The cinematic imagiNation: Indian popular films as social history

TLDR

India produces the most films worldwide, which are widely consumed by non‑Western cultures and diaspora communities, and as a storytelling medium it chronicles social history and cultural politics, using the family as a national symbol. The study examines how this dominant media shapes post‑Independence Hindi cinema. The author analyzes about 30 Hindi films from 1950 onward to show how national concepts center the cinema's moral universe. The analysis reveals that Hindi films’ portrayal of the nation as a mythical community collapses under contradictions across gender, sexuality, family, class, and religion.

Abstract

India produces more films than any other country in the world and these works are consumed by non-Western cultures in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and by the Indian communities across the world. This text focuses on how such a dominant media configures the in post-Independence Hindi cinema. The author scrutinizes approxiamtely 30 films that have appeared since 1950 and demonstrates how concepts of the nation centre this cinema's moral universe. As a form of storytelling, Indian cinema provides an account of social history and cultural politics, with the family deployed as a symbol of the nation. Virdi demonstrates how Hindi films' portrayal of the nation as a mythical community collapses under the weight of its own contradictions - irreconcilable differences that encompass gender, sexuality, family, class and religious communities.