Goa University’s plan
to inaugurate a Bollywood course needs a rethink that includes the history of
Goans in the industry.
A couple of weeks ago, Goa University’s Board of
Studies announced that it will introduce an optional undergraduate course in Indian
cinema, tentatively titled “History of Indian Cinema, 1913-2013” (O
Heraldo, 8 July, 2016).
Commonly referred to as Bollywood, India’s is the most prolific dream factory
in the world. While for this and other reasons Indian cinema is worthy of
study, the trajectory of Goa University’s proposed course gives cause for
concern.
Quoting Prajal Sakhardande as “[t]he brain behind
the concept”, the news report chronicling the development of the film course
states that the curriculum would cover the origins of “the Indian film industry
in 1913, migration to talkies in the ‘30s, growth of regional cinema,
Bollywood’s golden age from the ‘40s to ‘60s and the advent of ‘masala movies’
from 1970”. Additionally, Sakhardande is reported to have said that the course
would focus on such components as the “[m]ovies starring members of the famous
Prithviraj Kapoor family to decades when Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh
Bachchan, Dharmendra, King Khan, Madhubala, Hema Malini, Sridevi and Madhuri
Dixit ruled the industry…” Ambitious, no doubt, but the projected curriculum
leaves something to be desired.
Indeed, there are plans to offer the Bollywood
course alongside a couple of other options as part of the Choice Based Credit
System (CBCS) available to undergraduates. Sakhardande states that “[b]esides
Bollywood cinema”, other offerings may include the “history of regional
cinemas, including Konkani films…” This is precisely the problem. Again, the
study of cinema is important, and within its scope there is room for the
consideration of the multiple regional forms generated within a national
context and their relationship to one another; yet, what the proposed Goa
University course seems to imply is that there is (or was) no Goan contribution
to the cinema of India. Even as it is important to study Konkani cinema, the
question to be asked is what does it mean to teach about Indian cinema in Goa
without considering the place of Goa and Goans in the history of this national
industry?
To say that the current curriculum privileges a
mainstream perspective on Indian cinema is not a stretch, especially given how those
who have conceived of the course have chosen to highlight the legacies of a set
of particular players. On the one hand, this privileging of cults of
personality suggests that things to do not bode well for the inculcation of
critical analysis through the syllabus. And on the other, by uncritically
presenting the cinema of India as the cultural production of Hindi-speaking
actors and directors, Goa University participates in the occlusion of
minorities, such as Goans and Baghdadi
Jews among others, who greatly
contributed to the history of Indian cinema. Such a nationalist agenda obscures
the major contributions of Goans to the music and other facets of the Golden
Age of Bollywood as evidenced in Naresh Fernandes’ Taj
Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay’s Jazz Age
(2011) and the Konkani language film Nachom-ia
Kumpasar
(2015), directed by Bardroy Barretto.
It is no uncommon fact that the place of Goans in
Indian cinema history has been relegated to the mists of time, leaving the
contributions of many unknown even to their fellow Goans (leave alone Indians
in general). For instance, it might come as a surprise to many that Anthony
Gonsalves was a real person who worked in
Bollywood and is not just the Christian character to whom he lent his name in
the cult classic Amar Akbar Anthony
(1977), in which Amitabh Bachchan plays the fictional Anthony. Ironically, even
as Goa University has a Chair
that is also named after the late and otherwise uncelebrated Anthony Gonsalves,
its future Bollywood course does a further disservice to unsung Goan musicians
and entertainers. Devoid of any consideration for how mainstream Indian cinema once
thrived on the creative labours of such minorities as Goans, only to side-line
them after their value had been expended, a nationally inflected curriculum
taught in the very homeland of these forgotten artists participates in a
dominant representation of Indian culture that refuses to grapple with its
religious and cultural biases.
While several may not know of the impact of Goans on
Indian cinema’s history, what they know all too well about Goa’s place in
Bollywood’s imagination is the portrayal of the region in any number of Hindi
films. Bollywood’s continued dalliance with Goa is as a hedonistic beach paradise
and with all that such a place entails. Goa is the seemingly unpeopled land
that hosts the shenanigans of party-loving Indians who seek a reprieve from the
mainland, thus exemplifying the relationship between the metropole its colonial
pleasure periphery. And if perchance a film might actually remember that Goa is
not devoid of locals, then their depiction is often that of a stereotypical
nature, where the sexuality and drinking habits of these characters are the
stuff of ridicule. Beyond this, one still wonders why any of these Goan
characters speak Hindi, which is again testament to the culturally homogenising
nature of Indian cinema.
Any Bollywood course at Goa University that fails to
take up a critical analysis of Indian cinema’s gendered, class, and ethnic
representations while also not pointing out the history of the industry’s
cultural co-optation will simply rehearse a script we are all too familiar
with. The proposed course represents the opportunity to correct Bollywood’s
egregious treatment of Goans while also paving the way to offer undergraduates
a chance to engage with cinema anew. In the meantime, the audience awaits.
From The Goan.
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