Hindi cinema has also established an intimate relationship with Indian society and politics, but sincere efforts to understand it properly have not been made so far. Similarly, people still perceive the spread and popularity of Indian cinema in the contemporary world only from the perspective of entertainment and business. They do not acknowledge its other effects; it has both positive and negative effects. The effects are positive because the opponents of Indian cinema are not yet organising systematic protests, and negative because the audience of Indian cinema and the people benefiting from it are not cooperating. The cinema movement is getting weaker. There is stagnation and disintegration in the expansion and activity of film societies. Most of the filmmakers and writers are unaware of the culture and expectations of the Indian audience, but they do not have the same fear of technology and capital as the older generation of filmmakers and writers had; Hollywood does not terrorise them, but they do not have knowledge of the traditions and possibilities of other cinema apart from Hollywood films. Only the future will tell how many people like Producer Aditya Chopra, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Manmohan Shetty, Ronnie Screwvala, Amit Khanna, Subhash Ghai or Mahesh Bhatt will be able to take advantage of this creative explosion. Still, there is no doubt that filmmakers like Sooraj Barjatya, Aditya Chopra, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Ashutosh Gowariker, Karan Johar, Rajkumar Hirani, Vinay Shukla, Chandraprakash Dwivedi, Nikhil Advani, Vishal Bhardwaj, Vikram Bhatt, Madhur Bhandarkar, Farhan Akhtar, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Nagesh Kukunoor, Pradeep Sarkar, Sriram Raghavan, Anurag Kashyap, Anurag Basu, Milan Luthria, Kunal Kohli, Shirish Kundur, Sanjay Gadhvi, Shaad Ali, John Mathew Mathan, Neeraj Vora, Sanjay Jha, Suresh Nair, Ashwin Choudhary, Amrit Sagar are creating the new grammar and new verses of Indian cinema. These people will make extremely good and equally bad films in the future. The culture of cinema and the business of films will change qualitatively. Just as the years 1913, 1931, 1947, 1957, 1967, 1975, 1989, and 2004 are considered milestones for Indian society and Indian cinema, similarly, 2019 can prove to be a milestone for Indian society and Indian cinema.
A number of trends have coexisted in Indian cinema since 1913, even if they are contradictory to one another; yet there have been audiences who appreciate all kinds of trends in Indian society. Such a scenario was not present in Western cinema before 1968. Postmodern tendencies dominated Western countries after 1968. The West began to engage intellectually and artistically with its non-Christian, non-Jewish (pagan) traditions before the 4th and 5th centuries, which led to a neutral assessment of Christianity and modernity. It is a fact that most of the postmodern scholars and artists are of Jewish origin. The rest are those people who have been associated with atheistic, pagan or mystic practices.
The Sanatan (perennial) systems of India have accepted unity in diversity, just as the pagan traditions have. The expression of unity in diversity is expressed in poetry, songs, music and dance, rather than in prose; prose has its limits. There are four forms of speech– Para, Pashyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari; Vaikhari is the spoken language; Pashyanti is basically prose; Artistic language and sign language come under Madhyama; it is the language of Tantra and Mantra; Para is the language of silence, a language that communicates without sound.
Indian cinema is identified by its songs and music. This is the definitional “Indianness” of Indian cinema. This is the natural language of Madhyama speech. It has been transferred as a well-known cultural capital in the master-disciple tradition of cinema.
In the same way, it is necessary to understand that, for most Indian people, the culture passed down from one generation to the next, the ‘autonomy of capital’ or ‘person-centred consumerism’ developed in Western modernity remains a strange and unnatural thing. Even today, earning money is not the goal of life, even for those who constantly harp on money and spend most of their time thinking about making it.
His words and everyday actions do not reflect the sampradaya and faith of a person, but only when he encounters a challenge, when he is confronted by a Yaksha (existential) question, when any chance of martyrdom is presented to him, or when he confronts the dilemma of enjoyment and renunciation. Whether it is Nargis of Mother India or Sharmila Tagore of Aradhana, whether it is Nirupa Rai of Deewar or Shabana Azmi of Godmother or whether it is Rajendra Kumar of Sangam or Sanjeev Kumar of Anokhi Raat or Sanjeev Kumar from Sholay or Shah Rukh Khan in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, their film characters have a typical Indianness that emerges during crisis, and these movies find acceptance and become a super hit. Since the general Indian audience is still qualitatively different from the audience for Hollywood movies, the ideology of successful Indian films is neither in favour of socialism that might arise from a bloody revolution, nor does it establish capitalist consumerism. Every successful film in India finds a middle path, a middle-of-the-road solution, a kind of Gandhian socialism, a sort of devotional syncretism, a type of Buddhist policy, a kind of third path.
Like the Indian epics, the popular cinema uses all four forms of speech, both in word and in the visual medium. Vaikhari is a prose form of speech, which is the material form of speech; it is the grossest form of vak/speech; like, the lovers say ‘I love you’ or hold ‘hands’ or ‘hug’ or ‘kiss’ to express their love, that is Vaikhari. When lovers sing, look, or keep looking into each other’s eyes from a distance, it represents the Madhyama form. When they remain happy just by thinking of each other, sitting in the park next to each other, neither holding hands, nor looking into the eyes, nor singing songs, just sitting beside each other, the boy is reading, the girl is humming or playing with the birds or talking to the flowers sitting nearby, it is the Pashyanti form of expressing love. The Para form of love is the one described in Chandradhar Sharma Guleri’s immortal story Usne Kaha Tha, on which Vimal Roy has made an excellent film. These are all common examples; other examples can also be cited. Some notable examples would be the silent language of blessing and prayer, as Para. Pashyanti is the special language associated with Mantra and Tantra; it’s the sign language of Mantra and Tantra. Madhyama is the rhythmic language of song, music, and painting. Vaikhari is a simple spoken prose language, an instrumental language. These four forms of speech are used creatively in Indian cinema. That is why the meaning is hidden layer by layer, like an onion peel (or like a rose flower petals) in various scenes and dialogues of the film, especially in the songs and dream sequences. Each character in the movie is like an incomprehensible speech, an incomprehensible song and an incomprehensible verse. It is like a kilit or nailed mantra. The Divine element is dormant inside every character. When his Kundalini awakens, the ordinariness of his personality melts away. A Mohini incarnates from within every Vishnu; a Kali incarnates from Parvati. It is difficult to imagine a woman more beautiful than the Mohini form of Lord Vishnu or a braver man than the Kali form of Parvati.
This is why most heroes in Indian cinema are soft and gentle, easily distracted by circumstances. In contrast, most of the heroines display strong willpower, make unforgettable sacrifices and adhere to the highest ideals. Today, market forces are unsuccessfully trying to oust the traditional stories of Indian speech and Sanatan Dharma (Perennial Cosmic Order) through the covetousness, lust, hatred and violence of Hollywood-inspired fleeting consumerism. However, their ultimate success is as difficult as that of the villains in popular movies.
Therefore, a sociologist of Indian cinema cannot use Western cinematic theory even if he wants to. Although their cinematic technology and craft are similar, their plots, audiences, and cultures and expectations differ. Since cinema is an expensive and commercial medium, the decisions of the producer and distributor are more significant than those of the writer and director. This is the hierarchy both in Hollywood and Bollywood. Most of the producers and distributors want to make a profit from the film. Therefore, they cannot ignore the audience’s tastes, even if they’re going to. Film critics ignore the audience’s preferences due to ideological bias, whereas the audience’s culture ultimately drives the producer’s decision. Therefore, we can say that drama is essentially the medium of the writer-director. In contrast, cinema has become the medium of the producer-audience, where willingly or unwillingly, the indigenous and classical tradition of India gets renewed with each making and viewing.
Very few Europeans or Americans watch our movies. Our strength is that only India has been able to stop the Ashwamedha horse of Hollywood, for which the credit goes to the Indian audience. They do watch American movies, but the passion which the Indian audiences have for the Indian stars has ensured that we do not have cinema halls here that are owned by America and based predominantly on Hollywood movies. And we are still free in the field of entertainment. Hollywood has occupied a chain of cinemas to screen its films in all major countries except India and China. That is why, Europe’s own films are not widely screened in many countries of Europe. And the films in Europe are made in collaboration with many other countries for this very reason. It is surprising that Rajinikanth’s masala films are very popular and successful in Japan, which produces its own high quality films. The popularity of Rajnikanth’s masala films superficially surprises the Japanese audiences.
Due to the harsh realities of globalisation, the escape from this is an international truth; and while going beyond the limitation of logic, there is a strong urge, even a man engaged in war also escapes. A man may live anywhere, but he can never be completely cut off from his imagination. It is his cultural channel. Our seemingly illogical masala films, full of dance and songs, are a kind of psycho-emotional therapy, and can cure certain ailments. There are some dark corners in the human mind and heart that can be illuminated only through fantasy. The basis of fantasy is also cultural reality.
If we really want our cinema to be viewed by foreign audiences, then we have to develop the language of our new cinema. This goal can be achieved only if the subject of film appreciation is included in college curricula. The number of audiences who are well-versed in the art and cinematic understanding will motivate Indian filmmakers to develop a new language of Indian cinema.
