In other words, he concludes, these are “cultural” names, not religious ones. I do agree that the adoption of such Islamic/Quranic and Persian names is tied to the preservation of Muslim identity in India, but I do not think this should be a target of criticism. After all, one finds names like Kallicharan and Ramadhin among West Indian cricketers. This does not make them any less West Indian.
I should like to thank this eminent scholar and friend for his valuable contribution to the debate on this issue. More important, I agree that no Indian should feel obliged to take on elements of Hindu culture as “proof” of his or her own integration into the national mainstream. Equally, Hinduism can serve as a framework for the voluntary cultural assimilation of minority groups, if they want it. Yusuf Khan is no less Muslim because he chose the name Dilip Kumar to put on the marquee, and Shah Rukh Khan is no less Indian because he retained his Muslim name. In a country of such great cultural diversity, our names are, after all, one more tangible sign of the pluralism that is India's greatest strength.
Now if only Irfan Pathan, whose cricketing prowess fell away within a couple of years of his ascent to stardom, will recover his mojo for India….
6. Making Bollywood's India a Reality
TO ME, INDIAN FILMS, WITH ALL THEIR LIMITATIONS and outright idiocies, represent part of the hope for India's future. In a country that is still (whatever the official figures say) almost 40 percent illiterate, films represent the prime vehicle for the transmission of popular culture and values. Bollywood and its regional offshoots produce more than eight hundred films a year in nineteen languages and employ 2.5 million people, and their movies are watched over and over again by the Indian masses, especially those with few other affordable forms of entertainment.
In India, popular cinema emerges from, and has consistently reflected, the diversity of the pluralist community that makes this cinema. The stories they tell are often silly, the plots formulaic, the characterizations superficial, the action predictable, but they are made and watched by members of every community in India. Muslim actors play Hindu heroes, South Indian heroines are chased around trees by North Indian rogues. Representatives of some communities may be stereotyped (think of the number of alcoholic Christians portrayed on screen) but good and bad are always shown as being found in every community.
To take just one recent popular film: a Marathi-speaking “playback singer” records an Urdu poet's lyrics to the tune of a Tamil Muslim's music; her voice is then lip-synched by a Telugu actress, swaying to the choreography of a Goan Christian dance director, as she is romanced by a Punjabi superstar; the resulting film, produced by a Gujarati and directed by a Bengali, is then promoted by a Jewish public relations executive and watched by Indians of every imaginable caste, creed, cuisine, costume and consonant, from all over the country. Bollywood embodies the very idea of India's diversity in the very way in which it is organized.
But that alone is not enough. India's diversity is under assault: the twentieth-century politics of deprivation has eroded the culture's confidence, and the politics of bigotry, which once partitioned the country, have again arisen. Hindu chauvinism and other forms of communalism has emerged from the competition for resources in a contentious democracy. Politicians seek to mobilize voters by appealing to narrow identities; by seeking votes in the name of religion, caste, and region, they have urged voters to define themselves along these lines. Indians have been made more conscious than ever before of what divides us. When caste and religion elevate sectarianism to the level of public policy, it becomes more important to be a Muslim, a Bodo, or a Yadav than to be an Indian.
In this situation, films can — and do — play a vital role in keeping alive an idea of India that enshrines its diversity. Film is a more potent weapon than that used by the advocates of hatred. To take one example: in the film Zanjeer, a megahit of 1971, the character actor Pran played Badshah Khan, a red-bearded Pathan Muslim who exemplified the values of strength, fearlessness, loyalty, and courage. This was just a year after the bloody birth of Bangladesh in a war in which most of the subcontinent's Pathans were on the other side. But far from demonizing the Pran figure, the filmmakers chose not to portray a strong Muslim character but to make him the most sympathetic presence in the film after the hero (Amitabh Bachhan himself).
Bombs and riots cannot destroy India, because Indians will pick their way through the rubble and carry on as they have done throughout history. But what can destroy India is a change in the spirit of its people. The central challenge of India as it enters the twenty-first century is not purely economic or simply politicaclass="underline" it is the challenge of accommodating the aspirations of different groups in the national dream. The ethos of diversity — of an inclusionist, flexible, agglomerative India — helped the nation meet this challenge. The battle for India's soul will be between two visions of diversity, the secularist Indianism of the nationalist movement and the particularist fanaticism of the bigoted mob. The film world has a vested interest in the struggle because it too depends on the survival of the world from which it has emerged.
It is only through the Indian ethos of diversity, only by ensuring that all Indians find the same opportunity to fulfill their hopes and aspirations, that the nation can realize its potential. And even the trashiest film hit can embody loftier ideals: one megahit of the 1970s, Amar Akbar Anthony, was an action adventure film about three brothers separated in infancy who are brought up by different families — one a Christian, one a Hindu, and one a Muslim. As adults, one is a smuggler, one a street fighter, and one a policeman. How they rediscover each other and turn the tables on the villains is why the audience flocked to the film in their millions; but in the process they also received the clear message that Christians, Hindus, and Muslims are metaphorically brothers, too, seemingly different but united in their common endeavors for justice.
The Indian film industry is by far the largest in the world — making more films annually than Japan, and five times as many as Hollywood. Much of this is escapist entertainment, but it all reflects the understanding that the only possible idea of India is that of a nation greater than the sum of its parts. An India that denies itself to some Indians could end up being denied to all Indians; and so Indian films communicate the diversity that is the basis of the Indian heritage, by offering all of us a common world to which to escape, by allowing us to dream with our eyes open.
And what is the responsibility of the filmmaker in a developing society like India's? Even the most commercial filmmaker contributes toward, and helps articulate and give expression to, the cultural identity of the society. The vast majority of developing countries have emerged recently from the incubus of colonialism, which has in many ways fractured and distorted their cultural self-perceptions. Development will not occur without a reassertion of identity: that this is who we are, this is what we are proud of, this is the world we imagine when we want to entertain ourselves, even that this is what we want to be. In this process, culture and development, and films and national identity are fundamentally linked and interdependent. We have heard in the past that the world must be made safe for democracy. That goal is increasingly being realized; it is now time for all of us to work to make the world safe for diversity.