Difficulty as a fine art


The other day my friend Joe mentioned to me a curious experience with his academic peers. Having recently submitted an MPhil thesis on cricket at the English and Foreign Languages [EFL] University, Hyderabad, he showed a paper to his friends hoping for critical comments. The most outstandingly critical comment he got was this – ‘your writing is too simple. It requires no effort to understand’. This was followed by according to Joe, the disgustingly sage advice – ‘if you continue to write this way, you may damage your academic career. If people can understand you without any strain, they will not value your work.’
These comments reflect on the quality of the mind of the critic in more than one sense. I felt moved by a sense of utter innocence reflected in the plain admission here that abstruseness may be the most distinguishing trait of good academic [or theoretical] writing. I remembered my own graduation days when we struggled to inject as much academic argot as possible into our writings in order to be able to look down at the laity. This was done with unseemly hurry and exuberance and often made us sound like the new rich kid on the block. The problem was partly that of language – we were mastering high order concepts from a foreign language. English was not exactly our language of intimacy and yet we hoped to be on first name terms with its most refined words and concepts – a bit like paradropping over the Everest summit by way of preparing for a trek in the Himalayan foothills. But matters seemed to go deeper – there was a sense of lack of continuity between our inherited concepts and what was taught in the class. Of course, such intellectual breaches proved to be more of a challenge than a handicap over the years for the more fortunate students like me. Others continued to run franchises of foreign families of concepts.
In our promiscuous post-modernist times, a difficult writing often carries a heavy load of playfulness along with awe. It is no longer the unmixed awe associated with a stern Hegelian or a spare Wittgensteinian text with all the untranslated or untranslatable Germanisms etc. There is, these days, more commonly a sense of play to be seen in the author’s slippery text. ‘You can try but you cannot catch me in the midst of all the gelatinously mazy mass’ – it seems to say. The reader on her part continues the chase to get some feel of the shapes around her. In this the reader is often guided by the dim submarine glow of the author’s intent, enjoying and cherishing brief flashes of comprehension and mastery. And thus the hermeneutic game of reading and re-reading goes on in the absence of an arbitrator [except for the little matter of the grades]. But there is an anomaly here – even if a text is rarely allowed to take a permanent or stable position at the Olympian heights, an individual reader has full rights to place it on his own personal pedestal. It is a bit like having several gods to choose from but with an option to decide how devout you wish to be towards your particular god. And indeed, a devotee may choose to exhibit heights of monotheistic passion rare even in days of high monotheism.
In brief, even though we rarely unite in our reverence for the master-text, many of us continue to worship our chosen fragments with great fervour. Along with this fervour goes a sense of ‘sacral’ awe, and along with the sense of sacral awe goes a sense of difficulty and opaqueness. I remember how devoutly some of my friends uttered names like Foucault or Derrida while elucidating their quoted passages. Of course, it was very frustrating when the listener refused to be swayed, exposing his banality without shame! But at the same time, the aura associated with textual ‘difficulty’ seemed heavily endangered too.
This is no place for me to attempt a typology of either difficulties or ambiguities. But what the campus critics may have failed to include in their advice is the very practical matter of the rewards that come with the mastering of difficulty. I will never forget how angry and clueless I felt after my first viewing of Tarkovesky’s ‘Solaris’ – equally angry with myself and the filmmaker, not to mention Lem. When I saw the film a second time however, things fell into place through a split second revelation within ten minutes of the opening, and the rest was sheer pleasure.
The point then may be – did one get rewarded for all the wrestling with an author’s textual difficulties, or one has had to come back empty-handed? May be the campus critics forgot that there is nothing like ‘pure’ difficulty and that it means different things at different times to different people. It is indeed possible to lend a certain conceptual density or thickness to one’s writing – probably the closest thing to pure difficulty. But is that a mostly stylistic or a substantive issue? In my experience, despite a Sokal, it’s quite rare to make a living out of difficulty alone. You need to garnish it with substance. And yet the Sokal scandal continues to haunt us!
These days I find myself brooding on the many contexts and kinds of difficulties without getting anywhere. But every time I get angry with an author for being opaque and walk away, I wonder if I am a bit like the fox of the grapes story. While the fox stopped at the modest slander ‘the grapes are sour’, after several attempts I do begin to ask ‘do the grapes really exist’? And also the obvious question - am I a rare breed of foxes that has developed unnatural fondness for grapes of all things?
In sum, we as textual commentators of all hues seem to be in the business of creating difficulties as much as that of simplification. Like a see saw, when truths seem intolerably obvious we question them, and when mysteries seem unacceptably impenetrable, we try to simplify them.
Any opaqueness in this piece, incidentally, is unintended or let us say, I have not worked on it enough, according to Joe’s friends.

An appeal to a terrorist with conscience

The recent explosions in Bangalore, Surat and Ahmedabad have sent renewed shivers among the common citizens all over India, where we have a rich variety of ‘terrorists’. As usual, there has been a spate of articles and statements demanding stricter laws and better intelligence. And yet no one is willing to admit that if an individual/group seriously decides to kill people and is willing to pay the price, there is nothing much you or me or the state can do about it except after the event. All you can do is keep an eye on how kids are growing up in your neighbourhood over time. Call it community policing if you want. But this is not a counsel of despair!
Ironically, as the terrorists discover greater individual liberty and empowerment on behalf of the common citizen, it is often the common citizen that ends up becoming the target of these attacks and not the state – a zero sum game. Hitting out at the state via the common citizen is a very unethical but also a very circuitous idea. I reckon that in any terrorist group, half the members would be people with qualms, and the rest must be men and women who were anyway on their way to turning into suicides, serial killers, or child and wife beaters. It’s just that they find an excuse in a cause, and settle down to a humdrum career in violence. Many such people in India become cops and political leaders and succeed in sublimating their ferality to various extents.
The bombs e. g. in Surat were spread all over the place like garbage as if the bombers suffered a serious bout of moral reluctance on their way to work. I think it’s high time terrorists of all hues rethought their purpose – is the idea to hurt the state directly, or to hurt common people who will then turn and accuse the state of failing as protectors? If they are really earnest in their cause, why don’t they target government buildings emptied of people, or construction hubs and cinema halls after midnight? I think such acts would serve the cause better, although I remain strongly prejudiced in the favour of satyagraha. Significantly, even the meaning of 9/11 minus the 3,000 deaths changes radically!
The question is – does a terrorist want to kill people or win support among them? This appeal is clearly not directed at those egos that have a macho-er than thou problems with the super-macho state, or those caught in a deadlock who will anyway end up in a lover’s embrace with the big bro. But in case our terrorists want to win some support and sympathy among the citizenry, it may be a good idea to create spectacles where the citizen remains confined to the status of an onlooker/audience staring fascinatedly at their ideological fireworks, and not a target/victim. Lastly, I would recommend that before blowing up a huge building, a terrorist group should run up and down firing blanks at people to force them to leave. This much terror is still robust and anyway actually amounts to tender care.

Ratnakar Tripathy

reflections on item numbers in Hindi films

Since my friend Alice Samson from EFL University, Hyderabad, India suggests that i should write brief posts on blogs, and i respect her views, i will herewith comply.

for some time i have been wondering about the role played by the item in Hindi films. so here are some observations presented unsystematically before i put them down in a better structured piece.

first of all, the item seems a regressive developement in the Hindi film form in a non-pejorative sense. the item is perhaps a throwback to folk theatre, where the main performance would be interrupted by side shows that could be both desultory or highly attractive. to demystify this formal jugglery, these sideshows allowed the artists to change their costume and makeup, e g from that of a pretty princess to an unpretty hirsute demon, whic is not something you can do in haste. at any rate, they carried more enertainment content than the ad breaks on the TV channels these days. and the audience stuck on to their seats without seductive supplications from the long-legged VJ, unless nature called.

today's items may remind us of the vamps of the yesteryears, but this is false memory. item girls are rarely full-blooded 'characters' like our olden vamps, whether Nadira, Helen or Bindu. they seem to do their bit and move away from the stage...

...the point is, what is the 'bit' done by them for which an artist gets payed an entire temillion rupees these days? here is my response.

i have felt for some time that Hindi movies have traditionally been very uncomfortable with intimate but prosaic, everyday love scenes. they tend to confine sexual intimacy to song sequences picturized among flowers, bees, mountains, mist and rivers. the idea is to treat the universe as a dance floor and as Chidananda Dasgupta claims in 'The naked Mask' , to attain orgasm through a duet!

the item seems another attempt to fill up sexual spaces with crowds, riotous crowds such as in 'Beedi Jalaile' in 'Omkara', but also genteel corporate crowds as in Mallika Sherawat's dance in 'Corporate.'

i will now present a strong proposition - Hindi cinema [thus far] believes that if you have no right of entry into a love scene, it turns pornographic, and you are just a dirty voyeur. otherwise you are a normal healthy participant in an orgy of exposure and stripping, and your fawning and pawing are easily forgiven.

it will take me a while to recover from this ontological topsy-turvy, but i will be back with a longer piece even if i end up defying Alice's advice.

Jahaji Music

by Ratnakar Tripathy
I recently saw Jahaji Music, an excellent documentary film on the Caribbean by Bombay-based filmmaker Surabhi Sharma. The word Jahaji means fellow-travelers on ships that carried indentured labor to the Indies from India to work on sugar cane plantations owned by the British. This nearly two hour film takes you very close to the fervent musicality which the Caribbean is known for in both senses – the stereotypical and the profound. I walked into the theatre with incongruously cheery associations in my head. At some point in college, I had admired Bob Marley, which is a very sober and adult way of admitting a passing but intense phase of madness. Marley was for a long time stuck like an audio loop in my mind and well, in my body, for the way it made you want to dance in innocent and celebratory rather than insane or drugged ecstasy. I had always puzzled about the cultural associations that went with Marley without looking too deeply into them – the cannabis, the Rastafarian cult and its unlikely association with the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, and the even more unlikely and bizarre linkages with Judaism and queen Sheeba of all people. Even now this delightful broth of legends seems a good example of history written under the influence. Somewhat later I discovered Tosh, the original one, and heard his ‘Legalize it’ with a lot more detachment. I am reminded of it since I recently saw the slogan on the t-shirt of a Sherpa coolie in Gangtok with the tri-pinnate cannabis leaves.
Surabhi’s main focus in the film was the diasporic angle – the rather incredible journey and transformation of music between India and the Indies. It’s as if every indentured labour carried his own India all the way to the distant lands and reverse engineered it for his own purposes, before reinstalling it on a pedestal of faith. Surabhi’s film makes you wonder what crazy somersaults our memories can perform and how the mind is capable of incredibly intricate set design, changing completely alien spaces into home with some help from music, rituals and costumes.
Anyway, what I found or rather rediscovered through Surabhi’s film was how strongly and centrally music may matter to one’s identity. To those accustomed to the centrality of linguistic, caste or religious identity, there is something incredible about the central idea of film. Also, if I may point out, the Trinidadian Indians and Africans seem to posit their musical identity primarily for themselves, and the viewers seem to be incidental passersby. Throughout the film it seemed fairly clear that the Chutney or Rege defined identity primarily among the practitioners themselves rather than the outsider. There was an air of innocence about their music and dance in that its primary purpose seemed to be self-absorption among the performers rather than display. The raw sexuality that the film brings out is just that – pristine and raw sexuality with no patina of the pornographic, and the coy dissembling that often goes with it.
I also didn’t notice any anxiety among the performers over the image that the outsider may form of them. There was no purveying of the ‘look at our culture’ line at all. This is of course understandably a somewhat relative point as any performance is clearly aimed at display rather than purely private narcissistic viewing. The conclusion here may be that while choosing to posit our identity we also choose the dimensions so to say through which our identity is affirmed, and it is interesting to see that unlike some societies who choose religion, language or race, certain other societies choose music and dance. Why music seems as puzzling to me as the question why language or religion. I am sure dimensions such as religion, language and race do matter to the Caribbean but I get the impression that music and dance perhaps have a more decisive sway. Despite how things look from a few thousand miles, I am aware that what I say may not be true of the entire Caribbean society at all, but a smaller urban segment trying to rise above its misery with the help of music.
I am aware that smaller communities in Bihar, India have certain song forms such as chaita or biraha running in their veins. But I am not sure they are as music-dance mad as the Trinidadian. There is also the instance of the rather unique movie madness of the Telugus and the Tamils in India, which is as incomprehensible to those under its divine influence as the outsider, to those who live out this madness with great élan and poise, and those who see in it as an inscrutable puzzle. While rhythm seems to so central to the West Indian, I must admit, melodies matter to me a lot more. I have never forgotten a tale told by a friend who went to the US at a very young age. After being admitted in a campus residence, she quietly sat on her bed feeling crushed by a sense of utter loneliness. Suddenly she heard the strains of a Geeta Dutt song and followed the trails of the suspected hallucination, in the process making her first friend with a fellow Indian and perhaps laying the first mental foundations of a new home. Oliver Sacks, the neurologist would have us believe in his ‘Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007)’ that rhythms are neurologically more fundamental than melody but in melodically intense moments like these I am no longer sure. I somehow feel the Indian ear identifies more easily with the melody than the rhythms.
To conclude, I wonder if it’s possible to speak of ‘accents of identity’ wherein you have a wide range of features marked by traits like cuisine, smells, language, religion, melody, rhythm, terrain, physical appearance, costume where the needle of identity may find repose. Some pick on language and some others on music or cuisine. This would of course be a case of a harmless form of identity which seeks familiarity/commonality of some kind and in the process makes its preferences clear, whether for music or religion, to mention two examples. ‘Jahaji Music’ shows that the chutney singers often don’t speak Hindi and simply mug up the lyrics. There is thus no great passion for the language as such involved here. Superimposed on such preferences is of course the more politicized form of identity. A combination of the sensuous and the political [cerebral] can form a very tight and rather inescapable circle of identity. And then you have the questions of claimed identity and that which is placed like a mantle on you whether you like it or not!
Irrespective of all those unpleasant issues, the most beautiful part of the story here is one that involves an almost categorial definition of culture, rather rare in practice or theoretical discussions. We are informed that it is usually deadly dangerous to enter Trenchtown, Jamaica [where Bob Marley grew up] even during daytime. But once the scheduled musical event begins, the whole area turns into a glowing utopian haven of goodwill even in the dead of the night. I thought this contraposing of music and violence carries an implicit definition of culture - violence in, music out, music in, violence out. I have quite fallen for this variety of clarity after watching ‘Jahaji Music’. Remember, the Taliban in Afghanistan did not only whip its women for showing their faces, it also dynamited the ancient figures of Buddha in the Bamiyan caves.
I am aware that art and violence have no simple relationship, but it’s good to see them both declared antonyms even for a night of unalloyed pleasure.

Sulking religiously… or how to Punish Godly misdemeanors

Rarely does a faith allow its adherents to freely indulge in doubt or openly voice their skepticism. On rare occasions the church may allow the faithful to withdraw from society and battle their demons in the solitude of the monastic crypt. But the Bhakti tradition in Hinduism allows a Hindu to go on a private or even publicly articulated sulk against a God. This sulk could be a passing whim against a deity who did not, for example, help a lazy student pass an exam. But it could take the shape of a major episode bordering on sacrilege. According to a report in The Indian express [ May 5, 2006, Pune edition, Page 5] the inhabitants of Gethasalu in Tamilnadu decided to shut down the temple of god Jadiasamy when the well-known bandit Veerappan carried out a massacre in their village on October 8 1993. When Veerappan was killed on October 18 in 2004, the temple was reopened and god Jadiasamy found himself restored to his former status. This was indeed a big sulk, lasting more than a decade. We do not know if the village deity Jadiasamy has been large-hearted enough to forgive the villagers, but the villagers have definitely condoned their god as if nothing had ever happened.

There is of course no way to find out if this misdemeanor still rankles in the heart of the god Jadiasamy and whether everyone has started afresh on a clean slate with no vestigial karma. To sustain blind faith in the shapeless and formless almighty is a tough task emotionally. There is a constant fear of internal wavering and then there is the challenge of convincing others fellow believers of being rock steady in one’s belief. The only consolation is the din of those innumerable rituals and ceremonial prayers that suppress the doubts murmuring in the heads and the hearts of the believer. And thus the long gaps in faith go undetected, and thankfully unpunished.
Whether religious or non-religious, sulking is a very intimate act. First of all one only sulks in order to cause either hurt or irritation in the victim. For example, you don’t sulk against a green grocer who has shortchanged you. Instead you either argue or just blow up. Sulking is often directed towards someone superior or intimate such as parents. I heard the unforgettable example of a private secretary to a top manager, going into a sulk when he did not notice a smart haircut. Sulking scenes are a constant feature in Hindi films. You see religious sulk when a character rings a dangling bell outside the temple and walks straight to the god, delivering a long monologue in a plaintively angry mood. The marble face of the good may seem impassive to you, but the hero or his mother as the case may be, make sure to give him their piece of mind. These sulkers perhaps leave only when they are able to vividly imagine a chastened look on the face of the idol. Filmy heroines in Bollywood tighten their nooses on the hero through their sulking when they say – ‘I am not talking to you’. Often the hero has to sing a song or two in all kinds of deserts and mountains before the heroin rewards him with a smile.Arguably, the most intense emotion in a large Indian household is neither hate nor love but the sulking. It seems to radiate in invisible waves, traveling through neuronal circuitries, spilling out of brains till the entire house fills up with a strange choking haze. Husbands, mother in laws, brother in laws refuse to meet each other’s eyes. When asked if something’s the matter they tend to mumble monosyllables alleging that ‘nothing’s the mater except your imagination is working over time.’ In brief, denial of sulking is its greatest strength.
But sulking can be a double-edged weapon. In a religious context it comes very close to sacrilege as in the case of the victims of Veerappan. By way of fathoming the sentiments of those villagers, did they intend to declare their god impotent or did they doubt the very bona fides of the deity? Did the villagers feel cheated by a god who did not come to their aid when in need, or was the god blamed for sitting impassively in his abode when his men were being butchered?

This is an emotional quicksand that is difficult to fathom. We don’t quite know if it’s this way or that. Most likely it’s just a messy combination of all these sentiments.It would then seem that sulking can reveal depths of faith rarely seen in the fickle minds of human beings. A devotee goes into a sulk only when he can feel god in his gut, in all his/her realness. But it also reveals the sacrilegious temptations of a believer whose expectations must be met by a god to prove that he continues to care for his followers. Interestingly, when the residents of Gethasalu stopped worshipping their deity, they did not altogether banish him or shut his shop, nor did they make a doctrinaire declaration that his existence is herewith discontinued through a theological dictat. They just decided to teach him a hard lesson when he seemed to deserve it, the same way they decided to embrace him all over again after a decade when Veerappan was eliminated by the STF.

It is very tempting to compare this to the role played by the fans in Telugu and Tamil cinema in India. While the outsider may want to imagine that the fanatical fandom ensures a sort of voluntary slavery, S V Srinivas in his study of Chiranjeevi’s fans [fan clubs and individuals] found that the star himself faced constant pressures from his fans. In fact Chiranjeevi seems to carry a gnawing anxiety over every move and statement he makes in public life. Indeed ‘ye raste hain pyar ke, chalna samhal samhal ke’[‘make sure to tread warily on the pathways of love’]. The halo that you often see around the south Indian stars, may thus be largely composed of whirling photons of neurotic insecurities and anxieties, rather than unmixed deityhood. It would seem that god Jadiasamy after his last experience is now condemned to a life of perpetual torment, experiencing alternate waves of omnipotence and impotence with the sort of rollercoaster frenzy that we mortals remain ever unlikely to experience. Unless, of course, we decide to defect from the margins of madness to its vertiginous center.
ratnakar tripathy

A question of taste :The disgust of the arrogant

In my two earlier posts, I tried to approach society through cinema. I now wish to give this leg of the journey a sense of fulfillment however illusory by approaching cinema through society.
In the past couple of weeks a number of channels [I watched Sahara and Aaj Tak] provided elaborate and vivid footage of celebration of Chaita by the two brothers in law of Laloo Yadav in Patna. The footage showed a number of hired women performers dance with vigorous abandonment while a large crowd of supporters and friends riotously cheered them. In fact, it was difficult to believe this was real life – it seemed like a seedy version of a B grade Bollywood film. There were other appendages that disturbed the press – menacing characters strewn all over playfully fired their guns in the air. Dotting the crowds were the inevitable silk-clad and gold-chained roughnecks whose fingers twitched over their pistol triggers in the close ups. The hosts in both cases were the brothers in law of Laloo Yadav – Sadhu and Subhash – the two humourless criminal stalwarts, unleashed by the Laloo-Rabri regime, who nevertheless lack Lalu’s panache and sense of timing.
In all the reports including the Times of India [13 April, 2007, Patna edition] I found that the descriptions and the comments invariably carried a strong sense of disapproval, derision, disgust, and even downright condemnation. At least in one case the newscaster kept grinning coyly and implyingly, probably wondering over the unspeakable barbarity of it all. At least Subhash Yadav himself seemed somewhat self-consciousness when he asked a journalist – ‘vulgar, what?’, making a feeble attempt to distance himself from the general merriment. Imagine Subhash in a Fabindia suit and a Tilonia leather bag defending Bihari folk culture in the environs of Mandi House or Prithvi Theatre.
Having made the context clear let me discuss reasons for my own disquiet. I found that our middle class educated journalist were trying hard to paper over their own snooty incoherence and confusion – in the sense they didn’t seem clear if they were disgusted by the bad ‘taste’ reflected in the raw display of sexuality or the moral corruption of a decadent durbar. In brief, I wondered if the disapproval was esthetic, moral, or both. I wondered too if the journalists left this distinction deliberately ambiguous. I also wondered if the same commentators would like to look within and give us a clearer verdict on the source of their disgust. I feel a journalist should be sufficiently self-conscious to answer my query with some clarity or admit the lack of it.
Having posed the above question, I would now like to present a series of interpretations discrete or overlapping, for the above orgies.a. The Yadavs as the rulers are making a symbolic attempt to gain ascendancy not simply through modern democratic politics, but also through feudal gestures monopolized earlier by the upper castes.b. The two leaders are trying to appeal to their essentially rustic and pastoral origins in defiance of Patna’s urbanism.c. The two orgies were meant to cure the depression of the forlorn party cadre reduced to tinselly fantasies after their spell in power.d. The Yadavs as the rebels are making feudal gestures associated with bandits – dancing girls, guns, disruption of ‘peace’ in a posh urban neighbourhood – all equally telling. Bandits from Bollywood force their women to dance and sing a la Hema malini in Sholay. [remember the great scamster Telgi dispensing his millions in the Topaz dance bar in Mumbai?]e. A political caucus in decline is making a desperate attempt to commune and connect together .These are by no means the only interpretations possible. It is quite likely that they are all valid to different extents.
But to go back to my question – is the commentator in his disgust referring to esthetic taste or moral badness? Is the commentator uncomfortable with the naked display of gun power and its illegality or immorality, or an equally naked and ribald display of rented female sexuality?In case the cool-headed journalist is bothered by the technical-forensic issue of ‘unlawful carrying of fire arms under political patronage’ I can understand the objection. However, I fail to comprehend the accompanying angst. Any number of Hindi and Bhojpuri films show the same items albeit with greater production value. Do our commentators find occasion to show a similar disgust for them? I don’t remember. I don’t think so.
But if the orgies on the Yadav premises are fantasies very difficult to forgive and ignore, why? Why does the sweet syrup of Hindi films suddenly turns vinegary?My explanation for this for the time being is as follows:While we have come to accept the fantasies plied by our cinemas, we expect that they will remain confined to the celluloid screen. It is very disturbing for us when a reckless hood comes hurtling to implement all such fantasies as part of wide awake daily life. We find the idea of commandeered and incarnated fantasies disturbing. We feel esthetically disturbed by it. But we only have a moral language to express the disturbance. [Also, often when we see an actual hero and heroine sitting in the park and crooning a song, we begin to want to banish them. remember Operation Majnu from Meerut last year?]
I don’t pretend to be aware of the rules of translation between the real and the fantastic. My intention here was twofold – first, to bring to the surface a categorial problem [moral and esthetic] that we need to be aware of and second, to be better aware of how we relate specific fantasies to their daylight versions.

[earlier published in sacredmediacow]

The explosion of Bhojpuri Cinema

BHOJPURI CINEMA:
REGIONAL RESONANCES IN HINDI HEARTLAND

By Ratnakar Tripathy


The Context: Dead Ends and Outlets

The sudden and phenomenal growth of Bhojpuri cinema in India since 2001 provides a number of opportunities for a close look at the cultural dynamics in the most underdeveloped parts of India[1]. With eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar at its core, the dynamics in question directly involves the large Hindi speaking region of the country. It seems possible to use the cinematic frames as windows on caste relations, democratization process, rise of urbanism and language. At a broader level, the phenomenon also allows us to develop and fine tune our ideas on the correlations between changes at the local-regional- national and even global levels. The close relation between political aspirations and cinematic fantasies which seems to vary from region to region in India is another valuable source of cultural insights. While all these tasks cannot be performed within the present article, an attempt will be made to travel along some of the chosen cinematic lanes and to map out the several pathways such studies could meaningfully follow. This may even help us evolve a hermeneutic stance and strategy for making sense of similar cultural phenomena elsewhere. It is helpful to remind ourselves that Bhojpuri cinema is yet too young, and one needs to be economical with conclusions and comparisons, however tempting they may seem.
The phrase ‘cultural dynamics’ may seem too tame or trivial without a discussion on the dramatically charged metaphors of change used to characterize Bihar and parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh associated with Bhojpuri cinema. The metaphors range from barbarization, decline, stagnation, decay, breakdown [of the institutions], backwardness, ferment, and turmoil to recount some of them. These make an interesting mix of a tremendous sense of happening with nothing to show for it. Or running furiously to stay in the same place – so much so one may summarize the situation as some kind of inconsequential but excited state of eventlessness! These metaphors may seem confusingly sententious apart from being contradictory, unless we look at some of the contrasting states of India such as Mahrashtra or Karnataka where the urban centers symbolize social and economic dynamism for the entire country. Urban centers such as Bangalore and Hyderabad have in recent years defined the orientation of the Indian society and economy in its forward thrust, with states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh symbolizing stagnation or even regression. While it remains true that perception of change per se deserves attention, these metaphors are not arbitrary and are often backed by statistics. To take just one example, given the continuing decay and backwardness of Bihar if one recalls that in the late 1990s, not more than half a dozen films were made in Bhojpuri as against 76 of them in 2006, the uninspiring phrase ‘cultural dynamics’ acquires a sense of urgency. Looking at the figures alone one begins to feel that there is an interesting intellectual challenge looming over the figures and that the monopoly for ‘dynamism’ may not belong solely to states such as Maharashtra and Karnataka. A scholar of Bihar can decide almost as a matter of ‘esthetic’ taste if he is more fascinated by dead ends or the supposed changes that never seem to happen, or those changes that forcibly impinge on the senses directly and through media. The results at the end of the two pathways however are quite likely to converge time and again!
What makes the rapid spurt of Bhojpuri cinema interesting, indeed fascinating is that the concerned region is marked by a number of social and economic dead ends. It would not seem surprising if Bhojpuri cinema continued to decline, offering no surprises to a student of development and change. The grand judgmental metaphor of decline in Bihar is thus often accompanied by a more prosaic and spatial one, namely ‘dead-end’ or ‘impasse’[2]. It is in fact possible to enumerate the best-known among the dead ends – declining agricultural productivity despite Bihar’s dependence on agriculture, de-industrialization over a number of decades, and a serious rupture of law and order[3]. Law and order have been at such low ebb that the press routinely talks of a Kidnapping ‘industry’ in Bihar indicating its sheer size and role in the economy as well as public discourse[4]. Also, while the middle and the lower rungs in the rural societies have experienced some upward mobility in the past three decades since the 1970s, this has often led to internecine conflicts characterizing everyday life in the region – a good enough reason for both the upper and the lower sections to consider leaving the scene of rather ‘unfruitful’ action[5].
Pitted against these stark figures and images is the clichéd but seemingly unrelated scene of crowds thronging the cinema halls! Thronging to see not Bombay films however, but Bhojpuri films! There will always be a place for a social analyst who is never startled by anything at all, since in hindsight everything seems ‘inevitable’ or at least highly likely. The fact however is that this cinematic explosion requires continued analysis by the more readily puzzled social theorist for both reasons – its inherent significance, and also its value as a momentous cultural index for a society at a standstill. Sometimes it doesn’t help to take shelter in the ontological platitude that everything is in continuous flux, more so when one is unable to characterize the flux at all. To put it plainly, the question is what are the factors underlying the dramatic growth of Bhojpuri cinema?
Interestingly, while the isolated audience may produce a very coherent reason for joining the ticket queue for a Bhojpuri rather than a Hindi film, even he often has no clue why suddenly seventy six Bhojpuri films arrive to occupy the main street of Indian cinema[6]. He in fact expresses surprise at the milling crowds around him and can’t figure out the richness of the ‘phenomenon’ in the midst of a cultural wasteland. Often all he can tell is he feels an intimate tug in the heart looking up at the Bhojpuri hoardings. At any rate, he seems to have no idea why 76 Bhojpuri films were not made seven years ago!


Moving out of Dead Ends: Migration and Social Mobility

Just like the metaphors of change and stagnation, perceptions of dead end are neither as rigid nor claustrophobic as they may seem. It is an existential platitude that very often, when situations do not provide openings, people tend to move out of them. In this case, the extent of migration from Bihar would seem to be the major relieving factor[7]. Embracing the top and the bottom layers of the society, it has reached gigantic proportions comparable to the Indian Partition of 1947. The migrant population from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh shows an interesting differentiation within – ranging from middle class professionals to skilled but mostly unskilled labor – all of which stream down the Indian peninsula, as far as Hyderabad and Bangalore! Another differentiation is of great cultural significance – a great part of the small town and rural populations migrates temporarily or makes sure to keep their economic links and communication with the ancestral land. Migrations by their very nature are fraught with intense emotions wherever you look – at the point of origin where people seem to make their departures for a variety of unpleasant or pleasant reasons, and at the points of arrival where they face adaptive challenges.
As against the broader picture of migrations in plural, one would expect that every individual tale of migration carries its own emotional flavour unique to the person, the predicament and the locale. This once we are not dealing with the uniform tale of a mass exodus along the highways in response to drought, war or epidemic! Thus one wonders if it is possible to capture something of the emotional ‘tone’ characterizing the specific region, social predicament or wave of movement at a broader scale. Looking at things from a grand global perspective, the issue of emotional tone and flavour may seem like an irrelevant detail. But for someone standing in the thick of the cultural phenomenon, they stand for the reality itself with all its minute but significant nuances. The emotional tones in question may range between migration as a happy voluntary act and a virtual ejection from an existential dead end. At the other end it may range between a sweet welcome in the distant work place to a virtual entrapment, ghettoized alienation or even murder by the incensed hosts in a city[8]. The alchemy of love and hate, and the subtler emotions directed at the place of origin and the destination together form a complex web characterizing the deep ambivalences of a mobile population. The simple universal sadness of the sepia image of a family abandoning its abode is in brief no longer adequate in a world full of hectic departures and arrivals. It is very relevant to know who left, why he left, how he felt about having to leave, whether he continues to come back to his soil, how he relates to it after a number of decades, and how he passes on his stories to his successors. We need to remind ourselves that the simple word ‘home’ has lost its simplicity and innocence, and even a poor illiterate peasant from Bihar is now doomed to redefine it unendingly all his life. Unlike an oustee from a large dam site, he cannot even redefine it once for all as permanent dislocation. This in effect means a series of significant modifications in the social and familial lexicon!
The emotional tones and flavours are not exactly issues that can be relegated to literature or drama with an easy conscience. They are closely related to concrete sociological realities. What intensifies the characteristic emotional pitch of recent Bhojpuri migration is that while the relatively well-off sections are abandoning the region rather decisively, it is the less affluent, rural and quasi-literate segments that have kept their placental links intact. Interestingly, it is also these recent waves that have redefined the cultural and emotional tone of the broader historical process of the Bhojpuri Diaspora.
Let us not be oblivious to the paradox that those segments who left the soil out of despair – either due to pressing economic need or because of their miserable social predicament [read as - their place in the sclerotic caste hierarchy] have turned out to be the most loyal audience of the Bhojpuri film industry. The upper castes migrating to the bigger cities have found greater joy in mingling with the national elite as indistinguishably as possible. The nostalgia felt by the upper class and higher castes is likely to be accompanied by sighs of relief at escaping the daily humiliation at the hands of the middle and lower castes, who in turn may want to heighten their joy of self-assertion by constantly rubbing salt over the wounds of the upper crust. It is important to remember that the humiliation here is not just about coming down in the world but losing ritual status and the supposedly indestructible halo of the bloodline. Clearly, the most liberal among the upper caste migrants tend to have a highly uneasy relation with their roots, even when they continue to marry within their own communities outside Bihar. If one looks at the society as a whole, it becomes possible to see the often contradictory sentiments of different caste groupings. Through the numerous elections and change of state governments in the region, being ‘in power’ and ‘out of power’ can be a very real experience for a group or even an individual, whether situated in a remote Bihar village or working on a construction site in the midst of Mumbai.
The discrepant behaviour of the social segments and classes is a very good indicator of a cultural stampede in the society as a whole, where you witness a wide variety of movement, motives and emotions in all their ambivalent splendour. The various currents and countercurrents of movement, struggle, hope and despair would also indicate the complexity of feelings and relationships. To reiterate, these emotions may reflect predicaments as diverse as relief at being rid of one’s roots to missing them horribly despite the economic compensations. This is clearly a matter difficult to quantify but its scale becomes rather obvious on the ground. Vertical mobility within the social hierarchy and physical mobility through migration make a potent mix that should be expected to release great literary and artistic energy among other things. The phrases ‘emotional tone’ and ‘emotional flavour’ have been used interchangeably in the article precisely to capture something of this nuanced reality.
While it remains debatable if the results of the literary energy are sufficiently evident in Hindi literature, popular music and cinema clearly appear as the vehicle for this tidal force. It also needs to be emphasized that contemporary Hindi literature seems to largely reflect the relatively milder fidgety emotions of the urbanized middle classes towards life in the village, although the ‘anchalic’ [regional] genre has shown a moderate spurt in recent years.
Besieged by the various social changes and problems, this region clearly faces the danger of seeing migration and development become near synonymous[9]. This is important to understand and underline. While we sit and debate over the definitions of entrepreneurship and leadership within a given social context from our academic cocoons, the social initiative on the ground would clearly seem to belong to the migrant ‘outsider’ rather than the struggler on the site. We have a situation where the only means to a better life may lie beyond the frontiers, and where remittances sent back to the village make a clinching difference [accounting for 25-30 percent of the family income, seen by economists as a critical figure] to the depressed lifestyles[10]. Survival, movement, exposure to the outside world, changes in the world within – these become the stuff of everyday life impacting culture with ferocious directness. Trains overloaded with migrant workers on their way to or fro, railway platforms packed with the novices and journeymen of migration present us with a two-ended phenomenon[11]. Bangalore train junction simply becomes a depository, a clusterized version and a mirror image of the many Sultanpurs in Uttar Pradesh and the Chhapras in Bihar.
Imagine a journey of above 40 hours in a train between Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh and Bangalore and it becomes easy to see the first cultural form that would take a free ride all the way down the peninsula – the folk songs. Let us not pretend that songs come very easily to the lips of the distressed traveller. But they do turn up since life is looking up and now seems more like a widening rather than a narrowing tunnel!
Reverse the trip and you can hear the latest tunes from Bombay cinema along with the traditional ones. Indeed the only telling precursor to Bhojpuri cinema in hindsight could have been the cassette and CD revolution in the region in the 1990s, which created a number of stars in the region. Music is perhaps what drew a clear cultural map for the entrepreneurs of Bhojpuri cinema. After all Manoj Tiwari, one of the two superstars of Bhojpuri cinema began his career as a folk singer in country fairs and local TV stations!
There is no need to pretend that placing oneself back in the 1990s, in the midst of the musical explosion mentioned above, one could have predicted a sympathetic resonance in cinema. But it serves well to remember that before the arrival of the talkies the gramophone companies had already harvested classical and popular music from different corners of the country[12]. In a sense, the very songs that had been heard in a disembodied form earlier made a comeback in the guise of the ‘talking and moving pictures’ in the 1930s. It may be interesting to note that the musical industry in Bombay today is still largely coterminous with the movie industry and singers have a tough time making a career entirely outside the movies. The Bhojpuri cassette and CD revolution was however an exception – it had no natal connection with cinema. Even now it has an independent market and follows a different business model. Parthasarathi [2005] vividly indicates how extensive surveys and recordings were carried out by enterprising executives of newly found gramophone companies from the US and Europe, who keenly competed for the market. Music as an unwitting harbinger of cinema seems an interesting idea to explore!
It is useful to make explicit the following assertions before moving deeper into the world of Bhojpuri films:
First, the expanding Bhojpuri music industry played the harbinger to its cinema and on a more generalized level, music perhaps lies at the very core of Indian cinema. Music arguably forms the selfhood of Indian cinema around which stories, characters and visuality accrete. Despite the musical prelude, however, no one had an idea that Bhojpuri films were about to walk on to the stage unannounced and occupy it without hesitation or unease.
Second, the mainstay of Bhojpuri cinema is provided by the following segments: migrants in bigger cities from the lowest rungs of the middle castes, and semi-literate and illiterates from middle and lower castes from the smaller towns in the native region. Add to it a sprinkling of the Dalits [untouchables] and the relatively uneducated and economically under-privileged upper caste inhabitants and your profile for the Bhojpuri film audience is near complete. If this seems confusing, eliminate the educated and the upper castes [whether resident or non-resident] from the Bihar society and you zero in over the same sociological profile.
Third, if one excludes the inaffluent upper caste members from the above profile you begin to closely approximate the base of voters supporting parties and regional governments that have lead to the empowerment of the middle castes and to some extent the Dalits in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in the past two decades. Thus there seems to be a strange resonance and correspondence between the demography of the Bhojpuri film audience and the new caste alliances in the region’s electoral politics. It would seem that vertical social mobility and migratory mobility are closely related, often blending together in the cinema halls and on the cinema screen.

Arrivals and Departures I: Dreaming on Screen

True, when Bhojpuri cinema irrupted on the Indian scene in the year 2001 there was no one waiting for it. But this sudden arrival needs to be qualified. Strictly by way of origin, Bhojpuri cinema goes back to 1962, when Kundan Kumar made Ganga Maiyya Tohe Piyari Chadhaibo [roughly translated as ‘Mother Ganges I will make an offering to you if…’], which has now firmly settled, in public memory for its songs[13]. A few success stories separated by prolonged gaps and hiccups followed: in the 1980s films such as Mai [Mother], Ganga Ki Beti [The Daughter of Ganges], Hamaar Bhowji [My Brother’s Wife] and ‘Bhaiyya Dooj’ kept up as if the bare idea of Bhojpuri cinema alive[14]. However, by the 1990s Bhojpuri cinema was dying like a character from Hindi films – reluctantly but inevitably.
In 2001 the phenomenal success of Saiyyan Hamaar [My Sweetheart] put a big question mark on the inevitability of the demise. By 2005, Sasura Bada Paisa Wala [My Father in law- the moneyed Guy] which earned about fifty times its production budget of Rs 4.5 million made the several decades of irreversible coma seem like a preparatory nap before a bout of action. In great haste, Bhojpuri cinema produced its first superstars Manoj Tiwari and Ravi Kissen – and the cultural gestation collapsed the past several decades into months and weeks. In this particular case, the media hype has cautiously trudged behind the phenomenon ever since. In the perception of the trade, all this is still too good to be true.
A series of confirmations of the good times have followed in the past few years - Daroga Babu I Love You [Darling Cop, I love you], Panditji Batai Na Biyah Kab Hoi [Priest, priest, when will I get married], Dharti Kahe Pukar Ke [My Land calls me] and Bandhan Toote Na [Our Ties shouldn’t break] [15]. According to trade analyst Taran Adarsh "Most Bhojpuri films are made in small budgets, usually Rs 20-30 lakh [$50,000], and they fetch Rs 1-2 crore [$ 200,000-400,000]. Several of these films are grossing 10 times their production costs. A good film can even make a profit of Rs 10-12 crore...’[16].
Raghuvansh Singh, president of Bihar-Jharkhand Movies Distributors Association, says ‘Bhojpuri films are catering to over 200 million Bhojpuri-speaking people in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Besides, the Bhojpuri Diaspora in Mauritius, Ghana, West Indies, Fiji, Nepal, Dubai, Indonesia, and the Netherlands constitutes a good enough market for our films. Stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgan and Naghma have done films in Bhojpuri. As many as eight films are released in a month [17].”
Those familiar with Bombay mainstream cinema are likely to find certain close resemblances in Bhojpuri cinema – the falling in love, the love song, the serious social consequences that soon catch up with the lovers, a debate over family relationships, and the destruction or conversion of the villain[18]. But as you begin to view more films certain perplexingly unfamiliar scenes will appear. The viewing experience can be rather confusing and an impatient viewer is likely to walk out of the cinema declaring Bhojpuri films to be a regressed C grade version of the Bombay product, a further ‘massifed’ version so to speak of mass culture. Even though with increased budgets, Bhojpuri films seem increasingly sophisticated with every passing year, shoddy camera work, impromptu seeming choreography, ham acting and general disregard of professional standards may simply seem to confirm the view[19]. But repeated viewing may reveal differences that are far from subtle – they are glaring.
It would seem that apart from its own style of theatricality, Bhojpuri cinema magnifies certain selected aspects of Bombay films. In the process, Bhojpuri cinema acquires a new and different personality while it retains several popular gimmicks of Bombay films. This distinctness is definable in the following terms: the village becomes the primary theatre of action and moral drama despite the presence of the city [but remarkably rarely the slums], family interactions become very elaborate, and the moral discourse turns a lot more outspoken than in Bombay films. Interestingly, while the social conflicts and ‘evils’ of village life find more overt mention than Bombay, one cannot miss the point that the village forms the preferred emotional universe for the main characters. Despite that, in a Bhojpuri film when a boy from a peasant family sits by the muddy village pond in his branded jeans and T shirt waiting for his lover, it seems rather evident that he is breathing the seaside air of Marine Drive, Bombay. These mental journeys back and forth may make the viewer giddy, but the soul of the film remains bucolic. Urbanism despite being unavoidable continues to represent immanent corruption and degradation.
If one were forced to clearly specify aspects of Bombay cinema that have been magnified in Bhojpuri films, it would be a combination of the social dramas and the village based stories, both of which were eased out of the Bombay mainstream by the 1980s. There have been exceptions to this rule such as the recent Vivah [The Wedding] 2007, from the Barjatya banner, but they seem to be just that.
The national media in India has taken due notice of the tremendous vitality of Bhojpuri cinema and columnists have had to offer an explanation for this. The explanations come in mainly two types. The first typically focus on the recent changes within Bombay cinema and can be summarized as follows: Bombay cinema in the last decade or so has shown an increasing tendency to appeal to the big town audience and the Indians settled in Europe and the US. Even its stories have shifted from the Indian soil to locales such as New Zealand and the US and are populated with Indian characters based in Bombay, London and New York. Such outward movement has created a vacuum that is now understandably filled by Bhojpuri films[20].
The second explanation turns to the other half of the phenomenon – the regional against the global, pointing out the growth of a new regional audience, almost presuming that an audience had been waiting for Bhojpuri cinema to come into existence[21].
The two stock explanations are not entirely off the mark, and manage to catch the basic flavour of the phenomenon. Once one admits however that the two explanations [instances of verstehen] are complementary, the complexity of the sociological issues becomes apparent. It would seem that we are dealing with a gigantic change that can be best expressed through the dynamic continuum: Hollywood cinema - Bombay cinema - Bhojpuri cinema. It is possible to talk about this continuum not simply as a theoretical construct with heightened relevance in the age of globalism, but a ‘real’ experience from the audience’s viewpoint. On any given day for example in Patna, the audience has a choice not simply between a Hindi and a Bhojpuri film, but also dubbed version of Hollywood films. Who knows, there will be a day when Hollywood films would be dubbed in Bhojpuri! And if the audience is found lapping up James Bond in Bhojpuri, who are we to complain of cultural dissonance! Even more incredible images have popped up in the past just as the media commentators wondered over their unlikeliness![22]
If one were to present the above argument schematically and as a theoretical construct the following one would arrive at the following cultural map, starting from bottom upwards:
Regional films [Bhojpuri films etc.]
Hindi films for Indian audience
Hindi films for ‘global audience’ [relating to the Diaspora audience]
Hindi films for the global audience [relating to audiences inclusive of non –Indian origin in parts of Asia and Africa]
Hindi films as a global option [as yet an aspiration][23]
Hollywood cinema
It is very tempting to see in the above schema a sort of symmetry where for example one may aver that the relation between Hollywood and Bombay films is analogous to relation between Bombay and Bhojpuri films. As a playful [ludic] heuristic the symmetry would seem harmless and even useful if one compared results produced from the schema to extant reality. But when applied mechanically it will lead to hermeneutic failure. Bhojpuri films as folk versions of Bombay cinema, and Bombay cinema as Indianized version of Hollywood are good but limited models incapable of dealing with cultural fault lines and discontinuities. Additionally, we often do not know who ‘originally’ borrowed from whom, given the fact that cinematic themes and tales have a habit of endless back and forth mobility between the mint and the market. Most of all, in the field of cultural studies the discontinuities are often more interesting than the continuities. For example, Bhojpuri cinema in its most interesting moments is likely to dwell on themes that Bombay would habitually ignore. The purpose behind saying so is however not to undermine the significance of the continuities. This point will receive due attention in the section devoted to analysis of selected scenes from Bhojpuri films.

Arrivals and Departures II : Resonance and Conflict


What the two explanations provided by the media would seem to leave out is the core cultural and social process of coming together and consolidation of the Bhojpuri audience – a process that is by no means complete. The use of the word ‘resonance’ in the title aims to focus on the coming together of an audience over a period of time. True, the same population has shown its political sinews over the last two decades by challenging the hegemony of the upper castes through a number of movements and platforms as rallyist and voter. But it is only with the rise of Bhojpuri films that it has found a certain cultural commonality and resonance in the regions of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar[24]. It is in fact an audience that is still in the process of coming together. We thus have a situation where political mobilization and cultural resonance continue to consolidate as we find them reach a mature stage.
Probably the most striking basis for this consolidation lies in the everyday experience of the audience as citizen in this part of the country. The process of temporary and permanent migration from this region has over time compounded the rural and the urban experience into a single whole despite the polarities, incorporating Sultanpur or Chhapra and Bombay within the same continuum. This finds a parallel in Hindi cinema where increasingly Bombay and New York simply provide two different acts of a smooth-flowing story or a diptych. The strength of both these continuums is that they do not focus on a given site with total attention, nor to they draw opaque walls around the local experience. There is a situation as if of a see-saw or a constant arrival - transit – departure that lends a particular poignancy to the stories and the emotions.
Having drawn a parallel between the mainstream cinema and Bhojpuri it is important to explain what is meant by consolidation. The explanation lies in the very nature of this extremely flexible dialect with a huge embrace. Bhojpuri in actual experience ranges from being seen as a style of Hindi [‘Bhaiya’ or Bihari’] to a large cluster of dialects spoken natively in Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, and parts of Madhya Pradesh. First, while the label Bhojpuri is most handy, one needs to understand that its local variations are immense. Bhojpuri cinema has to thus constantly seek a balance that would ensure viewership in the entire region, albeit at a much smaller scale than Bombay films. Second, Bhojpuri cinema is seen not just by Bhojpuri speaking populations, but also by ones that speak similar tongues. In some cases the allegiance comes from speakers of tongues which are far from similar – Maithili e.g. is a language spoken in the non-Bhojpuri Mithila region and has a classical literature to boast of. Bhojpuri on the other hand is rarely found in the written form and is largely dependent on oral literature. In brief then, Bhojpuri is not a simple ‘given’ as defined by a grammatical ukase but a consolidated result of a process that has taken several decades. This has a close parallel in Bombay cinema which has to strike a balance over a much broader canvas covering a wider cultural and linguistic territory.
There is another vital socio-cultural process unfolding in the region that relates to the caste dynamics. In the past three decades, the entire region has seen a dramatic upward mobility among the middle castes such as Yadavs and Kurmis, and to a lesser extent among the lowest rungs, the Dalits in the society. State politics in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh is now largely in the hands of coalitions dominated by not just middle segments, but also certain Dalit castes and Muslims. These processes can be best understood perhaps through a close look at the upward mobility of certain lower castes and their highly reflexive and adaptive ways of making the most of the electoral and democratic processes. There is a clear need to admit the centrality of the above issues for any study on the region. Thus in brief, migratory movement and upward mobility, the twin factors directly influence both the content of Bhojpuri cinema and the rise of the Bhojpuri language.
The above two processes are not inherently linked in the sense that one does not follow the other. Nevertheless, they happen to be yoked together experientially, defining the life of the migrant and also the non-migrant in different ways despite the overlaps. The emboldening of the week thus acquires several layers – migration often ensures that the world outside seems less scary, and the dominant castes in the world within seem less fearing due to social mobility. Of course, the upper castes look at this confidence as newfound arrogance and vulgarity. No wonder then that Bhojpuri films are often condemned for their vulgarity and lack of esthetic appeal, perhaps as ‘esthetic’ retaliation to political hurt[25].
It is not difficult to see that in a region marked by bitter caste wars, deepening social conflicts, and lack of politically inclusive ideologies, a cultural form such as Bhojpuri cinema has the potential to create a new resonance not found elsewhere. While a number of opportunistic political coalitions have begun to emerge on the landscape, lack of ideological coherence is not easy to compensate. With the aspirations of different castes and sub-castes aligned in uneasy coalitions, politics would almost seem to make space for an inclusive cultural arena such as a cinema where people can commingle to create a broader identity. Clearly, political dialogue on its own may prove to have its own limitations and a society is often left to confront its most vital issues at the level of culture. The hope that politics alone can resolve social conflicts has proved vain in the past, choking spaces that culture should rightfully occupy. There is a clear need thus to look closely at some of the continuities between the realms of culture and politics in the region in the coming years, given that several processes are still in the state of unfolding.
Before we begin to recapture theoretically the relation between the life experiences of the audience and the content and thrust of Bhojpuri cinema, a word of caution is due. Just in case this paper gave the impression that Bhojpuri cinema is an inclusive genre in the sense of being all-inclusive, we need to admit that the process of consolidation has thus far excluded both sections – the upper crust that opts out of Bhojpuri films, but significantly also a lower crust that has no access to movies. Lack of access may be explained by practical financial reasons, or simply by unfamiliarity with entertainment involving high technology. Although it is difficult to quantify, there is a large rural or small town segment that does not connect with Bhojpuri films, just as it is unable to join the migrating hordes for a better life. There are castes such as Musahars and Doms and other illiterate groups with no prior exposure to cinema and for a variety of reasons no evident interest in it[26]. Thus while positing the Hollywood-Bombay- Bhojpuri continuum, one needs to remember that while Bhojpuri may scratch desperately at the bottom of the society, it clearly doesn’t reach far enough. Just as the expanding universe of newspapers, television, and mobile telephones seem to leave out a considerable part of the society, so does cinema.

Arrivals and Departures III : Fashioning Fantasies

Living in the village, living in Bombay [or Bangalore or rural Amritsar as disparate migratory destinations], traveling between the city and the native village, and coping with the cultural transitions both at home and abroad thus form the experiential raw material of a ‘new’ cinema. This new cinema began as an offshoot of the mainstream Bombay genre around 50 years ago, went through a long gestation, and is now emerging as a medium on its own. We don’t know yet how lasting it will prove in the years to come. We do not even know if Bhojpuri cinema is simply a sign of fragmentation in the entertainment media made possible by new technologies that allow business focus on smaller markets with comparable or higher rates of returns[27]. These returns may prove high enough to seem tempting to big business at this point, but may not seem attractive enough in future[28].
In order to make sense of the increasing individuality and the ‘difference’ posed by Bhojpuri cinema from its Bombay counterpart one needs to focus on a continuum of experience which proves as first hand for the migrant as many of his relatives and neighbours in the village. The continuum with all its breeches could be posed somewhat schematically as follows:
Village: small town: capital of the province: national metropolis: global metropolis.
While the above schema carries an air of linearity and theoretical simplicity, we need to remember that the Bhojpuri audience mentally travels a million times between these frontiers and even has some idea of the global metropolis through the Hindi films. Everyday experience ensures to create a maze of back and forth movement that constantly recreates the collision and the collusion between the myriad values from the village and the city. Although what we get to see as the end product is a song or a film or a story, the cultural auteur/protagonist/audience of the story lives it out and rehearses it endlessly before positing the end product in front of us. Despite all our attempts to recreate something of this emotional and intellectual struggle, we can only uncover a few layers of it at a time.
One feasible way of approaching and approximating the migrant’s struggle to make sense of his composite and kaleidoscopic universe is to look at his life situations in terms of two extreme predicaments. First, a situation when a migrant finds his village and city values rather similar or comparable. This may understandably be a simpler situation though fraught with considerable debate and oscillations. A more complex situation may be that of incommensurability, when village values [or situations] and city values [or situations] pose conflicts that prove impossible to resolve. And yet for practical reasons, they need to be resolved at least for the time being. The issue of incommensurability is thus to be placed in a pragmatic context and not in an abstract logical space, where a person can very well wring his hands and declare that the dilemma has no answer, and walk away unimpeded.
It is not difficult to see that even when compelled or driven by practical exigencies, the migrant has to live out an endless series of ambivalences, which he must resolve for the time being quite simply in order to carry on living as a morally sensate human being. It would also seem that the ambivalent predicament is rarely resolved for ever. The mental journeys between the village and the metropolis never come to an end, and in a sense the migrant spends a lifetime traveling back and forth not depending on where he is actually situated. In a sense then, leaving the frontiers of the village is like being doomed to a lifetime of ethical nomadism that has to be ‘translated’ constantly into a rooted existence. The fear of the unknown, as if, needs to be tamed by grasping part of it, any part of it, for the time being. Unthinking or opportunistic mimicry, strong resistance to it, slow absorption of alien values, promotion of such values in the village or town setting – all these would seem to provide the migrant with his bag of tricks or his arsenal of social strategies.
The tremendous reflexivity required of the immigrant is thus often reflected in Bhojpuri cinema. This reflexivity emerges from the frequently unseen ‘interstices’ of cultural systems and features[29]. What one probably needs to remember is that while the migrant faces tremendous pressures, he is also driven by a powerful existential force that combines his helplessness and despair with a great sense of opportunity and hope. Just in case, the above paragraphs seem to draw a rather agonized portrait of the migrant, one has to admit that theorizing may often permit if not encourage some amount of hyperbole. It also needs to be admitted that the rough edges of existence hide many of these daily struggles in their interstices – the intensities as well as the mechanical insouciance of daily living.
The above points need illustration from scenes from Bhojpuri cinema. This is important for getting a clear idea of hermeneutic openings that everyday experience may provide a person. To put in differently and perhaps more effectively, illustrations from Bhojpuri film story may give us a clear idea of how a person imposes his own interpretive take on a real life situation, since interpretive opportunities are anyway rarely available to a passive agent. The selected episode goes as follows:
In Pyaar Ke Bandhan [The Bonds of Love] the heroine, a lively but snooty daughter of a landowner insults a cobbler [a chamar!] in English, throwing his fee at him like he was dirt. The cobbler grabs this opportunity to give her an elaborate lecture in Bhojpuri-accented English on the value of education in refining one’s character. He tells her that sadly, education has instead only degraded hers[30]. The heroine stands corrected and promptly falls in love with the character, of course.
The above lecture explicitly talks about the dignity of labour and the value of education [English education], all of which goes on at a fairly overt level. Both these values are fixtures from the most boring of school assembly sessions, and the entertainment-hungry audience would normally refuse to tolerate such cliché beyond a few seconds, far from cheering it. The long lecture results in cheering from the audience because of what it implies. The message floating close to the surface is – learn to respect a chamar for both his work and his education, if not for his ‘chamarhood’ alone. The tame lecture thus carries a subversive sting in its tail, making the sequence exhilarating for the audience. Members of the potter and the carpenter castes can freely apply the morale to their own predicaments. And so can a plumber [not a caste, but a modern occupation]!
In an earlier paragraph, the heroine was depicted as an intrepid lover ready to fling her heart at the slightest opportunity. We probably need to modify this portrait. The heroine is more likely to brood endlessly on the brief homily, and sort out her ambivalent reactions after a great deal of interpretive agony. Of course, the film does not dwell on these broodings. Instead it makes something very unlikely happen – a landlord’s daughter falls in love with a cobbler! The ‘sweet’ euphemism of Bhojpuri films leaves it open whether the hero is chamar by caste or occupation only, making matters more palatable for an upper caste audience than they would have been [31]. In a sense then, the interstices are not provided by experience but sought out actively and intently by a person. At times these interstices turn into roomy windows, and at other times the interpreter has to ram away at the frontiers to create a narrow crack for an opening. The relative degrees of gentleness and violence may be commensurate with the toughness of the task at hand.
A second example from Kanyadan [2006] focuses on the issue of female infanticide. Having given birth to a series of girls, a not so young wife makes the discovery that her husband has been consigning the newborns to the sacred river Ganga. Rather uncharacteristically she confronts him and calls him a rakshasa [a demon]. Even more uncharacteristically for a Bombay film, the husband actually cares to defend his actions by recounting a trauma that made him completely averse to daughters. When young, he witnessed his father being humiliated by his sister’s husband. When the son in law found that he did not receive support from his father in law in the local elections, he dragged his wife and deposited her at her father’s feet. ‘You can take your daughter back’, he told his father in law. The arrogant son in law did not relent even when the father in law removed his headgear, the very symbol of his caste pride and put it at his son in law’s feet. The young boy interpreted this incident to mean that the very presence of a girl in the family made you vulnerable – anyone could decide to trample on your honour. All you could do is swallow your pride and beg for mercy.
The above dialogue between the wife and the husband is very revealing, in fact too revealing for a Bombay film. But the Bhojpuri film brings out the psyche of the ‘hurt’ male with great patience, not justifying it, but simply making it explicit. ‘Let the men squirm in their seats’, the thinking may seem to be, ‘they will take it from us’. Later on, in the King Lear fashion the story goes on to depict the surviving daughter as her father’s saviour as against a disloyal and feckless son, thereby demonstrating that the father interpreted his trauma wrongly. The story thus places the trauma where it belongs – with the original sufferer, namely the sister who was used as a pawn in a political quarrel. The husband had just dispossessed his married sister of her trauma, claiming it to be his own. In a sense then the film takes us to the rock bottom of the man’s misogyny[32].
What is striking here is not the situation itself, but the depth to which it is uncovered. In a sense what a Bhojpuri film is doing is to borrow a stock situation from Bombay cinema to magnify it with far greater patience than Bombay cinema is likely to show. Even if we see Bombay and Bhojpuri films as part of a continuum, it is such moments of discontinuity and thematic magnification that reveal unexplored terrains such as the details of a youth’s trauma mentioned above. Here again the intention is not to lay down rules of interpretation but to simply trace a certain strategy of storytelling, where a Bhojpuri film may be able to focus much more closely on the social fabric than Bombay cinema. Bombay cinema faces a somewhat different challenge in dealing with a wider social context, and perhaps has less space for nuances such as above. The apparent commonalities thus between Bombay and Bhojpuri quite simply bring out the common cultural ‘thresholds’. It is likely that regional cinemas will fin their own individual trajectories beyond the threshold often defining their own styles in the process.
The above reading of the event is by no means complete but adequate for our purpose here. Having examined the broad socio-economic features of the Bhojpuri speaking and understanding region, and having looked at a number interpretive stances and opportunities available to the migrant/non-migrant audience, it is now time to move on to the issue of Bhojpuri, the language.


Arrivals and Departures IV: Voicing Fantasies in the Vernacular

In a very significant sense the Bhojpuri language is much more than a tool of expression for a large section of the region in question. While Hindi has found a secure place in the spaces outside the family and the village, it still lacks the intimacy of dreams for a large majority. Over the past 150 years or so, Hindi has come a long way. Hindi as the language of literature and poetry, Hindi as the free-flowing practical language of the media, Hindi as a language of national politics – these are some of its different channels with somewhat different norms and styles. These vary between the extremes of the over-sophisticated literary expressions to by now an almost pan-Indian popular glossary of democratic electoral politics at the street level. But to an illiterate rustic, Hindi in its chaste form is often also the language of the bureaucracy, underlying the power of the educated sophisticates. For nearly a century the advocates of Hindi have thrived on the basis of pitiful anti-English sloganeering on the one hand and bullying strategies that include imposition of the ‘national’ language on unwilling regions[33].
The story of opposition to Hindi in many parts of the country and its grumbling and gradual acceptance in fits and starts is an interesting tale on its own. What is relevant here however is that the growth of Hindi as a common cause has resulted in the overshadowing of a number of dialects and even written languages, which have rarely reacted with hostility nevertheless. In fact, even though some of these languages such as Braj and Awadhi lost their quasi-classical status, they were happy to make a common cause for and with Hindi. With a vast hinterland of dialects, Hindi developed the ability to communicate with a very large population. Hindi cinema synthesized its own version of Hindi by evolving an Urdu-Hindustani dialect that made it even more acceptable to the audience, even though this is a version that cannot be used in daily life without turning the speaker into a laughing stock.
Yet the very growth of Bhojpuri cinema would indicate that Hindi is unable to cope with large territories of experience, except perhaps through translation from these languages. Interestingly, it is in recent times too that Bombay cinema has made place for the Bombay Hindi dialect in the Munnabhai series [2005-2007], proving a great success with near cult following[34]. The urdu tehjeeb [style, manners, polish] of Bombay cinema has had to give way to the crudely expressive tongues spoken by the common man. Thus while Hindi continues its heroic balancing act between influences from Sanskrit, Urdu, English and the dialects and may begin to grope southwards towards the Tamil family, languages like Bhojpuri cannot spend a lifetime behind the wings, forever repressing themselves voluntarily[35].
The rise of the middle castes and Dalits and their continued empowerment, their cultural self-assertion through literature and cinema, and their continuing political and ideological assertion are likely to change the shape and status of Hindi in the coming years. While it remains true that the relation between Sanskrit and the vernaculars, and Persian or English and the vernaculars has not been the same as between Hindi and its dialects, the unquestionably domineering position of ‘classical’ [shudhdha/pure] Hindi is likely to be questioned more frequently than before. If the proponents of Hindi decide to see a threat in the growth of the dialects, it may even lead to a new turn ious swerve in the politics of languages in the country.f Hindi s between Hindi of democratization iin the politics of languages in the country. At this stage, however there is a greater feeling of complementarity than conflict. It is quite likely that in the coming years the dialects will assert themselves not simply through independent platforms but by modifying Hindi itself to suit the needs of a greatly varied population ranging between the slums in metropolises and the smaller towns and villages across the nation.
Hindi has shown signs of adequate flexibility and ability to deal with rural and urban contexts of every day life and the rich variety in between. With the rise of globalism, Hindi’s adversarial stance towards English is quite likely to be complemented with a relatively pacific acceptance of their co-existence. Correspondingly, Hindi may feel enriched and not threatened by the consolidation of its dialects as its foot soldiers pitted against the onslaught of global English. The dialects themselves may range from the quasi-classical ones such as Braj and Maithili to Hyderabadi [Dakhni] and to the recently spawned ones like Bomabaiya [Bombay Hindi]. Hindi’s bitter envy of English is now increasingly based on its inability to make inroads in the South, where again the lifting of prescriptive grammatical sanctions and phonetic may allow different Hindi styles to find fertile soil in the coming decades. In fact such alchemy has already begun on the streets of Bangalore with some help from Gulbarga Urdu. Hindi’s real issue with English is likely to be in the realm of ideas and intellectual discourse, where the vernacular has to wrestle with the might of the cosmopolitan in an ‘unfair’ battle. Along the way, Hindi quite sensibly gave up its claims to provide scientific terminology except till the high school level.
In the midst of all the linguistic churning, Bhojpuri and other dialects clearly do not have aspirations that threaten the status of Hindi. But they equally clearly have the potential to create and even more important, legitimize many Hindis in all their richness, expanding the lexicon and the stock of regional idioms and sounds.
On the whole then, the dialects would seem to support the case of Hindi in its envious jostling with English. With the whole world fondly gazing at the vast Indian and Chinese markets, who knows if Hindi along with Chinese may make hasty inroads into the western curricula, causing another twist in the tale within our own lifetimes! Given that China’s preparations for the next Olympic Games include quick and aggressive mastery over Basic English by a large population, language learning may at times even acquire epidemic if not pandemic proportions!


Arrivals and Departures V: Political Aspirations and Cinematic Fantasies

Political Aspirations: Openings and Barriers

Having traveled along a number of hermeneutic routes, it now becomes possible to celebrate with the seasoned migrant, the happy confusion between the words ‘arrival’ and ‘departure’. Coming to a work site whether in Assam, rural Punjab or Bangalore seems as much an arrival as a journey back to the village with suitcases spilling out gifts and cash. Going back to secure and relatively lucrative employment in Hyderabad may seem as sweet and snug as homecoming. The lonely wife or the parent in the village too has to learn to rejoice as much in the migrant son’s departure as his arrival, despite the profuse tears. The conceptual confusion here seems more a sign of comfort than dyslexic disorientation. This exaggerated picture of warm and snug selfhood however dissembles many bitter tales of dissonance within the self, divided between home and destination, between the destiny of rural poverty and the free will of gainful employment abroad. Most of all, for a student of cinema and society, it is challenging to find out how the lyrical fantasies of cinema nestle together with the prosaic aspirations of politics within the embrace of selfhood. This is not an easy question to answer at any level – whether at the level of generality, or even in the specific context of Bhojpuri cinema. But it would be tragic if a social researcher decided to let the question pass without a comment.
While the last ten years of Bhojpuri revival make it difficult to make bold assertions, it is perhaps easier to tell the quintessential political tale. The last three decades in the region have seen the rise of what may be called the ‘politics of humiliation and humbling.’ Indeed, given the nature of caste, it is difficult to visualize any other mode of democratization. Being punished and humiliated repeatedly seems to be the only democratic answer to the ceremonial hierarchy based on birth alone. And yet while the hierarchy crumbles in flesh, the idea of caste as a disincarnated ghost may continue to haunt the body politic. The upper castes in the region have been through several rounds of humiliation at the hands of the middle and lower castes through the formation of a number of middle-caste and Dalit dominated governments. It seems castes such as Yadavs will now have to take their turn willy nilly. The downfall of the Laloo Yadav regime in Bihar and Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh may represent a second phase of humiliations, of the middle castes in this case, with the possibility of Kurmis in Bihar taking their turn some time in the future. Within the process of humiliation may lie a gentler process of humbling too, when Brahmins willingly reduce themselves to the junior partnership of Dalits in Uttar Pradesh, and Bhumihars do the same with Kurmis in Bihar. The upper castes thus are now learning to swallow their pride, humbling themselves in the process. The humbling involved is not simply a matter of subjective sentiments – a survey of the Rajput and Bhumihar opinion of the Brahmin’s collusion with Dalits in Uttar Pradesh is sure to make it seem very substantial.
The above process would seem to be entirely in line with the logic of democracy if one remembers that the mundane process of democratization is not so much about generation of sublime democratic ideals and values as elimination of the non-democratic ones, and not so much about the creation of ‘dignity’ as pruning of hubris and pride.
Unlike the story of politics in the region, the tale of Bhojpuri cinema is yet to unfold its storyline. Bhojpuri cinema in its inchoate phase has much exploring to do. It has to reflect the chastening and chiding the traditionally privileged castes and gender must receive from the unprivileged. But it can make itself interesting to the outside world or find a place under the global sun only by representing the community of the region in entirety or a semblance of it. The logic of both the community and the market place dictate that cinema should most often perform both the tasks simultaneously – of looking within, and also looking beyond its frontiers to project its image abroad. These tasks together define the spaces and the cultural gamut over which Bhojpuri films can freely move.

Cinematic Fantasies: Openings and Barriers

The section ‘Arrivals and Departures III’ in its analysis of selected scenes from Bhojpuri films deals with the first half of cinema’s task, that of reflecting on the conflicts and resonances within the society. But it is important to see briefly how Bhojpuri cinema and Hindi cinema try to locate themselves in the global context, and represent the outer world to themselves, in the process adapting to the intrusive challenges of globalism.
In the film ‘Firangi Dulhaniya [Foreign Bride]’, 2006, the central theme is that of an Indian boy coming back to the country with a foreigner [read white skinned Caucasian] bride. While Bombay cinema has occasionally dealt with such challenges, for a Bhojpuri film it amounts to a major social trauma. It seems the film was based on the real life story of a small town medical student enrolled in Russia who returned home with a Russian bride along with a degree. One begins to get an idea of the complex web of Bhojpuri Diaspora when told that the Russian actress in question learnt her smattering of Bhojpuri from a tutor from Fiji. What is remarkable however is that Bhojpuri cinema took this predicament as a challenge, managing to resolve the nightmare by turning it into a sufficiently harmless fantasy. But the question is – is Bhojpuri cinema capable of dealing with traditionally a highly uncomfortable issue in India such as extramarital relations?[36] The answer is a clear no at this stage. Bombay cinema has shown the ability to tackle the theme with sufficient aplomb only in the new millennium. ‘Silsila’ [1981], ‘Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna’ [2005] have for this reason become milestones in Hindi cinema, paving the way for a series of films on the theme.
Clearly, just as different communities and societies find their own way to globalize, Bombay or Bhojpuri cinemas are willing to globalize on their own terms! Imagine for a moment the very obverse of ‘Foreign Bride’, namely a situation where a foreigner groom comes home with a local bride. This is not beyond the imagination of Bombay cinema. ‘Namaste London [Hi London]’, 2007 deals precisely with a situation such as this, even though the ‘London-returned’ bride rejects the upper class British suitor in the favour of a Punjabi groom. But Bhojpuri cinema is miles away from being able to handle a delicate situation like this, in a sense leaving the audience to deal with similar real life situations as it pleases. In brief, it is yet a nightmare refusing to transmogrify into acceptable fantasy. Reluctance, indeed refusal to surrender its women to the outsider thus remains a sentiment heavily fraught with symbolism of self preservation and identity, revealing the heavy-handed masculine cultural bias with all its insinuating cunning and violence! This is not surprising – burqa clad software engineers, women with postgraduate degrees from US universities hunting for grooms in India through helpful but often bewildered parents are some other exotic but basically male dominated solutions to problems created by globalism.
Strangely enough the one occasion when the Indian malehood seems willing to make a compromise in media is during the beauty contests at local, national and international levels. The motives behind beauty contests are however difficult to read. They seem highly ambivalent – on the one hand they represent the boast of the male as the master, showing off ‘his’ women and the charisma of his bloodline. On the other hand they seem to indicate a sense of exposure, even surrender of his women to the world outside. To the smaller world of likely grooms? Or the wider world of superior white men who need to be impressed! In the Hindi film ‘Banti aur Bablee’, 2006, the female protagonist who sets out to win a beauty contest in the distant metropolis finds a lover from her own hometown, again turning a potentially disruptive tale into a tame fantasy.
The above discussion is by no means complete, but the purpose here was to demonstrate that a popular form like Bombay or Bhojpuri cinema is marked by both thresholds and openings as well as closures and silences. In the everyday life of the industry they are known as the dos and the don’ts of cinema. Although at any given moment they seem to have a fairly rigid and static appearance, the fact is they are always in a state of debate and modification[37]. For a student of cinema it is important to look closely at this process of internal legislation, clauses of which are detectable in narratives defining the thresholds of articulation as well as the barriers, beyond which lie the acres of silence. Thus, in a metaphorical sense, Bhojpuri cinema moves over a territory that spreads across the world within and the world without, reflecting over its own constituencies as well as the wider world.

Aspirations and Fantasies: Ambivalences and Resolutions

The two sub-sections above aim to bring out in relief the uneven terrain of Bhojpuri cinema. This terrain consists of the conflict ridden spaces within the Bhojpuri society, and the world without where Bhojpuri culture needs to posit coherent self-images. These self-images may serve to modify projections made by others and aim as much at one’s own satisfaction, as acknowledgment from others. Altogether, it would seem that Bhojpuri films are endowed with a large territory to navigate in. But one needs to understand that a popular form must move very carefully, choosing to say what must and can be said, leaving aside wide swathes of the unstated for future exploration. This uneven terrain is thus marked by deep chasms that cannot be filled up easily. Film scenes analyzed in the earlier sections make it clear that thematic shifts over this terrain often do not allow smooth or continuous movement. Thematic leaps, evasions, euphemisms, stark lies, cover up, and silences thus become means of keeping an audience intact. On the whole however, it seems a good idea to leave the portals of cinema open to castes and classes that are still mulling over the hoardings outside, wondering if they should walk in to take a seat. Bhojpuri cinema is thus divided between its indebtedness to the tales of conflicts within, and the need to amplify tales of resonances to the outside world. This is an ambivalence capable of providing a genre with sufficient moral, emotional and esthetic energy to continue for decades in search of a kaleidoscopic array of temporary narrative resolutions. A wonderful thing about cinema is it may continue to ‘rehearse’ social reality as long as the audiences are willing to purchase the tickets. The daily life of cinema thus contrasts with the five-year timescale of electoral politics, even if the two processes are seen as parallel. Another wonderful thing about cinema is it succeeds in tilting down utopian consummations from beyond the horizon to the cinema screen – a line from a dialogue and caste system may evaporate, a close up of brimming eyes may demolish aeons of social inequality at a glance on immediate basis!
The above terrain almost simultaneously gives us an idea of the typology of Bhojpuri films, its future course, and the thematic limitations[barriers] and possibilities[thresholds] that the Bhojpuri industry has to work with – issues which deserve continued analysis in the coming years. It may however be pointed out at this stage that on one extreme lies a world untouched by Bombay cinema – aspects of regions, religions, mythology, legends, castes and sub-castes, communities, ceremonies and many other unexposed crevices ready to dehisce untold tales. On the other extreme, Bhojpuri cinema faces the temptation to woo the upper castes and classes by retelling the Bombay tales in Bhojpuri. Given the heavy backlog of telling and retelling, Bhojpuri cinema is unlikely to find itself unemployed any time soon.

Conclusion: The Stillness within Movement

Let us remind ourselves - the hectic departures and arrivals, and the cultural tornado of cultural ambivalences depicted above amount to an exaggeration which is acceptable only because it helps us highlight selected areas of reality. The fact is we all have to live with our selves wherever we go, creating or ‘constructing’ moments of pragmatic calm in the midst of ceaseless din. Among the many selves that form part of clustered selfhood, the focus in the above pages has been on the individual as a citizen/voter and as audience of Bhojpuri films. The middle caste and Dalit voter in Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh has been experiencing social mobility and empowerment at an accelerated pace ever since the mid-1970s. The migration from Bihar really forms part of a larger twin tale, adding a sense of cultural poignancy and urgency to the equalitarian and democratic ideologies. Democratization in these societies itself seems to ride over waves of self-assertion by castes and sub-castes, at times helping generate spaces for individual liberty, but at times squeezing the individual to the limits of his liberty. Broadly, the same segments of the society hastily formed an audience for Bhojpuri cinema as ‘late’ as the new millennium. As stated earlier, while the rise of Bhojpuri cinema is inherently interesting, it begins to seem more fascinating when seen as part of a broader and diffuse change in the power equations among the caste groupings[38]. This process continues to unfold through myriads of twists and turns as Bhojpuri cinema continues to find its character and shape.
The overlapping or parallel developments in the realm of politics and culture throw light on the changing social equations within, but also the society’s self-image and its relation to the world without, in its national and global dimensions. One cannot ignore the state of the self in this scenario. While the above passages depict a number of ambivalences and dilemmas faced by the self, the tussle between the dignity of an individual and dignity for a caste [or any other grouping] seem to lie at the very core of our predicament in 2007. This is not an easy ambivalence to resolve, there are many ways to resolve it for the time being, and it might even be argued that it cannot be resolved forever even in theory through some kind of categorial summation or wizardry. The ambivalence is faced at many levels – juridical, economic, and cultural, and these are not easy to align together. However it would seem that the aspirations for equality, the forcible seizure of freedom and dignity obtained through political fight need to be supplemented by fantasies of willing acceptance and acknowledgment by the social enemy turned friend. Indeed, the taming of cinematic villains perhaps makes for more fulfilling narrative than their slaying. The reason for this may be quite pragmatic – once we assume we have to live together or spend three undisturbed hours in cinema halls, peace seems a desirable goal. It is often not possible to curb or alter the socially disruptive extremes of many equalitarian ideologies, but it’s possible to supplement them repeatedly and perhaps unendingly with fantasies of innocent togetherness[39]. The ‘undoing’ of the caste system in India thus forms an essential part of the democratization process, and ‘in the last instance’ we do not clearly know yet how finite the process may turn out to be.
One may conclude by reiterating a methodological point - a student of cinema must try to read both the said as well as the unsaid, admittedly a cliché. But remember - while insights obtained through interpretation of the ‘said’ are ‘falsifiable’ to various extents, uncovering the unsaid may often turn out to be rather a wild hermeneutic adventure. This inherent risk is however unavoidable. It is crucial to use both the above prongs to catch social reality in its most interesting moments. Refusing to comment on the silences, the ‘unsaid’ aspect of cinema may reduce the researcher to duplicating the results and insights of empirical sociology under the rather redundant rubric of cinema. One would expect that a study of cinema should frequently, if not regularly tell us things about society that often slip out of the grasp of the more direct approach of empirical sociology. Using cinema to only confirm findings from other empirical sources, in brief, seems such a waste!
To conclude on a more mundane and specific note, at the end of these discussions it would seem that relation between [a] Hollywood - Bombay - Bhojpuri as genres is somewhat similar to also the relation between [b] English –Hindi [or Tamil etc. in a different context] - Bhojpuri with a structural sociological parallel in [c]upper castes - middle castes - lower castes untouchables. While we may continue to use independent models and metaphors for the three different realms of experience, it would be interesting to use them as models for each other[40]. The shifting relation between the elements of the three continuums/lacunae may lead to insights relevant exclusively to each domain as well as those that may be applicable to wider public life. There is a strong basis to suspect that through a series of comparisons and contrasts between these inter-relationships, one would be able to delineate not simply a set of fruitful hermeneutic stances, but also an inchoate functional model with some causal content, in however limited or ‘weak’ sense.
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[1] ‘For the Indian film industry, 2006 was a watershed year. It produced the largest number of films ever - a staggering 1,091. ... With 76 films produced in 2006, Bhojpuri films have recorded the fastest growth rate — a 100 per cent increase over 2005. They also account for 7 per cent of the total number of films produced, only marginally behind Malayalam and Kannada films, according to figures released by the Central Board of Film Certification. …More Telugu films were made last year than Hindi. Against 223 films in Hindi, Telugu banners produced 245 films in 2006. The Tamil industry, which was in first place five years ago, slipped to third with 162 films.’ in Singh, Gurbir, ‘Bollywood Turns into Bhojywood’, Hindustan Times,[ Mumbai], 22 February, 2007.

[2] For a clear idea of the regressive metaphors and tendencies, specifically deindustrialization see ‘Bihar Development Report, 2006’, Institute of Human Development, 2007, New Delhi
[3] Kishore, Avinash, ‘Understanding agricultural Impasse in Bihar’, Economic and Political weekly, July 31, 2004 provides a keen diagnosis of the ailment.
[4]"Kidnapping Industry Continues to Thrive", The times of India, (Patna) 22 March 2007.
[5] Redistributive reasoning and political action based on it makes limited sense in a rural economy often driven by ‘cost recovery’ as the target of one’s hard work, a term tellingly used by Tushar Shah, quoted in Kishore, ibid.
[6] This is based on the author’s recent conversations with film viewers at a cinema hall in Patna, Bihar. The conversations form part of empirical work for an ongoing research project on Bhojpuri cinema.
[7] Deshingkar, Priya et al, ‘The Role of Migration and Remittances in Promoting Livelihoods in Bihar’, Overseas Development Institute, London, December 2006.
[8] Dasgupta, Barun and agencies, ’16 More Biharis killed in Assam’, The Hindu [online edition], Sunday, November 23, 2003.
[9]‘… there were 27.69 per cent households reporting migration in 1982-83. By 1999-2000, there is a steep increase in the number of households with at least one migrating family member (hereby referred to as migrating households) and their percentage jumped to 48.63. It means approximately every alternative household is effected by migration, whether for a short or long duration, depending upon the whole host of circumstances’ in Saran K., Anup, ‘Changing Pattern Migration from Rural Bihar’, Bihar Times, www.bihartimes.com. Accessed on 2.1.2007.
[10] Ibid.
[11] A casual visitor to Bihar will feel puzzled at the amount of newspaper reporting on fracas caused by delays and glitches at the railway stations on a daily basis.
[12] Parthasarathi, Vibodh, ‘Construing a New Media Market: Merchandizing the Talking machine c. 1900-91’ in Bernard Bel et al ed. ‘Media and Mediation’, Sage India, 2005.
[13] ‘I will offer you a yellow sari, O Ganges if you unite me with my lover’ was the theme song of the film
[14] Bhaiya dooj is a festival celebrating sister-brother relation and is based on ancient mythology.
[15] The movie titles have been translated to underline a clear contrast with Hindi film titles for those familiar with it.
[16] Tewary, Amarnath ‘Move Over Bollywood Here’s Bhojpuri’, Story from BBC, published: 2005/12/15 09:28:12 GMT.
[17] Shankar A, ‘The Rise of Bhojpuri Cinema’, Business Standard [New Delhi], February 21, 2007.
[18]A note of warning - this oversimplified depiction of Bombay cinema would have been more valid till the late 1990s. With Bombay cinema itself going through a serious transition and redifferentiation, we are dealing with shifty grounds. This study however focuses on the stable Bombay tradition to highlight the thematic departures characterizing Bhojpuri cinema. Recent changes in Bombay cinema clearly require a separate study apart from the comparisons with Bhojpuri cinema.
[19] ‘Production standards and budgets are fast changing however – “Firangi Dulhaniya is shot extensively in foreign locations, which is quite rare for Bhojpuri films. ‘Tanya is making history because she is the first foreign actress in a Bhojpuri movie," says director Rajan Kumar Singh. The film is inspired by the real-life story of a student in Patna, who went to study in Russia, fell in love with a Russian girl, married her and brought her here,"he adds. Tanya plays the young bride who tries to adapt to an alien culture, language and food. She learnt to speak Bhojpuri from a teacher and Bhojpuri language expert from Fiji” Sahay, Anand Mohan, ‘Russian Actor in Bhojpuri Film’, Rediff India Abroad, September 16, 2005 from http://www.rediff.com//movies/2005/sep/16bhojpuri.htm, accessed on 23.4.2007.
[20] a typical comment – ‘ It’s ironical to note that while our noted film producers like Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar are making handsome gain of Rs. 10 to Rs. 35 crores, are considering making films catering to taste of foreigners and multiplex audiences in India, ignoring the poor and backward masses living in states like Bihar, UP, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh.’, ‘Advance booking creates history in Jaipur’, Screen, September 23, 2005.

[21] ‘According to me, Bhojpuri films got a boost with the release of Sasura Bada Paisewala and since then there has been no looking back for the Bhojpuri film industry. Moreover, the Bhojpuri audience which likes to see more of their own culture has been ever-growing. And to top it all most films released after that have been successful.’ Sahay, Subodhkant, The Union Minister for Food & Processing Industries, India in an interview to Screen, December 08, 2006.

[22] Within three months after writing these lines, the author discovered that Spiderman III has been dubbed in Bhojpuri and is receiving an excellent run in the cinema halls.
[23] the types numbered 2,3,4,and 5 indicate the cultural differentiation within Hindi cinema.
[24] It is interesting to note that among the Hindi speaking states, consolidation of regional identities has often proved to be problematic. While Haryana, Rajasthan and Punjab seem to have strong identities, Bihari identity continues to be defined vividly by the outsider with reluctant validation from the Bihari populace as almost an afterthought. Culturally, eastern Uttar Pradesh, the very heart of the state seems to have more in common with Bihar than western Uttar Pradesh.
[25] ‘The city media tries to brush aside such cinema as loud and obscene, but Ravi argues, "These films are propagating values that are long lost in Hindi cinema like the respect for bhabhi, the relevance of ghoonghat. Even how rivers like Ganga have been part of our lifeline." "As for the songs, there is a degree of loudness the way people celebrate the occasions in the region. It's being reflected on the screen," adds Ravi’, in Kumar Anuj, “King Bhoj Speaks’ The Hindu, Friday, Jul 14, 2006

[26] A parallel observation - there are times when even a desperate social niche and ‘known’ status in a village may seem more secure than the possibility of moving out into the ‘unknown’ chaos of an urban job market.
[27] ‘It follows, then that a logical technology choice for India is "electronic cinema". Electronic presentation systems can be installed for considerably less money than high quality "digital cinema" systems. Such systems will not be as stellar in presentation as digital cinema, but will could offer enough improvement over the worn film prints and low quality film projection systems of the B and C-grade centers to attract patrons back to these cinemas.’ in Karagosian, Michael and Nirav Shah, ‘Digital Cinema in India’, INS Asia Magazine, December 2004.

[28] ‘Noted Bollywood film producers like Subhash Ghai and Nitin Manmohan are considering making Bhojpuri films. Boney Kapoor has released his film Matrubhoomi in both Hindi and Bhojpuri languages.’ in news ‘Advance Booking Creates History in Jaipur’, Screen, Mumbai, September 23, 2005.

[29] Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London ; New York: Routledge, 1994. Homi Bhabha’s notion of the interstices, the hybrid in culture, and some of the spatial metaphors form the basis for some of the concepts used here. However, the idea of ambivalence was elaborated and interpreted in this specific sense in the doctoral thesis ‘Freud and the Theory of Culture’ [unpublished] submitted to the University of Poona, India, 1985 by Ratnakar Tripathy.

[30] ‘The audience erupted deafeningly at this scene, with applause and whistles lasting several minutes. It later turned out that this same sequence was to be found in many of Tiwari’s films, beginning with his first, the 2005 blockbuster Sasura Bada Paisawala. Explains Aslam Sheikh: “The point is to show an image of what can happen when the cobbler learns English. Many Scheduled Castes are now educated.” ’ in Nelkantan, Latika, ‘The Heartland Values of Bhojpuri Cinema’, Himal, Kathmandu, October, 2006.
[31] Of late Bhojpuri films have shown a tendency to name castes. Over time if the audience is able to stomach the candour without breaking into riots, this may be a seminal contribution to the process of democratization in the society!
[32] This confession occurs not on the analyst’s couch but in a face to face conversation between a husband and his dying wife!
[33] See Orsini, Francesca’s ‘The Hindi Public Sphere 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism’, Oxford University Press, New York. 2002, and also ‘Tulsi Kyon [Why Tulsi]’ in Vaak, inaugural issue, 2007, Delhi.
[34] Bombay Hindi combines Bhojpuri, Marathi, and some south Indian languages.
[35] The author is indebted to two works noted for their sweep as well as numerous insights – ‘The Otherness of English,India's Auntie Tongue Syndrome’ by Probal Dasgupta, New Delhi: Sage 1993, and the more recent ‘The Language of Gods in the World of Men’ by Sheldon Pollock, Permanent Black, Delhi, 2007. The original purpose of the two volumes is however not directly related to the discussion here despite their highly relevant ramifications and implications.

[36] This is not just a general moral issue. Prolonged absence of migrant men from the village creates a wide variety of family crises, some of which seem routine. Clearly, there are situations that can turn the sweetness of nostalgia quite bitter. What e.g. if a story line tries to make place for a young wife who having run out of tears, decides to have some fun with other men! While it is easy to decry the silences of a popular form, one needs to appreciate the difficulties faced by the storyteller.
[37] In the Bombay film trade argot the word ‘masala’[combination of spices or recipe] refers to the strange alchemy of narrative strategies that moves between the horizons of the dos and don’ts to the higher plane of commercial success, rather than just acceptance. In a sense, with every success, the masala/s get redefined all over again, in turn modifying the dos and don’ts to some extent.
[38] Majumdar, Sudip, ‘An Unlikely Alliance: How one politician has begun reordering the country's politics—and its notorious caste system’, Newsweek International edition, May 28,2007
[39] It would be interesting to conduct an in depth inquiry to explain the gap of two decades between the rise of the middle castes/Dalits in the region and the rise of Bhojpuri cinema in the new millennium. Perhaps Bhojpuri cinema had to wait before the ‘political’ noise associated with caste strife settled into a more positive ‘cultural’ resonance.
[40] One would suspect that the discrepancies between the three would prove more interesting than similarities. While similarities and simple analogies tend to blunt hermeneutic and causal analysis, differences pose unavoidable but worthwhile challenges difficult to subdue.