From: Sangeeta Mediratta <smedirat@stanford.edu>
Date: 2011/3/18
Subject: Bollywood class!
To: "southasia@lists.stanford.edu" <southasia@lists.stanford.edu>
Here is the full announcement:
Bollyworld or Bollywood?
(FLM 79)
India is the largest film-producing country in the world, releasing a thousand films a year. The heart of the Indian film industry resides in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, which has led to the portmanteau word “Bollywood.” Bollywood evokes spectacular, musical films full of dancing women and melodramatic plot twists. Bollywood is also seen by many critics as a distinctly national (or nationalistic) cinema. But is it?
Throughout this course, we will watch some of the most popular Bollywood films from the last sixty years and uncover their deeply international roots. Each week, we will tease out the international character of Bollywood films by pairing an Indian film with a related film from world cinema. For example, we will place the gangster film Nayagan alongside The Godfather, the Curry Western Sholay alongside the Spaghetti Western The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and Raj Kapoor’s Awaara alongside Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp. This film course will generally require viewing two films a week (available on Amazon, Netflix, and in Green library reserve). Class time will be devoted to an in-depth exploration of nine primary films, each representative of a distinct phase in post-independence Indian film history.Bulbul Tiwari, Post-doctoral Fellow, Introduction to the Humanitites program
Bulbul Tiwari has taught courses on film, South Asian intellectual history, and Hinduism. Outside her academic work, Tiwari has written and directed plays, made films, and designed websites. She received a BA in comparative literature from Harvard and a PhD in South Asian Studies from the University of Chicago.
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23 comments:
Thanks to the cultural hegemony of the Hindi or North Indian people, the term Bollywood has come to represent the Indian cinema, denying any space for the regional cinema forms, although put together the latter is far ahead of Bollywood both in quantity and quality. First they forced Hindi on all Indians as a compulsory language in schools and now whole of India is their market. Gradual disappearance of cultural diversity in India is also due to the same imperialism.
Well looks like we have another "dravidian" type crusader unaware of Indian language history and Hindi.
You will be shocked to learn sir that Hindi is not the mother tongue of those whom you ignorantly call as "Hindiwallahs". Outside of Delhi proper Hindi isn't the mother tongue of anyone. Their mother tongue's are Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Maithili, Braj and so on. Speaker of one may be hardpressed to understand the other much less speak the other language, hence they communicate in this tongue that naturally evolved for cross communication called Khariboli or Hindi. This was why Guru Nanak instead of writing in his mother tongue Panjabi used Khariboli. Modern Hindi descends from it and was popularized by Bharatendu Harishchandra a man from a Marwari family that was settled in Bengal for generations, it wasn't even his mother tongue. He was anguished when he heard that the Tilanga's (from Telangana) could hardly communicate with the Purbiya's (UP-Bihar) while fighting shoulder to shoulder against Brits in 1857 and saw the need for a common cross communication language.
Second many UP-Biharwallah's are with you in their opposition to Hindi shocking though it may be to you. The Muslims of course with their pan Islamist zeal for Urdu but also the Bhojpuri regionalists.
You are worried about Hindi "imperialism" eh but you seem to have no problem with English imperialism, are our Telugu people speaking Telugu these days or Tenglish?
Have you seen the dialogues in any of these Southern movies, half the words are in English.
Soon instead of singing "maa telugu thalliki malle poovu danda" they will start singing "our telugu mummyki jaasminu flavaru gaarlaandu".
By your logic Karnataka is about Kannada imperialism. Check the stats sir, only 65% or so have Kannada as their mother tongue but it is the state language. Tulu which is a full fledged language spoken by around 17 to 25 lakh people isn't even taught in schools, its script is almost extinct. Tulu is in fact older than either Kannada or Telugu. Kodava is another full fledged language spoken in Karnataka.
But somehow it is Hindi that gets your goat.
I can send much more detailed info about our language history including Hindi to Rajeev to post up if he wants.
To add to what I said.
You had Narayana Dasa whose background was Telugu writing parts of Bhaktamala in Khariboli.
Many of Shivaji's letters to Rajput kings when not in Farsi are in Khariboli aka Hindi NOT Marathi.
In 1857 the Maratha leader's like Lakshmi Bai, Tatya, and Nana Saheb would communicate with Marathi among themselves but what do you think they used to communicate with non Marathas, this same Khariboli the precussor to what we today call Hindi.
Well said Julian. Murthy doesn't care about Andhra imperialism in Hyderabad and the entire Telangana region.
The imposition of coastal Andhra culture on the entire state is suffocating. Even worse, is Tamil and Dravidian imperialism. You only need 2 Dravidian types to get together in a loud conversation. The imposition of Tamil on everyone else within earshot is unbearable. Isn't it ironic, then, that the brainwashed stealth christist Dravidians are the loudest in complaining about "Hindi imperialism".
Full disclosure - I am a "South Indian".
The following is taken from a post by Sarvesh Tiwariji the learned writer of the http://bharatendu.wordpress.com/:
"2. khaDI-bolI was not 'invented' 100 years back like you suggested. khaDI-bolI naturally evolved as a cross-communication language between people of different regions. Historically, predecessor of khaDI-bolI is in two sources - merchants and roaming mendicants, sAdhu-s. These two were communities which always had a pan-India character. traders of one region had to interact with those of the other, and likewise the sAdhu-s. (saMskR^ita was not a language known broadly by these two classes). The result? a people's language evolved somewhere not later than 8th century in the sAdhu community called 'sadhukkaDI-bolI', which would liberally use the words from any tongue but a unique framework which you would later find in Hindi. So, you have a roaming nAnaka, a Punjabi, speaking this language rather than his mother-tongue Punjabi. Why! you even had a sAdhu nArAyaNa-dAsa who is from telugu background composing parts of bhakta-mAla with khaDI-bolI influence, sometime during Akbar's reign. The earliest evidence of this sadhukkaDI/khaDI-bolI is seen in the works of sarahapAda or sarahapA, a vajrayAnist tantra-yogI of 8th century, who being a lecturer in nAlandA university composed text books upon tantra for students, completely in what we would today call HINDI, albeit an older form of it. He was not from any 'Hindi-heartland' - he was a native of kAmarUpa country (Assam).
Now, the traders...
3. While this sadhukkaDI was good enough for sAdhU-s, but Traders needed more sophistication for conducting negotiations and bargaining (although agreements and legal deeds would still be conducted in saMskRita). Therefore from Gupta period onwards, when trade was flourishing, they used to use a more polished language which was a mix of saMsKR^ita words with slight 'market-simplification' in a northern-prAkR^ita framework. this was a VERY important development, often ignored by our scholars. This was apabhraMsha tongue of old, now modified for currency, and 'Hindi' is whose most modern version -- by definition -- saMskR^ita along with deshaja words, in northern-prAkR^ita framework and a flexi-grammer. (check out jain text kuvalaya-mAlA which describes a scene of these traders from different parts of India conducting a trade). This, proto-Hindi, was the business language of India for centuries, which takes us to talk about apabhraMsha.
4. What is the place of this historic pan-India tongue apabhraMsha, the older version of Hindi? That of Common People's Pan-Bharata Interaction Language, while saMskR^ita the language of state and scholars. This is supported in mAnasollAsa, a great Hindu encyclopedia composed by the king someshvara deva the chAlukya, where he expresses that all over India there was a 4-fold linguistic system: 1) saMskR^ita 2) prAkR^ita 3) apabhraMsha and 4) desha-bhASha (regional language). Purposes? The first one as the languages of scientists, scholars, and state-affairs. second one, naturally developed traditional languages, like tamizh. Third language, apabraMsha, for pan-bhArata people-to-people communication of those not erudited in saMskR^ita. Fourth, diverse colloquial tounges."
Reasons for the downfall of Hindus?:
"Root Cause: Tribalism mentality, as the favourite poet of the founder of the hindavI swarAja, the biographer of shivAjI, bhUShaNa said about this idioticity of Hindus (writing NOT in marahaTTI by the way):
Apasa kI phUTa hI te sArA hinduvAna TUTai
phirai bhAga kumatike chakatAhU kI pisAnI me
Transl:
"Hindu Nation (HinduvAna) has fallen only for one reason - disunity of Hindus
The IDIOTS (he is using the epithet "kumati") only learn to turn when grinded in the mills of tyranny!!"
One hopes the "idiots" will learn this time, before the tyranny reaches its peak."
Continued as this is an important issue and there is widespread ignorance among otherwise knowledgable Hindus:
"Linguistically, my "stand" is simple. ONE language alone has never ever been able to, and can not be the "NATIONAL" language. That is a failed notion. It has never worked in written past, nor will it ever work in future. Yes caveat to that is, it does work in imperialist systems of the mlechCha and turuShka rule. Wherever these Moslem and Christian colonizers have gone, they have always destroyed the local language besides other custural assets. Islam does not let you say azan in any language other than the maru-paishAchika language. Even in a culturally-rich country like Iran, they have made a complete mess of the pehlavi and other languages by total arabization. Likewise in Sindh -- today you see the language written in arabic-derived script, and hear Urdu. In Kashmir, Kashmiri is not the state language it is Urdu. In Karnataka, Moslems demanded and received second status to Urdu -- what the hell have they to do with Urdu, they can not even speak it!! European christos have succesfully replaced or at least mutilated local languages of South America. Now it is so sad to hear Mehicans speak Espanol and not the language of their forefathers!!
So, threat to the survival of Indic Languages is from these two imperial cultural forces. and NOT from each other. With each other they have mixed and enriched one other since milleniums. No fear. This I can say with confidence, by having lived for several years in TN, Maha, and AP, and learnt the respective languages, and now living in Bengal and easily conversing in Bengali -- Awadhi is my mother tongue, and I make efforts to learn the "true" classical languages of our ancestors.
Now, it is an age old trait of certain ignorant and foolish draviDists subnationalists and marahaTTI subnationalists, to oppose all things federationalist and Indian. It is not just Hindi. They have opposed every thing that is not local to them, including each other. If it is even telugu or kannaDa to be spoken in chennai they would fight. If tamil is spoken in mumbai, mahraTTI subnationalists have problem. If the common language is supposed to be saMskR^ita, then too these morons would raise from their caves and oppose. In fact left to themselves, they are to be the first ones to demand secession from Indian Union. It is a peculiar trait of these two anti-nationalist breeds, next to the moslem indians. No wonder the karunanidhi and raj takkeray easily make for the bed fellows out of moslem fundoos. (and never speak a word against the truly imperial role of Urdu.)
Coming to the genuine misery of the Indian languages, particularly south Indian languages, more particularly tamizh. yes, the situation is not good at all. Far from flourishing these languages are declining.
1. Look at the school enrolment in tamizh and kannaDa medeum schools - kannaDa shows the sharpest decline together with malayAlam, and tamizh remains stagnant within respective states. But at the same time, which language is gaining ground that these languages are losing? of course Englsih, which shows a sharp rise in these states. Benchmark is that only Hindi, Marathi, and Telugu show a continued rise despite the English growth. (source http://schoolreportcards.in/Media/m66.html)
Last post, continuation of previous one:
2. Look at the readership of tamizh and kannaDa news papers. Refer to Indian Readership Survey (IRS) 2008 Round 2 (R2) results. tamizh as well as kannaDa and malayAlam show steep decline in readership. But is it that these people now read Hindi newspapers?
3. Refer to the quality itself of the language as spoken by the urban people, as measured in terms of linguistic purity, usage of idioms, diversity of terms, phrases and overall richness of the fluent language. This is a serious issue afflicting ALL the Indic languages more or less including also Hindi. Indic youth can hardly speak his own mother tongue propoerly.
4. Quality and amount of literature produced. Is also sharply declining. Primarily for the same reason that now the literary talent is migrating to English. Look at bAnglA which in my opinion was always ahead of other languages in amount and quality of literary output. Now Bangalis are growingly taking English reading and writing, which may not be bad, but indeed at the COST of their own language, which is dreadful to me.
So, yes India languages face a serious threat. But is the decline because of Hindi being the state language??? I suppose people are barking up the wrong tree.
The root cause is within ourselves. Why do we not learn and propogate our languages to ourselves and our children? Why do we not learn classical languages that always inform us about the linguistic roots -- languages like prAkR^ita-s and saMskR^ita?
But can you expect an egoistic and ignorant subnationalist to worry about these? He is busy fighting the windmills of "Hindhi"!
Julian - to highlight your own ignorance, Tulu never had any script! It is a dialect of Kannada! Get your history of Indian languages right. It is just not enough if you say Tulu predates Kannada. Give us the dates! Kannada is a clasical language and derives mostly from Sanskrit. It is "undravidian", hence. Now Kodava language - another Kannada dialect being passed off as a language by ignorants or anti-kannada people like you! BTW, are you a maharashtrian or a Tamilian? Why don't you mind your own "language"?
I thought Mr.Murthy grouse here was about the lie of Bollywood representing Indian cinema which it does'nt.. Bollywood represents Hindi cinema.Period..
Indian cinema is much more broad, rich and varied in nature...
I dont see the need to hyperventilate on Hindi here..
Hindi imperialism, Tamil(a.k.a Dravidian) imperialism or any imperialism for that matter is wrong...
Anybody who mentions Hindi and Hindi culture being rammed down the throat in the rest of the country is not automatically some Dravidian (Xtian imperialist) and what not..
I am originally from coastal Andhra and have been resident in Telangana for more than 45 years (like KCR). I lost one year of education in 1969 during the previous Telangana agitation. I feel in retrospect that separation should have been done then itself. I would like to see Andhra Pradesh united but personally I have no problem with a separate Telangana state. In fact, I want an early resolution of this problem.
KK: I suggest you don’t put words in my mouth. I never stated whether I care or don’t care about Andhra imperialism.
Imperialism is bad in any form and certainly I am against Andhra imperialism if indeed it exists. This is a highly subjective issue and certainly this is not the forum for discussions on this topic.
The decline in cultural diversity especially in South India is an established fact and I have seen this happening during 62 years of my life.
There is no 'coastal andhra' culture in hyd. Hyd culture is a mixture of Telugu(all varieties) along with Urdu.
B.t.w destroying those statues of Telugu Heroes like Annamaya, Ramadas etc was despicable.
Spoken by an Indian first. Teluguite second and Telanganaite third.
Thanks Julian. I hate Hindi movies only because they aren't that many good ones. I will watch a movie in any language as long as it is good and subtitled in a language I can understand. I loved the name "Bulbul" tiwari..so "bollywood" type name.
Murthy Chebolu Garu, No disrespect intended. I agree that Bollywood does not necessarily represent all of Indian cinema. However, it was you who started ranting against "Hindi imperialism", which is quite illogical - because most of Bollywood speaks a bastard tongue, i.e. Urdu and *not*
Hindi. Secondly, Andhra imperialism in Telangana is real.
I do find it reprehensible that some lumpen elements destroyed statues of Krishnadevaraya, Annamacharya etc recently in the Telangana agitation. This was unpardonable, given that without these figures, there would have been no
Andhra, no Telangana or even a Karnataka today. They were a bulwark against Islamic expansion in the Deccan.
If at all any statues need to be destroyed, they would be of
Chacha Nehru & dynasty, Mohandas Ghandy, Potti Sriramulu, Samuel Reddy (YSR).
Murthy Chebolu garu, why did you start ranting against "Hindi imperialism" and "North Indian hegemony"?
Is it your contention that Andhra movies constitute a great art form? One look at the rabid Christists like Jaya Sudha,
the sheer vulgarity of a fat, uncouth fellow like Chieanjeevi dancing with a girl less than half his age - would leave even a neutral observer disgusted. Andhra movies also eulogise hideous monstrosities like "Mother Theresa" and
Yesu and the secularist cult. This has contributed to the conversion from Coastal to Pentecostal !!
I don't understand why KCR is licking Muslim asses on a daily basis, promising them reservations and what not. I don't understand why BJP and ABVP are tolerating this jerk, even trying to woo him.
Bollywood IS INDIA'S MOST MORONIC EXPORT - Murthy Chebolu is not the first one to say this. I can't help noticing that most pro-Telangana folks are showing the willingness to lick north Indian and Muslim asses to protest "Andhra Hegemony".
Agreed that Bollywood is moronic. Also that KCR is an opportunistic and dishonest politico, begging for Muslim support - which he isn't getting. Who said KCR is synonymous with the larger cause of Telangana? Who said the BJP is cerebral and intelligent when it comes to pursuing Hindu objectives? They have proven repeatedly that they are not. On the other hand, it is silly to attribute
"Hindi imperialism" to Bollywood. That would be barking up the wrong tree. Bollywood is guilty of Urdu imperialism.
Tamil & Andhra filmdom is as moronic as Bollywood, BTW.
It is a pity that people do not appreciate this distinction.
Apparently, the Dravidian Neanderthals have successfully implanted hatred of Hindi, Brahmin, North Indian in the sub-consciousness of many otherwise well intentioned individuals. Bollywood is quite deserving of derision, but it is unreasonable to translate that to *Hindi*.
What do Azam Khan, Zafaryab Gilani, Karunanidhi & TR Baalu share in common? These Urdu/Muslim & Tamil/Dravidian christist zealots are bound by a hatred of alleged "Hindi imperialism", because they identify Hindi with
Sanskrit and Hinduism, which they ultimately intend to destroy in its homeland.
"Bollywood IS INDIA'S MOST MORONIC EXPORT - Murthy Chebolu is not the first one to say this."
Read what he said instead of selective reading, he was going on about "North Indian people".
Most Bollywood movies use language closer to Urdu not Hindi and Hindi is not the mother tongue of most North Indian's. They have their own languages which they speak at home but communicate in Hindi when say an Awadhi speaker meets someone who speaks Maithili.
"Julian - to highlight your own ignorance, Tulu never had any script! It is a dialect of Kannada! Get your history of Indian languages right."
Kannada chauvunism at its finest.
Even a cursory google search would have prevented this embarassment for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulu_script
Tulu is a "dialect" of Kannada says who?
Kannada chauvunists like you?
Tulu is a full fledged language and so is Kodava.
This is akin Tamizh fanatics claiming that Malayalam is just a dialect of Tamizh.
What made you think I am Tamizh or Maratha?
Oh right your Kannada chauvunist mind cannot stand these two communities the same way Tamizh fanatics have a problem with Telugu or Kannada.
You don't even know that Tulu had a script of its own or that any competent linguist considers it a language on its own not "dialect" as you patronisingly call it.
I suggest you read before spewing nonsense, your contribution on this blog as far as I can remember has been zilch so far but see how quick you were to react to this, that too with stupid Kannada chauvunist propaganda.
I am supposed to give you "dates" huh, no spoon feeding fellow now you go out and do a little reading on your own for a change. You are such an imbecile (if you make up such blatant lies then you deserve such labels) that you think Tulu had no script or that its a "dialect" of Kannada, if someone a little more worthy had asked me I would have done so.
Hollywood? Bollywood? Kollywood? Mollywood? Who came up with these names? They ought to be taken to the woodshed and given some wood! How unimaginative!
As for a unifying language for desis, it can only be Sanskrit, for obvious reasons. Hindi is a pretender best ignored by those who don't care for it, mostly promoted by psecs who I believe are loathed in this forum. "Rashtra ki ek bhasha, RashtraBhasha kabi nahin" is what I always say wrt to Hindi.
Has anyone noticed a recent trend in Indian movies - overt and covert promotion of christianity? I can point to two movies "Gopi, Gopika, Godavari" in Telugu, and "Naan Kadavul" in Tamil. There maybe others, but I am not an avid movie fan. The christian influence on ther makers of Gopi, Gopika, Godavari is obvious. In Naan Kadavul, the movie turns from one painting a particular group of Hindus in a bad light, to one painting ALL Hindus in a bad light, in a blink and you miss it scene - the one where the heroine is approached by a nun offering relief from all her problems, problems obviously caused by Hindu madmen.
For Telugu movie fans, what's with all these portrayals of the migthy Godavari? Are the moviemakers not aware that a couple of more projects on the Godavari, and it will dry up like the Cauvery! I suspect there will not be any water to even wash one's feet when visiting Bhadrachalam.
If I remember correctly many Universities of repute suffered greater cuts during and after the economic downturn; research grants were cut even for core research fields in Science.
I wonder how and when Stanford / Harvard (and some Universities across the Atlantic that indulge in 'degrees' like 'Media Studies') did they lose the plot and continue to indulge in courses like 'Film Studies'?
Sujeev agreed on Sanskrit but with all due respect I suggest you study our history a bit more carefully and I doubt you have much idea of Hindi history to say that it was promoted by p-secs.
On the contrary it was bitterly opposed by most of them them ever since its modernization under Bharatendu, they wanted Urdu. Subhash Bose himself was one of these p-secs, check:
http://bharatendu.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/subhas-chanda-bose-2/
khaDI-bolI/Hindi naturally evolved as a cross-communication language between people of different regions. Historically, predecessor of khaDI-bolI is in two sources - merchants and roaming mendicants, sAdhu-s. These two were communities which always had a pan-India character. Traders of one region had to interact with those of the other, and likewise the sAdhu-s. (saMskR^ita was not a language known broadly by these two classes). The result? a people's language evolved somewhere not later than 8th century in the sAdhu community called 'sadhukkaDI-bolI', which would liberally use the words from any tongue but a unique framework which you would later find in Hindi. So, you have a roaming nAnaka, a Punjabi, speaking this language rather than his mother-tongue Punjabi. Why! you even had a sAdhu nArAyaNa-dAsa who is from telugu background composing parts of bhakta-mAla with khaDI-bolI influence, sometime during Akbar's reign. The earliest evidence of this sadhukkaDI/khaDI-bolI is seen in the works of sarahapAda or sarahapA, a vajrayAnist tantra-yogI of 8th century, who being a lecturer in nAlandA university composed text books upon tantra for students, completely in what we would today call HINDI, albeit an older form of it. He was not from any 'Hindi-heartland' - he was a native of kAmarUpa country (Assam). While this sadhukkaDI was good enough for sAdhU-s, but Traders needed more sophistication for conducting negotiations and bargaining (although agreements and legal deeds would still be conducted in saMskRita). Therefore from Gupta period onwards, when trade was flourishing, they used to use a more polished language which was a mix of saMsKR^ita words with slight 'market-simplification' in a northern-prAkR^ita framework. This was a VERY important development, often ignored by our scholars. This was apabhraMsha tongue of old, now modified for currency, and 'Hindi' is whose most modern version -- by definition -- saMskR^ita along with deshaja words, in northern-prAkR^ita framework and a flexi-grammer. (check out jain text kuvalaya-mAlA which describes a scene of these traders from different parts of India conducting a trade). This, proto-Hindi, was the business language of India for centuries, which takes us to talk about apabhraMsha.
What is the place of this historic pan-India tongue apabhraMsha, the older version of Hindi? That of Common People's Pan-Bharata Interaction Language, while saMskR^ita the language of state and scholars. This is supported in mAnasollAsa, a great Hindu encyclopedia composed by the king someshvara deva the chAlukya, where he expresses that all over India there was a 4-fold linguistic system: 1) saMskR^ita 2) prAkR^ita 3) apabhraMsha and 4) desha-bhASha (regional language). Purposes? The first one as the languages of scientists, scholars, and state-affairs. second one, naturally developed traditional languages, like tamizh. Third language, apabraMsha, for pan-bhArata people-to-people communication of those not erudited in saMskR^ita. Fourth, diverse colloquial tounges. With that, let us trace the place of Hindi -
In today's word, English has replaced saMskR^ita, sad yet true. That is the language of scholars and scientists, and practically, of state too. prAkR^ita and desha-bhAShA-s have merged together into what we today have as our regional languages from marahaTTI to telugu and panjAbI to assamiA and awadhI to kannaDa. That leaves us with apabhraMsha, which is what has developed into Hindi.
julian, i appreciate the details you have posted here. obviously you have a lot of knowledge about this. why don't you write it up and make an article out of it?
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