Book on Indian cinema’s sustained engagement with religion

(Financial Express
March 04, 2007)

God at 24 frames a second
A fine study of Indian cinema’s sustained engagement with religion

SAIBAL CHATTERJEE

Are most popular Indian feature films mere variations on themes from the Ramayana and Mahabharat? Aided by extensive research and flashes of insight, British scholar Rachel Dwyer delves deep into the heart of that question. So fascinating is Indian cinema’s constant engagement with things religious that it is a tad surprising that nobody has examined it before. Religiosity, mythology and symbols drawn from the epics and the lives of the saint-poets permeate virtually all of Indian cinema — a clear reflection of the manic hold religion has on lives here.

In her Introduction, Dwyer writes: “Scholars of Indian cinema have examined the form of film, its history, its social context and its relation to politics, in particular its relation with nationalism, but rarely discussed the spiritual realm…” Indeed, Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema fills a void. Besides analysing genres like the Hindu mythologicals, devotional films and Muslim socials, Dwyer also explores the nature of mythic allusions strewn across supposedly secular social dramas.

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Dwyer points out that scholars have ignored religious films, despite their popularity, for a simple reason: as in the West, where such films are seen as B-grade products, in India, where commercial Hindi cinema itself is often looked down upon, religious films are a much-maligned genre. Yet, she asserts, religious beliefs and rituals are an integral part, even the basis, of Indian cinema.

Dwyer touches upon the socio-political ramifications of the extreme religiosity of Hindi cinema, but, for the most part, she doesn’t quite go far enough. She refers to television’s Ramayana and Mahabharat, but she discounts the theory that the two serials might have had a deep political impact on middle class audiences. She does record that “the transformation of the viewing space into a sacred space was widely noted, as religious ceremonies were performed around the television sets as if the deities themselves were present on the screen.” These serials created the climate leading to the rise of Hindu fundamentalism. Ramayana generated the symbols that the Bharatiya Janata Party latched on to further its aim of dividing the nation along religious lines.

Describing the contention that Ramayana amounted to Hindutva propaganda as an exaggeration, Dwyer writes: “The more balanced view is that the Hindutva forces, already rising on the tide of liberalisation and who had made a canny assessment of the media and its power, drew on the symbols… circulated in this series for their campaign.”

The purview of Filming the Gods is rather limited. Dwyer admits as much: “Although the book is called ‘Indian cinema’, it will soon be clear to readers that I am talking mostly about ‘Hindi cinema’.” There is a fleeting reference to anti-religious Tamil films like Parasakthi, where deities are seen as mere pieces of stone, the book does not mention Satyajit Ray’s Devi, arguably the greatest ever cinematic exploration of the disruptive power of religion; or Utpalendu Chakraborty’s Hindi film, Debshishu, about a three-headed boy propped up as an incarnation of the divine; or Aparna Sen’s bilingual Sati, in which a deaf-mute woman is married off to a tree. Popular cinema often promotes obscurantism and blind faith. It also subliminally endorses patriarchy and gender stereotyping. These issues are beyond the ken of the book, undermining the value of an otherwise useful effort.