Bhakti in Bollywood

Hindi Cinema – One of India’s most popular arts, and greatest exports• More films than any other industry• Twice as many tickets as America• A major export• A political player

The Bollywood CritiqueThe Demonisation of Sentiment &

the Infantilisation of the Imagination

• I and my friend forced ourselves to sit till the end of the movie in West Palm Beach, Florida. It was an embarrassment and a relief to watch people walk out of the theatre all the time. The crowd was very displeased and did not hide their disappointment. There was jeering, mock clapping and whistles at the intermission. I was completely with the crowd though I did not jeer and whistle.

• the settings were made for a Dracula movie. What was the director hiding? Why did he go for unrealistic settings with lighted torches instead of showing the town of those days? The first reaction of the audience to Shah Rukh Khan's entry in a suit and hat was Charlie Chaplin!!

Emotion, Unrealism, and Repetition

• The western artistic ideal for narrative arts, since the modern development of the novel, has been that it should be – Realistic– Original– Critical of ‘happy’ polemical ideologies that make us

content with our lot

1. Greek Mimesis and Catharsis – the Imitation of Reality2. Marxist Critical Theory – liberation comes from

disillusionment and tearing away the fantasies

Art in another Cultural Matrix

• Like other cultures, India’s arts have their own distinctive history….

Film scholarship has rarely taken Bollywood seriously. Arguably this holds for Indian commentators as much as Westerm ones. More recently scholars (such as those referenced in this chapter) have tried to analyse the origins of Hindi cinema’s distinctive character, its representational strategies, and its implication in India’s national identity. (Melanie Wright)

“I would not wish to change my style of filmmaking to try to cater to the West. It has to be accepted the way it is.” Sanjay Leela Bhansali, (cited on cbsnews, copyright reuters in reference to Cannes 2002, Devdas)

Art in another Cultural Matrix

• Like other cultures, India’s arts have their own distinctive history….– Epic poetry has remained a more prominent

template for narrative arts – rather, for instance than the pre-eminence of the novel as ‘the’ pre-cinematic art.

Drama remains key: Chidanand Das Gupta in The Painted Face 1991 points to the theatrical heritage of India

Art in another Cultural Matrix

• Like other cultures, India’s arts have their own distinctive history….– Epic poetry has remained a more prominent template

for narrative arts – rather, for instance than the pre-eminence of the novel as ‘the’ pre-cinematic art.

– The popular arts of Bhajan and of Ornamentation influence Hindi cinema.

Geeta Kapur (1987) points to: forms of direct address: flat, diagrammatic and simply profiled figures; a figure-ground pattern with notational perspective; repetition of motifs in terms of ritual play; and a decorative mis-en-scene…

Art in another Cultural Matrix

• Like other cultures, India’s arts have their own distinctive history….

• Epic poetry has remained a more prominent template for narrative arts – rather, for instance than the pre-eminence of the novel as ‘the’ pre-cinematic art.

• At the popular level one of the most popular verbal arts is the sung arts of Bhajan and devotional poetry, as well as Persian poetics.

• India also has its own very different tradition of aesthetics, its own PHILOSOPHY of the arts.

Revisiting Emotion

• The Speciality of the Connoisseur…• The Basis of Social Struggle and Reform…• The Uniting Force…• A Heightened State of Humanity…

Bharata’s Natya Sastra

• Rati – śṛngāra-rasa (desire – passionate) (longing?)

• Krodha – raudra-rasa (anger – furious) (rage-filled, incensed)

• Vīra – utsāha-rasa (courage – heroic)• Jugupsā – bībhatsa-rasa (disgust – disgusted?)• Hāsa – hāsya-rasa (comical – humorous)• Śoka – karuṇa-rasa (sorrow – com-passion)• Vismaya – adbhuta-rasa (wonder – marvellous)• Bhaya – bhayānaka-rasa (fear – fearful)

Bhoja’s Theory of Rasa

• Rasa is different from the normal emotions: It is…• ‘Otherworldly’ (alaukika)

• Full of ‘wonder’ (camatkāra)

• ‘Uniting’ (sādhārāṇi-kṛti)

A Spiritual Stateor a Secular Spirituality?

• The later aesthetic theorists agree that it is not – Dhvani – the suggestion of constructed reality……but…– Rasa – emotional sensitisation and response to the

significance of situations, that is the goal of the arts• It is otherworldly and sublime, and unites us all• The Bhakti theologians of various traditions

take up this idea in a religious context and realise it on a popular scale…

Bhakti Art & Emotion

Abhinavagupta

• Santa-Rasa, the peaceful emotion is the goal…

Rupa Gosvami

• Srngara-Rasa, • the passionate

emotion is the goal

Bhakti Drama• 'The gopîs thus hearing the words of Govinda unpleasant to them felt,

dejected of being disappointed in their strong desires, an anxiety hard to overcome. (29) Letting their faces hang down in sorrow and their bimba-red lips dry up sighing, stood they scratching the ground and bore they, with their tears spoiling their make-up and washing away the kunkuma on their breasts, silently the burden of their great distress…

• One, with frowning eyebrows biting her lips was, beside herself in her love of God, agitated throwing sidelong looks like she would do something to Him. (7) Another one [said to be Râdhâ] with staring eyes relishing His lotus face could, although having the full taste, just like saints meditating on His feet, not get enough. (8) One of them, placed Him through the openings of her eyes in her heart and kept on embracing Him there with her eyes closed, while her hairs stood on end being drowned in ecstasy as if she was a yogi. []

Bhakti PoetryAnybody can attain the Supreme by just surrendering unto My will with loving devotion, O Arjuna. Bhagavad Gita 9.33

He bartered my heartlooted my flesh,claimed as tributemy pleasure,took overall of me.

I'm the woman of lovefor my lord, white as jasmine

It was like a streamrunning into the dry bedof a lake,like rainpouring on plantsparched to sticks.It was like this world's pleasureand the path to the other world,bothwalking towards me.

Even in seeing the feet of my masterThe lord white as jasmine,I was madeworthwhile.

Mahadevi Akka

Even Deities Need Emotional Catharsis

• 1 One day in Mathura Lord Krsna was sitting on a throne in His Palace. As He looked out He could see the flowers had started to bloom and new leaves were sprouting on the trees. He thought to Himself that Mathura looks like a new bride. As He was appreciating that sweet scene, the remembrance of His Vrndavana pastimes bloomed in His heart.

• • 2 Thereafter Lord Krsna due to the sudden remembrance of His Vrndavana pastimes

started to breathe very heavily and the lotus garland around His neck began to shake. As Krsna remembered His amazing pastimes with the Vraja gopis, incessant tears flowed from His eyes. Due to His being unable to enjoy those pastimes again He became stunned and looked like a painted picture.

• • 3 Then Lord Krsna thought for a moment how to cross to the other shore of that ocean

ofdistress and proceeded up to the jewel-studded roof of the palace. Seeing that Uddhava had come close to Him, He wished to reveal His heart to him but due to feelings of love no words were able to come.

• From the Uddhava Sandesa of Rupa Gosvami

Genre, Repetition and becoming ‘sa-hrdaya’

• decisive or foundational texts that get endlessly rewritten, though not necessarily endorsed. They are critiqued, their values are challenged, their structures destabilised or even parodied, but they remain foundational nevertheless… The literary evidence everywhere demonstrates a delight in mixed forms, a kind of restless generic permutation – “what is not here is nowhere to be found”. (4-5)

• Viyay Mishra, Temples of Desire

Hrda – the ‘heart-mind’

4 Bollywood case studies

• Devdas• Lagaan• Jodha Akbar• Mohabbatein

A Modern Art of Rasa

Devdas: God as Passionate Lover

Early Realism

From Bimal Roy’s 1955 Devdas

Set, spectacle and colour saturation

Detail, Pattern and Texture

Saturated scenarios

Ramprasad Sen: Bhakti and Suffering

• Does suffering scare me? O Mother,Let me suffer in this world. Do I require more?Suffering runs ahead of me and runs after me.I carry it on my head and set up a standIn the bazaar to peddle it.I’m a poison worm, I thrive on poison.I carry it wherever I go.

Bhakti as the Basis of Rebellion and Justice

Empathy: Shared Emotion as Social Union

Mohabbatein: Bhakti as Natural Ethics and Youth Rebellion