The ‘Nation’ in Indian Cinema

Abstract

AbstractIndian cinema studies, since the late 1990s, have witnessed a fast rising curve, and we now have a field which is almost saturated with the idea of ‘Bollywood’. ‘Bollywood cinema’ which is commonly understood as being a ‘national popular’ has come to occupy the central position in the scholarship on Indian cinema. While the term ‘Bollywood’ itself is contested, and has been the subject of debate among scholars, it has, more often than not, been used to signify the larger body of the Hindi cinema made in Bombay or Mumbai. This cinema has been identified as having certain attributes, which makes it the key arbiter (and for some the sole arbiter) of the ‘national’ filmic imaginary. More recently, however, there has evolved the paradigm of ‘pluralising’ the idea of a national cinema in India, and is evidenced in a deliberated turn to other Indian cinemas, like Tamil and Bengali. Scholars studying these other cinemas are attempting to demonstrate the complexities of the relation between the nationally dominant (but not ‘the national’) Hindi film and the other cinemas, indicating the interconnected and intersected nature of Indian cinemas, and problematizing the powerful trope of the nation in Indian cinema studies.