On a quest for the real ‘Pan-Indian’ cinema

An empty celebration of the current southern blockbusters could limit exploration of radical themes

The recent South Indian films, Pushpa, RRR, and KGF 2 are rewriting Indian film history. A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable that a Telugu and Kannada film, dubbed in Hindi, would become the highest all-time grossers in Hindi. This has led to an animated discussion about not only the supposed decline of Bollywood but also the emergence of a new “pan-Indian” cinema.

The rise of the southern film industries, hitherto marginalised as “regional” cinema, and the challenge to the domination of Hindi cinema is indeed a welcome development. But its celebration as pan-Indian cinema, breaking language and culture barriers, is premature without discussing what these films represent. These three recent films (two of which have crossed the stratospheric collection record of ₹1,000 crore), and Baahubali before, indicate that they do not challenge dominant ideas of a homogenous nationalism, caste hierarchies, toxic masculinity, or gratuitous violence. Neither do they offer any cultural authenticity.

Such “massified” commercial films (albeit in new linguistic registers and with vastly superior technical quotient and cinematic experience) targeting the national market and the “lowest common denominator”, may in fact be counterproductive to the idea of linguistic/cultural plurality and the exploration of novel and progressive themes. Because the barriers to better, and world-class cinema is not merely the domination of Hindi films.

Recently, Telugu superstar Chiranjeevi spoke about the insult he felt in the 1980s at a national award function where Indian cinema was portrayed as Hindi cinema, and how the recent South films have become a vehicle to correct that notion. The same was also reflected in Kannada star Sudeep’s comments on the claim of Hindi as the national language.

Yet, this “regional” claim for an equal place in Indian cinema does not refer to the exclusions, and cultural homogenisation performed by the mega-budget, pan-Indian film emerging from the South.

Thus, RRR, for example, is steeped in a religious-inflected nationalism with a cartoonish and melodramatic take on colonialism: the evil British versus the good Indians. It is perfectly in sync with the present climate of aggressive nationalism even though it seeks to speak from a linguistic marginality. In this nationalism, while Subhas Bose, Sardar Patel, Bhagat Singh, Shivaji, and others from the South are unsurprisingly present, Gandhi, Ambedkar and Nehru are missing.

More seriously problematic is the appropriation of the trope of Adivasi liberation to the nationalist cause, and thus making it seem that the oppressors of Adivasis were merely the British. This is a move, as I have argued before, seen in movies like Lagaan. One of the two heroes Bheem, who is purportedly based on the legendary — but ignored — Gond leader Komaram Bheem, is shown in the film as asking the other protagonist Ram, a savarna Hindu, to educate him. This, writer Akash Poyam (a Gond himself) points out, casts Bheem as an innocent “noble savage” while in reality it was Komaram Bheem who coined the slogan, “ Jal, Jangal, Jameen” which is shown as being inscribed by Ram in the film.