Page 167 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

154 << Diasporic Entrepreneurs and Digital Media

and Los Angeles. However, I would argue that for diasporic media produc-
ers, preliberalization Bombay had no specificity either as a “switching point”
for capital or as a center of media production capable of and/or interested
in mediating the experience of migration and diaspora. It is this dynamic
that changed in significant ways as India embarked on a program of eco-
nomic liberalization during the late 1980s and early 1990s. As I have outlined
in previous chapters, three interrelated shifts and emergences defined this
sociohistorical conjuncture: the growing cultural, political, and economic
influence of the Indian diaspora on different spheres of life in India and con-
versely, the growing influence of Indian media in the diaspora; the transfor-
mation of film, television, and advertising industries in cities like Bombay,
Chennai, and Hyderabad with the entry and establishment of transnational
media corporations; and the state’s creative responses and efforts to refigure
its relationship with both the Indian diaspora and the media industries. How
have these shifts reconfigured the field for diasporic media production and
circulation?
To begin with, several scholars have argued that Bollywood films played
a major role in mediating the newfound centrality of the diaspora, particu-
larly the late modern, “first world” diaspora, to India’s navigation of a global
economy. As I detailed earlier in this book, films such as Dilwale Dulha-
nia Le Jayenge (DDLJ, Aditya Chopra, 1995), Pardes (1997, Subhash Ghai),
and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (K3G, Karan Johar, 2001), which resonated
strongly with viewers in India and abroad and count among the most suc-
cessful films of the 2000–10 decade, began exploring the cultural space of
Non-Resident Indians in new ways. By exploring and cautiously legitimiz-
ing the cultural space of Indian life in the diaspora, films like K3G rendered
the diaspora’s version of Indianness less transgressive or impure and a more
acceptable variant, and in doing so set the stage for the state to reterritori-
alize Non-Resident Indians and remap the sociocultural boundaries of the
“national family.” Moreover, as Sujata Moorti has shown, such narrative strat-
egies whereby “India and Indians . . . imaginatively accommodated the dias-
pora, encompassing it within the folds of a globalized Indian identity,” can
also be traced in popular magazines and prime-time television programs. 15
Further, when we examine these representational shifts alongside significant
institutional and industrial changes, including the emergence of influential
television companies like ZEE, Sony, STAR, and Sahara One that have also
established themselves in diasporic markets since 2000, it becomes clear that
diasporic media producers have to negotiate and grapple with the challenges
and opportunities that the growing influence of Bombay-based media cor-
porations present.