India through re-Orientalist Lenses

Abstract

Re-Orientalism, initially defined as the perpetration of Orientalism by ‘Orientals’ (Lau 2009), is a discourse which comes out of and is inescapably informed by postcolonial and diasporic legacies. The investigation of re-Orientalism has revealed new, even radical strategies of eastern identity construction which, while not escaping Orientalism, manage to Orientalize subversively and with considerable self-awareness. This essay highlights two strategies currently being utilized in the negotiation of contemporary Indian self-identity: vicarious indulgence in poverty literature and vicarious redemption in Bollywood heritage films. The first part of the essay notes how the discourse of ‘Dark India’ via Indian writing in English (IWE) has become not only a re-Orientalist practice, but also most relevantly a re-Orientalist strategy, designed to challenge and deconstruct the rhetoric of ‘India Shining’ and to consciously pander to a western appetite for voyeuristic viewings of India as backward, poverty stricken and crime ridden. The second part of the essay argues that the reweaving of the independence struggle within post-2000 Bollywood heritage films (BHF) vicariously redeems British colonialists by representing white British characters facilitating Indian gallantry and heroism, thus constructing hybrid and more palatable depictions of Indian identities. In sum, the essay finds re-Orientalist discourse today increasingly and strategically utilizing elements of self-reflexivity and demonstrating new tones and themes of satire, subversion, self-mockery, reconciliation and artistic indulgence.

• Bollywood heritage films (BHF)
• Indian writing in English (IWE)
• re-Orientalism
• vicarious indulgence
• vicarious redemption

Notes

1 ‘Immoral voyeurism’ supposedly occurs when undetected glances invade privacy and take advantage of people's vulnerability, and observe people for condescending purposes and/or to further demeaning ends; members of a privileged group misrepresent the values and beliefs of an underprivileged group based on selective observations (Selinger and Outterson 2010).

2 The idea of taking a tour of the slums might never be free of an element of slum tourism and voyeurism, and of the middle class's patronage.

3 There is an established scholarship in the area of cultural and collective memory studies that has variously attempted to critique the rise of interest in the past, memory and nostalgia, as well as the current upsurge of reparations, apologies and other forms of redress. For example, Halbwachs (1992) and Olick (2007) are seminal studies in the area, but deserving a distinctive note here is the work of Rothberg (2009) and Ho (2012), which focuses particularly on the politics of memory in postcolonial texts.

4 An exception from earlier Hindi cinema is the 1952 film Jhansi Ki Rani (The Tiger and the Flame, dir. Sohrab Modi), the plot of which revolves around the coming of age of a female leading figure in the 1857 Uprising.

5 It falls outside the scope of this essay to provide a comparative dimension through the analysis of earlier Indian historical films, such as Jhansi Ki Rani, Shatranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players, dir. Satyajit Ray, 1977), Junoon (dir. Shyam Benegal, 1978), Kranti (dir. Manoj Kumar, 1981) and Sardar (dir. Ketan Mehta, 1992). To pursue this dimension would certainly prove productive for establishing a dialogue through time concerning the experiences of Indians in British India. Jhansi Ki Rani would be particularly apt for a comparative reading with The Rising as both films are fictionalizations of the Uprising from an Indian perspective.