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Abstract
Music has played an integral part in defining the sense of self for Punjabis at home as well as in the national and transnational diasporas. The images of the homeland have played a significant role in shaping the imagery of Punjabi music, therefore it is self-explanatory that Bollywood music has also incorporated a vast number of references to Punjabi localities when representing Punjab on screen. This paper investigates the representation of Punjab in Bollywood music through a textual analysis of a variety of Bollywood songs that discuss the imaginary and real landscapes of Punjab. I suggest that the image of Punjab has played an important role in post-liberalisation popular culture in India—however, the exact nature of this image has undergone significant change. Traditionally, the representation of Punjabi culture was tied to poetic and visual images of the landscape of Punjab and was used to evoke nostalgia and a bucolic idyll. However, recently, Punjabi culture has been dislocated from the land itself and represented as part of a global culture of aspiration and consumerism.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge my gratitude to the editors of this special edition, Dr. Radha Kapuria and Dr. Priyanka Basu, for all their hard work, and to the two anonymous reviewers whose detailed feedback has enriched this work and opened up new vistas for further research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Vijay Mishra, Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire (New York: Routledge, 2002): 260.
2. As this paper focuses on the post-liberalisation image and representation of Punjab, and most of the referenced songs were created pre-2014, it could not discuss the sea-change of socio-economic events that have a bearing on Punjab and its representation. The farmer protests, the increasing discussion of caste hegemony and the rising importance of Punjabi and diaspora filmmakers, as well as the increasing saffronisation of the Bollywood film industry are topics that would each deserve further discussion, unfortunately falling outside the remit of this paper.
3. Poulomi Banerjee, ‘Where Love Blossoms: Bollywood’s Romance with the Mustard Fields’, Hindustan Times, updated February 16, 2019, accessed October 9, 2021, https://www.hindustantimes.com/bollywood/where-love-blossoms-bollywood-s-romance-with-the-mustard-fields/story-8sukV8RoUQ2cHPfMHtBOoL.html.
4. That said, important forays into the field include Imke Rajamani’s and Rachel Dwyer’s contributions in the volume: Imke Rajamani, ‘Hindi Cinema’s Rainmaking Formula: Thodasa Roomani Ho Jaayen and Lagaan’, in Monsoon Feelings: A History of Emotions in the Rain, ed. Imke Rajamani, Margrit Pernau and Katherine Butler Schofield (Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2018): 315–46; and Rachel Dwyer, ‘“Rimjhim ke Taraane Leke Aayi Barsaat”: Songs of Love and Longing in the Bombay Rain’, in Monsoon Feelings, ed. Rajamani et al., 291–314, which discuss the importance of emotions bringing rain and propose a categorisation of rain songs, respectively.
5. Rachel Dwyer, ‘The Erotics of the Wet Sari in Hindi Films’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 23, no. 2 (2000): 143–60; 153.
6. Natalie Sarrazin. ‘Celluloid Love Songs: Musical Modus Operandi and the Dramatic Aesthetics of Romantic Hindi Film’, Popular Music 27, no. 3 (2008): 393–411; 405.
7. See the song ‘Jiya Jale’ from Dil Se (1998, dir. Mani Ratnam), where a Malayalam language chorus is featured alongside Hindi lyrics.
8. Madhuja Mukherjee, ‘Mustard Fields, Exotic Tropes, and Travels through Meandering Pathways’, in Travels of Bollywood Cinema: From Bombay to LA, ed. Anjali Gera Roy and Chua Beng Huat (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012): 36–51; 45.
9. Naveen Mishra, ‘What’s in the Backdrop: Representation of Landscape in Bollywood Cinema’, CINEJ Cinema Journal 7, no. 1 (2018): 116–141; 124.
10. Ananya Jahanara Kabir, ‘The Kashmiri as Muslim in Bollywood’s “New Kashmir Films”’, Contemporary South Asia 18, no. 4 (2010): 373–85; 379.
11. Ibid., 376.
12. Srijana Mitra Das, ‘Partition and Punjabiyat in Bombay Cinema: The Cinematic Perspectives of Yash Chopra and Others’, Contemporary South Asia 15, no. 4 (2006): 453–71; 466.
13. The Punjabi music industry is second only to Bollywood in terms of financial prowess, and many Punjabi film stars and singers have lent their voice to Bollywood film soundtracks. Gurdas Mann has been featuring in Bollywood films since the 1980s, with the more recent additions of Diljit Dosanjh, Ammy Virk, Sunanda Sharma and Jasmine Sandlas joining him in the past decade. Badshah and YoYo Honey Singh have carved a niche for Punjabi rap in films.
14. Anjali Gera Roy, Bhangra Moves from Ludhiana to London and Beyond (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2017): 17.
15. In more recent times, however, and as Kumool Abbi has pointed out, a new generation of Punjabi filmmakers now provide a more nuanced take on the urban–rural dichotomy and transnational mobility, whereby allegiances to the city and countryside are not mutually exclusive any more: see Kumool Abbi, ‘The Visibility and Arrival of the Transnational New Sikh Middle Class in the Cinematic Experience of the Turbaned Hero Diljit Dosanjh: Its Implication for Emerging Sikh Identity Politics’, Sikh Formations 16, no. 3 (2020): 308–42.
16. Jayson Beaster-Jones, Bollywood Sounds: The Cosmopolitan Mediations of Hindi Film Song (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015): 15, 16.
17. Anjali Gera Roy, ‘Is Everybody Saying “Shava Shava” to Bollywood Bhangra?’, in Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora, ed. Rini Bhattacharya Mehta and Rajeshwari V. Pandharipande (London: Anthem Press, 2010): 35–49; 36.
18. Gibb Schreffler goes so far as to call the dhol the emblem of Punjab, a national instrument: Gibb Schreffler, Dhol: Drummers, Identities, and Modern Punjab (Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2021): 22.
19. Nicola Mooney, Rural Nostalgias and Transnational Dreams: Identity and Modernity among Jat Sikhs (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011): 104.
20. Roy, Bhangra Moves, 50.
21. Mooney, Rural Nostalgias, 175.
22. Both Veer and Raj in DDLJ are played by Shah Rukh Khan, who, despite not being of Punjabi ethnicity, has played a variety of Punjabi characters throughout his career.
23. The song, ‘Ghar Aaja Pardesi’ from DDLJ personifies the landscape as perhaps an elderly mother left behind in the village. The lyrics, ‘Is gaon ki anpadh mitti, Padh nahin sakti teri chitthi, Yeh mitti tu aakar choome, To is dharti ka dil jhoome (The illiterate soil of this village can’t read your letter, if you come and kiss the soil, that is when the heart of the land will rejoice)’, try to convince the protagonist to return to the village and pay his respects in person.
24. The song ‘Ghar Aaja Pardesi’ from DDLJ used a similar picturisation technique with lines of village women wearing colourful dupattas while working in the countryside. The images used here could evoke a sense of secondary nostalgia, not only towards the land of Punjab, but also towards earlier cinematic depictions of it.
25. Nicola Mooney, ‘Aaja Nach Lai [Come Dance]: Performing and Practising Identity among Punjabis in Canada’, Ethnologies 30, no. 1 (2008): 103–24; 113.
26. Roy, Bhangra Moves, 64.
27. A reference to Jugni appears in other songs included in the sample of this paper, such as ‘Kala Chashma’, discussed later, the song ‘Jugni’ in Cocktail (2012, dir. Homi Adajania) and the song ‘Jugni’ in Tanu Weds Manu (2011, dir. Aanand L. Rai).
28. Andrea Nolte, ‘Vande Mataram—Ehre sei dir, Mutter: Zum Verhältnis von Heimat und Held im gegenwärtigen Bollywood-Film’, in Medien—zeit—zeichen, ed. Christian Hißnauer and Andreas Jahn-Sudmann (Marburg: Schüren, 2007): 54–61; 55.
29. Ananya Jahanara Kabir, ‘Musical Recall: Postmemory and the Punjabi Diaspora’, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 24 (2004): 172–91.
30. For example, Akshaya Kumar, ‘Provincialising Bollywood? Cultural Economy of North-Indian Small-Town Nostalgia in the Indian Multiplex’, Journal of South Asian Popular Culture 11, no. 1 (2013): 61−74; and Ashish Devasundaram, ‘Beyond Brand Bollywood: Alternative Articulations of Geopolitical Discourse in New Indian Films’, in Popular Geopolitics: Plotting an Evolving Interdiscipline, ed. Robert A. Saunders and Vlad Strukov (New York and London: Routledge, 2018): 152–73.
31. Gibb Schreffler, ‘Migration Shaping Media: Punjabi Popular Music in a Global Historical Perspective’, Popular Music and Society 35, no. 3 (2012): 333–58.
32. Gera Roy, Bhangra Moves, 47.
33. Kumar, ‘Provincialising Bollywood’, 63.
34. Suvadip Sinha, ‘Vernacular Masculinity and Politics of Space in Contemporary Bollywood Cinema’, Studies in South Asian Film & Media 5, no. 2 (2013): 131–45; 132.
35. This particular story also underpins the claim that Bollywood appropriates and transforms Punjabi culture at its whim—according to the report, the lyricist was not told that his song would be used in a film: ‘Kala Chashma Was Originally Written by a Punjab Police Head Constable, He Earned Rs 11000 For It’, The Indian Express, updated September 11, 2016, accessed August 14, 2022, https://indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/music/baar-baar-dekho-kala-chashma-was-written-by-punjab-police-constable-katrina-kaif-sidharth-malhotra-3025259/.
36. Midath Hayder, ‘The Curious Case of Katrina Kaif: NRI Stardom and Ethnicity in Bollywood’, in Indian Film Stars: New Critical Perspectives, ed. Michael Lawrence (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020): 219–30.
37. Rajinder Dudrah, ‘British Bhangra Music as Soundscapes of the Midlands’, Midland History 36, no. 2 (2011): 278–91; 288.
38. Mishra, ‘What’s in the Backdrop’, 125.
39. See Ibid., 131–32.
40. Ravinder Kaur, ‘Viewing the West through Bollywood: A Celluloid Occident in the Making’, Contemporary South Asia 11, no. 2 (2010): 199–209.