Creator Bio :

Ajay Gehlawat is Professor of Interdisciplinary Research, Theatre and Movie at Sonoma State College, USA. He’s the writer of Reframing Bollywood (2010) and Twenty-First Century Bollywood (2015), in addition to editor of The Slumdog Phenomenon (2013) and co-editor of The Evolution of Tune and Dance in Hindi Cinema (2019).

Bloomsbury India hyperlink: https://www.bloomsbury.com/in/bollypolitics-9781350401891/

Or Amazon hyperlink: https://www.amazon.in/s?okay=Bollypoliticspercent25bloomsbury&ref=nb_sb_noss

BLURB

This ebook supplies an in-depth exploration of the evolving panorama of Bollywood cinema in response to current socio-political modifications in India, together with a surge in sectarian violence and the ascent of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism, beneath Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s management.

By way of a complete evaluation of distinguished filmmakers and actors like Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Kangana Ranaut, Akshay Kumar, and Anupam Kher, Ajay Gehlawat investigates the extent to which their current works align with key tenets of the Hindutva motion. He scrutinizes the rising affect of the Bharatiya Janata Get together (BJP) on movie manufacturing, manifesting in collaborations masking various themes, from Modi’s Clear India initiative to the nation’s area exploration endeavors and grand historic epics equivalent to Padmaavat (2018) and Manikarnika (2019) that search to reshape Indian historical past in keeping with Hindutva ideology.

Gehlawat goes on to dissect smaller funds movies like Article 15 (2019) and Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (2020), which deal with urgent social points like caste-based violence and homophobia exacerbated by the surge in right-wing extremism in India. In doing so, he elucidates the profound and far-reaching influence of Hindutva ideology on Indian cinematic narratives and aesthetics, whereas additionally contemplating the broader implications for Indian society as an entire.

The next paragraphs from the ebook’s introduction describe the present state of affairs in India and the intervention this research intends to make on this panorama.

Because the air in India’s capital grows more and more unbreathable, one other poisonous specter haunts the nation right this moment, the rising specter of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism, which has overwhelmed India for the reason that election of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister (2014). India shouldn’t be alone on this chauvinistic rightward flip – witness the rise of nationalist strongmen world wide, together with in america, Europe, Brazil, Turkey, Russia and the Philippines – but the state of affairs in India has grown significantly dire since Modi’s election (and reelection in 2019). Within the ensuing interval one witnesses a dramatic rise of intolerance within the subcontinent, embodied by a rising variety of hate crimes perpetrated by extremist Hindu teams towards Muslims and different minorities. Since Modi assumed workplace, actually a whole bunch of circumstances of such vigilante violence have occurred (Baksi and Nagarajan 2017), the overwhelming majority of which have been directed towards Muslims (Mohan 2018: 35). Compounding this spate of violence has been the resounding silence that most of the time accompanies it, significantly from Modi, who’s an in any other case avid Tweeter. As media scholar Shakuntala Banaji (2018) has noticed:

Kidnapping, rape, gang-rape, molestation, lynching, extra-judicial killings of and pogroms towards Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis, Buddhists, Christians, Sikhs, Kashmiris and populations of contested areas of the North East happen recurrently (Taltumbde 2010; Mander 2015; Puniyani 2017). State and central governments usually collude. So, why is it that, even when reported extensively, these crimes have drawn little opprobrium from the overwhelming majority of India’s literate inhabitants?” (334)

This can be a key query and one which largely informs this research. The dramatic rise lately of sectarian violence and intolerance in India is matched, or compounded, by the dearth of condemnation ceaselessly greeting it, significantly from these in energy, and neither reveals any signal of abating. Certainly, it might be argued that one (type of violence) straight feeds into, or stems from, the opposite. Concurrently, collaborations between Bollywood, the colloquial time period for the favored Hindi cinema business, and Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Get together (Indian Folks’s Get together, hereafter BJP), have considerably elevated previously a number of years, with quite a few Bollywood stars ceaselessly using their movie star standing to endorse Modi’s agenda. Alternatively, those that have been recognized as critics of the ruling occasion inside Bollywood, together with two of the three Khans who’ve dominated the business for a number of a long time, have confronted repeated assaults on social media (for being anti-national) in addition to calls to boycott their movies. As Arkotong Longkumer (2021) notes, “The rise of Hindu nationalism and the research which have accompanied it have grown exponentially in the previous couple of a long time (Basu et al. 1993; Benei 2008; Doniger and Nussbaum 2015; Froerer 2007; Ghassem-Fachandi 2012; Gopal 1991; Hansen 1999; Hasan 1994; Jaffrelot 1998; Ludden 1996; McKean 1996b; Rajagopal 2001; Sarkar and Butalia 1995; van der Veer 1994)” (6). But solely one of many fourteen research he cites – Rajagopal’s – discusses Hindu nationalism in relation to media and that, too, is primarily targeted on tv and now over twenty years outdated. What arguably stays lacking is a sustained examination of the impact of the rise of Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, on Bollywood, and of Bollywood’s negotiations of such an ideology. Whereas current research by social scientists and journalists, together with these of Jaffrelot (2021), Chowdhury and Keane (2021) and Komireddi (2019), make passing references to Bollywood, none embrace any sustained dialogue of the movie business and its involvement with Hindutva. In a rustic during which this movie business performs an outsized function, it is a significantly obtrusive omission and one which the present research seeks to handle.