BOLLYWOOD, NATION, GLOBALIZATION: AN INCOMPLETE INTRODUCTION

Rini Bhattacharya Mehta

Bollywood, or Bombay Cinema, or Indian Entertainment Cinema went global in 1995, with Aditya Chopra's Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (The True of Heart Will Win the Bride). DDLJ, as the film came to be called (in the 1990s' style of abbreviating long Bollywood titles), outperformed Maine Pyaar Kiyaa (I Have Loved, 1989) in the box office which in its day had outperformed the long-time record-holder Sholay (Flames, 1975). In DDLJ, the Non Resident Indian (the NRI), hitherto portrayed in Hindi films as the marginal outsider with affected speech and behavior was redeemed and validated as not just a possible Indian national subject, but possibly one of the best. This film had a storyline highly unusual for its time. Baldev Singh, a Punjabi storeowner in England returned to India to marry off her daughter Simran to a native Indian Punjabi. The daughter had already had a brief romantic encounter with a Punjabi British man named Raj, and was determined to marry him. But Raj, who then followed Simran and her family to India, would marry Simran only if she was 'given away' in the 'traditional Indian way,' by her father Baldev Singh. Baldev's impression of Raj from a brief encounter was that of an irresponsible individual with no sense of 'tradition,' someone who was just not 'Indian enough'. But as the narrative unfolded, Raj proved his 'worth' and Indian-ness to Baldev, 'won' the bride, and the film ended with the newly-weds returning to England, as Indians as they ever were. The film broke several established Bollywood models; the men rather than the women were projected as guardians of 'tradition' and 'honor' (albeit Simran – the woman – was still locus of the struggle as well as the prize to be won), and it was the male hero who had to atone and toil to make up for his brief youthful misgivings. Covering two continents, the drama as it unfolded was visually and verbally 'Indian'; it was openly vocal about Indian values and customs, in spite of the fact that the major protagonists lived their lives in England. Moreover, the NRI was not required to return to India and stay there – and this was the twist that made it for DDLJ – the NRI could remain NR and be the 'I,' that is, Indian. Kuljit – the Indian Punjabi groom chosen by Baldev for his daughter – was portrayed as an opportunist crook, as he and his entire family perceived of his arranged marriage with Simran as a way to climb the social ladder. At one point, Kuljit verbally reveled in his aspirations of living a hedonistic life in England – his cherished destination of personal freedom without responsibility.

The significance of DDLJ in setting the new trend for the depiction of a new form of 'identity' in the global and the national context cannot be overstated. This film is specifically relevant to this anthology because if there is a narrative that several of the essays in this book claim, it is that of the 'Return of the Nation.' Nation, despite not having gone away anywhere, has come back with a vengeance in globalized India. What has diminished radically is the 'postponement' of assertion and gratification. The Nation in post-global India is an overwhelming 'now.' Not necessarily here, but now. Since the reconfiguration of the Third World as a geopolitical entity in the new world system, India as an archetype of non-Western nation-state in this system has renegotiated its commodity-value. As the Western news and media have nurtured and projected India's turn of the millennium image as an emerging super-power, a force to be reckoned with, a 'democratic,' tamable alternative to red China, the official and unofficial ideological apparatuses in India have reflected and embellished the image, to be perpetuated at home and out in the world. One of the significances of Bollywood lies in its self-positioning as an unofficial ideological apparatus.

In addition to drawing out Bollywood into the 'global', DDLJ also created a neo-nationalist imaginary. Using the time-honored comic trope of the wedding of young lovers as the denouement, DDLJ built itself upon the spectacle of the 'ritual' itself, following on the footsteps of another blockbuster that preceded it by a year. Sooraj Barjatiya in Hum Aapke Hai Kaun (Who I Am To You, 1994) – abbreviated as HAHK – had tried and tested successfully the formula of 'celebration', by making the family (in this film, a transparent signifier for the nation) an all-rounded unit, subsuming complexities of all kinds under the aegis of a benevolent patriarchy. The 'celebration' itself is highlighted as both the foundation and centerpiece of the narrative, and as Virdi describes, 'the protracted wedding celebration maximizes the pleasure in ritualized articulations of filial and sexual tensions through folk songs, dance routines ...' The obsessive underscoring of 'family' in an isolated, almost fetishized form in HAHK echoed and mirrored a parallel ideological phenomenon: the jingoist militant nationalism that the 'war and terrorism' films perpetuated. The patriotic Non-resident Indian, the content family, and India's 'just war' against terrorists and enemy-states formed a three-pronged cultural agenda for a post-cold war, neo-liberal, resurgent nationalism.

From India to India Inc.

Whether we choose to read Indian Cinema as 'social history' or not, the 'social history' of Indian Cinema has been intricately bound with that of the nation. The current, new Bollywood is the face of post-global India, and any attempt at comprehending the enormity of its social, cultural, political, and economic significance calls for a revisiting of India's postcolonial decades prior to globalization. During the cold war, India had embraced and led the Nonaligned Movement, a political alliance of African and Asian nation-states that had refused to subscribe to or be enlisted by either the USA or the USSR. Jawaharlal Nehru's vision of India...