Sikata Banerjee - Gender, Nation and Popular Film in India: Globalizing Muscular Nationalism

First published 2017
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2017 Sikata Banerjee

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ISBN: 978-1-138-65399-3 (hbk)
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The research for this book was made possible by an internal grant from the University of Victoria. Subho Basu and Sujata Chakrabarti Pasic read portions of this manuscript to provide valuable feedback, and Rina Williams listened patiently while I expounded various iterations of the argument presented here. Finally, this book could not have been completed without the unfailing support of my husband, Dan. Thank you.

On January 26th, 2006, Rang De Basanti ( Color Me Saffron , hereafter RDB) directed by Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra premiered in select Indian cities. RDB was one of the major hits of that year, a reputable film critic declared it to be among the ten best films made in the decade spanning 2000 and 2010, and it won a slew of international and national honours (Kamath, 2009). But most interestingly, it struck a chord with middle-class youth, who have spent most of their lives in an India flooded with global goods, images, and cultural icons. Blogs discussed the RDB phenomenon, contextualizing it within a debate wherein nationalism was defined as a resurgence of patriotism and a willingness to fight for a more just India (Dilip, 2008). Indeed a few protest movements adopted some of the activist strategies valorized in this film (Chakravorty, 2006; Chaudhury, 2006). The popular current affairs magazine, Tehelka placed an iconic image from the film in the first page of its online issue dated February 11, 2006; the caption above read Whats Right about India, while underneath were the following words: vibrant, resilient, resurgent, ancient, rooted, inclusive, plural, singular, country unputdownable. These words framed the bare muscular torsos of four young men as they leaped up and reached towards an Indian air force jet flying above.

This image draws together masculinity, youth, militarism, and a self-confident nationalism against the context of globalization in a manner that is quite provocative and can be located in a contemporary discourse of masculinized nationalism circulating in India. Eight years before the release of this film, on May 11, 1998, India detonated three nuclear devices. These were followed closely by two more on May 13. Newspaper editorials and public celebrations indicated that these nuclear tests were clearly seen by citizens as a performance of militant strength and restored national virility (Oza, 2006, p. 124). The resonance of this view of national manliness did not fade away, and almost ten years later, in 2007, Indias preeminent English language paper, the Times of India , initiated the patriotic India

In 1991, the government of India opened the economy to foreign investment, ending the Five-Year Plan based semi-socialist approach to economic policy that had existed since independence and ushering in an open, neo-liberal market economy. Not only did this change increase consumerism and the presence of global goods in the market, but simultaneously created a self-confident middle-class economically benefitting from these changes, which had global ambitions and was eager to see India as a key player in the world. As Leela Fernandes (2000) has argued, this assertive self-confidence differs from the post-independence Nehruvian years, which focussed on rational developmentalism and emphasized the need to be modest in ones patriotism. These changes occurred in a political context where the forces of Hindutva or Hindu nationalism were ascendant and circulating a discourse of patriotic fervour infused with a belief in the cultural dominance of Hinduism and Hindus in India. Indeed, it was the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP government which exploded the nuclear devices in 1998. These economic and political changes worked in tandem to create a social landscape wherein patriotism was celebrated.