Indian states and universities have oriented themselves to the West, and have imbibed their culture and its legacy for running their discourse and business, whereas Indian cinema, despite a few exceptions and excesses, has always entered in a dialogue with the indigenous and the classical tradition of this country to forward its discourse and business. This is the reason why cinema has become such a popular and strong medium in India. Cinema never attracted the attention of the Indian universities as a subject and as an effective medium of mass communication. It has always been considered a means of ‘inferior entertainment’, as something outside academia, and hence left to live and die on its own. Cinema was not considered a subject of study in Jawaharlal Nehru University before 2007. It is the inner vitality of Indian cinema that it has protected its existence and nurtured itself on its own. It has made its identity global, and has become the most prominent cultural signifier of the emerging India.
Therefore, it is necessary to understand the cathartic relationship of Indian cinema and its audience. This cathartic relationship has its own history and sociology; it has its own aesthetics and metaphysics; ‘Darkness to light’ (Tamaso Ma Jyotirgamaya) is the sutra or formulae which is helpful in understanding this. Most of the Indian audience feels a subconscious connection between the darkness of the cinema hall and the liturgical plot lit in the dark, which resembles the romantic-spiritual relationship between the devotee and the deity in the Sanctum Sanctorum of a traditional temple. The plot of a film is an imitation, memory and resonance of the spiritual world affairs.
In the darkness of the cinema hall, each spectator in the crowd engages in an indirect dialogue with the text, plot, the reality and the possibility of the plot, that is, the truth of the film. In the words of Coomaraswamy, every good or normal film creates a scenario in the darkness, where one can realise his Priya Brahma (Atma/self Brahma). Usually, that film becomes popular (hit) which has a natural dialogue (one liner), stemming from the self-realisation or self-experience. It can also be called a formula sentence (sutra vakya). This formula sentence works as a spark, a mantra or like a TV antenna. It triggers hundreds of chain reactions within each viewer. It confronts the viewers with their time, reality of the contemporary age, along with the dormant and infinite possibilities within their own self. It is precisely in this context that people like Bharatmuni, Abhinavagupta and Coomaraswamy consider art to be the dialogue of the soul with Brahma. In this sense, art becomes a sibling to Brahma. Film is at best an art in India. It could not only become a cultural product like it is in Hollywood, despite the efforts of Himanshu Rai, Shashadhar Mukherjee to Aditya Chopra, Ram Gopal Varma and Mahesh Bhatt etc. At least, the audiences have not accepted it as a cultural product. Indian audiences and most independent filmmakers still regard film as an art form, the coordination or identification ‘is established’ or ‘gets established’ between the modern technology and traditional art values, in one or the other forms.
Ultimately, in Indian vision, most of the traditional filmmakers (like D.K. Bose, Kedar Sharma, Bimal Roy, Raj Kapoor etc.) behave like a contemporary sage. Every film is, in a way, a manifestation of their sadhana (practice) and state of siddhi (accomplishment). No sage wants to impose his truth on others. He has no problem in accepting the truth of others because truth is non-dual, whether it is being spoken by oneself or by somebody else. The realisation of Truth is non-dual (Advaita); duality exists only in untruth; duality entails separation and disconnection. That is why, the audiences insistent on the realisation of truth (Satyanubhuti) want to see union, non-duality and Satyam Shivam Sundaram at the end of the film. They want to see the truth, justice and victory of divine powers; they do not prefer tragedy. Generally, tragic films, untruth, injustice and imbalanced films do not succeed in our country; they may be popular with Indian diaspora or Western audiences, but common Indians reject such films.
Tragedy, as a form, has been very popular in the West. It is considered to be the best form of art in ancient Greece, in Roman tradition and in Shakespearian plays. Whether one looks at Aristotle’s, Hegel’s or Nietzsche’s Aesthetics, the Western mind is overwhelmed by the excellence of sensibilities that a Tragedy is able to communicate. Similarly, in French and Italian cinema, realism or neorealism has been the most iconic form of cinema. However, in India such films are generally not considered excellent or successful. Such films, inspired by Western traditions, fall into the category of parallel cinema (the so-called new or ‘intellectual and artistic’ cinema that started around 1969). They could find only a limited audience in India. Such filmmakers blame the understanding abilities of the audience. In fact, there have been solid sociological reasons behind such films not getting an audience. In France and Italy, cinema is related to modernity. It is not associated with tradition in the same way as it is in India. There are no more traditional institutions or traditional people left in Europe. Tradition survives as ‘nostalgia’ or as an object on display in a museum. In the Greek tradition, ‘Tragedy’ had a different meaning and stemmed from an anthropomorphic pagan worldview, where a human being was a victim of hubris or fate. Tragedy has a different meaning in French or Italian realist and neorealist cinema.
Tragedy had a superhuman meaning in the Greek tradition. Medieval Christianity gave another meaning to tragedy. The meaning of tragedy changes qualitatively in the ideology of modernity and in industrial capitalist democracy. The relationship of the Western realist tradition to the French tradition of opera and the relation to Italian tradition of painting can be seen in French or Italian cinema. But Indian cinema has no such relation with Parsi theatre or with Indian visual arts. Indian cinema is more associated with the indigenous culture, folk music and story, religious hymn chanting and prayers (kirtan-bhajan) and the tradition of attaining self-realisation through religious endeavours and by entering temples. That is the reason, sometimes, the mesmerised spectator starts whistling, clapping, sometimes throwing money and hooting. Sometimes, the fans go to the extent of making temples to worship the hero-heroine, and even start social service and politics by forming a fan club.
A cinematic study centred on Indian aesthetics has not yet developed systematically. But on the basis of the comparative sociological hypothesis of successful and unsuccessful films (based on viewership) since 1913 till now, a tentative generalisation can be made that the realist and neorealist films of the western style do not get the same support from the Indian audience as they get from the cine-goers of the modern West.
It is not because the Indian audiences are naive and do not encourage a good film, rather the reason for this is that– despite being introduced to a new technology– cinema is a familiar entity for the Indian audiences, which has a deep connection with the thousands of years of oral tradition and indigenous tradition of storytelling, and listening to stories and indigenous culture of this country. While in the West, tradition and traditional culture have no living relationship with modern audiences and modern cinema. Indian literature that developed under the British Raj could not develop a vibrant relationship with the Indian society till today like Indian cinema did when it was established in 1913. Indian audiences gave their heart to cinema at the first sight. Such love has been received only by devout poets and Sufi singers. Therefore, instead of blaming the Indian audience, there is a need to properly understand the non-Indianness of realistic or neo-realistic cinema. In Indian society, reality is only a part or form of the truth. Modern European humanism and humanist history, philosophy and social sciences have given a special form to reality or the study of reality. Truth or Noumenon has no place in the European modern discourse as it gives emphasis to the Reality or the Phenomena. Whereas, in India, it is to be noted that, the reality is only a part or form of Noumenon. In the West, reality is something which is considered to be a form of Phenomenon. Anything that the historian leaves out or which does not align with his concepts, he dismisses it as myth, fiction or untruth.
When cinema was born and developed in India from (1913 to 1947), India was under British rule. The Independence movement was going on in the country. The Congress’ Garam Dal (Extremists) had the greatest influence on the freedom movement from 1913 to 1920. Bal Gangadhar Tilak was the greatest leader and inspirational figure of that era. There was an impact of the freedom movement on Dadasaheb Phalke and Prabhat Film Company; Ranjit Movietone, New Theatres and Minerva Movietone were also influenced by the freedom struggle. Therefore, what is considered by the English people to be the ignorance of Indian audiences and filmmakers is a kind of counter-narrative, derived from the alternative grammar and alternative aesthetics of cultural discourse, which was nurtured by the Swadeshi movement and a realisation of the idea of self-respect.
Considered from this viewpoint, realistic cinema and its filmmakers fall in an inferior category. It signifies the early stage of an art and artist. When cinema evolves as an art and cultural instrument in a country, then there is a flood of realistic cinema. When a novice filmmaker is learning the art of filmmaking, he creates realistic or neo-realistic cinema as an expression of his newly found romance with the technique and craft of filmmaking. He documents and presents a report on reality. From the Indian point of view, it is an idiotic attempt to contain the ocean in a small pot (Gagar mein sagar Bharna), which is an indication of the weakening or disappearing of the master-disciple (Ustad-Shagird) tradition. This situation can be amply expressed with the proverb, “Little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.” (Neem Hakeem Khatra Jaan). Here frog in a well (Kuan ka mendak), meaning, unenlightened attitude is highly narcissistic to think that he has not re-created but created; he has not imitated but originated. In India, such cinema is not accepted by the people; only that cinema is accepted by the people which communicates with the truth (myth + reality + possible reality), one that solicits for the truth.
Films, in India, are loved and established in two different ways at the level of public. From this point of view, popular (Blockbusters) films can be classified into two categories. One can be called a ‘popular’ film, and the other a ‘timeless classic’ film. The popular film is like a ‘love of the moment’, which gives an impression of truth. On the other hand, part of the truth is indicated or requested in a timeless classics film. Timeless Classical films also get established– leave a long term impact in the minds of people after being momentarily dear to them. Popular films are metaphoric in the Western sense, whereas classic films are metonymic. In the West ‘metaphoric’ is called ‘phenomena’, and is considered to be the highest form of art. Indian films have metonymic or methanoic (timeless classical, figurative) art as a part of noumenon (truth); it is the best form of the art; whereas, ‘metaphoric art’ is an underdeveloped or rudimentary form of art. Timeless Classical films can be made only by a filmmaker who has come out of the Guru-Shishya or Ustad-Shagird (teacher-student) tradition or has passed through self-realisation in the rishi (sage) tradition. Sometimes, an innocent-minded filmmaker creates a timeless classic, knowingly or unknowingly, with some known or unknown inspiration, or we can say that sometimes such films are made on their own. Generally, the incarnation of timeless classic films happens in the form of a ‘cosmic event’. These films have self value.
During the early days of cinema in India, people from different regions and languages got associated with it in the same way as in Hollywood cinema people of different languages from European countries were connected, but the language of Hollywood movies and America is English. In the beginning of Indian cinema, there were five major centres– Calcutta, Bombay, Lahore, Madras and Kolhapur-Pune. After independence, artist-technical experts from Calcutta, Lahore and Pune also came to Bombay; some also went to Pakistan from Bombay. Due to various practical reasons, people from different regions started making films in Hindi, instead of their mother tongues. Shantaram was a Marathi, Mehboob Khan was a Gujarati, Bimal Roy, Amiya Chakraborty, Fani Majumdar etc. were Bengalis, while Chetan-Dev-Vijay Anand, Baldevraj Chopra, Yash Raj Chopra, Prithviraj Kapoor, Raj Kapoor, Kedar Sharma and Dilip Kumar were Punjabi speaking, S.S. Vasan was a Madrasi and Sohrab Modi spoke Parsi mixed Marathi Hindi.
Most of the technical experts used to think, speak and work in English. Thus, although Hindi cinema gradually got the status of national cinema, but English became the working language of the Hindi film industry (like the working language of the Government of India and the universities). Most of the books about cinema were also written in the English language only. Most of the screenplays were written in the English language by English oriented people; the dialogues were also in English language. A translator was given the status of a dialogue writer. In the world cinema, there is only one category of story-screenplay. Sometimes, a category ‘Adapted from Original’ can also be seen. But the category of a dialogue writer, distinct from story-screenplay writer, has emerged as a fundamental specialty of Indian cinema. This category is similar to the trend of writing ‘Made in India’ by assembling different types of parts in the industrial sector; it has emerged as a fundamental feature of business opportunism of the Indian middle class; and it is being praised as the social capital (colonial rites) of the Indian professional class in the age of outsourcing; its seed form or origin is hidden in the formation of the category of a dialogue-writer in Indian cinema that emerged to encourage the translator’s creativity and to provide him an independent identity from that of the story-screenplay writer.
This trend has had both positive and negative consequences. The positive effect of this is that ‘Desi Blockbusters’ started being produced on foreign scripts. These blockbusters had the Indian seasoning of lyrics and music and also had master-stroke of the ‘one liners’, written by these translators until very recently. The other side of this trend is that, in order to establish their importance, sometimes, these translators knowingly or unknowingly changed the sentiment and context of the original story and wrote strange yet brilliant original-heart-touching one liner as for the audiences to clap to. On the surface level, the film’s cohesiveness and non-duality are disrupted and the resulting inconsistencies in the meaning of the screenplay caused by disjointed dialogues become noticeable. But, at times, the film becomes a hit due to these absurd yet sensitive dialogues; and even after many years, these dialogues are remembered while the script of the film gets relegated to oblivion of the memory. The sociological explanation for this is that through these dialogues, the viewer transcends his daily routine life, contemporary times, and the ongoing screenplay of the film and begins to experience or realise the Sanatan (Perennial)Truth and Sanatan Leela (Perennial Play). In this sense, these dialogues remind us of the voice of the swan or pigeon, parrot or mynah of Garuda Maharaj or Manas as described in the Indian epics; it enables us to travel from this world to the cosmos, from this body to the universe, leading us from the darkness to light.
Today, Indian cinema, especially popular Hindi cinema, is gaining a lot of popularity in the West. There are two interrelated reasons for this. Firstly, the craze of the Industrial Revolution has started to subside in the western countries. In the manufacturing (industrial production) and service sector, westerners are lagging behind the non-Western enterprises. These people are interested in becoming managers and stockbrokers and enjoying the social capital (colonial legacy) of the last 200-300 years. The discussion of the stagnation and decline in the study-contemplation-mindfulness-practice of Theology, Science, Philosophy and Art that refines the mind was started by postmodern critics around 1968. It was recognized from the time of Nietzsche (1844–1900) and Hahnemann (1755-1843). After 1989-90, the so-called unipolar ‘world village’ entered the era of overtly American grandeur, but this grandeur is not based on the inner creativity and inner health of their society, rather it is based on artificial tonics (Viagra, American Military, the political economy of Hollywood films). The audience of their films is continuously decreasing. This can be understood only in comparative form. Hollywood cinema has been in the similar condition since 1989 as was the condition of the British Raj in India from 1913 to 1947.
The trend of dubbing Hollywood movies in indigenous languages will eventually cause far-reaching harm to Hollywood films and the native language filmmakers will be encouraged by ideas to strive to make excellent films in their language for their audiences. Vivekananda had said long ago that the communion of Western technology and Indian culture would again make India the World-Guru. Here Vivekanandaji missed reading the pulse of time in one aspect. He had said that the downtrodden sections of India would have to learn Sanskrit in order to progress culturally; Gandhi and Tagore said that if India wanted its natural development, Indians would have to learn their vernaculars or mother tongues; education should not be in a classical language but in mother tongue or vernacular. Today, English has practically become the language of classical discussion and the folk discourse has shifted to indigenous languages or a hybrid language (colloquial mixed language consisting of words from many languages including English). Hindi is a language of the people; it is in the process of becoming a language of oral tradition and a colloquial national language.
People of Indian origin who may be living in any part of the world watch Hindi films in one or the other form. Even though they cannot read and write Hindi, they still watch Hindi movies, even if they have to watch them with the help of subtitles. Excellent films have been made in Indian languages like Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Oriya, Assamese, Bhojpuri etc. Some of these films, especially Bhojpuri films, have increased their fan base among people of Indian origin, yet these filmmakers often have an ambition to make Hindi films, just as most Indian scholars definitely want to write their commentary on Prasthana Trayi (Brahma-sutras, Upanishads, and Bhagavad Gita). Similarly, most filmmakers of India necessarily want to make their films in Hindi. The real challenge for Hollywood films is going to come from India only as western cine theories, western stereotypes and canons of storytelling have come to dominate China, Japan and other non-Western countries. Iranians are trying their best to instil Islamic culture in their cinema, but since, at least, the eighteenth century, Islamic art, thought and metaphysics have lacked continuity and creativity. There has been a lot of controversy among Sufi and non-Sufi thinkers about the role of sculpture, drama and music as well as Islamic cinema in Islam. At the moment, even the people of Iran are not very hopeful that Iranian cinema can become an alternative to Hollywood films outside Iran. Therefore, only Indian (originally Hindi) cinema can be popular among non-Western countries and audiences of non-Western origin who are living in the West. Gradually, the attention of the post-modern audience of the West may also turn to the alternative discourse of Indian cinema. Indian cinema is slowly moving in this direction. But a lot of preparation has to be done to achieve that goal; accomplishment (siddhi) has not yet been achieved; now Indian cinema is going through a stage of development or Sadhna; it has not attained its zenith; the golden age of Hindi cinema is yet to come. There is a trend to consider the decades of forties and fifties (1940 and 1950) as the golden age from the point of view of themes and presentation. Some good films were made during this period, but most of the films were dominated by nineteenth century formulas of religious and social reform. These formulas were based on the Western parameters with the Indian vision of the utterly hopeless situation during the British Raj. Traditional techniques, philosophies and institutions were considered outdated, and a movement was being run to reform society and sampradaya by making Western parameters prevalent, thinking that they are better than our own. The so-called intellectual or realistic cinema appears to be advertising the spread of western goods, ideas and institutions. Many great social films of that time can be put in the category of contemporary advertisements films. Therefore, from the point of view of technology and all time accepted parameters of the screenplay, there are many problems in considering the 1940s or 1950s as the Golden Age of Indian cinema. From this point of view, it is wrong to call the 1960s or 1970s the era of decadence; it should be considered as a transition period for India as well as for Indian cinema. In the 1960s, prosperity began to be seen in Indian society; there was a growing trend of presenting this prosperity in colour cinema. The Nehru era came to an end in 1964. A film like Haqeeqat (1964) is based on India’s humiliating defeat from China in 1962; in 1965, a film like Waqt was made; in 1966, a film like Teesri Kasam was made; Upkar (1967), Aradhana (1969), Anand (1970), Aandhi (1975) and Sholay (1975) were also made during this period.
Filmmakers of the 1980s and 90s have neither the shadow of slavery of the country nor the influence of the country’s freedom movement upon themselves. The decade after 1990 is a wonderful time for Indian society and Indian cinema at home and abroad. It represents the manifestation of the inner energy of Indian society in terms of opportunities and challenges along with talent and migration. It is the time of the youth whose dreams have not been trampled upon by slavery or conservancy or patronage. You may call them inexperienced like Abhimanyu, Ghatotkach and Barbarik but one cannot live without admiring their talent, dedication, innocent soul and fearless creativity. We may find fault with their understanding of philosophy, history, literature or myths but they know how to play with the camera. They are not afraid of technology; they do not have a fetish for originality; they are not bound by the stereotypes of artificial ideologies. They may not win the war of contemporary Mahabharata, but they are strong enough to shatter the pride of contemporary Maharathis. They can outrightly say or show that the emperor does not have clothes, and is walking naked owing to the wrong advice of his wicked courtiers. This generation has faith in its indirect experience. If this attitude seems decadent to the abbots and critics of Indian society and cinema, then it is clear that these people (abbots, critics etc.) are totally detached from their own time and society; these people do not watch the popular movies of India.
If the people of the older generation want to find their role in this scenario, then they should follow their dharma of Vanaprastha and Sanyasa. They should guide, support and train the new generation, wherever they require strength, cooperation and guidance. Unlike the West, there has not been a systematic attempt to present the history in India. People calling historical films ‘period films’ should be taught the philosophy of history. They should understand the contemporariness of the historical films by not considering Hollywood films like The Passion of the Christ (2004), Troy (2004), Alexander (2004) and Da Vinci Code (2006) the norm or standard. In Tamil cinema, C.N. Annadurai and M. Karunanidhi revolutionised the Dravidian movement and Tamil politics with the help of cinema by presenting contemporary Tamil tradition in their films. Leaders like Kamaraj Nadar and C. Rajagopalachari were stunned at this. Similarly, Bengali and Malayalam cinema has deeply influenced politics and society of those states since the 1950s.
