Hindi Films | Café Dissensus

May 4

A journey across cities: A re-encounter with the women of ‘Dhobi Ghat’

By Saumya B Verma
While I grapple with my own realities and memory-making in the new city, I identify with both Shai and Yasmin but only in parts. I continue my encounters with the city in both the domestic and professional realms – doing rapid rounds of groceries, cooking copious amounts of food, cleaning and washing, watching neighbours shovel their driveways and on other sunny days visiting film festivals, attending courses at the university, volunteering in the community, reading new authors, making new friends!

Dec 5

Contents – Bollywood Nationalism (Issue 30)

Contents - Bollywood Nationalism (Issue 30)

Dec 5

Contributors

Contributors - Bollywood Nationalism (Issue 30)

Dec 5

Guest Editorial – Bollywood: A melting pot of nationalism(s)

By Roshni Sengupta
This special issue of Café Dissensus acknowledges and engages with a number of issues around the broad theme ‘Bollywood Nationalism’ in the form of seventeen thoughtful and perceptive essays. Even though I personally detest the idea of categorising – thoughts or people – the essays have been divided into sections for the sake of discursive convenience. Needless to say, each of these insightful pieces could be read as articulations of great depth and discernment.

Dec 5

3 Comments

The Different Faces of Hindi Cinema: the past, present, and future

By Murtaza Ali Khan
Let’s not forget that there was a time when stalwarts like Chetan Anand and Bimal Roy competed head and shoulders with some of the world’s best filmmakers at the leading cinematic forums across the globe. What Hindi cinema needs today are brave filmmakers with novel and ingenious ideas. Perhaps, Hindi cinema can take the lead from Marathi cinema, which has really come of age during the last few years.

Dec 5

1 Comment

When Selfhood Meets Nationhood: Subjectivity and the New Nation in ‘Garam Hawa’

By Meher Ali
Can the sense of selfhood you held before an event like the Partition withstand such a total reconfiguration of nationhood? From a psychoanalytic point of view, the process by which we continuously construct identity only obfuscates, or defends against, the fundamentally divided nature of subjectivity. I would say, then, that what makes Garam Hawa so uniquely potent is how it imposes this split upon the senses in stark, often unsettling, ways.

Dec 5

Popular Hindi Cinema and the Conflictual Figure of the Mother/Nation: Radha (Mother India) and Sumithra Devi (Deewar)

By Swarnavel Eswaran Pillai
While it is not unusual to think of the landmark mother characters in popular Hindi cinema as signifying the larger community or nation, this essay is particularly interested in analyzing the tensions that arise out of the conflict between a mother’s desire to protect her son and to care for the community/nation at the same time.

Dec 5

Vestiges of Nehruvian Nationalism: Reading Sahir Ludhianvi’s songs today

By Sania Hashmi
One is reminded of Sahir’s fearless interrogation, “Jinhe naaz hai Hind par woh kahan hain?” (Where are the patriots now?), which focuses on the state of the poor in general and the miserable conditions of life of prostitutes in particular. While he was an ardent believer in Nehru’s secular socialism, it did not stop Sahir from pointing out everything that was amiss, including the constant delay and deferral in Nehru’s deliverance of the promise, and his critique of the war.

Dec 5

Indian Cinema and the Notion of Cultural Nationalism

By Hemaadri Singh Rana
While Fanaa portrays the love story of two Kashmiri Muslims, Jaal-The Trap revolves around the love story of two Kashmiri Pandits. In both the movies, one of the lovers is a terrorist while the other takes up the burden of bringing down the former for the ‘love of Motherland’. Both the stories prioritise the nationalist responsibility of a ‘good’ citizen towards her nation that comes before any sort of human emotion.

Dec 5

Aisa Desh Hai Mera: Bollywood’s preoccupation with North India

By Pritha Mahanti & Shreya Bhowmik
The fumbling awkwardness of the Gujaratis, the rigidness of the monolithic South Indians, the intellectual quirkiness of the Bengalis, the pensive grievances of the Kashmiris are a few of the worn-out tropes utilized in popular film narratives. The language and geography of the centre dictated by a North Indian culture, as and when it tries to incorporate regional elements does so in a half-baked manner that reeks of political, social, and cultural myopia.

Dec 5

Narration and Variation: Traversing the ‘nation’ through Bollywood

By Riti Agarwala
When synchronically read, Hindi movies might seem clichéd. However, there are small pockets of resistance, which always ruffle the predominant trend. One is compelled to confront stereotypes in numerous ways. What is needed is an awareness of the stereotypes, only then they can be interrogated and understood.