Politics of Gender and Hindi Cinema

Hindi film industry, popularly referred to as Bollywood, produces the maximum number of movies per annum. Its revenues are second only to Hollywood. Issue of gender eauations and portrayal of male-female relationships, wheather in the form of marriage or in romantic relationships, has always fascinated Indian filmmakers. Indian culture claims to give the status of goddess to women. But in reality, patriarchic Hindu society gave women an unequal status in male-female relationship. Women were supposed to make all the sacrifices for the family and could expect no gratification. During the decades of 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Bollywood portrayed similar values and women were depicted as inferior partner in a marital relationships and gender equations. India launched its massive economic program in 1991. Private TV channels also arrived in India in the same year. Consequently, Indian culture started adopting the values of consumerism, individualism and women’s liberation. This paper argues that Bollywood also reflected this cultural change and started depicting women as an equal partner in its narratives. This paper will reverse the idea of the male gaze of Laura Mulvey and contend that due to socio-economic changes a distinct female gaze has emerged and this has resulted in women being depicted as equal and even superior partner in gender equations. This paper will undertake the case studies of three recent films and by using the methodologies of semiotics, narrative and discourse analysis, will argue that the portrayal of women in recent cinema is very different from earlier decades.