India produces more films than any other country in the world and these works are consumed by non-Western cultures in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and by the Indian communities across the world. This text focuses on how such a dominant media configures the ""nation"" in post-Independence Hindi cinema. The author scrutinizes approxiamtely 30 films that have appeared since 1950 and demonstrates how concepts of the nation centre this cinema's moral universe. As a form of storytelling, Indian cinema provides an account of social history and cultural politics, with the family deployed as a symbol of the nation. Virdi demonstrates how Hindi films' portrayal of the nation as a mythical community collapses under the weight of its own contradictions - irreconcilable differences that encompass gender, sexuality, family, class and religious communities.

Book Information
ISBN 9780813531915
Author Jyotika Virdi
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint Rutgers University Press
Publisher Rutgers University Press