Page 285 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

emergence of new social groups in India. Since the 1970s the middle classes have
expanded rapidly, while the “new middle classes” (Dwyer 2000a, chapter 3) have
bene¤ted greatly from the economic liberalization of 1991. Many supporters of
Hindutva have emerged from this group, which also generates much of India’s
public culture, both as producers and consumers of television and ¤lm. They
can be contrasted with India’s “old middle classes” or the professional, national
bourgeoisie, who deplore this new group’s cultural products, which it attacks in
the cultural spheres it controls (most educational institutions, the press, and
censor boards), and who, on the whole, espouse secular democracy and reject
Hindutva.
Film is a major arena of contestation between the two groups, highlighting
the difference in their cultural tastes and values. Cinema in India has highly
segmented audiences (Dwyer and Patel 2002, 21–22), with the old middle
classes being associated with realist cinema, including the “art” cinema of
Satyajit Ray et al. and new cinemas that emerged during the 1970s, with the
state-sponsored “parallel cinema.” The new middle classes largely ignore these
forms, preferring popular Hindi cinema, a taste shared by other social groups
with less economic and educational capital, which the old middle classes regard
as commercial, crass, and vulgar. The new middle classes respond in kind, such
as in the Hindi ¤lm’s caricatures of Congress politicians. 6
It would be surprising if the Hindi ¤lms from the 1990s on, produced and
consumed by the new middle classes, did not manifest Hindutva ideology, just
as nationalist and Nehruvian ideologies dominated earlier ¤lms. Indeed, the old
middle classes argue strongly that cinema is in thrall to Hindutva, while the new
middle classes often regard them as espousing only “Indian values” (Dwyer
2000b). Distinguishing between these two positions is complex, as both include
religiosity (mostly Hindu) and patriotism. Certain images would identify Hin-
dutva clearly (see below), but otherwise the two sets of values can be hard to
separate because they are strikingly similar in “real life” as well as in ¤lm. This
is partly because, although India remains constitutionally secular, practices and
symbols of Hinduism remain central to the nation’s culture as India’s popula-
tion is overwhelmingly Hindu, comprising around 800 million Hindus, and
Hindu representations continue to dominate by default supposedly secular in-
stitutions. 7
This chapter examines the Hindi cinema of the 1990s and, in particular, how
religion, culture, and politics are imagined in production, ¤lm texts, stars, and
the audience. Saffron, long regarded as an auspicious color in Hinduism, is one
of the colors of the national ®ag of the secular Indian state, where it is popularly
believed to represent the Hindus of India, whereas the green element is that of
Islam. The “saffron ®ag” has now come to represent Hindutva, although it is
also a sign of wider Hindu practices. This chapter examines the question of
whether these ¤lms are showing signs of Hindutva or whether, as with the saf-
fron ®ag, general signs of Hindu practices and beliefs are misattributed to mili-
tant forms of Hindu nationalism, including Hindutva.

274 Rachel Dwyer