, Bimal Roy, Ritwik Ghatak 2 1960s POPULAR AND THE PARALLEL 3 1970s - 80s PARALLEL CINEMA – SHYAM BENEGAL, MANI KAUL, MIDDLE CINEMA – GULZAR, CHATTERJEE

4 1990s-2000s - HINGLISH FILMS 5 REGIONAL or VERNACULAR FILMS 6 THE 1990s RUPTURE! LIBERALISATION BOLLYWOOD 7 2010 - THE NEW INDIES

Figure 3.1  The Ship of Indian Cinemas.

Two propositions arise from the above questions, in keeping with the Ship of Theseus analogy. Both are directly relevant to the question of how the new Indies address the hegemonic Bollywood superstructure. The first perspective ponders whether the insertion of the Indies into the Bollywood Behemoth has triggered a reconfiguration and reorganisation of the ship’s structure. It asks whether this restructuring within the modern Indian cine­matic timeline, spurred by the contemporary exigencies of a disjuncturing globalisation, could create a new and distinct autonomous space for the Indies in the ­Bollywood Behemoth. The second scenario considers the possible reorientation of the Bollywood Behemoth’s totalitarian dominance by presaging increased hybrid collaborations, a coalescing between Bollywood and the new wave of independent Indies on an equal footing, in effect imagi­ning a new ship. A combination of these two scenarios may assist in forming an accurate assessment of the current transformation in Indian cinema. This is because the rupture of 1990s globalisation, swelling to its current crescendo of neolibera­ lism in India, has affected both Bollywood and the Indies. This underscores the fact that in a transforming milieu of reclassification and reconceptualisation of ostensibly impermeable, self-contained genre boundaries, a system of ­signification relating to the Indies must be fluid and context based. It must also be contingent on the immediate infrastructural practicalities that affect the local contexts of Indie films’ conception, production and distribution. Ultimately, it could be stated that the new Indies’ intervention in the heterotopic space of the Bollywood Behemoth has introduced flexibility as well as a sense of ‘potential instability’ (Thacker, 2003: 29) in the ship’s hegemonic superstructure.

64  The Anatomy of the Indies Funding mechanisms for Indian independent films are a key point of departure from traditional Western conceptions that regard ‘Indies’ as funded and filmed outside dominant mainstream studio systems. However, as this book will reveal, the singular feature of the Indian Indies is their hybridity; partly reflected in these films’ malleability and willingness to align with mainstream Bollywood producers and distributors. In this context, Jawaharlal Nehru University Film Studies professor Ira Bhaskar de-links the new wave of Indian independent films from ubiquitous or indeed stereotypical pre-conceptions of generic Indie cinema. In an interview, she asserts that the Indian Indie films are ‘offbeat, different from mainstream’, and this is valid, even if the Indies are supported by ‘mainstream financial structures; irrespective of funding strategies, the content and style remains non-­ mainstream’ (Bhaskar, personal communication, 2013). As mentioned earlier, some Indies assiduously solicit the gravitas of ­Bollywood-oriented production companies or sometimes enlist a Bollywood star to accentuate a film’s visibility. In most cases, the disequilibrium in India’s cinematic structure, skewed towards Bollywood, has rendered associations with the mainstream industry almost imperative for some Indie filmmakers to fund and distribute their work. Films such as Peepli Live (2010) and Dhobi Ghat (2010), drawing from the resources of Aamir Khan Productions (AKP) and UTV, had available greater budgetary resources in terms of actors, locations, production, sound and set design, in addition to augmented levels of advertising, promotion and marketing. Bollywood’s totalitarian dominance on the one hand and its role as a facilitator for the Indies on the other presents a complex and contradictory dialogic that confronts the new Indian Indies. Indeed, success or failure in securing capital investment from a ­Bollywood-oriented production house is sometimes a crucial consideration for some Indies. This is particularly the case in a filmmaking firmament where financial logistics are largely governed by immediate circumstances and situational requirements (at various stages) that eventually dictate the fate of an Indie project. These financial vicissitudes are determining factors, ranging between an Indie film’s feasibility in the first place to whether it can be completed and exhibited. In this context, it is important to mention ongoing alternative avenues, such as crowdfunding, currently being explored by the Indies to circumvent the Bollywood studio system. There are a growing number of situations where independent filmmakers, after being excluded from the big studio system, have had no recourse but to solicit crowdsourcing. New funding and distribution strategies adopted by the Indies will be discussed in greater depth in Chapter 4. Another distinguishing facet of the Indian Indies is their bilingual or sometimes trilingual dialogue, amalgamating Hindi, English and sometimes regional languages. Peepli Live, for example, contains Awadhi (a region specific dialect) dialogue in rural segments of its storyline, then switches to

The Anatomy of the Indies  65 English and Hindi when the narrative focus shifts to urban locations. The new Indies’ bilingualism is reminiscent of the Hinglish films of the 1990s and early 2000s (see Chapter 1), with their melding of mainly Hindi and English in films such as English August (1994), Bombay Boys (1998), Split Wide Open (1999) and Mr and Mrs Iyer (2002). However, this bilingualism is not de rigueur amongst the new Indies, notable exceptions being the Bengali film Gandu (subtitles in English), the Marathi film Court (2015), and Lucia (2013), a film in the Kannada language (spoken in the southern state of Karnataka), set in Bangalore. So what distinguishes these Indies from cinema in regional languages or in a vernacular that is specific to each Indian state? The new Indies transcend the borders of state and region and are usually accessible to national audiences (through multiplex releases, film festivals and nationwide DVD releases) and international audiences (albeit mostly restricted to the global film festival circuit). In comparison, regional vernacular films, particularly of the commercial variety, tend to be released within the borders of a state and district and contain dialogue almost exclusively in the corresponding state language. Veteran independent filmmaker Kamal Swaroop, director of the avant-garde postmodern film Om-Dar-BDar (1988), mentioned in an interview that the current Indies’ interspersion of English with Hindi dialogue, amongst several other languages, is largely ascribable to the New Wave films being a primarily urban phenomenon (Swaroop, personal communication, 2013). Former India Today journalist Nirmala Ravindran states in an interview that ‘the new films appeal more to younger people, particularly in the 20–30 age group’ (Ravindran, personal communication, 2013). The films therefore address the polyglot and pluralist composition of cities such as Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi, with their rising young middle-class demographic, although the films themselves often engage with rural themes; pertinent examples are the aforementioned Peepli Live (about farmer suicides), Fandry (2013) and Chauranga (2016) (about young love across the rural caste divide). Although the new Indies bear thematic, formal and stylistic similarities to earlier post-independence arthouse, Parallel cinema and Hinglish films, the distinctive feature of the new Indies is their adaptability. The new wave of Indian Indies’ enhanced, unequivocal thrust towards visibility and broader commercial acceptance distinguishes them in the enduring historical field of commercial Hindi cinema and Bollywood dominance. Ira Bhaskar considers the mainstream’s economic impetus to the new Indies as being vital to their survival. She states: Without the commercial push and without the budgets for publicity and release, this cinema would not exist. I think that is absolutely crucial and this is the big difference between the situation today and earlier. (Bhaskar, personal communication, 2013)

66  The Anatomy of the Indies Actor/director Aamir Bashir observes in a conversation that several new Indie directors are from the post-liberalisation generation ‘and therefore for them the economics of it is as, if not more, important than the content’ (Bashir, personal communication, 2013). Bashir’s independent film Harud (2010) is a good example of how several independent films are still selffunded through the director, producer or actor(s) personal funds. Recounting his experience of funding Harud, Bashir reveals, ‘we borrowed money and we are paying back still’, despite gaining some funding from the Hubert Bals Fund to assist with Harud’s post-production (ibid.). The advent of globalisation and the state’s ratification of industry status for cinema production in 1998 hastened the decentralisation of the state-supported National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), formerly the main recourse to film funding for Indian art cinema. With comparatively wider access to capital circulating in the modern cinematic sphere, albeit under the leviathan shadow of Bollywood and corporate production companies, Bashir considers distribution a greater obstacle to Indie filmmaking than funding (ibid.). Another marked feature of the new Indies is their increasing box-office success despite their small-budget status. In addition to gaining higher budgets, Indies involved in filmmaking contracts with corporate houses have the added advantage of wider distribution channels, which to some degree enhances their prospects of financial success (Nambiar, personal communication, 2013). However, this should not be construed as a rule. There are examples of films made on meagre budgets, such as Pawan Kumar’s Lucia, filmed with 5.1 million rupees (around £54,000) crowdfunded rupees; it went on to become a financial success (‘Mumbai Police’, 2013). Similarly, BA Pass (2013), a film made with a modest 20 million rupees (£200,000) went on to regain three times its capital investment (Khanna, 2013). The Hindustan Times, when announcing ‘the brave new world of indie films’ noted the success of several independent films, including Ship of Theseus and BA Pass ‘with minimal budgets, no stars and no big-ticket directors released in consecutive months’ (ibid.); these films gained theatrical releases and proceeded to outdo several commercial films at the box office (ibid.). The array of variables informing the production and distribution of the new Indies makes it all the more unrealistic and inaccurate to try to compartmentalise these films into one undifferentiated block. Whilst the term ‘Indies’ may be useful to describe the general growth and popularity of new, alternative, non-Bollywood urban cinema it is essential to highlight the heterogeneity in these films whilst still acknowledging their coterminous emergence since 2010. This simultaneously composite and contemporaneous development singles out the new Indies as an important new phenomenon in India’s cinematic terrain. In relation to classifying this new cinematic form, Ira Bhaskar visualises two general category of Indies within the broader general categorisation.

The Anatomy of the Indies  67 The first category directly displays some traits of the late 1960s and the 1970s Parallel films, such as Saara Akash (1969) and Bhuvan Shome (1969), in terms of their realist, satirical critiques of state policies (Bhaskar, personal communication, 2013). These elements are identifiable in Peepli Live. According to Bhaskar, the second form of contemporary Indian Indie is more experimental in its fragmentation of narratives, rupture of linear time and space, inventive use of music and editing (ibid.). Ship of Theseus and Gandu resonate with the latter description of Indie filmmaking strategies. Bhaskar’s insightful differentiation of the new Indies into two typological hemispheres is useful in formulating a more representative understanding of the Indies. However, it is possible to argue that even this broader dichotomisation of the Indies must be superseded in order to explain the multifarious composition of this modern Indian cinematic form. The mechanisms of funding, distribution and exhibition differ from Indie to Indie, as do their form and style. It is possible to argue that there is an increasing stratification in the constellation of new independent Indian films, largely due to a process of economic hierarchisation. This is enacted through a form of cinematic engineering, where an Indie that secures the financial support of a big corporate producer benefits most and ascends to the top of the table (Q, personal communication, 2013). In principle, the latitude afforded by corporate ­budgets – wider distribution networks and marketing in addition to financial input – would be almost inconceivable for primarily self-funded Indie films. Bhaskar’s above dichotomy of traditional/experimental Indie could be examined in the context of new bifurcated categorisations emerging from the public sphere in India. These include the self-funded ‘“true indie”’ that has to compete with the ‘blockbuster’ Indie, which is ‘currently in vogue and supported by marquee names like Studio 18 and directors like Anurag Kashyap’. Whilst the notion of ‘true’ Indie in itself seems simplistic and incongruous in the hybrid postmodern domain of the Indian Indies, it would seem ironic (being akin to the Bollywood/Ray divide) that a dyadic true/ blockbuster ‘class division’ within the Indies could be evolving, owing to discrepancies or exiguities in Indie funding and distribution. Notable examples of box-office success gained by ‘true’, self-funded or crowdsourced films, such as BA Pass and Lucia demonstrate that Indian Indies, at least in their current juncture of development, often avail themselves of alternative routes to funding and dissemination. In an interview, Prakash Belawadi, director of the Suchitra Cinema and Cultural Academy in Bangalore and winner of the National Award for the independent English film Stumble (2003), expresses his ternary formulation of how Indies in India are ‘trying to be independent’ (Belawadi, personal communication, 2013). Firstly, they seek independent funding. Secondly, they endeavour to distribute through independent means – which Belawadi considers ‘very hard to break through’ and in most cases to result in failure. The third aspect of an Indie is it ‘tries to talk to its market with independent appeal … saying something new’ (ibid.). In essence, Belawadi’s

68  The Anatomy of the Indies three-pronged proposition cites funding, distribution and content as distinctive markers of new Indian Indies. The ripple effect of India’s globalising systems reverberates in the Indies’ cinematic influences, which in turn inform their formal and stylistic hybridity. In this regard, the Indies are increasingly influenced by World Cinema, in addition to drawing from established Indian cinematic traditions (Raghavendra, personal communication, 2013; Rao, personal communication, 2013; Swaroop, personal communication, 2013). This is largely due to India’s globalising process, catalysing wider avenues of access to World Cinema, particularly through expanding spheres of broadband Internet and new media (Devasundaram, 2014: 113). In this regard, one of the defining aspects of the new Indies is the articulation of the local whilst narrating these stories though a global or universal cinematic grammar, particularly when compared to codes deployed by Bollywood films. The recent global approbation received by The Lunchbox (2013), culminating in the film’s nomination for a BAFTA award, is illustrative of the above description of the Indies as glocal (Marramao, 2012) cinematic forms. The Lunchbox narrates the serendipitous encounter of an ageing government clerk, trapped in the repetitive inconsequentiality of his bureaucratic tasks, and a disillusioned young housewife, the victim of a cheating husband. The mutual odium and tedium of their everyday routines is alleviated when lunchboxes delivered by Mumbai’s world-famous and usually infallible dabbawallahs (lunchbox deliverymen) are swapped. This oversight initiates interaction between the unlikely couple via daily messages secreted in one such lunchbox. In addition to a broader universal aesthetic, The Lunchbox underscores the proposition that the most conspicuous marker of the new wave of Indian independent films is their divergent content. The Indies’ cinematic themes and issues, unrestrained by Bollywood’s ‘institutionalised formula elements’ (Hood, 2009: 4), provide a glimpse into the cauldron of changes typifying a transforming modern nation. In this regard, their narration of everyday local stories, often involving ordinary characters and marginalised subalterns, is indexical of their departure from mainstream Bollywood. This validates the perception of the new Indies as articulators of alternative stories through content that diverges from hegemonic Bollywood’s rendering of the national narrative. In an interview, Peepli Live director Anusha Rizvi affirms that the primary marker of an Indian Indie is ‘content of an independent nature that is original, that is not formulaic’ (Rizvi, personal communication, 2013). Kiran Rao concurs with this view, citing the diverging content of her own film Dhobi Ghat as a demarcator of its independent arthouse credentials (Rao, personal communication, 2013). Filmmaker Onir highlights the aforementioned fluidity in the definition of Indian Indie cinema, nevertheless affirming his view of independent cinema as outside traditional studio systems of production but still stressing the importance of unconventional content as a defining marker (Onir, 2013). In this regard, there appears to

The Anatomy of the Indies  69 be an overriding consensus across this book’s sample of interview respondents affirming alternative stories or unconventional content as the common defining thread that runs through the new Indian Indies. This juxtaposed with all the points raised thus far in this overview of the new Indies characterises them as a distinctive emerging form of new Indian cinema.

The Indies as a New Wave The arrival of a multitude of independent Indian films, particularly from the watershed year 2010, has led to the declaration of a ‘new wave’ of Indian cinema. Rahul Verma (2011) announced in the Guardian the arrival of a new wave of independent Indian Indies, contesting the ‘all-singing, all-dancing’ Bollywood stereotype. The Hindustan Times highlights the Indies usurping the ‘limelight’ from ‘many star-studded movies’ (Khanna, 2013). It appears incontrovertible that the new Indies have risen in prominence and visibility at home and abroad since 2010. However, it is worth investigating the claims that there is a ‘New Wave’ that carries with it notions of a collective, concerted cinematic movement analogous to Indian Parallel cinema in the 1970s, or on a global level, something akin to the French Nouvelle Vague of the late 1950s and 1960s, or post–World War II Italian neorealism. During an interview, one of the pioneers of independent Hinglish films, actor/director Rahul Bose (personal communication, 2013,) describes the new Indies as ‘alive and kicking’ but has reservations about labelling them a consolidated movement. Bose’s view gestures towards a perception expressed by Onir; that there are current independent Indian filmmakers creating cinema in disjointed, individual spaces, which marks a departure from the filmmaking collectives of earlier Parallel or arthouse cinema (Onir, personal communication, 2013). Kiran Rao affirms Onir’s statement about individual voices emerging from Indian cinema being a reflection of more ‘personal standpoints’ (Rao, personal communication, 2013). These multiple perspectives emanate from a diversity of experiences that are spread across the Indian polity and demographic. Rao considers these subjective voices contributing factors to a ‘different cinematic language and narratives’ emerging from outside the mainstream of Indian cinema (ibid.). This statement informs Rao’s perception of the Indies as too varied to be lumped into a single appellation. Aamir Bashir (personal communication, 2013) problematises the notion of an Indie collective, attributing his scepticism to the lack of an ‘Indie alliance’ that could collectively challenge mainstream dominance. His view appears not to take into account instances of collective action, for example when independent filmmakers/actors across the nation united under the common banner of the 2013 ‘Save the Indies’ campaign (‘Onir, Anusha’, 2013). The campaigners supported by approximately 20,000 signatures (Dhar, 2013) presented their demand to the government for more Indie exhibition spaces, exemption from entertainment tax and a screening slot

70  The Anatomy of the Indies for Indies on state-operated television channel, Doordarshan (ibid.). To a significant degree, this demonstrates the potential of the independent filmmaking domain to mobilise and congregate in order to address a common cause. On a filmmaking level, the 2015 film, X: Past is Present is a distinctive collaborative effort featuring a team of eleven independent directors, each of whom directed allocated segments of this seamless non-anthology film. As a predominantly non-Bollywood ensemble of filmmakers, including Q (Qaushiq Mukherjee) from West Bengal and Tamil cinema director Nalan Kumarasamy, this unconventional collective endeavour underscores increasing co-operation, experimentation and growing cohesion within the Indie sector. Bashir (personal communication, 2013) underlines another key distinction between the current crop of Indies and their New Wave Parallel cinema forebears in the 1970s and 80s. He perceives the 1990s disjuncture in the chronology of postcolonial Indian cinema as a displacement from the traditional Indian national narrative, both in its socio-economic and cinematic contexts. As mentioned above, increased hybridisation and multiple cinematic influences on independent filmmaking are two profound reverberations of the globalisation-induced rupture in the Indian cinematic timeline. Bashir (personal communication, 2013) asserts that the hybridity of the new Indies is necessitated by contemporaneous contexts and economic realities and that it would be inaccurate to draw a simplistic through-line between the New Wave films of the 1970s and 1980s (by archetypal arthouse directors such as Shyam Benegal and Mani Kaul) and the new Indies. Along the lines of Rahul Bose’s assertion that the creation of new Indies may not be motivated by a common cinematic goal, Bashir notes that the new post-liberalisation cohort of filmmakers affords equal importance to the money-making stimulus of filmmaking and creating new, divergent film content (ibid.). Bashir also identifies the advent of satellite television as an artefact of India’s economic liberalisation that is contributing to a Western influence on new independent Indian cinema (ibid.). The process of post-­ globalisation hybridisation opening up new access, not just to cinema but also to digital cameras and editing software (Chatterjee, 2012), has contributed to decentralised, region-specific production as demonstrated by Gandu, Lucia and Kerala filmmaker Anjali Menon’s Malayalam film Bangalore Days (2014). In this respect, the thesis of postmodern splintering in current modes of independent Indian filmmaking significantly addresses filmmakers’ Rao, Onir, Bashir and Bose’s earlier-discussed observations of fragmentation  – individuals creating cinema simultaneously across a diverse demographic. As Bashir rightly points out, it would be ludicrous to disregard the fragmenting effects of India’s globalisation and the concomitant multi-­ dimensional, transcultural influences that have permeated the Indian cinematic sphere. This is precisely why the contention that there is an Indie New Wave has to be scrutinised through a new lens, taking into account the modern context of what constitutes a new wave of cinema.

The Anatomy of the Indies  71 Differing perceptions of the Indies as constituting a New Wave in some measure reveal the wider subjective dimensions that inform new independent filmmaking in India. Onir considers the generic label ‘New Wave’ to be synonymous with earlier European Cinema’s content and form and hence describes the term ‘New Wave’ as something ‘that has already been done’ (Onir, personal communication, 2013). Onir’s analogy restrictively and anachronistically frames European Cinema as the touchstone for any subsequent global new wave of cinema. In essence, his assertion fails to take into account India’s current multidimensional post-liberalisation cinema context. Comparisons akin to Onir’s could be drawn to earlier bellwethers of global cinematic movements, such as the French Nouvelle Vague or the earlier wave of Indian Parallel cinema, in order to suggest the paucity of a collective esprit de corps amongst the current Indian Indies. However, it is worthy to note the profusion of Indie productions since 2010; a surge in the number of Indie films increasingly populating the Indian cinema production roster. The year 2012 was cited as a ‘landmark year for the Indian indie’ and ‘the new wave of Indian cinema’, with fourteen films gaining multiplex releases in major cities and surpassing statistics over the previous five years (Chatterjee, 2012). The year 2013 in particular was highly productive for Indies, with a slew of productions not only gaining national and international visibility but also box-office success (Khanna, 2013). DearCinema. com, a website dedicated to new independent Indian films, terms 2013 an ‘unprecedented year for Indian Indie films’, with swelling Indie numbers significant enough to generate a top-ten list (DearCinema.com, 2013). The Lunch Box and Ship of Theseus took the lead for the Indies of that year’s national and international successes (ibid.). However, the ability of ‘local’ Indie films such as the Kannada film Lucia and the Marathi film Court to penetrate the national (and international) cinematic space, underscores the growing ascendancy of the Indies in general. Lucia went on to gain international film festival accolades, including Best Film at LIFF 2013 (Kumar, personal communication, 2013). Director Pawan Kumar subsequently gained a profitable all-India release, also selling the film rights for a Hindi language remake to Fox Star Studios (Bagdadi, 2014). Another example from 2013 is the national release of India’s ‘first martial arts comedy’ Local Kung Fu, an Indie from the northeastern state of Assam, by debutant director Kenny Basumatary, made on the paltry budget of one 100,000 rupees (around £1,000) (Bhumika, 2013). The film features local non-professional actors; it gained screenings in the PVR multiplex chain’s ‘Director’s Rare’ segment in several cities, including Bangalore, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Pune (Bhumika, 2013; ‘India’s Gets’, 2013). The above examples gesture towards shifting attitudes and growing cognisance of the market potential presented by the new wave of Indies by the hitherto indifferent PVR multiplex chain and media corporates such as UTV and Fox Star. Ira Bhaskar affirms the current crop of Indie films as a consolidated and ever-increasing corpus ‘when you think of independent films

72  The Anatomy of the Indies as a movement, the time is now; there are more films now. It is the volume of production; it is not just the stray film here and there’ (Bhaskar, personal communication, 2013). The advancing numbers of Indie productions across a broad spectrum of India’s regional demarcations juxtaposed with their increasingly successful reception by an urban spectatorship strengthens the contention of a New Wave. The points raised thus far highlight the Indies’ hybrid coalescing of (­alternative) culture and (corporate) commerce into films increasingly consumed by an expanding urban Indian audience. Aseem Chhabra, Director of the New York Indian Film Festival, describes this expanding urban viewership as ‘people who are looking for something new and then supporting independent cinema’ (Shankar, 2014). This equation in the form of an increasing number of Indie productions met with a growingly receptive urban Indian audience on the lookout for new alternative content further assists in positing the current Indies as a new wave of urban independent Indian cinema that is distinctive from its Parallel cinema progenitors. To sum up, the current Indie New Wave stands significantly apart on the basis of several factors. These include a wider contemporary ambit of funding (corporate funding, crowdsourcing), relative democratisation of the filmmaking process through augmented access, increasing avenues for urban exhibition, such as the multiplex (although this is still problematic, as Chapter 4 will reveal) and an increasingly receptive urban audience. India’s Parallel films in the 1970s and 80s were even more strictured in terms of exhibition and funding, relying mainly on the state-sponsored NFDC (Athique and Hill, 2010: 192). Parallel films were often rejected by a preponderance of India’s populist viewership as arcane and elitist, eventually leading to the petering out of the movement (ibid.). Later manifestations of alternative cinema in the 1990s and early 2000s – harbingers of the new Indies – were so intermittent in their releases and so tenuous in their audience reception that they could never mobilise themselves into a consolidated genre. They instead manifested in fits and starts and the odd release – films such as Satya (1998), Amu (2005) and Firaaq (2008) being good examples. This illustrates precisely why the thesis of a current New Wave is valid: sporadic instances of alternative films appearing intermittently from the 1990s to the early, mid and late 2000s have transformed into a full-fledged ­emergence – a new wave of independent Indian cinema since 2010.

Convergences and Divergences from the Western Indie Archetype In order to understand the multiple contexts that inform the current new wave of Indian Indies, it is necessary to identify specific characteristics that delineate them as distinct from Western understandings of ‘Indie’ cinema. Concomitantly, it may be interesting to identify commonalities between the new Indian Indies and their Western Indie cinema contemporaries,

The Anatomy of the Indies  73 particularly American independent films. This is because the overarching meta-hegemony may be extended to Hollywood’s own encompassed other – new self-reflexive and topical American Indie cinema; films such as Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011), Compliance (2012), The East (2013), Night Moves (2013) and The Sacrament (2013). These alternative American films could be placed in context with the new Indian Indies that are contained within the superstructure of the Bollywood Behemoth. Both variants of the independent film genre across the East/West divide seem to share a mutual negotiation of dominant systems – Hollywood/Bollywood, globalisation and the neoliberal imperative. In this regard, overlaps between current Indian and American Indies could possibly constitute an area for future research. In an interview, Anusha Rizvi problematises the standardisation of the term ‘Indies’ that she argues is an American scenario, universally inscribed as films with ‘less than 50 percent studio funding’ (Rizvi, personal communication, 2013). Rizvi states that this normative definition of independent films is a Western construct and cannot necessarily be superimposed on the Indian Indie domain. One of the key observations about the new Indian Indies is their ability to mould themselves according to the circumstantial particularities and situational immediacies governing their creation. This includes sometimes aligning with Bollywood stars or relying entirely on big corporate production houses in order to finance and distribute some of these independent projects. This facet appears to distinguish the Indian Indies from the putative Western definition. In addition, Rizvi reiterates a recurring theme in this present study of new Indian Indies. She considers ‘content of an independent nature that is original and not formulaic … original style, storytelling, characterisation and the vision of the director’ to be the combined facets that formulate a loose specification as far as the current Indian Indies are concerned (Rizvi, personal communication, 2013). Rizvi’s caveat against categorising Indian Indie cinema according to Western paradigms is as valid as it is important in light of the heterogeneous terrain of not just subcategories within the Indies themselves, such as traditional/experimental or true/blockbuster, but also India’s ethnolinguistic diversity and regional specificities. However, Rizvi’s assertion does not address several overlaps in filmmaking modes and themes between the current Indies in the US and those in India. This is particularly pertinent whilst taking into account the premise that, at least in terms of form and style if not funding, distribution and content (which arguably is immersed in local contexts), the Indian Indies are infused with influences from both Indian film traditions and global cinema. This hybridity could be viewed as a development coeval with India’s widening access to cultural flows in the form of transglobal cinema, across expanding ‘mediascapes’ (satellite television, multiplexes) and ‘technoscapes’ (Internet, new media) (Appadurai, 1990: 296). A new cohort of independent Indian filmmakers including Anand Gandhi, Kiran Rao, Ashim Ahluwalia, Ritesh Batra, Q, Chaitanya Tamhane

74  The Anatomy of the Indies and Anusha Rizvi, have emerged with the germination of the new wave of Indian Indie cinema. These new filmmakers can be compared with the American independent cinema space, often considered a launch pad for young filmmakers after graduation from film schools. In the latter system, it is viewed with inevitability that corporate production houses will invariably subsume the young American filmmaking talent pool in the corporates’ bid to reinvigorate their own product and imbue it with the cultural capital of an association with ‘critically celebrated cinema’ (Berra, 2008: 110). John Berra highlights ‘deals that are brokered’ between the mainstream Hollywood studio system and independent filmmakers as mutually symbiotic strategies to gain access to wider audiences. This American scenario is applicable to several new Indian Indie filmmakers’ desire for broader visibility and strategic corporate alliances to assist funding and distribution, including Peepli Live (AKP, UTV), Dhobi Ghat (AKP, UTV), Gangs of Wasseypur (Viacom 18) and The Lunchbox (international co-production). The blurring of funding and production boundaries between Bollywood and new Indian Indie cinema has led to Bollywood producers and their associated production companies being increasingly cognisant of future economic opportunities and symbolic capital associated with the new Indies. The most pertinent example is Bollywood producer/director Karan Johar’s decision to personally promote debutant Indie filmmaker Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox after being impressed by the film’s unconventional content, leading to Johar wishing his ‘name was associated with it’ (IANS, 2013). Johar has also made recent forays into the Indie space, directing one of the four stories in the anthology film Bombay Talkies (2013). Bollywood actor John Abraham has made inroads into the Indie domain, producing and appearing in the film Vicky Donor (2012) and more recently starring in and producing Madras Café (2013), a mainstream Bollywood film with an Indie aesthetic. As mentioned above, the films produced by Aamir Khan are probably the most enduring example of Bollywood’s investment in non-mainstream content. Khan’s involvement in and support of the Indie sector under the auspices of his production company AKP has manifested in a plethora of productions, including two of the films analysed in this book, Peepli Live and Dhobi Ghat. In some measure, on a smaller financial scale, some Indian Indies invoke parallels with American directors, such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, and Spike Lee, ‘whose works exhibit an independent sensibility, yet are frequently funded and distributed by several major corporations’ (Berra, 2008: 110). Several new Indian Indie filmmakers cite the larger interests of securing funding whilst negotiating contracts with corporates, although they acknowledge that their alignments with the mainstream runs the risk of their having to relinquish creative autonomy. Peter Biskind (cited in Berra, 2008: 111) observes that the jeopardy of creating independent films endogenously from within the American studio system lies in surrendering creative control in the realms of casting, scripting and production design. Berra posits the formation

The Anatomy of the Indies  75 of a system of production involving ‘independent graduates’ that solicit the financial investment from large corporates but still strive to retain creative autonomy, ‘progressive and free of compromise’ (Berra, 2008: 111–112). This bears a close resemblance to the Indian context, where resistance to interventions from the corporate chain of command and preservation of the director’s vision of a film are identifiable markers of an Indian Indie. Anusha Rizvi and Kiran Rao, the respective directors of Peepli Live and Dhobi Ghat, affirm autonomous creative agency in addition to unconventional content as distinctive indicators of Indian Indie filmmaking. Biskind also states that ‘film graduate’ American directors who ‘churn out’ films targeted at the Oscars are incompatible with the lower-budget films he considers bona fide Indies, which are possessors of a greater degree of autonomy (Biskind cited in Berra, 2008: 111). This paradigm appears to resonate with the previously mentioned true/blockbuster Indian Indie dichotomy, where ‘true’ self-funded Indian Indies seem to have more creative autonomy than the ‘blockbuster’ Indies that face prospective encroachments by corporate interests on creative control. These similarities and distinctions informing overlays and disjunctures between Indian Indies and the Western conception of the genre lends credence to the Indies’ multiple and heterodox dimensions. Emerging from the interstitial space of India’s post-liberalisation milieu, as discussed above, the Indies exhibit a sense of connectedness with the transglobal dynamics of World Cinema.

Glocal Indies: Hyperlinking India and the World The heterogeneity of cinematic influences is one of the distinctive attributes mentioned in this analysis of new independent Indian cinema. The compression of time and space through technics (Stiegler, 1998) in the form of electronic devices and technoscapes (Appadurai, 1990: 296) – expanding broadband Internet access in particular – has paved the way for increased accessibility to World Cinema in India (2013 personal communications with Bhaskar, Q, Rao, and Swaroop). The dimensions and implications of these developments have been manifold for the new Indies. This section addresses the proposition that the Indies are postmodern cinematic exemplifications that epitomise Marramao’s perception of the glocal as ‘the global production of the local’ (Marramao, 2012: 35). The emergence of hybrid cultural forms is largely attributable to the erosion of the notion of self-contained nation-states by the glocal (Marramao, 2012: xii). The new Indian Indies fall into the crucible of Marramao’s (2012: 35) thesis as glocal cultural products – global in form yet local in context. The first scenario reflecting the above proposition of ‘glocality’ addresses Indie filmmakers such as Onir and Pawan Kumar adopting new and innovative modes of distribution and exhibition. These methods include crowdfunding via social media, blogs and websites, which is proving a popular

76  The Anatomy of the Indies transglobal trend in sourcing funding for cultural production (Lee, 2013). Indian Indie filmmakers have suggested the need to conceive independent video on demand platforms, along the lines of global film streaming portals Netflix (now available in India) and LoveFilm (personal communications [2013] with Bose, Nambiar and Rao). Pawan Kumar’s indigenous pay-perview film website, Home Talkies, exemplifies the application of similar systems (Kumar, personal communication, 2013). Strategies such as Kumar’s are often necessitated by the lack of viable alternatives in the form of dedicated and consistent mainstream multiplex Indie films screenings. Dilemmas of funding and exhibition apart, the new Indies are exhibiting a growing trend of multilayered collaborations with foreign film companies and artistes. For example, the musical soundscapes layered over Dhobi Ghat’s narrative emanated from the guitar strings of Oscar-winning composer Gustavo Santaollala (Motorcycle Diaries, Brokeback Mountain), whilst the ethereal sound design in Anand Gandhi’s Ship of Theseus was conceived by Gabor Erdelyi, a regular sound engineer in Hungarian auteur Bela Tarr’s films (Variety, 2013). Variety’s review affirms the film’s glocal ethos, observing that although ‘“Ship of Theseus” doesn’t shy away from its Western-inspired influences, the film fully embraces its Indian roots’ (ibid.). Indian/British composer duo Naren Chandavarkar and Benedict Taylor, who composed Ship of Theseus’s music (Chandavarkar, n.d.), assert that their ‘alternative and unconventional compositional style’ has found an ideal environment ‘within emerging contemporary cinema and new music movements, both within India and internationally’ (ibid.). This context of growing hybrid cross-genre and cross-cultural collaborations interweaving music and film especially inflects the new Indian Indies. Chandavarkar and Taylor also composed the music score for earlier Indian Indie Harud and more recently for Avinash Arun’s independent Marathi feature film Killa (‘The Fort’, 2015), which won the Crystal Bear Award at the Berlinale Film Festival 2014 (ibid.). Cross-national filmmaking co-operations are not a new phenomenon in the cartography of Indian cinema, from its founding father Dadasaheb Phalke’s interaction with British filmmakers in London to Godard, Renoir and Pasolini’s filmmaking sojourns in India (Jhaveri, 2009). Collaborations also span Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982) to more recent crossover films by NRI (Non-Resident Indian) filmmakers, Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta. However, the point of interest in contemporaneous interpermeations between Indian Indie and global cinema is their teleological effect on the final form and style of the Indie films themselves. The thesis of postmodern fragmentation and an amorphous mix of styles in this new form of Indian cinema has been emphasised in this book. A mélange of transglobal filmic influences has moulded the Indies into a variegated palette of film form, style and narrative that differs from Bollywood’s formulaic uni-­dimensionality and its ubiquitous filmmaking conventions and grammar. The interleaving of minutiae from global cinema into the Indies has sculpted the aesthetic of films, such as Harud and Ship of Theseus, into

The Anatomy of the Indies  77 more universal, culturally transcendent cinematic texts. Harud’s inclusion of veteran Iranian actor Reza Naji and the film’s languorous pacing led to several film critics in the mainstream press (Times of India, IBNLive) comparing the film’s aesthetic design to archetypal Iranian art cinema (Malani, 2012; Vats, 2014). Such comparisons notwithstanding, the film’s wide-angle shots, meticulous framing and composition, slow-paced narrative, realism and formal minimalism contribute to its global ‘arthouse’ sensibility. Similarly, Ship of Theseus employs several experimental aesthetic techniques that exhibit diverse stylistic attributes including wide-angle tracking shots, long and single takes, aesthetically framed shots often filming a subject through people and objects and the creation of depth of field and space through mise-enscène. Leena Yadav’s visually evocative Indie, Parched (2015), was filmed by Hollywood cinematographer Russell Carpenter, whose previous oeuvre includes Titanic (1997) and True Lies (1994). These films’ varied World Cinema aesthetic appears almost antithetical to Bollywood’s theatrical address, where the action is usually restricted to the foreground along a 180-degree line (Vasudevan, 2000: 105), almost like a two-dimensional tableau. Although there is a growing transglobal cinematic aesthetic in the art and production design, editing, music and cinematography in Indian Indie films, cinematic content in the form of themes, issues and storylines for the most part remain firmly rooted in a local Indian context. For example, the portmanteau or hyperlink narrative structure – disparate stories in a single film that are eventually connected by a common thread – has been adopted and localised by Indies and Indie/mainstream hybrids such as Bombay Talkies, David (2013), I Am (2010) Island City (2015), Teenkahon (Three Obsessions, 2014) and Ship of Theseus. Another example of this ‘indigenisation’ is the transmutation of the global film noir genre into Hindi neo-noir by low-budget Indie BA Pass. The Indies’ multi-form, multi-style and multi-narrative composition articulating heterogeneous local contexts also reflects these films’ different regional points of origin. For instance, production of the Kannada film Lucia was influenced by regional and global dynamics in terms of support received from local and diasporic Kannadiga funders, from film director Pawan Kumar’s southern Indian home state of Karnataka (Kumar, personal communication, 2013). Lucia’s content also engages with the socio-cultural context of Karnataka state and delves into the everyday lives of ordinary denizens in the state capital, Bangalore. Similarly, Ship of Theseus, Island City and Dhobi Ghat are examples of urban postmodern city films, invoking local narratives of Mumbai as filmic motifs. These examples illustrate the glocal aspect of the Indies and segue into the thesis that characters, themes, issues, moral dilemmas, conflicts and anxieties in many Indies focus on marginalised sections of Indian society. Socio-political issues, such as political corruption, child abuse, farmer suicides in Peepli Live, the disenfranchised existence of Kashmiri civilians in

78  The Anatomy of the Indies Harud, stigmatisation of a single-mother opting for IVF and the brutalisation of India’s gay community by police in I Am, present a cross-section of discourses firmly tethered to their autochthonous Indian geopolitical location. All the above contributing factors coalesce to justify the location of the new Indies as glocal contemporary cinematic forms. The new Indian Indies’ hybrid acculturation involves a simultaneous accretion of global cinematic influences and the Indie New Wave’s reliance on mainstream B ­ ollywood’s economic and symbolic capital. This latter facet will be explored in C ­ hapter 4 on avenues of funding, distribution and exhibition.

References Appadurai, A. (1990). ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’. Theory Culture Society 7(2), pp. 295–310. Athique, A. and Hill, D. (2010). The Multiplex in India. New York: Routledge. Bagdadi, D. (2014). ‘Heroes 2013: Rise of the Independent Films in Indian Cinema’. dnaindia. 20 December. Available at: http://www.dnaindia.com/entertainment/ report-heroes-2013-rise-of-the-independent-films-in-indian-cinema-1938082 [Accessed 15 Aug. 2014]. Berra, J. (2008). Declarations of Independence: American Cinema and the Partialitiy of Independent Production, Bristol, UK: Intellect. Bhumika, K. (2013).  ‘There’s Kung Fu in the Air’. The Hindu. 25 September. Avail­ able at: http://www.thehindu.com/features/cinema/theres-kung-fu-in-the-air/article 5167612.ece [Accessed 14 Oct. 2014]. Chandavarkar Taylor Music.(website) (n.d.). Available at: http://chandavarkartaylor. com/about/ [Accessed 16 Dec. 2014]. Chatterjee, S. (2012). ‘Looking for screen time’. hindustantimes.com. Available at: http://www.hindustantimes.com/regional-movies/looking-for-screen-time/­storyANe91Kjt6YrUPv7X7TqujJ.html [Accessed 25 Feb. 2016]. Devasundaram, A. (2014), ‘Cyber Buccaneers, Public and Pirate Spheres: The ­Phenomenon of Bittorrent Downloads in the Transforming Terrain of Indian Cinema’, in Khorana, S., Parthasarathi, V. and Thomas, P. (eds.). Public Spheres and the Media in India. Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy, No. 152. pp. 108–118. Dhar, O. (2013). ‘Save Indie Cinema’ (petition). Change.org. Available at: https:// www.change.org/p/save-indie-cinema [Accessed 11 Dec. 2014]. Gopal, S. (2011). ‘Sentimental Symptoms: The Films of Karan Johar and Bombay Cinema’, in Mehta, R. and Pandharipande, R. (eds.) Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora. London: Anthem Press, pp. 15–34. Hood, W J. (2009). The Essential Mystery: Major Filmmakers of Indian Art Cinema, New Delhi: Orient Longman. IANS (2013). ‘The Lunchbox’ must be India’s frontrunner for Oscar: Karan Johar.’ Mid-day. 24 August. Available at: http://www.mid-day.com/articles/the-­lunchboxmust-be-indias-frontrunner-for-oscar-karan-johar/228471 [Accessed 14 ­February 2016]. ‘Ilai’ (2013). IMDb. Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2723568.

The Anatomy of the Indies  79 ‘India’s Gets Its First Martial Arts Comedy: Local Kung Fu’ (2013). Zee News, 24 ­September. Available at: http://zeenews.india.com/entertainment/and-more/indias-gets-its-first-martial-arts-comedy-local-kung-fu_143353.html [Accessed 14 Oct. 2014]. Jhaveri, S. (2009). Outsider Films on India. Mumbai, India: Shoestring Publisher. Khanna, P. (2013). ‘The Brave New World of Indie Films’. Hindustan Times. 8 ­December. Available at: http://www.hindustantimes.com/brunch/the-brave-new-world-of-indie-films/story-WCxWo5GFhiEbedltqs61eM.html [Accessed 10 ­February 2016]. Lee, D. (2013). ‘Kickstarter-backed Film Bags Oscar.’ [online] BBC News. 25 ­February. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21574994 [Accessed 11 Dec. 2014]. Malani, G. (2012). ‘Harud: Movie Review.’ Times of India. 26 July. Available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/bollywood/news/HarudMovie-Review/articleshow/15170367.cms [Accessed 3 Nov. 2014]. Marramao, G. (2012). The Passage West. London: Verso. Mishra, V. (2002). Bollywood Cinema Temples of Desire. New York: Routledge. ‘“Mumbai Police” to “Lucia”: 10 Outstanding Southern Films of 2013’ (2013). IBNLive. 21 December. Available at: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/mumbai-policeto-lucia-10-outstanding-southern-films-of-2013/440891-71-210.html [Accessed 28 Nov. 2014]. ‘Onir, Anusha Protest to Save Indie Cinema’. (2013). Zee News, 2 May. Available at: http://zeenews.india.com/entertainment/bollywood/onir-anusha-protest-to-saveindie-cinema_133489.html [Accessed 9 Dec. 2014]. Shankar, A. (2014). ‘The Indian Film Scene Diversifies, Even as Bollywood Dominates’. NPR.org. Available at: http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2014/ 10/09/354808515/the-indian-film-scene-diversifies-even-as-bollywood-dominates [Accessed 14 Oct. 2014]. Shoesmith, B. (2011). ‘Film Industry’, in Kaminsky, A. and Long, R. (eds.), India Today: An Encyclopaedia of Life in the Republic (1). Santa Barbara, CA: ­ABC-CLIO LLC. Stiegler, B. (1998). Technics and Time, Vol. 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Publishers. Thacker, A. (2003). Moving Through Modernity. Manchester, UK: Manchester ­University Press. Variety Staff, (2013). ‘Review: Ship of Theseus’. Variety. 5 February. Available at: http://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/ship-of-theseus-1117949172/ [Accessed 3 Nov. 2014]. Vasudevan, R. (2000). Making Meaning in Indian Cinema. New Delhi: Oxford ­University Press. Vats, R. (2014). ‘“Harud” Review: Whose Kashmir Is This Actually?’ IBNLive. 28 February. Available at: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/harud-review-whose-kashmiris-this-actually/452788-8.html [Accessed 3 Nov. 2014]. Verma, R. (2011). ‘Beyond Bollywood: Indian Cinema’s New Cutting Edge’. The Guardian. 16 January. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jun/23/ india-independent-cinema [Accessed 19 Nov. 2014].

4 Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition

The Indispensability of Bollywood Bollywood’s pre-eminent shadow looms large over the topography of Indian cinema through its meta-hegemonic custodianship of the dynamics of production and distribution in Mumbai cinema. This overweening presence means that Bollywood can intervene at various stages of the filmmaking process. This is especially the case in hybrid ‘collaborations’ such as Peepli Live (2010) and Dhobi Ghat (2010) – films conceptually independent, yet reliant on Bollywood-affiliated production houses for funding. The first section of this chapter examines the proposition that Bollywood currently appears indispensable to the Indies – a thesis that consequently validates the concept of meta-hegemony as well as affirms the hybridisation of modern Indian cinema. Anusha Rizvi’s (personal communication, 2013) assertion that Indie filmmakers need to retain creative control to justify their Indie credentials forms a good starting point whilst considering Bollywood’s indispensability to Indie funding, production and distribution. Rizvi’s caveat seems incongruous with Aamir Khan Productions’ deployment of rigorous mainstream advertising and marketing strategies to promote her film Peepli Live, in the public sphere (see Chapter 1). Aamir Khan’s aggressive corporate-model marketing compared with Rizvi’s commitment to directorial autonomy illustrates the ambiguities of the new Indian Indies with relation to the conventional conception of independent films standing apart from the unbridled dynamics of market promotion. Rizvi (personal communication, 2013) admits, ‘it is a whole new world out there … marketing is now the big thing, as in you cannot make a film without first having your marketing’. Similarly, Kiran Rao affirms the unorthodox content of Indies as an indicator of their independence, but attributes their frequent alignments with the larger Bollywood studio system to the reality of the production and distribution structure in Indian cinema. In the Indian system, where dominant Bollywood and peripheral Indie vie for visibility in the same space, Rao observes: This is different because we [the makers of Indies] are both, looking at new stories, but fall within a studio system, which in a sense is the reality of how we all exist. There is currently no alternative to the

Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition  81 mainstream structure. That’s where Dhobi Ghat was firmly situated – within the same distribution structure as the other [Bollywood blockbuster] films of the day. Dabangg, Welcome, Ghajini or any other film use the same system, methods and channels – that’s the reality of filmmakers today. (Rao, personal communication, 2013) Although Rao’s assertion that there are ‘no alternatives to the mainstream structure’ could be placed in the context of emerging alternative conduits of funding and distribution (see later in this chapter), the Indies’ hybridity index appears to have intensified since 2010, particularly through increasing interactions with Bollywood. This cinematic interpenetration is not restricted to the Indies’ drawing from Bollywood’s superior resources of capital, marketing and distribution. It also extends to Bollywood’s magnified permeation into the creative process of Indie filmmaking. As mentioned earlier, the increased investment in the Indie sector by archetypal Bollywood directors including Karan Johar – the paladin of post-globalisation Bollywood family melodramas – is a case in point. Whilst Aamir Khan1 set the precedent for Bollywood stars supporting or aligning with non-mainstream cinema, the current inroads made by Bollywood producers and directors into the Indie domain is mirrored by the appearance of Bollywood actors in Indies. This is another strategy deployed by big corporate production companies to raise the profile of an Indie film and augment its saleability. Director Onir highlights the infusion of mainstream agents into Indie films by stating that ‘all the definition of how good or bad it [an Indie film] is fringes on how well it does, and with corporate studios coming in, is dependent on stars – either a star director or a star in your film (Onir, personal communication, 2013). The casting of Aamir Khan as a central character in Dhobi Ghat, reframes notions of the Indian Indie as an inviolable and clearly delineated segment of Indian cinema. Recent examples of either mainstream or established actors appearing in new Indies include Irrfan Khan – known globally for his roles in The Namesake (2006), A Mighty Heart (2007) and Life of Pi (2012) – in Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox (2013), Juhi Chawla and Manisha Koirala in I Am (2010), John Abraham in Vicky Donor (2012) and Madras Café (2013), and Amitabh Bachchan in Anurag Kashyap’s instalment of the Bombay Talkies story quartet (2013). In some cases, the enhanced marketability that forms the raison d’être for the inclusion of Bollywood stars ostensibly dissolves the distinction between Indie and Bollywood. Anurag Kashyap, widely regarded as ‘the godfather’ of independent Indian cinema (Khanna, 2013), includes a plethora of Bollywood stars, such as Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma and Raveena Tandon, in his film Bombay Velvet (2015), also incorporating an acting role for aforementioned Bollywood impresario Karan Johar (Goswami, 2014). Bombay Velvet is co-produced and distributed by Indian-based Fox Star Studio, an

82  Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition offshoot of Rupert Murdoch’s STAR television network and 20th Century Fox, with the involvement of Phantom Films, co-owned by Anurag Kashyap (‘Bombay Velvet’, 2013). Kashyap’s gravitation towards the Bollywood space whilst presiding over the new Indie domain as patron to ‘aspiring filmmakers’ (Khanna, 2013) illustrates the shape-shifting aspects of modern Indian cinema. The increasing presence of Bollywood stars in Indies leads to hypothesising about the implications of Bollywood interventions in ubiquitous or commonly identifiable Indie filmmaking codes and strategies. This scenario raises the prospect of an overall diminishing of independent influence in an increasingly corporatised structure. There is a clear and present possibility that the mainstream industry, in its thrust towards forging new markets and expanding existing ones, could either subsume or co-opt hitherto heterodox or autonomous forms of filmmaking into the corporate model. This invokes the concept of a meta-hegemony driven by the impetus of neoliberal consumer capitalism. As a primarily urban cinematic phenomenon, the new Indies, with their growing appeal and widening audiences, particularly among urban middle-class Indian youth, constitute an investment opportunity for Bollywood to broaden its already dominant base. Consequently, the incentive of delving into new economic opportunities presented by the Indies, has attracted corporations such as Reliance, Viacom 18 and Fox Star Studios, in addition to the aforementioned Bollywood producers. Other perspectives view the involvement of Bollywood in the Indie sector as a positive development contributing to the growth and distribution of more independent films. Ira Bhaskar, noting Bollywood’s cross-pollination with the Indies, attenuates the significance of funding sources, instead emphasising the teleological importance of corporate capital in facilitating the production of Indie films. The difference today is that there is Aamir Khan or Viacom, UTV or even Yashraj or Karan Johar. All these big production houses have disaggregated their production budgets into smaller bits so that they can support new Indies – different kinds of cinema. Peepli Live would have sunk without Aamir Khan. (Bhaskar, personal communication, 2013) Bhaskar’s assertion of the causal link between funding and production is echoed in my interview with filmmaker Bejoy Nambiar, who declares, ‘it is a great thing that Viacom, UTV and the corporates are backing projects’ (Nambiar, personal communication, 2013). Nambiar’s Shaitan (‘Devil’, 2011), is an example of a hybrid film that straddles the Bollywood and Indie genres. Nambiar locates himself amongst new filmmakers who manage to ‘do films and say stories that somewhere are cerebral enough, and at the same time manage to balance this with some amount of commercial

Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition  83 trappings’ (ibid.). In essence, similar to Anusha Rizvi and Kiran Rao, Bejoy Nambiar stresses the importance of content, irrespective of funding mechanisms, in sculpting the conception of new independent Indian films. The spotlight on independent content and its connection with the financial and infrastructural indispensability of Bollywood evokes watershed Indie film Ship of Theseus (2013), widely acknowledged as setting a new precedent in Indian cinema. This is particularly due to the centrality of its distinctive philosophical themes. Film critic Derek Malcolm of the Critics’ Circle (UK), included Ship of Theseus in a transglobal selection of 15 alltime ‘films that can change your life’ (Maniar, 2013). Nambiar affirms that Ship of Theseus is ‘as Indie as it gets’ (Nambiar, personal communication, 2013) as far as its content, funding, form and style are concerned. The film is a case in point in relation to how the mainstream structure nevertheless has proved indispensable to its proliferation. Nambiar refers to Kiran Rao, filmmaker and wife of Bollywood star Aamir Khan, who drew on her gravitas and public visibility to promote Ship of Theseus, thereby augmenting the film’s profile in the public sphere (ibid.). Rao’s support paved the way for the distribution of Ship of Theseus in the urban multiplex space and subsequent releases in several smaller Indian cities (Nambiar, personal communication, 2013; Onir, personal communication, 2013). The importance of Rao’s patronage to the successful dissemination of Ship of Theseus in India is emphasised by the fact that the film was independently funded without corporate support. Stranded in the doldrums of a financial shortfall, one of the film’s actors, Sohum Shah, injected his own capital into the production, navigating the film through troubled financial waters and aiding its successful completion. Shah reveals the circumstances precipitating his financial involvement to prevent Ship of Theseus from foundering: ‘A number of things were going against the film commercially. We had no stars and we were speaking too many languages in the film’ (Dundoo, 2013). Shah’s revelation also foregrounds a common situation facing the Indies. This is in terms of Ship of Theseus being bereft of recognisable stars as well as the film’s polyglot (Hindi, English, Arabic and Swedish dialogue) divergence from Bollywood’s dominant use of Hindi. Overall, the points raised so far also underscore the various stages at which an Indian Indie could become dependent on the prosthetic of augmented publicity or the Bollywood superstructure. During our conversation, Bejoy Nambiar hypothesised about motivations and interests that cause corporates to either align with an Indie project at different stages or to reject it outright. He asserts that some films are spurned at the outset – at the ‘concept level’ – on the basis of the film’s content or premise being deemed unsuitable (Nambiar, personal communication, 2013). Nambiar presents the other scenario, where the final cut of a film is presented to prospective producers/distributors in a bid to garner their approval. In most cases, corporate production companies adopt as their barometer the past record of Indies with particular storylines or

84  Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition content that identifiably failed to generate sufficient revenue. In essence, corporates uphold the primacy of a film’s financial viability; its likelihood of gaining box-office success. Nambiar mentions, there are certain circumstances where conglomerations, such as Viacom 18, decide to ‘take a risk’ on certain films, and are sometimes financially rewarded in this stochastic play-it-by-ear strategy (ibid.). Aamir Bashir asserts that an Indie aligning itself with a Bollywood-oriented corporate from the incipient stages of production is distinct from a ‘truly’ self-funded film, such as Ship of Theseus, whose only buttress from Bollywood or mainstream associations is in the form of promotion after the film’s completion (personal communication, 2013). This line of argumentation recalls the gradations and subjectivities that inflect varying definitions of the new Indian Indie. Importantly, the above assertions indicate that despite variations in sources of funding – independent or corporate, Bollywood’s presence seems a sine qua non in shaping the contours of and presiding over the commercial fate of an independent Indian film. Bollywood’s hegemonic omnipresence is also highlighted in the recent success of documentary film The World Before Her (2012) by Canadian-Indian filmmaker Nisha Pahuja. The film, granted a 2014 release in India, two years after it circulated at international festivals, presents an armed training camp run by the extreme fundamentalist Hindu group Durga Vahini, the women’s wing of the extreme-right organisation, the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) (Francis, 2014a). With a right-wing Hindu nationalist BJP government installed in power after commanding an absolute majority in the 2014 national Lok Sabha elections, Pahuja expressed her trepidation about gaining permission to exhibit the film in India and indeed, experienced a struggle with ‘big distributors’, film festivals and the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) over the film’s controversial content (ibid.). Anurag Kashyap invoked his credentials as a popular Indie ‘crossed-over-into-Bollywood’ director and promoted The World Before Her in India, significantly contributing to the film’s nationwide multiplex release. Pahuja states, ‘having Anurag behind it just took it up a few notches up for sure. It became much more public’. Kashyap’s intervention recalls Kiran Rao’s resuscitation of the campaign to raise Ship of Theseus’s profile. Significantly, The World Before Her went on to become the most lucrative documentary film ever at the Indian box office (Francis, 2014b). Inferring from the above examples, it could be stated that these non-mainstream films’ reliance on patronage to proliferate is prototypical of a wider ‘godfather’ syndrome in Indian cinema. The fortunes of the aforementioned independent films bear testimony to a contingent system that seems predicated on ‘benevolent’ Bollywood – something that subversive Indian filmmaker Q refers to as the ‘Blessed’. Q’s satirical classification of the Indian Indies, explicated during an interview, illustrates the notion that Indie films receiving support from Bollywood personalities and corporate funding could be considered as being ‘Blessed’.

Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition  85 According to Q, the new Indian Indies in general could be divided into four categories: ‘Blessed’, ‘Unblessed’, ‘Rickshaw’ and ‘Drain’ (Q, personal communication, 2013). In the Blessed category, the Indie filmmaker has either located a corporate donor or a benevolent patron from the mainstream industry who has agreed to ‘bless’ the film with capital investment or the symbolic capital of association. In the Unblessed class, the filmmaker has identified a prospective patron or producer but is still awaiting the conferral of a ‘blessing’. Q considers the third category, the Rickshaw class, comprised of what he deems the true or bona fide Indie filmmaking domain in Indian cinema – documentary production. Owing to the hard work they put in, Q equates factual filmmakers in India with rickshaw pullers; toiling away without expectations of substantial returns. At the bottom of the pile are filmmakers without access to any funding or handicapped by inadequate insight into the dynamics of filmmaking. Hence, they are consigned to the Drain category, owing to their overwhelming incompatibility with the three other classifications. Q’s stratification appears to be an ironic reworking of the Hindu caste system and its four class divisions – Brahmin (priestly, privileged class), Kshatriya (warriors), Vaishya (merchants) and Shudra (menial workers). Q’s idiosyncratic taxonomy nevertheless provides an accurate insight into the gradations in Indie filmmaking, reiterating the sedimentation and hierarchisation that seem integral components of the new Indies. The division between the Blessed and other layers of the Indies also signposts several new independent Indian films’ differentiation from earlier norms of Parallel cinema. This is in the context of new Indies that forge mainstream alignments, eventually gaining commercial success. Peepli Live presents a good example of this assertion. Anusha Rizvi considers the film to have set a benchmark in terms of being financially successful whilst at the same time espousing social themes. She states, ‘I think it was Peepli Live that actually allowed people to believe that a film like that can make money because it is not a comic film. It is a very serious film and it did make quite a bit of money’ (Rizvi, personal communication, 2013). However, as mentioned above, Indie commercial success spawned from an alliance with corporates raises the prospect of restrictions in creative control. It entails the independent director’s constant struggle with the mainstream superstructure for creative autonomy. Rizvi’s description of the new framework of Indie filmmaking delinks the current New Wave from previous Parallel arthouse filmmakers such as Mani Kaul and Shyam Benegal, who possessed a significant degree of tacit authorial autonomy in the filmmaking process (Rizvi, personal communication, 2013). In this regard, Anusha Rizvi attributes the current situation to the notion that ‘the systems are not really traditional systems where you have independent producers’. According to her, ‘the independent producer from Bombay has vanished’ (ibid.). Rizvi’s contention informs the present scenario, where even Parallel cinema stalwart Shyam Benegal has solicited the wider production and distribution power wielded by mainstream production houses such as UTV

86  Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition and Reliance Big Pictures to finance and disseminate his films, Welcome to Sajjanpur (2008) and Well Done Abba! (2009) (Ghosh, personal communication, 2011). In a departure from the scenarios raised up to this point, filmmaker Pawan Kumar contests the apparent indispensability of corporate alignments or the presence of recognisable stars in relation to his independent Kannada language film, Lucia (2013). Kumar affords equal importance to assembling a talented cast and crew and the dynamics of funding and distribution, prescribing an equitable distribution of importance to workforce and capital (Kumar, personal communication, 2013). In this context, he reveals how his approach diverges from the normative convention of soliciting associations with recognised actors and crew, stating that this is his deliberate strategy to encourage new talent: Ideally, you would go for people who are popular, have a brand name in all departments, pay them their fee and bring in their work as well as their names to promote the film. Here, [with Lucia] we got everybody new; the kind of people who are very talented but otherwise would not be able to get a foot in the traditional setup or would take a lot of years for them to showcase their work. (ibid.) Kumar imputes his casting of a preponderance of industry newcomers in Lucia to the larger vision of his future filmmaking ventures. Citing Lucia’s modest budget and his ability to foreground creative content despite monetary constraints, he asserts ‘if we make more films it will be [with the reason] to tell a story and then to figure a way to sell it, not the other way round’ (ibid.). Kumar’s commitment to content affirms the Indies’ distinctive marker – non-mainstream narrative themes and issues. Unconventional storylines often become a drawback in relation to gaining support from mainstream mechanisms of distribution and exhibition such as the corporate multiplex chains in India. As mentioned earlier, overt political or sexual content often proves the Indies’ Achilles heel, exacerbating a process of selective absorption and exhibition that is skewed in favour of commercial films. This tendentious privileging of the commercial is often exercised both by corporate production houses (at the funding level) and by mainstream multiplexes such as India’s PVR franchise (in terms of exhibition). A good example of this unlevel playing field is Harud’s treatment of the taboo topic of Kashmir, a region mired in instability and territorial disputes between India and Pakistan. The film’s theme constituted a ‘poisoned chalice’ in relation to attracting mainstream financing and distribution interest. Bashir elaborates on the quandary facing his and other independent films with political themes: Of course, it [Harud] would have proliferated if UTV or Viacom aligned with it, but UTV or Viacom or anyone else would not want to tie up with a film like this because of its treatment, the story telling, the

Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition  87 way it is. It is almost made intentionally antithetical to all your tropes of storytelling as far as Bollywood is concerned. Anything commercial is plucked out of it. The other reason is Kashmir – it is the politics. You will not see any mainstream producer or distributor make or promote a film that is politically anti-establishment, whether they are making films about Naxalites [Maoist revolutionaries] or any issue-based thing, it is always nation first, one can never question … patriotism makes money. (Bashir, personal communication, 2013) Bashir’s assertion highlights the discrepancies in status quo between Bollywood and the Indies. Patriotic Bollywood sagas, such as Mission Kashmir (2000), have consistently secured the interest of corporate production houses, in contrast to the situation faced by Harud (ibid.). These propositions fold into some of the questions raised in this book pertaining to the Indies’ location in the dominant national narrative and Bollywood superstructure. Apprehensions held by mainstream corporate funding sources about polemical Indie content often project into the realm of exhibition and distribution. Indian multiplexes often display a reluctance to accommodate non-commercial content. In this context, Onir mentions his first independent directorial effort, My Brother Nikhil (2005), regarded as India’s first filmic foray into representing homosexuality. Based on true events, the film portrays the ostracism and vilification faced by the title character, Nikhil, who bears the double social stigma of being gay and HIV positive in 1994, a time when AIDS awareness in India was minimal. In an interview, Onir states that he was able to gain the participation of two prominent Bollywood stars, Manisha Koirala and Juhi Chawla in lead roles for his subsequent independent venture, I Am, despite the latter film’s small-budget being equivalent to the capital invested in 2005 in My Brother Nikhil (Onir, personal communication, 2013). The association of the mainstream lead actresses notwithstanding, Onir argues that I Am was deemed ‘untouchable’ by mainstream studios and multiplexes (ibid.). He attributes the mainstream channels’ indifference to I Am’s incisive content and topical narratives, particularly its portrayal of the systematic victimisation and brutalisation of India’s gay community by the police (ibid.). The film’s financial shortfall necessitated Juhi Chawla to invest her own personal funds to facilitate the film’s print and publicity (ibid.), mirroring Sohum Shah’s aforementioned role in relation to Ship of Theseus. Overall, I Am’s case scenario suggests Bollywood star power is not necessarily an infallible formula or guarantee of wider acceptance and box-office success. In the complex and uncertain terrain of Indie funding and distribution, which is often subjected to the caprices of corporate interest and Bollywood star involvement, film content, one way or another, can prove the game changer.

88  Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition The inference from the points discussed thus far reiterates the polyvocality and polymorphous nature of the new Indies. It is important to reiterate that films such as Lucia, conceived beyond the bounds of Bollywood, demonstrate that not all independent films are beholden or obligated to the meta-hegemonic Bollywood imperative. The eschewing of partnerships with corporate funders, which largely reflects the putative conventional definition attributed to the global ‘Indie’ genre, is still perceivable in several low-profile yet successful self-funded Indian independent films, such as Madholal Keep Walking (2010) and more recently, Court (2015), an internationally lauded small-budget independent film, selected as India’s official entry in the foreign language section of the Oscar Awards in 2016. It could be stated that the lack of an autonomous Indie funding and distribution infrastructure largely contributes to independent filmmakers’ dependence on the mainstream. The motivation for most Indie directors at the precarious ‘springboard’ stage of contemplating sources of finance is to at least break even and recover capital injected into a film. In most cases, this deterministic goal informs the filmmakers’ pragmatic and pre-emptive awareness that the recovery of investment is vital to the funding of their next project. In other words, the box-office proceeds from one film usually spill over into the director’s next filmmaking venture (Q, personal communication, 2013). This is another distinction between Bollywood and alternative Indian cinema. The former seems almost exclusively driven from the outset by the profit motive. Proponents of the latter, although seeking wider exhibition and box-office returns, are attuned to pragmatic realities on the ground. These practicalities include filmic content, the disequilibrium of a hegemonic cinematic structure skewed towards the mainstream, paucity of distribution networks and exhibition spaces. All these elements become mandatory considerations for Indian Indie filmmakers whilst prefiguring the commercial viability of their films in an unaccommodating paradigm. These obstacles also become motivating factors. As Pawan Kumar points out, ‘it is the need to survive that is making us more innovative in the way we make films’ (personal communication, 2013). Sometimes, losses incurred on personal investments stemming from disproportionate treatment at the hands of producers and distributors have left several filmmakers apprehensive about independent filmmaking. In an interview, Onir relates his experience of facing financial pitfalls whilst making I Am: ‘I put in my own money, time, and there is a huge difference when you’re doing it with someone else’s money’ (personal communication, 2013). The meta-hegemony of the mainstream superstructure and the situation-specific circumstances governing modalities of production and distribution stimulate the Indies to adopt heterodox strategies. The next sections of this chapter explore avenues for exhibition afforded to the Indies as well as new and innovative strategies employed by some Indie filmmakers to obviate direct competition with Bollywood for cinematic space. Alternative

Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition  89 funding and distribution sites and strategies are examined in the following sections of the chapter, including crowdfunding; the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) – the traditional bastion of state-supported film finance; the multiplex space, beset with disproportionate systems yet increasingly aware of the Indies market potential; and the pirate sphere of BitTorrent Internet downloads. In addition to these other channels of proliferation, film festivals, both domestic and international, are increasingly important in providing a platform for Indie exhibition and to some degree an alternative to Bollywood-dominated conduits of dissemination.

Film Festivals Facilitating an Indie Space The growing popularity of new independent cinema could be framed through the expansion of film festivals across the nation, whose raison d’être is to showcase alternative Indian films (Gopalan, 2012: 424). Alys Francis’s article on the BBC news website observes a ‘boom’ in Indian film festivals that is proportionally raising the profile of new Indie cinema (Francis, 2014b). The article observes an ascendency of Indie films with ‘searing portrayals of real life events and fictional stories that challenge cultural norms and conservative sensibilities’ (ibid.). The magnified visibility of these films in smaller Indian towns and cities is largely attributable to the germination of film festivals across the diverse Indian landscape. The Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF), established in 2012 by a couple of Indian Indie filmmakers, is located in the small town in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh. DIFF is a good example of the diversification and democratisation of the non-Bollywood space, reaching out to outlying and peripheral theatres of exhibition. Another example of the increasingly itinerant Indies is the Ladakh International Film Festival (LIFF) in the remote northern state of Jammu and Kashmir (ibid.). Dharamshala (DIFF) and Ladakh (LIFF) epitomise the movement of the Indies from major urban centres – officially ranked as ‘A’ cities - such as Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolata and Chennai, into wider territories, especially those classified as ‘B’ and ‘C’ cities (Q, personal communication, 2013)2. Ad hoc, informal and idiosyncratic strategies of organisation and exhibition often typify the operational modalities of some of the smaller players and proponents in the larger theme of burgeoning independent festival spaces. Logistical, infrastructural and budgetary constraints often motivate inventive, community-based participatory interactions centred on the screening of indie cinema. The ‘Bring Your Own Film Festival’ (BYOFF) is a prime example of unconventional yet pragmatic mobilisations of available resources to facilitate interactions through independent cinema across the heterogeneous Indian topography. In an interview, director Q reveals that the first ‘proper screening’ of his film Gandu was at the BYOFF held at the seaside town of Puri, in the eastern state of Orissa (Q, personal communication, 2013). Q mentions the festival’s minimalist logistical scheme,

90  Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition consisting of ‘three tents’ on the beach, where films were screened ‘from 4 pm to 4 am’ (ibid.). Q bears testimony to BYOFF’s independent credentials, mentioning his astonishment at the fact that ‘700 people came from all over the country to watch Gandu’ (ibid.). On a global level, growing cognisance of new emerging Indian cinema has contributed to film festivals featuring exclusively Indian Indie content, such as the London Asian Film Festival (LAFF), an annual international event with an eighteen-year history; the London Indian Film Festival (LIFF), Edinburgh’s fledgling Just Independent Asian Film Festival (JIAFF 2014) featuring the Scottish premieres of Ship of Theseus, Harud and Q’s documentary Love in India (2009), and the first-ever Edinburgh Asian Film Festival (EAFF 2016). In keeping with a focus on the new wave of Indian Indies, Jasmine Jaisinghani, director of the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles 2014, has expressed her intention to transform the annual event into ‘the “Sundance of Indian cinema” with films that contrast Bollywood’s often glamorised escapism with vivid realism’ (‘Move Over’, 2014). Placed in the context of Bollywood’s meta-hegemony, the creation of disaggregated, multiple, simultaneous spaces for Indie exhibition acts as a centrifugal force, broadening the Indies’ visibility across a wider demographic. This burgeoning of new independent film festivals that provide alternative cinematic spaces could be included as one of the features in the ongoing reconfiguration of the Indian cinema matrix. In this regard, the formation of new film festival spaces coincides with the notion of interstitial, liminal spaces springing up between overlapping binaries of past and present nation and its various cinematic traditions. This germination of new median sites of cinematic intersection manifests in the Indies culling out exhibition spaces, away from the confines of the cosmopolis, and venturing into new regional and zonal distributions. Although the rise of film festivals in India may still be viewed as an inchoate phenomenon, the perceptible increase in Indie film productions since 2010 must be assessed in terms of the ramifications on Bollywood’s meta-­ hegemonic dominance of the Indian cinema industry. The autochthonous growth of indigenous Indian Indie film festivals necessitates an appraisal of Bollywood’s coeval investment and expansion into the global film festival space, characterised by its obligatory presence in several high-profile Indian and global events. The assertion by young filmmakers such as Bhargav Saikia, producer of debut Indie, Kaafiron ki Namaaz (‘The Virgin Arguments’, 2013), that ‘mainstream festivals overlooked first-time filmmakers’ is echoed by Anurag Kashyap’s admission that the majority of festivals still privilege popular cinema (Francis, 2014b). Saikia states, ‘if you don’t have a known actor in your film, even in the independent space, some festivals won’t even watch your film for the selection’ (ibid.). Saikia’s view reiterates the notion of Bollywood as a dominant imperative even in the independent cinema sector.

Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition  91 Broadening the context to Bollywood’s role and influence in the exogenous global dimensions of meta-hegemony, Bollywood’s ascendancy as a growing competitor to Hollywood is to a considerable degree reflected in the industry’s growing presence at international film festivals. The International Indian Film Academy (IIFA), the equivalent of Hollywood’s Academy of Motion Pictures, gained a global broadcast audience of five hundred million viewers in 110 nations at its annual awards festival in 2007 (Chary, 2009: 72). Actor/filmmaker Rahul Bose observes Bollywood’s gravitation in recent years towards augmented visibility at the international film festival circuit, hitherto regarded as an ‘art cinema’ space (Bose, 2013). Bollywood’s branding as a global franchise raises the question of whether this move towards the festival sector is catalysed by the cultural capital and marketing opportunities increasingly being presented by an association with prestigious international festivals. Pooja Rangan (2012) notes the commonly held conception that film festivals in India serve as portals for commerce. In this regard, she discerns an intersection of aesthetics, politics and capital interests as a growing trend in the global festival space at Berlin, Cannes and Venice (Rangan, 2012: 24). The conspicuous presence of Bollywood stars such as Aishwarya Rai and Shah Rukh Khan at the Cannes and Toronto festivals (Chary, 2009:  72), along with premieres of several Bollywood films such as Imtiaz Ali’s Highway (2014) at the Berlinale, reiterates Bollywood’s permeation into the global festival sector. It is worth considering whether Bollywood making inroads into this arena augurs a diminishing space for Indian Indies in the abovementioned locations, akin to Hollywood’s dominant presence sidelining American indies at festivals. The changing cartographies of global cinematic configurations in the specific context of the international film festival space also signposts ongoing realignments in the relative positioning between Indian Indie films and Bollywood. Overall, Indies now countenance the prospect of having to vie for space with Bollywood at the international film festival level. The possibility of heightened competition for visibility at established global film festivals is crucial to the Indies, bearing in mind their often volatile relationship with India’s discourse of censorship and regulation. Several Indian independent films with mordant socio-political themes have either been excluded from public exhibition or denied a certificate of release. The most illustrative recent examples are Unfreedom (2015), tracing a lesbian relationship and religious extremism; Papilio Buddha (2013), about the marginalised Dalit community and Bengali Indie Gandu (2010), containing images of drug abuse and full-frontal nudity. Denied certificates of release by the CBFC, a host of independent films are solely reliant on international film festivals such as the Berlinale for exhibition. This is often the case, even with politically ‘non-confrontational’ films such as Ship of Theseus, which won a plethora of international film festival plaudits, but struggled to gain

92  Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition an Indian release until Kiran Rao arrived on board to promote the film. The correlation between censorship and the Indian Indies’ exhibition and distribution will be explored at a later stage. On the outer layers of the meta-hegemony, Bollywood’s growing interest in the international festival circuit prefigures, if not the de-territorialisation of the Indies, at least a turbulent arbitration between the two Indian cinematic forms – a jostling for space on the global film festival platform. On the other hand, within Indian borders, the amplified interest in films with alternative content and the emergence of indigenous Indie festivals in new and diverse locations presages the opening up of some of the Bollywood-dominated cinematic spaces; a re-territorialisation to accommodate the increasingly popular Indies. In other words, the burgeoning growth of Indie film festivals in India foreshadows heterodox, autonomous spaces of exhibition. In addition to the practical function of hosting screenings, these events espouse local narratives and act as microcosmic spaces of resistance to the dominant superstructures of power. Pawan Kumar’s explication in relation to the funding and distribution of his Kannada film Lucia could shed more light on the nuances of Indie distribution. Kumar mentions the first stage of his ‘low-risk’ approach to funding, manifested in his asking the film’s cast and crew to invest equal amounts in the production (personal communication, 2013). Following the first stage of equal capital investment by Lucia’s creative team, Kumar’s second stage beckoned to the public sphere. Pawan Kumar used social media to solicit financial contributions from the global public in an example of the increasingly popular alternative film-funding strategy of crowdfunding/ crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing During my conversation with Pawan Kumar, he reveals how he approached mainstream producers in order to launch Lucia. Disillusioned with their autocratic approach, Kumar discovered the demotic option of collective funding. He asserts: Every time I had a meeting I felt they [the producers] were trying to tweak my script or bank on a star name and were not banking on the script. So I wrote a blog about my frustration and it got converted into support from the people saying “let’s make it ourselves”. (Kumar, personal communication, 2013) In his crowdfunding quest, Kumar harnessed the various dimensions of social media, from blogs to Facebook and Twitter, adopting the approach of selling online tickets for Lucia even before filming had commenced (ibid.). The incentive provided to contributors lay in the promise of Lucia’s completion within six months, the return of their investment and free access to

Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition  93 the film (ibid.). Kumar exhorted public donors to send in their contributions within a specified timeline. His stipulated budget of 5 million rupees (around £50,000) was posted as the target amount on his blog along with a time limit of 100 days for the ‘funding collective’ to generate this amount (ibid.). Kumar reached his budgetary target (ultimately gaining 5.1 million rupees) in only 27 days (ibid.) crowd–generated instant cinema. Although Kumar had written the third draft of his script, he chose to reveal only the project’s title – Lucia – to his prospective crowdfunders (ibid.). Kumar attributes this ‘leap of faith’ approach to the rapport he had established with his audience through incessant blog posts and Facebook updates. During our conversation, the filmmaker ascribes his successful crowdfunding to building trust across social networks and establishing a sense of connectedness with his prospective funders through constant updates about the production (ibid.). Interestingly, Kumar reveals that Lucia’s sophisticated aesthetic production values belie its 5.1 million rupee (around £50,000) budget. This is largely owing to the reception of additional non-monetary crowdfunding that covered the film’s logistical requirements. Kumar discloses that the production team crowdsourced other implements integral to the filmmaking process including, inter alia, locations, people, cars and costumes. He further states ‘we didn’t have to pay for most of it – one could say that this is a 3 crore rupees [around £300,000] crowdfunded film’ (Kumar, personal communication, 2013). Crowdfunding is an ascendant mode of film finance in the current Indian Indie context, Onir’s I Am being a good recent example. However, a personalised version of this strategy has been employed in India’s arthouse filmmaking past by Shyam Benegal, veteran auteur and one of the pioneers of the Parallel cinema movement. Benegal traces the origins of crowdfunding to its Communist roots in 1954, when a filmmaking member of the Communist Party in the United States, after being spurned by traditional financiers, received funding support from the International Union of Mine Mill and Smelter Works (‘Milkmen’, 2014; Ross, 1998: 251). The resulting film, Salt of the Earth (1954) was banned on release by the American state (‘Milkmen’, 2014). The Indian crowdfunding journey invokes a flashback to Shyam Benegal’s 1976 film Manthan (‘The Churning’) about the dairy farmer collective in the western state of Gujarat. The self-financing of this film by the region’s farmers could be located as the first instance of crowdfunding in India (‘Milkmen’, 2014). Benegal credits Dr Verghese Kurian, founder of India’s ‘White Revolution’, conceived to reinvigorate the country’s dairy farming sector, with spawning the idea of involving the milk co-operatives in Gujarat as ‘film producers’ (ibid.). According to this plan, the farmers would retain 6 rupees out of the packet of milk that they usually sold for 8 rupees, with the surplus 2 rupees functioning as their contribution to the film (ibid.). These Gujarat farmers-turned-producers numbered 500,000, and in 1976 set a precedent for crowdfunding that Shyam Benegal

94  Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition would repeat in his future filmmaking endeavours – Susman (1987), and Antarnaad (1991) (ibid.). Although Pawan Kumar’s Lucia was the first regional Kannada language film to adopt the crowdfunding alternative to orthodox modes of film financing, Onir’s I Am was the first film to rejuvenate this strategy initiated by Benegal in 1976. Expanding crowdfunding from a national to a transglobal scale, Onir infused funds aggregated from 400 donors in 45 different countries into the production of I Am (Menon, 2011). The growth of crowdfunding as a means to an end for new independent Indian cinema raises several propositions. It affirms the atavistic nature of the new Indies as drawing from their predecessors – Parallel cinema, in this instance by adopting Benegal’s strategy of crowdfunding. However, the new Indies hybridise, contemporise and stylise Parallel cinema’s benchmarks, such as Benegal’s crowdfunding, to suit a postmodern paradigm. This resonates with Homi Bhabha’s notion of ‘looking back in order to go forward’ (Bhabha, 1994: ix; Bienal de São Paulo, 2012) – new art forms emerging in the present drawing from precedents and performing palimpsestic rewritings of the past in the present, whilst imagining and negotiating the future. Current shifts in Indian cinema funding strategies, particularly the growth of crowdfunding, draws into focus disjunctures and deviations in the evolutionary timeline of crowdsourcing itself. In this regard, it is worth revisiting Benegal’s allusion to the Communist provenance of crowdfunding vis-à-vis the production of The Salt of the Earth in 1954. This film, created in the crucible of a leftist collective ethos, presented a scathing indictment of the Empire Zinc Corporation’s exploitation of the Mexican-American mining community. The Salt of the Earth was also a forerunner of feminist socio-political perspectives, driven by ‘a strong female activist at the film’s center’ (McDonald, 2012: 3). The above elements are markers that emphasise a transmutation in the crowdfunding process since 1954. This change involves the deracination or de-territorialisation of this collective funding mechanism from its political, labour-class roots epitomised by The Salt of the Earth. Crowdfunding has been subsequently re-territorialised in the postmodern age by a disaggregated, largely global bourgeoisie, with the dynamics of this collective strategy predicated on the imperative of the Internet and social media. This transformation across time and space succinctly captures the impact of globalisation, even on microcosmic models of funding manifested by Indian Indies such as Lucia and I Am. Shyam Benegal underscores the disjuncture between his own experiences of generating film finance prior to the watershed of globalisation. Stating his apprehension about the current viability of crowdfunding as a stable, sustainable source of capital, Benegal argues: The primary purpose of a film is to entertain and make money out of entertainment. It is business ultimately and everyone wants to put

Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition  95 their money where they will get it back. So, we need a more regular system of funds to finance our films. (‘Milkmen’, 2014) Although Benegal’s assertion of the need for an independent infrastructure is justified, there appears to be a personal disconnect between the idealism of his Parallel cinema heyday and his current realist pragmatism. Benegal observes the shift in perspectives to filmmaking that informs the current complexities and anxieties countenanced by new Indies struggling for space in the mainstream. He states that ‘a film maker has to prove that he can make money. He also has to constantly test the worth of his ideas. The film industry is littered with corpses of filmmakers and ideas that didn’t make it’ (‘Milkmen’, 2014) Benegal’s misgivings about the practicability of crowdfunding appear dissonant with what seems to be a recent upsurge in awareness of this medium in India. Indeed, crowdfunding appears to be gaining popularity with the germination of organisations such as the National Crowd Funding Association of India (NCFA) and more specifically in the filmmaking domain, websites such as Wishberry and Ignite Intent. The Wishberry website appears to echo Pawan Kumar’s filmmaking sensibilities with its ‘Go Fund Yourself!’ campaign promising potential filmmakers ‘a new risk-free way to raise funds’ and also claiming to privilege the power of community over ‘financial return’ (Go Fund Yourself!, n.d.). The rise of crowdfunding platforms such as Wishberry emphasises the redefinition of ‘community’ as witnessed in the context of The Salt of the Earth. This new mode mimics and assimilates some of the skeletal contours of socialist ‘community’ and collapses it into the virtuality and anonymity of cyberspace. In effect, the time-space compression accelerated by the techno-economy of globalisation presides over the new rhetoric of crowdfunding. The hybridity of the Indies’ – socio-politically conscious and commercially aware, renders crowdfunding, with its own juxtaposition of community and capital, a compatible funding alternative to Bollywood’s meta-hegemonic monopoly of funding and distribution. Onir mentions one of the main pitfalls of crowdfunding – India’s tax and revenue rules. According to the filmmaker, this stems from the Indian state not recognising cinema as an art form and hence imposing tax levies on crowdsourced funds (Onir, personal communication, 2013). Onir contends that these state taxation laws caused him to jettison crowdfunding in his subsequent filmmaking endeavours. He reveals: ‘I realised it was too complicated, you end up spending too much money on a tax consultant and lawyer’ (ibid.). He considers this an unviable option ‘unless things change in India, and cinema begins to be treated as a form of art’ (ibid.). One of the alternatives to this dilemma involves independent filmmakers turning to foreign financial channels, either through selling distribution rights to an overseas company or by soliciting a global co-production.

96  Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition Examples of such arrangements include partial contributions to the funding of Harud by the Hubert Bals Fund (Bashir, personal communication, 2013), which also supported the making of Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court, and filmmaker Q’s sale of Gandu’s distribution rights to American (Artsploitation Films), Australian (Accent Film Entertainment), Netherlands (Filmfreak Distributie) and German (Bildstorung) distributors. Other permutations of the overseas option gesture towards new transglobal co-productions, some envisaged by India’s NFDC as a platform to promote young independent directors.

The NFDC Refashioning Its Role in a Heterogeneous Terrain The NFDC, although a pale shadow of its Parallel cinema persona, can sometimes offer recourse to Indies facing difficulties with restricted funding systems. Once a pre-eminent pathway to film funding, the NFDC in its scope of a ‘Government of India Enterprise’ (‘Annual Report’, 2013) funded and facilitated the production of a plethora of Parallel and arthouse films. Although its waning influence and potency since the decline of Parallel cinema has been further attenuated after liberalisation, the NFDC is attempting to rejuvenate and reposition itself in the postmodern age. The organisation claims that it continues to commission ‘the Cinemas of India’ (ibid.), commensurate with its traditional role of promoting alternative films (Rai, 2009: 118) and debutant filmmakers from across the nation. Some notable recent commissions include Gyan Correa’s Gujarati film The Good Road, which was India’s entry to the 2014 Oscars; it was exclusively funded by the NFDC. The Lunchbox, a globally acclaimed Indie film by first-time director Ritesh Batra, is an NFDC co-production with Anurag Kashyap films, ROH Films (Germany), ASAP Films (France), Cine Mosaic (USA), amongst others (Bhushan, 2013). The NFDC’s focus on forging global cinematic ties is a strategy that the organisation claims is reflected in the Punjabi film Qissa (2014), a co-production with Heimat Films, resulting from India’s co-production agreement with Germany and akin to The Lunchbox, starring Irrfan Khan (‘Annual Report’, 2013: 15). The organisation has also enlarged its ambit of global co-productions with an overseas division, Film Bazaar, that markets and promotes new Indian films at International film festivals as well as soliciting international filmmaking partnerships (ibid.: 13, 25). ‘Cinemas of India’ designed to function as a distribution platform was launched in 2012, with NFDC’s purported rationale of bridging the gap between ‘the maestros of Indian Cinema and the new age filmmakers’ through ‘Home Video, theatrical distribution, Video on Demand, and television syndication’ (ibid.: 22). The NFDC’s attempted reinvigoration in the present necessitates a reappraisal of its decline in the past concomitant with the Parallel cinema of the 1980s. With the liberalisation of the Indian economy, the

Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition  97 dominance of Bollywood-affiliated corporate production houses and alternative routes to funding such as crowdsourcing gaining in popularity, the NFDC’s current role puts into perspective its failures in the 1980s. Ira Bhaskar argues that the ‘NFDC collapsed because they agreed with everybody that these [Parallel cinema] films are not financially viable. But they never questioned, never tried to identify why this is so’ (Bhaskar, personal communication, 2013). Despite the attribution, at the time, of de facto national cinema status to Parallel cinema by the Indian press and the festival circuit, the state-run NFDC’s laissez-faire attitude to sustaining the Parallel movement through funding largely contributed to this alternative genre’s demise. The NFDC’s new initiatives underscore the shifting contexts in India’s cinematic timeline. Current reorientations in the NFDC also invoke the Indies recrudescent traits – their dialogic with certain scenarios faced by their Parallel cinema predecessors. For example, several of the interviewees featured in this book view the NFDC’s endeavours as restricted, inconsistent, parochial and often influenced by the caprices of the organisation’s supervening state authority, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. This has contributed to an imbalance between the number of films sequestered in the NFDC repository awaiting release, and those that actually manage to gain exhibition (Bashir, personal communication, 2013). The assertion of distribution shortfalls assailing the current Indies contains overtones of the state-supported NFDC’s similar failure in the past to support the dissemination of Parallel cinema. This is exemplified in the fact that ‘by 1982, 84 of the 130 films made with funding from the central government had not been distributed and were “still on the shelf”’ (Chakravarty, 1993: 244). In the contemporary scenario, prospective release can be so dilatory that it often results in some non-mainstream films from the ‘Cinemas of India’ never seeing the light of a cinema hall. However, Ira Bhaskar affirms a current decoupling from the previous funding and distribution structure of Parallel cinema. In the previous system, auteurs including Kumar Shahani and Mani Kaul were more or less anchored to the NFDC in its role as the solitary arbiter of film finance during the zenith of state-supported Indian art cinema (Bhaskar, personal communication, 2013). Bhaskar ascribes the decentring of the NFDC to the advent of post-liberalisation corporate interest in new Indian cinema and a heightened access to and awareness of global cinema, leading to modified sensibilities, particularly amongst informed young urban cinemagoers. She observes: The situation today is different because of international cinema and because there is a clear apprehension among production houses that young people today have access to global cinema. Therefore, their tastes are different, and that’s why production houses put their money behind different kinds of cinema. (ibid.)

98  Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition Bhaskar observes that corporate companies are increasingly amenable to the idea of infusing what (for them) constitutes smaller sums of money as capital investments into Indie projects, at relatively mitigated levels of financial risk and liability, compared to the average Bollywood blockbuster (ibid.). In this regard, Bhaskar’s observation endorses Bejoy Nambiar’s earlier perception of the ‘risk-taking’ strategies increasingly being adopted by Bollywood producers and companies investing in the Indie sector. Bombay Talkies is a good filmic example, where three of the film’s four directors – Zoya Akhtar, Karan Johar and Anurag Kashyap – have established Bollywood affiliations. Future ramifications on the role of the NFDC in new Indian cinema bear scope for future research in light of increasing corporate investment in the independent film sector. Bejoy Nambiar extends his approbation to the commercial gravitas afforded the Indies through alignments with corporates. Perceiving this as a beneficial mechanism to disseminate films, he states: As a filmmaker, our goal is to make sure that our story reaches out. UTV or anybody is now picking up on these stories. It is very good progress that they are looking at these films and seeing that they have marketing potential. I’m using UTV just as an example; even if their interest is purely business, then [UTV] seeing business in Peepli Live is a very good development. (Nambiar, personal communication, 2013) The ascendency of corporate production houses described above, the diminished influence of the NFDC and its new initiatives to regenerate itself illustrate some of the arbitrations, subjectivities and contradictions in the Indie domain. These propositions underline the proviso that the Indies must be ‘out there’ and visible in the public domain in order to survive. In this context, it must be mentioned that a preponderance of Indie filmmakers interviewed were categorical in wishing their films to reach out to a wider audience. Arguably, this indicates a delinking of the new Indies from the purported ‘elitist’ esotericism of earlier Middle/Parallel cinema and its associations with ‘high art’. In this regard, the modern Indian multiplex constitutes an important mediatory site in relation to the Indie filmmakers’ wish for broader visibility and a wider audience.

Multiplex Monopoly and High-Priced Tickets After India’s 1990s liberalisation, the stronghold of single-screen cinemas, a resilient thread in the fabric of India’s pre-globalisation cinema narrative began to unravel under the inexorable drive towards mass media and consumer culture (Athique, 2012: 141). Single-screen cinemas were often perceived as being biased towards Bollywood in their selection and exhibition of films. They were also regimented and restrictive in their rigid adherence to a ‘12–3–6–9’ time schedule (Rai, 2009: 145). The rise of multiplexes

Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition  99 seemed to augur well for non-mainstream Indian films, hinged on expectations of a re-visioning if not a renaissance of extant structures and practices, such as the single-screen cinemas’ pre-disposition to mainstream Bollywood blockbusters. The anticipation was that the multiplexes, through heterodox approaches, would create a more acephalous cinematic space, where commercial and arthouse could co-exist under the banner of a meritocracy and equitable exhibition. In essence, independent filmmakers envisaged a new conduit for the exhibition of Indie films in a more egalitarian cinematic structure. However, what transpired was a disconnection with this optimistic narrative influenced by several contributing factors, including the state’s reinvigorated push towards consumerism, the privileging of profit by corporate hegemons and the primacy of capital generation in a milieu of mass culture (Mehta, 2005: 135–138). India’s new economic ascendency and the burgeoning rise of an aspirational, nouveau riche Indian middle-class presented multiplexes with overweening opportunities to capitalise on the biggest film industry in the world. Amit Rai (2009: 141–142) conflates India’s foray into globalisation and deregulation with the imagining of hybrid postmodern spaces, such as what he terms the ‘malltiplex’ – a melding of mall and multiplex. Associating the cinematic experience with retail consumerism became an imperative strategy deployed by Indian multiplexes in a superimposition of the global ‘Hollywood’ model. Restaurant chains, franchises and shops were inextricably conjoined to the cinematic experience through visual, spatial and sensorial cues, rendering obligatory the attainment of ‘wholeness’ through the ‘total malltiplex experience’, where actual film viewing was attenuated to a part in the whole (ibid.). The Indian government was an instigator in this process, extrapolating the global commercial corporatisation of Bollywood as profitable (Rai, 2009: 135). This assertion is directly relevant to the theory of a meta-hegemony proposed earlier in this book. The state conferred industry status on films in 1998 and granted tax waivers to multiplex corporations (Mehta, 2005: 135–136). Big budget Bollywood benefited in particular, leading to an increase in the number of commercial films vying for a multiplex release. Therefore, the annealing of multiplexes as a commercially viable forum for both cinema and consumerism entailed their new dominance of public exhibition in the urban Indian cinemascape. Adrian Athique and Douglas Hill’s comprehensive investigation of Indian multiplexes observes ‘a productive tension between the way the multiplex reinforces and legitimises the overall dominance of the blockbuster film, whilst at the same time offering … a toehold to filmmakers producing offbeat films’ (Athique and Hill, 2010: 208). However, in recent years, there appears to be ambivalence in terms of multiplex space for Indian Indies, as ‘the logic of the multiplex paradoxically ensures that those films remain economically and materially marginal’ (Athique and Hill, 2010: 208).

100  Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition Filmmaker Kiran Rao (personal communication, 2013) observes a paucity of exhibition spaces in recent times for non-mainstream Indie films, emphasising a dialectical disequilibrium between the increasing number of Indie films and the restricted arenas for exhibition. India’s largest corporate multiplex chain, PVR Ltd, has arguably enacted a significant role in the discourse surrounding dwindling spaces for the distribution and screening of Indian Indies, particularly through its pricing system (Bashir personal communication, 2013; Bhaskar, personal communication, 2013; Rao, personal communication, 2013). Affordability in relation to cinema access continues to be a vital factor. Implications of India’s new ‘leisure economy’, demonstrated in a thrust towards neoliberal urban corporatisation and consumerism, frames the multiplexes’ ‘push to create a globalised, consuming middle-class and a new urban environment’ (Athique and Hill, 2010: 213). This has informed the multiplexes’ deployment of disproportionate pricing systems that often place access to cinema beyond the economic reach of the less affluent. Aamir Bashir, director of Harud, identifies the core issue of multiplexes charging the same ticket price for a low-budget Indie and a Bollywood blockbuster. PVR’s asymmetrical policies are further manifested in their designation of non-Bollywood films with an arthouse aesthetic and independent antecedents to a cinematic exhibition slot entitled ‘Director’s Rare’ (Bashir, personal communication, 2013). Ostensibly proffering an autonomous Indie film space, divorced from the domain of Bollywood, the ticket price for a Director’s Rare film such as Harud is around 1,000 rupees or £10 (Bhaskar, personal communication, 2013; Bora, 2013). Ira Bhaskar (personal communication, 2013) recounts her experience of paying this price to watch an Indie at a PVR Director’s Rare cinema in south Delhi, screened to an attendant audience of only three people. In addition to high pricing, Indie Director’s Rare screenings are often inconveniently slotted at 5.30 p.m. on working weekdays and are subject to ‘arbitrary schedule changes’ (Chatterjee, 2012). Bhaskar (personal communication, 2013) expresses her doubts about PVR’s erstwhile credentials as a visionary cinematic space, raising the pertinent question, ‘Who is going to go for these films?’ She ponders on the teleological consequence of an indiscriminate and unmediated pricing system that divests some young members of middle- and low-income groups, particularly students, of the opportunity to view non-mainstream films. Bhaskar asserts, ‘young people will wait to download [them] from torrents or get pirated copies, so multiplexes are killing the [Indies] movement’ (ibid.). It is fair to argue that limited channels of distribution stymieing accessibility to Indian Indies is a legacy of an enduring metanarrative of systems and structures, such as the meta-hegemony exercised by Bollywood on its internal others, particularly the Indies. The PVR multiplex chain as another hegemonic arbiter, constitutes an important factor, not just in the peripheralisation of the Indian Indies to the margins of multiplex exhibition

Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition  101 strategies, but also their displacement, in terms of access, into the pirate sphere of torrent downloads. Critically acclaimed Indies, such as Harud and I Am, sometimes manage to gain screenings in PVR multiplexes, but their presence on multiplex screens can often be fleeting, making way for the latest Bollywood blockbusters. Therefore, the ephemerality of these films in the public domain has paved a path towards pirate spheres and peer-to-peer file-sharing ‘BitTorrent’ downloads as tools to gain access to films. Whilst providing an alternative to high-priced multiplexes in India, BitTorrent downloads have diminished the viability of a moribund DVD distribution system that often exists in the form of cheap, low-quality, pirated DVDs. Aamir Bashir encapsulates the transition from DVDs to downloads in the context of Harud: That is the problem even if you release on DVD. DVDs do not make any money but provide accessibility. We released our film on DVD and we sold around 3,000–5,000 DVDs till date, but that is not a money-making venture, because the day a DVD is released it is already on torrent. (Bashir, personal communication, 2013) The digital reproduction of a single, original, high-quality DVD in torrent form and its dispersal into a labyrinthine, anonymous BitTorrent network is largely facilitated by an increasing access to the technoscapes of broadband Internet and digital devices.

Torrent Downloads, Technics and the Hyperreal3 The burgeoning rise of pirate spheres, including P2P (peer-to-peer) file-sharing through BitTorrent is a phenomenon congruent with growing broadband access, particularly in urban India. A research study, commissioned by the Motion Picture Distributors Association (MPDA), revealed that India accounts for the most film piracy in any English-speaking country, proportional to the number of broadband subscribers (Borpujari, 2009). It also revealed that from April to September 2009, India figured in the top ten countries in the world with the largest number of illegal P2P activities. ‘Overall, India is the fourth largest downloader of films after the U.S., Great Britain and Canada’ (ibid.). India is also the world’s third largest Internet user. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) listed 164.81 million Internet subscribers in March, 2013 (‘India Is Now’, 2013). A major proportion of users are young males, in a country where more than half the population is under the age of 25 and 70 percent of Indian Internet users watch online videos (Vaidyanathan, 2012). Metropolitan cities Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore account for the ‘major share of illegal downloads’ (Borpujari, 2009). This young demographic to a large extent embodies the

102  Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition shifting patterns of access to media and in the context of this study, the new Indies. Pawan Kumar affirms that ‘in the 1970s and 80s the cinema theatre was the only way that they could see film, there was no torrent or other option. Now phones are visual media, you don’t have to go to the theatres to feel the magic’ (Kumar, 2013). Kumar’s contention imagines a post-globalisation, postmodern hyperreality, where India’s infrastructural vicissitudes are mirrored in an enmeshing of culture and information and an aspirational clamour for space in an information and knowledge economy. Lawrence Liang (2009) locates the role of India’s ‘transcontinental networks through infrastructure consisting of telecommunications networks, broadband cables that traverse the seas much as the ships of maritime capitalism did’ (Liang, 2009: 5). This assertion of global networks contributing to cultural and information interflows resonates with Arjun Appadurai’s (1990, 1996) model of global cultural economy, characterised by an imbrication of ‘technoscapes’ and ‘mediascapes’ (Appadurai, 1990: 296; 1996: 33). Liang perceives an ambivalent ascendency in the increasing commodification of information and knowledge as cultural capital, particularly amongst the rising urban Indian middle class. He underscores the reality of a vast proportion of the Indian demographic elided from access to the global culture-knowledge economy, particularly through marginalisation by the state and corporate institutions. It is possible to acknowledge the above-mentioned disproportional access to technoscapes and mediascapes across gradations of Indian civil society, particularly the rural demographic. In this antinomy, wherever accessible, the pluralistic structure of the pirate sphere imbues it with the propensity to function as an interstitial site, to subvert the aforementioned elision or alterity engineered by discriminatory state practices, socio-economic inequities or infrastructural inadequacies. Liang and Sundaram (2011: 339) maintain that the informal sui juris network of pirate spheres enables a larger number of people into ‘the information and knowledge economy’. This is precisely the case in terms of access to the new Indian Indies as well as to World Cinema. It could be argued that torrents play a role in contesting dominant or elitist discourses that appropriate cultural capital through uni-dimensional and privileged access to cinematic culture and the information economy. This is reflected in the medium’s ability to actualise or sublimate the sublime, transform the immanent into the imminent, reclaim cultural capital and effect its libertarian redistribution (Devasundaram, 2014: 113). Kiran Rao (2013) asserts that access to an array of World Cinema facilitated by torrent downloads has ‘increased audience awareness and exposure’. She observes that whilst social media like Facebook and Twitter have assisted in raising audience awareness of a diverse range of films, particularly Indian Indies, it is torrents ‘that have done the real job of education’, also unveiling open ‘access to Iranian, Korean and Japanese cinema’ (Rao, 2013). Q, director of controversial film Gandu (2010), attributes his discovery of esoteric Filipino director Khavn De La Cruz’s films to BitTorrent, stating ‘pirated software

Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition  103 and films; none of us would have made films without them. Wong Kar Wai famously said “I would not be Wong Kar Wai without pirated films”’ (Q, 2013). Other Indie filmmakers, Onir and Pawan Kumar, raise questions about the implications of BitTorrent on Indie filmmakers and revenue loss. Onir (2013) asserts ‘film is an expensive medium. I have to earn my own living. Why will I provide my work of art, my labour, free to anybody?’ Liang and Sundaram (2011) however, state that the economic impact of BitTorrent remains nebulous in terms of drawing ‘specific conclusions about losses’ (2011: 359). In addition, theatrical revenues do not appear to exhibit any decreases compared to the increases in Internet connections (Scaria, 2013: 653). BitTorrent has arguably enacted an antinomy of cohesion and fragmentation, and as mentioned above, contributed to levelling the field in the form of free, egalitarian access to the culture and knowledge hub. On the other hand, torrent downloads have the propensity to displace the collective experience of cinema hall viewing into an individual space, where a communion between Internet pirate sphere and private sphere of the downloader coalesce. Therefore, the spatial and temporal variables between the ideation, production, distribution and exhibition of a film applicable to conventional cinema spectatorship are subverted and reconfigured by a process of condensation (Harvey, 1990: 284–286; Rai, 2009: 140). This involves shrinking the trajectory of a film, from creation to consumption, into a monadic space and a temporality of minutes instead of months or days. This constriction of time and space is facilitated by ‘technics’ (Stiegler, 1998) ) – technological objects and interfaces, in the form of Internet torrent downloads. In this context, torrent downloads have assisted in exteriorising into the public sphere the interiority of indeterminate human BitTorrent downloading individuations (Stiegler, 1998: 141–142). Torrents as technics could themselves be perceived as a technological intermediary, as they are intertwined with the internal drive and elemental human impulse to communicate or share information (Stiegler, 1998: 49). Therefore, the interiority of the individual engaging in the autochthonous process of downloading, viewing and sharing is interlocked in a process of sustained deliberation with larger outside discourses. One manifestation of this tumultuous imbrication is when the state apparatus and its ideological extensions of regulation and censorship try to perform interventions in this discursive field. The proliferation of Q’s subversive Gandu via torrent and on YouTube, juxtaposed with the film being debated on national television, is a key example of the discursive overlaps between the above-mentioned interiority and exteriority.

Torrents: Agents of Change? Torrents have polarised opinion in the Indian public sphere. This is illustrated by the Madras High Court’s short-lived legal action barring access to torrent websites across India, and the Court’s subsequent volte-face

104  Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition on this legislation, owing to resistance by hacker group Anonymous in the form of cyber-attacks against ‘Internet censorship’ (‘India Unblocks’, 2012). MPDA research implicating the growing rise of illegal P2P activities underscores state and industry cognisance of issues relating to copyright infringement. On the other hand, the BitTorrent network has been acknowledged by Indie filmmakers as an emissary to democratise access to cinematic cultural capital, particularly independent Indian cinema and inaccessible World Cinema. There appears to be an amplification of the earlier mentioned acknowledgement of torrents ‘educating’ and exposing Indian audiences to transglobal cultural interflows. Anand Gandhi, director of internationally acclaimed indie Ship of Theseus, affirms: The biggest boon my generation had was the Internet. Thanks to this, we were exposed to global cultures through foreign films. We may have to give some credit to the foreign film piracy too! Our films are slowly transcending international borders. (Dasgupta, 2013) Arul Scaria problematises the introduction of new Digital Rights Management (DRM) laws in India, asserting ‘it is high time for the industry to evolve innovative business practices to reach those potential consumers, rather than solely relying on threats against those consumers through technological and legal measures’ (Scaria, 2013: 663). Innovative systems are already being devised by some Indie filmmakers, utilising the common platform of the Internet. Anand Gandhi and his production team, Recyclewala Films, in an ‘open source initiative’ uploaded a high-definition (HD) version of Ship of Theseus on their website, exhorting people to watch the film through streaming or free legal download and make voluntary donations (‘Ship of Theseus’, 2014). Their rationale (as articulated by the creative team in the download copy’s pre-film exordium) is that free community sharing could circumvent the monetising of their film by advertisers or third parties. Actor and filmmaker, Rahul Bose (personal communication, 2013), prefigures further technological introductions, such as ‘4G’ technology, where ‘everybody can watch films’. He also forecasts aggressive self-promotion by filmmakers through ‘viral marketing’ (ibid.). Pawan Kumar reveals his motivation in devising independent distribution channels to counter torrent downloads. ‘Today everybody is watching 90 percent of the films on torrents, so we came up with an independent system for distribution called “Hometalkies.com”, a website we started, where you can watch any of our films’. (Kumar, personal communication, 2013)

Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition  105 Bejoy Nambiar, presaging the further expansion of Indian Indies, states: It is evolving. We are getting in new filmmakers and trying new things. What we really need is for audiences to accept any avenue – torrents or even watching on their phones. If someone gets to watch Miss Lovely [a 2012 indie film] on their phone and pays one rupee, that would be a great thing. Only if the money comes in will you find more funders putting [in] more money into these films. (Nambiar, personal communication, 2013) Pawan Kumar cites an increasing number of donors willing to ‘click, pay and watch’ his films on his website in HD, rather than via torrents. His reasoning is that ‘people above 27 or 29 years of age are not the sort who wants to go and look for a torrent’. Kumar perceives transience in the BitTorrent phenomenon stating ‘it is a good way to get students addicted to our films and when they start earning they will come back to HD’ (Kumar, personal communication, 2013). The proliferation and impact of torrent downloads is dyadic. It conjoins the proponents of Indian Indie cinema – its emerging young filmmakers, with their young urban audience. The torrent realm has the propensity to influence and shape the filmmaking contours of the former, with the latter now increasingly the possessors of wider, relatively unmediated access to these Indie films. Overall, torrent downloads and P2P file sharing may represent alternative future formulations for young urban Indian viewers to access the Indian cinematic sphere, particularly in relation to the multiplex hegemony and its attendant disproportionate pricing system. This imagines a discursive intertwining between mainstream and marginal, multiplex and BitTorrent in India’s larger urban public sphere. The BitTorrent phenomenon also has direct and tangential implications on articulation and agency in the public sphere. The most perceptible manifestation is in the growing democratisation of discourse relating to film criticism and review. The aforementioned example of public debate surrounding Q’s Gandu on NDTV invokes discourses of the film’s open access via the Internet, despite the spectre of censorship and Gandu’s elision from the mainstream multiplex cinematic space. The ascendency of online blogs such as F.i.g.h.t C.l.u.b and websites like DearCinema.com, dedicated to film reviews and discussion forums on new independent Indian cinema, represent increasing sites for public interaction in relation to the latest Indie releases. This has arguably destabilised and displaced the dominant discourse of uni-directional, pedagogical exposition by established television and newspaper film reviewers and critics from conventional conduits of the public sphere into more participatory, pluralistic realms of the blogosphere and social media. Q, noting the decentring of authoritative voices asserts ‘with the rise of the new Indian Indies, we have seen the new rise of new Indian journalists and new Indian journalism’ (Q, personal communication, 2013).

106  Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition Therefore, increased access to films, particularly Indian Indie and esoteric World cinema via BitTorrent downloads, has set the stage for enhanced cinematic awareness in the urban Indian public sphere. This has largely assisted in shifting the pendulum of arbitration, articulation and agency towards a civil society that is more empowered than before in its ability to influence public opinion on new Indian cinema. Ultimately, the downloading sector could be perceived as accelerating the articulation and exteriorising of opinion through the portals of technics and technoscapes in the Indian public sphere. Whether torrents are a transient trend or not, it seems conceivable that technics and technoscapes will play a prominent role in the shifting patterns of future film consumption, particularly in relation to the new Indies in India’s public sphere.

Notes 1. Aamir Khan was instrumental in bridging the Bollywood and alternative domains through films such as Taare Zameen Par (2007) and 3 Idiots (2009). 2. The Indian government’s A-B-C ranking system has been replaced by an X-Y-Z system. 3. The section on torrent downloads contains extracts from an earlier journal article, ‘Cyber Buccaneers, Public and Pirate Spheres: The Phenomenon of BitTorrent Downloads in the Transforming Terrain of Indian Cinema’ published in Media in Australia (MIA). Permission for re-use has been granted and the full reference appears in the reference section at the end of this chapter.

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108  Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition Liang, L. (2009). ‘Piracy, Creativity and Infrastructure: Rethinking Access to Culture’. SSRN Electronic Journal. Available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers. cfm?abstract_id=1436229 [Accessed on 22 December 2013]. Liang, L and Sundaram, R. (2011). ‘India’, in Karaganis, J. (ed.) Media Piracy in Emerging Economies. Social Science Research Council, USA. Maniar, P. (2013). ‘Ship of Theseus among the List of Films That Changed Life’. Times of India. 27 August. Available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ entertainment/hindi/bollywood/news/Ship-of-Theseus-among-the-list-of-filmsthat-changed-life/articleshow/22090720.cms [Accessed 22 Nov. 2015]. McDonald, K. (2012). Feminism, the Left, and Postwar Literary Culture. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Mehta, M. (2005). ‘Globalizing Bombay Cinema: Reproducing the Indian State and Family’. Cultural Dynamics (17), p. 135. Sage Journals. [Accessed 24 November 2013]. Menon, S. (2011). ‘I-Banks Eye Startups with Crowd Funding’. The Economic Times. 15 February. Available at: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-0215/news/28539704_1_funding-films-onir-startups [Accessed 9 Dec. 2014]. ‘Milkmen turned producers’ (2014). The Hindu. 6 July. Available at: http://www. thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/milkmen-turnedproducers/article6181411.ece [Accessed 1 Aug. 2014]. ‘Move Over Bollywood, US Festival Spotlights Indian Indie Films’ (2014). Gulfnews. com: Celebrity. 9 April. Available at: http://gulfnews.com/arts-entertainment/ celebrity/move-over-bollywood-us-festival-spotlights-indian-indie-films1.1317150 [Accessed 1 Nov. 2014]. Rai, A. (2009). Untimely Bollywood. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rangan, P. (2012). ‘Some Annotations on the Film Festival as an Emerging Medium in India’, in Dudrah, R. Gopal, S, Rai, A and Basu, A. (eds.), Intermedia in South Asia. London: Routledge. pp. 19–37. Ross, S. (1998). Working-Class Hollywood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Scaria, A. (2013). ‘Online Piracy of Indian Movies: Is the Film Industry Firing at the Wrong Target?’ Michigan State International Law Review, 2013, Vol. 21, Issue 3, pp. 647–663. www.ssrn.com [Accessed 25 Jan 2014]. ‘Ship of Theseus Free HD Download Available from Jan 15’. (2014). IMDb. 15  ­January. Available at: http://www.imdb.com/news/ni56666101/ [Accessed 6 Apr. 2014]. Stiegler, B. (1998). Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Publishers. Vaidyanathan, R. (2012a) ‘Is 2012 the Year for India’s Internet?’ BBC News. 13 January. Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-16354076 [Accessed 27 Dec 2013].

5 Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative

This chapter examines the notion that the Indies emerge from an interstitial space between India’s pedagogical master narrative of purportedly unifying historical traditions and values (Bhabha, 1994: 37) and the modern daily performative which ‘ruptures’ the authority of the pedagogical ‘by introducing the ‘“in-between”’ (McLaren, 1995: 245). I will argue that the Indies, sitting in this middle space, negotiate India’s idiosyncratically mixed milieu of archaic religiosity and postmodern hyperreality. This lends to the thesis that the Indies, with their ‘liminal character of performance, can function as a counter-narrative to rupture the essentialist identity of the state’ (McLaren, 1995: 245–246), particularly as legitimised by Bollywood. The new films significantly achieve this by liberating the ‘ghosts’ of forgotten, concealed, erased, untold and disavowed events that haunt the master narrative’s grand design. A burgeoning postmodern ‘interconnectedness’ is suggested in C ­ hapter 4’s mention of the pervasive influence of social media and the I­ nternet in Indian urban centres. This network of communication is served by a labyrinthine transglobal crisscross of knowledge and information flows and an unbridled growth of consumerism that positions India’s brand of postmodernism as ‘the cultural logic of late capitalism’ (Jameson, 1991). This is particularly visible in metropolises, such as Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi, and bears testimony to India’s ascendant neoliberal market-driven techno-economy. It is possible to commence by locating the postcolonial and post-modern in relation to Indian cinema, thereafter dealing with the theme of interstitial Indies in a split narrative of nation. Film scholar Nandini Bhattacharya renounces the term ‘postcolonial’ and privileges the expression ‘post-independence’ to describe Indian cinema after 1947. According to her, a postcolonial approach ‘assumes an inevitable cathexis of cinema and the nation with a particular relation to temporality and historical periodization as expressed in the progression of modern and postmodern, colonial or postcolonial’ (2012: 25). Bhattacharya nevertheless affirms that ‘cinema in India has always been postmodern in a singular non-eurocentric way’ (ibid.). There seem to be contradictory convolutions and epistemological anomalies in this thesis. The proposition appears to simultaneously disavow India’s

110  Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative postcolonial temporality whilst affixing a postmodern paradigm to Indian cinema, thereby disregarding the interlinking of postcolonial theory with poststructuralist and postmodern constructs. In this regard, I would argue that the temporal dimensions of postcolonial studies are indispensable to the (re)appraisal of contemporary cultural forms such as new Indian cinema. Merely suggesting the pre-existent ‘postmodernity’ of ‘cinema in India’ does nothing to acknowledge the anteriority in systems of dominance, difference and exclusion. For example, the morphology of Bollywood’s current meta-hegemony is identifiable in the incipient developmental stages of ‘post-independence’ Indian cinema. This period has witnessed the establishment of mainstream Hindi cinema’s monopolistic and often dynastic name-based star system. This constellation includes the Kapoors in the 1950s (Chapman, 2003: 348), Deols and Bachchans in subsequent years, and currently the Kapoor scions (Kareena, Ranbir) and Khans (Shah Rukh Khan, Salman and Aamir; not related to each other). Therefore, a history of dominant systems and practices is evident in the chronological timeline of commercial Hindi cinema’s mutation into post-liberalisation Bollywood. In addition, Bhattacharya does not specify what ‘cinema in India’ entails – does it refer to art, commercial Hindi, or regional cinema? Therefore, casting a blanket of post-modernism across the historical trajectory of Indian cinema is to paradoxically instigate a ‘postmodern’ metanarrative that repeats the scholarly folly of not sufficiently differentiating ‘Indian cinema’ into its heterogeneous parts. In the process of inadvertently ratifying a monolithic ‘cinema in India’ (which in its current context is collapsed into the term ­Bollywood), Bhattacharya, by default and without differentiation, appears to ascribe an amaranthine pre-existing ‘post-modernism’ to commercial Hindi cinema, with the exclusion of India’s cinematic others. The assertion of Indian cinema’s universal historical post-modernism notwithstanding, it could be argued that the new ‘interstitial’ Indies with their emphasis on hybridity, fragmentation and difference rather than cohesion constitute more accurate and apposite descriptors of post-modernism in current Indian cinema. This is in terms of form, style and content as well as the Indie films’ multi-perspective representation of India’s contradictory immersion into religiosity and the postmodern condition.

Fragmenting the Familiar: Postmodern Hyperreality and Mythologised Religiosity Delving into the nuances of the postmodern condition in relation to the hybrid, fragmented narratives, form and style of the Indies recalls David Harvey’s seminal definition (1990: 44): ‘Postmodernism swims, even wallows, in the fragmentary and chaotic currents of change as if that is all there is’. This splintering effect leads to contemplating what the Indies’ postmodern narratives augur in relation to the homogenising time of nation pedagogically propagated by Bollywood. Bollywood has generated its own

Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative  111 mythological hyperreality (Schaefer and Karan, 2013: 132) in the form of a monadic space where traditions and a mythical religious national imaginary are couched in fantastical stories and plots. The Indies fracture this traditional sense of national ethno-religious (Hindu) unity through their reconfiguration and contestation of Bollywood’s mythologised conception of the hyperreal. Significantly, in their heterogeneous thematic articulations, several Indies’ disaggregated narrative structures stand apart from classical Bollywood’s didactic delivery and tripartite Aristotelian ‘linear progression’: from ‘patriarchal status quo’ to ‘rebellion/conflict’ ultimately leading to ‘resolution where patriarchal authority is restored’ (Mehta, 2011: 8). In stark contrast to this mainstream model, Gandu [2010], an Indie film that will subsequently be analysed at length, manipulates time and space and resists the authority of normative representation. It fractures conventional linearities in terms of story logic and meaning formation. The film accomplishes this by constant defamiliarisation, subverting audience expectations and bypassing narrative conventions through its chaotic bricolage and pastiche of individual paradigmatic filmic elements. The Indies’ postmodern tropes extend to experiments with multiple identities, narratives, encounters between urban and rural and the omnipresence of televisual media. In their diegetic frames, these new films often represent the pervasive presence of virtual interfaces such as social media and mobile electronic devices. These symbols of technology and hyperreality often appear as integral mediatory implements used by film characters to filter and negotiate their daily real world experience. It is important to note that Indies, including Peepli Live (2010), The Lunchbox (2013) and Ship of Theseus (2103), consistently demonstrate India’s digital divide through their representation of digital ‘have-nots’ – individuals and groups denied access to or alienated from postmodern urban India’s technological transformations (Kool and Agrawal, 2006: 180). This is in contrast to Bollywood’s fetishising and commodification of smart phones, tablets and other gadgets as symbols and instruments of privilege (Basu, 2010: 189). In terms of representation, the Indies exhibit the postmodern trait of attenuating or bridging the ‘high/low’ divide (Hayward, 2013: 292), combining realism with entertainment. Through their representations of micro-narratives and subalterns, the Indies demonstrate that ‘postmodernism in culture’, one way or another, is an ‘implicitly or explicitly political stance on the nature of multinational capitalism today’ (Jameson, 1991: 3). It could be asserted that the Indies and Bollywood address this postmodern politico-cultural stance on capital in distinctly diverging if not antithetical ways. For instance, Peepli Live depicts a media-saturated urban Indian public sphere, mass-producing sensationalist discourse to a demanding demographic of cosmopolitan consumers, highlighting the fracture between India’s capital-driven cities and their agrarian other. Ship of Theseus portrays the imperative of technological devices, including mobile phones and

112  Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative laptops, and social media, used by characters to navigate their daily lives. Ultimately, the film uses its philosophical grammar to convey the dehumanising and alienating effects of these technological implements when wielded as simulacra of symbolic capital in a milieu where exchange value increasingly precedes use value (Harvey, 2014: 15). It is also important to understand the undercurrent that stimulates urban India’s immersion into simulacra and the hyperreal. The nation is undergoing a fractious shift from a mythologised historico-religious past towards a more contemporaneous homogenising time of consumer capitalism. This transition gestures towards a growing universal drive, a unidimensional thrust towards the attainment of middle-class economitas – economic gravitas as the barometer of social gravitas and acceptance. This phenomenon is significantly an artefact of globalisation’s standardisation of societies through public spaces – malls and multiplexes, or as Amit Rai (2009) prefers, ‘malltiplexes’, and the anonymity of cyberspace and new media. In general, the above vicissitudes fit into the frame of urban India’s collapsing of reality ‘exclusively into images, illusions and simulations’ (Slattery, 1995: 286). Allusions to the hyperreal can be traced to earlier scholarship on ­Bollywood. This relates to scholars, such as Vijay Mishra, referring to the Indian ‘proletariat’s’ en masse spectatorship of Bollywood stars as the ­darshan (worship) of simulated on-screen ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’ in cinema halls that are more akin to ‘temples of desire’ (Mishra, 2002: 1). B ­ audrillard deems hyperreal ‘the product of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere’ (Baudrillard, 2001: 170). This vacuum is analogous to Partha Chatterjee’s (2004: 4) elucidation of ‘empty homogeneous time’ facilitating the illusory unity of the imagined nation (Anderson, 2006) and the virtual commonality that this engenders. Chatterjee suggests that this all-encompassing empty time is a temporality that is susceptible to the indiscriminate or exploitative designs of capital (Chatterjee, 2004: 4, 6). Therefore, in the context of my argument, the imaginary dimension of the hyperreal and its simulacra of sensorial spaces incorporate India’s metropolitan multiplexes (or malltiplexes), which are postmodern temples where Bollywood’s invocation of the hyperreal is performed. This ‘sanctified’ space provides a forum for Bollywood’s narration of the national drive towards capital and hyperreal consumer-oriented lifestyles. In essence, Bollywood and the malltiplex are a (hyper)link to India’s current neoliberal imagination of the nation – its new national homogeneous time. Bollywood integrates enunciations of religious hyperreality into its new neoliberal narrative, exhibiting a simultaneous and paradoxical concatenation of two dominant forms of homogenising time in India. Carole Cusack (2012: 282, 294) connects the ‘hyperreal simulacrum’ of Indian televisual and cinematic practices with Hindu nationalism, or ‘hyperreal religions’, citing the overarching popularity in the 1980s of the TV series adaptation of

Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative  113 the Hindu mythological text, the Ramayana. Cusack observes the religious fervour generated by mass consumption of the series, likening its viewership to the darshanic (worshipping) gaze. Ramayana’s star actors were appropriated as talismanic emissaries to propagate the agenda of political parties in India. The popular engagement with Ramayana by the majority Hindu populace, particularly in Hindi-speaking northern India, was harnessed by the nationalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), who perceived possibilities of political mileage in Ramayana’s simulacral authenticity (Cusack, 2012: 282). Interestingly, a wide array of sadhus and sadhvis (religious ascetics) populate the political ranks of the current BJP government and its religious affiliates, demonstrating the lack of distinction between religion and politics in India. Lutgendorf asserts that ‘allusions to the Hindu epics, especially through dialogues and the names of characters, abound in popular Hindi films’ ­(Lutgendorf, 2007: 19), such as Bollywood science-fiction film Rudraksh (2004) that references the Ramayana. In this context, several Bollywood films, particularly since the 1990s, have served as hyperreal narrative vehicles for normative Hindu nationalism. Mainstream cinema’s almost obligatory religious iconography continues to punctuate contemporary narratives. For example, the song and dance set-piece from the film Don (2006), Morya Re, is a devotional paean to Lord Ganesh. Producer Karan Johar’s remake of an earlier Bollywood film, Agneepath (2012,) prominently depicts its main star, Hrithik Roshan, propitiating Ganesh in prayer, echoing his predecessor, Amitabh Bachchan, who paid obeisance with a similar incantation in the original film. Religious hyperreal simulacra in TV series and Bollywood films of the late 1980s and 90s continue to be popularised in updated tele-serialisations of Hindu mythologies, including the Mahabharat, which aired in the early 2010s. In commercial cinema, to some extent, the affirmation of majority religious ideology has shifted to a supporting role in light of contemporary Bollywood privileging the pursuit of capitalist plenitude. Arguably, Indian audiences now vicariously accompany virtual onscreen Bollywood ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’ on imaginary sojourns to exotic global locations – junkets of the young upper-class Indian jet set, as seen in the 2011 film Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (‘You Don’t Live Twice’). To a significant degree, the new Indies have destabilised familiar ­Bollywood imaginings of neoliberal ostentation and opulence, by conspicuously breaking the Bollywood mould of largely north-Indian-centric representation. This fragmentation of unilinear representation has several contours and dimensions. The Indies’ narratives traverse the nation, expressing local specificities: Lucia (2013), a Kannada film from South India is set in Bangalore; Papilio Buddha (2013) is situated in Kerala; Parched(2015) is situated in Gujarat; Masaan (2015) in Varanasi, Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) is located in the rural hinterland of northeastern Bihar; Liar’s Dice (2013) traces a journey from snow-clad Himachal Pradesh to Delhi and Fandry

114  Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative (2013) unfolds in rural Maharashtra. The polyvocality of these Indie films is a distinctive feature, augmented by their representations of ordinary everyday life. Unlike B ­ ollywood, Indie narratives often critically evaluate daily encounters between India’s dyadic construct of postmodern hyperreality and retrenched religiosity. Ship of Theseus is an apt example, with its narrative revealing a nation reluctant to divest itself of its traditional and religious past. This turbulent tug of war between national past and future waged in the present constitutes a recurring theme for the Indies, themselves located in an ‘in-between’ space. Therefore, the India re-imagined in the Indies, particularly as presented to a Western audience, offers different, multifaceted dimensions and challenges the West’s convenient, reductionist and condescending conflation of all Indian cinema with Bollywood. Overall, the marginalisation of alternative narratives in the unitary mythic construction of both Indian history and Indian cinema post-independence are integral points in the Indies imagination and contestation of a homogenising national metanarrative. Bhattacharya argues that Indian cinema is ‘a mythology whereby a political history of disjunctures is naturalised into a unitary ideology of the nation’ (Bhattacharya, 2012: 25). Her assertion is valid and pertinent to Bollywood’s meta-hegemony and the Indies’ articulation of divergences and disjunctures that undercut a monodimensional construction of ‘political history’. This proposition, therefore, largely echoes a double temporal construction of nation – the homogenising mythic time and a present time of undecidability (Bhabha, 1994: 37, 70, 77, 208, 220; Pisters, 2009: 302). The next section focuses on the Indies as interstitial, mimetic yet polemical interrogators of India’s own current liminal transition from tradition to modernity; in other words, the nation’s negotiation of ‘double time’ (Bhabha, 1994: 208) and the Indies’ interpretation of it.

The Indies and Double Time The topical nature of this study on the emergence of new independent Indian cinema since 2010 renders it important to reappraise the nature of India’s national homogenising time in line with its present form. Similar to Bhabha, Partha Chatterjee highlights and commends Benedict Anderson’s (2006) thesis of the imagined nation that exposes the ideologically constructed idea of a monolithic nation-state community. However, Chatterjee considers the construction of nation in ‘homogeneous empty time’ problematic, because he sees national time as heterogeneous, a place where politics ‘does not mean the same thing to all people’ (Chatterjee, 2004: 4–7). As mentioned in the preceding section, the concept of a shared albeit imagined national consciousness places the national subject in an illusory time and space – a false and meretricious sense of commonality. Chatterjee illustrates the tenuousness of ‘large anonymous socialities being formed by the simultaneous experience of reading the daily newspaper or following the lives of popular fictional characters’ (Chatterjee, 2004: 5). According

Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative  115 to Anderson, this apparent commonality facilitates discourse in the public sphere relating to shared social anxieties – ‘prices, wages, markets and so on’ (ibid.) For Chatterjee, the jeopardy in this paradigm is that the empty homogeneous time of the nation is also the dominion of capital and, in his opinion, capital brooks no interference or resistance to its expansion (ibid.). It could be argued that unregulated neoliberalism and the apparently inexorable proliferation of capital in India constructs a hermetic cylinder of empty homogenising time. This is essentially comprised of a new temporal mono-logic of nation manufactured through an ersatz sense of oneness that is supposedly based on the common aspirational goal of capital enterprise and economic gain. In this topography, Bollywood’s capital generation and global franchising potential facilitates its ideological potential to monopolise national cultural time (and space). Bollywood’s dominance largely fits Anderson’s aforementioned frame of ‘large anonymous socialities’ engaged in ‘following the lives of popular fictional characters’ (Chatterjee, 2004: 5). Pushing its own monetary interests, both at home and abroad, Bollywood’s meta-hegemonic soft-power narrative has gained paramountcy by being co-opted as a national cultural signifier. The industry now symbolises an indispensible cultural bulwark for the new neoliberal empty homogenising time of the nation. What does this entail for the new Indies who are attempting to create a space in the dominant Bollywood domain? It is worth considering scenarios surrounding the Indies’ increasing ‘encroachment’ into the above-described homogenising time and space of nation, hitherto secured and hegemonised on a cultural level by Bollywood. This prompts presaging of the possible outcomes of an intensifying imbrication between Bollywood’s homogenising time and the time of undecidability signified by the Indies. This intermeshing of temporalities reaffirms this book’s conceptualisation of the Indies as ‘hybrid mutants’; interstitial cinematic forms that are spawned from and represent the prevalent uncertainties and contradictions in the extant socio-politico-cultural system. In this regard, it could be contemplated whether the Indies are necessitating an ongoing reorientation in Bollywood itself – a shift in the complacent linearity of the mainstream industry’s time-space continuum. Unconventional new Bollywood films, such as The Dirty Picture (2011), a biopic about a female south Indian soft-porn film star, and PK (2014), a satirical critique of India’s obsessive religiosity, indicate an ‘Indie influence’ in Bollywood. If this influence becomes more pervasive, it is possible to consider whether a wider disjuncture in Bollywood’s representation of a linear national narrative could be orchestrated. It may then be useful to ask if the state’s ‘homogeneous postulate of identity’ could be ‘left behind’’ (Marramao, 2012: 211) – ‘behind’ here alluding to the temporal narrative of the national past. In this respect, it may be useful to frame the Indies within the notion of postcolonial cinema as exhorting its viewers to ‘reflect upon the repercussions of policies of the past within the present as well as their implications for the future’ (Chauduri, 2012: 195).

116  Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative Academic prognostication aside, if Bollywood’s modern narratives, overwhelmingly, are reflections of the urban bourgeoisie’s immersion into consumer capitalism, and by that token are a barometer of India’s neoliberal narrative as the predominant inscription, how do the Indies paint themes of temporal undecidability on the canvas of a transforming nation? This is particularly important when both Bollywood and right-wing elements of the Indian political system seem invested in the ambivalent retention of ‘traditional’ Hindu ideology and the pursuit of consumer capitalism. Indian cinema’s historiographical timeline, which experienced a g­ lobalisationinduced disjuncture in the 1990s (with Bollywood at the vanguard of transformations in the industry), again appears at a fault line, within the event horizon of another fissure. This time, a fracture could be precipitated by the glocal Indies, necessitating reconfigurations in Indian cinema’s current post-globalisation timeline and paving the way for even greater hybridity. As has been stressed, the Indies emphasise their point of departure from normative structures by sometimes functioning as filmic texts of resistance; Harud (2010), I Am (2010), Papilio Buddha and Gandu being pertinent examples. It could be argued that the Indies exercise mostly fluid and subtle but sometimes overt and subversive strategies to interrogate the dominant national narrative and Bollywood’s linear representation of it. Most prominent among these mechanisms is the Indies’ evocation of the forgotten and disavowed ‘ghosts’ that dwell in the in-between third space (Bhabha, 1994: 55, 312) of the double national narrative.

Ghosts of Narratives Past and Present The European Jews massacred are not just of the past, they are the presence of an absence. —Emil Fackenheim (quoted in Shoah, 1985) This section argues that the Indies represent some of the past voices from India’s historiographical evolutionary timeline. Despite being disavowed, excluded or erased from collective memory, these voices from the past are a constant presence in vicissitudes of the nation’s present. In essence, these elided voices – the ghosts of nation – are present despite their absence. Aesthetic and auditory representations of forgotten narratives made visible and audible in the Indies’ film frame particularly enables subaltern ghosts to speak and therefore brings them to ‘life’. These audio-visual instantiations possess the propensity to throw the viewer into an unsettled state of undecidability or ‘crisis’. This abstract evocation of marginalised narratives and voices by the Indies resonates with the thesis that displaced spectral voices inhabit an interstitial space, both in Indie film narratives as well as in the temporal narrative of nation. Representing the concept of nation as a temporal process necessitates an examination of the nation’s ‘disjunctive time’, which signifies fractures in the

Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative  117 ostensibly linear timeline of national history (Bhabha, 1994: 142), effected by minority cultures. Similarly, the modern narrative of nation lies in a median space, in fault lines and inconsistencies between its ever-­changing (post)modern present and the overarching ‘certainties of a nationalist pedagogy’, steeped in a purportedly originary past (ibid.). Akin to ‘colonial authority’ (Huddart, 2006: 110), this overweening nationalist pedagogy, as mentioned previously, is susceptible to manipulation by right-wing religious ideology and, increasingly in the postmodern age, to the dictates of capital. Where does this leave alternative and minority narratives that are excluded during the process of constructing the linear nationalist pedagogy of homogenous time? It could be asserted that the new Indian Indies, as cultural intermediaries, to a large extent perform the function of mediating between national past and future. As more self-reflexive cinematic proponents than Bollywood, they do so by dint of their themes and narratives, resurrecting spectres of several specific historical events that have been precluded or effaced from the nation’s postcolonial metanarrative. It is possible to summon the analogy of Anish Kapoor’s art installation Ghost (1997) to gain a better understanding of the spectres of events, individuals and communities forgotten and marginalised in India’s nation-­building process. Kapoor’s sculpture Ghost, a monolith of Kilkenny limestone with a black reflecting surface, has a cul-de-sac hewn into its centre containing the installation’s titular uncanny presence, its intangible aura (Bhabha, 2012). It is from within this ghostly core that the viewer’s ‘reflection gradually gathers definition, a distorted, mutable uncertain shade, which does not so much announce your death as offer a shaky, dreamy, partial guarantee of your continuing presence on earth’ (Warner, 2003: 215). Homi Bhabha (2012) narrates his unsettling experience: a sense of displacement upon viewing his own inverted transmogrified image in the reflecting centre of the Ghost stone. His apprehension prompts him to realise that a work of art is not confined to being just an object but rather represents a rite of passage, a corridor between the past and present, a transitional moment when our enduring conceptions of identity are transformed into ‘crisis’ (Bolt, 2011: 34). It is possible to analogise this evocation of crisis to the new Indies that represent alternative narratives from an interstitial space and unsettle the equilibrium of a linear homogenising Bollywood. The above crisis of identity originates from the unravelling of certainty during the temporal encounter. In the case of Ghost, it happens during the hiatus between Bhabha’s self, which directs its gaze at what he expects will be his reflected other, and the appearance of the other’s belated, distorted answering gaze. The linearity of time and space is broken in the process between Bhabha directing his glance at the Ghost core, the formation of his grotesque reflection in the core, and its returning ‘stare’ back at Bhabha. This shattering of Bhabha’s preconceived or expected notion of stable unity and the artwork postponing revelation of its presence signifies a disruption

118  Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative of linearity. This dislocation or deferral of cohesive meaning, in turn inaugurates a time of undecidability or ‘crisis’ (Bhabha, 2012). The notion of crisis evokes Derrida’s description of ghosts in Ken McMullen’s film Ghost Dance (1983). Derrida draws from Freud, describing two ways of mourning the dead. The first is by ‘internalising the dead’ into ourselves – accepting them as ‘dead’ and hence being able to engender some form of closure. The other form of mourning involves ‘incorporation’; where the dead are co-opted into our bodies, but instead of being absorbed they occupy a certain space in our bodies, leading to a splitting of the body (Ghost Dance, 1983). This bisection of the body could be related to the double time of the (body of) nation: the dissonance between homogenising mythic time and the uncertain, fluctuating present time of undecidability. The process of splitting consigns ghosts of excluded minority narratives to a liminal interstitial space in the nation’s official pedagogical narrative. The presence of these ghosts, despite denial of their existence and their intermittent interventions in the everyday performative functions of the body of nation, results in a sense of disequilibrium. This initiates a ‘zone of occult instability’ (Fanon, 1963: 226; Bhabha, 1994: 218–219), which is a larger, macro-level, national manifestation of the micro-crisis of identity experienced on a more abstract, individual scale by Bhabha upon perceiving his grotesquely reflected ghost. This latter concentrated effect may also be experienced by Indian cinema audiences witnessing unsettling Indie narrations of nation. Summing up the transplantation of the above thesis to the corpus of the nation, marginalised and forgotten narratives foreclosed during the formation of the nation-state are not assimilated into its historical national narrative. However, they continue to haunt the liminal spaces of national formation in the present. These narratives attempt to articulate and sometimes contest their alterity and exclusion from the dominant common national metanarrative which forms the representational core. A good recent Indie example is the independent film Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost (2014), starring Irrfan Khan, which revisits the traumatic dismembering events of the post-independence Partition, revealing the residual spectres incorporated into and forever haunting the split body of nation. Bhabha emphasises that the only way to represent interstitial spaces is by a process of repeatedly questioning the ‘representational core’, from the outside (Bhabha, 2012). In a broader context, this core represents the beating ideological heart of mythologised national traditions and values that homogenise citizens under the banner of imagined nation. Bhabha prescribes a repetitive disruption of the ‘representational core’, from the margins, by incorporating the ‘ghosts’ of alternative and minority representations, with a view to altering and mutating the ossified core. This approach could contest the core’s credibility as a fixed point of ­origin. Therefore, this sustained process of shape-shifting the core from the

Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative  119 periphery, akin to the Ghost, slowly reveals the amorphous, multiplicity of propositions and perspectives that lie concealed by the towering presence of the core. Ghosts of the nation problematise easy Manichean dualities: the simplicity of belonging or not belonging, of either ‘negative or affirmative space’ (Bhabha, 2012), or the superficial binaries of simply positive or negative meanings and identities: ‘the framed and the free, what is inside and outside’ (ibid.). Arguably, the new Indies, with their heterodox narratives that contain marginal and forgotten narratives, perform this function of blurring distinctions. Revenants also continually haunt India’s present time of capital, characterised by widening inequity and signifying a national time of undecidability. Arundhati Roy’s 2014 publication Capitalism: A Ghost Story is timely in this context, and her book’s main themes are pertinent to this section. Roy enunciates the specific context of India’s ghosts: In India the 300 million of us who belong to the new, post–­International Monetary Fund ‘reforms’ middle class – the market – live side by side with the spirits of the netherworld, the poltergeists of dead rivers, dry wells, bald mountains and denuded forests; the ghosts of 250,000 debt-ridden farmers who have killed themselves, and of the 800 m ­ illion who have been impoverished and dispossessed to make way for us. (Roy, 2014: 8) Roy therefore reveals India’s thrust towards the neoliberal free market as being cheek-by-jowl with the casualties of unmediated consumerism – the nation’s ghosts. It must be acknowledged that the Indies, distinctive in their narrative divergence from Bollywood’s dominant representations of the aspirational middle-class, are nevertheless themselves discursively enmeshed in what Roy refers to as the ‘middle-class market’. It is mainly in this urban middle-class arena that the Indies have to manoeuvre for space in a meta-­ hegemonic Bollywood-centric film industry. This conundrum exemplifies not only the singularity of India’s new Indies but cogently demonstrates the intricate, indiscriminate, often contradictory field of globalisation in which the Indies vie for space. Peepli Live is probably the most relevant Indie film interpretation of the suppressed narrative of farmer suicides, as elucidated by Roy. A more detailed study will be conducted in a later chapter dedicated to the themes in Peepli Live. The Indies’ narration of the mundane and the ordinary often percolates deep into the nether realms of oppressed and marginalised subaltern subjects and communities. It could be argued that the Indies, in their renderings of alternative stories, deploy overt and covert mechanisms; objects, characters or allusions that release the apparitions of forgotten events and people. In this regard, these films often evoke representations of interstitial spaces from the periphery, by setting up a main narrative theme as their ‘representational core’; a central plot or storyline. They then proceed to destabilise

120  Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative this ostensibly straightforward thematic core by introducing from the margins of the main narrative, ghosts that transgress the core narrative’s logical or unilinear constructions of identity, time and space. As stated earlier, there are manifold devices or artifices strategically deployed to bring these ghosts to life in the Indies. In addition to secondary or tertiary narratives inserted into the main storyline, several Indies include nondescript objects, props or media that appear in the mise-en-scène of the film’s diegetic world, such as a hand pump, video tapes, radio broadcasts or television news reports. These ostensibly inconsequential insertions contain intertextual references or extrapolations of past, present or future events. Derrida sees cinema as ‘the art of ghosts; a battle of phantoms’, asserting that ‘the future belongs to phantoms’ (Ghost Dance, 1983). Following his encounter with the art installation Ghost, Bhabha infers that the phantoms of marginalised narratives are difficult to contain within the frame of the artwork. Transposing this to the new Indies’ thematic verisimilitude, the spectres they portray seem to simultaneously inhabit ‘the inside’ of the films’ narrative space and the materiality of the outside world. Ultimately, I would argue that in their representation, several new Indies, such as Dhobi Ghat (2010), render marginalised ghosts as both virtual and real presences, in films and in the national narrative. Shonali Bose’s independent film Amu (2005) is a potent example of the assertion that it is difficult to distinguish between the ghosts’ fictional presence in the Indie cinema frame and their real presence in the everyday lived experience. The film engages with Kaju, a young American woman of ­Bengali origin, who returns to India on holiday and inadvertently stumbles onto the dark secrets of her past. She eventually discovers that her birth name was Amu, before she was given up for adoption to new parents and a life in America. Amu’s biological father and baby brother were murdered during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi. Her traumatised mother, unable to countenance the aftermath, hangs herself. During the events of 1984, thousands of Sikhs were massacred following the assassination of incumbent Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. Probably the first Indian film to critically appraise the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, Amu also confronts the historical dimensions of India’s current internal divisions. The film illustrates how the shadow lines between self and the other are indistinguishable; instead of being dichotomised, identities are fluid, indistinct and overlapping – the part exists within the whole and the whole exists within the part. The gradual uncovering of Amu’s past unleashes the ghosts of visceral, bloody events suppressed and disavowed in the Indian historical narrative. The massacre of Sikhs in reprisal for Indira Gandhi’s assassination is still a taboo topic in the Indian political and public sphere. Self-­reflexive and polemical cinematic investigations of the anti-Sikh riots are still subject to scrutiny by state authority. The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), under the custodianship of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, directed Bose to extirpate

Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative  121 references to the riots and their political motivations (Walsh, 2005). The complicity of the local police force with the ruling Congress government in permitting the killings is revealed during crucial plot-points in the film and particularly at its climax. After learning the truth, Amu and her friend Kabir are seated near a railway station abutting the slum where Amu was born. A news bulletin emanating from a television in the railway-side tea stall announces the death of 58 Hindu activists on the Sabarmati Express at Godhra railway station in the western state of Gujarat. This incident triggered the 2002 Godhra riots and precipitated the mass killings of Muslims. Following the news report, passers-by start milling around the teashop’s television. The camera performs a slow pan, gliding into a bird’s-eye view crane shot of the railway tracks, capturing the impoverished, precarious dwellings of the trackside inhabitants, their homes so close to the intersecting railway lines, they appear to melt into them. The distant departing figures of Amu and Kabir can be discerned along the railway tracks amidst the gathering throng of pedestrians as a train slides into frame across an adjacent track. Through this sequence of events, the film effectively performs a conjuring of phantoms from the past: victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. These ghosts are embodied in the film’s present by their ‘descendant’, Amu. The narrative proceeds to link the spectral detritus of the ghosts of 1984, with a premonition of the future – the 2002 Godhra massacre. In this sense, a compression of time and space is enacted through Amu’s dénouement. The past, 1984, folds into Amu’s diegetic present, which in turn prefigures future events. Amu’s re-invocation of 1984’s forgotten narratives in the film’s plot time, set at the cusp of the 2002 Gujarat massacre, also gestures towards the nation’s present, its current situation of religio-­communal precarity. As Amu’s director pointed out in an interview with David Walsh, ‘the seeds of the politics of the last twenty years were sown in 1984’ (Walsh, 2005). The recrudescence of communal violence in Gujarat in 2002, alluded to in Amu’s epilogue, signposts the ascendency of Narendra Modi, current Prime Minister of India and incumbent Chief Minister of Gujarat at the time of the Godhra incident. Rustom Bharucha cites numerous scholars such as Asghar Ali Engineer (2003) and Martha Nussbaum (2007) to ascribe the term ‘genocide’ to the killings in Gujarat, owing to ‘predetermined calculation and the intention to kill’ (Bharucha, 2014: 95). Bharucha also mentions several social organisations, including the National Human Rights Commission and Human Rights Watch’s indictment of Narendra Modi’s ‘role in engineering the genocide’ (ibid.). Nussbaum (2008: 50–51) in particular perceives the Gujarat violence as a pogrom of ‘ethnic cleansing carried out with the complicity of the state’. In the context of these observations, the significance of railway tracks and the passing train in Amu’s climactic scene evokes three monumental temporal events seared into the timeline of postcolonial Indian historiography, events that are largely elided or sublated in the construction of nation.

122  Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative Amu’s trope of the transient train recalls Train to Pakistan (1998) and Earth (1998), films that re-enact or re-imagine the carnage precipitated by the 1947 Partition between India and Pakistan, resulting in genocide on both sides and the loss of up to a million lives. Analogous to the Nazi Holocaust, trains functioned as mobile theatres or sites for extermination, with many trains during the Partition arriving at their destinations ridden with corpses. Amu bases its reconstruction of the 1984 killing of Sikhs beside a railway station based on actual incidents. The Gujarat anti-Muslim violence of 2002 was precipitated by the immolation of a train carriage in Godhra railway station that contained 58 occupants, predominantly activists belonging to far-right Hindu groups, the VHP and Bajrang Dal (We Have No Orders to Save You, 2002). Amu’s tripartite invocation of past, present and future events foreshadows several later new Indies performing similar interpretations of the time of nation, including the banned film Kaum de Heere (‘Diamonds of the Community’, 2014), which includes a representation of Indira Gandhi’s assassination. These overlaps in filmic attributes across the alternative cinema timeline validate the perception of the new Indies as historiographical hybrids from an interstitial space. In addition, the ramifications of Amu’s final sequence presaging Godhra and the massacres that ensued still reverberates and if anything has reached a crescendo in the nation’s present, visible in rising violent intolerance towards minorities under the veil of right-wing nationalist Hindutva politics. The film’s clairvoyant coda therefore captures and forecasts the nation’s continuing time of undecidability. In this regard, films such as Amu and Nandita Das’s Firaaq (2008), which delves into the aftermath of the Gujarat carnage, obscure borders between film narrative temporality and real time. Representing the interstitial space, several independent films therefore form a disruptive, repetitious peripheral force that interrogates the representational core and destabilises the national narrative’s time-space horizontality. Rakesh Sharma’s documentary Final Solution (2003) is a visceral exposé of the chilling events leading up to the massacre of more than 2,000 M ­ uslims in Gujarat by VHP and Bajrang Dal extremists. The film also reveals the complicity of several Hindu fundamentalist leaders and political groups, the ruling BJP and Narendra Modi in either orchestrating or condoning the killings. Overall, it could be reaffirmed that the above films and several current Indies raise questions about the act of forgetting. These films’ re-invocation of the ghosts of bloody and violent events in national history, including the Gujarat genocide, the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and the contravention of civil liberties in Kashmir, is comparable to Joshua Oppenheimer’s recent award-­ winning film, The Act of Killing (2012). In his documentary, Oppenheimer gets state-sanctioned Indonesian ‘gangsters’ to re-enact the brutal acts of mass murder they perpetrated in the past during a nationwide pogrom against alleged communists, following the fall of the Sukarno government in the 1960s. During their reconstructions and oral testimonies, the gangsters are confronted by the ghosts of their victims.

Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative  123 Similarly, the marginal figures and narratives that inhabit the celluloid space of many Indian Indie films unsettle and expose the duplicity of the official homogenising national narrative. To some extent, Aamir Bashir’s Harud and Onir’s I Am perform similar self-reflexive examinations of the national narrative. These and other manifestations of ‘ghosts’ integrated into Indie narratives, often at a subtextual level, will be scrutinised at length in case studies of selected films exhibiting varying modes of conjuring these narratival ghosts.

References Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 3rd ed. New York: Verso. Basu, A. (2010). Bollywood in the Age of New Media. Edinburgh, Scotland, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Baudrillard, J. (2001) (M. Poster, [ed.]; translated by J Mourrain). Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, 2nd ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bhabha, H. (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Bhabha, H. (2012). ‘Making Emptiness’. 31 January. Five Senses of Naked Shape [blog]. Available at: http://anishkapoor.com/185/Making-Emptiness-by-Homi-K.-Bhabha. html [Accessed 5 Aug. 2014]. Bharucha, R. (2014). Terror and Performance. Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Bhattacharya, N. (2012). Hindi Cinema: Repeating the Subject. Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Bolt, B. (2011). Heidegger Reframed. London: I B Tauris. Chapman, J. (2003). Cinemas of the World. London: Reaktion Books. Chatterjee, P. (2004). The Politics of the Governed. New York: Columbia University Press. Chauduri, S. (2012). ‘Unpeople: Postcolonial Reflections on Terror, Torture and Detention in Children of Men’, in Ponzanesi, S. and Waller, M. (eds.). Postcolonial Cinema Studies. London: Routledge. Cusack, C. (2012). ‘The Gods on Television’, in Possamai, A. (ed.) Handbook of Hyper-real Religions. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill. Engineer, A. (2003). The Gujarat Carnage. New Delhi: Orient Longman. Fanon, F. (1963). The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Harvey, D. (2014). Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Hayward, S. (2013). Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts, 4th, ed. Milton Park, Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Huddart, D. (2006). Homi K. Bhabha. London: Routledge. Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. ­London: Verso. Kool, V. and Agrawal, R. (2006). Applied Social Psychology: A Global Perspective. Delhi: Atlantic Publishers. Lutgendorf, P. (2007). ‘Bending the Bharata’, in Pauwels, M. (ed.), Indian Literature and Popular Cinema: Recasting Classics. Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge. McLaren, P. (1995) ‘Postcolonial Pedgagogy, Desire and Decolonized Community’, in McLaren, P. (ed.) Postmodernism, Post-colonialism and Pedagogy. Albert Park, Australia: James Nicholas Publishers, pp. 227–268.

124  Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative Mehta, R. (2011). ‘Bollywood, Nation, Globalization: An Incomplete Introduction’, in Mehta, R. and Pandharipande, R. (eds.), Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora, London: Anthem Press. Mishra, V. (2002). Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire. New York: Routledge. Nussbaum, M.  (2008).  The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pisters, P. (2009). ‘Homi K Bhabha’, in Coleman, F. (ed.) Film Theory and Philosophy, Durham, UK: Acumen Publishing. Rai, A. (2009). Untimely Bollywood. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Roy, A. (2014). Capitalism: A Ghost Story. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books. Schaefer, D. and Karan, K. (2013). ‘Introduction’, in Schaefer, J D and Karan, K. (eds.). Bollywood and Globalization: The Global Power of Popular Hindi ­Cinema, Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Shoah. (1985). [DVD]. France: Claude Lanzmann. Slattery, P. (1995). Curriculum Development in the Postmodern Era. New York: ­Garland Publications. Warner, M. (2003). Signs & Wonders: Essays on Literature and Culture. London: Chatto & Windus. ‘We Have No Orders to Save You’. (2002). Human Rights Watch Asia, 14(3(C), p. 21.

6 Running with Scissors Censorship and Regulation

Censorship is a perennially traversed topic in scholarship on Indian cinema. Several recent studies have delved deep into the intricacies of film censorship, certification and regulation, especially the role of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) and its operations under the aegis of the ­Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Someswar Bhowmik’s essay ‘Film ­Censorship in India: Deconstructing an Incongruity’ (2013) and ­Monika Mehta’s Censorship and Sexuality in Bombay Cinema (2011) provide particularly incisive academic analyses in this regard. However, these studies and others tend to focus on mainstream Indian cinema. When they do refer to independent films, their evocation is either intermittent or neglects the credentials of alternative films as offering a bona fide cohesive corpus and a distinctive discourse in Indian cinema. This could be attributable to the timelines of such scholarship and their intentional focus on Bollywood or could be symptomatic of the general lacuna in scholarship relating to the emergence of a new wave of Indian independent cinema. In order not to step on the toes of previous scholarship in these broader areas, this chapter will examine censorship in Indian cinema within the contours of the new Indies, whilst still invoking existing scholarly literature as a frame of comparison. It will also attempt, wherever possible, to address gaps in research, contextualising and therefore contempori­ sing the discourse of censorship through the current Indies. In this regard, it would be impossible to disregard the significance of rapidly transpiring recent events that directly impact the future of the Indies. These include politically engineered reorientations in the CBFC, foundational state-­ orchestrated overhauls in key funding organisations, such as the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), and strategic installations of religio-politically partisan individuals in positions of cultural power, most notably at the wellspring of critical art cinema; India’s premier film school, the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune. The overall endea­ vour is to co-relate the multifaceted themes and issues arising in this section on censorship to the main focus of this book. It must be mentioned that some of the interviewed former CBFC board members, whose input informs elements of this chapter, have been anonymised in adherence to their wishes.

126  Running with Scissors

Politics, Polemics and the CBFC An analysis of fieldwork research interviews alongside an appraisal of the extant literature on India’s state-controlled censorship suggests a largely dyadic mode of organisation and function. This is both in terms of hierarchical power structures as well as bifurcation in the actual standards and practices of operation. Cinema censorship in India is the overarching prerogative of the state’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The CBFC is the Ministry’s official arm and carries out the process of ‘certification’, which mainly involves granting films a U (Unrestricted Public Exhibition), U/A (Unrestricted but with Parental Advisory for children below 12 years), or A (Restricted) certificate (Cbfcindia.gov.in, 2014; Mehta, 2011: 14). The CBFC also possesses the power to deny certification to a film, blurring the distinction between censorship and certification. The trajectory of film censorship in India has to a large degree been predicated on the process of expurgation rather than certification (Bose, 2013: 195); a notion exemplified by the organisation’s significantly superficial nomenclatural change from ‘Board of Film Censors’ to ‘Board of Film Certification’ in 1983 (ibid.). This moniker change notwithstanding, the persistent use of the term ‘Censor Board’ to refer to the CBFC, much to the consternation of (now former) members of the CBFC interviewed during fieldwork, appears unanimous across a spectrum of demographic agents. This runs the gamut of filmmakers, newspapers, media, film scholars and denizens of Indian civil society. Paradoxically, ‘Censor Board’ is consistently used as a self-referential tag in the official communiqués of Prasar Bharati, India’s national public broadcasting system, an organisation significantly influenced by the M ­ inistry of Information and Broadcasting. ‘Censor Board’ also appears in the guidelines of the official application form for filmmakers hoping to have their films screened on the state television channel Doordarshan (Prasar Bharati, 2014). The above scenario suggests a tacit refusal to acknowledge the Board’s revamped title by the wider Indian public, not to mention the persistent, if anomalous, use of the erstwhile appellation by its own progenitors. To a large extent, these factors reflect a general reluctance amongst the public to affirm the legitimacy of the CBFC’s purportedly benign and euphemistic eponymous function of certification. On its website, the CBFC describes itself as being comprised of ‘non-­ official’ board members and a chairperson, appointed by the Central ­Government (Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, n.d.). These board members are non-official in the sense that they are not directly affiliated to the government and are usually established and recognised individuals in various fields across the arts and culture. In this regard, they are invited or nominated to function as Board members and their appointments ratified by the central authority. In addition, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting appoints an ‘official’ Advisory Panel with nine regional branches. These panels are

Running with Scissors  127 purported to be constitutive and representative of the nation’s broad demographic (Bose, 2013: 195). In reality, as Bhowmik (2013) asserts, the nomination of Advisory Panel members is largely governed by political nepo­tism, cronyism and opacity in the bureaucratic process, resulting in the Panel often being populated by ‘people biased towards or against particular themes or types of cinematic expression’ (ibid.: 303). The CBFC’s dyadic structure – Board members and Advisory Panel is further dichotomised into Examining Committee and Reviewing C ­ ommittee (Bose, 2013: 195). This subdivision appears nebulous and redundant, because the Advisory Panel effectively constitutes the Examining ­Committee and the Reviewing Committee is an amalgamation of selected Board and Panel members (Bhowmik, 2013). An interviewee mentions that the services of the CBFC Board members are usually only solicited whenever there is an anomaly or dispute in the Examination Committee’s primary certification process. Such situational exigencies then pass down to the Reviewing C ­ ommittee, which includes representatives from the Board, nominated according to their suitability to evaluate the specificities of each censorship dispute. The Advisory Panel is therefore at the vanguard of the CBFC’s certification procedure. Donning the mantle of the Examining Committee, Panel members are the first point of contact in the process of appraising a film and certifying it. According to one of the former members interviewed, the Panel (or Committee) first views the film and then provides its imprimatur, prescribing cuts and deletions or flagging ‘inappropriate’ content. The Board is generally regarded as a nominal, subordinate appendage to the larger supervening regulatory authority of the Advisory Panel and their common custodian, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The general affirmation of the Board’s restricted role in the censorship process gleaned from interviews with members of the CBFC concurs with the idea that the ‘CBFC is not an autonomous body’ (Bhowmik, 2013: 302). In addition, there appears to be a randomness informing the appointment of the Advisory Panel. This irregularity in the selection process accompanies a confounding indistinguishability between Examining and Reviewing Committees and their progenitors, the Board and the Advisory Panel. Both of the above propositions coalesce into consequent questions about the Panel members’ suitability for their roles. All of these factors signpost an arbitrariness in the process of certification and censorship in Indian cinema. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting extends this dichotomous field of operations (its discrepant distribution of power to the Advisory Panel and nominated Board members) into arguably dual standards of film classification. This is manifest in inconsistent, often antithetical, parameters applied to popular Bollywood films on the one hand, and non-commercial independent films and documentaries on the other. Bhowmik highlights the CBFC’s expurgation of a scene from Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth (1998) that depicts the decapitated head of a rebel, while Bollywood director Ramesh Sippy’s film Shakti (1982) and its portrayal of a person’s head being put

128  Running with Scissors through a sugarcane masher was passed without any cuts (Bhowmik, 2013:  303). These early filmic examples could be contemporised through several instances of current Indie films undergoing gratuitous excision or being denied certification, which is tantamount to banning a film outright. Before examining these examples, it may be useful to orient this discussion around an understanding of some underlying reasons for this ostensibly inconsistent if not discriminatory system of film certification and censorship. Scholarship on censorship in Indian cinema largely focuses on the domains of sex and violence, situating these areas as definitive demarcators. For example, Mira Nair’s Kama Sutra (1996) was embroiled in court disputes initiated by the CBFC. Monika Mehta (2011: 74) largely attributes this to Nair’s non-resident Indian status, the film’s sexual content and consequently the CBFC’s apprehensions about the film’s influence on perceptions of ‘Indian culture’. Violence plays partner to sex in the CBFC’s discourse of film censorship, as the above examples of Elizabeth and Shakti aptly demonstrate. Unlike sex, however, societal and censoring authority attitudes towards violence are ambiguous and mostly laissez-faire. This is owing to the interchangeability of violence and action-based entertainment as a vital ingredient of the Indian commercial film genre (Hood, 2009: 5), as manifested in several Bollywood blockbusters such as Ghajini (2008) and Singham Returns (2014). ‘Violence’ in the discourse of Indian cinema censorship is largely not concerned with nor constrained to overt depictions thereof in the films themselves. In practice, ‘violence’ relates more to the CBFC auguring a film’s propensity to trigger communal violence. In this context, Indie films and docu­ mentaries fall discrepantly under the censoring blade compared to their Bollywood counterparts. This is largely because independent films and docu­mentaries are more likely to be vehicles of political commentary and critique. It could be argued that the CBFC has cultivated a pre-emptive policy of excising or withholding release of some films by raising the spectre of violence possibly spilling over the film frame into real-life sectarian strife. In this regard, state control is often arbitrarily exercised through the CBFC to proscribe several independent films and documentaries containing poli­ tical content. It is possible to affix to the dominant parameters of sex and violence a third dimension on which censorship and regulation has increasingly been brought to bear in recent times – the realm of the political. In actuality, the realms of sex, violence and the political often overlap in the discourse of censorship in Indian cinema. The new Indies constitute a recurring site for state intervention in the form of censorship measures aimed at regulating socio-political critique or even political references in some of these films. The documentary filmmaking domain, regarded as a distinct yet integral part of independent Indian filmmaking, has especially come under the scrutinising gaze of the CBFC. Socialist filmmaker Anand Patwardhan’s documentaries

Running with Scissors  129 about religious violence, marginalised communities and environmental activism (In the Name of God [1992]; Jai Bhim Comrade [2011]), have consistently evoked turbulent debates with right-wing religious groups and state censorship (Maclay, 2004). As mentioned in Chapter 5, self-reflexive Indie film critiques of political and juridical complicity in the face of calami­ tous national events such as the 1984 anti-Sikh reprisal killings and the 2002 massacre of Muslims in Godhra have consistently been the target for censorship or injunction. Shonali Bose’s earlier-mentioned independent film Amu (2005), again, is a suitable paradigm to illustrate the often arbitrary expurgation of Indian alternative cinema when it broaches politically sensitive issues from the nation’s past and present. Amu, ‘the first and probably the only film so far’ to engage with the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in Delhi (Somaaya, Kothari and Madangarli, 2012: 204), explores the nexus between ruling Congress party politicians and local law enforcement that permitted and often instigated the killings. Bose narrates her experience of the CBFC giving her film an ‘A’  certificate, despite the film not containing any sex or explicit violence. She reveals the censors’ rationale for their decision: ‘Why should young people know a history that is better buried and forgotten?’ (Walsh, 2005). The CBFC’s attempt at the eradication of multiple events from the collective national memory emphasises the state’s encouragement of empty homogenising time (Chatterjee, 2004: 6) in the form of a mythologised onesize-fits-all national history. The Board’s actions symbolise how the grand narrative of the ‘imagined nation’ is forged through the exclusion or suppression of secondary and tertiary narratives, particularly those detrimental to the cohesion and linearity of the state-sanctioned metanarrative (Bhabha: 1994; Chatterjee, 2004). Bose also recounts the censorship of several crucial lines of dialogue from Amu. A pertinent example of such an omission is a scene in the film where a widow of one of the murdered Sikh men is asked whether it was one or two high-ranking ministers responsible for mobilising the mass killings (Walsh, 2005). The women replies, ‘No, it was the entire state, the bureaucracy, the government, the politicians, the police, all’ (ibid.). After being asked by the censors to delete the widow’s revelation, Bose decided to do so, substituting symbolic silence in its place. The filmmaker’s rationale was to invoke the silence of 1984 widows, rendered inarticulate in the aftermath of the state apparatus colluding in the deaths of their husbands and around 5,000 other people (ibid.). This scenario of censorship exacting silence from national subjects blurs the distinction between representation and reality. The discourse of indiscriminate state power is evoked in Amu’s filmic representation of the atro­ cities of 1984 and mirrored in the reality of the state’s attempts to control collective memory through censorship. The notion of the subaltern’s silence and inability to speak comes to the fore here. Bose’s testimony regarding the 1984 riot victims’ compensation claims and petitions for perpetrators

130  Running with Scissors to stand trial not having been redressed to this day underpins the thesis of unified national time and memory being formulated alongside the acts of alterity and forgetting. In effect, Gayatri Spivak’s question, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ and its addendum ‘Can the subaltern (as woman) speak?’ (­Spivak, 2006: 33), are invoked, both in the cinematic silencing of the widow in Amu, as well as in the inarticulacy of the surviving victims of 1984 and the reality of their unresolved trauma. These seminal questions can be conflated with Spivak’s thesis that ‘the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow’ (Spivak, 2006: 32). Amu’s brush with censorship underscores what appears to be a recursive phenomenon, particularly in relation to the new wave of Indian Indies. Another analogy is the recent ‘blocked release’ of independent film Kaum de Heere (‘Diamonds of the Community’, 2014), based on the 1984 assassination of Indira Gandhi – the event that precipitated communal violence in Delhi (‘Indira Gandhi’, 2014). The CBFC restrained the film’s release on the grounds that its screening could vitiate law and order, with political party members threatening to agitate in the event of the film’s release (ibid.). In this milieu, the film’s director, Ravinder Ravi, poses an interesting rhetorical question, asking why a film about Mrs Gandhi’s murder was almost inconceivable in India, when films portraying political assassinations were de rigueur around the world (ibid.)? Ravi’s rumination encapsulates the field of complexity facing Indian cinema, where the censoring authority has a propensity to form an impregnable barrier to free filmic expression. State intervention in the situation of Kaum de Heere seems explicit, considering that the film had originally been cleared by the CBFC and then immediately rescinded, after the Home Ministry castigated the film as ‘highly objectionable’ (Najar, 2014). The state justified its fulmination by alleging that the film portrayed Mrs Gandhi’s killers in a sympathetic light (ibid.). This scenario illustrates the Indies’ engagement, and often their encounter, with the dominant national narrative; this is one of the main areas of focus in this book. The historical backdrop to the impasse between Kaum de Heere and the ruling state evokes the 1984 ‘Operation Blue Star’. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi directed the Indian army to storm the sacred Sikh Golden Temple complex in the Punjab city of Amritsar in a bid to flush out Sikh separatists who had occupied the shrine, with the army action resulting in several civilian casualties (Najar, 2014). The Sikh community denounced the army-led operation as a desecration of their consecrated religious space. The incident maligned Mrs Gandhi’s reputation and was widely considered the cause of her assassination at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards (Das, 2001: 45). In this context, the state’s denial of permission to screen Kaum de Heere represents ‘the choices that are made to include or exclude events, people and perspectives in the creation of a cohesive national ‘“story”’ ­(Lee-Loy, 2010: 28). These sidelined narratives and stories are not dissipated by their exclusion but instead persist in ‘haunting’ the present time of

Running with Scissors  131 the nation – the ‘ghosts’ that inhabit the nation’s liminal interstitial space (see Chapter 6) (Bhabha, 1990: 1; Lee-Loy, 2010: 28). There is an interesting coda to the above scenario of state censorship and Kaum de Heere. The imbroglio surrounding the film was augmented by the subsequent arrest of the CBFC’s chief executive, Rakesh Kumar, on the charge of accepting bribes in exchange for approving films (Sharma, 2014). On interrogation, Kumar stated he had received Rupees 100,000 (around £1,000) from Kaum de Heere’s producers to grant the film a release, an allegation denied by the filmmakers (Najar, 2014; Sharma, 2014). The veracity of Kumar’s claims or the filmmakers’ vehement refutation notwithstanding, it is possible to infer that state intervention into the realm of cultural production in India is a fait accompli. Rakesh Kumar’s actions precipitating his arrest, as a metonymic manifestation of macro institutional corruption, exposes the systemic inconsistencies and lack of autonomy and transparency in the process of regulation. The above-described agonistic overlaps between state, CBFC and filmmakers reveal complex layers in the constantly shifting tectonic plates of censorship in modern Indian cinema. Scholarship consistently mentions the prevalence of institutional corruption in the machinery of state censorship. Bribery is described as an almost conventionalised proviso for filmmakers and producers to circumvent being encumbered with a certification that is detrimental to the commercial interests of their films (Bhowmik, 2013: 303; Mehta, 2011: 76, 246). Arguably, Bollywood, with the buying power of superior production budgets, stands at the forefront of being able to bypass this system, compared to small-scale Indie films. Bollywood possesses another more intangible advantage that enables it to flex its meta-hegemonic muscles: its underlying ideological credentials in the form of soft power. An example of this is Aamir Bashir’s experience filming Harud (2010), with its politically sensitive theme portraying life in conflict-ridden Kashmir. Bashir recounts in an interview how he had to manoeuvre through seve­ ral layers of government bureaucracy as well as the caprices of the CBFC in order to bring the film to fruition. In order to film in volatile, army-­ controlled areas of Kashmir, Bashir had to sometimes film covertly by not divulging Harud’s theme and plot (Bashir, personal communication, 2013). Bashir mentions that on occasions when authorities discovered Harud was not a Bollywood film, their levels of co-operation diminished. He attributes this to the pervasive privileging of Bollywood star power that in turn affords big-budget films greater filming rights and access. Bashir, noting Bollywood’s superiority in gaining access to filming locations remarks: ‘they will not be questioned or contested because they are stars’ (ibid.). This observation of Bollywood’s ‘star power’ effectively demarcates the hegemonic cultural capital that forms a part of Bollywood’s soft-power narrative and shows how it can implicitly influence the narrative of censorship in India. The earlier mentioned arrest of CBFC Chief Executive Officer Rakesh Kumar on charges of bribery, largely confirms the assertion that graft and

132  Running with Scissors corruption seem endemic in the ambiguous hierarchies of the organisation. Before he was remanded to judicial custody, Kumar oversaw the censorship of Vishal Bharadwaj’s film Haider (2014), an adaptation of Hamlet and akin to Harud set in Kashmir. Kumar, at the helm of the Examining Committee, prescribed 41 cuts to the film and proceeded to grant it a U/A certificate (Lalwani, 2014). CBFC protocol deems that once the Examining Committee has scrutinised a film and ordained cuts, further responsibility for censorship falls exclusively within the domain of the Reviewing Committee. However, in the case of Haider, this system was subverted. Senior Board member and Chair of the Reviewing Committee Nandini Sardesai has revealed that Rakesh Kumar watched the film and passed it with a U/A certificate and 41 cuts without consulting the Reviewing Committee (ibid.). To a significant extent, as the world’s largest and arguably most diverse democracy, the heterogeneity of the Indian body politic itself often becomes a force inimical to the freedom of speech and expression. There are seve­ ral circumstances where the CBFC’s ‘non-official’ board members in the Reviewing Committee are faced with a Hobson’s choice when it comes to accommodating the sensitivities of India’s myriad religious, communal, ethnic, linguistic and sectarian differences. One of the former CBFC board members interviewed in 2013 maintained that the incumbent board at the time was probably the most progressive committee in recent times, inclu­ ding several members with backgrounds in the arts and culture. Interaction with the board members reveals the quandaries they face in the Reviewing Committee. In this context, there are scenarios where even the titles of films could be deemed offensive or inappropriate by sections of the public. Kannan Iyer’s 2013 supernatural thriller Ek thi Dayan (‘Once there was a Witch’, 2013) came in for condemnation from the National ­Committee for Women. This was because the word dayan (witch) had been banned by the regional government of the state of Jharkhand, following incidents of dayan pratha, or witch-hunting – an arcane rural practice whereby primarily ‘lower-caste’ Dalit and tribal Adivasi women suspected of witchcraft are subjected to violence and often killed (Murthy and Dasgupta, 2014, n.p). Ek thi Daayan, a film thematically unrelated to the practice of dayan pratha, exemplifies how even titles of films can be taken out of context and denounced by sections of the public. This underscores the arena of complexities countenanced by the Reviewing Committee board members in the process of censorship. It would be fair to state that the broad spectrum of religious, ethnic, linguistic and caste divisions in India’s socio-cultural fabric intensifies the CBFC’s difficulties in navigating issues relating to film censorship. The scenarios discussed thus far also foreground the systemic inconsistencies and disaggregation in the CBFC’s contemporary policy of operations that seem incommensurable with these multiple obstacles. One of the main contribu­ ting factors to the CBFC’s inefficacy is the countermanding impingement of national ideology at the behest of state control over the CBFC’s censoring

Running with Scissors  133 operations. In this configuration, the state either directly or by proxy of the CBFC, interferes in political censure or commentary through film. For example, Harud’s encounter with the CBFC’s Examining Committee resulted in a series of cuts being prescribed. These included references to Indian security forces being responsible for forcibly ‘disappearing’ ­Kashmiri men, as well as references to Kashmir being a historically independent state before its accession to India in 1947 (Bashir, personal communication, 2013). Another redacted reference was in relation to a scene in which three young men discussing a hypothetical World Cup football match imagine Kashmir having its own team, separate from India and Pakistan. Bashir largely attributes the excision of these instances of dialogue from Harud to the overriding powers of the government-appointed Advisory Panel drow­ ning out the ‘progressive’ voices in the CBFC (ibid.). There are multiple dimensions informing the CBFC’s apparent antipathy towards self-critical filmic reconstructions of politically sensitive historical events or current affairs. Once again, India’s diverse ethno-religio-linguistic demographic itself plays a role, rendering it necessary to factor in societal consent and the ‘policing’ of and by the people themselves. A good example is Madras Café (2013), a mainstream film with a veneer of the independent aesthetic. Madras Café reconstructs India’s intervention in the Sri Lankan civil war and consequent events leading to the 1991 assassination of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger rebels in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The film falls within the representative matrix of re-­ inscribing Indian nationalism, with the lead character played by Bollywood actor John Abraham, representing a traumatised, battle-weary, yet unswer­ vingly patriotic Indian espionage agent. Despite its patriotic narrative, the film faced allegations in Tamil Nadu of negatively representing the Sri Lankan Tamil rebel organisation and its leader (Chandrababu, 2014). This led to widespread opprobrium of the film in Tamil Nadu, a region sympathetic to Sri Lanka’s minority Tamil community. In effect, what appears to be Madras Café’s patriotic triumphalism on a national level was deemed offensive at the Tamil Nadu state level, leading to cinemas in the state refusing to screen the film (Chandrababu, 2014). This summarises the complex concentric layers of discourse in Indian geopolitics that question the viability of compartmentalised or homogenised systems of censorship and regulation. Another example of arbitrary and asymmetrical censorship practices is filmmaker Rakesh Kumar’s aforementioned investigative documentary Final Solution (2003) about the 2002 Godhra pogrom that led to the organised massacre of Muslims in the western state of Gujarat. In the film, Sharma accuses Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat (and currently Prime Minster of India), along with the state’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, of being complicit in the killings. In 2014, Rakesh Kumar accused Bollywood actor Anupam Kher, who is a self-avowed BJP nationalist and was CBFC chairperson from 2003

134  Running with Scissors to 2004, of having colluded with the ruling BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in order to ban Sharma’s documentary ‘by not giving it clearance’ (‘Anupam Kher, Rakesh Sharma’, 2014). Sharma contends that Final Solution was ‘finally cleared’ in 2004, when the Congress-led United Party Alliance (UPA) government replaced the BJP’s NDA at the centre (ibid.). Kher’s rejoinder to the allegation claimed he had actually passed the film without any cuts and that Sharma was ‘lying … [the] Censor board has the proof’ (ibid.). This gridlock, reminiscent of the situation involving Kaum de Heere and CBFC chief Rakesh Kumar, demonstrates an intrinsic volatility in the Indian system of regulation and censorship that often vacillates according to the nation’s changing cycles of political power. Another recent example of the new Indies’ implication in censorship and the dominant national narrative is Papilio Buddha (2013), a film by Jayan Cherian, representing the downtrodden Dalit community in the southern state of Kerala and their struggle as historical objects of caste oppression. The film, based on authentic stories of violence on Dalits and symbolically representing a ‘pan-Dalit movement’ (Anandan, 2012), received a moratorium on its screening from the CBFC. The organisation cited the film’s disparagement of iconic leaders and visuals of ‘extreme violence’ as reasons for proscription, (Express News Service, 2012a). The CBFC’s allegation that the film contained iconoclastic content was based on an allusion to Mahatma Gandhi as a homosexual and a sequence where Gandhi’s effigy is depicted with a garland of slippers around his neck (ibid.). Papilio Buddha was excluded from the International Film Festival of ­Kerala 2012 and an alternative private screening of the film was disrupted by the state police (Express News Service, 2012b). These incidents bear the traits of similar circumstances in Mumbai, where Q’s film Gandu (2010) had to be cancelled because of police refusal to provide security in the event of intervention or attack from violent members of religious political groups (Q, personal communication, 2013). The ternary conjoining of state, CBFC and police invokes Althusser’s (1971) notion of the Repressive State ­Apparatus (RSA) in the form of police and law enforcement operating in tandem with institutionalised national ideology in the form of the ­Ideological State ­Apparatus (ISA) (Althusser, 1971: 140–145). In this regard, Jayan ­Cherian termed the CBFC’s banning (through denial of a certificate) of Papilio Buddha as a ‘fascistic’ move by a ‘draconian government body’ (Anandan, 2012). Cherian expresses what he considers the wider context of indiscri­minate censorship in democratic India: Attempts at strangling creativity and barring arthouse productions from reaching the masses is condemnable. In the film, we have tried to re-frame the historical references, and if you are denied the space for a counter-narrative, what is the point in calling India a democratic country? (Express News Service, 2012a)

Running with Scissors  135 Cherian’s query at the end of the above quote echoes earlier sentiments expressed by Shonali Bose in relation to Amu’s revisiting of the 1984 incidents. Cherian’s rhetorical question also resonates with Ravinder Ravi’s befuddlement at not having the freedom to portray Indira Gandhi’s assassination in Kaum de Heere. This bolsters the notion of a common thread emerging from a pattern of national censorship that quells overt self-­ reflexive political critique. Papilio Buddha’s exclusion by machinations of the state transcends boundaries of censorship in Indian cinema and questions the nation’s broader accommodation of the freedom of speech and expression in its demo­cratic narrative. While this small-budget Indie film about the Dalit community was denied a release, allegedly for denigrating Gandhi, portraying ‘extreme violence’ and alluding to Gandhi as homosexual, it can be intertextually linked to the scenario surrounding Joseph Lelyveld’s 2011 book, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and his Struggle with India. Following the book’s publication, some news reports including the right-wing ­British tabloid, The Daily Mail claimed Lelyveld’s book portrayed Gandhi as b ­ isexual, precipitating outrage in India. In her book review Martha ­Nussbaum mentions how, in March 2011, Narendra Modi, then still Chief Minister of the BJP government in Gujarat, proposed a ban on the book, which was eventually enforced in the western state (Nussbaum, 2011). This ban was met with resounding approbation by the rival Congress party, who sought a similar nationwide ban but eventually performed a volte-face on their position (ibid.). A similar predicament was faced by University of Chicago academic Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: An Alternative History (2009), which was impugned by Hindu groups and subsequently withdrawn by its publisher Penguin Books India in 2014. Penguin’s decision was in the aftermath of the particularly persistent demands of an obscure but obdurate Hindu fundamentalist group Shiksha Bachao Andolan (‘Save Education Movement’), whose raison d’être is to advocate the expurgation of ‘deviant’ content and the sanctification of ‘Hindu’ culture and morals in school curriculum (Biswas, 2014). The group identified in Doniger’s book, ‘Christian missionary zeal’ and the approach of a ‘woman hungry for sex’ (­Gopalakrishnan and Rituraj, 2014). The above examples underscore a recurring theme of impetuous, decontextualised reactions to alternative cultural representations emanating from religious fringe groups, political authority and often from sections of the public. In the perspective of this book, the above arguments feed back into the theme of a hegemonic national metanarrative and its intolerance for diverging or alternative side notes and footnotes. Jyoti Thottam (2011), writing in Time magazine, notes India’s ‘limits of free expression’ and summarises the nature of India’s post-liberalisation democracy: ‘it upholds free expression, but privileges national harmony over the right of the individual to offend’ (Thottam, 2011). It is possible to read between the lines of ‘harmony’,

136  Running with Scissors in the ‘national harmony’ mentioned above, to perceive the ‘hegemony’ and ‘homogenisation’ that reside therein. In a dramatic series of events in January 2015, twelve CBFC board members, including those interviewed during the fieldwork research phase of this book, resigned in solidarity with Chairperson Leela Samson’s resignation. The board members attributed their action to what they termed the repeated interference and direct encroachment on their functioning by the ruling BJP government and ‘fundamentalist organisations’ (Maheshwari, 2015). The members stated: [The] Advisory Panel continues to be filled up with people of questionable credentials appointed directly by the Ministry, without taking the Board’s recommendations into account … It is our firm position that given the cavalier and dismissive manner in which the CBFC is treated by government, it is impossible to perform this duty with even a modi­ cum of efficacy or autonomy. (‘9 Censor Board’, 2015) The mass resignation of the board members was triggered by the board’s apprehensions about the release of the controversial religious film The Messenger of God (2015), which the members perceived as propagating ‘blind faith’ (Haq, 2015). The members’ appeal to prevent the film’s release was overruled by the government. This is significant, in light of the ­Samson-chaired board’s earlier complaints of state coercion following their refusal to comply with government demands to cut scenes from Aamir Khan’s satirical 2014 film PK, which parodies India’s obsessive religiosity and critiques the tradition of deifying self-appointed ‘holy’ men (­Maheshwari, 2015). The en masse resignations were immediately accepted and a new board constituted, formed almost exclusively of BJP affiliates or sympathisers. The installation of new chairperson, Bollywood director Pahlaj Nihalani, is particularly notable, in light of his vociferous support for the ruling Modi government (Haq, 2015). Apprehensions about the impartiality of this appointment are intensified, considering Nihalani’s role in conceiving Modi’s campaign video during the 2014 national elections (ibid.). More recently, whilst installed in his incumbent position of Censor Board chief, Nihalani created and disseminated an obsequious hagiographic music video venerating Narendra Modi as a new father-figure of the nation (Mehta, 2015). In some measure, this blatant conflict of interest and political bias further maligns the credentials of the CBFC. Indeed, it challenges the veracity of the organisation at a foundational level. It is interesting to note that far from being an isolated event, the recent reconstitution of the CBFC is only a drop in the ocean of several reappointments to the helm of influential arts and cultural organisations under the BJP-led NDA government. The impact on new independent cinema is particularly profound in light of similar partisan placements at the executive level of the NFDC, the solitary bastion of state-funding for alternative and Parallel

Running with Scissors  137 cinema. In addition, the indefinite student strike at FTII, Pune, in protest against the appointment of BJP member Gajendra Chauhan as Chairperson of FTII, highlights the ascendant trend of politico-religious intervention in the arena of arts and culture in India. Direct suppression of dissenting voices by the appendages of state power is demonstrated in the police action taken against two former FTII students who shouted protest slogans and displayed placards at the opening ceremony of the 46th ­International Film Festival of India (IFFI) at Goa in November 2015 (Gatty, 2015). The presence at the ceremony of ruling government elites – Union ­Minister, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Harshvardhan Rathore; Union Minister for Finance, Arun Jaitley and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar–emphasises the symbolism of the ex-students’ act of resistance. The former FTII students were subsequently taken into police custody and interrogated (ibid.). These developments point towards an emerging statist superstructure, where every stage of the filmmaking timeline – ideation, funding, production, censorship and exhibition of an Indie film – is in some way or the other subjected to interventions and impingements by the ruling state. Overall, the broad-ranging intertextual film and literary censorship scenarios discussed in this section reinforce the notion of the state as sanctioning moral authority on affairs of art and culture. The rapidity with which regimes of political power are being inserted and configured in pivotal cultural positions bears direct ramifications for free artistic expression, parti­ cularly for the new Indies, but also for Indian cinema per se. This scenario aligns with one of the axioms of the meta-hegemony: the state selectively endorses some ‘benign’ cultural forms, such as Bollywood, under the scheme of soft power, and arbitrarily censors self-critical cinematic others. These ambivalences emphasise India’s time of undecidability, its turbulent tussle between mythologised tradition and modern materiality that are currently arbitrated by religo-political regimes of the state.

Meta-Hegemony, Patriarchal Narrative and Censorship The argument that state control of censorship and certification exercises duplicitous standards is strengthened on the basis of another argument raised earlier in relation to Bollywood’s meta-hegemony (see Chapter 2). This relates to the state’s agenda of formalising a patriarchal heteronormativity in the sustenance of a homogenised nation-state, a strategy absorbed and reflected by Bollywood’s cinematic affirmation of these norms. In this regard, Mehta (2011) cites a triad of non-Bollywood films, Bandit Queen (1994), Fire (1996) and Kama Sutra that precipitated censorship-related polemic. The debates surrounding these 1990s films often tipped over into violence, largely because the films disorientated the discourse of heteronormativity and gender, integral to ‘conventional understandings of the Indian family and Indian film history’ (Mehta, 2011: 56). The same thesis is viable

138  Running with Scissors and, if anything, magnified in its applicability to the current crop of non-­ Bollywood independent films and documentaries. To a large degree, films such as Papilio Buddha, Harud, Gandu and I Am, either through their censure of political malaise or deviations from accepted norms of sexuality, disrupt the state-engineered equilibrium of ‘empty homogenising time’ (Chatterjee, 2004: 14). In this regard, they incur disciplinary or punitive measures in the form of censorship for their ‘deviancy’. It would be misleading and myopic to posit censorship in India as the exclusive top-down prerogative of an ‘authoritarian’ state. The actuality is a field of inestimable complexities, where governmentality is not restricted to state operations but permeates across the micro level. In this regard, moral policing is often seen as a socio-religious duty of the individual. ‘Moral policing’ is common parlance in India ‘to describe instances of persons – including but not limited to police officers – intervening in some situation, often though not necessarily with violence … even if it [the situation] is not illegal’ (Jauregui, 2013: 149). These ‘moral’ interventions are increasingly prevalent in an ascendant milieu of right-wing Hindu religiosity in India, as thematised in The World Before Her (2012). The counterpoint to this rise in reactionary orthodoxy is India’s inexorable engagement with the neoliberal free market economy. It is important to stress these transformations in a timeline that has previously witnessed the vandalising of cinemas and disrupted screenings of Deepa Mehta’s film Fire. The film portrays an intergenerational lesbian relationship between a young woman, Sita (Nandita Das), and her middle-aged sister-in-law, Radha (Shabana Azmi). Nearly 15 years on, the screening of Onir’s I Am, featuring India’s first on-screen ‘gay kiss’ (Onir, personal communication, 2013) was not matched with the same crescendo of incendiary opprobrium faced by Fire. This could ostensibly indicate a détente or declension in parochial or reactionary public sentiments, particularly amongst the rising nouveau riche middle-class and their intensified urban drive towards consumer culture. On the other hand, this apparently less confrontational attitude (compared to that directed at Fire) towards the homo-eroticism depicted in I Am (2010) could be symptomatic of the diverging standards of India’s patriarchal society. The 1996 film Fire, portraying Nandita Das and Shabana Azmi as women expressing same-sex love was seen as unacceptably taboo. Their male ‘mirror images’ in 2010’s I Am – actors Rahul Bose and Arjun Mathur’s enactment of similar intimate scenes – also evoked conflict between Onir and the censors. Onir describes the CBFC’s discrepant standards, stating that the organisation prescribed cuts to I Am and only gave it a U/A certificate after eight months, whilst another film with similar themes backed by influential mainstream producers was cleared with a U/A certificate ‘right at the beginning’ (Onir, personal communication, 2013). Onir laments the pyrrhic victory of receiving ‘Best Hindi Film’ for I Am at the 59th National Film Awards at a time when Section 377, an antiquated British colonial law is still in force

Running with Scissors  139 outlawing homosexuality in India (Jha, 2014). A comparison between the two plot-points in the timeline spanning the two non-­Bollywood films, Fire and I Am, reveals the ossification, disjunctures, contradictions and intricacies that intermingle in Indian society, politics and cinema. Transitions in the Indian socio-political matrix can be identified in the granting of legal recognition to India’s transgender community, the hijras, as an official third gender (Khaleeli, 2014). The regression in such progressive moves could be observed in the Supreme Court’s re-criminalisation of homosexuality in 2013, reinstating Section 377, in a volte-face on an earlier decriminalisation ruling in 2009. In the context of censorship, independent films with gay themes still face the censor’s scissors and occupy a position of marginality. Sridhar Rangayan, whose film Gulabi Aaina (‘The Pink ­Mirror’, 2003), dealing with transsexuality, was twice denied a certificate (Indo Asian News Service, 2012), is optimistic about growing Indie representations of LGBTQ themes in films like I Am. He speculates that Gulabi Aaina (2003) ‘would’ve been cleared had it been made … today’ (ibid.). Following on from this assertion, transformations in Indian cinema and its encompassing milieu are indicated by emerging examples, such as the independent film Third Man (2015), claiming to be the first movie with an all transgender cast (‘Hemant Turns Hamangi’, 2015). However, these reorientations in modern Indian cinema are still subordinated by the dominant socio-political narrative of politically influenced censorship. Indie film forays into representing the wider reality of LGBTQ communities largely remain suspended between India’s current rejuvenation of Hindu conservatism and the nation’s broadening trajectory of globalisation. In this context, serious film treatments of the lesbian lived experience in India, whilst increasingly visible in the Indie domain, are either limited or non-existent in the mainstream. Portrayals of same-sex female love in the 2004 Bollywood film Girlfriend are arguably stereotypical and bowdle­rised. The film had the dubious distinction of incurring the wrath of both the Hindu fundamentalist group Shiv Sena and women’s rights organisations – for different reasons (Bajoria, 2004). The former denounced the film as being against Indian culture, the latter criticised its reductionist, ‘regressive’, male-oriented portrayal of lesbianism (ibid.). Therefore, the contention that patriarchy and masculinities preside over representation and reception seems viable, whilst examining the persistence of diverging attitudes and censorship of film representations of sexual minorities in India. The corollary to this is that whilst representations of alternative sexualities in general continue to be fraught with obstacles, depictions of female sexuality and women also face a disproportionate and discriminating field. In an interview, Arundhati Nag, erstwhile member of the CBFC board and founder of Bangalore’s Rangashankara theatre, states that one of the factors influencing the above scenario is systemic and structural dualities (Nag, personal communication, 2013). This results in discrepant regulatory yardsticks for heterocentric Bollywood and alternative independent

140  Running with Scissors articulations. Arguably, this paradigm seems embedded in the dyadic practices of ideological instruments of the state, such as the CBFC. A striking recent illustration is Raj Amit Kumar’s Unfreedom (2015), banned by the CBFC largely due to its portrayal of a lesbian relationship and religious fundamentalism. In essence, the censorship and moral policing fiasco surrounding Fire in 1996 is rekindled in the CBFC’s injunction on Unfreedom. The board justified its punitive action on the basis that the ‘nudity and lovemaking scenes’ between the film’s two female protagonists would ‘“ignite unnatural passions”’ (Chatterjee, 2015). This spotlights how the discourse of censorship surrounding new Indian cinema is counterpoised between regression and progression. Reconfigurations in contemporary Indian society present opportunities for contestation and resistance. A snapshot of emerging articulations of agency can be seen in the first-ever Lesbian Film Festival organised by Delhi University’s independent Gender Studies Group. The event’s credo according to one of its organisers was to interrogate the reality in India that ‘Women who love women are erased. Same-sex culture is dominated by gay men. Women are not given space to be on their own’ (Kausar, 2014). The festival programme included current Indies, earlier Parallel films and Deepa Mehta’s Fire (‘Lesbian Film’, 2014). This event exemplifies the opening up of alternative spaces through new independent films that interrogate the uniformity of the national narrative and dualities in its systems of regulation. There is the contention that directors of films such as Unfreedom and Gandu turn the ‘banned in India’ tag into a catch-phrase to promote their films (Chatterjee, 2015). Whilst this may be a valid point, I would argue that this proposition could be approached from an alternative angle. In situations where films are banned, filmmakers turn the dominant or authoritarian narrative to their advantage, inverting it and re-appropriating it as an idiosyncratic tool of resistance, not to mention an unexpectedly propitious tool to propagate their films. As is evident in the above arguments, restrictions surrounding the portrayal of sex in modern Indian cinema folds into the politico-religious discourse and largely enacts the meta-hegemony’s gendering of the nation. Conservative academic proponents go so far as to invest Bollywood with a moral sanctifier role akin to ancient Hindu stories and scriptures, as does Madhu Kishwar, who claims ‘Bollywood cinema has assumed the mantle of upholding a distinct moral code, just as the pauranic kathas once did’ (­Kishwar, 2013: 95). Bollywood, as overweening common cultural currency and narrator of the national grand narrative of ‘family values’, appears to garner greater legiti­ macy and leniency, particularly whilst facing the frontlines of the Exami­ ning Committee’s censoring gaze. As such, Onir (personal communication, 2013) contends that sexualised Bollywood ‘item numbers’ routinely escape unscathed from the primary censorship process (see Chapter 2). Onir underscores what he perceives to be the disparate treatment of Indie films in relation to Bollywood, where the CBFC turns a blind eye to scenes

Running with Scissors  141 in Bollywood films, such as Rowdy Rathore (2012), depicting women as sex objects. To illustrate his point, Onir describes a scene in the film where the hero’s arm is seen reaching out towards a woman’s stomach. The hero attempts to arrest his arm’s inexorable progress with the words ‘I cannot control myself’, but his arm eventually wins. Asked about the ‘regressive’ portrayal of women in his films in an interview with the Hindu, Bollywood actor and Rowdy Rathore (2012) star Akshay Kumar retorts: ‘It’s okay if you pinch your wife or girlfriend. It’s never the women who will make the move … (they are shy). The men have to do it. Some 80–85 percent of the time, it’s like that’ (Kamath, 2014). In an article entitled Molesters or Heroes, Anna Vetticad questions whether 2014 Bollywood blockbusters, featuring industry stars Salman Khan in Kick and Akshay Kumar in Holiday ‘continue the Bollywood tradition of sexually harassing their heroines under the guise of humour and romance’ (Vetticad, 2014). She implicates Akshay Kumar’s repeated acts of female objectification, including ‘roughing up the heroine in  ­Holiday  to joking about rape in Tees Maar Khan, from calling the girl ‘maal’ (hot stuff) in Rowdy Rathore  to pinching her waist with fingers that act of their own accord’ (ibid.). The author traces Bollywood heroes’ enduring historical ‘harassment’ of women as a means to gain their affections. This is a trope dating back to seminal 1970s and 80s commercial Hindi films employment of these tactics. Vetticad’s article argues there is a coalescing between Bollywood misogyny and India’s political patriarchy. This is reflected in Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh’s controversial press statement issued in the aftermath of an incident of rape: ‘boys will be boys. Mistakes happen’ (ibid.). Arguably, the distillation of Akshay Kumar and Salman Khan’s misogy­ nistic proclivities into Bollywood’s serialised ‘item number’ bolsters the objectifying male gaze in commercial Hindi cinema. Onir attributes the normalisation of the ‘item number’ in India’s common cultural narrative to Bollywood’s endorsement by the regulatory establishment – the CBFC and the Indian media (Onir, personal communication, 2013). This legitimisa­ umber’s tion often overlooks or disregards the popularisation of the item n overt and subliminal link to the grim reality of rape in India (ibid.). This discussion of the national patriarchy underwritten by Bollywood highlights the new Indies’ broader representation of women in prominent roles in several films including Dhobi Ghat (2010), Peepli Live (2010), Masaan (2015), Parched (2015) and Ship of Theseus (2013). The Indie space is also witnessing an increasing number of female directors, including Kiran Rao, Anusha Rizvi, ­Anajali Menon (Bangalore Days, [2014]) and Geetu Mohandas, the director of independent film Liar’s Dice (2013), India’s entry into the 87th Academy Awards competition in 2015. Indies increasingly representing LGBTQ issues include Aligarh (Hansal Mehta, 2016), based on the life of gay Professor Ramchandra Siras. Siras was suspended from Aligarh Muslim University after being outed by a sting operation, and eventually died in mysterious circumstances.

142  Running with Scissors In summary, the binarisation of regulation and censorship in the state-­ controlled structure is manifested in the CBFC’s dual hierarchies as well as its often duplicitous policies of operation. The fragmented composition of the Indian polity also presents a minefield in the terrain of censorship, further impeding the efficacy of this monolithic state-­controlled system. Even the division of the Advisory Panel into regional branches and the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal often proves inadequate to address the multifarious discursive permutations and combinations that could be triggered by filmic content, as demonstrated by the example of Madras Café. Another indeterminable variable is the arbitrary ‘moral policing’ exercised by vigi­ lante political and religious fringe groups – an enduring feature of Indian ‘self-censorship’. Manifestations of this range from attacks on the film Fire by right-wing Hindu extremists to the more recent Gandu, Papilio Buddha, Kaum de Heere and even the Aamir Khan blockbuster PK. In this milieu, filmmaker Ashvin Kumar articulates the need for a reappraisal of censorship rules, the restriction of the CBFC to certification rather than censorship, and a distinction between ‘what is regressive and what is throttling of art in the name of morality’ (Kumar, 2012). The ambivalence inflecting India’s push-pull between mythic homogeni­sing time and the current time of undecidability facilitates the emergence of multiple articulations from the interstitial third space. These include t­ ransgressive, self-reflexive or iconoclastic political enunciations and i­maginings as cited in this chapter on censorship. These articulations are instantiated in the various Indie films that interrogate or contest the patriarchal and heteronormative socio-political status quo and in a largely indiscriminate and disproportionate system will continue to bear the brunt of censorship.

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144  Running with Scissors news/gulabi-aaina-wouldve-released-made-today-sridhar-­rangayan-093609785. html [Accessed 7 Dec. 2014]. Jauregui, B. (2013). ‘Dirty Anthropology: Epistemologies of Violence and Ethical Entanglements in Police Ethnography’, in Garriott, W. (ed.), Policing and Contemporary Governance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 125–156. Jha, S. (2011). ‘“I Am” Is the First Gay Film to Win National Award’. Times of India. 11 March. Available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/­entertainment/ hindi/bollywood/news/I-Am-is-the-first-gay-film-to-win-national-award/­ articleshow/12209306.cms [Accessed 22 Nov. 2015]. Kamath, S. (2014). ‘I Find It Satisfying to Jump All the Time’. The Hindu. 2 August. Available at: http://www.thehindu.com/features/cinema/interview-with-actor-­ akshay-kumar/article6275477.ece [Accessed 8 Sep. 2014]. Kausar, H. (2014). ‘DU Kicks Off First Lesbian Film Festival’ India Today. India today. 27 September. Available at: http:// Indiatoday.intoday.in/story/­lesbian-filmfestival-delhi-university/1/393015.html[Accessed 4 Dec.2014]. Khaleeli, H. (2014). ‘Hijra: India’s Third Gender Claims Its Place in Law’. The Guardian.16 April. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/ apr/16/india-third-gender-claims-place-in-law [Accessed 22 Nov. 2015]. Kishwar, M. (2013). ‘Bridging Divide: The Triumph of Bollywood’, in Balslev, A. (ed.). On India. New Delhi: Sage. Kumar, A. (2012). ‘A Space for Indie Films’. The Hindu. 14 November. Available at: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-cinemaplus/a-space-forindie-films/article4063041.ece [Accessed 8 Sep. 2014]. Lalwani, V. (2014). ‘Vishal Bhardwaj’s “Haider” Cleared With a UA Certificate After 41 Cuts.’ The Times of India: Entertainment. 6 September. Available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/bollywood/news/ Vishal-Bhardwajs-Haider-cleared-with-a-UA-certificate-after-41-cuts/articleshow/41842174.cms [Accessed 6 Sep. 2014]. Lee-Loy, A. (2010). Searching for Mr. Chin. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. ‘Lesbian Film Festival Starts in DU’ (2014). The Times of India: City. 16 September. Available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Lesbian-film-­festivalstarts-in-DU/articleshow/43460213.cms [Accessed 22 Dec. 2014]. Maclay, K. (2004). ‘Anand Patwardhan, the “Michael Moore of India”, Brings His Hard-Hitting Documentary Films to Campus.’ Berkeley.edu. 13 october. ­Available at: http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/10/13_patwardhan. shtml [Accessed 28 Nov. 2014]. Maheshwari, L. (2015). ‘India’s Censorship Board in Disarray Amid Claims of Political Interference’. The Guardian. 21 January. Available at: http://www.­ theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/21/india-censorship-board-crisis-leela-samsonmsg-­messenger-of-god-political-interference [Accessed 1 Oct. 2015]. Mehta, M. (2011). Censorship and Sexuality in Bombay Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press. Mehta, T. (2015). ‘After His “Modi Kaka” Video Draws Ridicule, Pahlaj Nihalani’s Defence’. NDTV.com. 16 November. Available at: http://www.ndtv.com/indianews/pahlaj-nihalanis-video-tribute-to-pm-modi-amuses-social-media-1243949 [Accessed 3 Dec. 2015]. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (n.d.). Central Board of Film Certification [website]. Available at: http://cbfcindia.gov.in/ [Accessed 1 Sep. 2014].

Running with Scissors  145 Murthy, L. and Dasgupta, R. (2014). Our Pictures, Our Words. New Delhi: Zubaan Books. Najar, S. (2014). ‘Film about Indira Gandhi’s Assassination Is Barred from Indian ­Theaters’. Nytimes.com. 22 August. Available at: http://www.nytimes. com/2014/08/23/world/asia/film-about-indira-gandhis-­assassination-is-barredfrom-indian-theaters.html?_r=0 [Accessed 6 Sep. 2014]. ‘9 Censor Board Members Resign a Day After Chief Leela Samson Quits’ (2015). NDTV.com. 17 January. Available at: http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/9-censorboard-members-resign-a-day-after-chief-leela-samson-quits-728608 [Accessed 21 Nov. 2015]. Nussbaum, M. (2011). ‘Gandhi and South Africa’. Thenation.com. 12 October. Available at: http://www.thenation.com/article/163916/gandhi-and-south-africa [Accessed 6 Jun. 2014]. Prasar Bharati (website). (2014). Available at: http://www.ddindia.gov.in/Information/ Acts%20And%20Guidelines/Documents/hindifeaturefilm.pdf [Accessed 29 Sep. 2014]. Sharma, A. (2014). ‘Makers of “Kaum De Heere” Paid a Bribe of Rs 1 Lakh to Get the Film Cleared: Rajesh Kumar to CBI’. The Economic Times. 20 August. Available at: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-08-20/news/53029102_1_ cbi-official-cbi-scanner-censor-board-ceo [Accessed 28 Nov. 2014]. Somaaya, B, Kothari, J. and Madangarli, S. (2012). Mother Maiden Mistress. New Delhi: Harper Collins India. Spivak, G. (2006). ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Ashcroft, B, Griffiths, G. and ­Tiffin, H. (eds.). The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd ed. London: Routledge. pp. 28–37. Thottam, J. (2011). ‘Gandhi, Lelyveld and the Great Indian Tamasha’. TIME. com.1 April. TIME.com. Available at: http://world.time.com/2011/04/01/gandhi-­ lelyveld-and-the-great-indian-tamasha/ [Accessed 1 Oct. 2014]. Vetticad, A. (2014). ‘Molesters or Heroes?’ The Hindu Business Line. Available at: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/watch/molesters-or-heroes/article 6268105.ece [Accessed 3 Dec. 2015]. Walsh, D. (2005). ‘An Interview with Shonali Bose, Director of Amu’. World Socialist Web Site. Available at: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/10/bose-o06.html [Accessed 2 Sep. 2014].

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Part II

Case Studies

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7 Rapping in Double Time Gandu’s Subversive Time of Liberation

This chapter undertakes a close reading of the film Gandu (2010), as an illustrative example of the new Indian Indies’ mélange and hybridity of formal and stylistic influences. By framing Gandu as a postmodern film, particularly in relation to its fragmented construction, the chapter aims to identify the multiple discourses the film either espouses or signifies. Addressing the overarching question of the Indies’ emergence from an interstitial space, an examination of form, style and content in this film subsequently extends to its overt and latent references to extant discourses in contemporary Indian society and culture. Gandu presents subversive characters and portrays transgressive themes, such as social exclusion, drug abuse, anarchistic hedonism, breakdown of conventional family structures and the explicit expression of sexual freedom. All these elements have inflected the film’s turbulent immersion into the wider sphere of debate surrounding the state’s regulation, censorship and moral policing of cinema in India. From a theoretical standpoint, this case study argues that Gandu exemplifies a performative text of resistance signifying a ‘time of liberation’ through contestation of the national pedagogical mythical time. This is in concordance with Homi Bhabha’s construction of nation in double time as discussed earlier in Chapter 5.

Synopsis Gandu (‘Asshole’, 2010) charts the directionless existence of its eponymous protagonist, ‘Gandu’ (Anubrata Basu), a lower-middle-class teenager in urban Kolkata, capital city of the Indian state of West Bengal. Gandu lives with his single mother (Kamalika Banerjee), who sustains the household by providing sexual favours to Das Babu (Shilajit Majumdar), louche owner of the local Internet café in exchange for his financial largesse. Caught in the middle of this arrangement, Gandu compensates for his fractured domestic situation by paying obeisance at the local shrine to Kali (the goddess of death), buying lottery tickets at the local shop and seeking solace in drug-addled fantasies of being a rap star. Gandu’s disillusionment with life stems from his mother’s affair with Das Babu, his adolescent sexual frustration and imprecations suffered at the hands of his peers, who ostracise him as a misfit

150  Rapping in Double Time and outcast, repeatedly ridiculing his name, Gandu (asshole). Although this disparaging title has been imposed on Gandu, he has also accepted it as his identity, resigned to the marginal status connoted by this name. All these factors precipitate Gandu’s descent into a drug-induced alternative reality, replete with hallucinogenic delusions and an idée fixe of performing with the British-Asian band Asian Dub Foundation. Gandu finds it increasingly difficult to grapple with his growing ennui and sexual frustration. In the midst of his turmoil, Gandu befriends Ricksha (Joyraj Bhattacharya), a slum-dweller who pulls cycle-rickshaws for a living. The new friends, joined by the mutuality of their social marginality, embark on a psychotropic road trip that rapidly spirals them into a disorientated labyrinth of time and space. The obfuscation of distinctions between fantasy and reality leads to the eventual disintegration of Gandu’s sanity.

Postmodern Freestyle and Freeplay Gandu diverges from the normative content and conventional storytelling grammar associated with mainstream Indian cinema. This is largely attributable to the film’s complex interweaving of cinematic genres. Global influences, particularly of European and Japanese art cinema, are perceptible in Gandu, gesturing towards the self-affirmed investment of director Q (Quausiq Mukherjee) in transglobal cinema. In an interview, Q cites French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard as his personal filmmaking bellwether, also expressing his appreciation for the work of Japanese experimental director Takashi Miike (Q, personal communication, 2013). In this sense, Gandu’s amorphous mix of form and style problematises a reductionist Bollywood/Parallel Indian cinema classification and points towards a postmodern pastiche of styles. Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli (2003: 10) mention the characteristics of postmodern film seen in the work of modernist filmmakers like Godard – ‘radical self-reflexivity … an unorthodox approach to narration and its parameters in space and time; and a polemical attitude towards modern capitalism and its features’. This interrogation of capitalism includes themes of media domination, political indifference, the loss of freedom and verisimilitude (ibid.). Gandu exhibits ‘radical self-reflexivity’ juxtaposed with a fragmented, experimental and non-linear narrative approach amongst the other above-mentioned characteristics of postmodern texts. From the outset, the film sets out to defamiliarise, disorientate and challenge normative structures and conventions, both socio-political (through its portrayal of themes and issues) and cinematic (through its experimentation with non-linear time and space). The film’s exposition is dedicated to an evaluation of the perceived meaning of the word gandu, which serves as the film’s title. Split-screen images simultaneously depict responses to a vox populi involving a range of people expressing their understanding of the term gandu (Fig. 7.1).

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Figure 7.1  The vox populi.

The keywords – stupid, fucker, loser, moron – that appear as on-screen subtitles, are synchronised with each respondent’s utterance during the vox populi. They reflect the arbitrariness of the signifier – gandu. The multiple articulations stemming from the respondents’ subjective denotations of the word gandu are transposable to the larger fragmentation that undergirds the film’s form, style and content. This babel of public voices expressing diverse perceptions instantiates Gandu’s multiplicity, its compositional multilayering and the film’s destabilisation and fracturing of meaning. The vox populi sequence foreshadows the subsequent disjunctures that seem endemic in the film’s narrative, expressed through the constant arbitrary rupture of linearity and a subversion of the desire for cohesive closure. The film’s fragmented morphology appears to be in direct resonance with the postmodern condition, which problematises notions of unity, a stable centre or logos of meaning, instead highlighting chaos and disaggregation (Harvey, 1990: 44). Within a poststructural paradigm, the creation of meaning analogous to the construction of identity is multifaceted and subjective. Therefore, the cacophony of voices at the outset of the film – enunciating diffuse perceptions in relation to the solitary signifier, gandu – sets the stage for the film’s dismantling of unity. In essence, the documentary-style vox populi functions as cinematic shorthand; it is a precursor to the film’s deconstructive, decentring of meaning, which is never located and fixed, but destabilised and perpetually deferred (Derrida, 1976: xxii, 69). The absence of unitary meaning or stable identity affixable to the word gandu is important, because this signifier doubles as the film’s title and main character’s name. The free play of meaning (Derrida, 2001: 344, 355, 365) demonstrated in the vox populi also points towards eponymous protagonist Gandu’s volatile persona. The narrative subsequently reveals Gandu’s

152  Rapping in Double Time ‘divided self’, his tempestuous splintering between antinomies of recreation (drugs) and reality (fractured familial situation). Gandu is unveiled not only as the object of a fractured self, but also of a socio-economic reality that denies him a locus, a sense of identity, even on the nomenclatural level of a conventional, socially acceptable name. The aforementioned subtitles and audio-visual clues in the film’s vox populi scene elucidates the disparaging connotations of the auditory signifier gandu. In a later scene, Gandu is pilloried by his peers, who in the process of their bullying vilification repeatedly re-invoke the multiple pejorative social connotations of the word gandu that were revealed earlier in the vox populi. Gandu’s lack of social acceptance and a stable identity, characterised by the arbitrary and derogatory connotations of his name, ‘Gandu’ (the narrative never reveals his actual name), indicate at an elemental level the displacement of this film’s primary character to a marginalised space. The film’s opening sequence, which reveals the multiple deprecatory meanings contained in the term gandu, leads the film’s audience to form an association between the word (and its implications) and the physical embodiment of gandu – the young person seen seated at a table in the scene immediately after the vox populi sequence. Expressing this concept another way: the word gandu expounded in the vox populi introduces the character Gandu we see in the next shot. Therefore, Gandu has always-already been dispatched to the margins right at the start of the film. This is accomplished through an associative process where the verbal signifier ‘Gandu’ is conjugated with the first visible filmic character that becomes the signifier’s logical ‘signified’. This process is an example of syntagmatic connotation in cinema, where the significance of a shot and its meaning are contingent on ‘the shot [being] compared with actual shots that precede or follow it’ (Monaco, 2009: 181). James Monaco (2009: 182) ascribes a similar connotative ability to individual words strung together that then find meaning in those that precede or follow. The above cinematic transition from the vox populi scene to the shot of Gandu involves a connotative interaction between signifier word and paradigmatic filmic shot. It is the word or signifier gandu and its relation to the signified – the corporeal Gandu, who appears in the scene subsequent to the evocation of the word – that eventually constructs meaning in the mind of the viewer. The connotative property of the ‘sign’ thus created by the combination of signifier and signified assists the viewer in imagining the character Gandu in the film’s narrative as a pariah outsider. It does this by bridging the gap between interiority and exteriority, linking the young man Gandu in the frame and the signifier gandu in the vox populi (public sphere) by invoking in the viewer the idea of ‘Gandu-ness’. The sign is not restricted to cinematic meaning creation in the film’s diegetic world; Gandu’s world within the confines of the film’s finite frame, but has broader, discursive symbolic evocations. To a large extent, the sign of ‘Gandu-ness’ created in the film signposts underlying ideological Indian

Rapping in Double Time  153 discourses relating to alterity, subalternity and peripheralisation in the lived experience of modern Indian society. In the context of this film, the sign creates the idea of a generic ‘Gandu-ness’ relating to the social exclusion or othering of individuals, sometimes on the basis of a single word or signifier. A broader example is the word ‘Dalit’, which now (catachrestically in the Spivak sense1) undifferentiatingly subsumes a ‘lower-caste’ minority community previously referred to as ‘untouchables’. Q mentions his intention to normalise the socially taboo word gandu by using it as the film’s signifier, ironically stating, ‘we have successfully baptised a Shudra [‘untouchable’; lowest caste] word and made it if not a Brahmin [highest caste] at least a Kshatriya [caste directly below Brahmin] word. It is an upper-caste word now!’ (Q, personal communication, 2013). This harkens back to Q’s taxonomy of the Indies (see chapter 4). Q also reveals that his deployment of the word gandu stems from his perception that ‘a linguistic shift is critical to social change’ (Q, personal communication, 2013). In the film, Gandu’s friend Ricksha shares a similar predicament. He is dehumanised and defined by the tool of his trade; he is equated through his name with the object that provides his livelihood, the cycle-rickshaw. Therefore, the two friends share a state of namelessness, although their marginalisation occurs according to different Indian contexts of socio-economic and class stratification. In other words, Ricksha is a subaltern slum-dweller at the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder, whereas Gandu’s alienation stems more from socio-cultural exclusion. The marginality of the film’s characters discussed above is to some degree shared by the film itself, in its self-professed positioning outside mainstream cinematic modes (ibid.). In this context, Gandu’s subversive discourse from the margins of Indian cinema could be viewed through the lens of Bhabha’s mythical pedagogical time of nation and the performative time of liberation. From the theoretical purview of this book, Gandu could be regarded as espousing an alternative, transgressive filmic discourse, not solely because of its graphic depictions of sex and drug abuse, as well as a screenplay punctuated with profanity. Gandu distorts and disrupts the unified, mythical time of the nation by its subversion of the status quo – the traditional Indian ‘archetype’ often proliferated by Bollywood films. In this regard, the film has two young, anti-social drug addicts as its central characters, at once elementally antithetical to Bollywood’s privileging of the muscular, handsome hero. Gandu and Ricksha are devoid of any aspirational qualities and seen as social malcontents. This is diametrically opposite to Bollywood’s ubiquitous, neoliberal, soft-power narrative of upwardly mobile, nouveau riche, globe-trotting, young Indian achievers. Gandu also destabilises the homogenising national narrative of traditional Indian ‘morals and values’ by introducing a fragmented, hybridised, culturally ‘alien’ paradigmatic into the linear syntagmatic pedagogy of the nation. Gandu’s rupturing of conventional Indian cinematic norms and tropes

154  Rapping in Double Time includes the film’s heterodox strategies of revealing narrative information as well as its fracturing of time, space and linearity. These devices include often desultory ‘utterances’ in several subsequent vox populi and most conspicuously through Gandu’s frequent staccato outbursts of rap lyrics. The film’s director, Q, appropriates rap music, an essentially American musical genre, and redeploys it in Gandu as a mechanism for the film’s nihilistic protagonist to express his angst. Rap music is not autochthonous or typical in an Indian context, as emphasised by Gandu’s isolated and solitary yet passionate pursuit of this music genre. In one sequence, Ricksha, frustrated with Gandu’s constant obsessive expositions on rap music, turns to Gandu in consternation, asking him what he means by ‘rap’. Gandu’s reply is accompanied by subtitles: ‘Rap = Words’. Similar to the use of the vox populi device throughout the film to demonstrate the multiple meanings and arbitrariness of words such as gandu, rap and pornography, the film self-referentially deploys rap music to illustrate its own displacement of unified meaning. In Gandu, the stylistic codes of the rap music genre are appropriated and subverted through an infusion of stylised content that addresses the immediacy of Gandu’s local Indian context. The rap-song sequences are therefore predominantly in the Bengali language and accompanied by English subtitles. The genre of rap music itself undergoes hybrid ‘adulteration’ in Gandu by the inception of Bengali lyrics, Indian beats, rhythms and intertextual allusions to specifically Bengali themes. This could be perceived as a double deterritorialisation of geographically or culturally specific art forms through hybridity. On the one hand, Gandu’s hybridisation of an endogenously African-American music form by interspersion of local Bengali contexts deterritorialises it from its particular American associations. On the obverse side of this hybridising process, Gandu’s expletive-ridden Bengali-English rap deracinates notions of ‘pure’ Bengali culture. This is particularly relevant in the context of West Bengal’s enduring tradition of indigenous folk music and cultural sanctification of ‘Rabindra-sangeeth’ (music composed by Bengali Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore). In essence, it is fair to state that Gandu’s subversive rap music ­emanates from an in-between third space. In its Indian context, it enacts a deterritorialisation of norms of authenticity or notions of pure, inviolate ‘Indianness’. Gandu’s hybrid rap music reterritorialises this space with a more global musical mix, simultaneously rooted in its local Bengali context and coalescing with global influences. In this regard, the interpolation of this miscegenated form of rap into the film could be viewed as an enactment of the ‘glocal’- the synthesis of local and global, lending credence to the theme of hybridity observed not only in Gandu, but also in the larger new wave of Indian Indies. An excerpt of lyrics from one of the rap sequences in Gandu illustrates the specificity of context and the music’s function in character formation

Rapping in Double Time  155 and narrative development. After being harangued and abused by his peers, Gandu vents his frustration: You make me feel like a worm You call me an asshole Ambition is hopeless my future is dark You get angry and I go hungry I am invisible in the dark corner of your room They tell me YOUR life is worth more than mine But one day I will haunt you like a ghost You will be a balloon and I will be a safety pin Gandu’s spewing forth of these visceral sentiments through the medium of rap not only provides narrative clues to his condition, but also serves as a platform to emphasise the dissentious, non-conformist performative ethos of the film. Gandu’s subversive and profane use of artifice, in this instance a musical form that is ordinarily ‘alien’ or ‘foreign’ to the traditional Indian national narrative, exemplifies this film text’s disjunctive effect on the enduring grand narrative of nation discussed in earlier sections. In a broader cinematic context, Bollywood has been epitomised as the purveyor of traditional, albeit populist, modern Indian film culture, especially through its signature song and dance sequences. These musical interludes generally follow a specific format in their narrative function, commonly to celebrate weddings, courtship rituals, indicate dreams and fantasies (Gopal and Sen, 2008: 252) or serve as elegies. Gandu disorientates and transgresses the linear continuity of such normative traditional practices by adopting a provocative anti-establishment stance. This is characterised by the trenchant, obscenity-ridden, vituperative self-reflexivity of Gandu’s lexical arsenal expressed during his furious bursts of rap. These vitriolic, explicit and sometimes nihilistic lyrics subvert the pedagogical national narrative that Bollywood has conventionally endorsed through its post-globalisation mix of ‘traditional Indian values’ and sexualised item numbers. As demonstrated earlier, the explicit and often confrontational lyrics in Gandu’s rap songs extend a distinctively unrestrained and defiant direct address. Gandu seems to spew these lyrics as a cathartic release for his adolescent sexual repression in the film. The prominence of the provocative and the profane in Gandu’s rap songs is exhibited in its overt and Rabelaisian references to masturbation and sex in songs such as Horihor Nara Nara (‘Shake it Hard’). Both Gandu and Ricksha perform this song to a rapturously receptive live audience – all part of Gandu’s delusional drug-addled dream. Explicit expositions of this sort are unprecedented in mainstream Indian cinema. Gandu’s liberal use of Bengali and English expletives is an enlarged manifestation of a more general phenomenon. The emergence of the New Wave of Indie cinema since 2010 has concomitantly accompanied the magnified use of screenplay expletives, particularly ‘home-grown’

156  Rapping in Double Time vernacular swear words. These are redolent in the dialogues of independent films such as Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) and Delhi Belly (2011). Echoing these Indies in this regard, Gandu’s explicit content is another facet that distinguishes the film from its more circumspect Bollywood counterparts. Q’s description of Gandu as a ‘rap musical’ revitalises the thesis of the new Indies as a hybrid resultant of multiple global influences in addition to their Indian Bollywood and Parallel cinema predecessors. For example, in interviews with the media, Q positions Gandu as an ‘anti-Bollywood’ film (D’Silva, 2011). He vocally affirmed his counter-mainstream approach on a live prime-time TV debate show entitled We the People (Dhingra, 2011). Although Q positions his film in opposition to Bollywood, it must be mentioned that the musical component is common to both Bollywood films and Gandu, although Gandu uses music as a subversive rather than a celebratory device. In addition, Gandu selectively invokes tropes of Bollywood musical escapism and lampoons them. A scene in the film depicting one of Gandu’s drug-induced fantasies parodies a Bollywood-esque song-sequence. It features a seductress, reminiscent of an ‘item girl’ (see Chapter 2, this volume), draped in a diaphanous sari, her sensual gyrations archetypal of the mannered theatricality of Bollywood ‘heroines’. This dream sequence appears to be a self-reflexive, postmodern ‘send-up’ of the Bollywood prototype of the sensuous singing and dancing vamp. The parody also reveals the sustained signification strategies deployed in Bollywood’s item numbers that have over time become normalised and reinscribed as identifiable ‘mythic’, culturally specific signifiers in Indian collective viewing practices. Rap music in Gandu is another divergence from Bollywood song sequences, such as the ubiquitous item number, which are desultory, spectacle-­based, stand-alone set pieces, unrelated to the main storyline (see Chapter 2). ­Gandu’s set-list of rap songs are integral to the film’s plot and character development, charting a misanthropic youth’s delusions of rap-music stardom. In this regard, Gandu’s narrative is signposted by a series of impromptu rap-music videos. These ‘mini music videos’ function as a portal to Gandu’s psycho-social instabilities and are indexical of his volatile fragmented self. As the rap songs are predominantly vocalised by Gandu himself, this musical conduit offers him the only agency to express himself in the otherwise bleak terrain of his marginalised existence. Gandu’s guttural rap outbursts disclose narrative information accentuated by simultaneous visual renderings of on-screen lyrics. This resembles the music video format and provides the audience with an expository insight into the subtextual layers of Gandu’s precarious drug-fuelled lifestyle and unfulfilled sexual desires. Inclusion of the music video configuration in the multidimensional morphology (that includes documentary-style vox populi) of Gandu’s form and style underscores the film’s postmodern composition. Gandu’s postmodern intertextuality in terms of its experimentation with short-film formats, such as the music video, attests to director Q’s antecedents as an ad filmmaker and

Rapping in Double Time  157 musician. This in turn underpins the multiple influences and filmmaking backgrounds informing the constellation of new forms of independent Indian cinema – itself a polymorphous form. Gandu’s incorporation of the music video aesthetic permeates into the film’s title credits that appear recursively and span the spectrum of the film’s narrative. These recurring ‘title credits’ involve rapid jump cuts; jerky, handheld camera work; split screens; the appearance of lurid on-screen lyrics (including the earlier example) and live ‘performances to camera’ by the title character, Gandu. These are all ubiquitous devices borrowed from the modern music video. As mentioned above, the ‘title sequence’ reappears at several non-linear points in the film, reiterating the film’s postmodern fragmentation and its dismantling of linearity. The first appearance of the title credits occurs as unexpectedly as subsequent manifestations. Following the film’s vox populi prologue, the establishment of an ostensibly ‘normal’ narrative commences with Gandu seen eating at a table in the threadbare environs of his flat as his sullen mother performs her kitchen duties. A moustached man enters unannounced, his shifty appearance and demeanour enhanced by the dark glasses concealing his eyes. He is the aforementioned Das Babu, sleazy owner of the local Internet parlour. The subsequent scene reveals Gandu’s mother and Das Babu having sex. Gandu proceeds to crawl into their room unnoticed, purloining money from the man’s wallet, and slithering back out, but not before craning his head to bed-level and sneaking a curious peek at the copulating couple. The flow of narrative information up to this point impels the film’s spectators to anticipate a logical and sequential continuum of this theme. It sets up audience expectation to extrapolate a continuity editing cutaway to perhaps a shot of Gandu exiting the flat, spilling out onto the street, maybe to spend the money he has surreptitiously extricated from Das Babu’s wallet. Instead, the filmmaker chooses to interrupt linear progression at this point by inserting the first instance of rap ‘music video’ title credits. This abrupt disconnect or disjuncture effected by the intrusion of the ‘music video’ title sequence shatters the brief illusion of linearity that the narrative has constructed up to this point. The intruding sequence is a bricolage of multiple split screens containing filmmaking credits, visuals of Gandu rapping, subtitled lyrics, all simultaneously occupying screen space. This jarring dissonance of audience expectation is foregrounded by Gandu’s rapping excoriation at having witnessed his mother and Das Babu in flagrante delicto. He vents his expletive-ridden angst in the eponymous title track, ‘Gandu’, indicting his domestic plight in general and his mother in particular: In a dark corner of your room I lurk You feel love I feel like puking Your sins burn you, you sit up Petrified of losing your youth Some fucker will run away with it

158  Rapping in Double Time The title song, ‘Gandu’, bears the traits of several musical styles – rap, punk rock and funk. This unexpected injection of a split-screen, ‘punk-rap’ video at the film’s outset is symptomatic of postmodern filmic devices and recalls Quentin Tarantino’s consistent use of pastiche and bricolage. Gandu’s sudden defamiliarising enforcement of what appears to be an incongruous stylistic device is ‘out of time’ with anticipated linearity. This process is repeated throughout the film’s screen duration. Against the backdrop of Bollywood’s meta-hegemony and the normalisation of its linear, often formulaic, filmic codes in Indian culture, Gandu’s non-chronological, transgressive title sequence, with its use of lyrically explicit rap music and its nihilist protagonist, reiterates the film’s subversive, disjunctive articulation of cultural difference. Gandu’s decentring of normative mythical time and the codified conventions perpetuated by Bollywood, locates this film as a performative text. This in turn invokes Bhabha’s temporal theme relating to the ‘time of liberation’, or alternative narratives arising from the interstitial space between the pedagogy and performativity of the nation. The film’s preliminary statement of its alternative credentials is explicit in the ‘music video’ title sequence, containing modern urban inflections of contemporary Indian hybrid youth subculture.

Ghosts of Youth Subculture: Between Postcolonial and Postmodern Gandu’s subversion of the pedagogical national narrative could be framed through the thesis that the film imagines a hitherto unrealised indigenous national youth subculture or counter-culture. Postcolonial Indian society, particularly in the 1950s and 60s, largely adhered to the directives of state-sanctioned ‘traditions’ and ‘values’ and its preoccupation with the moulding of a cohesive new nation (Majumdar, 2012: 179). The liberated nation did not witness the formation of alternative urban youth subcultures along the lines of the ‘mods and rockers’ in the 1950s or the punks and skinheads in the 1980s in Britain. Such idiosyncratic movements would have been regarded as a Western ‘incursion’ into Indian culture and largely viewed with suspicion as alien cultural artefacts up until the onset of India’s globalisation in the 1990s and the advent of satellite television in the country (Banaji, 2013: 33, 37). There were several Indian-global cultural exchanges in the 1960s and 70s, largely through the matrix of the hippie counter-culture movement, typified by Ravi Shankar’s musical collaborations with the Beatles. However, the influence of this cultural movement on mass youth culture in India was either negligible or restricted to denizens of the urban bourgeoisie dabbling in the fashion, hairstyles and motorcycles of the day. When the American ‘flower-power’ generation’s Indian manifestations were culturally represented in commercial Hindi films, such as Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971), portrayals were invariably stereotypical or positioned in opposition

Rapping in Double Time  159 to the traditional and religious dictates of Indian culture. Against this historiographical context, Gandu’s contemporary imagining of a rebellious youth immersed in non-indigenous rap and punk-rock culture provides a snapshot of post-liberalisation India. To a significant degree, Gandu is an adolescent urban by-product of India’s globalisation-induced contradictions, fractures and hybridity. He also characterises urban India’s increased access to global cultural media in the nation’s post-liberalisation era. Gandu’s obsession with the radical British-Asian band Asian Dub Foundation is shorthand for contemporary India’s heightened access to global cultural production. Symptoms of Gandu’s immersion in Western forms of music (rap, punk, rock and funk), albeit through his hybrid, glocal mode of expression in Bengali, can be related to the South Indian city Bangalore’s emergence as India’s ‘pub city’ and ‘rock capital’. This city’s post-liberalisation engagement with rock and heavy metal music (Saldhana, 2002: 340) is underpinned by its rising reputation as a lucrative performance venue for Western artists. Bangalore is now a recurring site on the touring itineraries of global acts such as Metallica, Iron Maiden, Megadeth and the Rolling Stones. Recent media articles have charted the growth of the city’s ‘rock music subculture’. The popularity of Western rock and heavy metal music in Indian urban centres such as Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi has contributed to a rising number of young middle-class votaries. However, these are still disaggregated groups that can be classified less as subcultures and more as hybrid cultural artefacts of globalisation that are situated within India’s overarching, ongoing process of neoliberalisation. This fragmentation in terms of disparate (sub)cultural formations exists largely because transitional formative hybrid subcultures in India are suspended in a liminal space between the dominant narrative of Indian traditionalism and the indiscriminate effects of globalisation (Saldhana, 2002: 346). The latter factor operates through the corporatising strategies of neoliberal frameworks and contributes to India’s already discrepant distribution of economic and cultural capital. It could be argued that this new version of subculture, exemplified by Bangalore’s ‘rock culture’, is largely sustained by neoliberal branding in India’s larger subsuming thrust towards globalisation. This branding involves a process of monetising and market expansion and – in the specific context of ‘exported’ subcultures – the commodification of purportedly alternative or non-conformist Western genres of music. These include rock and heavy metal (as they existed in the 1980s), themselves largely imagebased franchises that have, since the escalation of globalisation, tapped into new Asian markets. This renewed, rebranded franchise includes band merchandise – T-shirts, posters, memorabilia – proliferated through aggressive marketing strategies and corporate-sponsored rock concerts. This branding of music subcultures is consistent with Slavoj Zizek’s assertion of ‘mass-media symbols’ enticing consumers to identify with the image created

160  Rapping in Double Time by the franchise (Zizek 1989: 96). This contention could be contextualised through Gandu in terms of the rock/rap ‘brand’ arousing the ‘idea’ or the image of a subculture and Gandu’s identification with it. However, there are no real, tangible means for him to connect with or feel a deeper and wider sense of belonging, identity or ‘authenticity’. Gandu, immersed in this imagined ideological connection with rap/punk subculture (his dreams of fame alongside Asian Dub Foundation), experiences a disconnection and falls into anomie when he cannot connect or relate in reality with his domestic and wider social milieu. This line of reasoning draws on Benedict Anderson’s (2006) concepts of ‘imagined communities’ and ‘imagined nation’ that describe how an intangible sense of kinship and ‘sameness’ is ideologically normalised without any real tangible commonality or face-to-face interaction between individuals. As mentioned in Chapter 5, Partha Chatterjee refers to this imagined sense of national unity as the empty homogeneous time of nation. Gandu does not fit into this unifying frame and hence retreats into a realm of solipsism and escapism. Gandu’s solitude and social stigmatisation largely arises from his obsession with rap music and his consequent creation of an imaginary realm of rap culture. This is an individual pursuit confined to the four corners of his room and the recesses of his imagination. This self-constructed musical ‘barrier’ insulates him from his mother, peers and even his friend Ricksha, who cannot fathom Gandu’s veneration of this alien form of music. Gandu’s solipsistic, self-indulgent, imaginary ‘subculture’ could be related to the current neoliberalism-inflected, music-oriented Indian urban youth subcultures in metropolises such as Bangalore. It could be argued that a collective or shared sense of commonality is paradoxically problematised by image-based signifiers. In other words, the simulacra manufactured by modern mass subcultures in the form of merchandising objects are essentially ‘signifiers that do not refer to a signified’ (Zizek, 1989: 97). Zizek uses Coca-Cola as an example of such signifiers that point to nothing in particular. Coke’s slogan, ‘Coca-Cola – it’s the real thing!’, is arbitrary because, as Zizek asserts, ‘it’ could refer to ‘excrement’ or ‘undrinkable mud’ (Zizek, 1989: 96). Gandu’s reference to an imagined or virtual ‘Indian’ rap culture is undergirded by the real example of the earlier-mentioned Bangalore rock subculture. This underlines modern hybrid Indian metropolitan formations’ reliance on arbitrary neoliberal signifiers, similar to Zizek’s Coke analogy. These signifiers include image-based branding, apparel and the MTV music video affiliations of modern rap/hip-hop subcultures. The object or cause of desire, the ‘unattainable something’ that forms Gandu’s unachievable wish for direct interaction with Asian Dub Foundation is contingent on his fulfilment of a market economy diktat – the sine qua non of getting signed to a lucrative record deal. This disjuncture between signifier and signified, virtuality and reality, causes him to retreat into an imaginary individual space and resort to drug-induced wish-fulfilment.

Rapping in Double Time  161 Through a cinematic lens, Gandu experiments with the ideological possibilities of rap/punk rock as a radical medium to articulate both the film and its protagonist’s anti-system sensibilities. To a large extent, these musical expositions represent the historically ‘absent’ Indian urban youth subculture and its current ‘ghostly’ reappearance in the form of Gandu; floating in a liminal space between tradition and modernity. Gandu’s ideological entrenchment, reflected in his unquestioning ‘belief’ in rap music, is conjoined with a material motive. This is indicated in Gandu’s drug-enforced delusions, where he sees as his apotheosis the act of getting signed to a record deal with Asian Dub Foundation, a globally recognised band. The adjunct to this desire for fame and fortune is Gandu’s desire to win the lottery ‘jackpot’. At the culmination of his hallucination, which is suffused with wish-fulfilment, Gandu’s tripartite desires are achieved – sexual appeasement, lottery triumph and a record deal with Asian Dub Foundation. The inference from the above proposition is that the teenage Gandu himself embodies a liminal space, a spatial passageway suspended between ‘religious’ zeal for rap music and a neoliberal reality. He appears to be a microcosmic manifestation of contemporary India’s negotiation between the domains of cultural past and modern materiality. However, Gandu is separated from the majority Indian narrative by dint of his own ‘in-between-ness’ which is transgressive, mutant, hybrid and disjointed. Therefore, his anarchic rap music is extrinsic, inconsistent or ‘out of time’ with the traditional Indian religio-cultural national metanarrative. Consolidating the above points, Gandu faces exclusion because of his musical proclivities, his socio-economic state and his broken home. The schism between Gandu and society widens due to the lack of recognition and affirmation of any creative or musical talents he may possess; apart from the amusement value he holds for the young female cashier at Das Babu’s Internet café, who begs him to perform his ‘human beatbox’ routine. Gandu faces an absence of identification or connection with a larger demographic. He communes with his own constructions of an imaginary rap subculture in the confines of his mind. These contentions relating to Gandu’s angst-ridden alienation in contemporary India, as mentioned earlier, invokes the absence of endogenous, urban-youth subcultures in India’s post-independence history. This absence consequently indicates the paucity of independent conduits or forums for adolescent Indians to express alternative or dissenting perspectives. A case in point is the recent banning of a YouTube video of a live comedy ‘roast’ show by young Indian stand-up comedy collective All India Bakchod (‘All India Bullshit/Bollocks’ [AIB]), followed by the filing of a police complaint against them (‘AIB Roasted’, 2015). This in turn gestures towards the homogenising mythic national narrative scripted by statist interventions after independence, particularly in the domain of culture. This absence in the nation’s past also implicates the current meta-hegemonic configuration of

162  Rapping in Double Time state-endorsed soft power that legitimises Bollywood’s current conjoined ‘traditional’ and neoliberal cultural master narrative. India’s variegated cultural diversity notwithstanding, ‘the rigid confines of Indian classical music and escapist Bollywood make no provision for rebellion or any form of personal expression’ (‘Cheap Alcohol’, 2014). The film’s imagining of Gandu as a non-conformist youth whose rebellion is animated by a hybrid non-indigenous musical mix of rap and punk music with confrontational and explicit lyrics is therefore an inflection of alternativeness or ‘internal otherness’. Gandu’s subversive anti-establishment imagery sub-textually evokes both national past and present. In essence, the film’s discourse encapsulates the absence of alternative urban youth subcultures in India’s postcolonial past. The film’s disaffected protagonist, Gandu, signifies this absence in the nation’s present. This representation of absence contests the linearity of traditional Indian culture and society. The location of Gandu as a rebellious rapper and a personification of historically absent urban youth subculture evokes ‘ghosts’ of other elided or unrealised narratives in the scripting of nation. These disavowed ghosts haunt the interstitial spaces: liminal conduits in the nation’s purportedly linear development chronology. These spaces represent the transitory and suspended in-between states that contain ‘absences’ in the nation’s stages of ‘becoming’ and include the preclusion of indigenous urban youth subcultures from postcolonial past to present. These are the shadowlines bordering breaks in the linearity of postcolonial Indian historiography. Q describes this caesura in the flow of nation, rupturing India’s transition from postcolonial to postmodern: We have bypassed the modern era. We have jumped straight from colonial traditionalism straight into postmodernism … but that makes it very interesting as an artist to live here and work in this complex environment. (Q, personal communication, 2013) Q’s observation folds into Bhabha’s perspective that the current desultory and discrepant levels of global development are due to the incomplete process of decolonisation that was impeded by the Cold War (Bienal de São Paulo, 2012). This could be one of the factors that caused postcolonial nations like India to leap across the chasm from (post)-colonialism to post-modernity.

Subversive Spectacle Ravi Vasudevan (2011) asserts that Bollywood films’ narrative structure consists of a disorganised version of Classical Hollywood–style continuity editing, heavily reliant on spectacle and ‘cultural codes of looking of a more

Rapping in Double Time  163 archaic sort’ (Vasudevan, 2011: 100). In Gandu’s postmodern address, the cultural code of ‘looking’ is transgressive and confrontational, in opposition to Vasudevan’s aforementioned observation of Bollywood’s antiquated, conventional codes. This emphasises Gandu’s resonance with the modern ‘time of liberation’ rather than the ‘mythic’ time of tradition that Bollywood ideologically sustains in its narratives. Bollywood’s emphasis on grand scale spectacle is often animated through saturated colour palettes, song and dance interludes that suggest sexuality, desire and libidinal pleasures. However, these films toe the boundary of Indian ‘morals’ and ‘values’, in relation to overt depictions of sex. Bollywood’s restraint, which is nevertheless interspersed with sexually suggestive imagery and lubricious codes, is largely due to its obligation to the traditional national narrative and commensurate with its role as purveyor of ‘wholesome family entertainment’. In an antithetical divergence from the Bollywood norm, Gandu provokes the primordial pleasure of looking by inducing, privileging and celebrating the voyeuristic gaze. The pleasure of looking is a recurrent idiom in the film’s narrative, from Gandu’s ‘sneak-peek’ at his mother and Das Babu having sex at the start of the film, to Gandu’s scopophilic pursuit of a woman who is an habituée of the Internet café. This woman is herself implicated in looking at her boyfriend through the computer screen interface. These representations of filmic voyeurism are transformed into a mise-en-abyme situation by the complicity of the cinematic audience enjoying the pleasure of a subversive, on-screen spectacle. In other words, the audience is watching on-screen individuals, such as Gandu and the woman in the café, who are themselves involved in the pleasure of looking. My personal reading of the discomfiture and premature departure of some viewers at cinema screenings of Gandu, is that this hasty retreat is symptomatic of the guilty pleasures imagined and elicited by the film’s explicit visuals. This reflects filmmaker Q’s strategy to present an unflinching, aestheticised suffusion of sex traversing the length of the film’s narrative. These overt expositions include scenes showing Gandu creeping in on his mother, who is locked in noisy shower sex with Das Babu, Gandu masturbating and ­ rostitute. the extended full-frontal sequence of Gandu having sex with a p Q’s authorial intent, gleaned from his interviews with the media, suggests his pre-meditated flinging down of the gauntlet against expurgation by regulatory powers such as the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) – ­commonly regarded as the Indian Censor Board (see Chapter 6, this volume). His motivation in adopting an explicit, anarchistic, ‘guerrilla’ approach to Gandu attests to the influences of radical, experimental and underground filmmakers such as Gaspar Noe, Harmony Korine and Filipino director Khavn De La Cruz (Q, personal communication, 2013). In effect, Gandu, performs a subversion of the enduring national notion of spectacle epitomised by Bollywood musicals.

164  Rapping in Double Time It could be stated that Q’s approach to Gandu attempts to combine elements of the sacred and profane in a unified space, in what he considers a frontal assault on archaic codes of supposedly inviolate Indian morals and ideals (ibid.). Again, this subversive intent could be viewed as a double contestation of both the national pedagogical metanarrative and its dominant cinematic proponent, Bollywood. The co-existence of the sacred and profane in Gandu invokes one of the sacrosanct totems of the Indian national narrative, often reinforced by Bollywood’s meta-hegemony – the Mother figure. Cinema’s system of signs is trichotomised by Peter Wollen (1972) into three semiotic modes – iconic (signifier represents signified by similarity), indexical (measures a quality not by likeness but by intrinsic association) and symbolic (arbitrary sign, signifier has no direct or indexical relationship to signified) (Wollen, 1972: 142). Bollywood representations invoke the iconic religious associations of the revered Mother figure, who is indexical of life-creation and symbolic of the nation – Mother India. The Mother in Bollywood films is enduringly portrayed as the fountainhead of wisdom, sanctifier of ideals, and the arbiter of moral rectitude. The paragon of virtue, she is constructed as a metaphor for ‘Mother Ganga’ or the sacred Indian river Ganges (see Chapters 1 and 2, this volume). From postcolonial times and in films such as Mother India (1957), India’s popular cinematic tradition has unswervingly perpetuated the narrative of the intemerate Mother as symbolic of the nascent nation. This book’s concept of meta-hegemony demonstrates how the baton of this postcolonial Indian national narrative was cinematically passed on to postglobalisation Bollywood. Gandu contravenes all three codes: iconic, indexical and symbolic in its portrayal of Gandu’s mother as indexical of failure; she is unable to embody a stable, inspiring figurehead. In this regard, Gandu’s conception of a flawed, fallen, morally compromised demi-monde Mother figure appears to fulminate against an essentialised Indian cinematic fetishisation of the Mother figure. As a corollary, the representation of Gandu’s mother could be perceived as an iconoclastic contestation of the postcolonial national master narrative of an inviolable Mother India. The film also contains explicit Freudian sexual tropes involving Gandu’s mother. Gandu’s adolescent sexual frustration is heightened by his voyeuristic observation of the young woman in the Internet parlour. The frustration stemming from Gandu’s repressed sexuality is exacerbated by his domestic situation – the repeated exposure to his mother’s uninhibited sexual intercourse with Das Babu. The ‘absent father’ and oedipal feelings towards his mother propel Gandu’s sacrilegious foray into the ‘sanctum sanctorum’ of one of popular Indian cinema’s most mythologised symbols. The sacred space of the Mother is violated in the scene where Gandu indulges his habit of crawling into his mother’s bedroom and stealing from Das Babu’s wallet as the couple is engaged in sex. Gandu is suddenly spotted by his mother and their gazes meet. Mortified, she continues the coital act, drawing

Rapping in Double Time  165 Das  Babu closer to her to prevent disclosure of Gandu’s indiscretions, as well as to shield her own shame and trauma at locking eyes with her son. Gandu himself retreats to his room and breaks down in tears, devastated by the guilt-ridden gaze. The reverberations of this incident persist in Gandu’s subconscious mind. In a later scene, Gandu performs the ‘unthinkable’ and ‘profane’ act of imagining sex with his mother. This is visualised when the prostitute with whom he is having sex in his hallucinogenic fantasy suddenly transforms into the superimposed image of his mother. Gandu instantly recoils and disengages on realising that his mother has encroached on his sexual fantasies. This scene extricates deeper psychological ramifications relating to the sexual repression and unfulfilled internalised libidinal drives that precipitate Gandu’s actions. The invocation of Gandu’s oedipal desires are reminiscent of a triune Hamlet configuration – weak and vacillating mother, absent biological father and incompatible ‘surrogate’ replacement – Das Babu. These factors contribute to Gandu’s ‘divided self’. This fracture reflects Gandu’s inner turmoil, his struggle between sacred traditional and postmodern profane. He is suspended in a limbo between an alienating ‘real’ world and an alluring chimerical fantasy realm. The binaries that are prominent in sculpting Gandu’s psychological profile invariably collide, resulting in his mental fragmentation. The resultant shards embed themselves in the disorientated imaginings of both the film’s mercurial central character and the defamiliarising instability of the film’s narrative itself. The Hamlet trope invoked here, extends to Gandu’s eventual descent into insanity and self-destruction – drug-overdose acting as the postmodern substitute for poison as the cause of death of the ‘hero’. The collision between dialectics mentioned above is suggestive of the encounter between Gandu’s self with (M)other. It also highlights larger post-globalisation Indian socio-cultural ruptures, including inter-generational differences, the clash between gaps and disjunctures in India’s non-linear postcolonial jettisoning of modernity and the nation’s indiscriminate leap into the current consumer driven hyperreality of postmodern society (Q, personal communication, 2013). Q admits that his film intentionally grapples with the notion of fractured identities, particularly sexual identity, asserting that ‘every human being is fragmented and is many individuals. It’s again social control that forces a structured, mono-dimensional personality on an individual’ (Ahmed, 2012). Q argues that the growing demographic of young people in India and the pressures of social structures makes this theme especially relevant. These dilemmas and anxieties are echoed by New York South Asian Film Festival programme director Galen Rosenthal, commenting in relation to the festival’s screening of Gandu ‘Half the population of India is under-25. This is India’s baby-boomer generation. They’re really trying to break free of the cultural yoke they were living under’ (Dollar, 2010). The Wall Street Journal, whilst heralding the arrival of a ‘new wave’ of independent Indian

166  Rapping in Double Time cinema (analogous to Rahul Verma in The Guardian) observes these films’ ‘burning need to express themes of immediate social relevance’ (ibid.). This interpretation is pertinent to Gandu’s filmic representation of sexual repression and cultural anomie, themes that interrogate the national narrative. On a broader level, this affirms the perception that the new wave Indies share a common character by discursively engaging with India’s contemporary zeitgeist as ‘state of the nation’ films. Ruptures with the mythical national metanarrative are never comprehensive, as demonstrated by India’s current arbitration between tradition and materiality (Chatterjee, 1993: 5). The homogenising and monolithic propensity of the national narrative invests it with a resilient resistance to contestation. The character, Gandu, embodies a site of intersection and mediation between the sacred and profane. Despite his anomie, and disillusionment with his station and circumstance in life, he is nevertheless interwoven with the traditional Indian fabric of religiosity. This is evident in his offerings and obeisance at the local shrine to Kali, the matriarchal Hindu goddess of death. The film repeatedly invokes Kali as a symbolic leitmotif. She is represented in the Hindu tradition as having several avatars; not solely as the goddess of death but also as the custodian of time and change. Gandu’s nemesis – a simulacrum of the goddess Kali, appears to him with her blackened countenance and extended tongue, every time he has a drug-induced hallucination, almost like a malevolent personification of mythical time. Gandu’s Janus-faced devotions typify his divided self. He worships Kali; the benevolent dowager during his diurnal moments of sobriety, and experiences the more macabre visitations by Kali; the harbinger of death, during his dark hallucinations. Sumita Chakravarty (2011: 6) sees goddess Kali as evoking an ‘in-between stage dividing day from night, the human from the sub- and superhuman realms, the socially marginal … from the well-to-do’. Gandu’s own ambivalence (profane rapper and conscientious devotee), therefore, reflects the encounter between mythical time and the ‘time of liberation’, between tradition and modernity. It is worth considering whether, ‘the masquerade of the goddess Kali as Mother India’ (Chakravarty, 2011: 121) represented in Gandu, functions as a counter-­ representation of the socially acceptable mythologised feminine personification of the nation, such as Radha in the iconic film, Mother India (1957). Gandu’s friend Ricksha on the other hand, supplicates to a custom-built shrine dedicated to a more unconventional icon – martial arts guru Bruce Lee. The ardent devotee Ricksha genuflects, offers flowers, and burns incense, all the while chanting ‘Om Lee’ (a parody of the Hindu word Om [‘God’]). He punctuates his venerations with ritual immersions in the river whilst chanting the martial artist’s name in the hybrid incantation – ‘Om Lee’. Ricksha’s stylised idolisation is an ironic, intertextual postmodern device to evoke wry humour, counterpoising Gandu’s more serious religious devotion. In this context, it is interesting that the imperative omnipresence of religion in India inflects the narrative of even this irreverent, carnivalesque

Rapping in Double Time  167 postmodern filmic text. The points discussed so far also stress the process of negotiation between the binaries embodied by Gandu and Ricksha, raising the question of whether Ricksha is Gandu’s alter ego – an imagined other of his split-self.

Film Style, Political Spectres and Self-Reflexive Subversion The aesthetic choice of filming Gandu predominantly in monochrome with momentary suffusions of colour to delineate Gandu’s fantasy sex scene, indicates Gandu non-mainstream filmic attributes. Black and white is a departure from contemporary Bollywood films that usually embrace a variegated and sometimes garish colour palette. Mixed monochrome and colour is also used in Kaushik Ganguli’s Apur Panchali (2014), an independent Bengali film tracing the journey of Subir Banerjee, the little boy who played Apu in Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955). Along with Gandu’s use of chiaroscuro, it is interesting to consider whether the ‘ghosts’ of Ray and postcolonial Bengali art cinema aesthetic techniques can be glimpsed in Gandu’s minimalist mise-en-scène, framing and composition, particularly its shots of the iconic Howrah bridge in Kolkata. The bridge has been invoked in earlier postcolonial art cinema (Hood, 2009: 21–23) including Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin (‘Two Acres of Land’, 1953) and Satyajit Ray’s Parash Pathar (‘The Philosopher’s Stone’, 1958). Interestingly, Q states that he makes a conscious effort to avoid any influence from Ray, whom he considers to have exercised an almost obsessive over-indulgence in representations of poverty (Q, personal communication, 2013). In general, Q’s approach to Gandu appears to resonate more with the new Indies’ mitigation of India’s erstwhile ‘high and low’ Bollywood/Ray cinema schism by hybridising several indigenous and global styles. Any fleetingly identifiable artefacts of postcolonial Indian art cinema are contemporised by Q’s stylised subversive postmodern approach. Gandu therefore bears inflections of current transglobal influences: alternative and experimental filmmakers such as the aforementioned Gaspar Noe, Takashi Miike and Khavn de la Cruz (Q, personal communication, 2013). In terms of modes of production as well as strategies of film form and style, Gandu shares several common features with the new wave of Indies. Q highlights the presence of non-professional actors in his film, remarking that several characters, such as the lottery storeowner, were bona-fide members of the public (Q, personal communication, 2013). This is akin to several villagers featuring as actors in Peepli Live in addition to the film’s lead, Omkar Das Manikpuri, the son of a daily wage labourer. Q asserts that the inclusion of real world participants or contributors accentuated the film’s engagement with ‘reality’ (ibid.). The element of spontaneity was a cornerstone in the construction of the film. Q reveals that the film was shot without artificial lighting, devoid of a premeditated script, using improvisation and a constant dialogic process between filmmaker and actors

168  Rapping in Double Time (Q, personal communication, 2013). He states ‘we were breaking all the conventions of shooting patterns. The film was made with a crew of eight people, a high-definition digital SLR (the Canon EOS 7D) and no script’ (Kamath, 2010). The budgetary sparseness informing the assembling of this film emphasises its divergence from elaborate, big-budget Bollywood creations. The freeplay in terms of meaning creation, through a spontaneous approach to the film’s narrative and its decoupage in the editing room reinforces Gandu’s postmodern construction.

Politics and the Subaltern in Gandu In order to gain a deeper understanding of the self-reflexive postmodern socio-political strategies of representation in Gandu, it is necessary to provide a brief overview of the historical, cinematic and political contexts informing the state of West Bengal, where Gandu is located. The Indian state of West Bengal has maintained a distinctive socio-political idiom since colonial times. The election of a Marxist state government after independence was perceived as a divergence from the norms envisaged by the seat of power and policy – India’s capital New Delhi. Pranab Chatterjee (2010: 19) observes the Bengali middle-class ‘pride in being Marxist and opposing the centre’. However, the state has been beset with political instability after independence, including the imposition of ‘President’s rule’. The Marxist Left Front government established in 1977 continued for nearly 35 years. Chatterjee (2010: 20) stresses the popularity and importance of Bengali art and film in the early 20th century and argues that these art forms were later marginalised by the growth of Bollywood, which eventually became the centre of film production in India. He mentions Satyajit Ray’s influential filmic representations of Bengal’s rural condition as a result of the above ambivalent modernisation, or the attempt to represent the marginalised in a transforming cinematic culture. Similarities with Ray’s representations could be located in Gandu’s subversive representation of urban ambivalence in the contemporary transforming terrain of Indian cinema. Whilst Ray’s films were potent neo-realist statements on the predicament of the subaltern classes, several other Bengali filmmakers such as Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen adapted narratives from Marx, Brecht, Trotsky, Gogol, and Hegel to the localised Indian context of impoverished farmers, marginalisation, displacement and migration following the partitioning of India (Das Gupta, 1991: 48). These Bengali filmmakers, the pioneers of early Indian ‘Parallel cinema’, emerged from the Marxist tradition of the Independent People’s Theatre Association (Hood, 2009: 5, 112) established in 1943 to reinvigorate rural Indian self-reflexive folk art. They turned to film in order to gain a larger audience, adapting the techniques of French Nouvelle Vague realist filmmakers such as Godard, and Truffaut and Soviet formalists like Eisenstein and Pudovkin (Ganguly, 2010: 24).

Rapping in Double Time  169 Themes of poverty, disillusionment and marginalisation starkly represented in early postcolonial Bengali art filmmakers’ oeuvre are not always visually overt in Gandu. However, these elements are subtly interspersed into the film’s visual environment at key plot-points to accentuate the alienation afflicting the film’s peripheralised characters – Gandu and his rickshaw-puller friend, Ricksha. This is highlighted in the scene where Gandu is invited by Ricksha to the latter’s squalid surroundings he calls home. In the rickshaw-puller’s slum habitat, pigs and humans live cheek-by-jowl and islands of excrement surround Ricksha’s dilapidated dwelling place. Gandu with his lower middle-class background cannot fathom how Ricksha lives in such impoverished conditions. This sequence effectively transports the viewer from Gandu’s rundown but relatively habitable neighbourhood into Ricksha’s subaltern domain of the urban slum – the fringes of India’s socio-economic reality. This sequence provides a cross-sectional visual index of India’s social divide and the marginal existence of subaltern classes in India. Gandu’s portrayal of everyday encounters across socio-economic shadowlines – the spaces in-between India’s multidimensional demographic is accentuated when Gandu and Ricksha are first introduced to each other through an accidental collision. As Gandu emerges round a blind corner, he clatters straight into Ricksha’s onrushing cycle-rickshaw. This collision between lower middle-class Gandu and the eponymous rickshaw-pulling subaltern occurs against the canvas of the erstwhile ruling Communist Party of India (CPI Marxist) hammer and sickle insignia etched on a wall and clearly visible in the frame’s background. This scene is followed by a surreal shot of Ricksha and Gandu locked in supine embrace, almost like Siamese twins. This turns out to be a dream from which Gandu stirs in an agitated state. The implicit symbolism in Gandu’s disturbing phantasm revives earlier consideration of whether Ricksha is indeed a figment of Gandu’s delusions; his alter ego. Foregrounding the peregrinations of the two teenagers around the Howrah area of Kolkata, the film simultaneously visualises the backdrop of complex layers and gradations in modern Indian society. These are depicted in various spaces and places including aesthetically framed images of Howrah Bridge, Das Babu’s Internet café, the sinuous lanes of Gandu’s lower-middle class locality, which is then starkly contrasted with Ricksha’s slum. The film’s selection of shots therefore provides background context. It also highlights similarities and differences in Gandu (ostracism) and Ricksha’s (impoverishment) shared ‘outsider’ status on the fringes of their common social space. Gandu is often depicted framed by windows and doors, symbolic of the restrictive circumstances constraining the fulfilment of his dreams. This trope of tight framing portrays Gandu as being trapped in an unsympathetic milieu, one that smothers his aspirations of escape from an unremitting socio-economic reality. The alienation and confinement experienced

170  Rapping in Double Time by Gandu also confront his mother. Although she appears to revel in the pleasures of sex, cigarettes and alcohol within the frontiers of her home, she is nevertheless constrained by the reality of her total dependence on Das Babu for sustenance. In one scene, she lambasts Gandu for being a failure and not making monetary contributions to the upkeep of the house. In the process of castigating Gandu, she reminds him that Das Babu, as their benefactor, pays for everything, including the roof over their heads. These themes of social fragmentation and anomie are interpolated with political overtones that resonate with the filmmaker’s sensibilities. Q reveals that for himself and the film’s co-writers, ‘this was always a political film’ (Q, personal communication, 2013), in terms of its intention to articulate dissatisfaction and dissent against socio-political systems and practices that the film’s creators consider governing factors for social exclusion. Q’s socio-political interventions in Gandu’s narrative are emphasised in several scenes through an almost subliminal motif. This is in the form of a background diegetic voiceover, ostensibly a political speech, apparently emanating from a tannoy and first appearing in a scene when Gandu proceeds to light a marijuana joint in his darkened room. He proceeds to have a coughing fit almost as if in reaction to the political diatribe. The ever-droning speech resurfaces in the background of other scenes, as Gandu’s mother pops a morning after pill, and as Gandu leans out of a window whilst smoking only to be caught out by his mother. The ‘voice’ also frames the backdrop of an intense argument between mother and son, during which Gandu threatens to commit suicide and his anguished mother threatens to kill him before he can commit the act. Following these scenes, the sinister, implacable political drone is rendered visible through the conversion of speech to writing in the form of scrolling subtitles onscreen. This occurs in the scene where Gandu’s mother serves him food, whilst in the background the sonorous voice keeps up its incessant rhetoric. On this occasion, rapid scrolling subtitles traverse the screen accompanying the amplifying voice, simultaneous with Gandu and his mother’s conversation, entailing a double narrative as well as multiple points of possible viewer focus (Fig. 7.2). In the babel of voices, the viewer is able to perform a découpage of the enigmatic political speech via the subtitles. It turns out to be a leftist call to fight systems of oppression and bring revolutionary changes to the political system. In an interview, Q reveals his deliberate intention to superimpose the political speech ‘on all the window scenes’ commenting on the speech’s growing intensity as ‘it gets louder and louder, and at the end it just takes over’ (Q, personal communication, 2013). It could be argued that there are sub-textual implications in Q’s strategy of repetitively cueing the acousmatic auditory motif of the speech to coincide with the film’s cloistered characters – mother and son, and their gravitation towards the liminal space symbolised by windows. Gandu seems trapped within his environs; literally and figuratively caged behind the window grilles. There is a separation between the interiority of his existence,

Rapping in Double Time  171

Figure 7.2  Scrolling subtitles.

circumscribed by the restrictive contours of his home, and the exteriority of an outside world that shuns him. This chasm is emphasised by the ominous, extraneous political monotone working in consort with the physical divider of the window. These elements seem to emphasise Gandu’s separation from the ‘real’ world’. It could be argued that the interjection of political symbolism in the above scenes is connotative of the enduring metanarrative typified by the state of West Bengal’s communist political legacy, and the ‘ghosts’ of its failure to materialise or reify the social equity envisioned and prescribed by its Marxist ideological underpinnings. The apparently casual almost anodyne inclusion of the ‘political voice’ in Gandu could be indicative of the disjunctures endemic in the lives of the state’s marginalised objects, Gandu, his mother and Ricksha, at the micro level. The ‘voice’ illustrates larger fractures in terms of the inefficacy of the political apparatus whose ideological credo theoretically espouses equitable distribution of wealth, social welfare and justice for all, and yet fails to crystallise these ideals, thereby contributing to the continued alterity and alienation of some of the state’s marginal citizens. This is rendered all the more pertinent in light of the growing popular discontent in West Bengal with the current leader Mamata Banerjee and her ruling Trinamool Congress who replaced the protracted rule of the Left Front. The recent ruthless suppression of popular dissent is instantiated in the Trinamool Congress colluding with local police in launching an assault on peacefully demonstrating students from Kolkata’s Jadavpur University (Basu and Ghosh, 2014). The turbulent current vicissitudes in West Bengal’s political trajectory frame Gandu’s enunciation of rebellion and its representation of the fragments of failed and failing political systems, past and present.

172  Rapping in Double Time Q attributes Gandu’s nihilistic discourse to the collective rationale of the film’s creative team. He asserts ‘it was about giving it back. We are just standing against everything. We don’t know what the answer is – we are ‘Gandus’ we don’t accept this shit’ (Q, personal communication, 2013). Q also reveals that the film’s political ‘call to arms’ – the speech leitmotif – was based on the actual rhetoric of a left-radical speaker (ibid.). To some extent, Q’s above-mentioned authorial expression of epistemological nihilism informs the film’s framing of Gandu and Ricksha as perpetually aleatory fragments, wandering in an aporetic state of chaotic undecidability. Importantly, the mostly inconspicuous deployment of the political speech in Gandu is analogous to similar devices implanted in other Indies to evoke the marginal micro-narratives of the nation’s past and present (see Chapter 5). These inflections interspersed in the films’ main narratives serve to conjure the latent, embedded phantoms of past socio-political narratives of resistance, grassroots movements, marginalised individuals and social groups that have been elided, disavowed or effaced, and haunt the present. Some of the devices in new Indies include the ghostly vision of the ‘disappeared’ brother in Harud’s Kashmir, the migrant Muslim girl Yasmin’s video diaries in Dhobi Ghat, and Fernandes’s dead wife’s recorded VHS tapes of pre-satellite TV era Doordarshan (India’s state television channel) comedies in The Lunchbox. Gandu joins these Indies in conjuring some of the absent narratives in India’s historiographical timeline. In the process, the film also addresses its specific local Kolkata/West Bengal context.

Falling into Mise-en-Abyme: Postmodern Self-Reflexivity One of the key self-referential postmodern moments in the film is when Gandu and Ricksha leave the city behind and embark on a surreal drug-distorted journey. The camera tracks their road trip along desolate terrain, as the disorientating psychotropic effects of the low-grade heroin they have imbibed finally plunges them into a blackout. They wake beneath the sprawling foliage and gnarled branches of a banyan tree. Appraising their new environs, the two boys spot an elderly man seated a few feet away from the imposing tree, declaiming verses of Bengali poetry. The man appears to be clairvoyantly cognisant of the preternatural circumstances surrounding the boys’ soon to be revealed assignation at the big banyan tree. Offering them a morning cup of tea, the Oracle-esque man calmly informs the lads that a well-known filmmaker Q is en-route to see them in relation to a film he is shooting, called Gandu. This introduction of the absurd and surreal into the narrative intensifies when Ricksha, also apparently clued-in to the entire subterfuge informs Gandu he is the eponymous subject of Q’s film. The bewildered Gandu is flummoxed by the revelation that he is a pawn, an unwitting and malleable patsy in the grand scheme of things. As Gandu and Ricksha, similar to Samuel Beckett’s Estragon and Vladimir in Waiting for Godot, bicker about the grotesqueness of the situation, a white car appears

Rapping in Double Time  173 in the distance in long shot, slowly moving towards the frame. The car stops and a figure in sunglasses steps out. The man raises his arm, which is attached to a camcorder and begins to film the boys from a distance. We, the audience suddenly become aware through an editing cut, that we can now see Gandu and Ricksha’s point of view (from behind them) as they bemusedly return the gaze of the silent figure filming them. So in essence, we are watching Q filming Gandu and Ricksha through his camcorder whilst at the same time being able to watch the two boys looking back at Q. This contrivance is revealed when the screen splits to unveil the invisible source providing the ‘Gandu and Ricksha POV [point of view]’: a cameraman stationed behind them.

Figure 7.3  Gandu and Ricksha’s POV.

Figure 7.4  View of Q filming.

174  Rapping in Double Time

Figure 7.5  Second camera revealed.

Figure 7.6  Mise-en-abyme diptych.

It is now possible to reorientate the earlier constellation of how we viewed this sequence of events. The first shot (Fig. 7.3) originates from behind the boys and facilitates spectator perception of Gandu and Ricksha in the foreground and Q in the background of frame. The next frame (Fig. 7.4) dispenses with the boys so we see only Q, filming over the distended door of his car. The overall artifice is revealed in the subsequent reverse shot from the filmmaker’s camcorder point of view. Q’s reverse POV, which appears in the left-half ‘letter-box’ panel of a split screen (Fig. 7.5) reveals the source that enabled us to gaze at Q from the two boys’ perspective – the camera operator standing directly behind the duo.

Rapping in Double Time  175 As if to dismantle the elaborate conceit or surreal illusion created in this scene, the left-half ‘letter-box’ panel of the split screen is balanced by the appearance of a right-half ‘letter-box’ frame, creating a diptych (Fig. 7.6). This right-hand panel completes the cycle and reverts to the original POV from the ‘hidden’ camera stationed behind Gandu and Ricksha. There are several intricate threads to unravel in the deconstruction of this scene, including the film’s recurrent strategies of defamiliarising viewer expectation and destabilising meaning. In this regard, it is worth investigating the technical modalities implemented whilst filming this singular sequence and examining the multiple layers of meaning it contains. Firstly, this filmic sequence is another example of cinematic mise-enabyme – an infinite loop generated using the notion of a film within a film. The audience is engaged in watching through the metaphorical ‘lens’ of the cinema screen, Gandu and Ricksha in the foreground, who are in turn watching Q in the distance, as he himself is engaged in ‘watching’ the two boys through the LCD screen of his camcorder. In the first instance, the audience picks up the POV of the cameraman standing behind Gandu and Ricksha, whose camera lens in turn captures Q in the background. The focus of Q’s reverse shot is on Gandu and Ricksha, but in the process also includes the camera operator positioned behind the boys. Therefore, Q’s gaze is directed into and received by the cameraman’s lens. The assistant cameraman filming from behind Gandu and Ricksha and thereby providing the cinema spectator with Gandu and Ricksha’s POV appears to complete the loop by looking back through his camera lens at Q and his camcorder in the distance. However, the loop does not terminate upon returning to Q. Instead, it is infinite because it returns to us, the audience, as we ultimately look back at Q. This entails an unending cyclical chain, owing to the proposition that Gandu has been made aware he is being watched by the world, that he is the object of both the filmmaker and hence the filmmaker’s audience’s gaze. This abstract theme could be understood utilising two analogies. The first is Diego Velázquez’s painting Las Meninas, where the painter is portrayed on canvas as engaged in the act of painting Spain’s King Philip IV and Queen Mariana, who we can see vaguely reflected in a distant mirror (Fig.  7.7). A mise-en-abyme is generated by Velázquez staring out at the Royals, who return his gaze and whose presence is affirmed by their reflection in the painting’s background, which is perceptible to us. The monarchs return Velázquez’s gaze and also figuratively return our gaze through the interface of the mirror. In a filmic example, Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998) depicts a scene where Jim Carrey’s character Truman Burbank realises he is the object of a universal gaze and that his life is being perennially broadcast as daily entertainment across the globe. When enlightened to this deception, Truman looks directly out at the hidden camera filming his life. By so doing, he also stares back at his ‘creator’ in the film, TV producer Christof (Ed Harris), and at us, the audience, complicit in the voyeuristic gaze.

176  Rapping in Double Time

Figure 7.7  Las Meninas, by Diego Velázquez, Prado Museum. Source: Google Earth.

Gandu’s similar employment of the self-reflexive device of mise-enabyme is another postmodern marker alongside earlier mentioned pastiche and bricolage integrated into the formal and stylistic attributes of the film. Gandu’s use of mise-en-abyme could be related to the poststructural proposition of aporia. This theme was invoked at the early stages of this chapter, whilst demonstrating the arbitrariness of the signifier gandu in the vox populi sequence. Derrida’s notion of aporia involves the perpetual deferral of meaning into an endless ‘reflexivity without depth or bottom’ (Royle, 2003: 92), an ‘unending experience of the undecidable’ (ibid.) where any unitary stable fixed logos of meaning is rendered impossible. A similar theme could

Rapping in Double Time  177 be identified in the mise-en-abyme of Gandu’s complex defamiliarising sequence, where the film audience watches film characters being filmed by the film’s creator. Arguably, this sequence provides an insight into the wayless pointlessness or sheer randomness of Gandu’s existence. At a deeper level, this scene demonstrates the arbitrariness of the very act of cinematic viewing, as a practice that entails an unfathomable, indiscriminate infinitude of meanings that cannot be fixed into one single unassailable or irrefutable reading. In the context of this study’s postcolonial theoretical focus on marginalised narratives, the sequence where Gandu confronts his own objectification is an important instantiation of Gandu’s articulation of self. The scene has a pivotal transition point, when Gandu squarely faces the camera, confronts the controlling and manipulating agent, in this instance Q and the wider society (the film’s audience) that Q represents. Gandu’s reaction is an example of Althusser’s concept of interpellation, where the ordinary individual walking on the street is hailed by an authority figure (in Althusser’s metaphor this is a policeman) shouting out ‘Hey, you there!’ (Althusser, 1971: 173–74). By turning around to acknowledge the police officer’s hail, the individual at once becomes both an object as well as a subject. He becomes the subordinate object, malleable to the directives of the authoritative voice, and at the same instant, becomes a subject of discursive strategies of the state’s subjectification of society. In the above sequence, Gandu, who has thus far been the object of vilification and derision, both at home and in his immediate social space, appears to have been pushed to breaking point. He turns his questioning gaze not only to the abstract ‘source’ of his condition and his general objectification, but also turns to figuratively face the ‘exploitation’ and ‘subjugation’ by his invisible ‘creator’, the ‘author’- Q. By raising his camcorder to film Gandu, Q has initiated the process of interpellating or hailing Gandu – ‘Hey, you there!’ By turning to face the interrogating eye of Q’s camcorder, Gandu affirms his identity and by that token confirms his objectification. An abstract parallel could be drawn with playwright Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, where the characters from an author’s drama script, corporeally materialise into the world and demand their author’s recognition by asking him to cast them as actors in the play. The writing of India’s modern urban narrative of progress and neoliberal enterprise arguably peripheralises several actors from the master narrative of its construction. It writes and moves on. Gandu and Ricksha are examples of societal detritus left in the wake of majority narratives. Ricksha falls into this category as a subaltern slum-dweller – always-already at the socio-economic margins. Gandu, an urban outcaste is displaced to the periphery of social discourse due to his antecedents in the form of his familial circumstances as well as his failure to deal with his situation and extricate himself from a state of despair. When Ricksha reveals to Gandu that he is the object of Q’s filmmaking project, Gandu bursts out with an angry riposte. This follows

178  Rapping in Double Time his possible realisation that even his unconventional name and hence his identity – Gandu, is the construction of an external authority and therefore even this titular source of daily debasement is not his own. This entails his enslavement at a primordial level. Gandu’s verbal expostulation and visual confrontation following the realisation of his appropriated identity, constitutes his most distinctive act of resistance in the film’s narrative. Overall, it is interesting to note that Gandu, the lower-middle class subject, can vocalise his resistance through rap music, whilst Ricksha the bona fide subaltern cannot speak and remains silent.

Note 1. Gayatri Spivak’s use of the term catachresis is summed up by Tani Barlow: ‘I understand catachresis to be the occulted (i.e., concealed, hidden from view, condensed, made difficult to read) evidence of normalizing strategies’ (Barlow, 2004: 32).

References Ahmed, S. (2012). The Fuschia Tree. [online] http://www.thefuschiatree.com. Available at: http://www.thefuschiatree.com/259/Q-On-Questioning-Answers/ fullview [Accessed 19 Nov. 2014]. ‘AIB Roasted: Democracy Cannot Survive If We Ban Humour And Comedy’ (2015). India Times.15 February. Available at: http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/ aib-roasted-democracy-cannot-survive-if-we-ban-humour-and-comedy-230010. html [Accessed 4 Sep. 2015]. Althusser, L. (1971). ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’, in Althusser, L. (ed.). Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press, pp. 127–188. Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 3rd ed. New York: Verso. Banaji, S. (2013). ‘A Tale of Three Worlds or More’, in Henseler, C. Generation X Goes Global. New York: Routledge. Barlow, T. (2004). The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Basu, S. and Ghosh, D. (2014). ‘To Break Jadavpur University VC Gherao, Police Molest Students.’ The Times of India. 14 September. Available at: http:// timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/To-break-Jadavpur-University-VCgherao-police-molest-students/articleshow/42743274.cms [Accessed 28 Sep. 2014]. Bienal de São Paulo, (2012). Interview with Homi Bhabha. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym2dPYqIvmA [Accessed 2 Jan. 2013]. Chakravarty, S. (1993). National Identity in Indian Cinema 1947–1987. Austin: University of Texas Press. Chatterjee, P. (1993). The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chatterjee, P. (2010). A History of Ambivalent Modernisation in Bangladesh and West Bengal. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

Rapping in Double Time  179 ‘Cheap Alcohol, an IT Crowd and Low Taxes: How Metal Got a Hold in B ­ angalore’. (2014).  The Guardian. 7 April. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/ music/musicblog/2014/apr/07/heavy-metal-bangalore-india-iron-maiden [Accessed 27 Sep. 2014]. Das Gupta, C. (1991). The Painted Face: Studies in India’s Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Roli Books. Derrida, J. (1976). Of Grammatology. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Derrida, J. (1994). Specters of Marx. New York: Routledge. Derrida, J. (2001). Writing and Difference. London: Routledge. Dollar, S. (2010). ‘Kids Take Over the School’. Wall Street Journal. Available at: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303467004575574493202168 2624493202168262.html [Accessed 19 Nov. 2014]. Dhingra, R. (Producer) 2011, We the People: Love Sex and Cinema (television broadcast). 13 Nov 2011, New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV). D’Silva, E. (2011). ‘Is Q India’s most Dangerous Filmmaker?’ CNN Travel. Available at: http://travel.cnn.com/mumbai/life/q-indias-most-dangerous-filmmaker-161252 [Accessed 19 Nov. 2014]. Ganguly, K. (2010). Cinema, Emergence, and the Films of Satyajit Ray. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gopal, S and Sen, B. (2008). ‘Inside and Out: Song and Dance in Bollywood Cinema’, in Dudrah, R and Desai, J. (eds). The Bollywood Reader. Maidenhead, Berkshire, UK: McGraw-Hill. Harvey, D. (1990). The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers. Hood, W J. (2009). The Essential Mystery: Major Filmmakers of Indian Art Cinema. New Delhi: Orient Longman. Kamath, S. (2010). ‘A telling tale’. The Hindu. 1 January. Available at: http:// www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/a-telling-tale/article1021623.ece [Accessed 19 Nov. 2014]. Majumdar, N. (2012). ‘Importing Neoliberalism, Exporting Cinema’, in Giovacchini, S. and Sklar, R (eds.). Global Neorealism. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Mazierska, E. and Rascaroli, L. (2003). From Moscow to Madrid: European Cities, Postmodern Cinema. London: I B Taurus. Monaco, J. (2009). How to Read a Film. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Royle, N. (2003). Jacques Derrida. London: Routledge. Saldanha, A. (2002). ‘Music, Space, Identity: Geographies of Youth Culture in Bangalore’, Cultural Studies 16(3): 337–350. Vasudevan, R. (2011). The Melodramatic Public. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Verma, R. (2011). ‘Beyond Bollywood: Indian Cinema’s New Cutting Edge’. The Guardian. 16 January. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jun/23/ india-independent-cinema [Accessed 19 Nov. 2014]. Wollen, P. (1972). Signs and Meaning in the Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Zizek, S. (1989). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.

8 Dhobi Ghat The Marginal in the Mumbai Mainstream

The aim of this chapter is to analyse broader themes and issues in this study of new Indian Indies through a specific close textual analysis of Kiran Rao’s Dhobi Ghat (2010). Identifying patterns of similarity and disjuncture between this film, other new Indies and mainstream Bollywood films will prove useful in gauging the larger epistemological and philosophical propositions raised in this book. This is particularly in relation to the postmodern characteristics of fragmentation, multiplicity and the representation of marginalised characters in several new Indies. These features are exemplified in Dhobi Ghat’s portrayal of the postmodern condition in contemporaneous urban Indian society and culture. In this regard, I will examine Dhobi Ghat as a postmodern ‘city film’ that expresses the local context of Mumbai whilst presenting a global audio-visual aesthetic. My investigation involves a close reading of the film’s form, style and content to identify ‘glocal’ (Marramao, 2012) hybrid influences. This will assist in further contextualising the permeation of transglobal cinematic influences into Indian independent cinema (see Chapters 3 and 4, this volume) through widening spheres of access in the nation’s post-liberalisation public sphere. The larger interdisciplinary formulation of this book takes into account the Subaltern Studies context of ‘fragments’ – marginal elements in everyday social life, such as minority groups and stories, that are often precluded from the normative national narrative (Chibber, 2013: 19). Dhobi Ghat’s representations of marginality and alterity could be examined in relation to the thesis of fragmentary narratives and cultural difference emerging from an interstitial space. The case study in this chapter will also incorporate the implications of globalisation on India’s changing cultural, socio-economic and spatio-temporal constellation. In the process, this close analysis of Dhobi Ghat will evaluate interrelations between socio-economic transformations, subaltern figures, cultural difference and the urban space as a site for postmodern intersections.

Synopsis Dhobi Ghat is framed against the backdrop of contemporary Mumbai, India’s financial centre and multicultural urban centre. The film foregrounds three primary characters: Arun (Aamir Khan), a famous but introverted and angst-ridden artist; Shai (Monica Dogra), a young non-resident Indian

Dhobi Ghat  181 investment banker (also an American), indulging her avocation of photography in Mumbai; and Munna (Prateik), a subaltern dhobi, or washerman, who is a migrant to Mumbai from the economically backward state of Bihar, who harbours aspirations of becoming a Bollywood star. Shai first meets Arun at a soigné art gallery opening of Arun’s paintings. Arun appears ill at ease and socially awkward in the ostentatious surroundings and is glad to engage in free-flowing conversation with Shai. Shai accompanies Arun to his flat and they share an enjoyable evening. The next morning Arun relapses into saturnine silence, apologising for the previous night’s ‘indiscretions’ and hoping they would not be misconstrued by Shai as a prelude to a lasting relationship. Shai departs disappointed from Arun’s flat, assuring him that she enjoyed their time together and harbours no illusions as to the longevity of their interaction. Shai subsequently meets Munna, the local dhobi, when he comes round to collect laundry. She attempts to penetrate the socio-economic and class divide by communicating informally with Munna. In the process, Shai elicits information about his origins in the impoverished Darbhanga district in the northeastern Indian state of Bihar. Munna is fascinated to learn of Shai’s interest in photography and petitions her to do a photo shoot of him. Shai agrees to Munna’s request on the reciprocal arrangement that she can photograph him at his work place – the dhobi ghat. This is an expansive outdoor laundry complex, where Mumbai’s myriad washermen beat the dirt out of their customers’ clothes on stone blocks with warm water and soap. In the meantime, Arun moves into a new flat. During the process of settling in, he discovers a box secreted away in an old armoire. It contains personal bric-à-brac belonging to the flat’s previous occupant, along with three mini DV tapes. Arun views the tapes and discovers they contain the video diaries of Yasmin (Kriti Malhotra), a young migrant Muslim girl from a small-town in North India. She is revealed as the invisible narrator ‘seen’ filming and touring Mumbai in a taxi at the start of the film. Addressed to her younger brother Imran, Yasmin’s epistolary self-narrated Mumbai video diaries reveal her slow descent into depression. She recounts the alienation she experiences in Mumbai and her loveless marriage to a philandering husband. Yasmin’s video diaries culminate in a farewell message in lieu of a suicide note. Shai, unable to obliterate the image of Arun from her mind, seeks to reinitiate contact with him. Munna’s credentials as Arun’s dhobi render him a possible intermediary, and he offers to provide Shai with the address of Arun’s new flat. Shai, undertaking a nightly photo shoot around the vicinity of Munna’s dilapidated slum, inadvertently interrupts Munna in the act of performing his clandestine nocturnal occupation – exterminating rats infesting the area. Humiliated by Shai’s uncovering of his subterfuge, Munna instantly bolts away into the darkness. Subsequently, the sudden death of Munna’s cousin Salim at the hands of Mumbai’s local drug mafia exacerbates the financial instability afflicting Munna’s family. In these circumstances, Munna realises his love for Shai is unrequited and the insurmountable socio-economic factors separating them lead to fissures in their friendship.

182  Dhobi Ghat

Form and Style in a Hyperlink Network Narrative Dissecting Dhobi Ghat’s structural and formal composition invokes comparisons with the genres of anthology, portmanteau and mosaic cinema. These terms, often used interchangeably, refer to multi-story or multi-plot narratives. It is interesting to posit ‘global network’ films (Traffic, 2000; Crash, 2004; Syriana, 2005; Babel, 2006, etc.) or hyperlink films (Ebert, 2006: 100) alongside the suffusion of new Indian Indies, such as Ship of Theseus (2013) and I Am (2010), that espouse the multiple-strand format. This comparison may assist in identifying links between ‘global network’ films and Dhobi Ghat, which adopts a multiple-narrative strategy. Neil Narine (2010) asserts that scholarship in the techno-­communications domain has imagined contemporary society as being interlinked through global networks and hence has perceived this interconnectedness as an optimistic indicator of augmented libertarian global cooperation. He countervails this utopian view by describing ‘global network’ film portrayals of ‘network society’ as an uneven terrain of ‘enduring inequality’ (2010: 209). Narine further argues ‘borrowing from social problem films, economic guilt films, and city films of the past, these network narratives illustrate how networks can link us in unwanted ways’ (ibid.). Dhobi Ghat is a concatenation of all three above-mentioned film classifications that constitute network narratives. The first two – ‘social problems’ and ‘economic guilt’ – inform Dhobi Ghat’s depictions of class divisions and socio-economic disparity between bourgeois Arun and Shai and subaltern Munna. The third category is fulfilled by the centrality of Dhobi Ghat’s location, Mumbai, rendering it a ‘city film’. Also, ‘in the cinematic network society, empowered agents fail to coordinate or even comprehend the networks that surround them’ (Narine, 2010). This is applicable to Dhobi Ghat’s characters, the investment banker, Shai, and successful artist, Arun. These two protagonists’ privileged circumstances in large measure contribute to their naïve or solipsistic modes of negotiating the network in which they live. Shai’s exteriority as an affluent, Westernised individual restricts her awareness of the realities of Mumbai’s socio-economic disparities. Self-absorbed Arun seems locked away in the interiority of his detached and often withdrawn self.

Meandering through Mumbai: A Postmodern City Film The city is indispensable to narrative development in Dhobi Ghat. The film could be situated as a ‘city text’, not just by dint of its full title Dhobi Ghat: The Mumbai Diaries, but also because it falls within the vision of the postmodern city (Mazierska and Rascaroli, 2003). The cartography of the postmodern cosmopolis describes the ascendency of industrialisation, the splintering of society and a burgeoning information superhighway resulting in the growth of high-tech industries, increase in social polarisation, fragmentation of the urban habitat and a compression of space and time (ibid.). This is produced

Dhobi Ghat  183 by information sharing, increased cosmopolitanism, multi-ethnicity, globalisation of culture and the shedding of barriers (ibid.). These significations of the postmodern city punctuate Dhobi Ghat’s narrative. Overall, the above facets align with the concept of globalisation and the new global economy as a grid of overlaps between ethnicities, media, technology, finance and ideologies (Appadurai, 1990). This model arguably imagines a postmodern synthesis of ‘information superhighway’ and ‘global village’. Whilst Mazierska and Rascaroli’s erudite analysis in From Moscow to Madrid: European Cities, Postmodern Cinema (2003) discusses some of the postmodern nuances of European cities, it could be argued that Dhobi Ghat as a city text presents an alternative frame. It envisions Mumbai as a metropolis in perpetual motion on a superhighway to the postmodern condition. A vertiginous divide between social classes and an antinomy of economic disparity – a broader symptom of Indian civil society – is visible in Dhobi Ghat’s representation of India’s financial capital. The disparate backgrounds of the film’s primary characters to some degree reflect Mumbai as a fragmented cosmopolis, a metonymic prototype of India’s larger heterogeneity. The socio-economic divisions between Munna, Shai, Arun and the other characters in the film appear watertight and insuperable. Despite these ostensible divisions, the historiography of the city as a caravanserai of culture lends to Mumbai’s blurring of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, which is a component of postmodern cities. As a nucleus of glocal intersections (global with local), Mumbai is represented as an unfathomable character in Dhobi Ghat, one that presides over the overlapping narratives of its various inhabitants. Director Kiran Rao deploys the device of personification in the form of Arun’s next-door neighbour, an inarticulate, elderly woman who silently observes the daily crisscross of passers-by from her spartan surroundings. This old matriarchal figure is a metaphor for Mumbai – the only constant in the perennially changing metropolis. In an interview, Kiran Rao states that the old woman, akin to Mumbai, has weathered the ravages of time and is a silent spectator to the ‘sadness of modern life’, contained in ‘the sheer weight of all these stories of failure, sadness or deep tragedy that the city always carries with it’ (Rao, 2013). The city’s grief-bearing stoicism is epitomised in the scene in which a distraught Arun, after learning about Yasmin’s suicide, stumbles out of his flat and collapses in the corridor overcome with grief. The omniscient old lady silently surveys Arun’s sad outpourings as ‘yet another person consumed by this tide of sadness that the city constantly has to wash over people’ (Rao, personal communication, 2013). Rao’s figurative allusion to the city as an ocean that incessantly inscribes and effaces human narratives invokes Mumbai’s historiographical evolution as a palimpsest of myriad human orthographies. The postmodern city implicated in an inexorable process of inscription and reinscription is a recurrent theme in Dhobi Ghat. Mumbai is portrayed as a canvas that across the annals of time has been spattered by a spectrum of human stories, an intricate interweaving of narratives that imagine the

184  Dhobi Ghat historical evolution of this metropolis. A potent idiom of this process of ‘scripting the city’ is a scene in which Yasmin, the small-town young woman, is enraptured by the wonders of the teeming big city. On a visit to Mumbai’s seafront, she directs her camcorder towards vain attempts to inscribe her name ‘Yasmin Noor’ in the sand. The relentless machinations of the waves repeatedly efface her writing and thwart Yasmin’s endeavour to etch her name indelibly into the city’s memory. To gain a deeper insight into the city that draws Shai, Munna and Arun together, it is useful to trace the trajectory of events that has situated Mumbai as a point of cultural and social convergence. Historically, Bombay (the city’s original title) was strategically poised as a centre of trade and commerce, a liminal point of intersection between East and West. Bombay was a gift from Portugal to Britain’s King Charles II, to commemorate his wedding to Catherine of Braganza (Monod, 2009: 16). Kiran Rao emphasises the city’s antecedents as an arena for social and intercultural interaction, including trade and commerce (Rao, personal communication, 2013). This is in contrast with the historical associations of India’s capital city, New Delhi, as a strategic theatre of battle and conflict for invading empires, marauding opportunists and warring factions (ibid.). Therefore, ‘Bombay’ is a site of ancient and modern overlapping disjunctures and cultural interflows (Appadurai 1990; 1996). Within the city’s historical diachronic evolutionary timeline, postmodern ruptures stemming from India’s globalisation/ post-globalisation national narratives are identifiable in the contemporary synchronic, longitudinal slice that Dhobi Ghat as a filmic text represents. Like the city in which it is located, Dhobi Ghat articulates the glocal – expressing the local with the global (Marramao, 2012: 35). The narratives of its main characters are firmly rooted in the local Mumbai urbanscape. The ‘global’ is expressed through the film’s World Cinema aesthetic; a visual canvas that is infused with a global soundscape in the form of music composer Gustavo Santaolalla’s musical score. In a departure from Bollywood-style song and dance interludes, Dhobi Ghat features a non-diegetic guitar-oriented score, composed and performed by Santaolalla (The Motorcycle Diaries, Brokeback Mountain). The film’s mélange of aural textures and layers is an index of Dhobi Ghat’s fusion of audio-visual styles. Santaolalla’s score augments the film’s global hybrid sensibility; his solo guitar segues into traditional ragas – melodic modes and phrases used in Indian classical music. One of these ragas is Paani Bharan Aaye in Raag Khamaj by Hindustani classical singer Siddheshwari Devi. Another sequence features ghazal singer Begum Akhtar’s rain song Ab ke Saawan in the raga Tilak Kamod, deployed diegetically in Dhobi Ghat to symbolically herald the onset of Mumbai’s monsoon. This synthesis of musical styles typifies the notion of hybrid amalgamation in the new Indies. It epitomises their integration of diverse sensibilities and influences that depart from conventional Bollywood modes of visual form, style and narration. Dhobi Ghat invokes the postmodern trope of urban individuals voyeuristically watching the world through electronic interfaces. In this regard, the

Dhobi Ghat  185 film draws intertextual comparisons with Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954). This relates to a scene where Shai, impelled by an irresistible urge to observe Arun, climbs up to one of the upper storeys of a high-rise building construction site owned by her father’s corporation, and located opposite Arun’s flat. Shai’s view from this vantage point captures the tenement building opposite her, peppered with windows like rectangular gashes in a cinema screen (Fig. 8.1). This recalls the view of L B (Jeff) Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart) in Rear Window; the building across the street from his camera’s spying eye, consists of a similar conurbation of flats dotted with the apertures of multiple windows (Fig. 8.2).

Figure 8.1  Shai’s wide shot of windows in Dhobi Ghat.

Figure 8.2  View from Jeff’s window in Rear Window.

186  Dhobi Ghat From her elevated position, Shai directs her gaze at Arun through the lens of her camera (Fig. 8.3). Oblivious to Shai’s surreptitious surveillance, Arun at that precise moment is himself implicated in the pleasure of ‘looking’. He is in the process of gazing at Yasmin’s video diary (Fig. 8.4). Arun draws inspiration from Yasmin’s onscreen presence and simultaneously attempts to distill the essence of what he sees onto his sketchpad. Framed by Shai’s roving camera viewfinder, Arun leaves his sketchpad aside and moves towards the television, ostensibly to rewind a scene playing on the television screen through the camcorder. As Arun inspects the camcorder

Figure 8.3  Shai’s ‘stakeout’.

Figure 8.4  Her object of scrutiny – Arun.

Dhobi Ghat  187 (Fig. 8.5), Shai is interrupted by a phone call (Fig. 8.6). Looking at her mobile phone, she realises it is a call from her father, who is checking whether Shai has managed to gain access to the building. Shai’s subsequent conversation reveals she has not disclosed to her father the real reason for her stakeout – her desire to ‘watch’ Arun.

Figure 8.5  Arun looking into the camcorder while playing Yasmin’s video diary.

Figure 8.6  Shai interrupted by a phone call from her father.

Dhobi Ghat applies a postmodern twist to Hitchcock’s Rear Window. In the above sequence, Rear Window’s portrayal of the pleasure of looking that privileges Jeff’s male gaze (Fig. 8.8), is reversed by Shai’s in Dhobi Ghat (Fig. 8.7). In the latter film, Shai is the ‘watcher’ and Arun is the ‘watched’

188  Dhobi Ghat object of her gaze. Another distinction is Dhobi Ghat’s deployment of symbols of hyperreal postmodern interconnectivity: technological devices that pervade the concise duration of this scene. These include Shai’s digital camera and mobile phone and Arun’s camcorder and television.

Figure 8.7  Shai spying through her camera.

Figure 8.8  Jeff indulging in the pleasure of looking.

The scene’s imagination of the process of looking is a sinuous chain contingent on these intermediary interfaces. Shai looks through her camera at Arun whilst he is watching Yasmin on the television, connected to his camcorder containing the mini DV tape of Yasmin’s video diaries. Shai pauses in her exertions

Dhobi Ghat  189 to look at her mobile phone, which connects her to her father. This cyclical loop of ‘looking’ returns to the audience watching the film and opens up the discourse of voyeurism. This is a theme perennially debated and dissected in Film Studies, particularly through the proposition that Jeff’s scopophilia in Rear Window largely mirrors the pleasurable act of viewing films (Winkler, 2009: 139). Overall, the interconnectedness on display in the above-described sequence once again is symptomatic of the postmodern condition – a hyperreality of constant communication via a crisscross of networks. Aside from Dhobi Ghat’s homage to Hitchcock, the film shares intertextual similarities with fellow Indie, Ship of Theseus. Dhobi Ghat invokes a dialogic connection with Anand Gandhi’s hyperlink film on the level that both films frame Mumbai as the backdrop for their narrative events. The two Indies also overlap in their representation of female characters interpreting the world through the lens of photographic devices – blind protagonist Aliya’s camera in Ship of Theseus, Shai’s camera and Yasmin’s camcorder in Dhobi Ghat. Both films’ female characters undertake similar journeys. Yasmin’s visit to the Elephanta caves, an island located on the outskirts of Mumbai, in 2010’s Dhobi Ghat is reinvoked in Aliya’s similar journey in 2013’s Ship of Theseus. Another point of convergence between Dhobi Ghat and Ship of ­Theseus is the use of photographs to trigger memory and nostalgia as well as to imagine Mumbai’s multidimensional socio-cultural layers. Capturing the city’s spaces, places and sites of intersection is a motif in both these ‘city’ films. As a votary of photography, Shai in Dhobi Ghat seeks to extract the essence of Mumbai’s beating heart, to find the city in its societal gradations. Blind photographer Aliya in Ship of Theseus attempts to capture elements of the metaphysical and transcendental in the ethnographical during her intuitive forays into the city’s febrile landscape. This implicit interweaving of local context, global film aesthetic and dialogic intertextuality assists in imagining the personal transitions of the films’ characters and provides a glimpse into Mumbai’s inexorable post-globalisation journey. In essence, Mumbai epitomises a liminal state of flux at the micro level. At the macro level, this continual state of becoming is indicative of India’s metamorphosis; the national journey from traditional to neoliberal. Another proposition relates to the film’s signification of absence and presence in the daily repetition of human narratives in the urban space. For example, Yasmin’s somatic absence in the film’s ‘world of the living’ emphasises her displacement to the realm of the virtual – she only exists in her video diaries. Yasmin ‘speaks’ to Arun from this peripheral position. Her voice from ‘beyond’ provides a stimulus for Arun to retrace her journey through Mumbai and therefore to assimilate her lived experience. In one such instance, Arun reconstructs Yasmin’s visit to the sea. Emulating Yasmin’s actions in her video diary, he inscribes his name in the sand. Arun also tries to locate the essence of Yasmin’s Mumbai experience through haptic engagement with the discarded objects in the box she left behind in his flat. Arun touches each object – a compact mirror, a fish-shaped bibelot and a silver ring.

190  Dhobi Ghat The trope of human touch as a portal to memory of a departed person is consistently invoked in several films. In the climactic scene of Brokeback Mountain (2005), Ennis (Heath Ledger) holds the shirt of his departed lover Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) close to him, feeling its texture and inhaling its fabric in an attempt to conjure Jack’s lost presence. Carolyn Burnham (Annette Bening) in American Beauty (1999) performs the same act of trying to corporealise her dead husband Lester (Kevin Spacey) by running her hands across an array of his shirts suspended in a closet. The grieving Chinese mother Junn (Cheng Pei-Pei) in the British drama Lilting (2014) evokes the memory of her recently deceased young son by stepping into his room and trying to find him in the fabric of his bed linen. In other words, she uses haptic and olfactory senses as human receptors to assimilate the residual remains of her departed son. In a similar gesture, Arun strings a ring he discovers in Yasmin’s belongings onto a chain and wears it around his neck. Standing in front of a mirror, Arun appraises his attempt to find himself in the ‘mirror image’ of the other (Fig. 8.9).

Figure 8.9  Arun: seeing himself in the other.

In a more tangible use of image, the recurrent theme of photographs as a portal to nostalgia, memory and identity is reprised when Arun looks at family photographs in Yasmin’s small box of possessions. One photograph contains a message scrawled on its reverse by Yasmin’s brother, Imran. This inscription and the photographs signifying happier times are the ghostly text and image traces of Yasmin’s interrupted dreams of a life. They serve as a memento mori (Barthes, 1981) evoking Yasmin’s past before the rupture and displacement of her migration from periphery to centre. Arun’s scrutiny of Yasmin’s family photographs impels him to imagine the ‘inviolate’ other and what appears to be the unsullied innocence and

Dhobi Ghat  191 naïveté of the small town that seems untainted by modern urban decay and anomie. To some degree this pre-conception represents the ‘ambivalent nature of the stereotype’ (Villar-Argaiz, 2008: 21), with the native other seen as ‘both mysterious and known’ (Bhabha, 1995: 79). The photographic images put into perspective Arun’s own disillusionment with the superficiality of Mumbai life. His growing cynicism with the vacuous upper echelons of the city’s dilettantes and glitterati is in stark contrast with Yasmin’s short-lived but genuine joie de vivre; her initial ebullience and excitement at experiencing the big city. In this context, Arun’s preoccupation with vicariously experiencing Yasmin’s story through her video diaries recalls Homi Bhabha’s assertion that peripheral narratives are indispensable for majority discourses and dominant groups to define and construct notions of self. Dhobi Ghat’s representation of Yasmin’s ‘absent’ voice and memories that haunt the present, signposts the film’s allusion to marginal individuals and communities integral to Mumbai’s complex network.

Marginalised Other in Dhobi Ghat’s Double Narrative Arun, in his speech at the art gallery soirée to launch an exhibition of his paintings under the theme ‘Building’, acknowledges the influence on his artistic work of labourers and migrant construction workers from ‘Rajasthan, UP (Uttar Pradesh), Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, who built this city in the hope that someday they will find their rightful place in it’. Arun’s paean to Mumbai’s syncretism represents the film’s broader affirmation of heterogeneity in the city’s construction. This testimony is particularly relevant to the miasma of sectarian violence in 2008, spearheaded by a splinter group of the right-wing fundamentalist Hindu Shiv Sena party with its drive to ‘purge’ Maharashtra state of migrant workers from other Indian states. These extremist groups especially targeted their violent attacks at taxi and auto-rickshaw drivers from economically backward Northern Indian states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (Chandran, 2008). This theme receives critical examination in independent Marathi film Court (2015), which portrays a scene where a right-wing theatre audience enjoys a vernacular performance explicitly advocating the ejection of non-Maharashtrian migrant workers hailing from other Indian states. In this context, Arun’s articulation and affirmation of the city’s acculturation in his speech at the gallery is Dhobi Ghat’s self-reflexive interrogation of the incidents of sectarian and xenophobic violence in Mumbai. As an enunciation of resistance, Arun’s declaration bears fresh relevance to India’s current socio-political milieu of intolerance, where mythologised notions of religious and ethnic purity continue to be enforced on a national scale by right-wing Hindu nationalist groups. Continuing with this theme, two of Dhobi Ghat’s characters, Yasmin Noor and Munna are minority Muslims and hail from the ostracised north Indian states. Both characters are from less-privileged socio-economic circumstances compared to those of Arun and Shai. During the film’s opening

192  Dhobi Ghat sequence, Yasmin, from Malihabad, a small town in Uttar Pradesh, discovers that her taxi driver, a fellow-migrant to Mumbai, is originally from Jaunpur, a neighbouring town in her home state. Similarly, the dhobi Munna reveals to Shai that he is from an impoverished region in Bihar and that ‘Munna’ is a diminutive of his real Muslim name, Zohaib. The assortment of characters in Dhobi Ghat emphasises Mumbai’s own socio-cultural multiplicity and hybridity. The city’s polymorphous composition and its attendant socio-economic realities often get subsumed by the dominant popular mythologisation of Mumbai as a propitious site, where financial aspirations and upward social mobility automatically come to fruition in the realisation of the ‘Bombay Dream’. Dhobi Ghat exposes some of the fissures in the unilinear imagining of Mumbai as modern Indian financial capital: a city associated with dreams of wealth, fame and Bollywood. The film demonstrates inconsistencies and instabilities in the ‘Bombay Dream’ by splintering this codified, homogenised and mythologised perception of the city into its multidimensional fragments. In this regard, Kiran Rao states: The city [Mumbai] is this universe, but each city having small universes that only the characters experience … your Bombay is quite different from the next person’s Bombay, and it is possible for us to live in the same city and have completely different imaginings and experiences of the same. The city gets its textures and layers because of all these multiple experiences. All of this creates this multiple-layered and still homogeneous whole. (Rao, personal communication, 2013) Rao’s perception of multiple imaginings and lived experiences within the contours of a single shared space recalls the two main characters in Gandu. Although they live within the same Kolkata locality, Gandu and his impoverished friend Ricksha have different interpretations and assimilations of their surroundings. Similarly, Dhobi Ghat’s location of Mumbai as a theatre of multiple transformative discourses enables the film’s various characters to performatively express the city’s pedagogical cultural diversity. Dhobi Ghat represents hybridity, fragmentation and contradiction in Mumbai’s daily performance of the aforementioned pedagogic cultural diversity, as highlighted in Munna, Shai and Arun’s overlapping lives. The film uncovers ‘the spatial fantasy of modern cultural communities’ being speciously idealised as the ‘People-as-One’, which in reality robs ‘minorities of those marginal, liminal spaces’ from where they can interrupt and contest the ‘unifying and totalizing myths of the national culture’ (Bhabha, 1994: 358). By demonstrating gaps and omissions between the imagined rhetorical discourse of India’s purported cultural unity (in diversity) and incongruence in its actual everyday practice, Dhobi Ghat opens up an interstitial median space that facilitates enunciations of the city’s peripheral subjects, Munna and Yasmin.

Dhobi Ghat  193 In this regard, the film’s opening scene sets the stage for Yasmin’s articulation of her outsider status in the Mumbai mainstream. She remains invisible to the spectator during this sequence, and is only identifiable by her voice heard within the hermetic interior of a Mumbai taxi. The taxi driver from Yasmin’s home state initiates a conversation, evoking her memories of home by alluding to Malihabad’s quintessential association with mangoes. The implicit meaning in this prologue scene is manifold. It provides a snapshot of the broader migrant experience by evoking Yasmin’s journey from the small town to the big city; from the margins to the mainstream. From the impressions evinced in the scene, the taxi driver’s own migration from Uttar Pradesh to Mumbai appears complete. At home in his surroundings, he sees Mumbai as the space where his place, identity and occupation as a taxi driver are inscribed. Yasmin appears to be in the formative stages of a similar migratory transition. This proposition is validated by piecing together the fragments of narrative information revealed in the scene. However, several audio-visual clues also indicate Yasmin’s sense of dislocation that is underpinned by nostalgia and memory. She reveals to the driver that she still feels like a stranger after five months in Mumbai. The camera zooms in to focus on the taxi’s dashboard sticker. It contains the sketch of a woman sitting by the side of a highway lost in forlorn thought, as a taxi races past her in the background. The caption at the bottom of the sticker reads ‘When will you come Home?’ The symbolism of this trope provides an insight into Yasmin’s ambivalent state of mind. Essentially, the taxi evokes the associative idea of ‘home’ or ‘belonging’. Within its enclosed space, Yasmin nostalgically re-imagines ‘home’; through the driver’s reference to Malihabad mangoes, which are obliquely invoked by the decorative green grapes dangling prominently from the driver’s backseat mirror. Thoughts of her hometown are amplified by the dashboard sticker’s melancholy appeal to return home. The camera’s tight framing of shots accentuate Yasmin’s suspension between the interiority of ‘home’ and the exteriority of unfamiliar Mumbai outside the taxi. Yasmin attempts to negotiate this overwhelming new ‘exterior’ space by invoking the memory of ‘home’, using her handicam to film her experiences in Mumbai and generate video diaries to send back home to her brother, Imran. Seated in the taxi, Yasmin is an embodiment of the liminal process of ‘becoming’ – from Malihabad migrant to Mumbai resident. In this sense, Yasmin herself is a bridge between the taxi’s interiority (home) and Mumbai’s exteriority. The description of performativity as ‘non-essentialized constructions of marginalised identities’ (Dolan, 1993: 419), raises the proposition of whether Yasmin’s performative act of re-invoking memory and remembering home in the taxi and at other subsequent plot-points in the narrative, constitutes a daily performance of re-inscribing identity. In other words, through her digital diaries, Yasmin draws from nostalgia and memory to perform her own (re)interpretation and (re)mediation of her daily life in Mumbai from her new perspective as a peripheral subject.

194  Dhobi Ghat Therefore, Yasmin’s performative re-articulations of her past develop new contexts with everyday iterations in her present life in Mumbai, ultimately charting the contingent future possibility of her ‘becoming’ or ‘belonging’. Therefore, the three mini DV tapes containing her video diaries are like a triple-act drama: beginning, middle and end, or in a temporal metaphor, past, present and future. In the process of interpreting her existence in the present by using the benchmark of the past, Yasmin includes new marginal characters into her field of experience. For example, in one segment of her video diary, Yasmin pauses whilst filming for an impromptu interview with Lata bai, her domestic help. Yasmin’s intention is to introduce Lata bai ‘virtually’ to her brother Imran via her video diaries. Yasmin asks Lata bai’s adolescent daughter, Vanitha to recite a poem to the camera. Proud of studying in an English-medium school, young Vanitha declaims the first few lines of Alfred Tennyson’s The Brook. The poem’s refrain: ‘for men may come and men may go but I go on forever’, contains the possibility of repetitive ‘performativity’ (Chawla, 2011: 92), and encapsulates Dhobi Ghat’s representation of Mumbai as a constant site of perpetually changing human narratives and identities. In effect, Yasmin’s everyday re-inscriptions reflect the constantly changing palimpsest of myriad individual layers; narratives sedimented and concealed by the homogenising discourse of pedagogical cultural diversity. This proposition prompts comparison with the experience of the co-author of Liminal Traces (2011), Devika Chawla, as an Indian migrant to America. Chawla reveals how she negotiated being an outsider in an unfamiliar milieu by documenting in a diary her experience of ordinary, everyday ‘affects’ – ‘things that happen’ everyday, that transport people to unexpected places (Chawla, 2011: 90). To this catalysing force of ‘things that happen’ Chawla adds her experience of nostalgia, of ‘things remembered’ – ‘the triggers’ or ‘the moments’ that caused her to docket other moments in her diary (ibid.). Yasmin, due to her ‘absence’ in the film’s ‘living’ world inhabited by Shai, Arun and Munna, is crucial to extricating larger subtextual discourses of nation in Dhobi Ghat. This is because her ‘ghostly’ confinement to the video diaries represents the micro narratives and marginal voices that are elided or effaced in the unrelenting master narrative of nation. Yasmin’s journey from the Malihabad periphery to the Mumbai mainstream results in her alienation from both the big city and her loveless marriage. This anomie displaces her into the imaginary zone of her digital diaries: a liminal virtual space that affords her the agency to articulate, something she is denied in her real, everyday existence. In this interstitial domain she can conceal her anxieties and disillusionment in the ‘hidden’ capsule of a video tape. Here, Yasmin can draw on memory and nostalgia to imagine her emergence from the narrow, liminal cloister and break free into the autonomous realm of ‘becoming’ – however unrealistic that may be in her bleak real world existence.

Dhobi Ghat  195 The fact that Arun ‘hears’ Yasmin’s posthumous self-narration through his discovery and viewing of her video diaries, also raises the thesis that Yasmin gains the agency of speech only in death. This proposition opens up the turbulent undertow of all the aforementioned ‘ordinary affects’, memories and performative vicissitudes of Yasmin’s daily life that lie beneath her oral testimony. Yasmin’s ‘ghostly voice’ is an example of a device used in several Indian Indies to deploy subtle and overt contestations of dominant or normalised narratives and figuratively represent peripheralised narratives in Indian society. Examples include Harud’s evocation of both literal and metaphorical apparitions: the ‘ghosts’ of young Kashmiri men ‘disappeared’ by the Indian state apparatus, Gandu’s ‘imaginary’ friend, the subaltern rickshaw-puller, and Peepli Live’s talismanic character Hori Mahato, who symbolises the ‘ghosts’ of farmer suicides in India.

Representation as a Marker of Divergent Narratives Shai, as the ‘outsider’, non-resident Indian (NRI) from America, is described as naïve, uninitiated and uninformed about Indian social mores and hence embodies an ambivalence of ‘authenticity’. This is in terms of her being outside the everyday Indian experience, yet privileged by her social class, family background and economic status, factors that afford her ready admittance into the upper strata of Mumbai society. Aside from this portrayal of the NRI outsider, Dhobi Ghat establishes a love triangle configuration between Shai, Munna and Arun that seems reminiscent of the commonly used Bollywood idiom. However, the film departs significantly from this trope’s conventional and ubiquitous use in commercial films. Most significantly, Shai is invested, even empowered, with the agency to pursue and woo Arun. She is relentless in her desire for him, even resorting to setting up subterfuges and stalking him. This is a departure from the entrenched masculine codes and privileged male gaze in Bollywood films, where courtship is an almost exclusively male-dominated prerogative. Although Shai appears genuinely fond of Munna and treats him with kindness, she is fascinated by his ‘exotic’ subaltern idiosyncrasies. Shai to a large degree infantilises the dhobi, never considering him worthy of more than platonic friendship and to some extent restricts him to being the object of her photography. Shai, despite her ‘liberal’ Western sensibilities and seemingly genuine investment in her friendship with Munna, cannot break from the ideological shackles of socio-economic strictures. Her privileged background as the daughter of a corporate business tycoon and her rarefied upbringing contribute to her bewildered enthrallment with ‘exotic’ Indian socio-cultural rituals and practices. In general, her antecedents as an American investment banker to a large degree insulate her from the realities of class and caste hierarchies in modern India. She therefore perceives Munna as a curiosity or a novelty.

196  Dhobi Ghat It could be stated that despite their benevolence towards the labouring class, Arun and Shai, in their own ways, are unwittingly complicit in objectifying the film’s peripheral subjects, Munna and Yasmin. In Arun’s case, he undergoes a cathartic renewal during the process of vicariously experiencing Yasmin’s life through her trilogy of tapes. Jaded and cynical with the superficiality and artistic stagnation that intersperse his existence, Arun discovers a muse in Yasmin. Watching her video diaries reanimates his creative faculties. Infused with new inspiration, he begins to paint again, with Yasmin as the central theme of his rekindled creative drive. As a character in the film, Arun is portrayed as reclusive, introverted and Bohemian. Although he installs himself in a nondescript part of Mumbai and seeks to distance himself from the vapid and vacuous high-society he eschews, he also seems to isolate himself from the marginalised sections of society that inspire his art. In essence, Arun exhibits a marked distantiation from the ‘objects’ that form the subjects of his paintings – the labourers he extols in his art ­gallery speech. Similarly, Yasmin seems to have become an object of his art. However, Arun experiences an emotional rupture and is wrenched from his ­idyllic imaginary connection with Yasmin upon learning of her suicide. Shai’s engagement with the film’s other marginal subject, Munna, is both similar and different from Arun’s ‘interaction’ with Yasmin. In an interview, film scholar M K Raghavendra observes Munna’s relegation to the periphery at the outset of his interactions with Shai. Raghavendra asserts that Shai cannot even consider Munna worthy of a sustained or ­genuine love interest (Raghavendra, personal communication, 2013). This view serves to highlight the deeper implications of India’s watertight class divisions that are arguably normalised and legitimised by several ­historical, religious and socio-cultural factors enmeshed in the nation’s postcolonial national narrative. Therefore, Shai’s subliminal casting of Munna to the margins is symptomatic of the reality of difference and exclusion always-already extant even in burgeoning Indian urban centres such as Mumbai. Munna’s predicament evokes similarities with Natha, the farmer in Peepli Live. Both are central characters in their respective films, but Munna and Natha are essentially pawns, malleable to the vested interests and whims of privileged individuals and groups and therefore dispatched to the periphery at the culmination of both films. Kiran Rao (personal communication, 2013) observes fossilised societal striations that seem to perpetuate antiquated historico-religious and socio-economic divisions in Indian culture. She highlights the reality of enduring boundaries between the bourgeoisie and working or ‘servant’ class in Indian urban centres, which operate through strictly defined as well as self-enforced occupational roles and subservient duties (Rao, personal communication, 2013). This standardised and internalised socio-economic stratification informs Dhobi Ghat’s representation of Munna. The above assertions can be contextualised by the Subaltern Studies proposition that the colonial and postcolonial Indian bourgeoisie could not formulate a

Dhobi Ghat  197 universalising system that incorporated the labouring classes into a ‘recognizable modern political order’ (Chibber, 2013: 37), and this instead contributed to an elite/subaltern divide. The legacy of this colonial/postcolonial narrative of separation and exclusion reverberates in modern Indian hierarchical structures and social situations. This schism is evident when Shai and her affluent companions share a drink in an upmarket bar. Shai’s friends mock her interest in Munna with disparaging statements belittling his profession as a dhobi. This social discrimination permeates into other interactions and extends to the working class. In one scene, Shai’s housemaid Agnes refuses to acknowledge Munna as an equal. Agnes expresses her disdain when Shai invites Munna to sit on the sofa like an ‘equal’. When Shai asks Agnes to serve them tea, Agnes extends an ‘inferior’ glass tumbler to Munna as opposed to the teacup she offers Shai. These examples reveal the tacit hierarchical social and class divisions that persist in modern urban India, where disequilibrium between privileged and peripheral and the multitudinous gradations in-between, are always-already formalised and normalised as a fait accompli. Dhobi Ghat portrays intricate overlaps and contradictions interpolated into the narrative of Mumbai, the modern metropolis, itself a microcosm of contemporary urban India. In this regard, the film demonstrates instances in Mumbai’s terrain where deep-rooted inequalities in society and prominently enacted class divisions in personal or private spheres (such as the above examples involving Shai in the exclusive bar and at home) can often be blurred through negotiations in more neutral spaces. Some scenes in the film depict the demotic sharing of public space, where social intersections are less constrained by tacit precepts of class and caste separations. In the first such example, Shai and Munna dine together at a table in a cosy, quaint old café. Kiran Rao (personal communication, 2013) reveals that this scene was filmed in Kayani, an ‘Irani’ café – a quintessential yet moribund Mumbai institution that harkens back to the 19th century. According to Rao, Irani cafés are the legacy of an enduring tradition, established by Mumbai’s dwindling Parsi community (the progeny of ancient Persian Zoroastrian immigrants). Rao’s intention was to document the imminent demise of traditional Irani cafés in Mumbai’s rush towards neoliberal corporatisation whilst also foregrounding the Irani café’s spatial inclusivity as a site for people of diverse backgrounds to congregate and engage in conversation. The Irani café therefore represents a neutral, pluralistic site of mediation between societal binaries and intermediaries (Rao, personal communication, 2013). In general, Mumbai’s Irani cafés exemplify built environments in cities, places that have embedded in them shards of the past and implications of the future. They therefore constitute nodal points of continual arbitration in relation to the city’s collective memories, current realities and future aspirations (Broudehoux, 2001: 275). Dhobi Ghat’s representation of the Irani café as a fast-dwindling demotic space in an ascendant urbanscape of corporate high-rise buildings

198  Dhobi Ghat is a reflection of larger vicissitudes in neoliberal India. The new neoliberal master narrative entails the ‘imposition of single-stranded images on urban diversity in the process of city marketing’ (Broudehoux, 2001: 275), allowing a commodification and consumerisation of city space through the ‘exclusionary processes that often privilege the views of one group over another’ (ibid.). Dhobi Ghat’s second instance of neutral social space relates to more contemporaneous transformations in urban India – the multiplex. As a point of contrast with the antiquarian associations of the Irani café, the multiplex is an enduring legacy of India’s early 1990s engagement with neoliberalism. The introduction of multiplexes after globalisation led to the phasing out of less commercially viable single-screens (Reddi, 2009: 377). As discussed in Chapter 4, Adrian Athique (2010) presents an important insight into the socio-cinematic disjuncture of switching systems from single-screen to multiplex. The majority of single-screen owners perceived elitism in the multiplex ethos of directing their strategies towards the ‘decent crowds’ from the upper- and middle-classes, contrasting this with their single-screen cinema’s accessibility to ‘the poor’, ‘villagers’, ‘rickshaw wallahs’ and the ‘little classy people’ (Athique, 2010: 221). This could be viewed through the lens of a scene where Munna, his cousin Salim and two of their friends run into Shai as they are waiting to see a film in the foyer of a multiplex. The perception of Mumbai as a postmodern Indian city of contradictions and imbrications is affirmed in the casual, contiguous co-existence between Shai, her affluent friends and subalterns Munna and Salim within the same spatial dimensions of the multiplex. At first glance, the earlier contention of multiplexes deploying selective strategies that solicit urbane audiences seems inconsistent with Dhobi Ghat’s representation in this scene. The sharing of public space represented in the sequence reflects perceptions of Mumbai as a melting pot of heterodox co-existence. However, it is worth pondering whether the social mixing shown in the scene is confined to the multiplex foyer, with no guarantee of egalitarian access to the screening spaces. In the wider context of this study, this sequence evokes the unstated realities of the disproportionate multiplex pricing system that functions as a socio-ideological sifting mechanism helping sustain the status quo of socio-economic disparity in Indian civil society. As a footnote, it is possible to ironically point out that urban multiplex ticket prices for non-mainstream films, such as Dhobi Ghat, can range towards 1,000 rupees (see Chapter 4). Socio-economic polarities informing interactions between Dhobi Ghat’s characters evokes comparisons with several British social realism films, such as A Taste of Honey (1961), Mike Leigh’s High Hopes (1988) and Ken Loach’s Carla’s Song (1996), where redeeming human sensibilities ultimately emanate from socially peripheral or subaltern characters. In Dhobi Ghat, Munna, the migrant washerman eventually emerges on the moral high ground rather than the film’s solipsistic middle-class characters. Munna

Dhobi Ghat  199 enacts the film’s only selfless human gesture by being able to transcend his unrequited feelings for Shai and privilege her happiness over his own. This is portrayed in the film’s climactic scene, where he chases after Shai’s departing taxi, heedless of the milling Mumbai crowds and maelstrom of traffic, to pass on a scrap of paper containing the phone number of his competitor for Shai’s affections – Arun. Munna’s largesse is rendered all the more altruistic in light of his recent bereavement following his cousin Salim’s murder. The desperate immediacy of the dhobi’s situation is underscored by his new responsibility as the sole breadwinner and custodian of Salim’s old mother and adolescent brother. Under these circumstances, Munna’s spontaneous performative act emerges from an otherwise mundane role repetition; his daily performance of ‘identity’ as subaltern migrant dhobi. Ultimately, Munna’s emergence as the film’s ‘bigger person’ (Rao, personal communication, 2013) raises questions about the modern Indian urban narrative of privilege, class distinction and socio-economic inequity. Munna’s gesture of altruism is an expression of agency ‘from below’. His act demonstrates the ability of the marginal to contest and diverge from the essentialising and shackling pedagogy of nation. In his gesture, Munna breaks the repetitious cycle of expected linearity by performatively expressing a ‘time of liberation’, albeit symbolic. Summing up the arguments and propositions in this chapter, Dhobi Ghat exhibits several characteristics of the new wave of Indies. In its representation of liminal ghosts and the fragments of nation, the film reveals micro narratives of marginalised and subaltern characters whilst performing a ground level mapping of the national narrative’s transition towards the neoliberal. Dhobi Ghat exemplifies the notion of hybridity and glocality in the Indies by drawing from multiple influences in its narration of multifarious characters and themes. As a postmodern city film that emphasises heterogeneity rather than homogeneity, Dhobi Ghat diverges significantly from Bollywood. Ultimately, through its own performative rewriting of the pedagogical national metanarrative and by exposing the marginal in the mainstream in terms of representation, Dhobi Ghat articulates a distinctively alternative narration of nation.

References Appadurai, A. (1990). ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’. Theory Culture Society; Sage Journals. vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 295–310. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Athique, A. and Hill, D. (2010). The Multiplex in India. New York: Routledge. Barthes, R. (1981). Camera Lucida. New York: Hill and Wang. Bhabha, H. (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Bhabha, H. (1995). ‘Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences’, in Ashcroft, B, Griffiths, G. and Tiffin, H. (eds.). The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 206–209.

200  Dhobi Ghat Broudehoux, A. (2001). ‘Image Making, City Marketing and the Aestheticization of Social Inequality in Rio de Janiero’, in AlSayyad, N. (ed.). Consuming Tradition, Manufacturing Heritage. Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge, pp. 273–297. Butler, J. (1999). Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge. Chandran, R. (2008). ‘Raj Thackeray’s Arrest Sparks Protests in Mumbai’.Reuters. 21 October. Available at: http://in.reuters.com/article/2008/10/21/idINIndia36069020081021 [Accessed 4 Oct. 2014]. Chawla, D. (2011). ‘Monologues in Brown: A Mystory Performance’, in Chawla, D. and Rodriguez, A. (eds.). Liminal Traces. Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense Publishers. pp. 75–94. Chibber, V. (2013). Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital. New York: Verso. Dolan, J. (1993). Presence and Desire. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Ebert, R. (2006). Roger Ebert’s Movie Yearbook 2007. Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel Universal. Madison, D. and Hamera, J. (2006). The Sage Handbook of Performance Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Marramao, G. (2012). The Passage West. London: Verso. Mazierska, E. and Rascaroli, L. (2003). From Moscow to Madrid: European Cities, Postmodern Cinema. London: I B Taurus. Monod, K P. (2009). Imperial Empire: A History of Britain and its Empire, 1660– 1837, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Narine, N. (2010). Global Trauma and the Cinematic Network Society. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 27:3, pp. 209–234. Reddi, C V N. (2009). Effective Public Relations and Media Strategy. New Delhi: PHI Learning. Villar-Argaiz, P. (2008). The Poetry of Eavan Boland: A Postcolonial Reading. Dublin, Ireland: Maunsel & Company. Winkler, M. (2009). Cinema and Classical Texts. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

9 Peepli Live Neoliberal Capital, Media ‘Knowledge’ and Political Power

Earlier chapters and sections have mentioned Peepli Live’s hybridity as a film funded and marketed by Aamir Khan Productions (AKP), yet espousing unconventional satirical socio-political themes. Peepli Live’s form, style and content will be analysed in this chapter to identify the film’s divergence from Bollywood narratives, its interrogation of the national narrative and, in this regard, the film’s evocation of the ghosts of subnarratives elided from the dominant discourse. I will demonstrate how the film represents marginalised, subaltern figures and their collision with the consumer-driven hyperreality of postmodern India, examining the representation of ruptures and fragmentation ensuing from India’s urban-rural encounter. I will examine the film’s depictions of the Indian news media as an increasingly dominant arbiter of discourse in an urbanising nation, where overwhelming consumerism is coterminous with vestiges of the erstwhile British colonial system. These relics of pre-independence structures reverberate in Peepli Live’s thematic evocation of endemic state corruption, bureaucratic apathy towards marginalised individuals and India’s seemingly ­unbridgeable socio-economic disparity. It is also worth considering whether the film’s themes and issues interpret discourse emerging from socio-­political fractures and contradictions in a rapidly globalising and increasingly neoliberal nation. In this regard, I will reveal a nexus between capital, media and politics as represented in the film.

Synopsis Peepli Live, directed by Anusha Rizvi, is a satirical narration of events in the life of its protagonist, Natha (Omkar Das Manikpuri), an impoverished farmer. Natha lives in the village of Peepli with his extended family: his brother Budhia (Raghuvir Yadav), wife Dhaniya (Shalini Vatsa), three children and the brothers’ elderly mother. The film is set against the backdrop of farmer suicides in India, stemming from their indebtedness and inability to repay bank loans in the face of drought and crop failure. Several rural regions in India witnessed farmer suicides, commencing in the post-globalisation years. P Sainath (2013) observes that ‘at least 270,940 Indian farmers have taken their lives since 1995’; and the Indian government is consistently indicted for its apathy towards the plight of these farmers.

202  Peepli Live In Peepli Live, Natha and Budhia are embroiled in a similar predicament; they are unable to repay a bank loan and are faced with the prospect of the bank auctioning their land. The imminent appropriation of their land and the hopelessness of their situation compel the brothers to ingratiate themselves to Bhai Thakur, the local moneylender. Bhai Thakur humiliates the brothers, sarcastically suggesting the two farmers commit suicide because the government has launched an initiative to grant monetary compensation to the surviving kin of farmers who kill themselves. This facetious remark is absorbed at face value by the siblings and adopted as a plan to extricate themselves from their impending penury. Natha decides to kill himself. Rakesh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a reporter for the small, local newspaper Jan Morcha (‘People’s Front’) gets wind of Natha’s plan and promptly publishes it. News of Natha’s announced suicide travels far and wide, reaching the New Delhi offices of news channels ITVN and Bharat Live. Ambitious news anchor Nandita Malik (Malaika Shenoy) is dispatched to the village of Peepli to investigate Natha’s ultimatum of self-destruction. Upon arriving in Peepli and establishing contact with Natha, Nandita’s breaking news report precipitates a media storm leading to a convoy of TV news vans descending on Peepli. A regiment of TV channel crews set up camp, laying siege to Natha’s hut and documenting his family’s every move on live national television. The media circus has a cascading effect on the political machinery of Peepli and the village’s encompassing state, Mukhya Pradesh. The intervention of the Mukhya Pradesh chief minister, Ram Yadav, and local Peepli politicians in Natha’s declaration of suicide eventually opens up a Pandora’s box for central government politicians in Delhi. Natha becomes a pawn in a manipulative game between the media, Chief Minister Ram Yadav, Federal Union Minister for Agriculture Salim Kidwai (Naseeruddin Shah) and local level bureaucrats. As the situation rapidly deteriorates, Bhai Thakur kidnaps Natha and holds him captive in a warehouse on the outskirts of Peepli. A farcical melee ensues between Bhai Thakur, his minions, the media personnel and government bureaucrats. In the tumult, a petrol lamp is displaced, starting a fire. Pushed to the precipice of his forbearance, Natha seizes his chance and absconds under cover of darkness as the warehouse is engulfed in flames. A body charred beyond recognition is extricated from the decimated warehouse, and the media hordes proclaim news of Natha’s death. However, a bracelet on the corpse’s arm reveals to the film’s audience that it is Rakesh, the Jan Morcha reporter, who has actually perished in the blaze. The media crews fold up their operations in Peepli and depart, leaving a trail of garbage in their wake. The film’s final moments depict Natha’s brother, Budhia and Natha’s ‘widow’, Dhaniya, sitting disconsolately in front of the façade of their hut. Budhia reveals that the government has rejected their appeal for compensation because Natha ‘died’ in an accident rather than by suicide. The last scene reveals a despondent, dehumanised Natha as an indentured labourer

Peepli Live  203 at a construction site in the city. He is a diminutive, pale shadow of his earlier self and seems lost amongst a slew of toiling construction workers; their bodies encircled by the same high-rise buildings their exacting and exploitative exertions will bring to fruition.

Peepli and the Postcolonial: Moneylenders, Middlemen and Farmer Suicides Peepli Live begins with a microcosmic reconstruction of India’s broad diversity and variegated composition. The heterogeneous nation is personified by a packed tempo minicab (a small, 3-wheeled van) containing a colourful assortment of people. The film’s main characters, Natha and his brother Budhia are ensconced in the throng of passengers as the tempo lurches forward. The film’s title track Des Mera (‘My Country’) is cued at this point, as the camera tracks the tempo’s transition from urban to rural landscape, filming the vehicle’s progress through child labourers toiling by the wayside. The metaphor of the crowded van, with passengers hanging on to its rear and sides, hopping on and off in conjunction with Des Mera’s lyrics, appears to gesture towards India as a nation of multitudinous inhabitants, inexorably hurtling towards an indeterminable destiny. The song’s refrain sums up the tableau: A river of colours paints this land With a trick in the dye at every bend … India, you see, is a clever mix Large hearts, tattered pockets … The tempo’s transition from the city to Natha and Budhia’s village is significant at the outset because this journey is reversed and its context altered at the film’s coda. Narrative information released during the title sequence enables the viewer to identify the brothers’ underprivileged socio-economic status. This is accomplished through Des Mera, which plays non-diegetically in the background as the song’s subtitled lyrics appear simultaneously on screen, juxtaposed with a shot of the brothers who have alighted from the tempo. The wheels keep turning, move on Who knows where we are headed No food no water Find an excuse to carry on living An interplay between lyrics and images assists in signposting Budhia and Natha’s impoverished condition. The opening sequence gradually filters down from its general views of the landscape and camera mid shots of the crowded van, to an image of Natha and Budhia isolated in long shot

204  Peepli Live (Fig. 9.1). This distillation from generic to particular also applies to the song lyrics. The first stanza of the lyrics (above) alludes to India and its people. The second half of the second stanza (No food no water | Find an excuse to carry on living) draws our attention to the two brothers and their impending fate, recalling Natha’s earlier musing, ‘what if we lose our land?’ Therefore, the combination of image, music and text appears to shift narrative focus from the diachronic generality of India’s uncertain collective national destiny to the immediate synchronic specific situation of the two individuals we see before us.

Figure 9.1  Natha and Budhia: Isolated long shot.

Subsequently, the two men pause for a drink at the roadside country liquor stall before staggering homewards across the village fields. Natha’s wife, Dhaniya, irate at their inebriation, demands an explanation for their visit to the bank in the city. Natha reveals that the bank is poised to auction their farmland, owing to the brothers’ inability to repay a loan. The brothers’ situation is a throwback to the historical socio-economic conflict faced by peasant farmers in India’s feudal colonial system of dialectical agrarian operations involving landowners and indentured peasants (Chatterjee, 2012: 11). In this colonial-era system, farmers had to rely on loans from wealthy landowners (zamindars) in order to cultivate crops on their own land. In the event of drought and crop failure, peasants unable to repay loans often at usurious interest rates had to either forfeit their land or become bonded labourers to the zamindars. In order to ameliorate this feudal structure, the Indian government initiated bank loan schemes directed at farmers in the rural hinterland. The loopholes in this system are highlighted in Peepli Live’s representation of Natha and Budhia’s predicament. Facing untenable circumstances stemming from their poverty, the

Peepli Live  205 brothers have had no alternative but to mortgage their land to the bank for a loan. Unable to repay, they fall prey to the commonly enforced penalty of banks appropriating land in lieu of loan repayment. In effect, Natha and Budhia’s condition reflects the contemporary inequalities continually faced by Indian farmers in the nation’s globalising free market economy. This indiscriminate system, juxtaposed with Natha and Budhia’s disempowered socio-economic status, results in their deflection to the margins of modern existence. They become subaltern fragments: ‘the elements of social life that cannot easily be assimilated into dominant discourses or structures’ (Chibber, 2013: 19). Peepli Live’s representation of entrenched feudal structures in contemporary rural India reveals reconfigured serfdoms that manifest in forms and figures such as the modern moneylender. The moneylender has arguably supplanted the erstwhile zamindar as a source of capital for impoverished farmers. Wary of state schemes in the form of bank loans, several Indian farmers still seek out moneylending middlemen as a more familiar way of procuring capital investment. These middlemen often resort to tactics of coercion and violence to extract farmers’ compliance to their directives. When Natha and Budhia learn about the auctioning of their land for defaulting on their bank loan, their only recourse is to approach Bhai Thakur, the local moneylending middleman. Bhai Thakur, the modern substitute for the erstwhile zamindar, in terms of his intermediary role between peasant and political elite is an opportunistic extortionist and unscrupulous fixer for the corrupt state chief minister, Ram Yadav. Bhai Thakur meets the brothers’ petition with callous disregard and a scornful suggestion to commit suicide as a means to receive compensation from the government. Thakur’s apathy and his political connections invoke parallels with India’s historical colonial/postcolonial configurations that contributed to the current tacit symbiosis between the socio-political elite and middlemen such as Thakur. Subaltern Studies theorist Ranajit Guha contends that in liberated postcolonial India, the empowered Indian bourgeoisie capitalist class failed to dissolve the feudal landowners’ dominance over subaltern peasants and hence could not engender an inclusive egalitarian system (Guha, 2012: 5). Instead, Guha argues, the capitalists aligned with the feudal class to form a coalition of ruling elites that obviated participation of the farmers and labouring classes, pushing them to the periphery of national discourse and the decision-making process. In this context, Peepli Live portrays the modern interpenetration of regional politics, local middlemen and the central government. Importantly, it introduces another key modern entrant into the dominant discourse in the form of the media. However, although the colonial complicity between feudal landlord and capitalist bourgeois policy makers may have been reconfigured in present-day India to include new participants such as the media, this pre-independence alliance remains intrinsically intact.

206  Peepli Live The detritus of colonial systems persisting in postcolonial India is a recurring motif in Peepli Live. Vivek Chibber uses the term ‘anticolonial nationalism’ to describe the independent postcolonial state’s desire to shake off the shackles of ‘colonial ideology’ or the ‘ideology of rule’, which in reality is contradicted by the state’s own acceptance and perpetuation of foundational frameworks that sustained colonial rule (Chibber, 2013: 249). Peepli Live’s narrative communicates this paradox by interweaving its representation of colonial-era bureaucracy and political corruption with the nationalist rhetoric deployed by local and national politicians in archetypically divisive state politics. This turbulent negotiation between colonial past and postcolonial present is couched in the postmodern hyperreality of a media-dominated Indian urbanscape. Arguably, Peepli Live’s constellation of financial institutions, political power, moneylending middlemen and pervasive news media is symptomatic of India’s rapidly globalising neoliberal economy.

Neoliberalism and Natha Peepli Live propagates a self-reflexive appraisal of the consequences of India’s globalisation for farmers, particularly the role of neoliberal market deregulation and corporate investment in exacerbating the nation’s economic disparity. Natha seems dwarfed by a system where power and capital preside over political policy and media manoeuvring. Essentially, most actions by individuals in the film appear to be directly or indirectly governed or motivated by capital. Nandita Malik, the relentlessly ambitious and sometimes ruthless ITVN news reporter, interprets people and situations through TRP (Target Rating Points) viewership ratings. The TRP system is an Indian media rubric used by television channels to gauge audience numbers and programme impact. In a highly competitive and male-dominated media milieu, Nandita’s actions are determined by her unmitigated thrust towards attaining the highest TRP ratings. This unfettered zeal to attain corporate targets is shared by Nandita’s rival news correspondent and bête noire, Deepak, as well as the motley assortment of media teams sequestered in Peepli. As the narrative unfolds, it becomes evident that political power at both the state and federal level is complicit with the news media in an intertwining of capital, communication and power. With his debilitating debt, Natha, the subaltern farmer, is at the receiving end of this discourse. He appears trapped in a liminal space between this insurmountable web of neoliberal capital and power. In essence, his manipulation by politicians, media and middlemen is demonstrative of the overarching and seemingly all-encompassing power of capital. One manifestation of the capital-power nexus is Union Minister for Agriculture Salim Kidwai’s hidden agenda: to invoke his executive powers and throw open the nation’s economic portals to American corporations. Peepli

Peepli Live  207 Live’s representation of Kidwai’s link with multinational corporations refers specifically to the American conglomerate Monsanto. Monsanto, a transglobal American biotechnology and transgenetic plants developer, was incorporated into India’s inchoate neoliberal policy of courting deregulated foreign capital investment or foreign direct investment (FDI) in the 1990s. During a conversation with the chief minister of the state of Mukhya Pradesh, Ram Yadav, Kidwai offers to exercise his powers to extricate Yadav from the ‘Natha suicide crisis’ in return for Yadav diverting all further Mukhya Pradesh government crop-seed contracts to the American multinational company. Yadav unequivocally accedes to Kidwai’s request and by proxy to ‘Sonmanto’ (Yadav’s malapropistic reference to the corporation). In 1998, Monsanto acquired a 26 percent share in MAHYCO (Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company), a company based in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. Its goal was to encourage the distribution of genetically modified Bt cotton seeds and herbicides (Dasgupta, 2005: 75). Several scholars, such as Vandana Shiva, link ‘multinational capital and globalisation to the “cultural abomination” of suicide seeds’ (Herring, 2007: 131). ‘Suicide seeds’ was a term coined by activist scholars to describe Bt cotton seeds proliferated by Monsanto, which could not regenerate seeds, leading to a ‘biological dependence of farmers on firms’ (ibid.). This demonstrates how capital can be totalising in its imposition of the market imperative, with capital’s attendant hegemonic neoliberal system predicated on introducing market logic into every human interaction (Harvey, 2005: 3). Crop failures, to a significant degree ensuing from Monsanto suicide seeds, exacerbated by failed monsoons and farmers being unable to countenance financial shortfalls, are factors widely identified as having precipitated the spate of farmer suicides in several regions in India. The central Vidharba region suicides of 2008, in particular, form the touchstone for thematisations in Peepli Live. These scenarios implicate the role of capital and the neoliberal state in pushing farmers such as Natha to the brink. David Harvey (2005) asserts that the global spread of neoliberalism into education, the media, corporate and financial institutions is so pervasive that it is now integrated into the common worldview – a blueprint to interpret daily life (Harvey, 2005: 2–3 ). It is fair to contend that the neoliberal agenda and its after-effects are thematically folded into Peepli Live’s exposition of the dilemma facing Indian farmers in general and Natha in particular. After their failed visit to Bhai Thakur, Natha and Budhia are accosted by a group of farmers who urge the brothers to join them in sharing a chillum of marijuana. Budhia recounts Bhai Thakur’s callous exhortation to commit suicide as a means of gaining compensation from the state. One of the farmers facetiously retorts that ‘the government should take over our lands and give us farmers a pension to retire’. Another farmer challenges the viability of farming in their current circumstances, with the state-prescribed use of expensive American seeds and fertilisers (a reference to Monsanto)

208  Peepli Live intensifying the vicious cycle of drought, crop failure, indebtedness and farmer suicides. This conversation between the farmers encapsulates the zeitgeist surrounding farmer suicides and underpins Peepli Live’s blurring of boundaries between representation and reality. This exchange also reflects radical changes in India’s agrarian operations following the nation’s neoliberal turn in the 1990s. Ania Loomba, invoking the Indian Research Unit for Political Economy (2003), cites the research group’s findings, describing globalisation as operating under the cloak of ‘integration and development’ but revealing its true form as an instrument of ‘imposition, disintegration, underdevelopment and appropriation’ (Loomba, 2005: 219). Relevant to the theme of farmer suicides as presented in Peepli Live, the research findings reported continued debt extraction in developing nations, cancelling of credit subsidies to underprivileged sectors, open door policies inviting global conglomerates to assume large market shares, the dismantling of domestic industry and supplanting of subsistence crops with cash crops (ibid.). These larger macro issues embedded in the discourse of neoliberalism inform the grassroots-level plight of Natha, his brother and the farmers of Peepli. A Centre for Development and Human Rights article asserts that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling government has appropriated land from farmers, demonstrating the ‘dominant [neoliberal] discourse in the country’ (Rayaprolu, 2015). This land is a barrier to the ‘Make in India’ campaign, which encourages multinational corporations to invest in production in India (ibid.). The expropriated land is passed on to the corporations in line with Modi’s invitation to ‘Make in India’ in exchange for tax exemptions. Peepli Live’s indictment of state apathy could be related to Ritambhara Hebbar’s claim that ‘the government, whilst expressing its concern over farmer suicides, feigned innocence in its role over the processes that have led to the conditions of despair and apathy in the countryside’ (Hebbar, 2010: 89). She asserts that the farmer has been diminished ‘to an object of study for his/her pathos and irrationality, and the state has regained its rhetorical role as the benefactor of the farmer caught in a situation of crisis’ (ibid.). This is clearly the case in Peepli Live’s depiction of the anthropological gaze directed at Natha by TV news channels, local politicians and those from the highest echelons of federal executive government. They all reduce Natha to an almost infantilised object (reminiscent of Shai’s overtures to Munna in Dhobi Ghat), with politicians, including the state chief minister Ram Yadav and his rival, the local ‘backward caste’ leader Pappulal, displaying a Pecksniffian and patriarchal benevolence towards Natha for the benefit of the rapacious TV crews. Peepli Live also parodies caste politics at the grassroots level in India, eviscerating topical and relevant issues in this regard. Striations of caste and class are strong determinants, particularly at the district level in Indian state elections. A scene in the film suggests that Ram Yadav, a member of the Yadav caste, will receive Yadav caste votes by default in the upcoming election.

Peepli Live  209 With the media frenzy descending on Peepli, Ram Yadav’s opponent, the ‘lower caste’ party chief Pappulal, perceives opportunity in chaos. In front of the perpetually present TV reporters, he exploits Natha’s background to fabricate a sense of commonality, a false solidarity with Natha on the basis of their common caste affiliation. Presenting a placatory television set to Natha, the leader proclaims to the media that Natha will martyr himself for the emancipation of the ‘backward’ castes. If Natha does not, Pappulal pompously declares, several of his party acolytes will lay down their lives for the cause. The stark irony is that the television presented to Natha is useless, because his hut cannot accommodate and he cannot afford the electricity. This irony is magnified by the presence of myriad TV vans and the media crew stationed outside Natha’s dilapidated dwelling, monitoring his every move for the viewing pleasure of a voracious urban audience. The object of their curiosity, Natha, however, cannot even plug in his new possession. The scene with Pappulal and his ineffectual gift therefore positions Natha as an embodied site of intersection for the nation’s discourses on economic disparity, pervasive media presence and rural caste dynamics. The intricacies of caste-based politics are an integral and singular dimension of rural Indian life. This is particularly the case during elections, when political groups often use the ‘alleviation’ of the suffering of the ‘lower’ castes as a rhetorical device or a promise of appeasement (Bayly, 1999: 303). The economic imperatives of India’s capital-oriented economy after globalisation have contributed to a state of flux in rural caste dynamics (Hebbar, 2010: 92). Hebbar notes the movement of traditionally non-agrarian caste groups, such as the Mahar, Matang, Teli and Banjaras, into the farming occupation (ibid.). This state of flux in rural caste dynamics has foregrounded the caste and class specificities of the problem by ‘demonstrating how insular intra-caste cooperation has weakened social ties and contributed to a loss of selfhood’ (ibid.) in rural India. Social scientists have argued that farmer suicides indicate the disintegration of community ties and familial bonds in rural areas (ibid., 192). This is especially evident in the isolation faced by Natha’s family in the wake of the media invasion of Peepli. Any notion of solidarity amongst the villagers is superseded by their desire to capitalise on the opportunity to hawk their wares to the media hordes. Natha himself experiences a growing dissociation from his family, falling into a state of anomie as the media onslaught intensifies. Fissures develop between Natha and Dhaniya, the latter indignant to the point of hostility at the media because of their besiegement of her home. Dhaniya is strong-willed and independent, and her pragmatic worldview causes her to vent her ire at Natha, blaming his ineptitude for all their travails. Natha and Budhia’s mother, Amma, played by veteran actress Farrukh Jaffar, retains her cantankerous, intractable demeanour during the media ordeal, heaping scorn and imprecations on all and sundry. Director Anusha Rizvi reveals that Amma was inspired by characters in India’s art

210  Peepli Live and Parallel films, including Ray’s Pather Panchali and Jaffar’s own turn as a mother in the mainstream Hindi film Umrao Jaan (1981) (Rizvi, personal communication, 2013). I contend that Amma embodies Peepli Live’s postmodern parody of Indian cinema’s venerable matriarch archetype, invariably present in several seminal arthouse and mainstream Indian films, including M S Sathyu’s Garam Hawa (1973) and the Odia-language film Lavanya Preeti (1993). Confined to her string-cot, Amma appears detached and almost oblivious to her son’s impending suicide. Similar to almost all the characters surrounding Natha, she is solipsistic in her concerns for her own welfare and interests. Natha’s brother Budhia, after cannily transferring the responsibility of suicide to Natha’s shoulders, is himself reduced to the state of mute observer. He seems overwhelmed and baffled by the media’s intrusion and the political interest generated by Natha’s announcement of suicide. Natha’s isolation from the Peepli villagers as well as his own family is illustrated in a scene where he is woken from sleep and repeatedly asked when he will die by his young son. The son’s anxious desire to be aware of Natha’s time of departure stems from the boy’s uncle assuring the lad that he will become a government contractor after his father’s demise. Natha, infuriated by his son’s apparently callous lack of filial devotion, casts the boy out of the room after administering a volley of verbal and corporal abuse. Following this incident, Natha unburdens himself of his weltschmerz, seeking solace in cuddling his goat thereby preferring the company of domestic livestock to his own flesh and blood. This sequence and preceding events described earlier indicate the slow breakdown of family ties and underscore Natha’s alienation. Peepli Live’s representation of Natha’s isolation also alludes to the larger individualisation and fragmentation of rural communities and the declension of community in the new national narrative of neoliberalism.

Indie Attributes Peepli Live departs from Bollywood in its use of several non-professional actors indigenous to its rural location. Director Anusha Rizvi specifically cast Omkar Das Manikpuri to play the film’s main character, Natha. Manikpuri has a background in local village folk theatre and is the son of a daily-wage labourer from the central Indian region of Chhattisgarh – the location for Peepli Live (Aikara, 2010). In this regard, Rizvi (personal communication, 2013) defends the film’s strong Indie ethos, despite its affiliation with big production companies AKP and UTV. She insisted on casting Omkar Das Manikpuri, despite the corporate echelons’ apprehensions about the ramifications of this choice on the marketability of the film (ibid.). Prior to Peepli Live, Manikpuri was a largely unknown actor whose physical appearance fell outside the stipulations of Bollywood’s male archetype, largely required to be tall, fair-complexioned and North Indian, with

Peepli Live  211 a chiselled physique (ibid.). Rizvi managed to convince AKP of Natha’s suitability for the role. Aamir Khan himself had previously expressed his desire to play the role of Natha (ibid.). Rizvi’s ability to maintain her artistic vision and independent ethos demarcates her Indie credentials within the film’s otherwise hybrid production. Peepli Live features several veteran actors with theatre, television and radio backgrounds, including Raghuvir Yadav as Natha’s brother, Budhia, Farrukh Jaffar as Amma and Naseeruddin Shah as Salim Kidwai. Peepli Live’s music is another facet that is distinctive from commercial Hindi cinema. The folk songs interwoven into the narrative are intrinsic to the thematic context, continuing the precedent of Des Mera at the start of the film, with satirical self-reflexive social critiques. The amalgamation of diverging musical styles, the interspersing of music by the Hindi rock band Indian Ocean with indigenous rural folk tunes, is a marker of Peepli Live’s heterogeneous composition. In addition to involving the participation of several villagers in the film as supporting cast members, Bhadwai village (where Peepli Live was filmed), is credited with the composition and performance of one of the tracks, Mehngai Dayain (‘The Demon Inflation’). Anusha Rizvi reveals the spontaneous filming of this song during a village geet mandali (community music session) (Rizvi, personal communication, 2013). The film’s coda unfolds to a regional tribal tune Chola Maati Ke, emphasising the integration of the local rural context into Peepli Live’s larger narrative themes. This use of indigenous folk music (particularly its lyrics) alongside pop/rock to develop narrative context in the film demonstrates a strong deviation from Bollywood strategies of song and dance. In some measure, Peepli Live’s incorporation of music and lyrics as a narrative device to raise critical questions about dominant socio-political systems is analogous to Gandu’s deployment of subtitled rap lyrics. Apart from its heterodox application of music to bolster its thematisation, Peepli Live also exhibits form and style that is more protean than Bollywood in terms of cinematography and editing. Wide-angle and establishing shots accompany handheld camera and close-up shots. For example, when Nandita’s ITVN crew first enter Natha’s hut and find him recumbent on the floor, the camera operator probes Natha’s sleeping face in an attempt to capture a documentary-style extreme close-up, with comical consequences. In addition to multifaceted cinematography, editing cuts function in the film to break linear continuity, enhance satire and, most importantly, to illustrate the urban-rural divide. A good example is the strategic contrast-cut deployed after the scene where Chief Minister Yadav is interviewed by TV news channel Bharat Live. He waxes lyrical about farmers in India, disingenuously declaring that the ‘prosperity of farmers means prosperity of the nation’. This scene immediately cuts to Natha’s wife, Dhaniya, snapping ‘What rubbish! Have you gone mad?’ In reality, Dhaniya is expressing her anger at Budhia’s revelation to her that Natha is going to commit suicide.

212  Peepli Live In conjunction with cinematography and editing, the film’s mise-en-scène also serves to communicate subtextual layers of meaning. The Delhi media offices of TV news channels ITVN and Bharat Live are portrayed as enclosed spaces; beehives of activity with a suffusion of tele­vision screens and technological devices. They represent modern India’s commodification of news and current affairs commensurate with the nation’s rapidly multiplying television news channels. The Delhi TV studios in Peepli Live, to some extent, are metonymic spaces that emphasise larger contemporary Indian civil society’s immersion into the postmodern practice of watching (Baudrillard, 1994: 76): mediating, negotiating and ‘consuming’ the world through televisual screen interfaces and the discourse generated by TV news.

The Ominpresence of Media The centrality of the media in contemporary India is constantly evoked as a leitmotif in Peepli Live. The incongruous presence of corporate media crews in Peepli’s rustic settings draws attention to the distinction between New Delhi and backward Peepli. Dalmia and Sadana cite the fracture between urban and rural as the most pertinent issue faced by modern India and regard this divide as a site of colliding urban and rural perspectives, as represented in films such as Peepli Live (2012: 5). However, this ostensible dichotomisation of urban and rural also contains diverse contexts impacted by India’s neoliberal transformation into a market-driven economy, of which the media is one of the most prominent manifestations. In this regard, corporate television channels ITVN and Bharat Live are overwhelmingly motivated by India’s aforementioned TRP system and an obligation to fulfil market demands. Representation of the two news channels in Peepli Live is an indictment of the burgeoning popularity of a sensationalist, alarmist and tabloid style of reporting adopted by contemporary news media in India (Athique, 2012: 67). Several of these channels operate within the common parameter of TRP-oriented news programming, with lurid broadcasting screens often overpopulated by two and often three simultaneously scrolling news tickers presenting a virtual bombardment of live news. In Peepli Live, the capital interests of these corporate TV news channels encourage their skewed representations that appease the political and elite class. This is demonstrated by Nandita and her rival reporter Deepak’s unctuous sycophancy towards Union Minister Salim Kidwai and Chief Minister Ram Yadav. These above factors – strategic corporate capital and its alliance with political elites – largely account for the cutthroat competition between Nandita and Deepak. Interestingly, Peepli Live’s representation of the local rural newspaper Jan Morcha contains clues to intermediary agents and actors at the socio-political interstices that are influenced by the larger shifting matrices of capital markets

Peepli Live  213 and political power. Jan Morcha, a struggling, sole-proprietor-owned village newspaper, operates at the bare minimum, with a dilapidated printing press in a decrepit room that is subject to the vagaries of frequent rural power outages. This provincial news daily, operating under the grandiosely-titled sole-­ proprietorship, Navkranthi Prakashan Private Limited (‘New Revolution Publishers Limited’), is portrayed as independent and socialist in its outlook, covering human-interest stories in the area encompassing Peepli. Rakesh, the Jan Morcha reporter, breaks the Natha suicide story when he overhears Natha and Budhia disclosing details of Natha’s suicide pact to a village tea-stall owner. Jan Morcha, already teetering on the brink of failure, has its licence arbitrarily revoked by the District Collector in reprisal for its ‘untimely’ publication of a potentially damaging story on the eve of state elections. This punitive action by agents of state power is an allusion to the precarity of indigenous local forms of print news media. Jan Morcha’s lack of autonomy and the newspaper’s arbitrary termination at the hands of the state political machinery emphasises the relatively unfettered operations of the TV news teams in Peepli, gesturing towards the intensifying influence of corporate media in India. After becoming redundant, Rakesh is optimistic about new job prospects when Nandita Malik contacts him. Contrary to his naïve expectations, Nandita takes control of the Natha story and uses Rakesh as a gofer during the ITVN crew’s stint in Peepli. In one scene, Rakesh presents Nandita with his job CV, mentioning his prior work experience of covering various village events for Jan Morcha. Nandita condescendingly dismisses Rakesh’s suggestions that she study his CV, tersely suggesting he should restrict his attention to the Natha story. In another sequence, Nandita berates Rakesh for his idealistic, sentimental view of the farmer suicides. This occurs when Rakesh raises the self-critical question of why media attention is tendentiously focused on Natha, when the entire village has witnessed a suffusion of farmer suicides. Nandita remonstrates with Rakesh for what she considers his maudlin view, declaring that the undeviating objective of journalism must be to acquire a story and maximise its appeal. Differing dimensions of discourse emerge from Nandita and Rakesh’s perspectives, where encounters between dualities of realist and sensationalist, urban and rural, print and television, corporate and local, occur against the backdrop of India’s transforming structures. These representations of Rakesh and Nandita, Jan Morcha and ITVN, signpost the changing dimensions of the Indian media. These overlapping dialectics invoked through antinomies of the nation’s media forms directly address the contention that the Indies evoke discourses of the national narrative from their median position in an interstitial space. In this context, Rakesh personifies the theme of diminishing integrity, ethics and honest reporting in modern Indian journalism. His death in the warehouse blaze at the end of the film is eclipsed by a cacophony of

214  Peepli Live live TV reports proclaiming Natha’s death in a fire. Rakesh’s inadvertent ‘martyrdom’ in an inferno – a death destined for Natha – functions as a symbolic elegy for moribund forms of grassroots print media, owing to the inexorable rise and insuperable influence of corporate news media. Peepli Live, in underscoring the primacy of media in modern urban India, concomitantly reveals the decline of agriculture and labour issues in mainstream urban media journalism. Former rural affairs editor P Sainath notes the growing absence of grassroots themes and issues in mainstream news reporting and the substitution of ‘beat’ reporters with business correspondents in the modern Indian media (Karnad, 2007). Sainath claims that these correspondents ‘walk in the tracks of corporate leaders’, and when they do report issues pertaining to labour, they do so ‘through the eyes of corporate leaders’ (ibid.). This assertion informs Peepli Live, which to a significant degree mirrors the symbiosis between corporate-owned media companies and political power, often resulting in tendentious news coverage. Deepak, the Bharat Live reporter, sets up an interview with Samman state chief minister, Ram Yadav. He displays his overt familiarity with Yadav, ingratiatingly asking him to provide a few ‘soundbytes’ to camera on the farmer suicide issue. Ram Yadav indulges Deepak’s blandishments, offering superficial platitudes about the value of farmers to the nation. Nandita Malik displays a similar lack of impartiality in the form of her obvious familiarity with Salim Kidwai, Union Minister for Agriculture. Kidwai and Nandita engage in playful repartee during the commercial break of a live news bulletin, with Nandita indulging Kidwai’s oblique and inconsequential remarks on the forthcoming Peepli by-elections, and in a later interview, the farmer suicide crisis. Peepli Live’s satirical take on the bonhomie between media and political power arguably bears a large degree of verisimilitude, in terms of a general ‘disconnect between the mass media and the mass reality’ (Karnad, 2007) in post-liberalisation India. This, in turn, questions impartiality and objectivity in factual coverage of news and current affairs in a neoliberal milieu where, as Peepli Live suggests, the media colludes with the state apparatus. In his interview with Karnad, Sainath mentions the departure of the ‘agriculture columnist’ in most newspapers, asserting ‘if you lack correspondents on those two beats [agriculture and labour], you’re saying 70 per cent of the people in this country don’t matter’ (Karnad, 2007). This could be transposed to Peepli Live’s representation of the laissez-faire reluctance by both Nandita and Deepak to cover Natha’s quintessentially rural problem. When Nandita is first assigned to the Natha story in Peepli, she initially demurs stating; ‘farmer kind of stories are not exactly my forte’. Nandita’s detached view is shared by the multitude of TV channels that descend on Peepli for the sole purpose of getting an exclusive and sensational ‘scoop’ on Natha’s suicide. This mirrors the agonistic and dialectical arbitration between the urban and rural space in the Indian national narrative.

Peepli Live  215 Concomitant with its appraisal of news media practices, Peepli Live also uncovers systemic political malaises and malpractices perpetuated by state representatives at the regional and national level. These bureaucratic misdemeanours occur in collusion with the sensationalist media. The dyadic forces of media and state eventually atomise Natha’s abject situation to the level of spectacle (Dalmia and Sadana, 2012: 5). There is a recurring theme in the film; Natha is treated as an anthropologised object, manipulated by the system and constantly oscillated between centre and periphery. Natha is dehumanised by the media, in the sense that his home becomes a human zoo and he is transmuted into a human exhibit to be broadcast for the spectatorial pleasure of a primarily urban viewership. Even Natha’s unpredictable bowel movements become a source of obsession for the stationed camera crews. In effect, as a pawn of the self-serving and opportunistic media, Natha is compelled to ‘perform’ before the camera, to enact his ‘exotic’ rural identity for a national TV audience, thereby appeasing the mythologised urban imagining of the ‘backward villager’. In this regard, Natha could be compared to Truman Burbank in The Truman Show (1998, director Peter Weir), where Truman’s daily life is on display, televised as fly-on the-wall corporate-sponsored entertainment for a worldwide audience. The distinction between the two film characters is that Natha is moderately aware he is being filmed (see Gandu’s similar predicament in Chapter 7), while Truman only realises this artifice halfway through the film. The common thematic strand that intertwines these two characters is their exploitation by the media to provide entertainment to a demanding viewership. Complicit in this manipulation, politicians fuelled by their own ulterior motives pose and posture in Peepli with the beleaguered Natha. After playing to the myriad camera crews, the politicians promptly depart, as soon as the cameras are set aside, and the discarded Natha is once again relegated to the periphery. P Sainath’s statement, describing his view of India’s liberalisation is also relevant to Peepli Live’s depiction, not only of Natha’s manipulation, but also of Peepli village’s contradictory stagnation in India’s neoliberal age. In other words, ‘political opportunism and media management have provided the appearance of different choices and systems, without any meaningful changes in outcomes’ (Sainath, 2001). In this context, entrenched corruption, bureaucracy and apathy are displayed at the highest levels of power in the central government’s ministry of agriculture. P Sengupta, the Agricultural Secretary to Agriculture Minister Salim Kidwai, exhibits a sense of detachment, reminiscent of the colonial era, preferring to indulge in tea tasting rather than paying heed when Sengupta’s secretary conveys the news of Natha’s impending suicide. Disregarding the announcement, Sengupta bids his secretary to sit down and sample the ‘second flush’ of his new exclusive Darjeeling tea. He advises his secretary not to concern himself with the situation, as they could easily transfer responsibility for the Natha crisis to the High Court, whilst their boss, Salim

216  Peepli Live Kidwai, would ‘manage the media’. Sengupta’s ‘let them eat cake’ attitude to some degree parodies the historical British colonial affinity for tea as well as the colonial authority’s apathy towards Indian peasant welfare. Natha’s story eventually makes the cover of Time magazine, exemplifying the intertwining of local, national and global levels through the hyperconnectivity of the media. This does nothing, however, to ameliorate Natha’s condition, and he remains an exploitable marginalised object.

Ghosts of Other Stories, Intertextuality and Double Time Peepli Live, similar to several of its new Indie counterparts, intersperses the ‘ghosts’ of other narratives in its primary storyline. As mentioned previously, these phantoms of ‘other’ stories often relate to issues and themes of alterity, marginality and exclusion in the historiographical inscription of India’s grand narrative. Peepli Live uses postmodern meta-reference as a recurrent strategy, conjuring these ghosts through the medium of intertextuality that is codified into the film’s narrative. Peepli Live specifically invokes the past narrative of colonial subaltern peasants operating under the yoke of feudal practices. The film demonstrates how these ‘ghosts’ still haunt the present in the unchanged situation of farmer suicides and rural stasis. The visitation of such subaltern narratives and historiographies from below (Chaturvedi, 2012: ix) in the form of farmers forgotten in the postcolonial mapping of a new nation is conjured through the talismanic leitmotif of Peepli Live’s lone farmer. He appears as a malnourished solitary figure, incessantly toiling and digging in unyielding barren soil in the intense Peepli heat. When the media cavalcade descends on Peepli, Rakesh the local reporter, astride his motorcycle, chances upon the solitary digger and asks him for directions to Peepli. Rakesh’s query falls on deaf ears and the farmer continues his relentless and seemingly hopeless pursuit of digging into the non-arable land. The silence of the emaciated figure appears to signify his inarticulate lack of agency; the inability of the subaltern to speak. This silence seems emblematic of the film’s larger theme of dispossession and desuetude afflicting farmers. Later in the film, Rakesh attempts to re-engage with the farmer, this time dismounting from his motorcycle, approaching the labourer and asking for his name. The man pauses only for an instant to proffer his reply – ‘Hori Mahato’ – before returning to his apparently futile labours (Fig. 9.2). The figure of Hori Mahato, the lone tiller – a ‘son of the soil’ trope, recalls Bimal Roy’s canonical postcolonial arthouse film Do Bigha Zamin (‘Two Acres of Land’, 1953) and its farmer protagonist Shambu Mahato. Shambu suffers a similar predicament to Natha. Following a famine in his village, he is unable to repay his debt to a feudal landlord and faces the auctioning of his two acres of land. The significance of the surname shared by Peepli Live farmer Hori Mahato and Do Bigha Zamin protagonist

Peepli Live  217

Figure 9.2  Rakesh’s encounter.

Figure 9.3  The vacant pit symbolising Mahato’s absence.

Shambu Mahato, could be posited as Peepli Live’s modern intertextual invocation of the ‘ghost of Mahato’, and the discourse of oppression and exclusion signified by this name. In addition to this filmic homage to Do Bigha Zamin, Peepli Live contains identifiable references to characters and themes from works of Hindi literature. Hori Mahato is also a central character in the seminal pre-independence Hindi novel ‘Godaan’ by literary luminary Munshi Premchand, which was published in 1936, translated into English by Gordon C Roadarmel in 1957 and adapted into a homonymous Hindi

218  Peepli Live film in 1963. Godaan’s Hori Mahato, like his skeletal namesake in Peepli Live, is a penurious peasant. Similarly, Natha’s spouse in Peepli Live shares the same name as Hori’s wife in Premchand’s book, Dhania [sic]. Like Peepli Live, Godaan’s themes interweave class and caste distinctions in rural Indian society and the enduring problem of farmer debt often engendered by feudal systems. Peepli Live’s inclusion and portrayal of the Hori Mahato character is not restricted to functioning as a stylistic intertextual cinematic narrative device. As a signifier, Hori Mahato enables Peepli Live to establish a dialogic, subtextual connection with Godaan, the colonial era Indian literary masterpiece; it therefore creates a link to the nation’s past. Mahato’s gaunt corporeal form is an almost spectral presence in the village of Peepli. He appears, drifting across the background of village events, including the evening musical gathering, the geet mandali. In another scene, Mahato silently glides past the raucous carnival put on by the villagers in front of Natha’s hut, a mute observer to the spectacle (Fig. 9.4). The simultaneous presence and absence of Hori Mahato rekindles latent narratives of marginalisation. These in turn summon the revenants of an effaced and disavowed subaltern past in India’s developmental historiography.

Figure 9.4  Mahato in the midst of the media circus.

The ‘then’ (Godaan’s Shambu Mahato) and ‘now’ (Peepli Live’s Hori Mahato) emphasise both the ruptures as well as the stasis in the nation’s timeline, gesturing towards India’s current time of undecidability. In the 2010 film, Hori Mahato remains fixed as the hopelessly oppressed, perpetually labouring farmer, while the world around him modernises and moves on. His appearance in Peepli Live symbolises the unchanged plight of the rural subaltern in India’s modern metamorphosis. This recalls historical

Peepli Live  219 episodes such as the Bengal famine of 1943 that resulted in the deaths of close to four million people (Fraser, 2006: 201). Crop failures in the wake of 1942’s devastating cyclones were compounded by the British administration’s diversion of food supplies intended for a starving rural Bengal population to an already well-stocked Allied war effort (Gupta, 2008: 253). Gupta mentions how the colonial administration’s vacillating ‘trial and error’ policies, including ‘free trade’ of essential food grains during a time of crisis, ‘sacrificed the civilian population, particularly of the rural areas’ (ibid.). This pre-independence scenario is re-enacted in Peepli Live’s depiction of Natha and of Hori Mahato’s contemporary postcolonial predicament in a neoliberal free market system where starvation, suicides and government indifference underscore the peasants’ largely unaltered state. Arundhati Roy draws attention to India’s current postglobalisation market-oriented middle-class existing alongside the ghosts of ‘250,000 debt-ridden farmers who have killed themselves’ (Roy, 2014: 8) (see Chapter 5). This revelation reaffirms Peepli Live’s evocation of the ghosts of subaltern peasants that re-emerge in a recontextualised present as recrudescent evocations of the past. Hori Mahato’s silent passing goes unnoticed by the media crews, undeviating in their obsession with Natha. Mahato dies in the very pit he was digging, literally and metaphorically having dug his own grave. His absence is denoted by an image of the vacant pit, the site of his fruitless exertions during his impoverished life (Fig. 9.3). This poignant and symbolic trope demonstrates the contiguous cohabitation of the modern market-driven middle class and the static rural subaltern – the encounter between ­majority and minority narratives in modern India. Hori ­Mahato’s largely unacknowledged death in Peepli Live signifies his passing into the s­ pectral realm of innumerable farmer deaths and suicides in post-­globalisation India. It gestures back to Roy’s assertion (also see Chapter  5) that the ‘300 million’ members of India’s post-International Monetary Fund market ‘“reforms”’ middle class, exist alongside the ‘800 million who have been impoverished and dispossessed’ in order to make way for the middle class (Roy, 2014: 8). Peepli Live’s subtle interpolations of metaphorical devices such as the subaltern Hori Mahato extends to the film’s incorporation of intangible and nondescript objects. In a knee-jerk reaction to Jan Morcha’s article reporting Natha’s impending suicide, the state’s political machinery under the aegis of Peepli’s district magistrate (DM) allocates Natha a conciliatory gift: a hand pump, whose model name is Lal Bahadur Shastri. This turns out to be a small hand pump. The significance of this diminutive and nondescript pump’s grandiloquent title is considerable, as it is shared eponymously with one of India’s prime ministers, himself physically short of build but regarded as a strong leader and an outspoken crusader for farmer welfare. The latter Lal Bahadur Shastri belonged to the Indian National Congress and was a votary of Nehruvian socialism, rendering the satirical potency of the above sequence all the more relevant.

220  Peepli Live However, the ‘Lal Bahadur Shastri’ given to Natha under the state’s Lal Bahadur Shastri resettlement scheme, has no appurtenance or mechanism to support its primary purpose: pumping water in a drought-ridden region. The hand pump impotently occupies space at the centre of Natha’s hut alongside the unopened box containing politician Pappulal’s placatory television; both objects are united in their total lack of practical function (Fig.  9.5). The DM’s emissary, Peepli’s block development officer, after leaving Natha with the unviable device, reminds him that he now cannot consider suicide, declaring ‘Lal Bahadur Shastri has just saved you’. This parody of the real Lal Bahadur Shastri’s grand design for rural India denotes how ‘out of time’ Shastri’s vision is with chief minister Yadav’s disingenuous piece-to-camera ‘soundbyte’: ‘prosperity of farmers means prosperity of the nation’. With the failure of the Lal Bahadur Shastri hand pump to forestall a media invasion, the chief minister compels the DM to consult a compendium of bureaucratic government schemes and programmes designed in the past to compensate or placate peripheralised sections of society. A Kafka-esque web of ritualised colonial red tape is re-imagined when the chief minister’s apparatchik DM recites an interminable list of such programmes. The DM’s incantation of schemes and initiatives is based on actual post-independence programmes aimed at alleviating the poverty of the rural poor, but largely ineffectual in reality, owing to the vitiation of these programmes by corrupt and bureaucratic government systems. These past programmes are parodied in Peepli Live in such a way that their archaic and vacuous titles appear to summon the ghosts of India’s bureaucratic past. They include Indira Housing for the Homeless (named after former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi), the Jawahar Employment

Figure 9.5  Ineffectual offerings: The Lal Bahadur Shastri hand pump and untouched television.

Peepli Live  221 Programme (after her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, the nation’s first Prime Minister), Annapurna (Sanskrit for ‘full of food’) for starvation and Gramin Vikas (rural development) for villagers. Minister Yadav displays his exasperation at the unsuitability of all these hoary and grandiose schemes that seem incommensurable with the contemporary singularity of Natha’s predicament. He asks the befuddled district magistrate to concoct a new scheme more apposite to the modern idiosyncrasies of the ‘Natha problem’. Two disparate timescales emerge from the above discussion of the ghosts invoked in Peepli Live and point towards the double time of nation. The village Peepli and its inhabitants seem to be suspended in limbo; a state-sanctioned stasis, where anachronistic colonial systems of feudal exploitation, bureaucracy, socio-economic and caste hierarchies are reinvigorated and sustained. This situation is encapsulated in reporter Rakesh’s remark, ‘Nothing has changed in Peepli for 60 years, so what will the election change?’ Peepli Live’s suspended state is to some extent comparable to the representation in Indie film Harud (2010) of the cloying environment in which ordinary civilians in the turbulent northern territory of Kashmir live in isolation, surrounded by Indian security forces and detached from the rest of India (See chapter 11). Rural Peepli, suspended between an ossified past and a hyperreal, media-dominated urban consumerist India, largely represents the nation’s present time of undecidability. The imbrications between these temporal dimensions imagined in Peepli Live epitomise turbulent, agonistic negotiations, multiple overlapping layers between ostensible dualities – development and stasis, urban and rural, peasant and politician, colonial and postcolonial. Through its ghosts that emphasise the splitting of the nation into double time, Peepli Live addresses several shades of globalisation’s asymmetries and ambiguities, particularly the widening gulf between marginal and mainstream in a rapidly neoliberalising nation.

Natha’s Transition from Rural to Neoliberal Space Peepli Live represents a nation gradually subsumed by the ‘totalising’ narrative of globalisation and neoliberalism. The ground-level reality of this subsumption is the elision of subaltern fragments. Modern embodiments of marginality, such as Natha, are arguably ‘living ghosts’ of the national narrative. Their peripheral existence in India’s present bears transdiscursive testimony to the nation’s historical colonial/postcolonial exclusion of subalterns from the process of scripting a national narrative. Instead, the traditional Indian pedagogical ‘mythology of nation’ is transmuting into a current dominant urban imagining of a neoliberal nation. David Harvey asserts that neoliberal capital aims to implant a universal economic impulse or market logic in every human interaction (Harvey, 2005: 3). Similarly, Sainath (2001) observes the universality of market fundamentalism from ‘Mumbai to Minnesota’ (cited in Loomba, 2005: 218),

222  Peepli Live with the neoliberal system ostensibly cutting across ethno-religious and geopolitical distinctions in order to present the market as a nostrum for all global malaises. On the one hand, globalisation has aided the compression of time and space through technological advances (Appadurai, 1990: 296; 1996: 33). On the other hand, despite the shrinking of spatial and temporal geopolitical dimensions, imaginings of the ‘global village’ have excluded and denied ‘citizenship’ to peripheral actors like Natha in the interstices of its discourse. Therefore, a politics and economics of exclusion inform interstitial sites such as Peepli and non-actors such as Natha, who become the marginalia of complex discourses of neoliberal capital, media-generated knowledge and political power. The above argument presenting the universalising and supervening face of capital is to an extent represented by the reaction of the Peepli villagers towards the impingement on their habitat by the urban media. The incursion of the media is not viewed as an encroachment on their space but as a stimulus for the economically desperate villagers to set up their own microcosmic open-market system and utilise the ad hoc opportunity to generate some income. Stalls selling bottled water and burgers spring up side by side with folk arts, puppetry and tightrope walking – archetypes of the traditional Indian village fair, underpinning the contradictions of globalisation. Enduring, mythologised notions of the rural sense of community and solidarity inscribed in films such as Mother India (1957) are superseded by the Peepli citizens’ individualistic pursuit of capital goals. They perceive the media circus as a serendipitous opportunity to alleviate their economic impoverishment rather than as a situation that demands their collective intervention in their compatriot Natha’s deteriorating state of affairs. This opportunism arising from impecuniousness resembles Hyenas (1992), a film by postcolonial cinema auteur Djibril Diop Mambéty, where denizens of the dilapidated Senegalese village of Colobane ingratiate themselves to a wealthy home-returning expatriate in the hope of receiving her financial favours. The standardisation of capital logic and the incorporation of the global neoliberal enterprise into the narratives of postcolonial nations (thematically invoked in Hyenas), arguably occurs through diffuse networks of power and a governmentality of the human body. Ultimately, in Peepli Live, Natha’s body itself becomes a site of contestation, a bio-political battleground in the complex network of state, media and capital. Natha’s ultimatum of suicide – the destruction of his own body, the source of ‘anatomo-politics’ and biopower (Foucault, 1978: 139–40) – despite originating from a sense of abject helplessness, nevertheless connotes an act of resistance. Interventions by agents of power in the form of the state and media, trying to either encourage or prevent Natha’s suicide, indicate coercive attempts to discipline, dominate and thwart Natha’s resistance through

Peepli Live  223 objectification and appropriation of his body. This objectification occurs on several different levels. For Nandita the reporter, the objectification of Natha is a means to an end. She is aware that the ultimate goal of the media corporation she represents is the achievement of top TRP ratings. The TRP barometer of corporate success therefore becomes Nandita’s own compass to navigate an unrelentingly competitive media milieu. This fuels her drive to flesh out a sensational story in Peepli, irrespective of its moral implications. This rationale also informs the modus operandi of Nandita’s nemesis, Deepak, and the media contingent in Peepli. However, the sinuous chain does not end here. The media maelstrom that descends on Peepli, patronising and anthropologising its inhabitants and Natha, is inextricably linked to the demand for sensational stories by an urban Indian viewership. This is symptomatic of the postmodern condition of consumer capitalism that extends from commodity fetishism to a rapacious desire for audio-visual images, news stories that entertain or titillate. The dominant discourse of urban consumerism also implicates the Peepli villagers, whose own compliance with objectification by the urban media and the state indicates a collective ‘lack of activism and political mobilisation’ (Hebbar, 2010: 103). This enables the hegemonic state and media to reinforce their intended status quo of top-down governmentality. In so doing, Peepli’s citizens become inadvertent instruments and unwitting accomplices in the repressive and ideological state apparatuses’ appropriation of Natha’s body. Eventually, at the film’s dénouement, Natha’s corporeal body is subsumed and subjugated by capital. His escape from Peepli marks his transition from the rural margins to the urban metropolis; a coda that reverses the film’s opening sequence. During the film’s final moments, the camera frames the city’s images of progress in the form of large billboards promising palatial dream houses in sprawling urban spaces – the modern Indian neoliberal dream. Natha is subsequently revealed as one amongst the multitude of the city’s indigent subalterns existing at the bottom of the urban food chain – he is an indentured migrant labourer in a building construction site. The montage at the end of the film depicts Natha and his fellow migrant labourers as spectres, their physiognomies shrouded in the white cement mortar and dust of their labours. The dispatching of Natha from the centre of the narrative to its periphery at the end of the film seems total and irreversible. This displacement symbolises the final appropriation of Natha’s body by the hegemonic neoliberal discourse marking his relegation to the realm of spectrality. Back in the village, Natha’s brother Budhia reveals to Dhaniya that their claim for compensation has been denied on the grounds that Natha ‘died’ in an accident and did not commit suicide, as per government stipulations. Natha’s transformation into a ‘living ghost’ and his surviving kin’s denial at the hands of the state is analogous to Bholaram’s soul in the satirical Hindi short story, Bholaram ka Jeev (‘Bholaram’s Soul’), by Harishankar

224  Peepli Live Parsai. This is a trenchant black comedy about the continuance of colonial corruption and hypocrisy in bureaucratic Indian government offices. The title character Bholaram, an ex–civil servant spends the entirety of his retired life propitiating and pleading with government clerks and officers for his pension. Bholaram’s dead soul even shuns paradise and returns from the afterlife to continue his crusade on earth. However, even his soul is unsuccessful in receiving reparation from the state. In a similar vein, Peepli Live’s epilogue establishes that Natha and his ‘surviving’ family seem condemned to occupy the same liminal purgatory as Bholaram, suspended in a hegemonic national narrative.

References Aikara, A. (2010). ‘The Unlikely HERO’. Journal of Courage Archive. 18 August. Available at: http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/the-unlikely-hero/662109/ [Accessed 4 June 2013]. Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bayly, S. (1999). Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age. New York: Cambridge University Press. Chatterjee, P. (2012). The Nation and Its Peasants’, in Chaturvedi, V. (ed.). Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial, 2nd ed. London: Verso. Chaturvedi, V. (2012). Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial. 2nd ed. London: Verso. Chibber, V. (2013). Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital. London: Verso. Dasgupta, B. (2005). Globalisation: India’s Adjustment Experience. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Dalmia, V and Sadana, R. (2012). The Cambridge Companion to Modern Indian Culture, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality. New York: Pantheon Books. Fraser, B. (2006). Bengal Partition Stories: An Unclosed Chapter. London: Anthem Press. Guha, R. (2012). ‘On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India’, in Chaturvedi, V. (ed.). Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial, 2nd ed. London: Verso. Gupta, D. (2008). Communism and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1939–45. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Hebbar, R. (2010). ‘Framing the Development Debate: The Case of Farmer Suicides in India’, in Sengupta, C. and Corbridge, S. (eds.). Democracy, Development, and Decentralisation in India. New Delhi: Routledge, pp. 84–110. Herring, R. (2013). ‘Stealth Seeds, Bioproperty, Biosafety, Biopolitics’, in Herring, R. (ed.). Transgenics and the Poor: Biotechnology in Development Studies, 2nd ed. Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Karnad, R. (2007). ‘The Editor? Do We Need the Fellow?’ Outlookindia.com. Available at: http://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/the-editor-do-weneed-the-fellow/235794 [Accessed 1 Mar. 2016].

Peepli Live  225 Loomba, A. (2005). Colonialism-Postcolonialism, 2nd ed. Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Rayaprolu, P. (2015). ‘One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: The Case of Land Acquisition in India. Centre for Development and Human Rights. 15 March. Available at: http://www.cdhr.org.in/land-acquisition/one-step-forward-twosteps-back-the-case-of-land-acquisition-in-india/ [Accessed 6 Nov. 2015]. Roy, A. (2014). Capitalism: A Ghost Story. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books. Krovvidy, S. (2001). ‘The People Who Matter Most: P. Sainath Records the Forgotten India’. Indiatogether.org. May-June. Available at: http://indiatogether.org/ opinions/talks/psainath.htm [Accessed 6 May 2013]. Sainath, P. (2013). ‘Farmers’ Suicide Rates Soar above the Rest’. The Hindu. 18 May. Available at: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/sainath/farmers-suiciderates-soar-above-the-rest/article4725101.ece [Accessed 4 Jan. 2014].

10 All the World’s a Ship Broken Binaries and Hyperlinked Heterotopias in Ship of Theseus

Each photograph always contains this imperious sign of my future death. —Roland Barthes (1981: 97) For nothing is so productive of elevation of mind as to be able to e­ xamine methodically and truly every object that is presented to you in life, and always to look at things so as to see at the same time what kind of universe this is and what kind of use everything performs in it and what value everything has with reference to the whole. —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, iii. (167 bce)

Anand Gandhi’s Ship of Theseus (2013) is based on historian Plutarch’s conundrum about mythical Greek hero Theseus’s ship. Plutarch ponders whether the ship retains its authenticity if its old, worn-out, constituent parts are removed incrementally and replaced by new ones. This intriguing motif is intricately interwoven into the film’s three ostensibly self-contained stories that are ultimately interlinked. Ship of Theseus (SOT) embarks with the story of a blind girl, Aliya (Aida El-Kashef), whose passion for photography is guided by an intuitive and sensorial approach, enabling her to navigate the febrile Mumbai cityscape in her quest for aesthetic images. The film’s second strand, and perhaps its philosophical pièce de résistance, delves into the eschewal by Jain monk Maitreya (Neeraj Kabi) of all medication, despite being diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. Maitreya’s refusal of medical treatment is in accordance with his beliefs and his legal campaign against laboratory testing on animals by pharmaceutical companies. The film’s third tributary traces the intercontinental journey of a human kidney. It was stolen from an impoverished Indian bricklayer, Shankar, and tracked by an improbable Good Samaritan, Navin (Sohum Shah), an opportunistic stockbroker, himself the recent beneficiary of a donated kidney. At the outset, SOT could be considered a watershed film, a distinctive yardstick in the changing trajectory of Indian cinema, setting a precedent not only for the new Indies but also for the entirety of modern Indian cinema. This interpretation is not based solely on the film’s aforementioned non-linear multi-narrative approach – the anthology, portmanteau or hyperlink format it shares with several new Indian Indies and Indie/commercial

All the World’s a Ship  227 hybrids such as David, I Am and Bombay Talkies. The feature that sets SOT apart, particularly from mainstream Bollywood, is the intensity of its intellectual arguments that are crystallised by the introspection, depth and profundity of its philosophical point/counterpoint and intricate overlapping patterns. This close reading of the film reveals the palimpsest of philosophical and epistemological expositions that qualify it as a bellwether in modern Indian cinema. This in-depth analysis calls for the application of an appropriate philosophical palette. I will therefore draw not only from Derrida and Barthes but also from under-studied and excluded Indian epistemological canons that precede privileged European philosophical paradigms in terms of provenance, but often languish in their shadow. I contend that director/screenwriter Anand Gandhi deploys binary oppositions in the film, animating agonistic negotiations between these appa­ rent dialectics. He then proceeds to fracture these dyadic modes of thinking to reveal gradations, multidimensionality and disaggregation that sit in the interstices of ostensibly simple dichotomies. In this postmodern aspect of affirming fragmentation, difference and overlapping heterogeneity, SOT shares consanguinity with the other Indies. Also akin to the other new Indies mentioned in this book, SOT speci­ fically addresses India’s protracted push-pull between the spiritual and the material. In this chapter, I propose that SOT undertakes to undermine this bipolarity by revealing the nation’s fragile bipartisan compromise between these two realms. The film shows how this tenuous truce plays out on a daily basis in everyday interactions across the socio-economic divide in India, often splintering into multiple shards that mirror the makeup of this diverse nation. In this context, I will demonstrate how SOT disrupts a dualistic model of life that informs modern India’s preoccupation with the spiritual/ material binary. The film accomplishes this by often drawing from a school of Indian nihilism that predates Nietzsche, an indigenous form of anarchistic thought, conceived and prescribed between the eighth and twelth ­ arvakas. This is centuries ce by an ancient sect of Indian iconoclasts, the C another conspicuous facet of SOT. The film harkens back to and rejuvenates the underexplored, arcane yet influential Carvaka school of thought, which includes avant-garde proponents of atheism, rationalism, hedonism and materialism. Overall, it would be fair to propose that SOT sets its film­making machinery in motion to dismantle dominant, unitarian, socio-­ religio-economic perspectives that uphold the whole as superior to its parts. SOT’s credo, therefore, stands in opposition to a Gestalt Frankfurt School Weltanschauung, or worldview that privileges the total over the fragments that fuse together to create the bigger picture. In this respect, I liken SOT’s three hyperlinked stories to permeable mem­ b­ranes that haemorrhage into each other. Despite this inter-story interflow and the stories’ ultimate interlinking, it would be shortsighted to regard the film as merely a sum total of three subnarrative compartments that subserviently surrender or conveniently collapse into an overweening main narrative.

228  All the World’s a Ship Indeed, as will be explicated, the diegesis of each individual story entangles a motley array of individuals, objects, ideas and concepts that constantly co-mingle, covertly coalesce and randomly collide with one another. In other words, these filmic elements and agents burst the banks of their cinematic story borders. They communicate feverishly across micro, meso and macro levels and across spatio-temporal, tangible-intangible, socio-economic and ethno-cultural borders, at local, national and transglobal levels of discourse. In this sense, I propose that the film uses Mumbai as a microcosmic analogy of the larger heterogeneous Indian terrain, which in turn, is hyperlinked to the world at large, via the cursor click of globalisation. It is possible to draw a connection between the film’s themes and my diagrammatic conception of a Ship of Indian Cinemas (see Chapter 3). The notion of a ship as a heterotopic space that I ascribed to the ship of Indian cinema, where majority Bollywood is coterminous with the new Indies, also informs the film’s convergence of mainstream, marginal and intermedial. ­Heterotopias are manifested in several social spaces, where majority and minority discourses, social agents and stakeholders are side-by-side, enmeshed in various sites of arbitration including museums, galleries and prisons. The cinema also constitutes a heterotopia where socio-economic, ethno-religious and linguistic asymmetries coexist in a common space for the screen duration of a film. SOT’s strategy of breaking binary oppositions and its portrayal of Mumbai as a postmodern, hyperlinked glocal city assists the conception that the film itself, with its interpenetrating layers, represents a fluid heterotopic film space. I will scrutinise each of the three instalments in the film in order to identify and gauge philosophical and epistemological undercurrents in each synchronic slice that forms the larger Ship of Theseus. I will then stand back and assess the whole within the context of the fragments, spotting how the ship sails purely by dint of the incessant interaction of its parts. Some perspectives suggest that Anand Gandhi apportions the film’s three subnarratives according to the Hindu philosophical triumvirate of ideals: Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram – truth, ethics, aesthetics. Although these themes are identifiable in the three strands, hermetically sealing each story with the totalising stamp of mono-dimensional meaning would be restrictive and counter-intuitive to the film’s emphasis on impermanence. In keeping with my aforementioned thesis that the film’s semantic and hermeneutic borders are porous and hence invite multi-perspective interpretations, I will now examine the interplay of meaning in the film’s intertwining threads.

Blindness, Beauty and Multimedia in a Perception-Dominated Hyperreal World The first story charts blind photographer Aliya’s transition into the world of sight following a cornea transplant. Despite her blindness, she possesses an intuitive ability to frame and compose her human subjects, proprioceptively wielding her camera as if it were an extension of her body. With Aliya

All the World’s a Ship  229 as its focal point, the film’s first instalment problematises the privileging of perception as the pre-eminent tool to experience the world. Instead, the narrative destabilises the link between creativity and the ability to see. This is epitomised when Aliya faces her own paradox. She gains her eyesight but loses the innate creative compass that has enabled her to transcend the dualism of seeing and not-seeing and reproduce the beauty of the world through photographs. Aliya’s paradoxical predicament echoes the film’s motif of blurring barriers and dissolving demarcating lines that are often drawn arbitrarily and spuriously to separate elements that are actually conjoined. Themes in Aliya’s story are symbolised by objects placed in the film frame. Visual interfaces – mirrors, desktop and laptop screens and camera lenses screens and camera lenses – pervade the mise-en-scène, performing the dual function of simulating the human eye, as well as signposting the postmodern condition: fragmentation, heterogeneity and the pervasive presence of techno-visual devices. Transglobal cultural communications across technoscapes (Appadurai, 1996) are underscored when Aliya, who is of Egyptian extraction but resides in M ­ umbai, interacts with her mother via Skype. The film’s emphasis on postmodern heterogeneity includes intercultural miscegenation, represented by Aliya’s relationship with her Indian partner Vinay. The shrinking of time and space through virtual interfaces is invoked when Aliya regains her eyesight in a hospital room in the presence of her father and Vinay, the latter filming the event with a digital camera. In a microcosmic re-imagining of the global village, Aliya’s mother and sister join in as virtual participants, witnessing Aliya’s transformation via a computer logged in to Skype. Therefore, Gandhi concatenates the global and local, collapsing the macro into the micro by aggregating geographically and ethnically disparate agents through the virtuality of technics and technoscapes, bringing them into a shared liminal space where they collectively experience Aliya’s life-changing transformation. In addition to SOT’s representation of technological interconnectivity, the film’s polyglot palette of English, Hindi, Arabic, Marathi, Kannada and Swedish paints the picture of a glocal network with nodal points that intersect in an aleatory, stochastic manner. Aliya, like most of the film’s characters, appears acclimatised to the multicultural and multilingual Mumbai milieu. For example, Aliya’s Arabic Skype conversation with her mother switches to English when Vinay enters the scene. Aliya’s eye surgeon simultaneously code switches and code mixes from Hindi, to the lingua franca, English, both official Indian languages. This versatility of lingual acrobatics is passed on to the other story strands. Maitreya, the monk, performs incantations in the ancient sacred languages, Sanskrit and Prakrit, segueing into English and Hindi as the situation requires. In the film’s third instalment Navin, the stockbroker, chats to his doctor about Kannada, a regional language spoken in the southern state of Karnataka. On his kidney-seeking mission to Stockholm, Navin uses a Swedish-speaking Indian intermediary, Ajay, to communicate with the locals. This lattice of language use bolsters

230  All the World’s a Ship the notion of SOT as a glocal film, forging connections between the local, national and global. The above aspects of SOT could therefore be located as a cinematic evocation of a post-global ‘network society … a culture of virtuality in the global flows that transcend time and space’ (Castells, 2010: 386–387). In essence, SOT represents a hyperlinked world communicating in a crisscross of levels, languages and media. As a noteworthy addendum to the above discussion, in SOT living languages co-exist with dead ones. English, Hindi, Swedish inter alia are coterminous with so-called extinct Sanskrit and Prakrit. This shared lives of languages – present and absent, living and extinct – emphasises SOT’s recurrent motif of syncretism and synthesis that supersedes oppositions and antinomies. The first narrative is inflected with several binary oppositions, largely undergirded by the ostensibly foundational dichotomy between vision and blindness. For example, at an exhibition of her photographs, Aliya is queried by a reporter about her reason for choosing black and white as a medium. Aliya replies that chiaroscuro gives her greater control. It is this notion of control that is destabilised after she gains her eyesight and is no longer able to experience the intuitive inspiration she possessed whilst sightless. In other words, Aliya’s erstwhile sensorial proclivity towards black and white is denuded when she perceives the world through new eyes, assailed by its disorienting suffusion of colour. In short, her black/white binary is broken. The trope of antinomies also punctuates the first film’s mise-en-scène. SOT’s recurring theme of duality appears in different modes, formulating a subconscious backdrop to the film’s narrative progression. In one scene, Aliya stands poised to photograph an elderly man and his young grandson as they engage in a game of chess. The counterpoise of intergenerational distinction and the diametric opposition of black and white chess pawns subtly invoke a universal normalised system of binaries. As mentioned earlier, this depiction of conventionalised dichotomies is offset by the film’s subtle interspersion of shots that continually affirm multiple parts that make up a whole and reflect the Ship of Theseus paradox. For example, Aliya whilst ascending the stairs of a building is intrigued by the presence of bamboo poles flanking the stairs. She questions a man walking ahead of her about the purpose of these pillars. The man explains that the poles serve to prop up the building. This scene’s allusion to individual components indispensible to the existence of the larger superstructure is one of the film’s many allegorical reinventions of Plutarch’s conundrum. The motif of monadic components collectively constituting their overarching monolith is transposed to Gandhi’s formal assemblage of paradigmatic film shots. Each shot depicts a fragment of a larger object – a hand, a contact lens reunited with its other half, a piece of cloth on a washing line, the segments and pips of an orange – all accentuating and reinforcing the notion of the part within the whole.

All the World’s a Ship  231 It is possible to draw on a comparative filmic frame to delve deeper into the theme of binaries blurred by multiplicities and the perception of beauty, as portrayed in Aliya’s story. In this regard, Dhobi Ghat (2010) and SOT share a kinship based on both films’ deployment of photography as a medium to advance plotline and character development. The two films’ prominent female characters, Aliya in SOT and Shai in Dhobi Ghat, are united across the film divide by their passion for photography. There also exist obvious distinctions between the two women. Shai is a diasporic Indian from ­America, whose eagerness to ‘return to her roots’ and capture ‘authentic’ culture often borders on an exoticising anthropocentrism. This is parti­ cularly visible in her desire to photoshoot Munna, the dhobi (washerman), in his ‘natural habitat’, the dhobi ghat. (outdoor laundry). Aliya, on the other hand, is an Egyptian expatriate living in Mumbai, and unlike Shai, her commitment to photography seems more psychologically intense and artistically driven, although at first glance Aliya appears to match Shai’s desire to capture an ethno-cultural slice of Mumbai and its citizens. Both clamour for an authentic image, in some way reflective of the photographer’s own detached wish fulfilment that seeks ‘essence’ before affirming existence. Departing for a moment from the two individuals’ personal causal motivations for freezing life in still frames, it is possible to read reasons for the strategic deployment of photographs per se as a narrative tool in the two Indie films. In both films ‘the testimony of the photograph bears not on what is represented, but on Time’ (Ribière, 2008: 65). Photographs in Dhobi Ghat are used as visual documents of the city and as tombstones to the fleetingness of time. They reflect the ephemerality of Mumbai’s diverse cast of characters: its multitude of inhabitants, as they play their daily role on the city stage and then are heard and seen no more, their narratives overwritten by the arrival of new dramatis personae, in the constantly changing theatre of life. Photos in SOT are markers of time too. They trace Alia’s liminal journey into seeing. Apart from standing as sentinels of time, photos in Dhobi Ghat and SOT are also symbols of death. The presence of artistic objects focused on in the images created by Shai and Aliya reflects the two women’s desire to appropriate and keep alive that which has already passed away in the outer world. Barthes asserts that ‘photography is a kind of primitive theatre, a kind of Tableau Vivant, a figuration of the motionless and made-up face beneath which we see the dead.’ (Barthes, 1981: 32). Raising the thesis of SOT’s deployment of photographs as demarcators of human mortality, it is possible to frame photographic images as memento mori. The immobilised subject’s stasis in a photo is an immortality of sorts, free from the ravages of time. However, the apparent constancy of a figure in a photo is neutralised by the death of the person in real life – their passage into posterity. Even if the person has not yet died, the moment in which they were captured has elapsed, leading to an illusory hyperlink – a dead link, where the image as reference has no corresponding tangible referent in the real world.

232  All the World’s a Ship The severance of the unique bond between Aliya’s blind intuition and her prodigious ability to artistically render the world outside shines a light on how arbitrary the relationship is between her photos and the world she is able to perceive after gaining eyesight. In her case, newly acquired eyesight suffocates her innate and instinctual artistic ability. Alia’s own personal para­dox subsequently leads her to an aporia – a sense of pathless disillusionment. The above dead hyperlink between photos and their referents gives rise to the question, Is visual perception in the process of art creation as imperative as meets the eye? Not mentioned till this point, the most visible distinction between the Dhobi Ghat and SOT characters is Shai’s sightedness and Aliya’s blindness. Deeper scrutiny of the apparently axiomatic binary of blindness/sight draws into focus Aliya’s aforementioned ability to perceive beauty even in blindness, through her tactile, auditory and vocal senses. It is possible to consider whether ‘ultimately—or at the limit—in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes’ (Barthes, 1981: 53). At this point, it could be argued that Shai and Aliya’s photographic attempts at the preservation of beauty for posterity is created by a double blindness: by looking away (Derrida, 1993) or in Aliya’s case, looking through closed eyes. To illustrate this assertion, attention could be drawn to Derrida’s curation of an art exhibition at the Louvre in Paris, Mémoires d’aveugle (‘Memoirs of the Blind’), based on his hypothesis that the process of painting or drawing is one of double blindness. In particular, ­Derrida focuses on Joseph-Benoît Suvée’s Invention of the Art of Drawing (1791), depicting the Corinthian woman Butades, who, torn by her lover’s imminent departure, traces his profile on the wall using his shadow as a guide (Fig. 10.1). In Butades’s tracing of her lover, she must look at him first and then lose visibility for an instant, as she leans over him to outline his shadow on the wall behind them. She is therefore tracing from her memory of the object, leading to a time delay between perceiving her lover, turning a blind eye to him, whilst retrieving from memory the impression of him and reproducing it on the wall. In other words, the artist ­Butades is blind whilst creating beauty. Also, what she is ‘­capturing is not his presence, but the presence of his absence1 – his shadow’ (Kenaan, 2006: 24). How does this relate to the technological apparatus of modern photo­ graphy and filmmaking and in particular Aliya and Shai? When photo­ graphers frame their objects through the inanimate medium of the camera, be it through the lens or viewfinder, they are oblivious to the actual object they have assessed and framed with their own optic lens – the eye. So in this regard, by using the camera as an intermediary device to perceive the figure they are representing, the artist is blind to the object and also experiences the same time-lag or belatedness as Butades between appraisal and reproduction of the model. So, ‘without this miniscule hiatus, one would either have the vision of the model or the vision of the paper, but not drawing on the paper’ (Lawlor, 2006: 32). Is it possible then to tell the difference between

All the World’s a Ship  233

Figure 10.1  Butades’s ‘blind tracing’ of her lover. Source: Joseph-Benoît Suvée, Invention of the Art of Drawing (1791) © Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Image appears in Blocker, J 2007. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis.

Aliya, who can look away or directly face the object of her photo­graphy but cannot see it, and Shai, who momentarily loses sight of her model as she peers through the virtual lens of the camera? This leads to the inference that ‘drawing is blind, if not the draftsman or draftswoman’ (Derrida, 1993: 2), and the ability to apprehend and capture beauty is informed by blindness. This conjoins Aliya and Shai rather than dividing them, dissolving the superficiality of the seeing and non-seeing delineation. In addition, the trace of the represented figure, ‘an emanation … from a real body, which was there’ (Barthes, 1981: 80) inhabits both the meretricious copy temporarily housed in the camera lens and the final captured photographic image or film frame. The art object’s physical and temporal absence lingers in its photographic presence, enlivened by the eyes of the beholder. In other words, ‘the heterogeneity of the invisible to the visible

234  All the World’s a Ship can haunt the visible as its very possibility’ (Derrida, 1993: 45). The flip side is ‘that it is visibility itself that involves a non-visbibility’ (ibid., 52). The adjunct to this simultaneous presence/absence is that death resides in life and vice versa, creating a liminal in-between state. Aliya’s blind ability to create visually stimulating images evokes blind Homer, who in Nietzsche’s (1967 [1872]: 64) opinion, writes more vividly than others because he can ‘visualize so much more vividly’ than those with sight. Perhaps this is why when Aliya awakens to the ‘light’ of perception, after her cornea transplant, she is disillusioned and disoriented, because for her, seeing entails blindness. The unsettling residues of her ‘un-sight’ haunt her newly gained sight. Her previous ability to establish rapport with her photo subjects through a synergy of other senses – speech, sound and touch – seem to have deserted her, dissipated by her inauguration into the normative seeing world, where tangibility is privileged over the ineffable. Without the harmonious collaboration of the senses, experience via perception alone appears an implausible proposition. Eventually, this interruption in Aliya’s ability to produce beauty through art causes her to travel to the ethereal beauty of the snow-capped Himalayas in a quest for inspiration. Patricia Pisters (2014) reads SOT and in particular Aliya’s story through the lens of post-human feminism, espoused by philosopher Rosi Braidotti. Invoking Laura Marks’ (2000) notion of ‘haptic visuality’, Pisters prescribes a decentring of aesthetics and perception that has thus far been implicated in reducing women to cinematic objects of male desire. This position is particularly pertinent to this book’s indictment of the Bollywood ‘item number’ (a provocative dance sequence) as cinematic conventionalising of women as objects of male spectacle. Through its strong female protagonist, SOT raises alternative discourses of experiencing beauty through more subconscious synergies, intuitive modes and sensorial tools. It seems ironic therefore, that Aliya’s departure to the pristine landscape of the Himalayas in order to rediscover and rejuvenate her artistic adroitness is presented to us, the viewers, as grand spectacle – a stunning wide-angle canvas of snow-clad peaks encompassing the foaming white waters of a river cutting through a valley. It is food for thought: the film’s philosophical caveat against privileging the visual as the only means of experiencing and reproducing beauty is itself reliant on aestheticised iconography to communicate the full impact of its message. Could this be considered a paradox within SOT’s rendering of Plutarch’s paradox?

Locating a Confluence Between Nihilism and Metaphysical Dualism: Materialist Charvaka and Monk Maitreya In the film’s second segment, Maitreya, a Jain monk, is vehemently opposed to laboratory animal testing by pharmaceutical corporations. His crusade leads him to a legal battle during which he meets a young law intern, ­Charvaka, at a court hearing. Although united by their public interest

All the World’s a Ship  235 litigation, Maitreya and Charvaka espouse antithetical worldviews. This disjuncture between the older monk and the younger man, who is a radical nihilist, precipitates an impassioned philosophical debate. Charvaka reveals to Maitreya that he has rejected his birth name, Madhavacharya (an ancient Hindu theologian), and adopted, at the age of 14, the name Charvaka [sic], inspired by the ancient heterodox Carvaka school of thought. The ­Carvaka, or Lokayata, system advocated materialism and atheism, exhorting hedonistic enjoyment of worldly pleasures and a nihilistic disassociation from metaphysical concepts such as the soul. During their conversation, Maitreya asserts his perception of human beings as dualists, echoing ­Madhavacharya’s metaphysical tenets from the Dvaita Vedanta, or dualistic school (Myers, 2001: 125), propagating a God/soul binary that is contingent on interpretation through the Hindu scriptures, the Vedas (Iammarino, 2013: 188). This is anathema to Charvaka, who in rejecting his given name, Madhavacharya, has symbolically abjured the dyadic metaphysical subscription to God and the existence of the soul. A strong component of SOT’s philosophical framework is its resurrection of iconoclastic Carvaka thought in the film’s postmodern narrative timeline. The second story’s incorporation of this autochthonous Indian philosophy is all the more striking in that Carvaka was revolutionary at its time. The Carvakas displayed a radically dissenting non-conformity to both the elite echelons of mainstream Hindu ‘high caste’ Brahmins as well as to the a­ lternative but pedagogical religious paths of Buddhism and Jainism. Somewhat akin to the new Indian Indies, the Carvaka collective occupied a ­tertiary, in-between space. As Ramkrishna Bhattacharya argues, the ­Carvaka credo was the ‘lone contender standing against the perceived binary of pro-­ Vedic Brahminical schools on the one hand, and the non-Vedic Buddhist and Jain schools on the other’ (Bhattacharya, 2011). In a modern Indian milieu, with the ascendency of Hindu nationalism under the government of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) and their far-right affiliates, it would be worthwhile to hypothesise how the apostate and often libertine Carvakas would be apprehended if they were to be corporealised amongst the current crescendo of calls for the homogenisation of India as a Hindu nation. In large measure, the film’s second strand performatively exhumes the past, bringing the anarchical Carvaka philosophy back to the present, embodying it in the young law intern Charvaka and pitting him in an itinerant intergenerational Socratic duel with Jain monk Maitreya, who although metaphysical in his spiritualistic affiliations, simultaneously claims adherence to atheism, thereby revealing the instability of logocentric belief. One of the cornerstones of Carvaka philosophy states, ‘Only the perceived exists; the imperceivable does not exist, by reason of its never having been perceived; even the believers in the invisible never say that the invisi­ble has been perceived’ (Myers, 2001: 26). This puts into perspective the first story’s focus on Aliya’s problem and the ‘blindness’ involved in replicating beauty through art. However, Bhattacharya refutes the conception of Charvakas

236  All the World’s a Ship being perception-centric as a common misinterpretation. He  argues that ‘inference preceded by perception’ (Bhattacharya, 2011: 63) is integral to the Carvakas Weltanschauung, although the Carvakas interpretation of ‘inference’ was the antithesis of Brahmin, Buddhist and Jain teachings. Inference in the Carvaka interpretation took a transgressive stand. Rather than toeing the line of scriptures, rituals and mediating priests, Carvaka inference opposed the belief in self, immortal soul, the existence of God, heaven, hell or the afterlife (ibid.). This bipolarity sets the stage for the ideological battleground between Maitreya and young Charvaka. The Carvakas’ refutation of the existence of anything that cannot first be seen recalls the dictum espoused by Gorgias, the nihilist pre-Socratic sophist. Gorgias argued that nothing exists; if it exists, it cannot be known, and if it is known it cannot be communicated (McComiskey, 2002: 35–36). The similarities between Gorgias and Carvaka epistemology are distilled into the views of Charvaka in SOT, who debates the existence of the soul with Maitreya. According to Michael Myers (2001), ancient Carvaka philosophy rejects ‘arguments across the philosophical spectrum – for dualism of body and mind, or for idealism … as part of a general dismissal of metaphysics’ (Myers, 2001: 29). In large part, Charvaka’s debate with Maitreya mirrors both the philosophical fracas between Gorgias and Socrates and the Carvaka disbelief in logocentric transcendentalism. Myers subscribes to what he claims is the Carvakas’ tendentious focus on ‘seeing is knowing’ (Myers, 2001: 31), which seems restrictive and myopic when analysed alongside the broader Indian philosophical thesis that the five senses operate in unison to facilitate ‘experience’ (ibid.). This cooperation between the senses to some extent explains Aliya’s innate ability to reproduce beauty through photography. Bhattacharya undertakes to dispel the conventional conception of the Carvakas’ allegedly unremitting emphasis on perception as the sole means of knowledge. Contrary to popular conception, although the Carvakas did position perception at the pinnacle of experience, they did not disavow other modes of knowledge. They considered all other forms subordinate to seeing in the chain of learning and knowing. ‘They denied the validity of any kind of inference whatsoever unless and until it was preceded first by perception’ (Bhattacharya, 2011: 62). The philosophical duel between Maitreya and Charvaka, often perpetuated through the walking-talking Socratic method of doubt, question and counter-question, provides a conduit to further explore the film’s binaries: tradition and modernity, intergenerational differences, metaphysical trans­ cendence and nihilism inter alia. In one scene Maitreya chants a prayer containing his core beliefs that at once appear nihilistic and metaphysical: There is no celestial beings I know of There is no God Neither heaven, nor hell Neither a preserver not an owner of this universe

All the World’s a Ship  237 Neither a creator not a destroyer No eternal judge There is only the law of causality I take responsibility for my actions and their consequences The truth is multifaceted and there are many ways to reach it May I find balance in this duality I pray, may my true self be liberated of the cycle of life and death … and attain Moksha. Maitreya’s prayer is punctuated with philosophical contradictions. Although he appears to espouse the multifariousness of truth, he still subscribes to the metaphysical notion of truth qua truth. His exhortation to seek balance in ‘duality’ affirms a dialectical imagining of the world. Maitreya is further implicated in metaphysical conditioning, indicated by the desire for his ‘true self’ to be liberated from the karmic cycle of life and death. The allusion to a ‘true self’ seems inimical to the aforementioned notion of multiplicity and entails the monk’s desire for and attestation to a stable unitary logos – a ‘true self’ towards which an individual must aspire in order to attain ­Moksha, or salvation. Therefore, Maitreya perception of the soul as transcendent, infinite and amaranthine is divergent from Socrates’ perception of the soul as contingent on a being’s life or death – the soul exists whilst life exists and dies with the death of its bearer. The ambivalences in Maitreya’s incantation provide an insight into his philo­sophical perspective, redolent with dualities, denying the existence of a creator or destroyer, yet deterministically extolling the primacy of the ‘law of causality’. Maitreya appears to articulate a Sartrean existentialism, where actions and their consequences are the sole determinants of human existence. However, this thesis is subsequently disavowed by the monk’s affiliation to metaphysical causality. In contrast, Sartre advocates non-­deterministic autonomy. ­Maitreya’s adherence to the law of causality more closely resembles Schopenhauer’s dualis­tic metaphysical interpretation of Brahman (­universal reality) and atman (individual embodied soul), (Cooper, 2012: 273), stemming from the German thinker’s study of ancient Hindu philosophical scriptures, the Upanishads. Maitreya tells Charvaka, ‘Every molecule in the universe is affected by our actions. That is the truth or else everything is meaningless … the soul is formless, shapeless, it’s non-­matter and it connects to the world through the body’. For the metaphysical M ­ aitreya, the body is but a mortal coil, a carrier for the immortal soul, serving no other purpose that to signpost the soul. Earlier comparison of Maitreya and Charvaka’s intellectual sparring sessions to Gorgias/Socrates evokes Indian equivalents. Exchanges between Maitreya and Charvaka can be posited as the film’s modern re-enactments of a similar verbal duel between Pingakesa, a Carvaka adherent of dehatmavada (non-belief in the existence of soul outside the body) and Vijayasimha, a Jain monk (Bollée, 2002), 2002: 357). The prolonged debate over the existence of the human soul and, according to Pingakesa, the futility of

238  All the World’s a Ship monastically renouncing the world, is invariably and unsurprisingly won by the monk. This is attributable in no small measure to the urtext for this story stemming from a Jain source, Samaraditya Katha, by Haribhadra (­Bhattacharya, 2011: 22). Indeed, as Bhattacharya observes, ‘in all versions of the story, the denier of soul is defeated by some Jain or Buddhist monk … and is reduced to submission’ (Bhattacharya, 2011: 23). SOT turns the tables on this ancient religious grand narrative, with ­Charvaka the atheist eventually prevailing over Maitreya in the philosophi­cal battle of wills. At the end-stage of cirrhosis of the liver, Maitreya lies prostrate and dying, refusing both medication and food, in a ritual fast unto death. The visiting Charvaka sits by his side and, similar to Pingakesa of old, endeavours to make Maitreya acknowledge the futility of his self-­destructive fast unto death. The young man draws on rationalism to try to make the monk realise the irrationality of his decision to renounce life by refusing medication for his liver, as well as refusing food. He challenges the fast-fading Maitreya with the argument that, with millions of bacteria inhabiting the human body, who knows whether brain cells or bacteria are really in charge? Ergo, he confronts Maitreya with a coup de grâce question to clinch the philosophical duel: How do you know where you end and where your environment begins? Faced with the excruciating pain of his liver cirrhosis and confronted by Charvaka’s unrelenting deconstruction of metaphysical binary conceptions, the monk eventually chooses to sever ties with monastic life and enters the mainstream of secular society. Religious Maitreya’s capitulation to ratio­nality, through his renunciation of asceticism and his integration into society, indicates his acknowledgement of the inadequacies of dualistic, transcendental and metaphysical modes to explain or provide answers to modern life’s everyday quandaries. Unable to further countenance his corporeal suffering, M ­ aitreya repudiates his previous Cartesian dualistic separation of body and soul, mind and matter, self and world, and throws himself headlong into the Dasein of being in the world (Heidegger, 1962). This also spells the annihilation of his adherence to the notion of one true self. Therefore, the structural binary of his earlier privileging of soul over body has effectively been dismantled. ­ aitreya It is interesting to note, as the narrative reveals at a later stage, that M divests himself of the monastic cloak, the sartorial symbol of s­ pirituality that largely cuts him off from the very society he seeks to engage with, and to which he is so morally and idealistically committed. In parti­cular, the monk’s ultimate renunciation of the spiritual can be interpreted as an impetus to disentangle several apparently binary questions that directly confront a modern Indian context. Charvaka and Maitreya’s vocal tug-of-war and the latter’s realisation of the shortcomings of religious belief animate the larger binary of India’s tussle between spiritual and material (see Figs. 10.2 and 10.3). This is aesthetically articulated in several camera shots. The subtext in the second story gestures towards imminent decisions facing the nation in light of the upsurge in invidious religious politics. It is possible to contemplate whether this entails a choice between whether the nation in the future sails towards a free-thinking, free-expressing autonomy or dogmatically

All the World’s a Ship  239

Figure 10.2  Spiritual and material in Mumbai.

Figure 10.3  Karma and commerce in contemporary India.

religious heteronomy. This is particularly relevant at a time when the bipartisan compromise that has characterised the historically pluralistic and secular Indian social fabric is now under threat from politico-religious factionalism.

Journeying through Time: Hyperlinked Humans, Postcolonial Traces, Transglobal Kidneys The trope of a human kidney’s transcontinental journey is transposed to the time and space boundaries thematically traversed in SOT’s third film segment. Navin, a capitalistic stockbroker turns unlikely crusader, setting off on a cross-continental mission to track down a stolen kidney belonging to

240  All the World’s a Ship Shankar, a daily-wage construction labourer. Navin’s empathy for Shankar’s predicament stems from the stockbroker’s own recent kidney transplant and his social activist grandmother’s exhortations to eschew materialism and embrace altruism. Chasing a clue to Shankar’s whereabouts, Navin and his friend Mannu, reminiscent of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, set off on an animated quest. They arrive at one of Mumbai’s meandering slums, resembling the B ­ razilian favelas in City of God (2002) and Trash (2014) and the ­Argentinian Buenos Aires equivalent, the Ciudad Oculta, portrayed in the film Elefante Blanco (‘White Elephant’, 2012). The camera tracks the duo’s progress down the labyrinthine layout of the slum’s gullies, nooks and crannies leading to ­Shankar’s dilapidated dwelling. This lattice of lanes calls to mind the inner space of the human circulatory system. The city space has long been conceived of as a complex maze of arteries, veins and blood vessels (­Fraser, 2011: 89–90; Sennett, 2008: 204). Navin and Mannu’s winding quest for Shankar through the maze of Mumbai’s slums (Fig. 10.4) simulates the film’s anatomical theme of a constellation of body parts composing the inner and outer whole. The duo’s encounter with Mumbai’s ‘other’ side also exposes ‘officially discarded “‘obsolete’” citizens who form the underground of a modern city’ and whose exploitable labour fuels the ‘ambitions of its modernising elite’ (Nandy, 2008: 74). This in turn invokes the interrelation of micro- and macro-levels of socio-economic discourse.

Figure 10.4  Through winding alleys.

The film zooms out from Navin and Mannu’s expedition to the beating heart of where Mumbai’s downtrodden denizens live to reveal transglobal European links. We learn that the trail of Shankar’s stolen kidney leads to Sweden, where a Swedish man, Aron Jacobsen, has undergone a transplant,

All the World’s a Ship  241 becoming the kidney’s new owner through a purchase brokered by an Indian doctor acting as middleman. This theme of a ‘middleman’ acting as internuncial ‘connecting tissue’, or the meso layer between the macro and micro, again comes to the fore. In Peepli Live, the penurious farmers, Natha and Budhia, had no recourse but to supplicate the unscrupulous money-lending middleman Bhai Thakur, himself a venal agent, serving the macro politics of apathy and corruption at the local and national government levels. Navin and his interpreter friend, Ajay, eventual track down the ­Swedish recipient to his home and confront him with the real provenance of what the man had hitherto considered a legitimately obtained kidney. Navin narrates how his overseas investigation is spurred by the uncovering of a global organ-trafficking network masterminded by the Indian doctor, who has since been arrested in Mumbai. Jacobsen tries to exculpate his action, stating ‘a man in need of money sold his kidney. I am told it happens all the time in India’. He also asserts that he paid a lot of money to obtain the kidney. Navin confronts Jacobsen, asking him whether he considers it morally viable to buy a kidney and capitalise on someone’s poverty. Navin’s riposte is an important inversion of the ethico-moral high ground often portrayed in mainstream western films to be the preserve of white western characters. Navin’s indictment of Jacobsen’s action reflects the larger discourse of indifference and feigned ignorance that typifies the Eurocentric disavowal of historic economic exploitation and inflicted human bondage on which the colonial edifice of Europe was founded and on which its postcolonial structure still stands. Navin’s sojourn to Sweden and his ethically incendiary exchange with the Swedish kidney recipient represents the European man as personifying a discourse that is ‘no longer viable as the deep-frozen Cartesian modern Man of disconnected, distanced and disinterested ways of seeing the world’ (Asberg, 2014: 60). Although the recipient breaks down in tears at the revelation that his body’s gain comes at the cost of another person’s loss, he opts to shut Navin and Ajay out, urging them to leave and never return, on the condition that he will richly recompense Shankar. Jacobsen’s refusal to delve deeper into the humanitarian ramifications of his own solipsistic requirements is symptomatic of wider contemporary discourses, such as the refugee crisis and pandemic of deaths in the Mediterranean, beginning in 2015. In this regard, the third story in SOT exposes the residues of orientalist systems and practices that continue to pervade in the disinclination of richer nations to face up to the realities of socio-economic degradation and dehumanisation that in large measure are vestiges of past colonial oppression, revivified in the global postcolonial present. Navin could be posited as a postcolonial embodiment carrying the trace of the subaltern Shankar across time (of historical colonial oppression) and space (of geopolitical separation). Navin’s act of reversing the moral compass results in a posthuman, boundary-breaking, postcolonial encounter. ­Nonetheless, I argue that this scene in SOT does not seek to

242  All the World’s a Ship overturn a simplistic east/west binary merely to privilege its altruistic Indian ­protagonist. It is revealed that Jacobsen acquired Shankar’s kidney through the same doctor who was implicated in the Mumbai kidney racket. The murky dimensions of the mercenary middleman in India resurfaces in this regard, escalated to a global level, in comparison with the local operations of Peepli Live’s Bhai Thakur. The interpreter and intercultural go-between, Ajay, represents the hybrid in-betweenness that informs the postcolonial encounter and perturbs binary separation. An Indian expatriate, Ajay speaks Swedish, and mediates the interaction between Navin and the kidney recipient. Ajay therefore exemplifies the permeability and interconnectivity of globalised socio-cultural inter-flows. He functions as a device in the film to obviate a bipolar ‘moral versus amoral’ representation of the stockbroker and the Swede, instead underscoring a third space fluidity between ostensible opposites. In effect, the notion that ‘relations precede identities’ (ibid.) is very much at the heart of this three-person set-piece in Ship of Theseus. This sequence resonates conceptually with the posthuman mode of superseding boundaries between the ethical and political, ‘agency and subjectivation, autonomy and dependence’ (ibid.). Another scene depicts Ajay perfectly integrated into the cultural milieu of his adopted Swedish environs as he engages in a Swedish folk music singalong with two local girls. In an earlier scene, we see Ajay’s naturalisation within his home space, where his flat becomes a site of interaction between his Swedish and Asian friends and the Indian sojourner, Navin. The film’s socio-linguistic acculturation and syncretism translates into its multilayered music and soundscapes. Akin to the villagers’ songs in Peepli Live and Dhobi Ghat’s use of Ghazal and Hindustani classical ragas, SOT incorporates indigenous Indian folk music, interweaving it with global soundscapes. In an earlier scene, Navin’s grandmother, hospitalised with a broken leg, invites renowned, real-life folk music singer, Mukhtiyar Ali, from the western state of ­Rajasthan, to her hospital ward. Ali, who hails from the ‘semi-­ nomadic community of Mirasis’ (‘Mukhtiyar Ali’, 2015) performs a song in the Muslim Sufi music tradition. These ethnic tonalities are textured with a more unclassifiable, hybrid sound design, juxtaposing music by Indo-British composer duo Chandavarkar and Taylor, with an aural palette designed by Hungarian sound designer Gabor Erdelyi. The film’s variegated sonic template, alongside the above-described diegetic audio-visual representations of a multilingual and multi-ethnic world, further demonstrates that the players in SOT are enmeshed in a postmodern grid society, one that seems irreducible to simple dialectics. The points raised so far affirm the thesis that SOT imagines local and global heterotopias; spaces of interpermeation, throughout the course of its narrative, ranging from the inner contours of private spaces to larger fields of intercultural and ethno-linguistic communication.

All the World’s a Ship  243 SOT throws a twist into the previously mentioned postcolonial segment of its tale, queering the pitch for any humanist resolution of the kidney-­ related impasse. Navin telephones Shankar from Stockholm to triumphantly reveal the success of his kidney-finding mission. He apprises Shankar about the possibility of restoring the latter’s kidney through the legal channel of filing a judicial challenge. Expressing his distrust and disdain for judicial processes and the law, Shankar spurns Navin’s overture to bring the Swedish recipient to justice, stating he has no more use for the kidney because he has already accepted an out-of-court monetary settlement from his kidney’s new owner. In effect, Shankar’s impoverishment compels him to privilege commerce over kidney. He therefore prefers being bought out of his legal rights to the less lucrative restoration of his kidney. Shankar’s choice, whilst serving as an ironic plot twist, reflects the complexities of entanglements that transcend any predictable pattern of human behaviour, particularly given the fluctuations of a market-driven globalising world. Shankar’s rejection of Navin’s bourgeois altruism also reflects the stark reality of subaltern need at the grassroots level. In addition it dismantles any deterministic cause-and-­effect, top-down conception of Navin’s middle-class beneficence and ­Shankar’s automatic subaltern gratitude. Indeed, Shankar subverts this scheme by displaying agency, taking matters into his own hands and not letting the Bourgeois speak for the subaltern. Essentially, Shankar sidesteps the meso level, in this instance represented by Navin, to directly deal with the macro agent; the foreign usurper of his own body part. Shankar’s volte-face also functions to subvert audience’s expectation of redemptive narrative closure. In addition, it breaks the dualism of materialism, personified by the entrepreneur Navin, and altruism, represented by his idealistic grandmother; a fractious binary that impelled Navin’s philanthropic quest in the first place. Ultimately, through the plot surprise sprung by Shankar, SOT once again accomplishes its agenda of setting up a binary and then breaking it.

Coda: Connecting the Parts The film’s dénouement connects its three main characters, Aliya, Maitreya and Navin, along with several other individuals, when it is revealed that they are all recipients of donated body parts from a single donor. This distribution of human organs from a single source to multiple recipients recalls a similar theme in the Canadian film Jesus of Montreal (1989). SOT’s final sequence depicts a congregation of all the organ recipients (Fig. 10.6), who have separately received invitations from a humanitarian organisation to watch a video created by their donor, whose hobby in life was to explore caves. Gathered in a Mumbai museum hall turned into an ad hoc ‘cinema’, with screen and projector (Fig. 10.5), the recipients follow their donor’s POV camera perspective as he tracks through the interiors of a cave. The only indication of his presence is a shadow cast on the cave walls. This scenario

244  All the World’s a Ship is comparable to Plato’s ancient allegory of the cave, where an assembled ‘audience’ of captured prisoners is bewildered by shadowy images projected onto a cave wall by their captors standing in front of a fire, with the captive audience unable to fathom the genesis or meaning of the images.

Figure 10.5  The museum-cinema heterotopia.

Figure 10.6  Heterogeneous assemblage: The organ recipients.

The jagged excrescences of the cave walls in the donor’s film appear to resemble the inner contours of the human body and its vital organs, echoing the earlier slum alley simulacrum of human arterial by-lanes negotiated by Navin and Mannu. To some degree the three recipients, Aliya, ­Maitreya and Navin, have all experienced meandering, introspective journeys. The ­metaphor

All the World’s a Ship  245 of the cave suggests that the transformative process of their journeys and the accretion of multisensorial experiences provide a more holistic insight into reality than only perception can afford. In other words, the replacement of the original configuration of their corporeal frames with a foreign body part has precipitated alterations and realignments in their perspectives. The evocation of intersections between the living and the dead and the breaching of bodily and conceptual boundaries is underpinned in this climactic scene. Patricia Pisters argues (2014: 70) that the organ recipients are the seemingly seamless continuations of the dead donor, because his organs live in them. I would like to take this a step further and implicate the film’s audience as collaborators in the film’s cinematic and philosophical construction of dissolving borders. To justify this contention, I will revert to the aforementioned argument that the art object being captured during the process of drawing, painting or photography is always-already departing or fading into the past. The image of the object being recorded or reproduced by the artist is produced ­organically in ‘real time’ in the present. The completed picture, film or photo­graph will stand as future testament, not only as a representation of the object that has lapsed into history but also of the absent or departed artist. This co-­weaving of past, present and future is reborn in SOT’s culminating sequence. The seamless flow of time’s triune dimensions is in confluence with  the film’s overarching dissolution of dichotomies. Convergence of time and the breaching of discursive borders in SOT occur philosophically (through the film’s themes) and physically (in the cinema hall), in both abstract and real heterotopic spaces, thereby validating one of this chapter’s core themes. In the latter case, the modern multiplex cinema hall constitutes a hetero­topia, where marginal and mainstream, both in terms of cinema genres as well as socio-­ economically diverse social individuals and groups, congregate in a coterminous space, with the common objective of viewing a film. As sharers of body parts, the omnium gatherum of organ recipients, including main protagonists Aliya, Maitreya and Navin, are all biologically interlinked. They are hyperlinked humans. This recalls Plato’s analogy in The Republic and The Laws, where ‘citizens are compared with the parts of the human body’ (Rutherford, 1995: 220) that unite to build a sharing-based community – a cohesive city-state. In SOT’s climactic set-piece, off-screen spectators in the cinema hall watch the onscreen organ recipients assembled in another heterotopic space; a museum, where they watch images of their donor on a screen. This looping audio-visual interplay between tangible and intangible, real and virtual, cinema hall and fictional cinema, occurs under the auspices of the film projector, similar to the fire in Plato’s cave – both light sources are indispensible to image generation. Playing with time, let us transfer the earlier analogy of the art object past, the artist creating or capturing it in the present, and the artwork as future signifier of the object and artist’s anteriority. The previously discussed simultaneous absence and presence that problematises notions of where the aesthetic interior of a picture or photographic image ends and its outer frame begins

246  All the World’s a Ship is extendable to the film’s final sequence, where the boundaries between life and death are again not just obscured but actively thematically transgressed. Firstly, as ticket-paying spectators, the audience views SOT on the screen in real time, in the present, as the narrative unfolds. However, what the viewers are watching has always-already elapsed, slipped into the past, because this is only a mechanical replication of a series of previous screenings. In other words, thanks to the largesse of the projector, SOT (the art object being viewed) has already been screened in the past in a plethora of cinema halls and multiplexes. So, what we are seeing is a facsimilie of a facsimilie. The assortment of onscreen film characters in the last sequence are themselves implicated in the act of looking (Fig. 10.7) at something that has gone before – the ghostly foray of the cave explorer, his captured video images speaking from beyond the grave. However, Aliya, Maitreya, Navin and their organ-recipient compatriots are in unison with us, the audience, in the present, because we are all staring at a symbol of our inevitable future – death. The cave explorer’s shadow on the cave walls; the only trace of his presence, also signifies his absence from this (and the film’s) world (Fig. 10.8). His absence, akin to Butades’s shadow-tracing of her lover, also adumbrates the recipients’ presence; the donor’s shadow signifies absence on philosophical, figurative and literal levels. His shadow thereby becomes a symbolic prolepsis, a flash-forward for the onlooking fictional film characters, whose cinematic ‘life cycle’ has already revolved into the past. The spelunker’s shadow signifying an absent presence also functions as a prefiguring look to the future for the cinema hall audience in the present. Therefore, in a melding together of time, spectators in the cinema gain a glimpse of onscreen ­character’s ‘passing’ into the past, and through the donor’s posthumous video footage, an anticipation of their own impending future.

Figure 10.7  Looking into time.

All the World’s a Ship  247

Figure 10.8  Presence and absence coterminous in the cave.

The discontinuities between photo/film image, its represented individuals, and the absence of corporeal referents gesture towards undecidability, the zone of ‘occult instability’ (Fanon, 1967: 182–183) between borders of life and death, not to mention the borderlines between other bipolarities explored in SOT’s narrative bulwark. Barthes states: For Death must be somewhere in a society; if it is no longer (or less intensely) in religion, it must be elsewhere; perhaps in this image which produces Death while trying to preserve life. Contemporary with the withdrawal of rites, Photography may correspond to the intrusion, in our modern society, of an asymbolic Death, outside of religion, outside of ritual, a kind of abrupt dive into literal Death. (Barthes, 1981) The above-described marbled mosaic of mortality, time, space, conceptions of humanness and hyperlinked heterotopias plays out in the cinema hall, itself a heterotopic arena. This intricate tapestry renders indistinct the duali­ ties of us/them, viewer/viewed, representation/reality, human/posthuman. It is difficult to delineate in the instant of the film’s final revelation where the film frame (for both the live and virtual viewers) ceases and the outer world commences. It is hard to tell where cinema hall and screen space end and the outside ‘real’ world begins, or where the gazing ticket-paying audience’s real human finitude terminates and the ‘immortality’ of the technologically generated screen characters begins. The interplay between real and virtual audiences, screens, time and space in SOT’s filmic finale is a microcosmic mirroring of the larger world, where entropy and randomness pervade rather than simplistic binaries. SOT ultimately upholds a non-deterministic, fragmented ambiguity, where

248  All the World’s a Ship metaphysical logocentric notions are problematised. The film’s circumvention of overt resolution or restoration of equilibrium is arguably indicative of the irresolvable and indecipherable aporetic arbitrariness in the matrix of the human condition. Therefore, the film’s deployment of Manichean modes and binary encounters that are framed by stochastic, metaphysical, eschatological, rational and nihilistic arguments in all three story instalments lead to inconclusive alleyways and an infinite sinuosity of propositions. Ultimately, in its philosophical significance, SOT becomes a powerful idiom, not just for new, independent Indian cinema, but also for India’s current ambivalence; the nation’s own binary forces of spiritualism and materialism that often subordinate the multiple and marginal voices on the fringes and in the spatial corridors of becoming.

Note 1. This is similar to Aamir Bashir’s statement that he was representing Hindu ­Kashmiri Pandits’ presence by their absence in Harud. See the analysis of Harud in Chapter 11.

References Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Asberg, C. (2014). ‘Imagining Posthumanities, Enlivening Feminisms’, in ­Blaagaard, B. and Van Der Tuin, I. (eds.). The Subject of Rosi Braidotti: Politics and Concepts, London: Bloomsbury. Aurelius, M. [167 bce] (2015). Stoic Six Pack. Lexington, KY: Enhanced Media. Barthes, R. (1981). Camera Lucida. New York: Hill and Wang. Bhattacharya, R. (2011). Studies on the Cārvāka/Lokāyata. London: Anthem Press. Blocker, J (Winter 2007). ‘Blink: The Viewer as Blind Man in Installation Art’. Art Journal, vol. 66, no. 4, pp. 6–21. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis. Bollée, W. (2002). The Story of Paesi (Paesi-kahanayam). Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz. Castells, M. (2010). End of Millennium, 2nd ed. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers. Cooper, D. (2012). ‘Schopenhauer and Indian Philosophy’, in Vandenabeele, B. (ed.). A Companion to Schopenhauer. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 266–279. Derrida, J. (1993). Memoirs of the Blind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Fanon, F. (1967). The Wretched of the Earth. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books. Fraser, B. (2011). Henri Lefebvre and the Spanish Urban Experience. Lanham, MD: Bucknell University Press. Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time. New York: Harper. Iammarino, D. (2013). Religion and Reality. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications. Kenaan, H. (2006). ‘Tracing Shadows: Reflections on the Origins of Painting’, in Bornstein, C. and Fishhof, G. (eds.) Pictorial Languages and their Meanings. Tel Aviv, Israel: Tel Aviv University, pp. 17–28. Lawlor, L. (2006). The Implications of Immanence. New York: Fordham University Press.

All the World’s a Ship  249 Marks, L. (2000). The Skin of the Film. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. McComiskey, B. (2002). Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. ‘Mukhtiyar Ali (Home)’ | Kabirproject.org Available at: http://www.kabirproject. org/profile/mukhtiyar%20ali [Accessed 10 Sep. 2015]. Myers, M. (2001). Brahman: A Comparative Theology. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press. Nandy, A. (2008). ‘Introduction: Indian Popular Cinema as a Slum’s Eye View of Politics’, in Dudrah, R. & Desai, J. (eds.). The Bollywood Reader. Maidenhead, Berkshire, UK: McGraw-Hill. Neitzsche, F. (1967). The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Walter Kaufman. New York: ­Vintage Books. Pisters, P. (2014). ‘Transplanting Life: Bios and Zoe in Images with Imagination’, in Blaagaard, B. and Van Der Tuin, I. (eds). The Subject of Rosi Braidotti: Politics and Concepts, London: Bloomsbury. Ribière, M. (2008). Barthes. Penrith, UK: Humanities-Ebooks. Rutherford, R. (1995). The Art of Plato: Ten Essays in Platonic Interpretation. ­London: Gerald Duckworth. Sennett, R. (2008). The Craftsman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

11 A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation Harud, Haider, The Lunchbox and I Am

Within this study’s broad focus on new independent Indian films evoking alternative narratives of nation, this chapter reconjures the strategies deployed by several Indies of embedding ghosts of other stories in their main narratives and plotlines. It is important to assert that ‘the ghost is not simply a dead or a missing person but a social figure, and investigating it can lead to that dense site where history and subjectivity make social life’ (Gordon, 1997: 8). This chapter expands on the silencing of traumatic episodes in India’s historical timeline, and the new Indies’ reinvigoration and vocalisation of suppressed stories in the present. I turn this theme squarely towards a specific canon of Indie films; a cinema quartet that is simultaneously conjoined and detached by dint of each film’s approach to common topics. I will examine Harud and Haider, both largely invested in revealing disconcerting realities that menace the lived experience of repressed civilians in the trouble-torn northern Indian state of Kashmir. One of the storylines in I Am, last in this chapter’s film quartet, connects with the Kashmir premise of the two above films. I Am’s general thematic tenor covers a range of human rights, identity and social justice issues in modern India. I will also evaluate what is ostensibly an incongruous inclusion to the three above films – Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox. My intention is decidedly not to forge a facile or forced interlinking between the latter and former films. That would seem baseless, considering The Lunchbox, an unconventional epistolary romance set in Mumbai, seems a world away from the conflict-laden clouds covering Kashmir, as portrayed in Harud and Haider, or the socio-political malaises that thematically inform I Am. I will instead gesture towards the converging and diverging avenues through which all four films beckon to subalterns, minority spaces and stories of the departed that co-habit with the living in the nation’s present. So, whilst Kashmir is mired in the stasis of political and existential gridlock, and Mumbai hurtles down the highway to hypercapitalism, the quartet of films scrutinised in this chapter seem harmonious in their interpolation of yesterday’s spectres into today’s stories. These ostensibly obsolete, inconsequential secondary and tertiary narratives from the past are nevertheless fed by, meander from and debouch into, the mainstream.

A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation  251

Ghosts of Kashmir’s Disappeared in Harud Aamir Bashir’s Harud (‘Autumn’, 2010), through its measured narrative pacing and cinematographic long takes, appears to elongate time itself, mirroring the stultified lived experience of ordinary Kashmiri civilians, caught in the crossfire between separatist militants and the Indian Army. The film delves into the struggle of Muslim Kashmiris to retrieve their own identity in this disputed northern Himalayan region, suspended between larger dialectical forces – India and Pakistan, both operating to fulfil their own ulterior agendas (Devasundaram, 2013: 182). Harud is a film that validates Derrida’s perception of cinema as ‘the art of ghosts, a battle of phantoms’ (Ghost Dance, 1983). Derrida’s thesis of a ghost being something from the past that has never found realisation in the present (ibid.) is transposable to Harud’s exposition of the ghosts of Kashmir – its human casualties of conflict. In particular, the film evokes the phantasms of Kashmir’s ‘disappeared’; thousands of young men whisked away from their homes by Indian security forces, in plain sight of their families, and never seen again. The ghosts of traumatic events are abstract apparitions, manifesting in the hidden stories of marginalised common people, forgotten in the face of ineluctable conflict. They resemble the spectres of war invoked in The Road to Guantanamo (2006), through Michael Winterbottom’s ‘double perspective’, where ‘a different angle of vision’ reveals ‘marginal or excluded figures’ that would ordinarily ‘have remained hidden from sight’ (Bennett, 2014: 188). Similarly, Harud conjures Kashmir’s peripheralised phantoms through the film’s diegetic elements. These include photographs of disappeared individuals, real life film clips, radio broadcasts and news footage depicting the conflict, all self-referentially inserted into Harud’s diegetic mise-en-scène. The film’s primary character, a teenager named Rafiq (Shahnawaz Bhat), is continually haunted by the ghost of his brother, Tauqir, who was a tourist photographer before being ‘disappeared’ by Indian security forces. Tauqir appears to Rafiq throughout the film as a silent revenant staring mutely back at Rafiq. These disconcerting visitations exacerbate the bleakness of Rafiq’s aimless existence as he struggles to cope with the stultifying omnipresence of armed soldiers and the city’s volatile and uncertain environment. Shubh Mathur (2012: 218) notes ‘Indian-administered Kashmir is one of the most highly militarized regions of the world, with over 70,000 troops (military and paramilitary)’ stationed to counter the insurrection that commenced in 1989 against Indian rule in Kashmir. The regime of military power at the behest of the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) is so encompassing that it interrupts common social interactions and impedes mobility. In one striking scene, shot in real time, Rafiq and his traffic policeman father, Yusuf (Reza Naji), are seated in a bus filled with Kashmiri commuters returning home after a day’s work. The bus is halted at an army checkpoint. The

252  A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation vehicle’s occupants are ordered to alight and stand in a single-file line as they are methodically frisked by soldiers, who don’t exclude a small child from the body search (see Fig. 11.1)

Figure 11.1  Boy frisked during stop-and-search.

In documentary film fashion, the camera locks in on the protracted process, providing a real-time glimpse into Kashmiri citizens’ resigned acceptance of an intrusive security measure that has become a routinised part of their daily rituals. This scene is evocative of how ‘Palestinian films take place at borders and checkpoints and have therefore been termed ‘roadblock movies’ (Gertz and Khleifi, 2007: 124). In an interview, director Aamir Bashir (personal communication, 2013) reveals the context behind the filming of this sequence in Harud. He notes that he requested permission to film the bona fide army stop-and-search but had no control over its actual enactment. Bashir asserts that the frisking of the little boy came as a surprise to him and presented a deeper perspective on enforced interruptions in everyday Kashmiri civilian life. He notes: So when I went to the soldiers to say this is what I want, they said, ‘we will do what we do’ … but I did not tell them to frisk the boy, who was 3 or 4 years old, and the soldiers did. So for me, that scene became about the stoppage of time. If you are going from point A to B, how an external force comes and stops you from getting there … and the fact that he actually frisked the boy as well … a 3-year-old kid. (ibid.) The provision of a free hand to the Indian security forces in Kashmir was formalised by state and judicial imprimatur of the 1990 Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which was passed by parliament. The Act empowers army personnel to ‘enter and search without warrant any

A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation  253 premises’ (Goldston and Gossman, 1991: 29). It affords armed forces the authority to make an arrest if ‘“reasonable suspicion” exists that [a person] has committed or is about to commit a cognizable offence.’ (ibid.). This is precisely the discourse that informs the disappearance of Rafiq’s brother and a multitude of others in the film. Harud highlights several instances of Kashmir’s suspension in limbo, not only in terms of security, but also the region’s socio-economic detachment from the rest of India and the latter’s thrust towards consumer capitalism. An interesting example is when Rafiq and his friends Ishaq (Mudessir Khan) and Aslam (Rayes Mohiuddin) are lounging on the grass, engaging in idle banter. Ishaq strikes up a melancholy ditty ‘O, world of regret. How can one ever find happiness here? Look at all those who have ended up in their graves’. Commending his vocal abilities, Aslam suggests Ishaq try his luck on the (fictional) TV Show, ‘Who Wants to Be a Superstar?’, assuring him that the whole of Kashmir would send SMS votes in support of their local lad – as and when Kashmir receives a mobile-phone service (the film is set in 2003, when Kashmir was on the cusp of becoming connected via mobile phones). Singer Ishaq retorts, ‘Kashmiris have never voted in an election, so why would they vote for me?’. This is a reference to the promise of a plebiscite for Kashmiris on the question of autonomy and self-determination, which has not been fulfilled. There is a double narrative running through this scene. On the surface, we are clued in to the fact that Kashmir has thus far been disconnected from the rest of India by its lack of a mobile phone service. The narrative subsequently reveals that the Indian government is due to introduce SIM cards in Kashmir as a symbolic ‘gift’ to the people on the Muslim festival day of Eid. However, the perceptibly commonplace conversation about a TV talent show and mobile phones contains deeper connotations. Ishaq’s observation that Kashmiris were not able to vote, together with the fact that mobile phones came to Kashmir several years after they were introduced in the rest of India, underscore the historical disenfranchisement and disjuncture from normative modes experienced by modern Kashmiri civil society. This disconnection has contributed to the community’s continued suspension in a regressive state. Therefore, the film’s ironical interplay of meaning portrays pre-mobile-phone Kashmir’s disenchanted and estranged position in the world’s largest democracy. Arguably, this remains a relatively unaltered state of uncertainty in contemporary times. Harud’s recurring employment of embedded and semi-restricted narrative information provides further insight into Kashmir’s state of arrested development. This is exemplified in a scene where young Kashmiri men stand in a serpentine queue, waiting to receive their mobile phone SIM cards. A TV news reporter from Delhi directs her microphone towards the men and asks them how it feels to be ‘connected with the rest of India’. Segueing into a piece-to-camera, she proceeds to laud the state’s benevolent gesture; the ‘bold step’ of bringing connectivity to Kashmir. The reporter’s superficial and specious ‘coverage’ is typical of endemic media misrepresentation in India

254  A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation and mirrors similar scenarios portrayed in Peepli Live. It also demonstrates the nexus between the news media and government that largely legitimises hegemonic structures. This sequence also throws light on the endeavour to present Kashmir as ‘normal’, integrated and inscribed within a homogeneous national metanarrative. Overall, the reporter’s duplicitous coverage unveils the stark reality of alterity in Kashmir, a region which plays catch-up with the rest of India and therefore is a ghostly shadow of the nation. The device of liberating disconcerting pieces of information from ostensibly mundane interactions is re-invoked in a set-piece involving a football match. Rafiq gets into a fracas with a member of the opposing team. He is dragged away from the melee by his friends, who admonish him for his belligerence, revealing that his opponent is the local militant commander’s cousin. This scene illustrates how, at every turn in Kashmiri life, there seems to be a subversion of ‘normality’, with common citizens constantly sandwiched between military and militants, and where a daily existence bereft of complex underpinnings seems a distant utopian dream. Expositions of socio-political fractures in Kashmir also emerge in moments of levity, as when, for example, the three friends indulge in ‘armchair’ politics, adopting the World Cup football qualifiers as a metaphor to delineate global configurations of power. Conflating football and world dominance, Ishaq, the budding singer, mulls over his hypothesis that if Kashmir were to play the World Cup qualifiers, they would have to play against Pakistan – but he reckons Pakistan is too busy with cricket, so Kashmir might have to play Afghanistan – but he thinks that country cannot even put together a team. Ishaq ultimately declares that China would be Kashmir’s biggest challenger. Aslam reminds Ishaq that ‘China could kick us (Kashmir) like a football’. Ishaq expresses his confidence that America would not permit any Chinese dominance over Kashmir, inviting Aslam’s riposte, ‘Why would the Americans be interested; we have no oil!’ From the points raised so far, a conception emerges of Kashmir as a postcolonial third space, a no-man’s-land populated by living spectres branded by the painful scars of a traumatic past. The title of Pierre Bourdieu’s essay, The Disenchantment of the World, ironically and inadvertently is an almost direct translation of the mournful song Afsoos Duniya, or O World, Full of Regret, sung by aspiring singer Ishaq. The similarity does not end here. Bourdieu’s study of space in relation to the French military presence and their regime of surveillance during the Algerian War of Liberation resonates thematically with Harud. Physical space was forcibly reshaped to be one in which Algerian peasants and nomads would become good subjects under the barrel of the gun. The violence of occupation attacks personhood; but also, in ways inaccessible to western liberal discourses centred on the autonomous individual, attacks, tortures and destroys beloved others, things and ideals. (Mathur, 2012: 217)

A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation  255 Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to see shades of Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers in sections of Harud (and as will be seen, in Haider). This is particularly the case in Harud’s depictions of military occupation that not only deterritorialises geopolitical space but also etiolates the local populace, rendering its members pale shadows of their own existence. During the course of Harud’s narrative, the apparition of Rafiq’s brother is transformed into a metonym for the thousands of young Kashmiri men ‘disappeared’ by instruments of the Indian state apparatus (the police and army). Blurring distinctions between reality and fiction, the film captures an actual mass rally by the APDP (Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons), an organisation demanding government accountability for the abduction of their sons. A scene in Harud depicts the gathering, comprised mainly of Kashmiri mothers, including Rafiq’s, holding placards with photographs of their missing sons. This cinematic revelation of a macabre Indian reality is a definitive component of Harud. It exposes the human rights abuses (Kabir, 2009) and repression inflicted on members of Kashmiri civil society in a democratic nation, thereby uncovering the disturbing skeleton of disappeared Kashmiris in secular India’s closet. Harud’s portrayal includes the Indian state amongst the ranks of nations such as Chile, Argentina and Spain, who have the dubious distinction of having the largest recorded numbers of ‘disappeared’ citizens. In this context, the events in Harud and the ghosts of forgotten narratives evokes India’s time of undecidability. During my conversation with Harud’s director Aamir Bashir (personal communication, 2013), he remarked that his film came under fire from mixed sections of Indian society. This was either for not presenting a more radical representation of atrocities inflicted by security forces on innocent civilians, or for not adequately addressing the plight of the exiled minority Hindu Kashmiri Pandit community. Following violent attacks on their community, Kashmiri Pandits fled the valley in the 1990s. Their flight received mention in Onir’s film I Am as the largest mass exodus in Indian history, after the monumental 1947 Partition. When queried about addressing the displacement of the Pandits from their homes in Kashmir, Bashir replied, ‘I have represented them by their absence’ ( personal communication, 2013). One of the lines spoken in the film echoes Bashir’s statement: ‘a whole generation of (Kashmiris) have [sic] grown up for whom the only reference to Kashmiri Pandits is abandoned houses’ (ibid.). In other words, the absent always inflects the present. The points discussed underscore how Kashmir is asynchronous, out of time with the rest of the nation’s march towards neoliberalism. Kashmir, as a perpetually deferred signifier, is a symbol of national difference, always-already in a state of anteriority and latency. Ananya Kabir (2009: 108) observes ‘the nationalist discourse around Kashmir that promoted its purity and antiquity to supplement the modern Indian nation’. Kabir seeks ‘an alternative Kashmiri history … the signposts of which are the wounded Kashmiri body’ (2009: 108). What Harud provides is a sliver of alternative

256  A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation contemporaneity that we get to see through Rafiq’s eyes, which in turn signposts not only Kashmir’s wounded, but its dead, departed and disavowed. Young Rafiq is himself consumed by the ghosts of Kashmir at the film’s climax. This is metaphorically evoked in the film through Rafiq’s sacrificial killing of a sheep, customary during Eid celebrations. As the festive day dawns and Kashmir receives its Eid gift of mobile phone connectivity from the Indian government, it is revealed that Rafiq has been gunned down in an alley by security forces. The film’s climax is portentous, mirroring actual events that transpired in September 2010 during the Eid festival, when four Kashmiri teenagers were killed by Indian security forces (Mathur, 2012: 235). This has led Parveena, the woman who founded the APDP, to sum up the situation in Kashmir: ‘Here is only matam (mourning); there is no Eid [celebration] here’ (ibid.). This perpetual deferral of celebration and interminable mourning for the departed largely captures the communion between the living and dead ghosts of Kashmir.

Digging Up the Departed: Haider, an Indian Rendition Haider’s (2014) cinematic treatment of the Kashmir quandary epitomises the new Indies’ multifaceted and parallax approach to topical discourse. Haider shares Harud’s anxieties and apprehensions of the political and religious dimensions of the Kashmir conflict, but is distinct from Harud in its interpretation, form and style. The film is directed by Vishal Bharadwaj, synonymous with Indianised adaptations of Shakespearean plays, including Maqbool (‘Macbeth’, 2003) and Omkara (‘Othello’, 2006). As such, Haider takes its narrative cues from the theatrical template of Hamlet, and in its film frame, the ghosts of the departed perturb the living present. Through a hybridised lens the film transposes the ‘something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ premise to turbulent Kashmir, a terrain itself torn asunder by political and religio-sectarian ambivalence. In addition, the intertextual dialogic between Haider and Harud is unmistakeably significant in both films’ unequivocal interrogation of the Indian state’s human rights record in Kashmir. Like Harud (and Hamlet), Haider spotlights a solitary young man’s psychological problems and internecine instabilities against the backdrop of sectarian strife and political injustice. Haider’s eponymous central character is played by Bollywood actor Shahid Kapoor, exemplifying the diverse and fissiparous field that typifies the new Indian Indies. Haider seeks to avenge the disappearance of his father, which has been arranged by the connivance of Haider’s uncle, Khurram/Claudius (Kay Kay Menon) and mother, Ghazala/Gertrude (Tabu). The seeds of this plot were sown whilst Haider was away at university, and his father, Hilal/King Hamlet (Narendra Jha), an altruistic doctor, agrees to provide medical treatment to a wounded Kashmiri militant. Unbeknownst to the doctor, his brother, Khurram is an informant, and has tipped off the Indian military about the presence of the injured militant and his comrades in the doctor’s house.

A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation  257 In a pitched gun battle, the security forces blow up Haider’s house. His father is denounced to the police and is subsequently disappeared. Akin to Claudius and Gertrude in Hamlet, Khurram courts Ghazala and they eventually wed. Haider embarks on a quest to trace his vanished father, joining political demonstrations with the APDP. Uncovering a tangled web of deceit and duplicity, Haider encounters the repressive apparatus of the police, embodied by Superintendent Pervez Lone/Polonius (Lalit Parimoo) in collusion with Khurram, who becomes a state politician. Haider’s love for Lone’s daughter Arshia/Ophelia (Shraddha Kapoor) is impeded by the intense hatred harboured by her brother Liyaqat/Laertes (Aamir Bashir) against him. Ultimately, Haider’s discovery that his father has been tortured and murdered sends him down a violent spiral of mental illness and bloody retribution. It could be noted that whilst Harud adopts an introspective, meditative and understated arthouse cinema approach, Haider’s rendition of Hamlet contains the dynamic address of drama. Whilst divergent in form and style, the two films are united in foregrounding the contentious theme of Kashmir’s ‘disappeared’. Moreover, Haider’s indigenisation and contemporising of Shakespeare’s seminal work underscores the Indies’ adoption of hybrid modes to exhume the ‘corpses’ of forgotten narratives, marginalised individuals and groups. As mentioned earlier, Haider shares a ‘fraternal’ connection with Rafiq in Harud, in that they are both isolated figures battling with their own inner demons and the injustice they experience in the outer world. A striking similarity is the two young men’s subjection to the imperious directives of the Indian military as they are stopped and searched at checkposts that pose obstacles to the free mobility of Kashmiris in general. In Harud, it is the earlier-described scene where Rafiq, his father, fellow commuters and a little boy are frisked. Haider’s encounter is more rigorous. After being frisked (Fig. 11.2), he is taken into an army tent, his diary confiscated and its contents scanned as a means of ascertaining his Indian affiliations.

Figure 11.2  Haider frisked by security forces.

258  A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation The army’s ritualised invasion of body space is re-invoked in another scene. A Kashmiri man, who appears to be in a catatonic state, refuses to step across the threshold of his own home, despite his wife’s entreaties. Eventually, an artifice is employed by a helpful passer-by, whereby the mentally-disturbed man is frisked and asked to display his identity card. When this mock exercise is completed and the card ‘validated’, the man subserviently walks into his home. The passer-by, Roohdaar (Irrfan Khan), who is later revealed as a personification of Kashmir’s disappeared ‘ghosts’, subsequently declares ‘people have become so used to body searches that unless they are frisked they fear entering their own homes’. Haider and Harud also portray how, on a mass scale, Kashmiri men are ordered out of their homes herded into open fields, their identity cards checked one by one, as a police informant picks out suspected ‘militants’ who are then ‘disappeared’. This en-masse round-up is reminiscent of the mass arrest and detainment of Jews by French police in the Vélodrome d’Hiver in 1942 during the Nazi occupation of France. As depicted in the film Sarah’s Key (2010), most of these victims reached their journey’s end at the Auschwitz extermination camps. Haider reveals that the territorialisation of space and forced rendition of humans into spectral shadows of themselves relies on systematised zones of dehumanisation and ideological indoctrination. This is represented through clandestine army torture centres. In one scene, we see disappeared prisoners including Roohdaar and Haider’s father in one such army prison called MAMA 2. Incarcerated along with Roohdaar, the imprisoned doctor laments ‘the prison is a sullen ghost. Ask the breeze for a whiff of hope’. After his escape from this ‘fortress’, Roohdaar recounts to Haider how ‘men returned from MAMA 2 as mere shadows of themselves’. In this cavern of torture, the film reveals a prisoner being emasculated through electric shocks administered to his testicles. His agonising screams that he is a student not a militant are disregarded by his torturers. In the prison precincts, ideology is implanted in the minds of the prisoners, who are ordered to chant ‘Long Live India’. More macabre dimensions come to light when a derelict cinema hall is revealed as another carceral space. Here, dominant cultural and state narratives collude in the degradation of the disappeared men. Roohdaar further reveals to Haider how Faraz Cinema has been reterritorialised by the Indian army (Fig. 11.3). The edifice now doubles as an arena of pleasure and a site for torture. Bollywood films are screened to army personnel coterminous with Kashmiri prisoners being lined up for surveillance. Akin to the Plato’s cave analogy as applied to Ship of Theseus, Faraz Cinema operates on a system of projector light, shadows, captors and prisoners. Haider’s father, Hilal, and several disappeared prisoners are marched into the cinema hall and lined up in front of the screen. Their shadows are incongruously cast on the canvas containing the cavorting gyrations of Bollywood star Salman Khan as he relentlessly pursues a girl in a song and

A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation  259

Figure 11.3  Army audience reterritorialises Faraz cinema.

Figure 11.4  Bollywood ‘applauds’ hegemonic power.

dance sequence. Indeed, the film characters flashing jubilant ‘thumbs-up’ signs to Salman Khan, also seem to be applauding their armed forces audience for the parade of prisoners (Fig. 11.4). The oppressors positioned behind the film projector are subsequently revealed as Khurram and police superintendent Parvez Lone; who have masterminded the disappearance of Haider’s father. The self-referential transmutation of the cinema hall from a space of entertainment to a zone of state terror bears testimony to the meta-hegemonic construction where Bollywood as banalised cultural entertainment can turn a blind eye to acts of social injustice and state oppression.

260  A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation Haider, however, takes a political stand. His earlier zeal to investigate his disappeared father’s fate saw him join APDP rallies, holding up placards and demanding restitution. After learning of his father’s murder, Haider adopts confrontational and violent methods. Addressing a huge crowd in the town square he muses, ‘Do we exist or do we not?’ Haider asks the crowd about azadi (freedom), a taboo word that invokes state and cinema censorship. If Harud implicitly portrays the AFSPA, Haider openly heaps vitriol on the legislation, sarcastically declaiming its most contentious sections to the gathered throng. Drawing attention to the Armed Forces’ authority to use deadly force Haider quotes Article 4(a) of the Act: After giving such due warning as he may consider necessary, fire upon or otherwise use force, even to the causing of death, against any person who is acting in contravention of any law or order for the time being in force in the disturbed area prohibiting the assembly of five or more persons or the carrying of weapons or of things capable of being used as weapons or of firearms, ammunition or explosive substances. Overall, the Act’s nebulous and partisan phraseology grants the army and police absolute power to act with impunity in Kashmir. Security and paramilitary forces often interpret this law as carte blanche to carry out acts of rape, torture and extra-judicial killings (Mathur, 2012). Morton (2013: 194) argues that by repeatedly ‘framing Kashmiri civilians as Pakistani infiltrators’ the Indian military legitimises repressive violence as a lawful ‘struggle to protect the security of the Indian nation state’ (ibid.). It is ironic that the Special Powers Act of 1990 has its antecedents in the British colonial regime’s Armed Forces (Special Powers) Ordinance of 1942, which granted the British army the licence to ‘kill civilians to suppress the Quit India movement’ (ibid.). This shakes the foundations of the notion that India, ‘because of its iconic history of colonization and anti-colonial struggle, is not to be held accountable for the abuses the post-independence state has wrought in its turn’ (Mathur, 2015: 220). Importantly, Haider’s direct confrontation of controversial and taboo themes such as AFSPA and azadi demonstrates the delineation of the Indies from apolitical Bollywood, in terms of content. Indeed, Bollywood codes are recast in Haider, during the latter’s equivalent of the tragedians’ performance in Hamlet. Adopting the Bollywood song and dance format, Haider exposes the perfidious role of his mother and uncle in the disappearance and death of his father. Appropriating the trope of Bollywood spectacle, incorporating costumes and giant puppets to convey a counter-narrative underlines Haider’s heterodox approach. It also exemplifies how the conventional musical interlude when used in Indies is often integrated into narrative context. Incensed by Haider’s song and dance subversion, Parvez Lone and his police officers set off in hot pursuit as Haider flees the scene. This aptly captures how flouting the

A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation  261 norms of state censorship through counter-narratives often invokes the wrath of ruling power structures. Haider’s turbulent encounter with the law is abstractly evoked in another sequence in which he returns to his former home, which has largely been incinerated by the security forces’ siege and assault. As Haider, accompanied by Arshia, steps into the remains of what used to be the living room, his discovery of a family photograph lying amidst the wreckage triggers an analepsis to happier times when he bantered with his father in that very room. This propensity of decrepit buildings to act as crucibles of memory and containers of traumatic events is also shared in the film I Am, where Megha, a Hindu Kashmiri Pandit, revisits her uncle’s abandoned house. She walks through its bullet-scarred hallways reliving the moments preceding her father’s murder at the hands of Kashmiri militants. Ultimately the spectres of conflict consume Haider’s main players in an apocalyptic shoot-out sequence. Haider and three elderly gravediggers (who are insurgents) engage in a bloody and explosive battle with the paramilitary forces led by Khurram. Holed up in a log cabin in the centre of the cemetery, death is the inevitable consequence of the conflict. During the carnage, Ghazala, unable to countenance Haider’s imminent destruction and her own guilt, detonates a garland of grenades she has strapped to her body. The final image of the graveyard scattered with fresh bodies and dismembered human body parts is emblematic of the cheek-by-jowl existence of life and death in a region trapped in undecidability.

I Am: Interrogating the National Narrative Like Anand Gandhi’s Ship of Theseus, Onir’s I Am adopts the hyperlink format, interweaving four apparently disparate narratives into a filmic mosaic based on four characters. Each story segment is named after its protagonists; Afia, Megha, Abhimanyu and Omar. I Am’s portmanteau of stories exhibits an explicit representation of past narratives and themes that confront the film’s characters in the present. I Am also strives for a more representative rendition of nation, with its plotlines spread across the four corners of the nation: Kolkata, Kashmir’s Srinagar, Bangalore and Mumbai. In I Am, director Onir challenges several institutions and appendages of the state apparatus that dichotomise into distinct but overlapping domains – the Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs) and the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) (Althusser, 1971: 140–145). RSAs are state institutions such as the police and army that can use violence or repressive methods to elicit compliance from civil society, whilst ISAs, such as the media, education, family and religious systems are secondary arms of the state, incorporating ideological forms of societal control (ibid.). Onir challenges both the RSAs and ISAs in I Am. The film questions Indian society’s normalised, often mandatory, institution of marriage and entrenched patriarchal attitudes in ‘Afia’, the film’s first story. ‘Afia’ broaches

262  A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation the theme of its titular character, a recently divorced single woman, who is stigmatised in her struggle to have a child through IVF (In vitro fertilisation) treatment. The narrative also examines the role of the medical clinic that Afia approaches for help in receiving IVF treatment. Continuing thematically with the traditional construction of family, the third segment traces Bangalore-based Abhimanyu’s struggle with his sexuality, haunted by traumatising spectres of childhood sexual abuse suffered at the hands of his stepfather. The third segment reappraises the institution of the family in India, unpacking the latent, disavowed macro-level discourses of suppressed sexuality and child abuse. In the interest of brevity and focus, I shall shine a light on I Am’s second and fourth segments. This is also because they strongly illustrate this chapter’s primary premise. The second segment, Megha, conducts a bifurcated examination of the Kashmir question. The narrative places in parallel the plight of displaced Hindu Kashmiri Pandits, represented by the film’s eponymous central character, Megha (Juhi Chawla). She returns to Kashmir after several years and encounters her childhood Muslim friend Rubina (Manisha Koirala), who has remained in the strife-torn region. The film addresses the RSA of the Indian Army in Kashmir, simultaneously evoking the exiled minority Hindu Pandits and the army’s harassment of local Muslims, thereby engaging with complex narratives of conflict and violence. In this respect, I Am could be presented as a companion piece to Harud and Haider in the context of these films’ intersecting yet diverging perspectives on Kashmir. Megha, who has discovered a new life in Delhi, carries the baggage of trauma and excommunication from the time when her Pandit family had to flee the valley in the early 1990s due to violent insurrections, which were often abetted by an opportunistic Pakistan (Snedden, 2012). In one scene, Megha, accompanied by Rubina, revisits her uncle’s old abandoned house. The dilapidated interiors of the building animate the ghosts of conflict in Megha’s mind. She is transported back in time as she walks through the ruined house’s spatial passageways and hears the cacophonous clamour of menacing voices and crescendo of gunfire that culminated in the murder of her uncle. Faced with the wall that served as the backdrop for her uncle’s execution, the distraught Megha reaches out to touch the crater eviscerated by the exiting bullet as Rubina stands silently in the background (Fig. 11.5). Megha’s experience exemplifies how built environments are often receptacles that bear residues of traumatic and violent events. This disconcerting visitation by ghostly voices from a traumatic past unleashes the repressed antagonism in Megha, and she confronts her friend Rubina with the accusation that her uncle’s murder at the hands of Muslim militants was part of a larger master plan to expel the Hindu Pandit community from Kashmir. Rubina’s gentle response is that whilst Megha was privileged to leave Kashmir, it was her punishment to remain and endure her futureless existence in the region’s suffocating stasis. As with all four

A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation  263

Figure 11.5  Confronting the wall of the past.

narratives in I Am, the Megha story strand terminates in departure; a parting of ways and severance of relationships, in this case Rubina leaves Megha and boards a boat that drifts silently away on Srinagar’s Dal Lake. I Am’s fourth instalment, Omar, indicts the Indian police, an RSA consistently implicated in the brutalisation of India’s LGBTQ community (Onir, personal communication, 2013), against the backdrop of India’s judicial system upholding British colonial-era anti-gay legislation. Section 377 of the Indian penal code was instituted in India by the British. This law was overturned in 2009, decriminalising homosexuality in India. However, in a volte-face in 2013, on the eve of national elections in which the rightwing BJP were strong contenders, the Indian Supreme Court overturned this ruling, returning India to a colonial-era legal system that enjoins consensual sexual relations outside the restrictive confines of ‘Victorian’ heteronormativity. Kama Maureemootoo (2014: 122) notes a ‘nationalist attempt to reclaim Victorian masculinity as Indian’ through a ‘dissemination of homophobic discourses’ in complete denial and erasure of a pre-colonial Indian past that embraced polysexuality. In this regard, Onir’s I Am could be framed against an Indian cinematic firmament where Bollywood, with its meta-hegemony, actively promotes the Hindu nationalist version of normalised heterosexuality. Omar, the final instalment in I Am’s quartet of stories, narrates incidents that bring together two men from geographically antipodal Indian locations. Jai (Rahul Bose), from the southern city of Bangalore, is a managing director of a multinational corporation, and Omar (Arjun Mathur), a Mumbai-based male sex worker, hails from Delhi. Jai is on a business trip to Mumbai when he meets Omar at a cafe. The pair dine together, and prompted by their mutual attraction, go on a nocturnal drive through

264  A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation Mumbai. Halting in an isolated spot, the couple begin to become intimate in the car when they are jolted by the loud rapping of a truncheon on the car’s window pane. A police officer orders them out and proceeds to assault Jai, accusing the duo of unnatural acts and of ‘sullying the culture of the nation’. Meting out sustained physical and verbal abuse to Jai, the police officer extorts a bribe, also relieving Jai of his mobile phone. The Omar strand of the storyline is based on research drawn from reallife incidents recounted by members of India’s LGBTQ community who have suffered victimisation and violence at the hands of the police. In this regard, Omar could be regarded as a performative enactment of a minority identity that is consistently disavowed or repressed in the reality of the daily lived experience. The film therefore becomes a device to reverse-interrogate repressive and ideological regimes of the state apparatus that deploy physical violence and legislation to suffocate the free expression of sexual identity. In the sequence where Jai is repeatedly and mercilessly beaten by the policeman, the film frame is politicised by positioning a distant fluttering Indian flag as the backdrop to Jai’s brutalisation (Fig. 11.6) This encoded aesthetic device prompts conceptions of ideological complicity in the policeman’s repressive enforcement of regressive statutes that have been upheld by a juridical system claiming to act in the national interests of maintaining mythologised moral and cultural imaginaries.

Figure 11.6  Police officer’s assault on Jai, with Indian flag in the background.

It is possible to state that this imagined rectitude and purported purity, often violently enforced by India’s rising Hindu political right wing, is foundationally out of time and inconsistent with ancient Hindu culture. Hindu tenets of tolerance and sexual pluralism are etched into the temples of Khajuraho and inscribed in the Kama Sutra. It is this ancient tradition of

A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation  265 sexual liberation that causes Adela Quested, the repressed British woman in A Passage to India (1984), to be split between self and other. This division of Adela’s sense of self is a precursor to her fateful visit to the Marabar caves (an iconic scene in the film), and occurs when she stumbles into a thicket containing ancient Indian statues frozen in inventive positions of copulation. The evocation of Adela’s repressed sexuality mirrors the ambivalence facing modern India. Progressive young middle-class attitudes towards sex face the opposing pull of the Hindu fundamentalist religious right who, akin to the police officer in Omar, are often self-appointed sanctifiers of national morality. Other discourses of intolerance and division arise from Jai’s punishment at the hands of the law. When Jai, as a South Indian, whose first language is not Hindi, addresses the policeman in English, the latter is incensed both by Jai’s adoption of a ‘foreign’ tongue and by his middle-class affluence. He rains blows and vituperation on the hapless Jai, using the pejorative Madrasi; a colloquial corruption of the southern city of ‘Madras’, now called Chennai. This homogenising slur is often used disparagingly by some North Indians to refer to the ‘lumpen mass’ of South Indians. The policeman also threatens to out Jai to his parents, a prospect that terrifies Jai into absolute submission. These layers of ideological and socio-cultural discourse reveal the antinomies and fractures that traverse the Indian topography with its multitudinous mix of religions, ethnicities and cultures. The police officer’s avarice exhibited in his extraction of a hefty bribe from Jai also exposes the endemic corruption that runs through the bureaucratic structures of power, from local-level middlemen, such as Bhai Thakur in Peepli Live, to the instruments of regional, state and national law and governance. Events take a sinister turn when Jai finds himself alone with the police officer, who has dispatched Omar to the ATM with Jai’s credit card to withdraw the bribe money. The police officer forces Jai to perform a sexual act on him, threatening him with the prospect of being hauled to the local police station where he would be coerced to comply. Faced with no alternative, the already traumatised Jai obeys authority’s directive. On Omar’s return with the money, the police officer dismisses Jai, but despite Jai’s protestations drags Omar along with him to the police station. At the film’s dénouement, it is revealed that Omar has played a duplicitous game and in reality is an agent provocateur in league with the police. His modus operandi is to lure unsuspecting gay men like Jai into the dragnet of an extortion racket helmed by the police. Omar’s role as a mercenary middleman echoes this trope cited in several films analysed in this book, from Peepli Live to Ship of Thesesus. The state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital, is an enduring bastion of Hindu right-wing politics and represents a microcosm of a larger confluence on a national scale of muscular religious ideology and repressive juridical power embodied by the ruthless police officer in I Am. A pogrom to purge Mumbai of ‘outsiders’ from other Indian states is thematically

266  A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation represented in Dhobi Ghat and in the Marathi Indie film Court (2015), mirroring real events at the behest of ultra-right Hindu political organisations such as VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad ), RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and Shiv Sena, the state’s xenophobic religious political group, currently in a co-ruling alliance with the BJP. Recently, examples include deadly violence over a call for a nationwide ban on beef, as well as the Hindu fundamentalist brigade accusing India’s Muslim men of mounting an organised ‘Love Jihad’ – the alleged conversion of Hindu women to Islam by wooing, courting or seducing them (Sethi, 2015). In essence, such measures could be regarded as Hindutva power groups’ thinly veiled ploy to proscribe any interreligious relationships between Muslim men and Hindu women. During an interview, Onir (personal communication, 2013) reveals that ‘there is so much unspoken censorship that is happening that stops you from doing things’. With respect to I Am’s Indian release and apprehensions about the Omar story depicting a socially taboo sexuality, Onir argues, ‘it is not a film about sexuality; it is a film about human rights, about identity’ (ibid.). He goes on to state that he considers it a duplicitous configuration when the artistic merits of Hollywood films with gay themes, such as Brokeback Mountain and Milk may be appreciated in India, but self-reflexive Indian films grappling with alternative sexualities are castigated (ibid.). Onir therefore uses I Am as a trigger to invoke topical discourses that traverse the nation’s temporal timeline – past, present and future. This in turn invokes ‘postcolonial residues that haunt India’s contemporary cultural and political scapes’; pivoting India’s cultural identity on the clash between tradition and modernity, Indianness and Westernization, and the religious and secular’ (Maureemootoo, 2014: 108, 115).

Ghosts in The Lunchbox I think we forget things if we have no one to tell them to. —Fernandes (Irrfan Khan in The Lunchbox) As mentioned earlier, The Lunchbox undertakes a more implicit evocation of the past. In keeping with its ethos of understatement, the ghosts conjured in this film’s narrative relate to the temporality of the nation itself – a duration in India’s collective memory that precedes the disjuncture of liberalisation in 1991. The Lunchbox’s evocation of the past signifies a crucial transition in the time of nation, from an earlier, diluted version of state socialism to the current state-sanctioned neoliberalism. The film follows the unexpected interaction between Fernandes, (Irrfan Khan), a middle-aged office clerk on the cusp of retirement, and Ila (Nimrat Kaur), a depressed young housewife coping with a failing marriage. The serendipitous wrong delivery of a lunchbox meant for Ila’s husband initiates daily correspondence between Fernandes and Ila via letters strategically placed in the lunchbox.

A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation  267 Set against the unrelenting febrile modern Mumbai cityscape, Fernandes’s Kafkaesque role as a clerk in a bureaucratic government office exemplifies both him and his office milieu as being temporally unsynchronised with Mumbai’s rampant movement towards modernity. Fernandes, seated at his desk, is like a drop in the ocean of his fellow government apparatchiks. He seems lost amongst the multitude of employees arranged into a regimented assembly line of rows and columns, bureaucratic functionaries mired in stasis and embodiments of institutional systems that are to a large degree an anachronistic continuum of India’s colonial past. In the midst of their epistolary interactions, Fernandes reveals to Ila his mechanism to summon the memory of his beloved departed wife. He watches recorded VHS tapes of old comedy serials broadcast on Doordarshan, India’s solitary national TV channel, at the time the nation’s only portal to news and entertainment before the advent of satellite television in the 1990s. Fernandes describes to Ila how his wife during her living years enjoyed repeated viewings of these old ‘DD’ (Doordarshan) series and how his own emulation of her actions keeps his memory of her alive. Fernandes’s ostensibly en passant anecdote actually contains a link to another time. His motivation in watching pre-recorded 1980s Doordarshan comedy shows such as Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi (‘The Life That We Have’) is to resuscitate the memory of his wife, but it also indicates his nostalgia and longing for a ‘better’ time. Before the entry of Rupert Murdoch’s STAR TV satellite network in 1991, Doordarshan, as a transregional custodian of cultural memory, ‘played a critical role in the recasting and redeployment of the very notion of culture’ (Mankekar, 1999: 11). Countenancing the daily prospect of a rapidly changing Mumbai, caught in the mainstream of modernity and development, Fernandes seeks the solace of what he considers a less complicated, navigable time. This simplicity is reflected in the archaic aesthetic and opening titles of Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi, as it blares out from Fernandes’s video cassette player, itself a moribund device. Essentially, the integration of this nuanced reference to the ‘good old DD days’ in the film’s main narrative performs the function of signposting anteriority. Writing to Ila about Mumbai’s frenetic, dehumanising dash into capitalism, Fernandes laments ‘life is very busy these days, too busy, there are too many people and everyone wants what the other has’. So, the content of the VHS tapes invokes a past that has gone by but nevertheless revisits Fernandes in the present and evokes in him feelings of longing, nostalgia and desire. In effect, the video cassette and its contents serve as a hyperlink to an earlier era in India’s timeline – a period that has since been palimpsestically overwritten by the discourses of globalisation. These indelible re-inscriptions occlude any reversion to an earlier originary temporal state – the past, which is only accessible through the invocation of its ghosts. The trope of video tapes used in The Lunchbox is also deployed in Dhobi Ghat as examined in detail in Chapter 8.

268  A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation In The Lunchbox, the female character, Ila, has her own encounter with nostalgic narratives. This memory of the past is reified as the unseen ‘Aunty’, an older lady who lives with her paralysed husband in the flat above Ila’s. Aunty is perpetually invisible in the narrative. Her presence is only indicated by two elements. First, her raucous voice, dishing out culinary instructions and maternal advice, as Ila prepares her daily lunchbox, and second, the pulley-operated hanging basket; the ‘dumb-waiter’ through which Ila and Aunty exchange condiments and sundry items. In one scene, Ila requests Aunty to play the title love song from popular Hindi blockbuster Saajan (1991) on her audio cassette player. Unbeknownst to Aunty, Ila’s sudden urge to hear this particular ballad is because ‘Saajan’ is also Fernandes’s first name. Ila’s intergenerational petition to Aunty nostalgically summons the era of cassette tapes and commercial Hindi cinema; the latter of which, in the watershed year of liberalisation (1991), stepped into the more glamorous, globally rebranded avatar of Bollywood. Fernandes’s fetishism of old 1980s DD TV series via a VHS player and old Aunty’s audio cassette player recalling 1991 symbolically alert the viewer to a national rite of passage into a new order of neoliberalism and meta-hegemonic Bollywood. Echoing the property of media to double as instruments of entertainment and chroniclers of time, onscreen Ila and Fernandes themselves embody corporeal and conceptual links to two chronologically contiguous decades in a departed national past. It is almost as if the chimera of the national past hangs in the film’s ether, and in the two above scenes, is channelled into the material media of audio and video players. In other words, these inanimate (and moribund) technological devices kindle audio and visual signals that are infused with the ideological implications of carrying the grand narratives of Doordarshan, neoliberalism and Bollywood over the airwaves. There is a striking similarity between the predicaments faced by Yasmin in Dhobi Ghat and Ila in The Lunchbox. Both live repressed, domesticated lives in Mumbai, trapped in loveless marriages with misogynistic and philandering husbands. In what seems to be an intertextual conversation between the two Indies, The Lunchbox depicts a scene where Ila writes to Fernandes about her empathy with a woman who commits suicide by leaping from a Mumbai skyscraper. It appears as if Ila is obliquely communicating with the ghost of Yasmin. However, whilst the medium of music summoned through Aunty’s tape player functions as an escape passage into realms of imagined romantic fantasy for Ila, Yasmin’s VHS video diaries are a marker of her death. In this vein, Fernandes’s fleeting visits to the cemetery containing his wife’s grave is indexical of the impermanence that characterises the Indian cosmopolis, which is a theatre of consumer-driven change. This theme evokes comparisons with Japanese film Okurbito (‘Departures’, 2008), where the death of loved ones is portrayed as shorthand for larger transitions in traditional society and culture.

A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation  269 Arjun Appadurai frames Mumbai as a modern contradiction; a metropolitan urban space aspiring to be ‘ethnically pure but globally competitive’ and a ‘point of translation and mediation between a renascent Maharashtra and a re-Hinduized India’ (Appadurai, 2000: 644). Through its diverse, multi-religious collage of characters – Fernandes the Goan Catholic, Shaikh his Muslim work colleague and Hindu Ila – The Lunchbox reiterates Mumbai’s, and, by proxy, India’s secular, pluralistic constitution. In this regard, The Lunchbox implicitly reprises the strident secular affirmations of the multi-ethnic and multicultural composition of Mumbai, articulated in Dhobi Ghat and Ship of Theseus. The backdrop to these statements of secularism in the above Indie films is the amplified calls for a majority ethnic-Maharashtrian Hindu ‘purity’, at the behest of the Shiv Sena. By offsetting the aforementioned Mumbai binary of desired ethno-religious homogeneity and aspired global consumerist hubris, The Lunchbox, like Anish Kapoor’s art installation Ghost, reveals a slow-forming, distorted reflection of its beholder, a parallax view of a city and its containing nation, both levels pulling in two differing directions, splitting the ego of identity formation into an ambivalent state; Frantz Fanon’s (1963: 226) ‘zone of occult instability’. But it is worth questioning: Is this construction of modern India as bipolar as meets the eye? This is particularly relevant when bipartisan coexistence in a multicultural lived experience on the ground is performed as praxis on a daily basis in India, whilst multiculturalism largely remains a utopian theoretical ideal to be achieved (but constantly deferred) in western nations. Capitalism in its universalising, all-encompassing, leviathan form is arguably so structurally isomorphic to right-wing religious politics that the latter conveniently collapses into the more cavernous contours of the former. This is a throwback to the book’s earlier assertion of the BJP’s opportunistic courting of diasporic non-resident Indian capital investment in the late 1990s, allying with Bollywood in the alloying of a Hindu nationalist narrative contingent on a relentless pursuit of capital. Indeed, the incumbent leader Narendra Modi’s current thrust towards a neoliberal nation and the religious right’s call for Hindu rashtra (nation), both being pursued with indefatigable urgency, bear witness to the strange amalgam that Appadurai considers apropos to Mumbai. Fernandes and Ila are united in their desire to leave Mumbai and seek new lives in other imagined ‘territories of desire’. Fernandes looks forward to retirement in Nasik, a city in northwest Maharashtra. For Ila, her dream destination is Bhutan, a land where, according to her; wealth is measured by a happiness quotient – Gross National Happiness instead of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In essence, the alienating effect generated by hypercapitalism leads to a sense of ennui and estrangement from the master narrative of progress. In this regard, The Lunchbox functions as a narrative elegy to the bygone straightforward ‘simplicity’ of pre-liberalisation India. Fernandes, who earlier expresses his regret at not treasuring moments in the past: ‘I wish I had kept on looking back then’, reverses his journey to Nasik and decides to join Ila in an attempt to look to the future.

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References Althusser, L. (1971). ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’, in Althusser, L (ed.). Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press, pp. 127–188. Bennett, B. (2014). The Cinema of Michael Winterbottom. New York: Wallflower Press Book, published by Columbia University Press. Devasundaram, A. (2013). ‘Autumnal Explorations of Alterity: Conjuring Ghosts of Kashmir’s Forgotten and Disappeared in ‘Harud’, The South Asianist Journal of South Asian Studies, Special Issue, 100 Years of Indian Cinema, University of Edinburgh, Vol2, No. 3, pp. 179–187. Gertz, N. And Khleifi, G. (2007) ‘Palestinian “Roadblock Movies”’, in Power, M. and Crampton, A (eds.). Cinema and Popular Geo-politics. London: Routledge. pp. 121–138. Ghost Dance. (1983). [DVD] United Kingdom: Ken McMullen. Goldston, J. and Gossman, P. (1991). Human Rights in India. New York: Human Rights Watch. Gordon, A. (1997). Ghostly Matters. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kabir, A. (2009). Territory of Desire. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mankekar, P. (1999). Screening Culture, Viewing Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mathur, S. (2012). ‘This Garden Uprooted: Gender Violence Suffering and Resistance in Indian-administered Kashmir’, in De Matos, C. and Ward, R. (eds.). Gender, Power and Military Occupations. New York: Routledge. pp. 217–238. Maureemootoo, K. (2014). ‘The Nation as Mimicry’, in Dasgupta, R. and Gokulsing, K. (eds.). Masculinity and Its Challenges in India. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. pp 106–125. Morton, S (2013) ‘Violence, Law and Justice in the Colonial Present’, in Huggan, G. (Ed). The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Studies. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Sethi, A. (2015). ‘“Love Jihad” in India and One Man’s Quest to Prevent It’ Guardian. 29 January. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/29/ love-jihad-india-one-man-quest-prevent-it [Accessed 29 Nov. 2015]. Snedden, C. (2012). The Untold Story of the People of Azad Kashmir. New York: Columbia University Press.

Conclusion Charting the Ship’s Course

One of the inferences of this book is that the unisonant appellation of a ‘new wave of Indian Indies’ actually conceals a polymorphous set of propositions. Initial stages of research involving the examination of news articles and media relating to the new Indies seemed to substantiate the thesis of a consolidated new wave of Indian Indies. However, my interviews in India revealed the multiple subjective and contingent perspectives relating to the description and classification of current independent Indian cinema. A posteriori knowledge gained from in-depth interviews highlights the different subcategories and cultural specificities collapsed into the umbrella term ‘Indie’. It must be acknowledged that the heterogeneity of content and composition characterising the new Indies juxtaposed with their prolific output since 2010, validates the contention of a New Wave. In addition, Indie feature and documentary filmmakers and actors have been galvanised into collective action, manifested in the Save the Indies Campaign. Independent filmmakers have also come together in innovative and experimental creative projects, demonstrated in the 2015 ‘team effort’ film, X: Past is Present, featuring a synthesis of eleven non-mainstream directors. This exhibition of collective creation and counter-action lends further credence to the contention of a New Wave. The term Indie came under scrutiny in this book, owing to the universalising and often essentialist connotations of the term. Albeit an arbitrary signifier, the moniker ‘Indie’ is ubiquitous to American independent cinema, rendering it imperative to ascertain the Indian contexts of the term’s use. Deeper investigation reveals the often precarious and contingent vectors that govern the Indian context and applicability of ‘Indie’. Some of the determining factors influencing the taxonomy of Indian ‘Indies’ include mechanisms of funding, distribution and exhibition. This study finds that the Indian Indies are a stratified field containing gradations of scale that problematise simple binaries, such as true/blockbuster Indie or realist/experimental Indie. The traditional Western conception of Indie cinema as films created outside the studio system is not necessarily applicable to Indian Indies, which often solicit the financial and infrastructural support of big corporate studios and Bollywood in order to survive. Funding and distribution strategies vary between local contexts of Indian

272 Conclusion filmmaking and span the spectrum of self-funding, crowdsourcing, corporate production houses, National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) assistance and transglobal co-productions. The common cohesive force that binds the Indian Indies together and demarcates them as independent is divergent content – alternative storylines that deviate from mainstream Bollywood. In this regard, several films use heterodox strategies to represent marginalised and subaltern characters and storylines that interrogate the national metanarrative. In terms of classification, the most objective and utilitarian morphology of the Indian Indies emerged unexpectedly from a ‘freeplay’ of meaning, during an interview with filmmaker Q (Qaushiq Mukherjee). He revealed his stylised categorisation of the Indies as Blessed, Unblessed, Rickshaw and Drain. This subversive reconfiguration of the four watertight compartments in the Hindu caste system makes up with utility for what it lacks in epistemological conventionality or academic refinement. ‘Blessed’ Indies have received funding from either an established Bollywood producer or mainstream corporate production house. ‘Unblessed’ Indies have experienced a latency period during which the filmmaker has solicited financial capital from mainstream sources and is awaiting the result. The ‘Rickshaw’ category, according to Q, includes filmmakers who are akin to ‘daily wage labourers’, due to their relentless hard work. This category alludes to the assiduous labours of independent, largely self-funded filmmakers, particularly India’s documentary filmmaking community, who regardless of the vagaries of finance, marshal available resources and continue to make polemical films. Lowest in this hierarchy is the ‘Drain’ Indie category, which contains filmmakers bereft of financial resources, access to equipment or technical knowledge, but who regardless, make a foray into filmmaking. This idiosyncratic disambiguation of ‘Indies’ in an Indian context performatively reveals not only each subcategory’s enactment of its specific role but also exposes the inner workings of the Bollywood meta-hegemony. Q’s classification, in large measure, reflects the Indian Indie’s subordinate status in relation to Bollywood, and the Indie’s current dependence on the mainstream Bollywood industry for finance, visibility and distribution. This resonates with the meta-hegemony thesis that reveals Bollywood’s monopoly of capital as well as its normalisation as the state-sanctioned instrument of Indian soft power. This hegemonic configuration often standardises Bollywood’s presence as a seemingly indispensable intermediary for Indies to gain funding or a wider audience. Therefore, the meta-hegemony’s internal Indian operations often necessitate Indie filmmakers to enlist Bollywood actors to enhance their films’ saleability. The meta-hegemony often deems it necessary for independent film directors to solicit the influence and patronage of Bollywood personalities or producers. The aim is to augment their films’ visibility amongst civil society by attaching the associative commercial gravitas of Bollywood to an Indie project. This is part of an idiosyncratic ‘godfather’ syndrome in the Indian filmmaking firmament.

Conclusion  273 The Indies typify the glocal, expressing their local contexts through a global aesthetic. In this regard, the Indies narrate state of the nation stories about ordinary, often peripheral, subaltern figures – landless farmers, rickshaw pullers, disenfranchised urban youth, Dalit activists, monks turned anti-corporation animal rights agitators and migrant workers in Indian towns, villages and metropolises. The Indies espouse these local themes through a universal cinematic lens, often experimenting with World Cinema strategies and practices of framing and composition, mise-en-scène and music. Several Indies also demonstrate postmodern non-linearity, multistrand narratives, intertextuality, self-reflexivity, pastiche, bricolage and the portrayal of simulacra and consumer-driven hyperreality. These attributes and the new Indies’ interpermeations with the Bollywood superstructure validate this book’s framing of the Indie New Wave films as glocal hybrids that are emerging from the interstices of India’s transition into a neoliberal economy. Despite their representation of marginal and subaltern individuals and communities, the young emerging Indie filmmakers are themselves impelled by a post-liberalisation sensibility. In this regard, they seek a wider audience and are not averse to assiduous commercial marketing strategies and promotion on social media, as demonstrated by films such as Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) and Lucia (2013). One hypothesis during the incipient stages of research for this book perceived the Indies’ representation of peripheralised subalterns as a common strategy of the New Wave as a collective whole. Subsequent stages of research revealed that it was the Indies’ commitment to espousing alternative content and micro-narratives that deviate from majority Bollywood that led to their representations of subaltern characters and excluded fragments of society. This is congruent with a poststructuralist perspective where external socio-political discourse shapes and influences the individual’s creative conceptions and constructions rather than vice versa. Distribution and exhibition is a core issue for the Indies. They are often reliant on Bollywood actors and producers or on big production houses for financial support or to raise a film’s profile in the public domain. In order for the Indies to develop into a cohesive self-sustaining industry, there needs to be parallel construction and development of an infrastructural framework to encourage young emerging Indie filmmakers. This support structure also needs to provide more local and global platforms to exhibit Indian Indie films unimpeded by meta-hegemonic considerations. The section below proposes a few suggestions relating to the future imagination and implementation of an Indie infrastructure. The logistics of this prospective infrastructure includes envisioning a more streamlined finance system that ensures studios or financiers adopt more acephalous and pluralistic attitudes towards Indies. This could be through a dedicated quota or percentage of investment in Indies. If this seems unrealistic in terms of the profit-oriented corporate agenda, a viable alternative may be the establishment of more bespoke dedicated Indie production

274 Conclusion houses across the country, perhaps by Indie filmmakers themselves. This could assist in circumventing the current institutional Bollywood bias in the machinations of corporate film finance. The role and involvement of the NFDC needs to be magnified and diversified to take cognisance of the multiplicity of emerging young filmmakers from diverse regions. In this regard, the NFDC as a state-run organisation would need to exceed the levels of its financial and logistical support for earlier Parallel cinema, to keep abreast of the current upsurge in Indie films. Criticism of the NFDC’s limited role in assisting Indie filmmakers with releasing and distributing films indicates an area that seeks immediate attention in relation to the future role of the organisation in encouraging new non-mainstream Indian cinema. The film festival space has constituted a lifeline in terms of exhibition and distribution for several Indian Indies. The burgeoning of film festivals dedicated to independent cinema across small towns and remote areas in India, such as the Himalayan regions of Ladakh and Dharamshala, demonstrates the growing proliferation of the new Indies. In a broader context, an infrastructural lacuna necessitates the imagining of a platform that melds the domains of indigenous Indian Indie filmmaking and Indian local and regional audiences, whilst at the same time providing global visibility; something along the lines of the Tribeca or Sundance festivals. However, it is fair to state that the current germination of independent film festivals across the diverse Indian terrain and demographic mirrors the disaggregated yet concomitant and prolific emergence of the Indie films themselves. The increasing Indie presence at international film festivals underscores the requirement for a dialogic ‘bridge’ between national and global exhibition of Indian Indies, emphasising the need for wider distribution and increased access in western cinemas. It is possible to extrapolate a more structured or centralised, purpose-built, bona fide independent Indian film festival system in the future, possibly one that does not privilege only the elite top layer of bigger-budget corporate-sponsored or high-profile Indies. These considerations are contingent on the hypothetical possibility that Indie films will concretise their hybridisation with Bollywood or alternatively, will establish not only an autonomous Indie film space in Indian cinema but also an independent infrastructure that is decoupled from Bollywood’s dominance of funding, exhibition and distribution. A foreseeable Indie infrastructure needs to address the contentions of the Save the Indies Campaign, stressing the need for more venues and exhibition spaces, especially in Tier-II and Tier-III Indian cities and towns. The rising popularity of the Indies among urban audiences has precipitated previously reluctant, intransigent or Bollywood-oriented multiplexes, such as PVR, to screen esoteric, small-budget films from far-flung regions such as Local Kung Fu from Assam. This apparent paradigm shift in PVR’s earlier system of operations augurs a widening of the multiplex space in the future of Indie cinema. The proliferation of BitTorrent downloads in India presents

Conclusion  275 the pirate sphere as a demotic site for free and open access to new Indie cinema, bringing with it the question of lost revenue. Whilst the popularity of peer-to-peer BitTorrent file-sharing emphasises the moribund state of DVD sales in India, unfettered access to Indie films such as Gandu on YouTube contextualises the efficacy of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and the CBFC’s systems of regulation and film censorship in India. The antiquated system of operations often enforced by these regulatory institutions is largely culpable for stymieing the free expression of several independent Indian filmmakers. However, these reactionary structures have indirectly galvanised new and innovative alternative interfaces for distribution and delivery of Indie films. Crowdfunding is currently one of the prominent alternative conduits to film funding. Pawan Kumar’s indigenously created pay-per-view on-demand streaming portal Home Talkies, which he uses to promote his films and obviate piracy, could be the precursor of more broad-based national-level streaming video on demand enterprises in India, along the lines of Netflix (which has now been introduced in India) and Amazon Instant Video. Patriarchal and heteronormative socio-religio-ideological structures remain potent factors surrounding and often impeding the growth and proliferation of Indian Indies. The larger ambivalence in India’s negotiation of tradition and modernity permeates down to social mores and cultural attitudes to representations of sex, religion and politics. Although there has been an alteration in social attitudes towards unconventional film content, this is largely an urban middle-class phenomenon. The vast majority of the Indian polity remain susceptible to moral policing and vigilantism by religio-political fringe elements and fundamentalist political groups such as the Shiv Sena, RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), Bajrang Dal and VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad) amongst several others. The unpredictability of the heterogeneous composition of India’s demographic constitutes a difficult terrain for the Indies’ negotiation of film censorship. The intervention of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in the affairs of censorship and regulation entails a continuum of the aforementioned archaic, bureaucratic practices. Indiscriminate state injunctions, as exemplified by scenarios surrounding Unfreedom, Papilio Buddha and Kaum de Heere, seem disproportionally directed at self-funded independent filmmakers. The continuance of arbitrary practices of censorship calls into question the lack of implementation of India’s constitutional democratic principles of free speech and expression. In this impinging milieu, the Indies deviate significantly from Bollywood’s gendered and heteronormative rendering of a patriarchal national master narrative. This is exemplified in the growing number of female directors and Indie films featuring women in lead roles as well as Indie representations of alternative sexualities. As mentioned through the diagrammatic Ship of Cinemas analogy, two possibilities can be prognosticated for the future of the new Indian Indies and Indian cinema in general. The first is a Bollywood/Indie hybrid that is

276 Conclusion more concretised in the foreseeable future owing to Bollywood’s growing capital investments in the Indie sector. This is commensurate with an ongoing hybridisation process by which Bollywood and Indie are already intertwined in collaborations and co-productions. The Indies’ general thrust towards wider visibility could entail their gravitation in greater numbers towards Bollywood as a beacon of funding or as a survival strategy. There is a strong likelihood of this case scenario occurring if there is a failure in the future to develop the above-mentioned infrastructure to support independent filmmaking in India. The second extrapolation is of an autonomous Indian Indie space. This forecast is based on the Indies sustaining or magnifying their current prodigious production output. If this surge in film production is matched by proportional audience reception and consumption, it is likely that the existing infrastructure for exhibition and distribution, such as the multiplex, will revise and re-orientate strategies to accommodate the new market opportunities created by a rising demand for alternative cinema. This could initiate a chain reaction in terms of infrastructural adjustments including wider avenues for the Indies in relation to film festivals, exhibition spaces, private and state funding and initiatives to encourage young filmmakers. This could imply a further decentring and destabilising of Bollywood’s undisputed position at the centre of the Indian cinematic meta-hegemony. The paradox of this scenario is that it requires the Indies to devolve from their marginal position of alterity and in effect join Bollywood as an equal in the mainstream. This raises interesting questions about the continuance of Indies espousing polemical or subversive content. It also poses the question of what would replace the Indie vacuum in the event of their migration from the margins to the mainstream. In this regard, it is possible to ponder whether the speculative transition of the Indies to an autonomous or hybrid mainstream space could transform cinematic expositions of socio-political narratives of resistance and the articulation of the ghosts of nation into the sole prerogative of India’s often overlooked documentary filmmaking domain and the understudied regional vernacular art cinemas, particularly the Marathi and Tamil sector. On a broader level, the new Indies reflect the transformations in the Indian socio-political sphere coeval with the nation’s journey into the neoliberal domain. The broadening interest in the Indies’ alternative non-mainstream content, particularly in urban areas, largely reflects shifting social attitudes amongst the young urban middle class. On the other hand, the unanimous public mandate in the 2014 national election, handing a landslide victory to the right-wing BJP-led government is symptomatic of a current wave of conservative nationalistic religiosity amongst some sections of Indian civil society. This emphasises India’s sustained ambivalence in negotiating a mythical pedagogical past and a current time of undecidability, whilst charting the future.

Conclusion  277 In this regard, it is fair to infer that the new Indies are more representative of this time of undecidability than mainstream cinema because the Indies critically draw on extant socio-political discourse in their narration of alternative content. They are also less impeded by ideological religio-political and meta-hegemonic constraints than status quo-serving Bollywood, which affords the Indies wider leeway to articulate minority discourses. The new Indies therefore, to a significant degree, play an intermediary role as the interpretive cinematic interface to daily transformations in India’s socio-politico-cultural matrix. Positioned outside the mainstream, the Indies possess the ability to transgress, subvert or fracture the dominant national narrative through heterodox representations. The increasingly fractious nature of socio-religious relations catalysed by a current thrust towards Hindu nationalist theocracy poses crucial questions for alternative cultural articulations in India. Repressive and divisive designs that appear determined to quell rationalism and suppress any dissent towards religious patriarchy bears direct relevance to the future of the new Indian Indies. With the Indies’ often bold indictments of prevailing political and religious structures, it is not only the discursive and direct regimes of censorship that could be brought to bear on the Indies and their proponents. The rise of muscular right-wing Hindutva politics can be indiscriminating in its deployment of violent methods to cause the capitulation of any dissenting cultural forms. In this increasingly fraught internal milieu in India, it will be interesting to observe to what extent the Indies, as a counter-narrative are permitted space to articulate alternative views. The corollary is to contemplate to what extent the Indies will continue to demand space if space is not afforded them. All things being equal, it is possible to conclude that the Indies in their current interstitial position, in-between the nation’s pedagogical past and performative present, could be cinematic signifiers of a future time of liberation.

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Index

A Passage to India 265 Aamir Khan Productions (AKP) 64, 74, 80, 201, 210–211 absence and presence 189, 245 acousmatic 170 Adivasis 37, 132 Afghanistan 254 AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act), 252, 260 Ahluwalia, Ashim 22, 73 Algerian War of Liberation 254 Aligarh 141 Ali, Mukhtiyar 242 All India Bakchod (AIB) 161 alterity 9, 36, 102, 118, 130, 153, 171, 180, 216, 254, 276 alternative: Indie content and storylines 2–5, 7, 19, 26, 51, 68–69, 72, 77, 83, 86, 92, 114, 117–119, 135, 153, 158, 199, 234, 250, 255, 272–273, 276–277; forms of Indian cinema 16, 18–20, 33, 53–54, 72, 89, 96–97, 106, 122, 125, 129, 136, 167; avenues of funding, distribution and exhibition 6, 8, 10, 21, 64, 67, 80–81, 88–90, 92, 94–95, 97, 101, 105, 134, 140, 273, 275 alternative sexualities 139, 266, 275 Althusser, Louis 134, 177 ambivalence 4, 39–40, 99, 102, 116, 137, 142, 166, 168, 178, 191, 193, 195, 237, 248, 256, 265, 269, 275–276 American Beauty 190 American Indie cinema 73–74, 91, 271 Amu 53, 72, 120–122, 129, 130, 135 Anderson, Benedict 114–115, 160 Anglo-Indian 43 Angry Indian Goddesses 41 angry young man films 37 Antarnaad 94

anthology films 10, 70, 74, 182, 226 anthropocentrism 231; anthropological gaze 208 anti-Sikh killings in 1984 9, 120–122, 129 APDP 255–257, 260 aporia 176, 232; aporetic 172, 248 Appadurai, Arjun 54, 102, 269 Apur Panchali 167 Arabic dialogue 83, 229 see Ship of Theseus art cinema 18–20, 62, 66, 91, 97, 125, 276; arthouse cinema 6, 25, 69, 257, see also regional and vernacular films Arun, Avinash 76 Asian Dub Foundation 150, 159–161 Atman 237 Auschwitz 258 authenticity 20, 36, 40, 61, 113, 154, 160, 195, 226 azadi 260 Bachchan, Amitabh 37, 81, 110, 113, see also dynastic Bollywood star system backward caste 208–209 BAFTA 68 Bandit Queen 137 Banerjee, Mamata 171; see also Jadavpur university; Trinamool Congress Bangalore 1–2, 65, 67, 71, 89, 101, 109, 139; representation of 77, 113, 261–263; urban rock subculture 159–160 Bangalore Days 70, 141 banning of Indie films 9, 40, 93, 122, 128, 134 BA Pass 66, 67, 77 Barthes, Roland 226–227, 231, 247

280 Index Bashir, Aamir 1, 66, 69, 84, 86–87, 100–101, 131, 133, 252, 255 Basumatary, Kenny 71 Batra, Ritesh 10, 73–74, 81, 96, 250 Baudrillard, Jean 112 Beatles 158 Beckett, Samuel 172 Begum Akhtar 184 Belawadi, Prakash 1, 67 belonging 119, 122, 160, 181, 193–194 Benegal, Dev 20 Benegal, Shyam 2, 19, 25, 62, 70, 85, 93–95 Bengal famine of 1943 219 Bengali 120, 154–155, 159, 168–169, 172; art cinema 167; films 9, 17, 65, 91, 167–168 Berlinale 76, 91 Bhaag Milkha Bhaag 42 Bhabha, Homi 4, 37, 49, 94, 117–120, 149, 153, 158, 162, 191 Bhadwai village songs in Peepli Live 211 Bharadwaj, Vishal 132, 256 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 27–28, 39–40, 48, 84, 113, 122, 133–137, 235, 263, 266, 269, 276 Bhaskar, Ira 2, 64–67, 71–72, 82, 97–98, 100 Bihar 113, 181, 191–192 binary oppositions in SOT 227–228, 230 biopower 222 BitTorrent film downloads 27, 89, 101–105, 274–275 Blessed Indies 84–85, 272 blindness in SOT 228, 230, 232–235 blogs on Indian Indie cinema 75, 92, 105 Bollywood: Bollywood and Satyajit Ray 60; Bollywood behemoth 62–63, 73; branding 7, 32–35, 49, 52, 91; family melodramas 81; product placement in films 35, 52; Genesis of the term ‘Bollywood’ 34; metahegemony 6, 32–33, 37, 40, 42, 51–52; Bollywoodization 35, 58; monopoly 6, 33, 54, 272; Bollywood/ Parallel binary 3, 150; star power 87, 131; superstructure 5, 38, 48, 62–63, 83, 87, 273; Bollywood/Ray 67, 167 Bombay 85, 184; Hindi cinema 19, 49 Bombay Dream 192 Bombay Talkies 74, 77, 81, 98, 227 Bombay Velvet 81 Bose, Rahul 1, 21, 69–70, 91, 104, 138 Bose, Shonali 120, 129, 135

Bourdieu, Pierre 254 bourgeoisie 39, 94, 116, 158, 196, 205; bourgeois 37, 182, 205, 243 Brahman 237 Braidotti, Rosi 234 Brand-building 3; branding 7, 32–35, 49, 52, 91, 159–160 Brazilian favelas 240; City of God 240; Ciudad Oculta 240; Elefante Blanco 240; Trash 240 Brecht, Bertolt 168 British 46, 76, 150, 159, 190, 216, 242, 265; Armed Forces (Special Powers) Ordinance of 1942 260; Bengal famine of 1943 219; British Film Institute (BFI) 23; British social realism films 198; colonial system 201; mods and rockers 158; Section 377 anti-gay legislation 138, 263; The Daily Mail 135 Brokeback Mountain 76, 184, 190, 266 Bt cotton seeds 207 Buddhism 235 built environment 197, 262 bureaucracy 8, 129, 131, 206, 215, 221 BYOFF (Bring Your Own Film Festival) 89–90 ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ 130 Cannes Film Festival 24, 91 capitalism 39, 40, 102, 109, 111, 150, 267, 269; Capitalism: A Ghost Story 119; consumer capitalism 2, 33, 36, 40, 42, 82, 112, 116, 223, 253; hypercapitalism 250, 269 carceral space 258 Carpenter, Russell 77 Cartesian 238, 241 Carvaka 227, 235–237; Lokayata 235 caste divide 26, 65; caste and class divisions 85, 182, 195, 196–197; caste politics 208; untouchables 153 caste system 37, 85, 272; Brahmin 85, 153, 235–236; Kshatriya 85, 153; Shudra 85, 153; Vaishya 85 CBFC 1, 27, 125–134, 138–142; Advisory Panel 126–127, 133, 136, 142; Board Members 125–127, 132, 136, 145; Censor Board unofficial title 8, 126, 134, 136, 163; censorship of political Indies 22, 25–27, 84, 91, 120, 128–134, 138, 140; Examining Committee 127, 132–133, 140; film certification process 126; Ministry

Index  281 of Information and Broadcasting 120, 125–126, 275; replacement of Board members 125, 136, see Pahlaj Nihalani; resignation of Leela Samson and Board members in 2015 136; Reviewing Committee 127, 132 Censorship and regulation 28, 91–92, 125–132, 137, 266, 277; corruption and bribery 131–132; debate on NDTV 27, 105; efficacy in the face of YouTube 27, 275; Indies face greater 5, 8–9, 25–27, 40, 91, 129, 133–135, 260–261, 277; Internet censorship 104; Madras High Court action and Anonymous counteraction 103–104; LGBTQ themes in Indies 138–140; books by Joseph Lelyveld and Wendy Doniger banned 135; restricted to sex and violence 8; Mira Nair’s Kama Sutra 128; selfcensorship and moral policing 9, 138, 140, 142, 149, 275 Chandavarkar and Taylor 76 Chatterjee, Partha 53, 112, 114, Chauhan, Gajendra 137 Chawla, Juhi 81, 87 Cherian, Jayan 26, 134–135 Chibber, Vivek 206 child abuse 10, 77, 262 Chinese cinema 50 Cinema’s triple system of signs 164 Cinemas of India 15–16, 61–62, 96–97 cinematography 77, 211–212 Cineworld 60 city films 9, 77, 180, 182–183, 199 city space: consumerisation of 198; comparison to human circulatory system 240 transnational film co-operation and co-productions 8, 10, 74, 95–96; Hollywood and Bollywood 32, 55; Bollywood and Indie 276; between Indie filmmakers 70; Hubert Bals Fund 96; across Indian cinema history 76; NFDC 96, 272 colonial/postcolonial 197, 205, 221 commercial Hindi cinema 15, 18–19, 21, 36–38, 43, 47, 62, 65, 110, 141, 211, 268; film studios in the 1950s 36; in the 1970s and 80s 37; transformation in 1991 to Bollywood 38; cabaret song and dance 43 Communist Party of India (CPI) 169 Congress party 48, 121, 129, 134–135

consumer capitalism 2, 33, 36, 40, 42, 82, 112, 116, 223, 253; corporate branding 32; corporate branding strategies 32 corporate production companies 66, 81, 83; corporate production houses 7, 21, 25, 73–74, 86–87, 97–98, 272 corporate TV news channels 38, 212 corruption 16, 25, 77, 131–132, 201, 206, 215, 224, 241, 265 counter-culture 9, 158 counter-narrative 3–4, 109, 134, 260–261, 277 Court 65, 71, 88, 96, 191, 266 Critics Circle UK 10, 83 crowdfunding/crowdsourcing 8, 64, 75, 89, 92–95, 275 cultural difference 9, 11, 56, 158, 180, 199; cultural diversity 11, 56, 162, 192, 194, 199 cultural soft power 34, 48 cyberspace 8, 95, 112 Dabangg 81 Dadasaheb Phalke 76 Dalit 2, 26, 37, 40, 91, 132, 134–135, 153, 273 darshan 112; darshanic gaze 113 Dasein 238 David 77 dayan pratha 132 DDLJ 35, 37 DearCinema.com 105 Dehatmavada 237 De La Cruz, Khavn 102, 163, 167 Delhi Belly 156 Derrida, Jacques 118, 120, 151, 176, 179, 227, 232–234, 248, 251 deterritorialisation 154, 255 dhobi 181, 195, 197, 199, 231 Dhobi Ghat 5, 9, 16–17, 21, 25, 41, 45, 64, 68, 74–77, 80–81, 120, 141, 172, 180–185, 187–189, 191–192, 194–199, 208, 231–232, 242, 266–269 Dhoom 3 46 diachronic 62, 184, 204 dialectic 4, 21, 53, 100, 165, 204, 213–214, 227, 237, 242, 251 diaspora 34, 48; diasporic Indians 15, 38–40, 45, 48–49, 61, 77, 231, 269, see also Non-resident Indians (NRI) diegetic 38, 111, 120–121, 152, 170, 184, 242, 251; diegetic voiceover 170

282 Index DIFF (Dharamshala International Film Festival) 89 digital divide 111; digital citizens 17; digital ‘have-nots’ 111 Director’s Rare 71, 100 disappeared Kashmiris 172, 195, 251, 255, 257–258, 260 divergent content 22, 68, 272; divergent narratives 195 diversity: ethnolinguistic 73; of Indian cinema 15; of the Cinemas of India 16; Indies 61, 69; India’s cultural 162, 194, 203; Mumbai’s 192; Parallel cinema depicts 19 divided self 152, 165–166 Do Bigha Zamin 18, 167, 216–217 dominant discourse 105, 201, 205, 208, 223; dominant groups 191 domination 39, 50–51, 150 Doniger, Wendy 135, 143 Doordarshan 38, 70, 126, 172, 267–268 double blindness in drawing 232 double narrative 8, 109–124, 170, 191, 253; double national narrative 116; double time 53, 114, 118, 149–179, 216, 221; double time of nation 53, 221 downloading films in India 101, 103, 106 DRM (Digital Rights Management) 104 dualism 60, 229, 234, 236, 243 Durga 84 Durga Vahini 84 Dvaita Vedanta 235 dynastic Bollywood star system 110 EAFF 2016 (Edinburgh Asian Film Festival) 90 east/west 73, 242 economitas 112 editing 67, 70, 77, 157, 162, 168, 173, 211–212 Eid 253, 256; Eid Kashmir killings in 2010 256 Ek Thi Dayan 132 elite/subaltern 197 Elizabeth 127–128 English August 20, 65 Erdelyi, Gabor 76, 242 Eurocentric disavowal 241 Europe 241 European: directors 18; Cinema 71; philosophical paradigms and links 227, 240–241

Everybody says I’m Fine 20–21 existentialism 237 exotic 113, 195, 215; exoticised female figures in Bollywood 43, 46; exoticism 47; exoticising anthropocentrism 231 exteriority 103, 152, 171, 182, 193 F.i.g.h.t C.l.u.b Indie film blog 105 Fandry 65, 113 Fanon, Frantz 269 farmer suicides10, 26, 65, 77, 119, 195, 201, 203, 207–209, 213, 216, 224 FDI (foreign direct investment) 207 female filmmakers in Indie cinema 141; prominent female roles in Indies 45 female Bollywood actors paid less than male stars 42 feudal systems 216, 201, 205, 221, 218 Film Bazaar 96 Film Certification Appellate Tribunal 142 film festivals 8, 65, 84, 89–92, 96, 274, 276 Film Studies 2, 5, 7, 64, 107, 189 film style 167 Final Solution 9, 26, 122, 133–134 Firaaq 72, 122 Fire: attacks by right-wing Hindu extremists 26, 40, 137–140, 142, see moral policing first instance of crowdsourcing in India 93–94 foreign direct investment (FDI) 207; foreign multinational investment 2, 36 form, style and content 4, 21, 62, 110, 149, 151, 180, 201 Foucault, Michel 61, 222, 224 Fox Searchlight 52 Fox Star Studio 33, 71, 81–82 Fox TV 38 framing 9, 77, 149, 167, 169, 172, 193, 224, 260, 273 Frankfurt School 227 Free speech and expression 2, 135, 264, 275 free market 2, 10, 34, 36, 48–50, 119, 138, 205, 219 free play of meaning 150, 151, 168, 272 French New Wave 18, 150; Nouvelle Vague 69, 71, 168 Freud, Sigmund 118 frisking by police in Kashmir 252, 257–258

Index  283 FTII 125, 137, 143 FTII student protests and arrest 137 Gandhi, Anand 1, 10, 61, 73, 76, 104, 189, 226–228, 261 Gandhi, Indira 36, 120, 122, 130, 135, 220, see also Operation Blue Star Gandhi, Rajiv 133 Gandu 5, 9, 17, 26–27, 29–30, 40, 51, 65, 67, 70, 89–91, 96, 102–103, 105, 111, 116, 134, 138, 140, 142, 149–178, 192, 195, 211, 215, 275 Gandu-ness 152–153 Ganga 164; Ganges 27, 164 Gangs of Wasseypur 23, 74, 113, 156, 273 Garam Hawa 19, 210 geet mandali 211, 218 gender 7, 34, 41, 47, 137, 139–140, 144, 200, 270; gendered 7, 33, 37, 41–42, 275; gendered roles 33; gendering the nation 41 Gestalt 227 Ghajini 81, 128 Ghatak, Ritwik 18, 62, 168 ghazal 184, 242 Ghosh, Suman 1, 17, 25 Ghost art installation 117, 119–120, 269 Ghost Dance 118, 120, 251, 270 ghost of Mahato 217 ghosts of Kashmir 251, 256; ghosts of nation 116, 250–270, 276; ghosts of other stories 216, 250 Girlfriend 139 global film festival space 91 global village 183, 222, 229 glocal 5, 7, 10, 54, 62, 68, 75–78, 116, 154, 159, 180, 183–184, 228–230, 273; Indies 75, 116; network 229 Godaan 217–218 Godard, Jean-Luc 76, 150, 168 godfather syndrome in Indian cinema 81, 84, 272 Godhra massacre in 2002 121–122, 129, 133 Gogol, Nikolai 168 Gorgias 236–237; Gorgias/Socrates 237 governmentality 138, 222–223 Gramsci, Antonio 50 grand narrative 4, 35, 49–51, 129, 140, 155, 216, 238, 268 grassroots 172, 208, 214, 243 Guha, Ranajit 205, 224

Gujarat 9, 26, 93, 113, 121–123, 133, 135 Gulabi Aaina 139, 143 HAHK 37 Haider 10, 132, 250, 255–262 Hamlet 132, 165, 256–257, 260 haptic 189–190, 234; human touch 190 Hare Rama Hare Krishna 158 Harud 5, 10, 51, 66, 76–78, 79, 86–87, 90, 96, 100–101, 116, 123, 131–133, 138, 172, 195, 221, 248, 250–258, 260, 262 Harvey, David 110, 207, 221 hat-ke 61 heavy metal 159, see urban rock subculture hegemony 4–8, 10, 15, 18, 32–59, 73, 80, 82, 88, 90–92, 99–100, 105, 110, 114, 136–137, 140, 158, 164, 263, 272, 276 Heimat films 96 Helen 43–44 heteronormativity 137, 263 heterotopia 10, 61, 63, 226, 228, 242, 244–245, 247 high-priced tickets 98 Hindu Kashmiri Pandits 248, 262 Hindu nation 235; nationalism 39, 41, 56, 112–113, 235; nationalist 27, 39, 84, 191, 263, 269, 277 Hindu rashtra 39, 269 Hindu right-wing politics 265 Hindutva 39–40, 42, 122, 266, 277 Hinglish films 6, 20–21, 30, 65, 69 Hippie counter-culture 158 historiographical 5, 26, 39, 51, 116, 122, 159, 172, 183, 216 Hitchcock, Alfred 185, 187, 189 Holiday 141, see Molesters or Heroes Hollywood 6, 15, 26, 32–33, 39, 47–50, 55, 57–58, 73–74, 91, 99, 106, 108, 162, 266; Hollywood films 266; Hollywood hegemony 6, 32 Hollywood/Bollywood 32, 73 Home Talkies 76, 275 Home Video 96 Homer 234 homosexuality 28, 87, 139, 263; gay community and Indie representation 77, 87, 138–139, 265–266 Hori Mahato 195, 216–219 Howrah bridge 167, 169

284 Index human rights 121, 124, 208, 225, 250, 255–256, 266, 270 hybridity 4, 8, 17, 20, 22, 24, 54–55, 64, 68, 70, 73, 81, 95, 110, 116, 149, 154, 159, 192, 199, 201 Hyenas 222 hypercapitalism 250, 269 hyperlink films 77, 182, 189, 231–232, 261, 267; hyperlink format 226, 261; hyperlink network narrative 182 hyperlinked: heterotopias 226, 247; humans 239, 245 hyperreal 101, 111–113, 188, 221, 228; hyperreality 8, 10, 17, 102, 109–112, 114, 165, 189, 201, 206, 273; hyperreal religions 112; hyperreal world 228 hypersexualised 43–44 I Am 5, 9–10, 16, 28, 45, 78, 81, 87–88, 93–94, 101, 116, 123, 138–139, 144, 155, 182, 227, 241, 250, 255, 261–263, 265–266 ideology 2, 6, 33, 36–37, 39, 42, 113–114, 116–117, 132, 134, 142, 178–179, 183, 206, 258, 265, 270 IIFA 91 Ilai 60–61 imagined communities 123, 160, 178 imagined nation 112, 114, 118, 129, 160 immigrants 197 In the Name of God 129 in-between 5, 8, 22, 109, 114, 116, 154, 161–162, 166, 169, 197, 234–235, 277 Independent People’s Theatre Association 168 India’s neoliberal turn 33, 36, 43, 49 Indian army 130, 251, 258, 262 Indian bourgeoisie 196, 205 Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles 90 Indian folk music 242 Indian nation-state 2, 4, 35, 42, 137 Indian National Congress 219 Indian news media 201 Indian nihilist philosophy 227 Indian Ocean 211 Indian security forces 133, 221, 251–252, 256 Indian state apparatus 195, 255 Indianness 38, 43, 45, 266 Indies: as alternative films 1, 66, 72, 88, 139, 153, 158, 276; boxoffice success 16, 23, 66, 71; Indie attributes 67, 210; increase in Indie

releases 71; Indie content 87, 90; Indie infrastructure 21, 273–274; Indie New Wave 6, 8–9, 54, 70, 72, 78, 273; Indie space 5, 74, 89, 141, 276 Indie subcategories: true/blockbuster 73, 75, 271; traditional/experimental 67, 73; Q’s classification of Indies 85, 272 indispensability of Bollywood 80, 83 information superhighway 182–183 infrastructure 4, 8, 10, 21, 25, 38, 50, 88, 95, 102, 108, 273–274, 276 intercultural 1, 6, 10, 184, 229, 242 intergenerational 138, 230, 235–236, 268 interiority 103, 152, 171, 182, 193 Interiority and exteriority 103, 152 internal others 100, 162 International Indian Film Academy 91 interpellation 177 interstitial space 4, 9, 51, 75, 109, 116–119, 122, 131, 149, 158, 162, 180, 213 intertextuality 10, 120, 137, 154, 156, 166, 185, 189, 216–218, 256, 268, 273 intolerance in India 2–3, 40–41, 122, 135, 191, 265 Invention of the Art of Drawing 232–233 Irani cafes in Mumbai 197–198 Iranian Cinema 77, 102 ISAs 134, 261 Island City 77 Italian Neorealism 18, 69 Item girl 43, 156 item number 7, 43–47, 140–141, 155–156, 234; featuring Samantha Fox, Denise Richards, Kylie Minogue 47 Jadavpur University 171, 178 Jaffar, Farrukh 209–211 Jai Bhim Comrade 129 Jainism 235 Jan Morcha 202, 212–213, 219 Jesus of Montreal 243 Jews 116, 258 Johar, Karan 21, 38, 61, 74, 81–82, 98, 113 Kaafiron ki Namaz 90 Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham 61

Index  285 Kaif, Katrina 44, 46 Kali 149, 166 Kama Sutra 128, 137, 264 Kannada 62, 65, 71, 77, 86, 92, 94, 113, 229 Kapoor, Anish 117, 269 Kapoor, Raj 62 Kapoor, Shahid 256 Kapoors 110 Kapur, Shekhar 127 Karnataka 33, 62, 65, 77, 229 Kashmir 10, 79, 86–87, 89, 122, 131–133, 172, 221, 250–258, 260–262, 270 Kashmiri militants 261 Kashmiri Pandits 248, 255, 261–262 Kashyap, Anurag 23–24, 26, 67, 81–82, 84, 90, 96, 98 Kaul, Mani 19, 62, 70, 85, 97 Kaum de Heere 9, 26, 122, 130–131, 134–135, 142, 275 Kerala 33, 62, 70, 113, 134 Khajuraho temples 264 Khan, Aamir 3, 21, 23, 25, 40–41, 46, 74, 80–83, 106, 136, 142, 180 Kher, Anupam 40, 133–134 Kick 141 see Molesters or Heroes Killa 76 Kiran Rao 1, 3, 9, 16, 40, 68–69, 73, 75, 80, 83–84, 92, 100, 102, 141, 180, 183–184, 192, 196–197 KJo (Karan Johar) films 61 Koi Mil Gaya 39 Kolkata 1, 9, 149, 167, 169, 171–172, 178, 192, 261 Korine, Harmony 163 Kumar, Ashvin 142 Kumar, Pawan 1, 16, 19, 30, 62, 66, 71, 75–77, 86, 88, 92–95, 97, 102–105, 131, 140–142, 144–145, 275 Kumar, Raj Amit 140 LAFF (London Asian Film Festival) 90 Las Meninas 175–176 Lavanya Preeti 210 Lee, Bruce 166 Leigh, Mike 198 Leone, Sunny 46 Left Front 168, 171 Lelyveld, Joseph 135, 145 lesbian 26, 40–41, 91, 138–140, 144 Lesbian Film Festival 140 LGBTQ 139, 263–264 Liar’s Dice 113, 141

liberalisation 2, 6, 9–10, 28, 34–35, 37, 40, 43, 60–61, 66, 70–71, 75, 96–98, 110, 135, 159, 180, 214–215, 266, 268–269, 273 LIFF (London Indian Film Festival) 17, 60, 71, 89–90 Lilting 190 liminal 90, 109, 114, 118, 131, 159, 161–162, 170, 184, 189, 192–194, 199–200, 206, 224, 229, 231, 234; liminal space 90, 118, 159, 161, 170, 192, 206, 229; liminal virtual space 194 Loach, Ken 198 Local Kung Fu 71, 274 logocentric belief 235 logos 41, 151, 176, 237 longing 267 Love Jihad 266, 270 love triangle 195 Lower-caste 132, 153 LSD 23, 27 Lucia 65–67, 70–71, 77, 79, 86, 88, 92–94, 113, 273 lumpenproletariat 37 Madhavacharya 235 Madholal Keep Walking 88 Madras Cafe 143 Madrasi 265 Mahabharat 113 Maharashtra 114, 191, 207, 265, 269 Maharashtra attacks on migrants 191, 265–266 Mahatma Gandhi 134–135 majoritarian 1, 4, 6, 39 majority discourses 191 Make in India 208 Malayalam 62, 70 male gaze 46, 141, 187, 195 Manikpuri, Omkar Das 167, 201, 210 Manthan 19, 93 Maqbool 256 Marathi 61, 65, 71, 76, 191, 229, 266, 276 Marcus Aurelius 226 marginalisation 20–21, 33, 36, 52, 102, 114, 153, 168–169, 218; marginalised narratives 5, 116, 120, 177; marginalised other 191; marginality 9, 139, 150, 153, 180, 216, 221 Marks, Laura 234 Martha Marcy May Marlene 73

286 Index Marx, Karl 168, 179; Marxist 168–169, 171; Marxist Left Front 168 Masaan 113, 141 masculine codes 195 master narrative 6, 8–9, 33, 47, 109, 162, 164, 177, 194, 198, 269, 275 Mathur, Arjun 138 McMullen, Ken 118 media misrepresentation 10, 253 mediascapes 73, 102 Mehta, Deepa 76, 138 memento mori 190, 231 Memoirs of the Blind 232, 248 memory 10, 35, 116, 129–130, 184, 189–191, 193–195, 197, 232, 261, 266–268 Menon, Anjali 70 meta-hegemony 4–8, 10, 32–59, 73, 80, 82, 88, 90–92, 95, 99–100, 110, 114–115, 119, 131, 137, 140, 158, 161, 164, 259, 263, 268, 272–273, 276–277 metanarrative 4–5, 33, 46, 48, 50–51, 54–55, 100, 110, 114, 117–118, 129, 135, 161, 164, 166, 171, 199, 254, 272 metaphysical 189, 234–238, 248; metaphysical dualism 234 micro-narratives 2, 4, 111, 172, 273 middle cinema 19–20, 34 middle-class 19–20, 23, 28, 39, 102, 119, 169, 178, 219, 276 middleman 203, 205–206, 241–242, 265 Miike, Takashi 150, 167 militants in Kashmir 251, 254, 258, 261–262 Milk 93, 266 Ministry of Information and Broadcasting 97, 106, 120, 125–127, 137, 144, 275 minorities 2–3, 9, 122, 139, 192; Christians and Anglo-Indians 43, minority Muslims 191 minority spaces 250 mirror image 138, 190 mise-en-abyme 163, 172, 174–177 mise-en-scène 9, 120, 167, 212, 229–230, 251, 273 Miss Lovely 105 Mission Kashmir 87 mobile phones 111, 253 Modi, Narendra 36, 40, 121–122, 133, 135–136, 144, 208, 269

Mohandas, Geetu 141 Moksha 237 Molesters or Heroes 141 moneylenders 202–203, 205 Monsanto 207 moral policing 9, 138, 140, 142, 149, 275 morals and values 38, 153 Mother figure 41, 164 Mother India 36, 41–42, 164, 166, 222, see also Kali MPDA 101, 104 Mr and Mrs Iyer 20, 65 multiculturalism 180, 229, 269 multimedia 228 multinational corporations 52, 207–208 multiplex 2, 6, 11, 28, 33, 56, 60, 65, 71–72, 76, 78, 83–84, 86, 89, 98–101, 105–106, 198–199, 245, 274, 276 multiplex monopoly 98 Mumbai 1, 9, commercial Hindi cinema’s birthplace 15; represented in Hinglish films 20; representation of 1993 bomb blasts 26; Bollywood located in 33–34; Bombay film studio productions in 1950s 36; dabbawallahs 68, postmodern Indie film representations 77; illegal internet downloads 101; representations of marginal narratives180–189; Mumbai mainstream 180, 193–194 Murdoch, Rupert 38, 52, 82, 267 museum space 176, 228, 243–245 music video 136, 156–158, 160 Muslim 2–3, 9–10, 26, 41, 121–122, 129, 133, 172, 181, 191–192, 242, 251, 253, 262, 266, 269 Muslim Sufi music 242 My Brother Nikhil 87 mythic time 37, 51, 114, 118, 149, 153, 158, 166 mythology 113–114, 221 Nag, Arundhati 2, 139 Nair, Mira 52, 76, 128 Naji, Reza 77, 251 Nambiar, Bejoy 1, 66, 76, 82–84, 98, 105 nation-state 2, 4, 35, 42, 49, 55, 75, 114, 118, 137 NDA government 134 NDTV 27, 40, 105 Nehru, Jawaharlal 221 Nehruvian socialism 36, 219

Index  287 neoliberalism 6, 8, 34, 36, 39, 50, 63, 115, 160, 198, 206–208, 210, 221, 255, 266, 268; neoliberalisation 159; neoliberal capital 55, 201, 206, 221–222; neoliberal turn 33, 36, 43, 49, 208 Netflix 76, 275 network society 6, 182, 230 new cohort of Indie filmmakers 73 New Delhi 49, 168, 184, 202, 212 new media 27, 68, 73, 112, 123 New Wave: earlier Parallel cinema as ‘Indian New Wave’ 18–19, 70; French New Wave 18, 150; of Indian Indies 1, 5–9, 16–22, 24–25, 53–54, 63–65, 68–72, 74, 78, 85, 90, 125, 130, 154–155, 165, 271, 273 New York South Asian Film Festival 165 News Corporation 52 NFDC 19, 66, 72, 89, 96–98, 106, 125, 136, 272, 274 Nietzsche, Friedrich 227, 234 Night Moves 73 Nihalani, Pahalaj 136, 144 nihilism 172, 227, 234, 236; nihilist 158, 235–236 Noe, Gaspar 163, 167 non-linear 8, 150, 157, 165, 226; non-linearity 273 non-professional actors 71, 167, 210 Non-resident Indians (NRI) 38–40, 76, 128, 180, 195, 269 nostalgia 10, 35, 189–190, 193–194, 267 Nouvelle Vague 69, 71, 168 Nussbaum, Martha 121, 135 Nye, Joseph 7, 48–50 oedipal desire in Gandu 164–165 Okurbito 268 Om-Dar-B-Dar 65 Omkara 256 Onir 1, 10, 45, 68–71, 81, 87–88, 93–95, 103, 138, 140–141, 261, 266 Operation Blue Star 130 Oppenheimer, Joshua 122 Orientalism 52; orientalist 38, 43, 52, 241; self-orientalising 38 Oscar Awards 32, 75–76, 88, 96, 141 other 117, 120, 190–191 outsiders 43, 265 Pahuja, Nisha 46, 84 Pakistan 3, 86, 122, 133, 251, 254, 260, 262

Paan Singh Tomar 23 Papilio Buddha 9, 26, 40, 51, 91, 113, 116; excluded from the International Film Festival of Kerala 2012 134–135 paradigmatic 111, 152–153, 230 Parallel cinema 2–3, 5, 18–22, 24–26, 37, 62, 67, 69, 72, 156, 168, 210, 274; Bollywood and Parallel 3, 5, 6, 17, 22, 25, 60, 156 Parash Pathar 167 Parched 41, 45, 113, 141 Parsi community in Mumbai 197 Partition 118, 122, 168, 255 Pasolini, Pier Paolo 76 Pather Panchali 18, 167, 210 patriarchal 4, 7, 37, 41–42, 47, 111, 137–138, 142, 208, 261, 275; patriarchal status quo 111; patriarchy 6, 42, 139, 141, 277 patriotism 87 Patwardhan, Anand 26, 128 pay-per-view 76, 275 pedagogical 105, 109, 153, 276; cultural diversity 192, 194; master narrative 109; metanarrative 164, 199; mythical time of nation 149, 153, 276; mythology of nation 221; nationalist ideology 37; national narrative 35, 42, 47, 118, 155, 158, 199; pedagogical past and performative present 277; religion 235 Peepli Live 5, 10, 16–17, 23, 38, 64–65, 80, 82, 85, 111, 119, 201, 207 peer-to-peer file-sharing 8, 27, 101, 275; P2P 101, 104–105 performative 109, 118, 149, 153, 155, 158, 192–195, 199, 235, 264, 272, 277; performativity 158, 193–194 peripheralised 169, 195, 220, 251, 273 Persian Zoroastrian 197 photographs used as a device in Indies 189–190, 229–231, 251, 255 photography 181, 189, 195, 226, 231–232, 236, 245, 247 Pingakesa 237–238 piracy 101, 104, 107–108, 275; pirate sphere 8, 89, 101–103, 275 Pirandello, Luigi 177 PK 115, 136, 142 Plato 244–245; Plato’s Cave 244–245, 258

288 Index pleasure of looking 163, 187–188; voyeurism 163, 189; voyeuristic gaze 43, 163, 175; watching 173, 184, 188–189, 196, 212, 246, 267 Plutarch 61, 226, 230 pogrom: Godhra killings in 2002 121, 133; murder of communists in 1960s Indonesia 122; to purge Mumbai of ‘outsiders’ 265 political speech in Gandu 170–172 polysexual 28, 30, 263 Pontecorvo, Gillo 255 portmanteau films 10, 77, 182, 226, 261 postcolonial: Bengali art cinema 167, 169; colonial/postcolonial 197, 205, 221; comparison with Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Hyenas (1992) 222; decolonisation of India incomplete 162, 165; Indian bourgeoisie 196, 205; Indian cinema 17–18, 33, 70, 109, 115, 164, 216; Indian national narrative 35–36, 53, 164, 196, 216; Indian society 158, 165; postcolonial encounter 241–243, postcolonial Europe 241; Postcolonial Metanarrative 117; Postcolonial Studies and theory 4, 110, 177; Postcolonial traces 239, 241; residues 266; Ship of Indian Cinemas explanation of diagram 62; temporality 36, 110, 121, 162, 206, 241; third space 254 post-globalisation 34, 52, 81, 102, 189; Bollywood films 20, 35, 38, 42–43, 52, 61, 81, 155, see also Karan Johar; farmer suicides 201, 219; hybridity and western influence 70, 116; hyperreality 102, 165; ‘item girl’ 43; national master-narrative 6, 33, 39, 42, 184 post-human 234 postmodern: characteristics of postmodern films 150; connectedness, simulacra and hyperreality 8, 10, 17, 102, 109, 110, 112, 114, 165, 188, 201, 206, 212; grand narratives 49; new Indies as postmodern hybrids 7, 8, 67, 70, 75–76, 94; Indie films’ postmodern tropes and traits 111, 149, 156, 157–158, 167–168, 180, 184, 187, 210, 227; in Indian cinema 109–110; logic of late capitalism in India

109; pastiche 9, 150; postmodern theoretical and philosophical approach 4, 51, 60, postmodern city film 9, 77, 180, 182–184, 199, postmodern condition 110, 151, 180, 183, 189, 223, 229; freestyle and freeplay in Gandu 150; intertextuality 166, 216; mise-en-abyme 176; Mumbai as postmodern city 198, 228; self-reflexivity 168, 172, 216; postmodern meta-reference 216; postmodernism 56, 109–111, 123, 162; Tarantino comparison 158; youth subculture in India 158 poststructural 4, 53, 110, 151, 176, 273 POV [point of view] 173–175, 243 power 10, 25, 92, 201, 213–215, 222, 254; biopower 222; Bollywood star power 87, 131; CBFC and Ministry of Information and Broadcasting 126–127, 129, 133, 163, 261; Hindutva groups’ ‘Love Jihad’ 266; Hollywood’s power 32; Indian military and police in Kashmir 251–252, 259–260; mainstream corporate production companies 24, 85; neoliberal enterprise and power 222, see Hyenas; police brutality 137, 265; religious national and political 2, 27–28, 39, 84, 134, 137, 201, 206, 213–214, 265; soft power wielded by Bollywood and its meta-hegemony 7, 33–34, 42, 48–52, 115, 131, 137, 153, 162, 272 Prakrit 229–230 Prasar Bharati 126, 145 pre-Socratic sophist 236 Premchand 217–218 presence/absence 234 product placement in Bollywood films 35, 49, 52 public spaces 112 public sphere 5, 111, 115, 120, 152; Indies being categorised in the public sphere 67; Indies raising awareness and participation in India 1, 16–17, 28, 105, 180; promotion of Indies 80, 83, 92; reaction to Aamir Khan’s statement 3; torrent downloads 103, 105–106 Pune 71, 125, 137 see also FTII punk music 158–162 PVR multiplex 71, 86, 100–101, 274

Index  289 Q 70, 73, 96, 134, 156, 170, 272; anarchistic ‘guerrilla’ approach 163, 172; classification of the Indies 84–85, 272; India’s transition from postcolonial to postmodern 162; influence of Jean-Luc Godard and Takashi Miike 150; making gandu socially acceptable 153; mise-enabyme and postmodern self-reflexive scene in Gandu 172–177; on his film being leaked online 27; on screening of Gandu at BYOFF 89–90; on the rise of new Indies and new Indian journalism 105; sexuality in Indian cinema 28, 165; spontaneous approach to filming Gandu167; torrent downloads in India 102–103 Qissa 96, 118 Quit India Movement 260 Rabindra-sangeeth 154 ragas 184, 242 Raghavendra, M. K 2, 196 Ramayana TV series 113 Rangayan Sridhar 139 Rao, Kiran 1, 3, 9, 16, 40, 68–70, 73, 75, 80, 83–84, 92, 100, 102, 141, 180, 183–184, 192, 196–197, 199 rap music in Gandu 149, 154, 156, 158, 160–161, 178 rape cases in India 45, 141, 260 rationalism 2–3, 227, 238, 277 Ravi, Ravinder 130, 135 Ravindran, Nirmala 2, 65 Ray, Satyajit 6–7, 18, 21, 60, 62, 167–168 Rear Window 185, 187, 189 refugee crisis in 2015 241 regional and vernacular films 15, 18, 33–34, 60–62, 65, 94, 110, 276 Reliance Entertainment 32, 82; Reliance Big Pictures 86 religiosity 8, 109–110, 114–115, 136, 138, 166, 276; religious and ethnic purity 191 Renoir, Jean 76 representation: alternative sexualities 139, 275; Bollywood’s patriarchal normative 4, 7, 41–42, 46, 47, 116, 139; Bollywood’s representation of Hindu ideology and capitalism 36, 38, 41, 115, 119, 164; female roles magnified in Indies 45, 141,

189; heterodox, divergent and heterogeneous Indies 111, 113–114, 162, 166, 195, 229, 242, 277; India’s news media 210, 212–214; minority, marginal and subaltern in Indies 2, 9, 116, 118, 120, 180, 183, 191, 196, 273; national issues and topical themes in Indies 8, 10, 110, 122, 129, 168, 171, 190, 194, 197–198, 205, 255, 261; Parallel films ‘progressive leftist’ realist 19, 20; representation of digital ‘have-nots’ in Indies 111; sex, religion, censorship and politics 8, 25, 26, 28, 139, 166, 206, 275; Slumdog Millionaire 52 residues 234, 241, 262, 266 resistance: Arun’s enunciation in Dhobi Ghat 191; ‘banned in India’ tag as a tool 140; contemporary Indian society 140; film festivals as spaces of 92; FTII students act of 137; Gandu as performative 149, 172, 178; hacker group Anonymous 104; Natha’s ultimatum in Peepli Live 222; new Indies espousing cinematic resistance 4, 54, 116, 276; to interventions in the Indie creative process 75 right-wing Hindu nationalist 191; BJP27, 39, 84; Bajrang Dal 122, 275; RSS 266, 275; Shiksha Bachao Andolan (‘Save Education Movement’) 135; Shiv Sena 39–40, 139, 191, 266, 269, 275; VHP 84, 122, 266, 275 Rizvi, Anusha 1, 9, 23, 68, 73–75, 80, 83, 85, 141, 201, 209–211 Robinson, Marc 46–47 rock subculture in India 158–161, 211 Rowdy Rathore 141, see Molesters or Heroes Roy, Arundhati 119, 219 Roy, Bimal 167, 216 RSA/RSAs 134, 261–263 Rudraksh 113 Saajan 268 sacred and profane 164, 166; profane 155, 164–166; profanity 9, 153 Sahara 25 Sainath, P 201, 214–215, 221 Salt of the Earth 93–95 Samaraditya Katha 238

290 Index same-sex: culture 140; portrayal in Bollywood 139; portrayal in Fire 138; relationships in India 9–10 Samson, Leela 136, 145 Sanskrit 221, 229–230 Santaolalla, Gustavo 184 Sarah’s Key 258 Sartre, Jean-Paul 237 Sathyu, M. S 19 Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram 228 Save the Indies Campaign 69, 271, 274 Schopenhauer, Arthur 237 scopophilia 189; scopophilic 43, 163 Section 377, 138–139, 263 secular India 2, 238–239, 255, 266, 269 self and other 265 self-reflexive: Anti-Sikh riots and Godhra massacre Indie representations 120, 129; censorship suppresses political critique 135, 142; American Indie cinema 73; Indie narratives 4, 6, 25, 117; Dhobi Ghat 191; Harud and I Am 123; Peepli Live 206, 211; postmodern subversion in Gandu 156, 167–168, 176; representation of alternative sexualities in India 266 semiotic modes in cinema 164 Sen, Mrinal 18–19, 62 shadowlines 162, 169 Shah, Naseeruddin 211 Shahani, Kumar 19, 62, 97 Shah Rukh Khan 3, 41, 55, 91 Shah, Sohum 83, 87, 226 Shaitan 82 Shakespeare 257 Shakti 127–128 Shambu Mahato 216–218, Shankar, Ravi 158 Sharma, Rakesh 26, 133–134 Shastri, Lal Bahadur 219–220 Ship of Indian Cinemas model 7, 228; diagram and explanation 62–63 Ship of Theseus 5, 7, 61–63, 66–67, 71, 76–77, 83–84, 87, 90–91, 104, 108, 111, 114, 141, 182, 189, 226, 228, 230, 242, 258, 261, 269 Ship of Theseus paradox 62, 230 Shiva, Vandana 207 Shoah 116 simulacra 17, 160, 273; ‘hyperreal simulacrum’ in Ramayana TV series 112–113; simulacrum 166, 244 Singh, Mulayam 141

Singham Returns 128 single-screen cinemas 98–99, 198 Siras, Ramchandra 141, see Aligarh Six Characters in Search of an Author 177 Slumdog Millionaire 52 social media: crowdfunding through 94; Facebook and Twitter 92–93, 102; representation in Indies 111–112; social media-savvy young Indians 23; to promote Indies 8, 23, 24, 75, 92, 273; wider access in India 17, 105, 109 social realism 18–19, 25, 198, see also British social realism films Socrates 235–237 soft power 7, 11, 33–34, 42, 48–52, 57–59, 131, 137, 162, 272 song and dance: Bollywood 7, 22, 113, 155, 163, 211, 260; escapes censorship 26; Indies deviation from Bollywood 5, 184, 211; Parallel cinema dispensed with 19; sexualised 7, 43; subversion of the format in Haider 260 sophist 236 see Gorgias South Indian 60, 115, 133, 159, 265 Soviet formalists 168 spaces and places 169 spiritual and material binary in India 8, 36, 53, 227, 238–239, 248 Spivak, Gayatri 130, 153 Split Wide Open 20, 65 splitting the ego 269 Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger rebels 133 STAR TV Network 38, 267 state censorship 9, 129, 131, 261 state of the nation 5, 25, 166, 273 status quo 4, 8, 37, 87, 111, 142, 153, 198, 223, 277 stereotype 16, 52, 69, 191 Stewart, Jimmy 185 subaltern: dhobi 181–182, 199; elite/ subaltern divide 197; farmer 206; fragments 205, 221, 273; in Dhobi Ghat and British social realism films 198; narratives and historiographies from below 130, 216, 218; peasants and rural subaltern 37, 205, 216, 218–219; representation in new Indies 25, 68, 111, 119, 250, 272–273; representation in Parallel cinema 19; rickshaw-puller 19; silence of the subaltern 129, 130, 178, 216; slum-dweller 153, 169,

Index  291 177; subaltern (as woman) 130; subaltern figures 9, 54, 180, 201, 241, 243, 273; subaltern in Gandu 168; subaltern ghosts in Indies 116; urban migrant 60, 223 Subaltern Studies 180, 196, 205 subtitles in Gandu 65, 151–152, 154, 170–171 subversive spectacle 162 Sundance 23, 90 Supreme Court 139, 263 surveillance 186, 254, 258 Susman 94 Suvée, Joseph-Benoît 232–233 Swaroop, Kamal 1, 65 swear words 156 Swedish: dialogue in SOT 83, 229–230, 242; folk music 242; character in SOT 240–241, 243 synchronic 184, 204, 228 syntagmatic: connotation in cinema 152; pedagogy of the nation 153 Tagore, Rabindranath 154, see ‘Rabindra-sangeeth’ Tamhane, Chaitanya 73, 96 Tamil: Indie Ilai screened at London Cineworld 60; Parallel Tamil art cinema in 1970s 62; director Nalan Kumarasamy 70; Sri Lanka’s minority community 133; vernacular art cinema 61, 276 Tamil Nadu 33, 60, 62; refusal to screen Madras Café 133; migrant workers in Dhobi Ghat 191 Tarantino, Quentin 158 Tarr, Bela 76 technics 75, 101, 103, 106, 229 technoscapes 73, 75, 101–102, 106, 229 Teenkahon 77 Tees Maar Khan 141, see Molesters or Heroes temples of desire 112 Tennyson, Alfred 194 Tharoor, Shashi 48 The Act of Killing 122 The Battle of Algiers 255 The Brook poem in Dhobi Ghat 194, see Tennyson The Daily Mail 135 The Dirty Picture 115 The Disenchantment of the World 254, see Bourdieu The East 73, see American Indie cinema

The Good Road 96 The Hindus: An Alternative History 135, see books by Joseph Lelyveld and Wendy Doniger banned The Lunchbox 5, 10, 21, 54, 96, 111, 250; BAFTA-nominated 68; boxoffice success 22; dabbawallahs 68; ghosts in 266; Irrfan Khan in 81; Karan Johar’s decision to promote 74; multi-religious characters 269; nostalgic narratives 266–269; similarities to Dhobi Ghat 268; VHS tapes trope 172, 267 The Messenger of God 136, see resignation of Leela Samson and Board members in 2015 The Motorcycle Diaries 184 The Road to Guantanamo 251, see Winterbottom The Rolling Stones 159, see Bangalore: urban rock subculture The Sacrament 73, see American Indie cinema The Truman Show 175, 215 The World Before Her 9, 46, 84, 138 Third Cinema 19 Third Man: first film with all transgender cast 139, see LGBTQ third space 7, 54, 116, 142, 154, 242, 254 ticket prices: same for Indie and Bollywood films 100; expensive multiplex tickets for Indies 100, 198 time of liberation 4, 149, 153, 158, 163, 166, 199, 277 time of nation 53, 115, 110, 153, 160, 221, 266 Toronto Film Festival 91 torrent downloads 8, 100–106 traditional Indian values 33, 38, 153, 155 Train to Pakistan 122 transgender community: hijras 139, see Third Man Tribeca and Sundance festivals 23, 274 Trinamool Congress 171 Trotsky, Leon 168 TRP television rating system 206, 212, 223 TV News channel sensationalism 38, 208, 212 Umrao Jaan 210 UN study on women in popular cinema 45

292 Index unblessed Indies 85, 272 undecidability 2, 247; absence of physical referents in photo/film images 247; aporetic state of chaotic undecidability 172; ‘crisis’ 116, 118; ghosts of forgotten narratives evoking undecidability 255; Indies represent India’s current time of undecidability 276–277; Kashmir trapped in undecidability 261; nation’s present time of undecidability 221; time of undecidability 114–116, 118–119, 122, 137, 142, 218, 276–277 Unfreedom 9, 40, 91, 140, 275, see CBFC untouchables 153; lower-caste 132, 153 Upanishads 28, 237 urban slum representations in Indies 121, 150, 169, 181, 240, 244; slum-dweller 153, 177 urban space 4, 9, 180, 189, 223, 269 urban youth subculture in India 158, 160–162 urban-rural divide 18, 201, 211 Uttar Pradesh 191–193 UTV 21, 23, 25, 64, 71, 74, 82, 85–86, 98, 210 vamp figure in commercial Hindi cinema 43–44, 156; vamp/heroine 43 Venice Film Festival 91 vernacular 15, 60, 156, 191, 276; films from Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala 33; art cinema in the 1970s in Malayalam, Tamil and Kannada 62; current Marathi and Tamil films 61, 276; difference between vernacular/regional and new Indie cinema 65; vernacular swear words in Indies 156 VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) 84, 122, 266, 275 Viacom 18, 24, 33, 74, 82, 84 Vicky Donor 81 Video on demand 8, 76, 96

Vidharba region farmer suicides 207 Vijayasimha 237 virtual 112, 160, 189, 194, 245, 247; ghosts as virtual and real presence 120; interfaces and technological devices 111, 229, 233; onscreen Bollywood ‘gods’ and goddesses 113; virtuality in technics, technoscapes and global flows 229–230; virtuality of cyberspace 95 Waiting for Godot 172 We the People NDTV debate show 27, 156 Weir, Peter 175, 215 Welcome to Sajjanpur 86 Well Done Abba 86 Weltanschauung 227, 236 West Bengal 36, 70, 149, 154, 168, 171–172 Western audience 114 Western conception of Indie cinema 72 wide-angle 77, 211, 234 Winterbottom, Michael 251 Wong Kar Wai 103 working class 37, 197 World Cinema 5; aesthetic influence in Indian Indies 68, 75, 77, 184, 273; broadband Internet and downloads in India providing access 75, 102, 104, 106; World Cinema Film Festival 2011 ‘Soul of India’ theme 17 X: Past is Present 70, 271 xenophobic 191, 266 Yadav, Leena 41, 77 Yadav, Raghuvir 201, 211 YouTube 27, 103, 161, 275 zamindars 204–205 Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara 113 Zizek, Slavoj 159–160 zone of occult instability 118, 269, see Frantz Fanon