Book review: Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram,India’s New Independent Cinema: The Rise of the Hybrid

In the last two decades, popular Hindi/Bombay Cinema has experienced rapid industrial and infrastructural corporatisation which has led to significant changes in production, distribution and exhibition. Intersecting with a period of intense globalisation, rapid and uneven urbanisation, and a proliferation of media and communication technologies, these industrial and infrastructural changes have also had a profound impact on film content. Scholars like Tejaswini Ganti (2012) have argued that the Bombay film industry’s neoliberal restructuring and gentrification have entirely transformed popular cinema’s social status among the elite, globalised middle classes both at home and in the diaspora. Aided and supported by the Indian state, directors, producers and actors now consciously perform and propagate Bollywood’s transnational cultural and social capital, thereby avowedly moving away from earlier industry associations with ‘kitsch’ and ‘low-brow’ mass entertainment. Others such as Adrian Athique and Doughlas Hill (2010) have looked at the rapid rise of the Indian multiplex as a direct consequence of the economic restructuring and corporate control of the film industry, along with a reorganisation of leisure that emphasises certain modes of living (and consuming films) over others. In terms of film content, we have seen the emergence of a host of films (typically those directed by Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Navdeep Singh and so on) which deviate from the melodramatic commercial fare usually associated with popular Hindi cinema. This new hatke (different) film is supported by the nexus of a corporate industry conscious of its newfound cultural capital, the multiplexes and the country’s globalised middle-class urban audiences.

Devasundaram’s book looks at recent films such as Gandu (2010), Dhobi Ghat (2010), Peepli Live (2010), The Lunchbox (2013), Harud (2010), I Am (2010), Ship of Thesues (2013) and Haider (2014) all of which he terms as belonging to India’s ‘New Wave independent cinema’ or the Indian indie (terms used interchangeably by the author). With the exception of the Bengali film Gandu, the rest are Hindi–Urdu films. The author states that the new indies (p. 5) ‘combine a universal aesthetic with locally specific stories, circumventing ubiquitous Bollywood “song and dance” sequences and stereotypical storylines’. Devasundaram traces the historical lineage of the contemporary indie to the following periods and directors: post-independence Hindi and Bengali cinema (Bimal Ray, Guru Dutt, Satyajit Ray), the parallel cinema of the 1960s and 1970s (Mrinal Sen, M. S. Sathyu, Shyam Benegal) and middle cinema of the same period (Basu Chatterjee, Gulzar, Hrishikesh Mukherjee) along with the Hinglish films of the early 1990s (Aparna Sen, Dev Benegal, Homi Adajania). Finally, what the author terms as the ‘Hybrid Mutant’ or the Indian indie emerges post 2010—it includes films such as LSD (Banerjee, 2010), Gangs of Wasseypur (Kashyap, 2012) and Paan Singh Tomar (Dhulia, 2012). The new indies, therefore, may be characterised as films that juxtapose social realism with entertainment and have become a full blown ‘New Wave’ post 2010 (p. 72).

Other significant characteristics of the Indian indie in terms of content include a focus on the marginalised sections of society and a questioning of the imaginative cohesion of the Indian nation state. The author argues that the indie occupies a middle space between the two dominant traditions of Indian cinema at large, Bollywood and Parallel arthouse. The bilingual or trilingual nature of some of these new indies is also delineated as a distinctive characteristic. Devasundaram argues (pp. 65–67) that what distinguishes these indies from ‘regional’ language or ‘vernacular’ films are that they ‘transcend the borders of state and region’ and are available to ‘national audiences’ through DVDs, multiplexes and film festivals—thereby also marking them as a predominantly urban phenomena.

In the Introduction, the author decries the majoritarian bias in Indian film scholarship and states, ‘In general, academic engagement largely continues to either perpetuate the dichotomy of Bollywood/Parallel, or nostalgically recall the hoary historical achievements in a unilinear, uncritical and often mythologized construction of Indian cinema historiography’ (p. 3). The author’s mission is to rectify this ‘all-encompassing brand-building exercise of bolstering the myth and monolith of the nation’ (p. 3) in which are complicit the State, Brand Bollywood and a section of the Indian scholarship (for instance, Devasundaram cites right-wing writer Madhu Kishwar). According to the author, this monograph’s significant original contribution to the Indian film scholarship is an analysis of Bollywood’s ‘meta-hegemony’ across three facets. These include: (a) infrastructural, (b) ideological (a blend of various majoritarianisms such as neoliberalism, patriarchy and Hindutva along with stereotypical representations of women) and (c) its emergence as a cultural ‘soft power’. This chapter argues that the Indian State and Bollywood are hand in glove in propagating a unified ‘one-size-fits-all’ neoliberal national narrative.

In terms of the channels of distribution, funding and exhibition available to these new indies, the author outlines their contradictory reliance on Bollywood producers, stars and corporate production houses for survival. He also highlights alternative channels used by Indie filmmakers to distribute and fund their projects such as foreign co-productions, social media, self-funding and crowdfunding, torrent downloads and so on, and their struggle to find spaces in the Bollywood-dominated urban multiplexes. In one of the chapters, the author discusses the indie’s struggles with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) and mentions films such as Amu (Bose, 2005) as well as documentaries such as The World Before Her (Pahuja, 2012) and Final Solution (Sharma, 2004). Here, Devasundaram observes that the indies with their overtly transgressive content and contestations of the national status quo will continue to strongly bear the brunt of censorship (p. 142), while the CBFC turns a blind eye to mainstream misogynistic narratives from mainstream Bollywood.

In a brief discussion on the similarities and differences that the Indian indie has with its American counterpart (pp. 72–74), Devasundaram argues that in terms of form and style (though not funding, distribution or content), there are some overlaps between the two. First, he points to the co-option of indie talents through studio alliances which exist in Hollywood are also prevalent in India—for instance, Peepli Live, Dhobi Ghat and Gangs of Wasseypur are all films with major Bollywood studio associations. In fact, the first two also benefitted from the mammoth star capital of Aamir Khan, as the author observes (p. 81), ‘the casting of Aamir Khan as a central character in Dhobi Ghat, reframes notions of the Indian Indie as an inviolable and clearly delineated segment in Indian cinema’. Second, there is a blurring of funding and production boundaries between Bollywood and the indies, where the former wants to now be associated with the latter’s symbolic capital. The author argues that this is similar to the scenario in Hollywood where the works of directors such as Paul Thomas Anderson and Spike Lee ‘exhibit an independent sensibility’ but are distributed by major studios. The book could have benefitted from a deeper engagement with the scholarly literature on the American indie. Especially relevant in this context is Michael Newman’s (2009, p. 17) argument that the contemporary indie is a self-contradictory category. While attempting to criticise the hegemony of mass culture and desiring to be an ‘authentic’ alternative to it, it ends up creating a ‘taste culture perpetuating the privilege of a social elite of upscale consumers’. As Newman points out, this opposition has always been at the heart of any ‘alternative’ cultural scene: From the Greenwich Village bohemia in the 1920s to the counterculture movements of the 1960s and 1970s—‘what is new about this alternative formation is how enmeshed it is within the dominant culture’.

While the book provides a plethora of information about the making and distribution of several fiction and documentary films in the last few years (differs from film to film), its classification of what exactly constitutes the New Wave Indian Independent Film requires further clarity. Devasundaram includes both fiction and documentary films in his discussions though his film chapters provide readings of only the former—this is an important gap. At times, the author acknowledges that the indie may in fact be a tenuous category, for instance, he asserts (p. 66), ‘the array of variables informing the production and distribution of these new indies makes it all the more unrealistic and inaccurate to try to compartmentalize these films into one undifferentiated block’. However, despite this acknowledgement, the author does not really problematise the categorisation and loosely applies it across a number films mentioned in passing as indies in different chapters through the book. These include an assortment of studio-funded or distributed Bombay films such as Vicky Donor (2012; Rising Sun Films, Eros Entertainment and John Abraham Entertainment), Madras Café (2013; Viacom 18) and Bombay Talkies (2013; Viacom 18), the aforementioned documentaries, along with self-funded films such as Amu (2005), Harud (2010) and Gandu (2010), crowdfunded ones like the Kannada Lucia (2013) and those produced by actors like the Malayalam Papilio Buddha (2013).

However, the author limits his textual analyses primarily to films from Bombay that have some form of studio funding, distribution or mainstream star capital. Though Gandu and Harud are, the only exceptions in terms of being produced and distributed outside the mainstream Bombay system, it leads one to question whether these two films should at all be included among the likes of Peepli Live, Dhobi Ghat, The Lunchbox, I Am, Ship of Theseus or Haider—all of which also had theatrical releases in urban multiplexes. For instance, Kiran Rao (quoted by the author, p. 80), director of Dhobi Ghat, and distributor of Ship of Theseus, makes clear, ‘there is currently no alternative to the mainstream structure. That’s where Dhobi Ghat was firmly situated—within the same distribution structure as other [Bollywood blockbuster] films of the day’. Following Rao’s declaration, can some of these films then at all be classified as ‘independent cinema’? To elucidate this point further, let us consider the author’s reading of Haider alongside Harud, which are contextually situated in the disputed territory of Kashmir. Harud was self-funded and directed by the relatively unknown Aamir Bashir. Haider was not only helmed by a major Bollywood studio (UTV Motion Pictures) and directed by Vishal Bharadwaj, it also had a star-studded cast of many popular Bollywood actors along with song-and-dance sequences. Even as a mainstream film, Haider was able to liberally merge a contemporary work of political non-fiction (Basharat Peer’s Curfewed Nights) with Shakespeare’s Hamlet and intersperse the narrative with the ghazals of the Pakistani revolutionary poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Therefore, we might consider the ‘indie’ as primarily a marketing term propagated by the industry itself? As Newman writing about the American indie astutely states (2009, p. 17), ‘today’s media conglomerates offer their own alternative to themselves, bringing in even those consumers who might be contemptuous of their very existence’.

Even if we were to move away from the industrial definitions of the indie and consider it as alternative aesthetic category alone, it is unclear how Devasundaram’s classification of the new Indian indies differs from what Ranjani Mazumdar has defined as the ‘urban fringe’ (2010, p. 156) in popular Bombay Cinema:

…an anti-genealogical, rhizomatic formation that is not easy to categorize but constantly surprises us with innovation and experimentation…. In the Urban Fringe, the epic scale of melodrama becomes small, the cavities are made starkly visible, friction is overwhelming, and the characters no longer need to be redeemed…. Experimenting with the morphology of vision, the Fringe pushes the possibility of ‘seeing’ through narrative and spatial journeys that appear unfamiliar in relation to the melodramatic form of popular cinema.

The author’s claims that mainstream Hindi Cinema is unified in its propagation of a monolithic neoliberal national narrative, while significant, may also be a bit overstated. Both historically and in the present, several films have questioned the ideas of a uniform national identity and exposed the cracks and anxieties that haunt the nation both while keeping within the generic conventions of popular Hindi–Urdu Cinema (Dil Se [Mani Ratnam, 1998], Fiza [Mohammad, 2000], Pinjar [2003], My Name is Khan [Johar, 2010], Kapoor and Sons [Batra, 2016], Raaes [Dholakia, 2017], Raazi [Gulzar, 2018]) and deviations from it (Dansh [Verma, 2005], Titli [Behl, 2014], NH10 [Singh, 2015], Pink [Chowdhury, 2016]). Several of these are helmed by big production companies and have tremendous star capital associated with them (Anushka Sharma, for instance, starred in and produced the slasher NH10). The book could have also benefitted from a larger discussion (though mentioned briefly in the conclusion) of the relationship between these alternative films and global and local digital entertainment platforms (where they are often housed) which are quickly precipitating a remapping of both linguistic-cultural audience regions in South Asia as well the form, genre and content of cinema and television. Ultimately, by primarily focusing on films from Bombay that deviate from mainstream aesthetics (thus presenting self-alternatives), the author unwittingly perpetuates the same hegemony in the politics of a majoritarian language, a national cinema and a singular all-powerful industry that he seeks to decry.