Bollywood and Hindu nationalism

Poster for Ali Abbas Zafar's Tandav (2021). Image source: IMDB

Samanth Subramanian's recent New Yorker article "When the Hindu Right Came for Bollywood" (issue of 17 October 2022) uses the controversy over the Amazon Prime series Tandav (2021) as an illustration of the pressure the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Hindu nationalist satellite organizations are bringing to bear on the commercial Hindi film and television industry. That pressure includes calls for boycotts and outright bans; both veiled and explicit threats of violence (which sometimes have erupted into actual violence); and filing FIRs (First Information Reports requesting police investigation of alleged criminal wrongdoing) against actors, directors and producers for offending the religious sentiments of Hindus.

The BJP-led government has also moved to assert pre-release control over content: in 2020, the government ordered that streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime fall under the censorship of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, which has long been involved in film censorship through its Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). And in 2021, the government abolished the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal, where negative decisions by the CBFC could be appealed.

Tandav is about political betrayal, corruption, blackmail, and the cynical exploitation of social unrest to gain personal power. It includes a scene where a student leader named Shiva paints his skin blue and carries a trident (both elements of the iconography of the Hindu god). In response FIRs were registered in Bengalaru (Karnataka) against the actors Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub (Shiva) and Saif Ali Khan, writer/director/producer Ali Abbas Zafar, producer Farhan Akhtar, and head of Indian Originals for Amazon Prime Aparna Purohit. Accusations against each were made under Indian Penal Code sections 153A ("Promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc."), 295A ("Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs"), 298 ("deliberate intent to wound religious feelings"), and 35 ("When a criminal act is done by several persons in furtherance of the common intention of all, each of such persons is liable for that act in the same manner as if it were done by him alone"). Similar cases were filed in Maharashtra (the state that includes Mumbai), Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh; in all, at least 10 FIRs were registered.

Ram Kadam, a BJP Member of the Legislative Assembly for Maharashtra who filed an FIR against the creators and stars of the show in Ghatkopar, a suburb of Mumbai, tweeted that the Shiva scene in Tandav "demean[s] Hindu gods" and called for a boycott. Under the hashtag #BanTandavNow, Dehli BJP leader Kapil Mishra tweeted to his 1.3 million followers that Tandav was "spreading massive hate against our dharma and our Gods making hero out of terrorists [i.e., Muslims] and making fun of our forces." [1]

On January 18, only three days after the series' release, Zafar tweeted an "Official Statement from the Cast & Crew of Tandav." Under the heading "Our sincere apologies," he posted:

We have been closely monitoring viewer reactions to the web series Tandav and today during a discussion, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting have informed us regarding a large number of grievances and petitions received on various facets of the web series with serious concerns and apprehensions regarding its content hurting the sentiments of the people.

The web series Tandav is a work of fiction and any resemblance to acts and persons and events is purely coincidental. The cast and crew did not have any intention to offend the sentiments of any individual, caste, community, race, religion or religious beliefs or insult or outrage any institution, political party or person, living or dead. The cast and crew of Tandav take cognizance of the concerns expressed by the people and unconditionally apologize if it has unintentionally hurt anybody’s sentiments.

Subramanian writes, "In Mumbai, people divide recent history into pre-'Tandav' and post-'Tandav' periods, reading the show’s fate—its bitter legal battles, its suspended second season—as a lesson in what can and cannot be said in Modi's India." While the manufactured outrage over Tandav is clearly intended to send a message to filmmakers, those who think it marks the beginning of an era have short memories. The tactics used against Tandav and its creators are well-established.

Poster for Deepa Mehta's Fire (1996). Image source: RogerEbert.com

• In 1998, screenings of Indo-Canadian writer/director Deepa Mehta's film Fire in India were violently attacked by members of the interrelated Hindu nationalist organizations Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal, and the BJP; Mehta herself received death threats and required armed protection. Fire depicts two sisters-in-law (Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das), each trapped in a loveless marriage, whose growing emotional closeness develops into passionate erotic desire. Shiv Sena's founder and leader Bal Thackeray claimed absurdly in an interview that sexual relations between women "are not part of Indian culture.'' [2]
  
  
  
  Vishvanath Temple in Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India. Photo credit: Aotearoa, CC BY-SA 3.0. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
  
  After theaters and audiences in Mumbai, Dehli, Surat and Calcutta (now Kolkata) were attacked—the audience in Calcutta fought back against the attackers and the screening continued—the film was withdrawn from theaters for recertification by the CBFC. Advocates for freedom of expression and gay and lesbian rights mobilized and Fire was recertified without changes. Theater showings resumed, although some theater owners feared renewed violence and were reluctant to book the film.

Poster for Karan Johar's Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2016). Image source: dnaindia.com

• On 23 September 2016, as a response to an attack by Pakistan-based jihadists on an Indian army base in Uri, Kashmir, the Hindu nationalist group Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) ordered all Pakistani actors and film technicians to leave India within 48 hours or "we shall push them out." In a show of support for MNS, both the Indian Motion Picture Producers Association and the Film Producers Guild quickly followed this pronouncement with a call for a ban on the employment of Pakistani actors and technicians.
  
  Producer Karan Johar initially opposed the ban. However, after threats by the MNS to prevent screenings of his new film Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, which featured Pakistani actor Fawad Khan, Johar reluctantly joined the boycott, saying "For me, my country comes first. . .Going forward, I would like to say that of course I wouldn’t engage with talent from the neighbouring country given the circumstance."

Poster for Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmaavat (2018). Image source: Allociné

• In his New Yorker article Subramanian mentions a January 2017 attack on the set of the film Padmaavat during a location shoot at the Jaigarh Fort in Jaipur, Rajasthan, by members of the organization Karni Sena. A crowd of men chanting slogans invaded the set, struck director Sanjay Leela Bhansali in the head and seized him by the hair, and vandalized the set and equipment; a video of the assault can be seen on YouTube. A few months later, after the production was moved to Maharashtra, the sets were burned in a late-night arson attack.
  
  Karni Sena falsely claimed that the film contained a dream-sequence love scene between the Hindu Queen Padmavati (Deepika Padukone) and the Muslim Sultan Alauddin Khalji (Ranveer Singh), as though this would justify its violence. Mahipal Singh Makrana, state president of Karni Sena, later threatened to facially disfigure Padukone. Surajpal Amu, media coordinator of the BJP in Haryana, offered a ₹ 10 crore reward for the beheading of Bhansali and Padukone (₹ 10 crore is 100 million rupees, or US$ 1.3 million). Haryana BJP leader Subhash Barala asked Amu to "show cause" for his comments (as if there could be any cause to call for beheadings), but later refused to accept Amu's resignation. In 2021 Amu was appointed the spokesperson of the Haryana BJP. [3]
  
  It's ironic that Padmaavat was the target of Hindu nationalist violence, because the film depicts the Muslim characters as stereotypical villains: lecherous, treacherous, and murderous. In the final scenes—spoiler alerts!—the black-clad, black-flag-waving Muslim horde stabs the upright Rajasthani hero Maharawal Ratan Singh (Shahid Kapoor) in the back, and yes, I do mean literally. Subramanian writes, "Padmavati and her handmaidens are besieged by Khilji’s army. Instead of submitting, they dress in red and stream through the palace, like blood through an artery, to leap into a pit of fire—a happy ending, in the moral universe of the Hindu right." Padmaavat quickly took its place among the all-time top ten highest-grossing Indian films worldwide, and went on to win a slew of awards; Karni Sena withdrew its condemnation and declared its support. Padmaavat was named Biggest Disappointment in my year-end survey Favorites of 2018: Movies and Television.

Film critic Fareeduddin Kazmi has written,

Conventional Hindi films. . .instead of challenging the ideological assumptions of their times, tend to reinforce and perpetuate them. In India, the mass media are primary technologies of ideology, with the Hindi conventional cinema standing in the forefront. [4]

Although no film industry is univocal, in the decades following independence the ideology expressed in mainstream Hindi films tended to be pluralistic. This followed the lead of the modernization policy of the Nehru-led government which criminalized caste and religious discrimination and attempted to give women legal parity with men.

The quintessential example of a film reflecting pluralistic values is Manmohan Desai's Amar Akbar Anthony (1977).

Amar (Vinod Khanna), Akbar (Rishi Kapoor), and Anthony (Amitabh Bachchan) in Amar Akbar Anthony.

As I summarized the film in my Favorites of 2019: Movies and television, three little boys, inadvertently separated from their parents and apparently abandoned, are taken in by a Hindu police officer, a Muslim tailor, and a Catholic priest. Twenty-five years later, Amar (Vinod Khanna) has become a tough but honest cop, Akbar (Rishi Kapoor) has become a famous qawwali singer, and Anthony (Amitabh Bachchan) is a two-fisted, good-hearted bhai who rules his lane. When a blind old woman (guess who) is hit by a car and needs an emergency transfusion, the three men (who, of course, all share the woman's blood type) volunteer. As the blood of the three strangers who are her unsuspecting Hindu, Muslim and Christian sons mingles in Ma's veins to give her life—symbolism, anyone?—the credits begin to roll. The opening credits. This is just the pre-credit sequence.

Of course, the mid-1970s were also the period of the Emergency, during which Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ruled by decree. Political opponents were jailed and their organizations banned, civil liberties (such as political protests and trade union strikes) were restricted, and a program of forced sterilization was instituted that targeted the poor and marginalized, especially Muslims. The sentimental pluralism of films like Amar Akbar Anthony was belied by the actions of the Congress Party-dominated government.

One reason for the pluralism of many Bollywood films between independence and the early 1990s was not only the (stated) non-sectarianism of government policy, but the pluralism of Bollywood itself. As Maidul Islam writes,

. . .for many decades, Bollywood has remained one of the strongest bastions of secularism and 'perhaps the least religiously segregated place in India today where Hindus and Muslims work together as well as intermarry.' It is one of the few sites in India where Muslims are not marginal, but actually enjoy some prominence and success, and has many famous stars, successful directors, screenwriters, choreographers, lyricists, and composers. [5]

"Some prominence and success" indeed (links are to mentions in E&I):

• Actors from Muslim families include the current global superstars Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, and Shah Rukh Khan, as well as Tandav's Saif Ali Khan. Other well-known actors from Muslim families include Shabana Azmi, Irrfan Khan, Naseeruddin Shah, and Tabu, and stars from the 50s and 60s including Farida Jalal, Dilip Kumar (born Yusuf Khan), Madhubala, Nargis, Waheeda Rehman, Shakila, and Johnny Walker. 
• Muslim playback singers include Mohd. Rafi, Talat Mahmood, and Noor Jehan.
• Muslim writers and lyricists include Javed Akhtar, Kaifi Azmi (Shabana's father), and Sahir Ludhianvi.
• Muslim directors include Mehboob Khan (Mother India, 1957), K. Asif (Mughal-e-Azam, 1960), Muzaffar Ali (Umrao Jaan, 1981), Imtiaz Ali (Jab We Met, 2007), Farhan Akhtar (Dil Chahta Hai, 2001) and Zoya Akhtar (Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, 2011). Farhan and Zoya are the children of Javed Akhtar, and step-children of Shabana Azmi; Farhan was one of the producers of Tandav.

As the BJP, aided by Congress Party corruption and incompetence, developed significant political power from the late 1980s onward, pluralistic films continued to be made. Films such as Lagaan (2001), Veer-Zaara (2004), Rang de Basanti (2006), Dor (2006), Chak De! India (2007), and My Name Is Khan (2010) were critical and box-office successes.

However, with the ascendency in the 2014 general elections of Modi and the BJP, and their consolidation of power in the 2019 general elections, Bollywood is bending with the prevailing political winds. We were dismayed to learn from Subramanian's article about recent films such as the Hindu-chauvinist Samrat Prithviraj (starring Akshay Kumar, 2022), and prominent actors who have embraced the BJP and its Hindutva ideology, including Anupam Kher and Kangana Ranaut.

Even many of those who aren't vocal BJP supporters are keeping their heads down, or up, as the case may be. A 2019 photo from Karan Johar's Instagram account:

Ranveer Singh, Sidharth Malhotra, Karan Johar, Varun Dhawan, Ranbir Kapoor, Vicky Kaushal (? identification uncertain), Rohit Shetty, Ekhta Kapoor, Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, Rajkummar Rao, Bhumi Pednekar, Alia Bhatt, Ayushmann Khurrana, and others surrounding Narendra Modi. Image source: India Today

Actress Nafisa Ali posted in response, "Felt sad to see my Fraternity being part of PM’s planned PR. . .I will pray that the truth is exposed and the closed door planning of divide & rule is understood. I worry for the Constitutional rights of every Indian. I was in Gujarat soon after the riots and will never forget the reality of what I saw. I pray for the Unity of India."

---

1. Mishra has been accused of fomenting the 2020 Dehli riots which started when a non-violent crowd blockading a road was attacked. The blockade was in protest of the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act, which provides a path to Indian citizenship only for non-Muslim immigrants from neighboring Muslim-majority countries. Over several days of violence and arson 53 people, more than two-thirds of them Muslims, were killed. ^ Return
2. Quoted in Barry Bearak, "New Dehli Journal; A Lesbian Idyll, and the Movie Theaters Surrender." New York Times, 24 December 1998, p. A4. https://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/24/world/new-delhi-journal-a-lesbian-idyll-and-the-movie-theaters-surrender.html. Bearak's smirking, flippant article betrays his own profound limitations of perspective as a cultural observer.
3. Throughout the anti-Padmaavat protests Hindu nationalists selectively conflated the characters depicted onscreen with the actors who portrayed them. Selectively, because while Padukone was threatened with death for what the perpetrators believed were the actions of her character in the dream of another (evil) character, apparently it didn't matter that offscreen Padukone and Singh were a real-life couple; they are now husband and wife.
4. Quoted in Maidul Islam, "Imag(in)ing Indian Muslims in Post-liberalization Hindi Cinema," in Indian Muslim(s) After Liberalization, Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 111. 
5. Maidul Islam, p. 93.
   

Amar Prem

As someone whose short list of favorite Bollywood movies would include Devdas (2002), Umrao Jaan (1981), Mughal-e-Azam (1960), and Sadhna (1958)—don't ask me for the other titles on the list right now—I've clearly got a major weakness for tragic-courtesan-with-a-heart-of-gold stories. And the creators of Amar Prem (Immortal Love, 1972), director Shakti Samanta and writers Arabinda Mukherjee and Ramesh Pant, know exactly how to push my emotional buttons.

Mukherjee was the writer and director of the original Bengali version of the film, Nishipadma (1970), which was based on the short story "Hinger Kochuri" by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. (Hinger kochuri is a typical Bengali dish of fried dough stuffed with lentils and chickpeas.) If Bandopadhyay's name sounds vaguely familiar, he was also the author of the novels Pather Panchali (1929) and Aparajito (1932), which Satyajit Ray adapted as The Apu Trilogy (1955-1959).

The childless Pushpa (Sharmila Tagore) is violently driven away from her village home by the brutality of her husband and his second wife. As Pushpa is about to commit suicide, a solicitous neighbor, Nepali Babu (Madan Puri), stops her and offers her a job in Calcutta. Of course, the job is fictional, and Pushpa discovers too late that she has been sold to a brothel. On the first night that she performs for the brothel's clients, singing "Raina beeti jaye, Shyam na aaye" (The night has passed, and Shyam (Krishna) has not yet arrived), the drunken Anand (Rajesh Khanna) follows the sound of her voice and is instantly smitten:

Tawaif movies tend to have excellent music, and Amar Prem is no exception. The songs were composed by R. D. Burman, with lyrics by Anand Bakshi, and were performed by Lata Mangeshkar, Kishore Kumar and R. D. Burman's father S. D. Burman.

The wealthy Anand is trapped in an unhappy marriage to a faithless wife, and has been drowning his sorrows in drink and the allurements of the pleasure quarter. He immediately becomes Pushpa's patron. Although they quickly fall in love, they each recognize that they'll remain forever separated by caste and status. The melancholy mood is beautifully sustained in "Chingari koi bhadke" (A raging fire), as Anand and Pushpa drift on the Hooghly River at night:

Meanwhile, the Sharmas, a couple from Pushpa's village, move in across the way from her. Their 8-year-old son, Nandu (Bobby), is mistreated by his stepmother (Bindu) and finds a refuge with Pushpa. She, in turn, sees in him the child she never had, and lavishes affection on him.

Of course, the tenuous happiness of Anand, Pushpa, and Nandu can't be permitted to continue, as it's an implicit critique of the lovelessness of the more conventional relationships that surround them. Anand's brother-in-law (Rakesh Pandey) demands that Pushpa separate from Anand. Meanwhile, Nandu's stepmother forces Pushpa to agree never to see Nandu again; before Nandu's family takes him back to the village, though, Nandu gives Pushpa a cutting of night-blooming jasmine that she literally waters with her tears.

Twenty years later the night-blooming jasmine is a flourishing tree, and the adult Nandu (Vinod Mehra), now an engineer, returns to Calcutta. Will Nandu ever find the woman he thinks of as his real mother...?

Almost every socially-sanctioned union in the film—Anand with his unfaithful wife, Pushpa with her violent husband, and the unhappy Sharmas—seems to offer nothing but misery and emotional deprivation. The only happy marriage in the film is that of the adult Nandu with his wife (Farida Jalal). Amar Prem remains radical more than 40 years on for suggesting that true families are those formed by love.

Thanks to Rajshri Films, you can view Amar Prem online, for free, with English closed captioning.

Aradhana

Mothers, don't let your sons grow up to join the Indian Air Force. At least on the evidence of our Bollywood viewing, characters in the Air Force may as well wear a sign saying "I'm doomed." We've seen Air Force pilots:

• Get killed when their defective planes crash (Flight Lt. Ajay Rathod (Madhavan) in Rang de Basanti (Paint it Saffron, 2006))
• Get imprisoned for decades by a certain hostile neighboring country (Squadron Leader Veer Pratap Singh (Shah Rukh Khan) in Veer-Zaara (2004))
• Get shot down during a border conflict with a certain hostile neighboring country (Squadron Leader Shekhar Malhotra (Shashi Kapoor) in Silsila (Connections, 1981))

So when we discover early in Aradhana (Adoration, 1969; directed by Shakti Samanta and written by Sachin Bhowmick) that Arun (Rajesh Khanna) is an Air Force pilot, it can only be a matter of time before the inevitable happens. First, though, he woos Vandana (Sharmila Tagore) by serenading her from a jeep as she travels through the mountains on a train in "Mere Sapno Ki Rani" ("Queen of my dreams"):

(You may recognize this song as one of the many to which Shah Rukh Khan pays homage in "Phir Milenge Chalte Chalte" from 2009's Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (A Match Made in Heaven).)

Vandana is swept off her feet by Arun—who could resist?—and a few days later as they are visiting a temple they exchange wedding garlands in the presence of a priest. Caught in a sudden thunderstorm, Arun and Vandana take shelter, and of course Vandana has to remove her wet sari and warm herself by the fire. Although she modestly covers herself with a blanket, the temptation proves too much for both of them, as the thunderstorm raging outside echoes their own overwhelming passions ("Roop Tera Mastana" ("Your beauty is intoxicating")):

Afterwards, Arun assures the guilt-stricken Vandana that they will be married in the eyes of their families as well as in the eyes of God in just a few days; first, though, he just has to make a short flight to bring his uncle and aunt to meet Vandana...

I don't think it will be much of a spoiler if I reveal that, sure enough, Arun's plane crashes and he is fatally injured. On his deathbed, he exacts a promise from the pregnant Vandana that their son will grow up to be an Air Force pilot. That seems reasonable: what parents wouldn't want their son to take up the same profession that killed his dad?

Of course, Arun's death is only the first of a series of tragedies that strike Vandana; mild spoilers follow. Her father dies, leaving her impoverished, and Arun's family rejects her and her story about their secret marriage. She agrees to anonymously give her son Suraj up for adoption, but return to adopt him herself the next day. But her plan goes horribly wrong when another couple, the wealthy but childless Saxenas (Anita Dutt and Abhi Bhattacharya), adopts him first. Vandana then takes a job as a servant in the Saxena household so that she can be close to Suraj as he grows up, even though she can never let him know that she is really his mother.

As if this giant helping of Maternal Self-Sacrifice isn't enough, her employers' sleazy relative Shyam (Manmohan) tries to rape Vandana. The assault is only averted when Suraj comes to his beloved "nanny"'s rescue with a sharp pair of scissors. To protect him, Vandana takes the blame, even though she realizes that it means prison and a lengthy—perhaps permanent—separation from her son.

In the intervening years Suraj (Rajesh Khanna in a double role) becomes a young man, joins the Air Force (gulp) and, like his dad, woos a local beauty with a flirtatious song, "Baghon Mein Bahar Hai" ("Has Spring come to my garden?")

Will Suraj find happiness with the lovely Renu (Farida Jalal)? Will Vandana and Suraj ever be reunited? Will he ever learn that Vandana is his mother? And most importantly, can Suraj somehow avoid the Curse of the Air Force?

Even if you can guess the answers to most of these questions, Aradhana is very much worth seeing for Sharmila Tagore's whole-hearted performance as the devoted Vandana (I'm already seeing Vidya Balan playing the lead in The Sharmila Tagore Story), for the obvious chemistry between Sharmila and the far too handsome Rajesh Khanna (this was the role that made him a superstar), and for the classic S.D. Burman/Anand Bakshi songs sung by Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Kishore Kumar, Mohd. Rafi, and S.D. Burman himself.

For additional thoughts about Aradhana, please see the reviews by Filmi Geek and Philip Lutgendorf.

Thanks to RajShri Films, you can watch Aradhana with English captions on YouTube for free.

Update 21 March 2013: Memsaab has written two wonderful appreciations of Rajesh Khanna, My ten favorite Rajesh Khanna songs and The complicated superstar.

Having It Both Ways: Bollywood Contradictions

"The culture industry endlessly cheats its consumers out of what it endlessly promises."

—Adorno & Horkheimer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment

In one view, commercial movies are part of a vast culture industry intended to shape popular consciousness so that it conforms to the needs of modern capitalism. And clearly, this is true: to take an obvious example, what is product placement but an advertisement not only for a particular brand, but for consumerism as a whole? The culture industry derives profit from, in Adorno and Horkheimer's words, the "producing, controlling, disciplining" of our desires.

From another perspective, popular movies reflect the longings, aspirations and anxieties of their audiences. And clearly, this is also true: if they didn't, they wouldn't be popular. Of course, if those longings, aspirations and anxieties are created by the culture industry in the first place, the feedback loop is neatly closed. Perhaps too neatly: the culture industry is not so monolithic or univocal as it is portrayed by Adorno and Horkheimer, and popular desires, while clearly manipulable, do not always perfectly coincide with the interests of the ruling class.

Perhaps this is a reason why movies often seem to embody mixed messages. They can uphold tradition while insisting on the inevitability of change; they can extoll the virtues of simplicity while acting as advertisements for upscale consumer goods. Like most of us, perhaps, Bollywood movies often want to have it both ways.

What follows are brief discussions of two Bollywood movies (of of dozens that could be possible illustrations) that simultaneously represent markedly ambivalent points of view about moral codes, ethical dilemmas, social anxieties, and personal choices.

The obedient rebel: DDLJ

Of course, the obedient rebel of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The Brave Heart Will Take the Bride, 1995) is its hero Raj, played by Shah Rukh Khan. Raj is a thoroughly Westernized NRI: he wears black leather jackets, drives fast cars, and drinks beer. In a famous scene early in the film he cons a six-pack out of London cornershop owner Baldev (Amrish Puri); according to Anupama Chopra's Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (British Film Institute, 2002), in an early draft of director Aditya Chopra's script Raj was instead seeking condoms.

Raj seems to represent everything that the traditionalist Baldev despises and fears. To protect his daughter Simran (Kajol) from the baleful influence of boys like Raj and the society which produces them, Baldev has arranged her marriage back in his village in India with a man she has never met. But the summer before her marriage Simran is allowed to take a monthlong Eurail holiday. On that trip she meets Raj, and they fall in love. Raj follows Simran back to India and arrives at her father's village in the middle of the wedding preparations. Both Simran and, ultimately, her mother Lajjo (Farida Jalal) urge Raj to elope with her. But the Westernized rebel Raj instead wants to dutifully seek Baldev's approval: "I'll take you from here," he tells Simran, "only when your father gives me your hand in marriage."

It is Raj's insistence on fulfilling the forms of patriarchal tradition that drives many DDLJ viewers up the wall, and some reject the movie for its apparent endorsement of those patriarchal values. In a recent Masala Zindabad podcast, Beth memorably calls DDLJ a "patriarchal ball of crap."

But I think DDLJ is more complicated than that. While Raj disdains certain forms of authority—early in the movie we see him flunking out of college—he asserts the legitimacy of others, such as filial respect and love. Raj is shown to have a very close relationship with his own father, Dharam Veer (Anupam Kher), who convinces Raj to follow Simran to India. Family is important to Raj, and eloping with Simran would cut her off from her family forever. As he says to Simran, "How can you run from your own people?"

This isn't the only time Raj puts Simran's interests (or, at least, what he sees as her interests) ahead of his own. During their summer holiday he has the opportunity to have sex with a very drunk and apparently willing Simran, but he refuses to take advantage of her inebriated state. The next morning Raj makes teasing suggestions about what happened the night before, but when Simran becomes hysterical (she doesn't remember what happened, or didn't), he suddenly becomes serious: "I know what you think of me. You think I'm a wastrel. But I'm not scum, Simran. I'm a Hindustani, and I know what honour means to a Hindustani woman. Not even in my dreams can I imagine doing that to you." Again the Westernized rebel embraces Indian values.

Raj embodies ambiguity in other ways. As Anupama Chopra points out, Raj disregards the traditional divide between men's and women's roles. He is seen sitting in the kitchen with the women of Baldev's household, serving food to the wedding guests, and even observing Karva Chauth (a fast that married women undertake ostensibly to insure their husbands a long life, and more directly as a sign of their love and devotion). In one of DDLJ's many famous songs, "Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna" ("Put on your henna"), Raj dances over a bridge separating the women and men of the wedding party, and, grabbing a veil from one of the women, dances among them as though he were one of them:

I also love how, when Raj sings "Keep your eyes downcast," Simran looks straight into his eyes.

So DDLJ and its hero Raj both subvert and uphold patriarchal codes of honor and woman-as-male-property. Despite the manifest injustice of a father insisting that his daughter marry a man she doesn't know, or love, or feel the slightest affinity with, Raj tells Simran, "Our parents have raised us with love and can decide for us better than we can." And in the end, Baldev finally gives his consent and the lovers—symbols of West and East, the modern and the traditional—are united. They, and we, have it both ways.

The anti-abortion feminist: Kya Kehna

Like DDLJ, Kya Kehna (What Is There To Say?, 2000) can be seen as both endorsing and subverting patriarchal authority. Priya (Preity Zinta) gets pregnant by the self-involved and unreliable Rahul (Saif Ali Khan). Her father and mother (Anupam Kher and Farida Jalal) go to Rahul and beg for him to marry Priya to restore the family honor.

Marriage to the womanizing narcissist Rahul might restore the family honor, but it would clearly result in misery for Priya. This is one of several occasions in the film (written by a woman, Honey Irani) where conformity to conventional morality, enforced by the father's authority, is ostensibly upheld but emotionally undercut. Marriage to Rahul is the last thing we want for Priya.

Rahul has no intention of marrying, of course, and he and his awful mother (Naveet Nishan) suggest instead that Priya have an abortion. But Priya wants to keep the baby, despite the profound personal cost. So the film can be seen in a way as anti-abortion, since abortion is advocated by characters who either forfeit or never possess our sympathies. On the other hand, it's clearly Priya's choice to keep the baby, and so the film can also be seen as powerfully advocating a woman's right to choose.

Priya and her family are ostracized, as becomes painfully obvious when her elder brother marries and no one shows up to the wedding celebrations. (What at first seems like some gratuitous slapstick at the beginning of the movie—Priya gets drenched from head to toe in mud when trying to hitchhike home from college—turns out to carry symbolic resonance when she becomes "unclean" in the eyes of the community.) Facing the loss of his family's standing, Priya's father disowns her, symbolically shattering the chair she sits in at family meals and barring her from the house. He's clearly in the wrong, although our responses of shock and dismay are complicated by the fact that the father is played by the immensely sympathetic Anupam Kher. Once again we are encouraged to take a highly critical stance towards his enforcing of conventional morality. While no one directly challenges his authority, ultimately he is convinced by the rest of the family to go after Priya and ask for her forgiveness. Patriarchal authority is restored, but only with the active consent and support of those who are supposedly governed by it. The family (along with Priya's loyal friend Ajay (Chandrachur Singh)) then vows to defy the community together (song ends at 1:57:03).

Towards the end of the movie, Priya faces that community and make a very difficult speech in the face of strong disapproval. She defends her out-of-wedlock pregnancy by invoking, not her right to love whom she chooses, not her sexual autonomy, but the sacred vocation of motherhood—the one value that can never be questioned in a Bollywood film. She thus defends her radically unconventional choices by embracing the most hallowed convention of all: the role of Ma.

Priya's courageous stand leads ultimately to not one, but two proposals of marriage. Thus her potentially radical challenge to patriarchal authority and social conformity is ended by her reintegration into the structures of marriage and family. But we haven't quite returned to our starting place; as in DDLJ, patriarchal authority and institutions are restored only because they are fundamentally changed.

The contradictions of these films are part of their fascination and richness. As Anupama Chopra writes of DDLJ, "It offers, to both men and women, to everyone who faces the terrifying uncertainties of new freedoms and the unpredictable future, a vision of the present which combines the both stability of the old order and the enticing choices of the new."

Chori Chori Chupke Chupke

Chori Chori Chupke Chupke ("Quietly, Secretly") (2001), like Kya Kehna (1997/2000) (a previous Preity Zinta film that also centers on questions of sexuality and motherhood) is frustrating and fascinating, regressive and progressive, taboo-breaking and convention-affirming, in roughly equal measure.

A brief plot synopsis for those who haven't seen Chori Chori Chupke Chupke: Raj (a remarkably subdued and so surprisingly tolerable Salman Khan), the fabulously rich grandson of a major industrialist, marries Priya (Rani Mukherjee), who is soon pregnant. But due to the requirements of the plot, she has an accident that results not just in a miscarriage, but in her permanent infertility. Since Raj's granddad (Amrish Puri) has such an emotional investment in great-grandchildren, Raj and Priya decide to conceal her condition from the family, and Raj goes in search of a woman to be a surrogate mother.

A search which takes him, as it would any reasonable person, to a bar that features the dancing girl Madhu (Preity Zinta). No sooner does Raj watch Madhu bumping, grinding and crawling across tables in "Diwani Diwani" ("Crazy, Crazy") than he decides that this is the ideal surrogate mother for his and Priya's child.

One problem: no, it's not that Madhu can quote the hourly and nightly rates for her company, or that she has trouble extrapolating those rates to a full year. It's that she lacks manners: she's crude, loud, and tacky, which will never do. So Raj embarks on a Pygmalion/My Fair Lady/Pretty Woman makeover of Madhu.

It has to be said that Preity Zinta does a great job of making you cringe at Madhu's crassness, while keeping her character basically sympathetic. The whole setup is misogynistic and classist; on the other hand, when just before the intermission Madhu is finally revealed as the Preity Zinta we know and love, elegantly striding through an airport in a chic pantsuit, the transformation is striking. I guess the movie ferreted out my own unconscious class prejudices.

So Raj, Priya and Madhu jet off to Switzerland, where they'll live for a year in order to conceal Madhu's pregnancy and perform several dance numbers with spectacular background scenery. Of course, Madhu isn't impregnated in a clinic or even using a turkey baster, but the old-fashioned way. Despite the double suspension of disbelief involved (first, that this incredibly rich couple is unaware of the medical technologies of surrogacy, and second, that Raj doesn't find the transformed Madhu to be attractive), the impregnation scene is actually rather sweet--Raj can only perform after he's drunk enough to imagine that Madhu is really Priya. One night, of course, is all it takes for Madhu to get pregnant--and to fall hopelessly in love with Raj.

Oddly enough, Raj's family begins to wonder at his insistence that they have to stay in Switzerland for a year, and they show up in a surprise visit to convince the couple to return to India for the birth. (Priya stuffs a pillow under her sari to fake pregnancy, and Madhu is passed off as the wife of a business associate.) There's a remarkable scene in which Priya's mother-in-law (Farida Jalal) massages Madhu's swollen feet and legs with oil. In Hindu culture, of course, the feet are considered to be the most unclean part of the body (thus the gesture of touching an honored person's feet as a sign of respect), and the feet of a prostitute/lower caste woman especially so. Preity does a great job expressing the conflicting emotions this act--the touching of her feet by an elder/superior--arouses in Madhu: shame, embarrassment, pleasure, gratitude.

Back in India, Raj's granddad has arranged a ghod-bharai ceremony for the "expectant" Priya. Wanting the child to be blessed, Priya convinces Madhu to attend the ceremony in her place. Of course, a semi-transparent veil is enough to conceal Madhu's identity during the ceremony, since Preity and Rani look so similar. It's not like Preity has rosebud lips and sharper chin while Rani has a generously wide mouth and a squarer jaw, or anything like that...

I realize that to complain about the implausibilities of a Bollywood plot is to miss the point. Instead, I should just confess to enjoying the pleasures the film offers--the obvious onscreen chemistry among all the principles, and particularly the terrific performances of Preity and Rani. There's a great confrontation between the two in the final part of the film where Madhu decides to keep the baby and the saintly Priya finally lashes out in very convincing anger. If the conclusion of the film reaffirms that in Bollywood, motherhood is the condition that absolves all sins, it's just the price you pay for admission. And under the, er, veil of reaffirming traditional values, the movie has managed to suggest a number of fairly radical propositions: that one's identity is more a matter of life circumstances than of ineluctable fate; that the reduction of a woman's value to her childbearing ability is highly damaging; and that love--like generosity and self-sacrifice--takes no heed of caste or class boundaries. As with many Bollywood films, you just have to take the crunchy with the smooth.