Indian Cinema and Modern Hinduism

Abstract

This chapter looks at how issues of modernity and Hinduism have been treated in a key modern medium: film. Chatterjee looks closely at several important Indian films that all reveal changing ideas on the place of Hinduism in modern India. Several of these films are historical. For instance, Rammohun Roy, the subject of Killingley’s chapter, is the hero in the 1965 film bearing his name. It shows the reformer as an enlightened man fighting social ills, insisting that Hinduism should exist peacefully with Islam. According to Chatterjee, the portrayal also glosses over several other, and important, aspects of his life. The social and religious movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries inspired a large body of Indian films in the early decades of Indian cinema, and these are one of the main foci of Chatterjee’s chapter.