Current Research

Epic Bollywood: Religion and Representation in Modern Indian Cinema

Epic Bollywood: Religion and Representation in Modern India Cinema is about one of the most popular ways to tell stories in India and two of India’s most popular stories: film, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata. India is the largest producer of movies in the world with over one thousand films being released every single year. The country boasts several different film industries including Bollywood, India’s immensely popular Hindi movie industry based in Mumbai. And for over a thousand years, the stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata have captivated the hearts and minds of the people of South Asia. While the oldest iterations of these narratives are two ancient Sanskrit epic poems attributed to caste-privileged Hindu sages, retellings of the epics have also been created by Buddhists, Jains, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Zoroastrians, and members of caste-oppressed communities including Dalits (those sometimes derogatorily described as “Untouchables”) and Adivasi (Indigenous) people. There are innumerable Ramayanas and Mahabharatas from the realms of literature, poetry, theater, music, dance, and visual arts.

Epic Bollywood is a study of films that draw heavily from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata narrative traditions. In this book, I focus on Ramayana and Mahabharata movies that were created from 1990 onwards. While most of the films I analyze are Bollywood movies, I also explore Bengali, English, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu films as well as movies produced outside of India. Along with closely examining over forty different films, I investigate how these movies were received by general audiences and film critics in India and abroad.

Films I examine in Epic Bollywood include: Thalapathi (1991), Khal Nayak (1993), Karan Arjun (1995), Fire (1996), Hum Saath-Saath Hain (1999), Hey Ram (2000), Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001), Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham...(2001), Lajja (2001), Pinjar (2003), Main Hoon Na (2004), Swades: We, the People (2004), Eklavya: The Royal Guard (2007), Raajneeti (2010), Raavan (2010), Raavanan (2010), Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish (2012), Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (2015), Kaala (2018), Kalank (2019), Kurukshetra (2019), Karnan (2021), Sita Ramam (2022), RRR (2022), Gadar 2 (2023), Paradise (2023), Adipurush (2023), Hanu-Man (2024), Kalki 2898 AD (2024), Monkey Man (2024), and Singham Again (2024).