Postcolonial study in bollywood

Postcolonial Theory and Bollywood Films

Postcolonial theory has hardly been a defining paradigm in the field of film studies. Postcolonial theory originally emerged from comparative literature departments and film from film and media studies departments, and despite the many intersections postcolonial theory has not been explicitly foregrounded. However, there are more similarities and natural points of intersections between the two areas than it would at first appear. For example, both postcolonial theory and film studies emerged at the end of the 1970s with the development of semiotic theory and poststructuralist thought. Both areas engage intensively with the field of representation, implying the ways in which a language, be it cinematic or otherwise, manages to convey reality as “mediated” and “discursive,” and therefore influenced by power relations. An example could be the notion of the gendered gaze by Laura Mulvey and her concept of looked-at-ness and how it also applies to the screening and representation of black and colonized bodies in films, which bell hooks later theorized as black looks, to which she proposed the response of an oppositional gaze. Despite their different genealogies, it is therefore not only very natural but also necessary to combine postcolonial theory and film in order to unearth how the visual field is inherently hegemonizing and hierarchical and therefore in need of critical appraisal and a deconstructive take, such as postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory has critically contributed to revisiting the representation of the Other, addressing long-standing tropes and stereotypes about cultural difference and racial otherness. This implies new interventions on how visual representations are implicated in the policing of boundaries between East and West, between Europe and the Rest, the self and the other, undoing or rethinking the ways in which the visual field conveys operation of a mastery that needs to be undone and decoded.

Rang De Basanti :-

Rang De Basanti (Color me Saffron) tells us the story of Caucasian and Hindi speaking, British filmmaker, Sue, who comes to India to make a documentary on India’s revolutionary and legendary freedom fighters, Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekar Azad, Sukhdev, Rajguru and Ashfaqullah Khan who were instrumental in India’s struggle against the British. The five Indian youngsters she chooses to play the revolutionaries are Laxman Pandey (Atul Kulkarni), a Hindu fundamentalist with political aspirations; Daljit Singh called DJ (Aamir Khan), a Punjabi guy who is also an ex-student of the university and uninterested in the life outside the universities’ gates; Aslam (Kunal Kapoor), a rational Muslim ; Sukhi (Sharman Joshi) , a fun loving guy primarily interested in women; Karan (Siddharth) a rich kid who dreams of settling abroad and shares an estranged relationship with his father; and Sonia (Soha Ali Khan) , a youth activist who is engaged to a patriotic pilot Ajay (Mad havan). The group of friends is at first unable to relate the characters they portray on screen. The film-within-a-film format allows Mehra to compare yesteryear’s ideal ism (represented through the freedom fighters) with today’s skepticism (represented through the portrayal of the friends) and as Sue continues to make the documentary, the idealism of India’s revolutionary heroes’ seeps into the protagonists. Somewhere during the making of the movie, the friends find themselves moved by the passion of the characters they play. They gradually begin to realize that their own lives are not very different from the actors they portray on the screen and that the same state of affairs that once plagued the revolutionaries continues to torment the present generation. 

While, previously it was the British Empire who played the villain, today this role is being essayed by contemporary politicians. Soon the barrier of time between the two generations begins to dissolve as the characters become one in spirit. The death of their close friend, Ajay, who dies like a hero, having averted a greater tragedy by crashing his MiG plane (inspired from a real life incident in India) into an empty field instead of trying to save his own life pushes their tolerance over their brink, as instead of honoring his martyrdom, the Indian government labels him as a careless novice so as to deflect media attention away from the details of the purchase of faulty Russian MiGs. The friends are devastated by Ajay’s death and shocked by the corruption they encounter from the bureaucracy when they try to clear his name. This forces them to take action against the State. In the process of trying to cleanse the system, they take the law into their own hands and meet a tragic end. In the film, the docudrama shot by Sue of British India in the 1930s runs along with the main story and intersects it at decisive moments in the narration. The climax of the film sees the blurring of the past and the present, reiterating the idea that nationalism is not yet dead and that people need to wake up and be the change they talk about. 

As Hindi film critic Dr. Chakravorty describes it, RDB is more than another patriotic film: it is a moral, social and political allegory. “By blending history along with the nationalist struggle, idealism and humanitarianism along with contemporary politics, religious fundamentalism, and the lack of social responsibility, Mehra pro vides us with a mirror to look inwards and think about the way we live and the choices we make.”13 It was for this reason that audiences, especially youngsters, for whom daily life in India was on the lines depicted in RDB, found this film to be a slice of their own lives. RDB also ends with a strong message that it is not patriotic or right to be indifferent to what is going on in the country, and even more so in public life. Moreover, nor is it correct to sit on the fence and point fingers at all the things going wrong in a democracy like India. It stresses the idea that is very important for people to actively participate in the public sphere to bring about change in their country. “No country is perfect, it needs to be made perfect”14 and this is the message that Mehra’s film leaves the audience with. Interestingly enough, film critics even when discussing the movie in their reviews felt that RDB could lead to reflection, discussion and possibly even action among youngsters in India. It was for this reason that RDB enjoyed much publicity before and after its release. It also helped that this film had an interesting ensemble of novice and established actors starring in it and that the popular press declared the film to be one of the biggest releases of 2006. 

While there is always the danger of popular cinema like RDB being labeled es capist, mere entertainment, and fantasy-oriented, it is very essential to understand the role it plays in motivating audiences to act in certain ways. For despite all its inanities and irrelevancies this cinema is ideology-filled and its raw material is the society of today. RDB, by focusing on the concerns of youngsters, operating from their perspective and speaking their language, conveyed the mindset of urban and educated youngsters in post-independent India. It therefore serves as a fertile ground to study issues of changing culture, identities, media consumption and audience effects among others. It is in this context that I study the consumption of RDB and the implications of the same on young audiences. RDB, as this thesis showcases, is an example of a distinctive case in which the consumption of a super commodified cinematic product revitalized citizenship among the youth in India.

Lagaan :-

 Lagaan films with their appeal to the mass audience of uprooted peasants, factory workers, the unemployed, uneducated and poor can decolonise the imagination of the Indian masses. It points out that "Lagaan's" efforts at indigenisation and interrogation of prescribed discourses of modernity and history deserve credit for making possible the creation of public debates within a culture where the majority of the population is non-literate, and is unable to partake in elite discussions of culture and modernity.

 conclusion :-

 The white woman's association with capitalism and modernity in Rang de Basanti, Lagaan, and Indian advertisements, buttresses the dominance of the Indian male and affirms nationalist constructions of gender. Dark suggests that romance with the white woman offers a form of redemption for the various humiliations the Indian male suffered in the colonial dynamic and offers a fantasy of symbolic wholeness á la Frantz Fanon. Indeed, this introduction of the British woman in both Lagaan and Rang de Basanti harkens back to the imperialist romances popular in the 1980s, based on the novels of E.M. Forester and Paul Scott. Both David Lean's film Passage to India and the television series Jewel in the Crown highlight the British woman's consumption of Indian culture and the perils of such erotic consumption. In these films, the erotic gaze of the British woman is correlated directly to the punishment of the Westernized Indian man, who is jailed and beaten for his purported sexual aggression against her. The eroticism in these romances depends on the sadomasochistic degradation of the Indian male linked to the British woman's excessive, misplaced, and ultimately impossible desire. Renato Resaldo has perhaps the most blunt description of the "paradox"of "imperialist nostalgia" that plays out in these romances: "A person kills somebody, and then mourns the victim" . According to Resaldo, this nostalgia disguises any complicity of the mourner in this loss, in effect erasing the traumatic history. In relationship to imperialist nostalgia, Jennifer Wen-zel describes "anti-imperialist nostalgia" as a phenomenon in a formerly colonized nation, in which the pre-independence period becomes an idealized ur-moment of potential, not necessarily fulfilled in the present day nation-state. In both forms of nostalgia, the pre-independence period acts as a fetish or an object that compensates for the trauma of Britain's loss of empire and India's occupation under colonial rule. If for Anne McClintock, the fetish, as both commodity and psychoanalytic "perversion," work off the "failure of a single narrative of origins" whether cultural or sexual, Rang de Basanti offers a type of doubling of India's narrative of origins as a nation-state. In Rang de Basanti two types of fantasies imperial and anti-imperial — overlap. Although Sue is the supposed director of a documentary film, she also acts symbolically as the fantasy audience, both a witness to India's successful transformation into a global force and the Western subject who provides recognition for the historical trauma behind India's birth into modernity through sentimental affiliation with heroic individuals.

SR: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 SR: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie :-

Chimamanda was born in Enugu, Nigeria on September 15, 1977. Her works centered primarily on the Biafran war in Nigeria in the late 1960’s.

From a young age, Chimamanda is already a voracious reader. She found the work of fellow Igbo Chinua Achebe, “Things Fall Apart,” as truly powerful and trans formative. She studied medicine in Nsukka for a time, however, she felt that it was not her calling so she left for the United States in 1997. In the US, she studied Political Science and Communication at the Eastern Connecticut State University. Traveling back and forth to Nigeria and the US, she also worked hard and earned a Creative Writing Master’s degree from the prestigious John Hopkins University. Later on, she also went and studied African history at Yale.

Chimamanda Adichie’s play entitled “For Love of Biafra” was printed in Nigeria in 1998 but she remarked that this particular play as appallingly“melodramatic.” In this play, she explored the repercussions of the 1960 Nigeria and Biafra war. Later on, she wrote stories picturing the conflicts in that same war. In 2006, she wrote her highly-successful novel “Half of a Sun,” still drawing inspiration from the said Biafran and Nigerian war.

Her first novel entitled “Purple Hibiscus” was written and published in 2003 when she was still a student at the Eastern Connecticut State University. The novel talks about the coming-of-age of a 15-year-old girl named Kambili. Although they are rich, her father was a religious fanatic which causes a lot of problems. This novel won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2005 for Best First Book written by an African category and also won the 2005’s Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book for all categories. Furthermore, the said novel was short-listed for the 2004 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Chimamanda Adichie received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2008. In 2009, she then released her collection of short stories called “The Thing Around Your Neck.” In 2013, she released “Americanah,” a novel which tells the story of a young Nigerian woman learning and blogging about ethnicity and race in the US.

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Truly, the story of Chimamanda Adichie’s success is the perfect example of how one can turn discrimination against one’s color and cultural background into their very own platform for success.

1. Did the first talk help you in understanding of postcolonialism?

yes, the first talk help  me in understanding of postcolonialism.Americanah is written entirely in the third person point of view. The narrator is both reliable and omniscient. This does not change even when the book shifts focus from present to past and from Ifemelu to Obinze. The narrator reveals the actions and thoughts of the characters throughout the book. For example, when Obinze meets a woman and her son in a coffee shop in England, the narrator describes the actions of the three characters while also revealing that Obinze finds her attractive and the encounter leaves him thinking about love. This point of view allows the reader to get to know the characters involved and develop an interest in what happens to them.

The story is told in a mix of exposition and dialogue, with dialogue occurring through a wide variety of characters. The pace is moderate with enough action to keep the reader.

2. Are the arguments in the seconds talk convincing? 

yes, the arguments in the seconds talk convincing because The words she sampled were from a now-famous TED Talk by Chimamanda where she talks about feminism, and why it is important to teach it to girls. More recently, we have seen some heated debates about the relevance of feminism, thanks to the tumblr ‘Women Against Feminism’ and all the negative light they are casting on the movement.

More than anything, our point of view is that people are now having honest an open conversations on a global scale, and we have an anti-feminist site to that for that. Feminism is getting more publicity than ever, in this digital age where literally anything has the potential to go viral, like their tumblr page. What it has also allowed is for the positive (read: not radical or exclusionary) feminist voices to rise up and be stronger than ever, and show cynics that all the stereotypical things about the movement that seem to be perpetuated by society, are certainly not telling the full story. The negative and radicalism has hijacked what true feminism is about: equality, and women supporting women.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has just released a book version of her TED talk called ‘We should all be feminists’, which you can buy online, or you can watch the full video here. Given the current climate of feminism, it couldn’t have been more timely.

If there is anyone out there looking for a clear, concise, short and convincing reason why feminism is still relevant, this is the speech you need to hear or read. To start off, let’s be reminded of the dictionary definition: “the theory of the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.”

For those that think Chimamanda spent her life reading feminist books and probably can’t identify with her, you’d be wrong.

In an interview with Vogue about the release of her book, Chimamanda says her speech was received quite well from the men in her country.

“I was surprised that some of the young men that I’ve heard from, mostly Nigerians, who I thought of as so retrograde that they could not be saved, actually started to think about and talk about gender. We don’t really talk about gender, and I’m very much a believer in the power of discourse, in having conversations, of trying to reach out.”

3. What did you like about the third talk?

In the third video about truth in post-truth era, she beautifully said about the courage of speaking truth. Her thought is to be loyal with ourselves to tell the truth. Post truth is very dangerous weapon in this 21st century, especially political parties make use of this kind of weapon to provocate riots and also Media used for profit and to raise their TRP. So. She tries to say that do not driven as sheeple with the political language, try to understand the truth with authentication and always doubt in such a things.

4. Are these talks bringing any significant change in your way of looking at literature and life?

yes, these talks bringing significant change in my  way of looking at literature and life because after this talk in my mind I can see the world in larger picture instead looking from only one perspective . 

Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor :-

Shashi Tharoor is a member of the Indian Parliament and also a columnist, author, human rights activist, and a former UN envoy. He served in the UN for 29 years. He is passionate about politics and has been writing for newspapers, like Washington Post, The Times of India, New York Times, The Hindu and many more. He has also written fiction and non fictions, which have also been translated into many languages. He is known as a compelling speaker and has won many awards.

Shashi Tharoor was born in 1956 in London. He is originally from Kerala as his parents, father Chandran Tharoor and mother Lily were from Kerala. His early education was completed in Montfort school in Yercaud, Tamil Nadu and Campion School in Mumbai. His high school was completed in St. Xavier’s Collegiate School in Kolkata. He earned his honours degree in History from St. Stephen’s College in Delhi. A bright student, he won a scholarship to Tuffs University in Boston. He earned his master’s degree in the US and also a Ph.D at Tuffs University in Diplomacy from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
Shashi Tharoor’s first wife was Tilottama Mukherjee and they have two sons, Ishaan and Kanishk. However, they divorced and Tharoor married a Canadian national named Vhirsta Giles. After splitting from Giles, Tharoor married Sunanda Pushkar, who has a son from a previous marriage. However, she died mysteriously in a hotel room in Delhi. He is known to love theatre and has played the role of Antony in Cleopatra. He acted in various plays even in school and college days. Tharoor founded the Quiz Club in St. Stephen’s College. He was elected as the President of the college union.
Shashi Tharoor in his whole political career has been surrounded by various controversies. His remarks have irked his party members many times and he has been caught in a fix due to his statements. He was also attacked due to his participation and being a shareholder in the Kochi-IPL team. He was accused of having made financial gains to Sunanda Pushkar, who was not his wife then. The matter became serious as the income tax department asked him to pay income tax on sweat equity even after giving it up. All this made Shashi Tharoor to resign from the post of the Minister of State of External Affairs.
The death of Sunanda Pushkar also built up controversies. Her death mystery has not been solved yet and investigations are being carried out.

An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India :-

While I was reading this book, I kept thinking that one of the things people on the left could reasonably do is just make up stuff about the extent of murderousness that colonisation has involved. The reason being that it is highly unlikely anyone on the left would have the imagination to think up the horrors that were actually inflicted upon the world by the imperial ambitions of Britain or Spain – or the costs to indigenous peoples in the US or Australia. This book documents horrors upon horrors. But infinitely worse is the clear view that is left of the British who were not merely rapacious is thievery from those they pretended to be lifting out of darkness, but who did nothing to alleviate suffering when lifting the smallest finger would have saved many lives from the most horrible of deaths.
Winston Churchill does not come out of this at all well. As someone born in Ireland, he has never particularly been a hero of mine anyway – but in India his name ought to be a curse.
I’m not going to list the catalogue of crimes against humanity visited upon India by British rule – this book provides ample examples and ought to be read for that alone – however, I want to focus mostly on something that I believe still holds relevance for us today everywhere on the planet – the inhumanity of free market economics when accepted as a moral philosophy.
Marx says somewhere that we should consider capitalism as simultaneously the best and the worse system that has ever existed. As the author here points out, those in charge of India from Britain were guided by ethical principles that had two great foundations – that the market is always right and a vision of Malthus where overpopulation inevitably leads to famine. This meant that when various imposed famines occurred in India those who might otherwise have been expected to do something to reduce the suffering experienced by the people saw any such action as misguided ‘charity’ that would, in fact, merely make matters worse. That the market had spoken and the death of those people (counted in millions) was ultimately the kindest thing. Rather than divert some of the food that was being transported out of these areas where people were starving, the food continued to be moved to Europe and the people dropped like flies.
The point isn’t that such actions were the cynical excesses of a hideous regime content to merely suck the wealth and life out of India – and, there is something to this as well, of course – but rather that free market economics, with its invisible hands and its dogmatic certainties, allows people to consider their actions (or inactions) as the height of morality while millions perish. This was done to Ireland with the same callous disregard as it was to India. That the monsters who committed the crimes remain heroes is difficult to understand other than from the perspective that we still live under the sway of an ideology that still believes the market will provide and any intervention in its free action will ultimately prove counter-productive – and thus are the greatest of human tragedies visited upon the poor while the wealthy can barely count their riches.

The Black Prince:-

'The Black Prince' successfully makes an aware of some determinant historical events of the past.
 The Black Prince is a 2017 international historical drama film directed by Kavi Raz and featuring the acting debut of Satinder Sartaj. It tells the story of Duldeep Singh, the last Maharajah of the Sikh Empire and the Punjab area, and his relationship with Queen Victoria.
In this movie , we can see the Postcolonialism through the main character of Duldeep Singh. In this movie we can see that the condition of Duldeep Singh that he find himself with the two different cultures of his India birth and British education.
After the death of his father Maharajah Ranjit Singh who was the previous ruler of the Sikh Empire. And after his death , Duldeep Singh placed on the throne at the very early of five age.  After the time passed Britishers who colonized Punjab and they take Duldeep with them and separated from his mother.In the movie prince Duleepsingh play roll as a protagonist. One thing I noticed that this movie also focus on how British government ruled on India. Movie reflected good side of British government though providing so many things for prince but Prince always prefers conman life. Mother of the princes also hate British government and people. She didn't like their manner of hospitality. Normally movie working surrounding nationalism,colonialism,reflect British's manner,clothe,food,Christianity...etc.
So, Duldeep consider himself as  a Britisher but it is not actually that. After the few years he meet his mother and his mother told him the story about Britishers that what they did with him in the prior. Then after the death of his mother , he came to know that who is he and which country he is actually belong. He want to go at India but Britishers who deny him to go there.
So in a way, he found himself in dilemma that what should he do?
So, in a Postcolonial perspective .... Duldeep Singh himself free to live with Britishers but he is colonized by his mind. That he didn't do anything according to his mind. He always colonized by that british people who always wants to kept him with under their rules.

Summarise Ngugi Wa Thiongo's views :-

Ngugi Wa Thiongo who was an African Writer & Professor of English Literature and language in Africa." Decolonizing the Mind" the book by Kenyan novelist and Postcolonial theorist Ngugi Wa Thiongo. It is the collection of essay about language & its constructive role in national culture, history and identity.In this book he talks about..." What language played the role in African Literature?"
Decolonising the Mind is a collection of essays about language and its constructive role in national culture, history, and identity. The book, which advocates for linguistic decolonization, is one of Ngũgĩ’s best-known and most-cited non-fiction publications, helping to cement him as a pre-eminent voice theorizing the “language debate” in post-colonial studies.

            Ngũgĩ describes the book as “a summary of some of the issues in which I have been passionately involved for the last twenty years of my practice in fiction, theater, criticism, and in teaching of literature…” Decolonizing the Mind is split into four essays: “The Language of African Literature,” “The Language of African Theater,” “The Language of African Fiction,” and “The Quest for Relevance.”
So, in the Postcolonialism , Resistance is very important , Resistance is the main buzz word in post colonial. So he said that the another form of to resist language is to own it or discard the language totally.