The politics of the representation of Christian women characters in select Hindi films

Abstract

ABSTRACT This research will attempt to understand the politics of the representation of Christian women characters in Hindi films, Julie, and Bobby from a postcolonial feminist lens. This paper studies the portrayal of Christian women characters as ‘westernized’ and ‘common’ in Hindi films. To prove this argument, a postcolonial feminist approach with the theories of Partha Chatterjee’s idea of the role of nationalism in the representation of the ‘westernized’ and ‘common’ women; Gopal Guru’s argument of the exclusion of the minorities from the mainstream imagination of the nation, and Diana Dimitrova’s discourse of ‘Otherism’ will be used. This research implies that the minority Christian women characters as the lead heroines in Hindi films are typecasted into the roles of immoral, sexually alluring, and unchaste woman who through her association with the Hindu hero poses a threat to the purity of Hindu dharma and hence the majoritarian idea of ‘Indianness’.