Contents

19.1 lntroduction
19.2 Bollywood and Diaspora - Consumption and Representations
19.3 Diasporic Filmmakers and their Communities
19.4 Conclusion
19.5 Further Reading
Learning Objectives

L
This Unit will help you to:
Understand the patterns of consumption and representation of
Bollywood and diaspora; and
Know the representation of diasporic filmmakers and their communities.

19.1 lntroduction
Meera joota hai Japani
Y e Patloon lnglistani
. Sar pe la1 topi Rusi -
h Phir bhi dil hai Hindustani.
(Shree 420)

The chorus from this song i n Raj Kapoor's legendary film i s a fitting starting
point, especially when considering how it has subsequently cropped up i n
many movies and novels by diasporic writers of South Asian origin. For
instance, i n Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses fictional Hindi movie
superstar Gibreel Farishta, a blend of Amitabh Bachchan and M. T. Rama
Rao, sings the song when tumbling down to earth after his Al flight 420 is
blown up i n the middle of the English Channel and i n Mira Nair's film
Mississippi Masala the song i s played on a tape recorder when a Ugandan
Asian family i s violently ejected from their home and forced to migrate via
England to the US. Indeed Raj Kumar Saxena, the main character in Shree
420, is a masquerader par excellence, a man who can absorb difference -
racial and cultural, dress, makeup and behaviour. He can inhabit an identity
that valorises fragmentation and seek wholeness and incorporate several
transnational identities in himself (see Chakravarty, 1993:203). In this respect
it could be argued that the song i s an anthem for migrancy, dislocation and
re-rooting on our routes. In the song, the chaplinesque clown wears a
motley of international attire, yet despite these markers his 'heart remains
Indian for all that'. Is he the prototype of the diasporic migrant? Within
processes of identity negotiations film, film music and cinematic
lndia and lndian Diaspora: accompanied by discomfort, guilt and pain, that i s central to the attempt
Images and Perceptions at identity formations on the part of displaced peoples. Bombay cinema and
film songs become thus the common %round of social intercourse i n the
lndian diaspora. (Chakravarty, 1993:3) She further argues that for Indians
living in the diaspora Hindi movies become the metonymic substitution for
'India' and this substitution i s an attempt at closure, a means of constructing
rigid mental boundaries between the past and the present, the culture at
home and the new adopted culture, home and exile, nationality and
naturalisation. More often than not, this imaginary 'India' i s frozen i n time,
a past to which it i s impossible to return, but 'which comes to represent
the self valorized i n another place, at another time.' (Chakravarty, 1993:4)
In this respect, the Bombay film becomes the displaced site of national
exploration. Yet to read the Bombay film and i t s relationship to the
diaspora as mere nostalgia wou1.d not expose the full picture. Increasingly,
lndian p o p ~ ~ l acinema
r has impacted on markets outside India. Until
recently these used to be markets with large lndian immigrant communities,
but ever since the late 1990s lndian cinema's reach has widened even
further.

This unit will look at how Bollywood cinema represents the diaspora and
will also look at the consumption of Bombay cinema in -the diaspora.
Furthermore, it will look at a cinema located beyond Bollywood, the South
Asian diasporic films, which at first were markedly different from Bollywood
cinema, but have increasingly been influenced by Bollywood. Although
lndian popular cinema has had a global following for decades, the diaspora
has not emerged as a central theme until the mid- t o late 1990s. Therefore
this unit will focus on the post-1990s period with a special emphasis on the
genre of the Romantic Film. Of course, Hindi cinema has tackled other
issues i n those years besides family and romance, but 'the assertion and
endorsement of lndian "family values" i n an uncertain globalising world has
become a conspicuous and insistent theme i n popular culture i n the 1990s.'
(Uberoi, 1998:311) This seems to be reaffirmed i n films such as Kabhi
Khushi Kabhie Gham (hereafter K3G) and Kal Ho Naa Ho. Interestingly
lndian diasporic filmmakers have also addressed this issue i n their films and
it seems grounds for commonality can be located here. lndian diasporic
filmmakers have tackled issues of home, belonging and alienation i n their
cinematic productions, but have often adhered t o realism and eschewed
Bollywood's blending of different genres, but negotiations of 'family values'
too have increasingly dominated. When considering lndia and i t s diaspora
on film, several questions emerge. Firstly what function does Bollywood
cinema have i n negotiating the migrant's relationship with home and the
new host nation? Secondly, how do diasporic filmmakers represent their
own communities on screen? How do they position themselves to renegotiate
the shifting ground beneath their feet? Thus this unit seeks to explore how
film i s a useful medium i n mapping an emerging cultural landscape of
hybridities, confluences and influences. This unit can only give an indicative
account of the debates that have dominated the fast proliferating
analysis of lndian popular cinema i n relation to the South Asian diaspora i n
a variety of fields, such as postcolonial studies, social anthropology, film
studies and cultural studies, but what will hopefully emerge here is how
South Asian diasporic cinema and, more problematically, Bollywood do not
only occupy a position between [Link], nationality and internationality
(Kaur and Sinha, 2005:16-23), but also occupy a position at the interstice
of culture.
 FiIms
19.2 Bollywood and Diaspora - Consumption
and Representations
In Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire, Vijay Mishra asserts that any
study of lndian popular cinema must nowadays address the role it plays
in the lives of the peoples of the lndian diaspora (see Mishra, 2002:235).
He distinguishes between two instances of diaspora formation. Firstly, the
movement of indentured labourers to the colonies, secondly, the post-1960s
phenomenon of economic migration to the metropolitan centres of Great
Britain, Canada, the United States and Australia. The migrants of this second
phase have been usually referred to as NRls and, according to Mishra, have
'radically reconfigured lndian readings of the diaspora and redefined [...I
cultural forms that see this diaspora as one of their important recipients.'
(Ibid: 236) It is this diaspora of Late capitalism which has been increasingly
targeted by the film industry as a lucrative market for their products and
which has also become the subject of its films. In these films 'the space
of the West' becomes 'the desired space of wealth and luxury that gets
endorsed, i n a displaced form, by lndian cinema itself.' (Ibid) Mishra argues
that a diasporic imaginary grows out of a sense of being marginalised, of
being rejected outright by nation-states, because of their difference (see
Mishra (lbid:237). Thus Bollywood for the diaspora fulfils the function of
bringing the homeland to the diaspora while also 'creating a culture of
imaginary solidarity across the heterogeneous linguistic and national groups
that make up the South Asian diaspora' (Ibid). Mishra sees lndian popular
cinema as a crucial determinant i n globalising and deterritorialising the link
between the imagination and social life (Ibid). Where such a reading of
Bollywood becomes problematic i s i n its levelling of South Asia into a
homogenised monoculture in which an orientalised version of lndia becomes
a stand-in (see Desai, 2004:6). In this respect, Bombay cinema informs a
narrow ethnicity that finds its imaginative realism through a particular kind
of cinema that 'brings the global into the local, presenting people in Main
Street Vancouver, as well as Southall, London, with shared "structures of
feeling" that i n turn produce a transnational sense of communal solidarity.'
(Mishra, 2002:238) Thus, according to Mishra, the consumption of Bombay
cinema actively constructs an lndian diaspora of shared cultural idioms, the
lndian diasporas as imagined communities, i n which Bollywood cinema
functions as a self-contained, cultural specific phenomenon (Ibid).

Vijay Mishra raises here quintessential questions about home, belonging and
rootedness, and the function of Bollywood in these identity negotiations.
Marie Gillespie's study is also revealing in this regard as she investigates
what it means to be 'British' and 'Indian' as well as ethnographic questions
about the perception of Britain and lndia i n relation to the viewing habits
I of Hindi films among young British Asians. She maintains that for young
people i n Southall, London, lndian films are influencing their perceptions
I of the subcontinent, especially for those who have no direct experience of
India. Furthermore, for those who have been to lndia these movies are an
1 important counterpoint to their lived experience (Gillespie, 1995:81). The
binaries of tradition I modernity, village-rural I city-urban, poverty I wealth,
community I individualism, morality 1 vice are important markers within a
social, politital and moral discourse within these films that have a particular
I
influence on young diasporic South Asians' perception of these films
(lbid:82). Gillespie points towards striking gender differences i n the

t perceptions of lndian cinema, where young girls looked towards the social
and moral values inherent i n the films through a retelling of the narratives,
InMa and lndian Maspora: ot lnaa and lndian communities and on that basis often rejected these
Images and Rrceptions portrayals in the movies (Ibid). Gillespie associates this partly with the
experience of racism i n Britain which 'undoubtedly influenced the ranqe of
meanings projected on to Hindi films, as they underpin responses to
constructions,of lndian society in all mediaJ (Ibid).

Hindi films are a heterogeneous blend of a number of genre, often structured

around composite narrative themes. Rosie Thomas identifies three basic
narrative themes - 'DostanaJ, where the bond of male friendship overcomes
the desire for a woman; 'lost and found', where parents and children are
separated and reunited, usually involving a plot of mistaken identities; and
'revenge' where villains are justly thrashed by wronged heroes (see Thomas,
1985:125). Crucially, viewers are drawn into these movies and become
emotionally involved:This involvement forms an integral part of the viewing
pleasure as '[alffective engagement i s ensured not only by cinematic
techniques which encourage identification, but also through the songs which
heighten the emotional impact of the filmJ (Gillespie, 1995:84-85). Music
i s a powerful element of Hindi films and Like an interior monologue can
express repressed desires, emotions and aspirations and thus are often
picturised as fantasies and dreams, moments of escape from reality. Music
can also function as an emotional memory trigger that allows for escape
from the harsh realities of everyday life i n a society that is often hostile
towards its immigrant communities. Thus, music provides a form of escape
and respite for a younger generation of South Asians who stand somewhere
between East, West - the pressures of traditional values at home and the
pressures the West puts on them. Furthermore, Gillespie also shows how
Hindi films are a powerful tool used by the older generation of diasporic
Indians to educate their children and grandchildren 'in the values and
beliefs that are seen to be rooted in lndian culture and traditions (Ibid).
Gillespie argues that films allow both the young and their elders to form
opinions on 'salient themes, especially issues of kinship, duty, courtship and
marriage'. She further concludes that Hindi films seem to be used 'to
legitimate a particular world-view, but also to open up i t s contradictions.
So, while young people use lndian films to deconstruct "traditional culture",
many parents use them to foster cultural and religious traditions' (Ibid: 87).

Box 19.1: Bollywood as a tool

Bollywood serves as a tool within the diaspora to reformulate and translate
cultural traditions in the South Asian diaspora, but also as a tool with which
to deconstruct these. This i s mirrored in the patterns of consumption of
Hindi films. Rachel Dwyer notes that while during the 1960s and 70s Hindi
films were screened in the UK in cinemas during off-peak times and Sunday
mornings, these were discontinued in the 1980s as the VCR took over, a
market that in turn was superseded by the advent of cable and satellite
television channels that cater for the Asian diasporic community, such as
Zee TV and B4U.4Multiplex cinemas revived Hindi movie shows in the 1990s
as the practice of video holdback (films being released on VCR up to six
months after their cinema release) made these showings commercially viable
dgain.

Yash Chopra was one of the first to recognise the potential of the diaspora
market as a major source of revenue, quickly setting up offices in London
and New York in 1997 and 1998. For Yash Chopra, film audiences i n Bombay,
London and New York and the South Asian diaspora of the UK, US and
Canada became his film's imaginary realm (Dwyer, 2002: 160). Increasingly
there is also a non-South Asian audience interested i n the films of the Yash
Chopra brand. It i s therefore not surprising that ever since the late 1990s
76
Hindi films have regularly featured i n the l i s t of top 20 grossing movies i n Films
the UK and the US, Mani Ratnam's 1998 movie Dil ~e being the first. From
a marketing point of view, the overseas market i s very lucrative for Indian
film producers, considering that revenue from ticket prices can be almost
ten times higher than i n India. There i s in this new market a new generation
of cinema-goers that has emerged from the Asian diaspora, a generation
educated i n English, that grew up i n a western cultural environment i n
education and i n i t s patterns of media consumption (Ibid: 161). Few of these
are Hindi speakers - the British Asian community i s largely Punjabi, Gujarati
or Bangladeshi. Thus there are very few mother-tongue Hindi speakers i n
this diaspora (Ibid). According to Rachel Dwyer, This younger generation
acquires i t s knowledge of Hindi largely from watching Hindi movies. Hindi
cinema's supplementary material, like soundtrack albums, fanzines like
Filmfare and Stardust as well as television specials on the latest releases
are readily available through shops and satellite television as well as the
growing number of websites and discussion forums on the internet, allowing
for a much wider and faster consumption of Bollywood. As an industry
Bollywood has become truly globalised, albeit i n a specifically diasporic
sense.

The heightened awareness of Bollywood cinema and of the South Asian

diaspora'suggests that Bollywood's aesthetic i s invested with some kind of
cultural capital that goes beyond the commercial. Thus to discuss Hindi
cinema as merely escapist entertainment would also be too simplistic.
Rajinder Dudrah argues convincingly that what we mean by escapist
entertainment needs to be thought through i n more complex terms. He
suggests that Bollywood cinema needs to be studied as 'part and parcel of
cultural and social processes and elaborated on, though not exclusively,
through an engagement with actual social subjects.' (Dudrah, 2006:29) In
this respect, Dudrah argues, there i s a need to think imaginatively about
cinema as a global industry, films as popular cultural texts, and the
relationships that are possible between cinema and its audiences. A closer
look at patterns of consumption and production of Bollywood allow us to
open such a debate. Importantly, for the diaspora Bollywood cinema has
had this cultural capital all along. However a definition of that cultural
capital i s problematic especially when it produces readings of Bollywood
solely in terms of latent nostalgia for i t s diaspora or as the eroticised
commodification of a minority culture. The question i s how can this be
avoided?The Bollywood craze i n the UK i n 2001/2002 may be an illustrative
example. While the department store Selfridges i n London transformed its
basement into a Bollywood set, the Victoria and Albert Museum curated
'Cinema India: The Art of Bollywood', under the banner Imagine Asia the
British film institute toured with a selection of films through the regions,
and the big-budget musical Bombay Dreams produced by Andrew Lloyd
Webber with music by A. R. Rahman opened i n London. Bombay Dreams i n
particular drew from the musical and visual language of Bollywood and
accentuated spectacle while packaging it within the conventions of the
musical theatre genre. It initially brought i n mainly a South Asian audience
and then by word of mouth the audience became increasingly mixed. The
question of audience and representation is of importance here. The lure of
A. R. Rahman's score is undisputed, but what image of India i s the show,
scripted by Meera Syal, presenting? Is it a Bollywood pastiche or exuberant
exotica? To be a convincing pastiche the show relied too much on Bollywood
conventions to actually work. 'The question is how we read these shows and
events. Despite the recent celebrations of Bollywood cinema within Western
mainstream culture, it i s important to note that this celebration coincided
with a backlash against South Asian diasporic communities i n the wake of .
India and Indian Diaspora: the September 1 i attacks. This further complicates the relationship between
Images and Perceptions a 'majority' cdlture and i t s minorities. It brings up questions about where
we place films by diasporic filmmakers which, unlike Bombay cinema, are
not necessarily 'commercial' films. Furthermore where i s the place of
Bombay cinema within this discourse? Considering Bollywood's output, which
has always exceeded Hollywood's and considering Bollywood's audience
reach, can we really speak of a niche cinema?The increased critical attention
this cinema i s receiving suggests that the balance i s slowly but surely being
redressed and that lndian popular cinema i s increasingly read as not only
a national cinema, but also as a global cinema. But can it really challenge
the dominance of Hollywood? Kaur and Sinha go as far as to suggest that
the integration of the Bombay film into film studies allows for a wider
engagement with the nature of globalisation and how it operates in popular
culture.

The application of methodologies applied to the reading of Hollywood films

to the Bombay film too i s problematic, considering that on this basis the
Bombay film has been too often dismissed by scholars, because it is so I

difficult to categorise (see Thomas, 1985:116-117). Thus, there i s an argument

to be made for the production of new methodologies to read Bollywood
cinema on i t s own terms. Arguably, within processes of globalisation,
Bollywood could be seen to work as a centrifugal force against the cultural
homogenisation exercised by Hollywood. Thus 'the circulation of India's
commercial cinema through the globe has led to the proliferation and
fragmentation of i t s fantasy space, as i t s narrative and spectacle beget
diverse fantasies for diasporic communities and others.' (Kaur & Sinha,
2005: 15) For film studies in particular, attaching value to the popular remains I

a bone of contention. Indeed, the heightened interest and engagement with

lndian popular cinema and mass entertainment seems to redress the balance
in the debates about Third World filmmaking and can make an important
contribution insofar as it forces us to engage with a different mode of
filmmaking that i s not avant-garde or structured according to the tenets of
received Western modes of filmmaking. In a discussion of Bollywood we
have to engage with populist modes of cultural production that reach
people of disparate backgrounds and experiences uniting them in front of
the silver screen.

These debates are linked to questions about the relationship between global,
national, popular and mass culture (see Chakravarty, 1993: 10) Thus the idea
of nation and the relationship between diaspora and the nation becomes a
site of constant contestation that needs to be navigated. Perhaps the
negotiation of identity for the diaspora through the medium of film can be
best understood, to bring together Chakravarty and Virdi's terms from their
studies of lndian popular cinema, as the tension between 'ImpersoNation'
and 'Cinematic ImagiNation', which i s also reflected in the song from Shree
420. In both these metaphors we can locate 'notions of changeability and
metamorphosis, tension and contradiction, recognition and alienation, surface
and depth: dualities that have long plagued the lndian psyche and constitute
the self-questionings of lndian nationhood.' (Ibid:4) lndian popular cinema
i s caught up i n the cross-currents of these debates and negotiations and
through i t s contributions made the drama of impersonation i t s distinctive
signature (Ibid). According to Chakravarty it serves more than just reinforcing
'the truisim that films impersonate Life; characters impersonate real men
and women; the film-viewing experience impersonates dreams.' (Ibid) Thus
4
impersonation 'subsumes a process of externalization, the play oflon
surfaces, the disavowal of fixed notions of identity.' (Ibid) Within the global, 1
then, Bollywood i s s t i l l posited within India. India s t i l l i s i t s imaginary
78
 realm, but i t needs to acknowledge through i t s global distribution that as
a cinema it has become the conveyor of what it means to be Indian to an
array of audiences. Thus the Bombay film has become a means by which
diasporic communities negotiate lndianness and i t s transformation (see Kaur
Et Sinha, 2005:16). Kaur and Sinha propose an analytical framework that
posits itself outside prevalent discussions of Bollywood cinema in terms of
i t s difference, largely based on i t s unique formulae or in terms of nationalist
ideologies. Yet Kaur and Sinha stress the interdynamic relationships between
the local and the global, the national and the international and the national
and intra-national, arguing that Bollywood cinema through multiple sites of
productive economies has the power to link broader networks of transnational
societies and diasporic communities, demonstrating how Bollywood cinema's
consumption by i t s diasporas across the globe inflects the imaginings of
nationhood (lbid: 23). Thus what has become evident especially during the
1990s and after i s that the construction of a 'national fantasy' has become
unstable. Sudhanva Deshpande illustrates that in her discussion of the family
romances of the 1990s. Bollywood's relationship with i t s diaspora challenges
us as 'readers' and viewers 'to think imaginatively about cinema as a global
industry, films as popular cultural texts, and the relationships that are
possible between cinema and i t s audiences.' (Dudrah, 2006:29) In this
respect, while India remains Bollywood's target market, increasingly, one
needs to consider that Bollywood equally and simultaneously appeals to a
wider audience, especially i n South Asia and i t s diasporas (Ibid:31).

Reflection and Action 19.1

Explain the patterns of consumption and representation- of Bollywood vis-
a-vis i t s diaspora.
'
During the 1990s) the Bollywood 'masala' formula has undergone a number
of changes, which often makes it difficult t o categorise Hindi movies into
the five generic strands that Edward Johnson identified: Muslim social film,
Devotional films or mythologicals, Masala Films, historical films, social films
(see Dudrah, 2006:33). As Dudrah convincingly argues i n his reading of
Subhash Ghai's 1997 film Pardes, these thematic differentiations are
increasingly challenged through the emergence of the diaspora as a Lucrative
market during the 1990s. Thus filmmakers are actively rethinking and retuning
the established conventions and genres, creating a new masala formula
(lbid:65-96). Mishra pertinently points out that i n recent years in particular,
Bombay cinema has actively so~~ght to picturise i t s own version of the
diaspora and to tell the diaspora what it desires. Thus, as much as the
diaspora might construct i t s view of the homeland through Bombay cinema,
Bombay cinema attempts to 'display the diaspora better than it displays
itself.' (Mishra, 2002:245). While this might not be an entirely new
phenomenon - Mishra points to Manoj kumar's Purab Aur Pachhim (1970) as
a filmic example that uses the East/West binary to dramatise the tradition1
modernity dichotomy - the diaspora has become more and more an integral
part of Bollywood cinema (SalaamlNamaste, being a more recent example). .
Mishra sees the reasons for that i n a massive process of deterritorialisation
between 1970 and the early 1990s (Ibid). This further accelerated with
market liberalisation in India. The possibility of travel brought the homeland
and the diaspora closer together. For Mishra, film forms an active part in
the culture of travel which also brings star concerts and film production
units abroad, especially to the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States,
Australia, The Gulf states and Switzerland. For example, Farhath Hussain
has presented Bollywood entertainment shows ever since 1986, Sensation
2005 being the latest one where actors and actresses Like Shahrukh Khan,
Rani Mukerji, Preity Zinta and Saif Ali Khan perform hit songs from their
lndla and Indian Diaspora: movies. The ot:erseas locations, especially Switzerland, also have become
Images and Perceptions a staple par'. of Hindi movies. These concerts, according to Mishra, mediate
between aiasporic culture and lndian culture, as well as between diasporic
c u l t u r ~and Western culture (Ibid). Mishra identifies in these concerts a
cross-current of cultural representation, where Bollywood movie stars
represent Western popular culture back to a diaspora audience 'in response
to the diaspora's own unease about claiming Western culture as i t s own.'
(Ibid) How convincing this i s as an argument is debatable, especially i n the
light of more recent developments where cultural "cross-overs" have
occurred more regularly and more easily i n film, theatre, and music and
many of these have been facilitated by the South Asian community.

The success of 1994 movie Hum aapke hain kaun...! (hereafter HAHK) made
the family-orientated film a viable commercial option once again, paving
the way for the success of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (hereafter DDU).
DDU has been regarded as the film that has brought the diaspora back t o
the desh. Dwyer sees DDU directly borrowing the visual vocabulary of the
romantic dramas of Yash Chopra. The film features a gripping story, visual
beauty, great locations and unforgettable songs and bears all the hallmarks "
I

of a Yash Chopra romance. However, the film differs in the more conservative
deployment of the family i n the young lovers' romance (Dwyer, 2005:76).
Aditya Chopra explores his own thematic vision in the way in which the
lovers do not directly challenge society's prohibitions and taboos as their
passion unfolds, but instead seek to persuade the harsh, i f well-meaning, I
I

patriarchy (Ibid:141). Another notable difference is the portrayal of foreign I

1
locations not as mere spectacle. Though the Swiss Alps are presented as an
idyllic place where romance flourishes, London i s presented as a cold and
anonymous city, home to the dislocated transnational lndian middle-class
nuclear family. The Punjab i s presented i n this respect as the idyllic yearned-
l
for homeland where traditional values remain intact, 'a place for family
and love' (Ibid). London is presented as an inappropriate location for I

romance, the Swiss Alps allow romance to flourish, but full passion i s
unleashed i n the Punjab (Dwyer, 2005:76). The film's driving force i s the
hero Raj's (Shahrukh Khan) love for his heroine Simran (Kajol), which
transforms him from spoilt brat into a responsible adult. His rite of passage
highlights the structuring of family friendships and emotions (lbid:78). Dwyer
convincingly argues that the film tackles family friendships and emotions
and reinforces the belief that lndianness i s not so much a question of
citizenship as of sharing family values. Thus the film's emotional richness
lies at the centre of the narrative:rather than the story of return from the
foreign land back t o the desh (Ibid). This emotional richness is largely
enshrined in the on-screen chemistry of Kajol and Shahrukh.

A closer look at Aditya Chopra's 1995 smash hit with its Western-lwk-
Eastern-message might illustrate what Mishra means when he argues that
DDU together with HAHK redefined Bollywood cinema i n the 1990s. DDU
links the institutions of family and courtship and marriage to the articulation
of an lndian identity within the context of the diaspora (Uberoi, 1998:331)
Mishra terms it a seminal text about diasporic representation and consumption
of lndian popular culture, as the film's success with the diaspora community
is directly linked to the manner i n which the film reprojects the diasporic
subject. However, it is, according to Mishra, a reprojection of a diaspora
manufactured in the dream factory of Bombay in terms of i t s own conventions
and 'at odds with the struggle for self-legitimacy and justice that underpins
diasporic lives generally.' (Mishra, 2002:250). What happens i n the film
according t o Mishra is the reworking of a number of diasporic fantasies,
which are reconfigured by the homeland 'as the "real" of diasporic lives'
80
and in the process become "truths" to which the diaspora aspires. These Films
fantasies are sublimated in what Patricia Uberoi in her diqcussion of HAHK
terms the 'arranged love marriage'. The film does not challenge traditional
lndian family structures. For Baldev Singh, Mishra argues, in England,
difference needs to be maintained as otherwise one's own identity would
be lost. Is this merely a casting of the patriarchal family father as the
villain or obstacle that both lovers Simran and Raj need to overcome, or
i s this as Mishra pertinently asks a display 'of ethnic absolutism? No
engagement with the nation state? No gesture towards hybridity?And home?
Where is it?What one has left behind rather than where one i s at? But are
they also indications of a new sense of diasporic self-assuredness after
years of excessive pandering to the West on matters of the popular? Or,
finally, i s this Aditya Chopra's own reading of lndian culture onto the diaspora
to emphasize the culture's eternal verities to the home audience?' (Ibid:
252) These are hard hitting questions that we as audience need to negotiate
and be aware of. For the daughter Simran in particular, the homeland i s set
up as a possible threat to her emotional independence, and the European
tour seems a form of escape from familial pressures. Thus the film sets up
Raj's and Simran's European pastoral in the Swiss Alps as backdrop in
contrast to the pastoral place of origin in the Punjab for Simran's father.
Along with HAHK, DDW set a t r nd and there have been similar reworkings
1
of the plot, Pardes being one ex ple. Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Hum Dil De
Chuke Sanam too uses the model of a narrative of return. According to
Mishra, Bollywood cinema through these films elaborates a fantasy text of
the homeland and the diaspora that strikes a cord with the implied diasporic
spectator, now living in a threatening foreign nation state. In this respect
Mishra identifies two trends. A heavy dependence on overseas locations
largely unfamiliar to the home audience but familiar i n the diaspora.
Secondly, a Punjab ethos displacing the old Northern lndian ethos of Bombay
cinema, because of the large Punjabi community living in the lndian diaspora.

Since this unit i s concerned with the diaspora itself this discussion leaves
out the way in which the diaspora and the presumed narratives about them
can function as an ideal for the lndian spectator as well. This also needs
to be considered in a discussion oftthe representation of the diaspora in
Bollywood cinema. The question i s in how far are these representations
accurate; do we need to look for authenticity? On the one hand we need
to read these representations on Bollywood's own terms, but on the other
we also need to consider the cinema that lies beyond Bollywood, films
produced by diasporic filmmakers from the South Asian community abroa
Thus what Bombay cinema presents on screen i s i t s own reading, som
would say misreading (see Mishra and Kaur) of the diaspora. According-to
4
Mishra, this i s partly due to the centre-periphery understanding of the
homeland-diaspora nexus in which the diaspora becomes a site of permissible
transgressions while the homeland i s the crucible of timeless dharmik virtues
(lbid:267). Bombay cinema has also created i t s diaspora stereotype. Mishra
concedes that Bombay cinema comes to the subject of the diaspora with
i t s own ideology. Thus, apart from a narrative diegesis that locates films
such as DDW and Pardes in the idea of global migration he sees the texts
not as a distinct representation of the diaspora experience. This i s tackled
more incisively by diasporic filmmakers from the South Asian community
abroad, exploring social tensions within the diaspora community and in
relation to an alien host culture. Bollywood cinema engages in a double
construction. On the one hand it constructs an image of the affluent NRI
abroad and on the other it constructs an imaginary homeland for the
diaspora itself (lbid:269). Kaur further develops this points. She sees in the
lndia and lndian Diaspora: from a particular perspective, where capital and distributive networks
Images and Perceptions determine what it means to be a 'proper Indian' (Kaur and Sinha, 2005: '
314). She also argues against too simplistic a reading of Bollywood cinema
where box-office successes and TV ratings are too often uncritically translated
into a discourse about NRI nostalgia. A closer examination of Ciasporic film-
making underpins this argument. Part of the issue seems to be location, as
many second or third generation South Asians do not necessarily 'see lndia
as their centre of psycho-political imaginaries' (lbid:316). In this respect,
Kaur argues, Bollywood i s essentially taking up an ultra-conservative Euro-
centric argument that migrants from elsewhere 'do not quite fit' i n the
west and presents them without context in an environment 'where the
specificities of diasporic histories and the cultural politics of that are elided'
(Ibid). What emerges from Kaur's study and interviews during fieldwork is
that the aspiration of Bollywood filmmakers to "represent" the diaspora has
lead to a striking disidentification from South Asians living i n the diaspora,
showing that these films are 'negotiated on a shifting terrain of love and
disdain' (lbid:322). Part of the problem i s a lack of differentiation. The NRls
presented in the films are affluent upper-middle class north lndian families.
Thus these films overlook 'the diversity of class and ethnic positions of the
diasporic Indians.' (lbid:323) Kaur sees this blanket generalisation implicit
i n the term Non Resident lndian - someone whose main orientation i s
Indian, even i f he or she was not born there, to which some of the
participants i n Kaur's fieldwork took exception. Within these debates about
lndianness and debates about lndianness as a measure of authenticity lies
a much more politicised debate about home and the positioning of lndia as
the authentic homeland that stands i n opposition to the inauthentic 'home'
in the west. This i s often accompanied by a representation of the homeland
'with intoxicating imagery of peasants dancing i n lush fields' (Ibid: 323).
Within these parameters, we need to ask the question where and how to
position the films of the South Asian diasporic filmmaker, screen-play writer
and director, such as My Beautiful Laundrette, The Buddha of Suburbia, My
Son the Fanatic, Bhaji on the Beach, Mississippi Masala, East is East, Bend
It Like Beckham, Anita and Me, Bollywood Hollywood, Life Isn't All Ha Ha
Hee Hee, to name but a few. The next section will look at some of these
films i n more detail.

19.3 Diasporic Filmmakers and their

Communities
British cultural critic Stuart Hall has pertinently observed with regards to
an emerging new cinema of the Caribbean that identity needs to be
understood as a 'production', never complete, always i n process, and always
constituted within, not outside representation (See Hall, 1994:392). Thus,
cultural identity is always i n flux, t o be negotiated and renegotiated, to be
produced from different positions of enunciation. The question it raises i s
i f it i s possible, considering the inevitable fragmentation and experience of
dispersal inherent i n diaspora, to impose any form of coherence and i f such
a coherence must not ultimately be imaginary (Ibid: 394). Salman Rushdie
remarks i n his essay 'Imaginary Homelands' that the emigrant's physical
alienation from 'India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable
of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will, in short,
create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary
homelands, lndias of the mind. ' (Rushdie, 1992: 10) The diasporic migrant
needs to negotiate his relationship with a new alien culture and carve out
space and place for himself. Thus negotiating identity becomes a two-fold
process, in Hall's terms 'a matter of "becoming" as well as "being".' (Hall,
1994:394) While cultural identities of the lndian diaspora are formed and
 shaped by the history of colonialism, Empire and its aftermath, they are
nevertheless subject to an infinite number of rearrangements. Thus 'identities
are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and
position ourselves within, the narratives of the past.' (Ibid) Cultural identities,
as Hall sees it, are thus the points of identification within the discourses
of history and culture and these are characterised by difference and rupture.
Thus the diaspora experience is defined by heterogeneity and diversity, 'by
a conception of "identity" which lives with and through, not despite,
difference; by hybridity'. (lbid:402) Hall proposes a conceptualisation of
diaspora as a form of cultural identity that moves away from a fixation with
a return to the roots and origins t o a diasporic cultural identity that is born
through difference. This construction of identity through difference and by
hybridity has become increasingly important in cinematic representations
of the South Asian community by South Asian diaspora filmmakers in Britain,
Canada and the US, who will be the main focus in this section.

According t o Jigna Desai, South Asian diasporic identificatory processes are

centrally configured and contested through the cinematic apparatus. South
Asian diasporic cinema is a developing cinema that negotiates the dominant
discourses, politics and economies of multiple locations (Desai, 2004:35). In
this respect, South Asian diasporic cinema is posited somewhere between
Bollywood, Hollywood, Britain's, Canada's and the US'S national cinemas
and 'art-house' cinema. This again becomes a difficult territory t o navigate.
As Desai convincingly contends, part of the phenomenon of the art-house
and its reception in the west i s t o view 'foreign' films, especially from
developing countries, as ethnographic documents of "other" cultures i n
which diasporic filmmakers serve as native informants, e.g. Merchant Ivory's
1983 docu-drama The Courtesans of Bombay, Mira Nair's debut film Salaam
Bombay!. The films of Satyajit Ray's were read i n a similar way i n the West.
These directors are perceived as significant enough t o occupy a place
among the pantheon of European art house film directors such as Jean Luc
Goddard or Federico Fellini, while Bollywood films were never included.
The animosity this can cause i s illustrated by Nargis's following remarks:

NARGIS: Why do you think films like Pather Panchali become popular
abroad?... Because people there want to see India in an abject condition.
That is the image that they have of our country and a film that confirms
that image seems t o them authentic.
I INTERVIEWER: But why should a renowned director like Ray do such a
thing?
t

NARGIS: To win awards. His films are not commercially successful. They
t
only win awards. ...What I want is that i f Mr Ray projects Indian poverty
abroad, he should also show 'Modern India'.

INTERVIEWER: What i s 'Modern India'?

NARGIS: Dams...
(Rushdie, 1992, p. 108-109)
Desai points t o South Asian diasporic chema's position as outsider, actively
engaging i n a contesting relationship with national cinemas. It reveals South
Asian diasporic cinema, especially within the British context, as actively
engaged in debates about 'Englishness' and challevging Eurocentric views
(see Shohat and Stam, 1994). Within the British context, many of the films
and scripts had their origin in workshops and groups formed i n the 1980s
in London as a response to growing racial tensions and exclusionist definitions
of 'Englishness' by a right-wing conservative elite. While Black British cinema
India and Indian Diaspora: works inside parameters of mainstream filmmaking - i n this respect it
Images and Perceptions seems more accurate t o talk about independent film-making - the topics
these films tackled were deemed 'radical', both within their own community
as well as the British public. The response to Hanif Kureishi's films illustrates
this well. For instance, Norman Stone condemned My Beautiful Laundrette
i n the London Sunday Times as a film that represents 'sick scenes from
English life' (Nasta, 2002:184), while the British Asian community were
outraged by the iconoclastic portrayal of their community. Indeed, it
illustrates the in-between space a second generation Asian like Kureishi has
to negotiate. For him, then, it becomes more of a problem of how to
negotiate his Britishness. Hanif Kureishi's films were some of the first films
to reach a wider audience, partly because of the funding they received -
these workshops had been funded with public money, thus these films
gainea access t o a much wider network .of distribution and had some
commercial success as well (see Desai, 2004:46). Another reason for the
films' success is the great economy with which Kureishi tells his stories:
'one objective of film writing is t o make it as quick and light as possible'
(Kureishi, 2002:vii). Kureishi handles complicated issues of race, gender,
individuality, home and tradition with a lightness of touch yet s t i l l presenting
their complexity. Kureishi comments that because of his screenplays' subject
matter 'it didn't occur to any of us involved i n My Son the Fanatic, for
instance, that it would be either lucrative or of much interest to the
general public' (Ibid).

Kureishi's 1985 movie My Beautiful Laundrette is the story of Omar, a

restless young Asian man who takes care of his alcoholi; father i n South
London during the mid-1980s. His uncle, a keen supporter of the
entrepreneurial zeal of the then prime m'inister Margaret Thatcher, offers
Omar a business opportunity to revamp and manage a dilapidated laundrette,
an opportunity at which Omar jumps, enlisting the help of his old school-
friend Johnny, who has since fallen i n with a gang of neo-Nazis. Both men
form an alliance that turns the laundrette into a successful business as both
men also become intimate with each other. The film explodes a variety of
racial, sexual and class stereotypes. What is revealing about this film is its
negotiation of a British and Asian identity from both sides. I t reveals that
'belonging' must not necessarily be an exclusionary zone but that you can
be both British and Asian. Thus the film engages in a process of learning
t o live outside already defined and known parameters of home (Nasta,
2002:192). In this respect, Kureishi i n his attempt to present the local
histories of individuals from the South Asian community opens up new
spaces and creates new parameters for the representation of the
heterogeneity of the diaspora within Britain, while at the same time engaging
with and often exploding essentialising dichotomies of home and abroad,
native or immigrant by presenting differently conceived possibilities situated
within the contested terrain of 'Englishness' itself. Thus any conceptualisation
of home can 'no longer be a single place, but represents a series of
locations, an imaginative ground fertile for new improvisations.' (Nasta,
Ibid:211) These films, then, carve out a new discursive space for the
articulation of the diversity of British Asian lives.

Filmmakers and screenplay writers such as Gurinder Chadha, Hanif Kureishi

and Meera Syal topicalise identity, home, belonging, race and ethnicity i n
relation t o questions of justice, self-empowerment, representation and
equal opportunities. These three i n particular have 'explored the
uncomfortable terrain of a hybridity which is "Englishness" for a new
generation of Asians born and raised i n Britain' (Nasta, 2002:173). Thus
 Indian, etc. Furthermore, these films, many of them scripted by authors Films
who have also written highly acclaimed and successful novels on similar
themes, point to the fact that living in a society with contradictory attitudes
to class, race, gender and sexuality that define the hybrid spaces of the
black and Asian diasporas in Britain remains a difficult territory to navigate.
As a recent movie like Bend i t like Bekcham shows, the issues are i n many
ways unresolved (Ibid:190). In this respect, diasporic self-representation
becomes an important marker in identity negotiations in relation to a
consideration of home and the homeland. In an interview with Filmfare in
September 2000, Shabana Azmi observed: 'The term 'British needn't mean
white Anglo-Saxon. [...I Asians [also] are now so much part of the British
fabric.' (see Mishra, 2002:241) In how far the South Asian diaspora has
become part of the fabric i s explored in the alternative identity constructions
by diasporic South Asian filmmakers. Films like My Beautiful Laundrette,
My Son the Fanatic, Bhaji on the Beach, Anita and Me or Bend it Like
'Beckham do not only reveal the problems of identity negotiations for second
generation Asians but also reveal a more profound identity crisis that Britain
faced i n the mid-1980s and i s s t i l l facing. The black cinema that developed
after the race r i ~ t of
s the early 1980s sought to be challenging, transgressive,
imaginative and illuminating as well as pleasurable to watch as a direct
challenge to the stereotypical image of minority ethnic communities that
were constructed as 'problem- ridden, undesirable and most of all invisible. '
(Alexander, 2000:109) Thus the emergence of the British Asian and Black
communities as a subject for British cinema worked as a direct challenge
to received ideas of cultural identity and demonstrated that cultural identity
could not only be deconstructed and reconstructed as well as rewritten.
Thus a film like My Beautiful Laundrette 'mapped out a possibility of
Britishness that could contain and engage with diversities of race, gender,
sexuality and class in a meaningful and often poetic way.' (1bid:llO) Kureishi's
screenplay shows a version of British culture that i s both familiar as well
as alien and negotiates that territory from an insiderloutsider point of view
I (Ibid).

Gurinder Chadha's interest i n filmmaking grew out of seeing My Beautiful

Laundrette and her first film Bhaji on the Beach, scripted by Meera Syal,
was very much i n the same vein. The film depicts three generations of
Indian women on a day trip to the seaside resort of Blackpool in the North
'West of England and engages with similar topics as Kureishi's'films however
from the point of view of its female protagonists. I t was one of the most
successful South Asian diasporic films and while initially it did not recover
its costs at the box office, it did so through video sales. Bhaji on the Beach
set the trend for the 'more commercial [South Asian diasporic film] that
becomes the primary focus of Asian filmmaking discourses i n the last half
of the 1990s' (Desai, 2004:64). There seems to be a shift in these films
from drama towards comedy; the 1999 film East is East also confirms that
trend. With Bend it Like Beckham, the runaway success of 2002, Chadha
attempted to communicate similar issues and sensibilities about the Asian
f comm~~nity in Southall, while using a more populist approach. Because
these films were 'conventional' i n their style of film-making and because
I of the rise of discourses of multiculturalism in the UK, Canada and the US,
which many of these filmmakers took on board, it allowed 'them to gain
I wider access to production and distribution' (Desai, 2004:45). In this respect,
Black British filmmaking moved away from being a minor independent strand
of film-making: 'it becomes progressively demarginalised, and in the process
its oppositional perspectives reveal that transitional structures of cultural
value and national identity are themselves becoming increasingly fractured'
(Mercer, 1994:74). As this cinema pushes into the mainstream and it becomes
P
lndia and lndian Diaspora: institutionalised can it be seen as a part of a new national public sphere?
Images and Perceptions Films like My Beautiful Laundwtte and Sammy and Rosie get Laid have
exploded dominant conceptualisations by presenting a plurality of identities
on screen and through representation rejected essentialist notions of
'Englishness'. In that respect these films also stand as a direct challenge
t o the construction of an English nationalism with its resurgent Raj nostalgia
of the early 1980s (see for instance films like Gandhi or A Passage to lndia
and the TV mini series The Jewel in the Crown). The first wave of South
Asian diasporic films i n Britain, Canada and the United States were the first
films i n English representing the South Asian diasporic community that also
had a level of commercial success. How do we need t o understand the
complex locations of diasporic cinema and it occupying an in-between
space? On the one hand it is a minority cultural production within a national
framework, on the other it is also a cultural production that belongs t o a
transnational framework. Topically, there are many meeting points i n terms
of content between the films - an emphasis on race, racism, multiculturalism,
conceptualisations of home, gender and sexual politics (Desai, 2004:48).
Importantly, i n these early films, the protagonists tend t o imagine and
'seek home i n mobilized "routes" i n the diaspora rather than national and
cultural "roots" i n the homeland; thus they refuse t o evoke "natural" and
"organic" roots in the homeland through nostalgia and memory.' (Ibid) In
this respect these films disavow any essentialising discourse of 'home' and
'abroad', but recognise diaspora identities as 'hybrid', not being 'either'
'or', but 'as well as'.

During the mid-1990s' largely due to the [Link] of the lndian economy,
some filmmakers from the South Asian diaspora like Mira Nair and Deepa
Mehta re-directed their lens back to the homeland. Nair directed Kama
Sutra (1996)' an erotic historical romance centred around the life of
courtesans and queens, ultimately giving an eroticised and some argued
stereotypically orientalised account of sixteenth century India, and Monsoon
Wedding (2002). Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta returned to lndia t o
make a film trilogy (Fire, Earth, Water) concerned with the position of
women i n South Asia. Fire, although controversial i n India, sparking a number
of protests by ultra-nationalists who objected to the depiction of two
women falling in love, was a critical and commercial success. The second
film i n the trilogy, Earth, based on Bapsi Sidhwa's 1988 novel Ice-Candy
Man, brought together Bollywood talent and Mehta's Canadian team - the
music was composed by A. R. Rahman and starred Aamir Khan and Nandita
Das. After a wave of protests by the same nationalists who objected t o
Fire, Mehta had t o abandon her plans t o make Water. Subsequently, Mehta
returned to Canada to make [Link], discussed below. It took
almost five years to put the production of Water back together and it was
finally shot i n S r i Lanka under an assumed name and strict code of secrecy
and released i n 2005. Desai pertinently points t o the difficult position of
Nair's and Mehta's films that focus on South Asia, as their films occupy
precariously balanced positions i n regard to Bollywood and other lndian
cinemas, demonstrating how South Asian diasporic films can be involved in
complicated struggles over representation.

In recent years, South Asian diasporic film increasingly renegotiated its

relationship with Bollywood cinema, as Bollywood sought t o position itself
as a global cinema (see Desai, 2004:40). Bollywood's global push has also
affected the production and circulation of South Asian diasporic cinema,
not only thematically, but also in terms of audience reach. As British Asians
pushed Bollywood successfully into the mainstream, British Asian diasporic
filmmakers also took these sensibilities on board, i n order t o increase their
audience. However, diasporic film makers have often referenced Bollywood Films
before, e.g. Bhaji on the Beach uses a Bollywood-style musical dream
sequence, in East is East the family goes to a cinema hall t o watch a
Bollywood movie, both Mississippi Masala and Fire use Bollywood music as
their background soundtrack (lbid:42) But South Asian diaspora filmmakers
have also looked to Bollywood's romantic film genre. Weddings as a common
cultural denominator play an increasingly large role i n fusion projects, as
it travels very well between East and West, and between the diaspora and
the homeland (lbid:212-216). Monsoon Wedding is one example, Bend i t
Like Beckham another, while Deepa Mehta plays with this ingredient i n
Bollywood Hollywood and Gurinder Chada's adaptation of Jane Austen's
Pride and Prejudice titled Bride and Prejudice in the U K makes this point
even more obvious. Jigna Desai explores this further, arguing that Mira
Nair's Monsoon Wedding relies on a complex interplay between nostalgia,
pleasure, and feminine politics i n its depiction of a large bourgeois family
wedding, recognising that weddings function in many ways for different
audiences, as they are evoked as markers of the idealised relationship
between diaspora and the homeland but also as the object of the
transnational and cross-cultural gaze. (Desai, 2004:217) Monsoon Wedding
exposes the disturbing issues brewing underneath the silence that is ,imposed
on the self-proclaimed happy family reminiscent of Bollywood films, while
developing a narrative of nostalgia and fantasy regarding familial relations
and cultural practices amidst global processes of late capitalism,
transnationality and modernity. (Ibid:219).

The main focus in Monsoon Wedding does not lie on the ceremony itself,
but cultural practices. For example, the female sangeet is very much
presented as a feminist space of expression and agency. The arranged
marriage functions i n the film as an ambiguous sign, considering the emphasis
the director puts on India's modernity and serves to build up the tension
between the modern and tradition and is marked as giving stability within
a world i n flux through globalisation and modernisation. The arranged
marriage becomes acceptable as the bride Aditi allows herself to fall i n love
with her future husband, hence the match evolves into an 'arranged love-
marriage' through the agency of the protagonist herself. She clearly chooses
him over her lover Vikram as she identifies Hemant as the better of two
options. She confesses her trespasses t o him and by doing so allows her
sexual agency t o be channelled into acceptable forms.

Reflection and Action 19.2

Discuss the representation of Diasporic filmmakers and their communities
with suitable illustartions.

Deepa Mehta's film Bollywood Hollywood also challenges conventions about

marriage within parameters of tradition and modernity, but i n the space of
the diaspora. The film is about an affluent NRI, Rahul, i n Toronto who hires
an escort to pose as his fiancee for his sister's wedding as he tries to evade
the pressures of his pushy mother and grandmother t o finally get married.
Deepa Mehta makes interesting use of the wedding-film genre as she mixes
Bollywood's recent reliance on them as common cultural denominator with
that of the Hollywood romantic comedy which needs it for its Happy End:
I t is the successful conflation of the two that produces an engaging fusion
without ever losing sight of the fact that the entire film would not be
possible without Bollywood. Rahul explains the NRI as being i n a 'Bollywoodl
Hollywood state of mind' - living i n the West, but with the Indian cultural
values as they are emphasised by Bollywood cinema as a lifeline. Mehta
explains that she took the very schematic ~ o l l ~ w o oplotd and imposed
India and Indian Diaspora: Bollywood on it: 'TO me they're very similar. Both have commercial plot
Images and lines. Boy meets girl, they get separated, they come back together.' (Mehta,
2002, p. 44). Underneath this simple plot lies an exploration of identity
where the boundaries are completely blurred. For instance, Rahul's chauffeur
spends his evenings working as drag queen Rockini, Rahul's geeky brother
Govind, a teenager with a serious lack of confidence, always has his camera
with him and lives i n the cinematic world of Bollywood, commenting
constantly on family matters by comparing them t o Bollywood plotlines, the
mother lives up to the whole back-catalogue of the stereotypical Bollywood
mother, crying and fainting on demand, and the grandmother's resoluteness
is matched by her advice and commentary usually given i n the form of
Shakespeare quotes. Rahul has t o take the role as head of the family after
his father's death and struggles with the pressures to fulfil his duty t o his
family. So he hires Sue, a girl partial to multiple identities. She is the
stereotypical 'benevolent prostitute7, which Western audiences would know
from films like Pretty Woman and South Asian audiences would recognise
from the courtesan movies like Mughal-E-Azam, Pakeezah or Devdas. While
Rahul's sister Twinky is i n a hurry t o marry because she is pregnant, Sue,
who is revealed to be Sunita, daughter of a Sikh from the Punjab, entered
her line of work as an escort as a last resort to escape the pressures from
her father who wanted her to marry the wrestler Killer Khalsa. She proves
her 'cultural' worth at Twir~ky's Sangeet, as she keeps up appearances.
However, as her secrets are revealed, it is Rahul who has t o make up his
mind, t o accept Sue on her own terms, prostitute or not. Her rebellion
against cultural norms imposed onto her by her father is something Rahul
has to accept, which he does after his grandmother talks some sense into
him. In that respect, the film echoes Shakespearean comedy, which is
perhaps alluded to by Mehta having the grandmother quoting from his plays
all the time. This connection might be revealing, as weddingslmarriage I

function i n Shakespeare as a way of channelling female sexuality. As the

film negotiates issues such as sacrifice, marriage and filial duty, identities
. are increasingly blurred, exposing the patriarchal pressure t o marry that I

weighs heavily on Rahul, his sister and Sunita.

I

This echoes i n Bollywood films like DDU or K3G, where patriarchal resistance,
objecting either t o the proposed groom or bride respectively, is the obstacle
that needs t o be overcome. So while the romantic melodrama of the late
1990s casts the patriarch as the villain, i n Bollywood Hollywood, cultural
conventions of the South Asian diaspora that Rahul sums up as 'living i n a
time warp', exemplified by Rahul's mother or Sunita's father, are portrayed
as the obstacle that needs t o be overcome. The film is a nuanced overlaying
of Bollywood and Hollywood conventions, easily recognisable as a romantic
comedy, yet the tongue-in-cheek references to Bollywood cinema, its use of I

stock narrative devices and charakters, the spoofing of heavy handed

metaphor-laden dialogue ('remembelr, you hold the baseball bat of destiny')
are direct references t o Indian popular cinema immediately recognisable t o
1
South Asian cinemagoers. What Mehta does successfully and where a film
like The Guru failed is that her own knowledge of the genre allows her t o
weave Bollywood i n t o her film, not as exotic imitation that ends up
perpetuating cliched stereotypes, but as a way of exploring the migrant 1
condition, highlighting the importance of Bollywood cinema for the diaspora
and, i n the process, by showing what effect it has on her set of characters, t
to use it t o comedic effect. She deploys Hindi cinema strategically i n her
film, having sequences from films like Rangeela and Mast play on televisions
i n the background that serve as points of reference or she uses little taglines
before a scene starts that directly reference Bollywood. The Western
cinemagoer is not excluded from her ironic jokes, as she questions the
88
1
appeal of lndian cinema for a Western cinemagoer. Rahul comments to
Sunita: 'everyone i s a sucker for exotica, trust me.' Mehta not only displays
an understanding for both genres that allows her to lovingly send up lndian
popular cinema and i t s place in the lndian diaspora wit50ut forgetting that
her own film would not be possible without Bollywood as well as Hollywood.
What Deepa Mehta's irreverential look at Bollywood makes abundantly clear
i s that there i s a playful and parodic relationship with the genre i n the
diaspora. In this respect it i s too simplistic to read Hindi films as merely a
vehicle for nostalgia and provider of an emotional and material link to the
homeland (see Kaur and Sinha, 2005, p. 313).

19.4 Conclusion
Within processes of identity negotiations film, film music and cinematic
representation have always played a significant role. Bollywood5cinema i n
this realm occupies an in-between place, on the one hand providing a link
with the home country for the diasporic migrant, on the other presenting
the diaspora back t o the homeland. Although lndian popular cinema has had

perceive that the Bombay film becomes the displaced site of national
exploration. Yet t o read the Bombay film and i t s relationship to the diaspora

used to be markets with large lndian immigrant communities, but ever

since the late 1990s lndian cinema's reach has widened even further. Besides,
as we consider lndian film and i t s diaspora, several questions requires to
be tackled, such as the role and function of Bollywood cinema and
representation of diasporic filmmakers on screen.

19.5 Further Reading

Alexander, Karen, 2000. "Black British Cinema i n the 90s: Going Going
Gone" i n Murphy, Robert, ed., British Cinema of the 90s, British Film
Institute: London

Durdrah, Rajinder Kumar, 2006. Bollywood: Sociology Goes to the Movies,

Sage: New Delhi.

Hall, Stuart, 1994. 'Cultural Identity and Diaspora' i n Williams Patrick and
Laura Chrisman eds., Colonial and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, Longman: