Towards a more inclusive Indian identity? A case study of the Bollywood film Swades

Abstract

This article focuses on the greater inclusiveness in the Indian national identity necessitated by the changing political and economic scenario worldwide and the ways in which it has been articulated in contemporary Indian cinema through an inclusive identity that continues to draw heavily from, according to Chatterjee, the ‘inherited culture’ of the nation to provide the ‘adaptive leverage’ to meet the Western standards of progress. This attempt to propagate an inclusive national identity is placed in the context of the Dual Citizenship Act passed by the Government of India in 2003 in an effort to draw the overseas Indian into the process of Indian nation-building.