Whose Bollywood is this anyway?

Abstract

The first part of the chapter revisits critical frameworks for studying Bollywood. It upholds Ashis Nandy’s reading of Bollywood as a South Asian popular cultural form. It also acknowledges studies that see Bollywood films as forging a complex notion of transnational Indian identity within the broad category of diasporic Indian communities. The chapter also espouses what Nandy and Vinay Lal believe that Bollywood films need to be studied closer to the context of the audience. To use Bollywood films as pedagogic texts is ridden with contradictions and complexities that dominant popular cultural forms are known to have. Neither should Bollywood be dismissed for its seeming triviality nor should it be measured against globally upheld cinematic aesthetics. The students need to be provoked to look beyond the seemingly inclusive, albeit exotic depictions of people and cultures in Bollywood films. With a selection of films that are avowedly inclusive and seemingly aware of ethnic and racial discrimination in India, the chapter explores the problematic representations.