This book explores the complex relationship between Indian nationalism and Hindi cinema, examining how film serves as a crucial medium due to its visual narrative power and connections to traditional cultural forms including Parsi theatre, folk traditions, and mythological storytelling.
While Hindi films have often been positioned as embodiments of nationalism, they simultaneously present alternative, more inclusive, and liberal conceptions of national belonging. This collection investigates the multifaceted construction, dissemination, and reception of Indian nationalism across four decades of Hindi cinema, from the 1980s through the 2020s.
The contributors analyze how Hindi cinema, as both a discursive and popular medium, not only portrays various forms of nationalism but also shapes the politics of film production through nation-building narratives and industry power dynamics. This volume demonstrates how films have served as mouthpieces for those in power, showcasing both majoritarian perspectives and critical challenges to hegemonic thinking. Covering a deliberately broad timeline and diverse genres—from war epics and sports dramas that exemplify muscular nationalism to biopics, comedy-dramas, and spy thrillers—this collection offers a nuanced examination of nationalist messaging across different periods of India's socio-economic development and political leadership.
This book is essential reading for academics, researchers, and students in film studies, cultural studies, regional studies, and nationalism studies focused on Indian cultural landscapes.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of National Identities.
Introduction Nation, Nationalism and Indian Hindi cinema 1. Invisible reformation: understanding the construction of nation in select Bollywood films 2. From domestic guardian to the national militia: the familial, the national and the middle class in 1980s popular Hindi films 3. Historicising the colonial past of India and Hindi cinema 4. Bollywood in the neoliberal era: changing discourses on multiculturalism, terrorism, and nationalism in ‘Dil Se … ’ (1998) and ‘Fanaa’ (2006) 5. The changing dynamics and othering of Muslims in Bollywood films: rereading Sarfarosh (1999) and New York (2009) 6. Reframing nationalism and national identity in Anek 7. Politics of apoliticality and the Indian citizen in popular Hindi cinema 8. Beyond good and evil: imagined nation in Hindi films 9. No country for sex workers, then or now: Srijit Mukherji’s Begum Jaan (2017) and its many imagi-nations 10. Leveraging history to invoke nationalism: from the annals of history to social engineering of present and future in Hindi cinema 11. Nation, family and trauma: techno-nationalism and conflicts of loyalty in the Indian Hindi-language espionage thriller Mission Majnu 12. The changing dynamics of Indian nationalism in contemporary Hindi movies
Goutam Karmakar is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the School of Humanities, University of Hyderabad, India. He is also an associate member at the Global South Studies Center (GSSC), University of Cologne, Germany, and an honorary research associate at the Faculty of Arts and Design, Durban University of Technology, South Africa. Karmakar has been awarded several research and visiting fellowships, including the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship at Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities (MESH), University of Cologne, Germany, and the National Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Faculty of Education, University of Western Cape, South Africa. Karmakar’s research interests include literature of the Global South, postcolonial and decolonial studies, environmental studies, and cultural studies. Karmakar edits the journal Global South Literary Studies (published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis group) and also serves as a series editor for the Routledge book series South Asian Literature in Focus. Pippa Catterall is Professor of History and Policy at the School of Humanities at the University of Westminster, UK. She has published extensively on religious, political, constitutional, diplomatic, intelligence, and media history.
