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BHOJPURI CINEMA:
Article in South Asian Popular Culture October 2007
DOI: 10.1080/14746680701619552

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Ratnakar Tripathy
BHOJPURI CINEMA:
Regional resonances in the Hindi heartland

The sudden and phenomenal growth of Bhojpuri cinema in India since 2001 provides a
number of opportunities for a close look at the cultural dynamics in the most
underdeveloped parts of India.1 With eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar at its core, the
dynamics in question directly involves the large Hindi speaking region of the country.
It seems possible to use the cinematic frames as windows on caste relations, the
democratization process, the rise of urbanism and changing language equations. At a
broader level, the phenomenon also allows us to develop and fine-tune our ideas on
the correlations between changes at the local-regional- national and even global levels.
The close relation between political aspirations and cinematic fantasies, which seems
to vary from region to region in India, is another valuable source of cultural as well as
political insights. While not all these tasks can be performed within the present
article, an attempt will be made to map out the several pathways such studies could
meaningfully follow. This may even help us evolve a hermeneutic stance and strategy
for making sense of similar cultural phenomena elsewhere.
The dramatically charged metaphors of change used to characterise Bihar and
parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh associated with Bhojpuri cinema include, predictably,
barbarism, decline, stagnation, decay, breakdown, backwardness, lawlessness, and
turmoil. These metaphors may seem confusingly sententious unless we look at some
of the contrasting states of India such as Mahrashtra or Karnataka where the urban
centres symbolize social and economic dynamism for the entire country. Urban
centres such as Bangalore and Hyderabad in recent years have defined the orientation
of the Indian society and economy in its forward thrust, with states like Bihar and
Uttar Pradesh symbolizing stagnation or even regression. While it remains true that
perception of change per se deserves attention, these metaphors are not arbitrary and
are often backed by statistics. At the same time, considering that as recently as the
1990s only a handful of Bhojpuri films had been made and the number had risen to a
phenomenal 76 in 2006, the uninspiring phrase cultural dynamics acquires a sense of
urgency. Looking at the figures alone one begins to feel that there is an interesting
intellectual challenge looming over them and that the monopoly for dynamism may
not belong solely to states such as Maharashtra and Karnataka.
What makes the rapid spurt of Bhojpuri cinema interesting, indeed fascinating is
that the concerned region is marked by a number of social and economic dead ends. It
would not seem surprising if Bhojpuri cinema continued to decline, offering no
surprises to a student of development and change. The grand judgmental metaphor of
decline in Bihar is thus often accompanied by a more prosaic and spatial one, namely
dead-end or impasse.2 It is in fact possible to enumerate the best known among the
South Asian Popular Culture Vol. 5, No. 2, October 2007, pp. 145-165
ISSN 1474-6689 print/ISSN 1474-6697 online 2007 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/14746680701619552

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SOUTH ASIAN POPULAR CULTURE

dead endsdeclining agricultural productivity despite Bihars dependence on

agriculture, de-industrialization over a number of decades, and a serious rupture of
law and order.3 Law and order have been at such low ebb that the press routinely
talks of a Kidnapping industry in Bihar indicating its sheer size and role in the
economy as well as public discourse.4 Also, while the middle and the lower rungs in
the rural societies have experienced some upward mobility in the past three decades
since the 1970s, this has often led to internecine conflicts characterizing everyday life
in the regiona good enough reason for both the upper and the lower sections to
consider leaving the scene of rather profitless action.5
Pitted against such stark figures and images is the cliched but seemingly unrelated
scene of crowds thronging the cinema halls to see Bhojpuri films. There will always be
a place for a social analyst who is never startled by anything, since in hindsight
everything seems inevitable or at least highly likely. The fact is that this cinematic
explosion requires continued analysis by the more readily puzzled social theorist for
both reasonsits inherent significance, and its value as a momentous cultural index
for a society at a standstill. Sometimes it does not help to take shelter in the
ontological platitude that everything is in continuous flux, more so when one is unable
to characterize the flux at all. To put it plainly, the question is what are the factors
underlying the dramatic growth of Bhojpuri cinema?
Interestingly, while the isolated viewer may produce a very coherent reason for
joining the ticket queue for a Bhojpuri rather than a Hindi film, even he often has no
clue why suddenly 76 Bhojpuri films arrive to occupy the main street of Indian
cinema.6 He in fact expresses surprise at the milling crowds around him and cannot
figure out the richness of the phenomenon in the midst of a cultural wasteland.
Often all he can tell is he feels an intimate tug in the heart looking up at the Bhojpuri
hoardings. At any rate, he seems to have no idea why 76 Bhojpuri films were not made
seven years ago.

I.

Migration and social mobility

Just like the metaphors of change and stagnation, perceptions of dead end are neither
as rigid nor claustrophobic as they may seem. An existential platitude very often,
when situations do not provide openings, people tend to move out of them. In this
case, the extent of migration from Bihar would seem to be the major relieving factor.7
Embracing the top and the bottom layers of the society, it has reached gigantic
proportions comparable to the Indian Partition of 1947. The migrant population from
Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh shows an interesting differentiation withinranging
from middle class professionals to skilled but mostly unskilled labourall of which
stream down the Indian peninsula, as far as Hyderabad and Bangalore. Another
differentiation is of great cultural significancea great part of the small town and
rural populations migrates temporarily or makes sure to keep their economic links and
communication with the ancestral land.
As against the broader picture of migrations in plural, one would expect that
every individual tale of migration carries its own emotional flavour unique to the
person, the predicament and the locale. This once we are not dealing with the
uniform tale of mass exodus along the highways in response to drought, war or

BHOJPURI CINEMA

epidemic. Thus, one wonders if it is possible to capture something of the emotional

tone characterising the specific region, social predicament or wave of movement at a
broader scale. The emotional tones in question may range between migration as a
happy voluntary act and as a virtual ejection from an existential dead end. At the other
end, they may range between a sweet welcome in the distant work place to a virtual
entrapment, ghettoised alienation or even murder by the incensed hosts in a city.8
The alchemy of love and hate, and the subtler emotions directed at the place of origin
and the destination, together form a complex web characterizing the deep
ambivalences of a mobile population. The simple universal sadness of a family
abandoning its abode in its sepia image is no longer adequate in a world full of hectic
departures and arrivals. It is very relevant to know who left, why he left, how he felt
about having to leave, whether he continues to come back to his soil, how he relates
to it after a number of decades, and how he passes on his stories to his progeny. We
need to remind ourselves that the simple word home has lost its simplicity and
innocence, and even a poor illiterate peasant from Bihar is now doomed to redefine it
unendingly all his life. Unlike an oustee from a large dam site, he cannot even redefine
it once for all as permanent dislocation. This in effect means a series of significant
modifications in the social and familial lexicon.
Let us not be oblivious to the paradox that those segments who left the soil out of
despair, either due to pressing economic need or because of their place in the sclerotic
caste hierarchy, have turned out to be the most loyal audience of the Bhojpuri film
industry. The upper castes migrating to the bigger cities have found greater joy in
mingling with the national elite as indistinguishably as possible. The nostalgia felt by
the upper class and higher castes is likely to be accompanied by sighs of relief at
escaping the daily humiliation at the hands of the middle and lower castes, who in turn
may want to heighten their joy of empowerment by constantly rubbing salt over the
wounds of the upper crust. It is important to remember that the humiliation here is
not just about coming down in the world but losing ritual status and the supposedly
indestructible halo of the bloodline. Vertical mobility within the social hierarchy and
physical mobility through migration make a potent mix that should be expected to
release great literary and artistic energy among other things. The phrases emotional
tone and emotional flavour have been used interchangeably in the article precisely
to capture something of this nuanced reality.
Besieged by the various social changes and problems, this region clearly faces the
danger of seeing migration and development become near synonymous.9 We certainly
have a situation where the only means to a better life may lie beyond the frontiers,
and where remittances sent back to the village make a clinching difference (accounting
for 2530 per cent of the family income, seen by economists as a critical figure) to the
depressed lifestyles. Survival, movement, exposure to the outside world, changes in
the world withinthese become the stuff of everyday life impacting culture with
ferocious directness. Trains overloaded with migrant workers on their way to or fro,
railway platforms packed with the novices and journeymen of migration present us
with a two-ended phenomenon.10 Bangalore train junction simply becomes a
depository, a clusterised version and a mirror image of the many Sultanpurs in Uttar
Pradesh and the Chhapras in Bihar.
Imagine a journey of above 40 h in a train between Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh
and Bangalore and it becomes easy to see the first cultural form that would take a free

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ride all the way down the peninsulathe folk songs. Let us not pretend that songs
come very easily to the lips of the distressed debutante. However, they do turn up
since life is looking up and now seems more like a widening rather than a narrowing
tunnel.
Reverse the trip and you can hear the latest tunes from Bombay cinema along
with the traditional ones. Indeed the only telling precursor to Bhojpuri cinema in
hindsight could have been the cassette and CD revolution in the region in the 1990s,
which created a number of stars in the region. Music is perhaps what drew a clear
cultural map for the entrepreneurs of Bhojpuri cinema. After all Manoj Tiwari, one of
the two superstars of Bhojpuri cinema began his career as a folk singer in country fairs
and local TV stations.
There is no need to pretend that placing oneself back in the 1990s, in the midst of
the musical explosion mentioned above, one could have predicted a sympathetic
resonance in cinema. Nevertheless, it serves well to remember that before the arrival
of the talkies the gramophone companies had already harvested classical and popular
music from different corners of the country.11 In a sense, the very songs that had been
heard in a disembodied form earlier made a comeback in the guise of the talking and
moving pictures in the 1930s. It may be interesting to note that the musical industry
in Bombay today is still largely coterminous with the movie industry and singers have
a tough time making a career entirely outside the movies. The Bhojpuri cassette and
CD revolution was, then, an exceptionit had no natal connection with cinema.
Even now, it has an independent market and follows a different business model.
Parthasarathi vividly narrates accounts of extensive surveys and recordings carried out
by enterprising executives of newly found gramophone companies from the US and
Europe, who keenly competed for the market. Music as an unwitting harbinger of
cinema seems an interesting idea to explore.
It is useful to pose the following assertions for debate before moving deeper into
the world of Bhojpuri films:

N
N

First, the expanding Bhojpuri music industry played the harbinger to its cinema and
on a more generalized level; music perhaps lies at the very core of Indian cinema.
Music arguably forms the selfhood of Indian cinema around which stories,
characters and visuality accrete.
Second, the mainstay of Bhojpuri cinema is provided by the following segments:
migrants in bigger cities from the lowest rungs of the middle castes, and semiliterate and illiterates from middle and lower castes from the smaller towns in the
native region. Add to it a sprinkling of the Dalits (untouchables) and the relatively
uneducated and economically under-privileged upper caste inhabitants and your
profile for the Bhojpuri film audience is near complete. If this seems confusing,
eliminate the educated and the upper castes (whether resident or non-resident)
from the Bihar society and you zero in over the same sociological profile.
Third, if one excludes the non-affluent upper caste members from the above
profile, you begin to approximate closely the base of voters supporting parties and
regional governments that have lead to the empowerment of the middle castes and
to some extent the Dalits in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in the past two decades. It
would seem that vertical social mobility and migratory mobility are closely related,
often blending in the cinema halls and on the cinema screen.

BHOJPURI CINEMA

II.

Dreaming on screen

True, when Bhojpuri cinema erupted on the Indian scene in the year 2001 there was no
one waiting for it. However, this sudden arrival needs to be qualified. Strictly by way of
origin, Bhojpuri cinema goes back to 1962, when Kundan Kumar made Ganga Maiyya
Tohe Piyari Chadhaibo (roughly translated as Mother Ganges I will make an offering to you
if ), which has now firmly settled, in public memory for its songs.12 A few success
stories separated by prolonged gaps and hiccups followed: in the 1980s films such as Mai
(Mother), Ganga Ki Beti (The Daughter of Ganges), Hamaar Bhowji (My Brothers Wife)
and Bhaiyya Dooj kept up as if the bare idea of Bhojpuri cinema alive.13 However, by
the 1990s Bhojpuri cinema was dying like a character from Hindi filmsreluctantly but
inevitably.
In 2001, the phenomenal success of Saiyyan Hamaar (My Sweetheart) put a big
question mark on the inevitability of the demise. By 2005, Sasura Bada Paisa Wala (My
Father in law- the moneyed Guy), which earned about 50 times its production budget
of Rs 4.5 million, made the several decades of irreversible coma seem like a
preparatory nap before a bout of action. In great haste, Bhojpuri cinema produced its
first superstars Manoj Tiwari and Ravi Kissenand the cultural gestation collapsed
the past several decades into months and weeks. In this particular case, the media
hype has cautiously trudged behind the phenomenon ever since. In the perception of
the trade, all this is still too good to be true.
A series of confirmations of the good times have followed in the past few years
Daroga Babu I Love You (Darling Cop, I love you), Panditji Batai Na Biyah Kab Hoi
(Priest, priest, when will I get married), Dharti Kahe Pukar Ke (My Land calls me) and
Bandhan Toote Na (Our Ties shouldnt break).14 According to trade analyst Taran
Adarsh, Most Bhojpuri films are made in small budgets, usually Rs 20-30 lakh
($50,000), and they fetch Rs 1-2 crore ($ 200,000400,000). Several of these films
are grossing 10 times their production costs. A good film can even make a profit of Rs
1012 crore..15
Raghuvansh Singh, president of Bihar-Jharkhand Movies Distributors Association,
says that Bhojpuri films are catering to over 200 million Bhojpuri-speaking people in
Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Besides, the Bhojpuri Diaspora in Mauritius, Ghana, West
Indies, Fiji, Nepal, Dubai, Indonesia, and the Netherlands constitutes a good enough
market for our films. Stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgan and Naghma have
done films in Bhojpuri. As many as eight films are released in a month.16
Those familiar with Bombay mainstream cinema are likely to find certain close
resemblances in Bhojpuri cinemathe romantic theme, the love song, the serious
social consequences that soon catch up with the lovers, a debate over family
relationships, and the destruction or conversion of the villain.17 However, as you
begin to view more films certain perplexingly unfamiliar scenes will appear. The
viewing experience can be rather confusing and an impatient viewer is likely to walk
out of the cinema declaring Bhojpuri films to be a regressed C grade version of the
Bombay product, a further massifed version so to speak of mass culture. Even
though, with increased budgets, Bhojpuri films seem increasingly sophisticated with
every passing year, shoddy camera work, ham acting and general disregard of
professional standards may simply seem to confirm the view.18 Nevertheless, repeated
viewing may reveal differences that are far from subtlethey are glaring.

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The national media in India has taken due notice of the tremendous vitality of
Bhojpuri cinema and columnists have had to offer an explanation for this. The
explanations come in mainly two types. The first typically focus on the recent changes
within Bombay cinema and they can be summarised as follows: Bombay cinema in the
last decade or so has shown an increasing tendency to appeal to the big town audience
and the Indians settled in Europe and the US. Even its stories have shifted from the
Indian soil to locales such as New Zealand and the US and that are populated with
Indian characters based in Bombay, London and New York. Such outward movement
has created a vacuum that is now understandably filled by Bhojpuri films. The second
explanation turns to the other half of the phenomenonthe regional against the
global, pointing out the growth of a new regional audience, almost presuming that an
audience had been waiting for Bhojpuri cinema to come into existence.
The two stock explanations are not off the mark and manage to catch the basic
flavour of the phenomenon. Once one admits, however, that the two explanations
(instances of verstehen) are complementary, the complexity of the sociological issues
becomes apparent. It would seem that we are dealing with a gigantic change that can
be best expressed through the dynamic continuum: Hollywood cinemaBombay
cinemaBhojpuri cinema. It is possible to talk about this continuum not simply as a
theoretical construct with heightened relevance in the age of globalism, but a real
experience from the audiences viewpoint. On any given day in Patna, for example,
the audience has a choice not simply between a Hindi and a Bhojpuri film, but also
dubbed version of Hollywood films. Who knows, there will be a day when
Hollywood films would be dubbed in Bhojpuri. Moreover, if the audience is found
lapping up James Bond in Bhojpuri, who are we to complain of cultural dissonance.
Images that are even more incredible have popped up in the past just as the media
commentators wondered over their unlikeliness.19
It is very tempting to aver that the relation between Hollywood and Bombay films
is analogous to the relation between Bombay and Bhojpuri films. As a ludic heuristic,
the symmetry would seem harmless, but when applied mechanically it may lead to
hermeneutic failure. Bhojpuri films as folk versions of Bombay cinema, and Bombay
cinema as Indianised version of Hollywood, are good but limited models incapable of
dealing with cultural fault lines and discontinuities. In the field of cultural studies the
discontinuities are often more interesting than the continuities. For example, Bhojpuri
cinema in its most interesting moments is likely to dwell on themes that Bombay
would habitually ignore.

III.

Resonance and conflict

What the two explanations provided by the media would seem to leave out is the core
cultural and social process of coming together and consolidation of the Bhojpuri
audiencea process that is by no means complete. As against political mobilisation
the word resonance in the title aims to focus on the coming together of an audience
over a period of time. True, the same population has shown its political sinews over
the last two decades by challenging the hegemony of the upper castes through a
number of movements and platforms as rallyist and voter. However, it is only with

BHOJPURI CINEMA

the rise of Bhojpuri films that it has found a certain cultural commonality and
resonance in the regions of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.20
The process of temporary and permanent migration from this region over time
has compounded the rural and the urban experience into a single whole despite the
polarities, incorporating Sultanpur or Chhapra and Bombay within the same
continuum. This finds a parallel in Hindi cinema where increasingly Bombay and
New York simply provide two different acts of a smooth-flowing story or a diptych.
The strength of both these continuums is that they do not focus on a given site with
total attention, nor to they draw opaque walls around the local experience. There is a
situation as if of a seesaw or a constant arrivaltransitdeparture that lends a
particular poignancy to the stories and the emotions. Thus, the most striking basis for
this consolidation lies in the everyday experience of the audience as citizens in this
part of the country.
Having drawn a parallel between the mainstream cinema and Bhojpuri it is
important to explain what is meant by consolidation of an audience and a linguistic
grouping. The explanation lies in the very nature of this extremely flexible dialect
with a huge embrace. Bhojpuri in actual experience ranges from being seen as a style
of Hindi (Bhaiya or Bihari) to a large cluster of dialects spoken natively in Bihar,
eastern Uttar Pradesh, and parts of Madhya Pradesh. Thus, Bhojpuri cinema
constantly has to seek a balance that would ensure viewership in the entire region,
albeit at a much smaller scale than Bombay films. Bhojpuri cinema is seen not just by
Bhojpuri speaking populations, but also by ones that speak similar tongues. In some
cases, the allegiance comes from speakers of tongues that are far from similarfor
example, Maithili, a language spoken in the non-Bhojpuri Mithila region and endowed
with a classical literature. Bhojpuri, on the other hand, is rarely found in the written
form and is largely dependent on oral literature. Bhojpuri is not a simple given as
defined by a grammatical ukase but a consolidated result of a process that has taken
several decades. This has a close parallel in Bombay cinema, which has to strike a
balance over a much broader canvas covering a wider cultural and linguistic territory.
There is another vital socio-cultural process unfolding in the region that relates to
the caste dynamics. In the past three decades, the entire region has seen a dramatic
upward mobility among the middle castes such as Yadavs and Kurmis, and to a lesser
extent among the lowest rungs, the Dalits in the society. State politics in Bihar and
Uttar Pradesh is now largely in the hands of coalitions dominated by not just middle
segments, but also certain Dalit castes and Muslims. These processes can be best
understood perhaps through a close look at the upward mobility of certain lower
castes and their highly reflexive and adaptive ways of making the most of the electoral
and democratic processes. There is a clear need to admit the centrality of the above
issues for any study on the region. Thus, in brief, migratory movement and upward
mobility are twin factors that directly influence both the content of Bhojpuri cinema
and the rise of the Bhojpuri language.
The above two processes are not inherently linked in that one does not follow the
other. Nevertheless, they happen to be yoked together experientially, defining the life
of the migrant and the non-migrant in different ways. The emboldening of the weak
thus acquires several layersmigration often ensures that the world outside seems
less scary, and the dominant castes in the world within seem less fearsome due to
social mobility. Of course, the upper castes look at the expressions of this confidence

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as newfound arrogance and vulgarity. No wonder then that Bhojpuri films are often
condemned for their vulgarity and lack of aesthetic appeal, perhaps as aesthetic
retaliation to political hurt.21
It is not difficult to see that in a region marked by bitter caste wars, deepening
social conflicts, and lack of politically inclusive ideologies, a cultural form such as
Bhojpuri cinema has the potential to create a new resonance not found elsewhere.
Opportunistic political coalitions and eclectic ideologies can often create a sense of
incoherence and anomic vacuum that needs to be filled up. With the aspirations of
different castes and sub-castes aligned in uneasy coalitions, politics would almost seem
to make way for an inclusive cultural arena such as a cinema where people can
commingle to create a broader identity. The hope that politics alone can resolve social
conflicts has proved vain in the past, choking spaces that culture should rightfully
occupy. There is a clear need thus to look closely at some of the continuities between
the realms of culture and politics in the region in the coming years, given that several
processes are still in the state of unfolding.
In the event, if this paper gives the impression that Bhojpuri cinema is inclusive in
the sense of being all-inclusive, we need to admit that the process of consolidation has
thus far excluded both sectionsthe upper crust that opts out of Bhojpuri films, but
significantly also a lower crust that has no access to movies. Although it is difficult to
quantify, a large rural or small town segment does not connect with Bhojpuri films,
just as it is unable to join the migrating hordes for a better life. There are castes such
as Musahars and Doms and other illiterate groups with no previous exposure to
cinema and for a variety of reasons no evident interest in it.22

IV.

Fashioning fantasies

Living in the village, living in Bombay (or Bangalore or rural Amritsar as disparate
migratory destinations), travelling between the city and the native village, and coping
with the cultural transitions both at home and abroad, thus form the experiential raw
material of a new cinema. This new cinema began as an offshoot of the mainstream
Bombay genre around 50 years ago, went through a long gestation, and is now
emerging as a medium on its own. We do not know yet how lasting it will prove in
the years to come. We do not even know if Bhojpuri cinema is simply a sign of
fragmentation in the entertainment media made possible by new technologies that
allow business focus on smaller markets with comparable or higher rates of returns.23
These returns may prove high enough to seem tempting to big business at this point,
but may not seem attractive enough in future.
In order to make sense of the increasing individuality and the difference posed
by Bhojpuri cinema from its Bombay counterpart one needs to focus on a continuum
of experience which proves as first hand for the migrant as for many of his relatives
and neighbours in the village. The continuum with all its fissures could be posed
somewhat schematically as follows:
Village: small town: capital of the province: national metropolis: global
metropolis
The above schema carries an air of linearity and theoretical simplicity. However,
everyday experience ensures to create a complex maze of back and forth movement

BHOJPURI CINEMA

that constantly recreates the collision and the collusion between the myriad values
from the village and the city. Although what we get to see as the end product is a song
or a film or a story, the cultural auteur/protagonist/audience of the story lives it out
and rehearses it endlessly before positing the end product in front of us. Despite all
our attempts to recreate something of this emotional and intellectual struggle, we can
only uncover a few layers of it at a time.
One feasible way of approaching and approximating the migrants struggle to
make sense of his composite and kaleidoscopic universe is to look at his life situations
in terms of two extreme predicaments. First, a situation when a migrant finds his
village and city values rather similar or comparable. Though fraught with considerable
debate and oscillations, this may understandably be a simpler situation. A more
complex situation may be that of incommensurability, when village values (or
situations) and city values (or situations) pose conflicts that prove impossible to
resolve. Yet for practical reasons, they need to be resolved at least for the time being.
The issue of incommensurability is thus to be placed in a pragmatic context and not in
an abstract logical space, where a person can very well wring his hands and declare
that the dilemma has no answer, and walk away unimpeded.
It is not difficult to see that the migrant has to live out an endless series of
ambivalences, which he must resolve for the time being quite simply in order to carry
on living as a morally sensate human being. It would also seem that the ambivalent
predicament is rarely resolved forever. The mental journeys between the village and
the metropolis never end, and the migrant spends a lifetime travelling back and forth.
In a sense, then, leaving the frontiers of the village is like being doomed to a lifetime
of ethical nomadism that nevertheless has to be translated constantly into a rooted
existence. The fear of the unknown needs to be tamed by grasping part of it, any part
of it, for the time being. Unthinking or opportunistic mimicry, strong resistance to it,
slow absorption of alien values, promotion of such values in the village or town
settingall these would seem to provide the migrant with his bag of tricks or his
arsenal of social strategies.
The tremendous reflexivity required of the immigrant is thus often reflected in
Bhojpuri cinema. This reflexivity emerges from the frequently unseen interstices of
cultural systems and features.24 What one probably needs to remember is that while
the migrant faces tremendous pressures, he is also driven by a powerful existential
force that combines his helplessness and despair with a great sense of opportunity and
hope. It also needs to be admitted that the rough edges of existence hide many of
these daily struggles in their intersticesthe intensities as well as the mechanical
insouciance of daily living.
The above points require to be illustrated with scenes from Bhojpuri cinema. This
is important for getting a clear idea of hermeneutic openings that everyday experience
may provide a person. To put it differently and perhaps more effectively, illustrations
from a Bhojpuri film story may give us a clear idea of how a person imposes his own
interpretive take on a real life situation, since interpretive opportunities are anyway
rarely available to a passive agent.
In Pyaar Ke Bandhan (The Bonds of Love) a lively but snooty daughter of a
landowner insults a cobbler (a chamar.) in English, throwing his fee at him like he was
dirt. The cobbler grabs this opportunity to give her an elaborate lecture in Bhojpuriaccented English on the value of education in refining ones character. He tells her

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that sadly, education has instead only degraded hers.25 The heroine stands corrected
and promptly falls in love with the character, of course.
The above lecture explicitly talks about the dignity of labour and the value of
(English) education. Both these values are fixtures from the most boring of school
assembly homilies, and the entertainment-hungry audience would normally refuse to
tolerate such a cliche, far from cheering it. The message cheered by the audience is
learn to respect a chamar for both his work and his education, if not for his
chamarhood alone. The tame lecture thus carries a subversive sting in its tail, making
the sequence exhilarating for the audience. Members of the potter and the carpenter
castes can freely apply the morale to their own predicaments. Moreover, so can a
plumber (not a caste, but a modern occupation).
The heroine was depicted above as an intrepid lover ready to fling her heart at the
slightest opportunity. We probably need to modify her portrait, as she is likely to
brood endlessly on the brief homily, and sort out her ambivalent reactions only after a
great deal of interpretive agony. Of course, the film does not dwell on these
broodings. Instead, it makes something very unlikely happena landlords daughter
falls in love with a cobbler. The sweet euphemism of Bhojpuri films leaves it open
whether the hero is chamar by caste or occupation alone, making matters more
palatable for an upper caste audience than they would have been.26 In a sense then,
the interstices are not provided by experience but sought out actively and intently by a
person. At times, these interstices turn into roomy windows, but at other times, the
interpreter has to ram away at the frontiers to create a narrow crack for an opening.
The relative degrees of gentleness and violence may be commensurate with the
toughness of the task.
A second example from Kanyadan focuses on the issue of female infanticide.
Having given birth to a series of girls, a not so young wife makes the discovery that
her husband has been consigning the newborns to the sacred river Ganga. Rather
uncharacteristically, she confronts him and calls him a rakshasa (a demon). Even more
uncharacteristically for a Bombay film, the husband actually cares to defend his actions
by recounting a trauma that made him completely averse to daughters. When young,
he witnessed his father being humiliated by his sisters husband. When the son-in-law
found that he did not receive support from his father-in-law in the local elections, he
dragged his wife and deposited her at her fathers feet. You can take your daughter
back, he told his father-in-law. The arrogant son-in-law did not relent even when the
father-in-law removed his headgear, the very symbol of his caste pride and put it at his
son-in-laws feet. The growing boy interpreted this incident to mean that the very
presence of a girl in the family was enough to make you vulnerableanyone could
decide to trample on your honour. All you could do is swallow your pride and beg for
mercy.
The above dialogue between the wife and the husband is very revealing, in fact
too revealing for a Bombay film. However, the Bhojpuri film brings out the psyche of
the hurt male with great patience, not justifying it, but simply making it explicit.
Later on, in the King Lear fashion the story goes on to depict the surviving daughter as
her fathers saviour as against a disloyal and feckless son, thereby demonstrating that
the father interpreted his trauma wrongly. The story thus places the trauma where it
belongswith the original sufferer, namely the sister who was used as a pawn in a
political quarrel. The husband had just dispossessed his married sister of her trauma,

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claiming it to be his own. In a sense then the film takes us to the rock bottom of the
mans misogyny.27
What is striking here is not the situation itself, but the depth to which it is
uncovered. In a sense, what the Bhojpuri film is doing is to borrow a stock situation
from Bombay cinema to magnify it with far greater patience than Bombay cinema is
likely to show. Even if we see Bombay and Bhojpuri films as part of a continuum, the
moments of discontinuity and thematic magnification reveal unexplored terrains such
as the details of a youths trauma mentioned above. Here again the intention is not to
lay down rules of interpretation as such but to simply trace a certain strategy of
storytelling, where a Bhojpuri film may be able to focus much more closely on the
social fabric than Bombay cinema. Bombay cinema faces a somewhat different
challenge in dealing with a wider social context, and perhaps has less space for
nuances such as above. The apparent commonalities thus between Bombay and
Bhojpuri quite simply bring out the common cultural thresholds. It is likely that
regional cinemas will find themselves focusing together on two types of
assignmentsfirst, to pick on common cultural thresholds and to seek their own
individual trajectories beyond them, and second, to find altogether new themes. They
will succeed in defining their own vernacular styles with sufficient distinctiveness
without having to choose exclusively between one or the other.

V.

Voicing fantasies in the vernacular

In a very significant sense, while Hindi has found a secure place in the lives of the
masses in urban and rural India, it still lacks the intimacy of dreams that the
vernaculars can provide. Over the past 150 years or so, Hindi has indeed come a long
way. Hindi as the language of literature and poetry, Hindi as the free-flowing practical
language of the media, Hindi as a language of national politicsthese are some of its
different registers with somewhat different norms and styles. These vary between the
extremes of the over-sophisticated literary expressions to by now an almost panIndian popular glossary of democratic electoral politics at the street level.
Nevertheless, to an illiterate rustic, Hindi in its chaste official form is often also
the language of the bureaucracy, underlying the power of the educated sophisticates.
For nearly a century, the advocates of Hindi have thrived on the basis of pitiful antiEnglish sloganeering on the one hand and bullying strategies that include imposition of
the national language on unwilling regions on the other hand.28
The story of opposition to Hindi in many parts of the country and its grumbling
and gradual acceptance in fits and starts is an interesting tale on its own. What is
relevant here is that the growth of Hindi as a common cause has resulted in the
overshadowing of a number of dialects and even written languages, which have
nevertheless rarely reacted with hostility. In fact, even though some of these languages
such as Braj and Awadhi lost their quasi-classical status, they were happy to make a
common cause for and with Hindi. With a vast hinterland of dialects, Hindi developed
the ability to communicate with a very large population. Hindi cinema synthesized its
own version of Hindi by evolving an Urdu-Hindustani filmy dialect even though this
is a version that cannot be used in daily life without turning the speaker into a laughing
stock.

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Yet the very growth of Bhojpuri cinema would indicate that Hindi is unable to
cope with large territories of experience, except perhaps through translation from
these languages. Interestingly, it is in recent times too that Bombay cinema has made
place for the Bombay Hindi dialect in the Munnabhai series (20052007), proving a
great success with near cult following.29 The urdu tehjeeb (style, manners, polish) of
Bombay cinema has had to give way to the crudely expressive tongues spoken by the
common man. Thus while Hindi continues its heroic balancing act between influences
from Sanskrit, Urdu, English and the dialects and may begin to grope southwards
towards the Tamil family, languages like Bhojpuri cannot spend a lifetime behind the
wings, forever repressing themselves voluntarily.30
The rise of the middle castes and Dalits and their continued empowerment, their
cultural self-assertion through literature and cinema, and their continuing political and
ideological assertion are likely to change the shape and status of Hindi in the coming
years. While it remains true that the relation between Sanskrit and the vernaculars,
and Persian or English and the vernaculars has not been the same as between Hindi
and its dialects, the unquestionably domineering position of classical (shudhdha/
pure) Hindi is likely to be questioned more frequently than before. If the proponents
of Hindi decide to see a threat in the growth of the dialects, it may even lead to a new
turn in the politics of languages in the country. At this stage, however, there is a
greater feeling of complementarity than conflict. It is quite likely that in the coming
years the dialects will assert themselves not simply through independent platforms but
by legitimizing forms of Hindi used by a greatly varied population ranging from slums
in metropolises to smaller towns and villages across the nation.
Hindi has shown signs of adequate flexibility and ability to deal with rural and
urban contexts of every day life and the rich variety in between. With the rise of
globalism, Hindis adversarial stance towards English is quite likely to be
complemented with a relatively pacific acceptance of co-existence.
Correspondingly, Hindi may feel enriched and not threatened by the consolidation
of its dialects as its foot soldiers pitted against the onslaught of global English. The
dialects themselves may range from the quasi-classical ones such as Braj and Maithili to
Hyderabadi (Dakhni) and to the recently spawned ones like Bomabaiya (Bombay
Hindi). Hindis bitter envy of English is now increasingly based on its inability to
make inroads in the South, where again the lifting of prescriptive grammatical and
phonetic sanctions may allow different Hindi styles to find fertile soil in the coming
decades. In fact, such alchemy may have already begun on the streets of Bangalore
with some help ironically from linguistic islands such as Gulbarga Urdu. Hindis real
issue with English is likely to be in the realm of ideas and intellectual discourse, where
the vernacular has to wrestle with the might of the cosmopolitan in an unfair battle.
Along the way, Hindi quite sensibly gave up its claims to provide scientific
terminology except until the high school level.
In the midst of all the linguistic churning, Bhojpuri and other dialects clearly do
not have aspirations that threaten the status of Hindi. However, they equally clearly
have the potential to create and, even more importantly, legitimize many Hindis in all
their richness, expanding the lexicon and the stock of regional idioms and sounds.
On the whole then, the dialects would seem to support the case of Hindi in its
envious jostling with English. With the whole world fondly gazing at the vast Indian
and Chinese markets, who knows if Hindi along with Chinese may make hasty inroads

BHOJPURI CINEMA

into the western curricula, causing another twist in the tale within our own lifetimes.
Given that Chinas preparations for the next Olympic Games include quick and
aggressive mastery over basic English by a large population, language learning may at
times even acquire epidemic if not pandemic proportions. Linguistic communities
thus have so many ways of consolidating.

VI.

Political aspirations and cinematic fantasies

Having travelled along a number of hermeneutic routes, it now becomes possible to

celebrate with the seasoned migrant, the happy confusion between arrival and
departure. Coming to a work site whether in Assam, rural Punjab or Bangalore
seems as much an arrival as a journey back to the village with suitcases spilling out
gifts and cash. Going back to secure and relatively lucrative employment in Hyderabad
may seem as sweet and snug as homecoming. The conceptual confusion here seems
more a sign of comfort than dyslexic disorientation. This exaggerated picture of warm
and snug selfhood, however, dissembles many bitter tales of dissonance within the
self, divided between home and destination, between the destiny of rural poverty and
the free will of gainful employment abroad. Most of all, for a student of cinema and
society, it is challenging to find out how the lyrical fantasies of cinema nestle together
with the prosaic aspirations of politics within the embrace of selfhood. This is not an
easy question to answer at any levelwhether at the level of generality, or even in
the specific context of Bhojpuri cinema.
While the last 10 years of Bhojpuri revival make it difficult to make bold
assertions, it is perhaps easier to tell the quintessential political tale. The last three
decades in the region have seen the rise of what may be called the politics of
humiliation and humbling. Indeed, given the nature of caste, it is difficult to visualize
any other mode of democratization. Being punished and humiliated repeatedly (over
many reincarnations?) seems to be the only democratic answer to the ceremonial
hierarchy based on birth alone. Yet while the hierarchy crumbles in flesh, the idea of
caste as a disincarnated ghost may continue to haunt the body politic. The upper castes
in the region have been through several rounds of humiliation at the hands of the
middle and lower castes through the formation of a number of middle-caste and Dalit
dominated governments. It seems castes such as Yadavs will now have to take their
turn willy-nilly. The downfall of the Laloo Yadav regime in Bihar and Mulayam Singh
Yadav in Uttar Pradesh may represent a second phase of humiliations, of the middle
castes in this case, with the possibility of Kurmis in Bihar taking their turn some time
in the future. Within the process of humiliation may lie a gentler process of humbling
too, when Brahmins willingly reduce themselves to the junior partnership of Dalits in
Uttar Pradesh, and Bhumihars do the same with Kurmis in Bihar. The upper castes
thus are now learning to swallow their pride, humbling themselves in the process.
The humbling involved is not simply a matter of subjective sentimentsa survey of
the Rajput and Bhumihar opinion of the Brahmins collusion with Dalits in Uttar
Pradesh is sure to make it seem very substantial. Shame over past privilege however
takes time merging with shame over reduced status in the present.
The above process would seem to be entirely in line with the logic of democracy
if one remembers that the mundane process of democratization is not so much about

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generation of sublime democratic ideals and values as elimination of the nondemocratic ones, and not so much about the creation of dignity as pruning of hubris
and pride.
Unlike the story of politics in the region, the tale of Bhojpuri cinema is yet to
unfold its storyline. Clearly, it can make itself interesting to the outside world or find
a place under the global sun only by representing the community of the region in
entirety or a semblance of it. The logic of both the community and the market place
dictate that cinema should most often perform both the tasks simultaneouslyof
looking within or looking in the mirror, and turning without to project its image on a
wider universal screen. These tasks together define the spaces and the cultural gamut
over which Bhojpuri films can freely move.

VII.

Images of the self: The mirror and the screen

A previous section deals with the first half of cinemas task, that of reflecting on the
conflicts and resonances within the society. However, it is important to see briefly
how Bhojpuri and Hindi cinema try to locate themselves in the global context, and
represent the outer world to themselves, in the process adapting to the intrusive
challenges of globalism.
In the Bhojpuri film Firangi Dulhaniya (Foreign Bride), 2006, the central theme is
that of an Indian boy coming back to the country with a foreigner )read white skinned
Caucasian) bride. While Bombay cinema has occasionally dealt with such challenges,
for a Bhojpuri film it amounts to a major social trauma. It seems the film was based on
the real life story of a small town medical student enrolled in Russia who returned
home with a Russian bride along with a degree. One begins to get an idea of the
complex web of Bhojpuri Diaspora when told that the Russian actress in question
learnt her smattering of Bhojpuri from a tutor from Fiji. What is remarkable is that
Bhojpuri cinema took this predicament as a challenge, managing to resolve the
nightmare by turning it into a sufficiently harmless fantasy. However, is Bhojpuri
cinema capable of dealing with traditionally a highly uncomfortable issue in India such
as extramarital relations?31 The answer is a clear no at this stage. Bombay cinema has
shown the ability to tackle the theme with sufficient aplomb only in the new
millennium. Silsila (1981) and Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (2005) for this reason have
become milestones in Hindi cinema, paving the way for a series of films on the theme.
Clearly, just as different communities and societies find their own way to
globalize, Bombay or Bhojpuri cinemas are willing to globalize on their own terms.
Imagine for a moment the very obverse of Foreign Bride, namely a situation where a
foreign groom comes home with a local bride. This is not beyond the imagination of
Bombay cinema. Namaste London (Hi London), 2007 deals precisely with a
situation such as this, even though the London-returned bride rejects the upper class
British suitor for a Punjabi groom. However, Bhojpuri cinema is miles away from
being able to handle a delicate situation like this, in a sense leaving the audience to
deal with similar real life situations as it pleases. In brief, it is yet a nightmare refusing
to transmogrify into acceptable fantasy. Reluctance, indeed refusal, to surrender its
women to the outsider thus remains a sentiment heavily fraught with symbolism of
self-preservation and identity, revealing the heavy-handed masculine cultural bias with

BHOJPURI CINEMA

all its insinuating cunning and violence. This is not surprisingburqa clad software
engineers, women with postgraduate degrees from US universities hunting for grooms
in India through helpful but often bewildered parents are some other exotic but
basically male dominated solutions to problems created by globalism.
Strangely enough, the one occasion when the Indian male-hood seems willing to
make a compromise in media is during the beauty contests at local, national and
international levels. The motives behind beauty contests are however difficult to read.
They seem highly ambivalenton the one hand, they represent the boast of the male
as the master, showing off his women and the charisma of his bloodline. On the
other hand, they seem to indicate a sense of exposure, even surrender of his women
to the world outside. To the smaller world of likely grooms? Or the wider world of
superior white men who need to be impressed. In the Hindi film Banti aur Bablee
(2006), the female protagonist who sets out to win a beauty contest in the distant
metropolis finds a lover and fellow traveller from her own hometown, again turning a
potentially disruptive tale into a tame fantasy.
The above discussion is by no means complete, but the purpose here was to
demonstrate that a popular form like Bombay or Bhojpuri cinema is marked by both
thresholds and openings, as well as closures and silences. In the everyday life of the
industry, they are known as the practical dos and the donts of cinema, in reality
providing vital clues to deeply embedded cultural norms. Although at any given
moment they seem to have a fairly rigid and static appearance, the fact is they are
always in a state of debate and modification.32 For a student of cinema it is important
to look closely at this process of internal legislation, clauses of which are detectable in
narratives defining the thresholds of articulation as well as the barriers, beyond which
lie the acres of silence. Thus, in a metaphorical sense, Bhojpuri cinema moves over a
territory that spreads across the world within and the world without, reflecting over
its own constituencies as well as the wider world.
The two sub-sections above aim to bring out in relief the uneven terrain of
Bhojpuri cinema. Altogether, it would seem that Bhojpuri films are endowed with a
large territory to navigate in. But one needs to understand that a popular form must
move very carefully, choosing to say what must and can be said, leaving aside wide
swathes of the unstated for future exploration. This uneven terrain is thus marked by
deep chasms that cannot be filled up easily. Film scenes analysed in the earlier sections
make it clear that thematic shifts over this terrain often do not allow smooth or
continuous movement. Thematic leaps, evasions, euphemisms, stark lies, cover up,
and silences thus become means of keeping an audience intact. Overall, however, it
seems a good idea to leave the portals of cinema open to castes and classes that are still
mulling over the hoardings outside, wondering if they should walk in to take a seat.
Bhojpuri cinema is thus divided between its indebtedness to the tales of conflicts
within, and the need to amplify tales of resonances to the outside world. This is an
ambivalence capable of providing a genre with sufficient moral, emotional and
aesthetic energy to continue for decades in search of a kaleidoscopic array of
temporary narrative resolutions. A wonderful thing about cinema is it may continue
to rehearse social reality as long as the audiences are willing to purchase the tickets.
The daily life of cinema thus contrasts with the five-year timescale of electoral
politics, even if the two processes are seen as parallel. Another wonderful thing about
cinema is it succeeds in tilting down utopian consummations from the horizon to the

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cinema screena line from a dialogue and caste system may instantly evaporate, a
close up of brimming eyes may demolish aeons of social inequality at a glance on
immediate basis.
The above terrain almost simultaneously gives us an idea of the typology of
Bhojpuri films, its future course, and the thematic limitations (barriers) and
possibilities (thresholds) that the Bhojpuri industry has to work withissues which
deserve continued analysis in the coming years. At one extreme lies a world
untouched by Bombay cinemaaspects of regions, religions, mythology, legends,
castes and sub-castes, communities, ceremonies and many other unexposed crevices
ready to dehisce untold tales. At the other extreme, Bhojpuri cinema faces the
temptation to woo the upper castes and classes by retelling the Bombay (or even
Hollywood) tales in Bhojpuri. Given the heavy backlog of telling and retelling,
Bhojpuri cinema is unlikely to find itself unemployed any time soon.

Conclusion: The stillness within movement

Let us remind ourselvesthe hectic departures and arrivals, and the cultural tornado
of cultural ambivalences depicted above amount to an exaggeration, which is
acceptable only because it helps us highlight selected areas of reality. The fact is we all
have to live with our selves wherever we go, creating or constructing moments of
pragmatic calm in the midst of ceaseless din. Such calm can only be synthesised by
making note of the numerous tensions and ambivalences amidst which the dynamic
self is situated.
The middle caste and Dalit voter in Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh have been
experiencing social mobility and empowerment at an accelerated pace ever since the
mid-1970s. The migration from Bihar really forms part of a larger twin tale, adding a
sense of cultural poignancy and urgency to the equalitarian and democratic ideologies.
Democratisation in these societies itself seems to ride over waves of self-assertion by
castes and sub-castes, at times helping generate spaces for individual liberty, but at
times squeezing the individual to the limits of his liberty. Broadly, the same segments
of the society hastily formed an audience for Bhojpuri cinema as late as the new
millennium. As stated earlier, while the rise of Bhojpuri cinema is inherently
interesting, it begins to seem more fascinating when seen as part of a broader and
diffuse change in the power equations among the caste groupings.33
While the above passages depict a number of ambivalences and dilemmas faced by
the self, the tussle between the dignity of an individual and dignity for a caste (or any
other grouping) seems to lie at the very core of our predicament in 2007. This is not
an easy ambivalence to resolve, there are many ways to resolve it for the time being,
and it might even be argued that it cannot be resolved forever even in theory through
some kind of categorical summation or wizardry. The undoing of the caste system in
India thus forms an essential part of the democratization process, and we do not
clearly know how finite the process may turn out to be. The ambivalence is faced at
many levelsjuridical, economic, ceremonial and cultural, and these are not easy to
align together. However, it seems that the aspirations for equality, the forcible seizure
of freedom and dignity obtained through political fight need to be supplemented by
fantasies of willing acceptance and acknowledgment by the social enemy turned

BHOJPURI CINEMA

friend.34 Indeed, the taming of cinematic villains perhaps makes for more fulfilling
narrative than their slaying. To put it bluntly, a culture cannot project itself
meaningfully to the outside world when positing its internal conflicts or fault lines as
its distinctive core or the basis of its identity. For this reason, a culture has often to
depict its evils as non-unique secondary traits, or at least as universal evils to be fought
and vanquished by all. To conclude the thematic discussion, it is indeed the goodness
of the hero and the goodness of the culture for which uniqueness must be claimed.
To conclude methodologicallya student of cinema must try to read both the
said as well as the unsaid, admittedly a cliche. While insights obtained through
interpretation of the said are falsifiable to various extents, uncovering the unsaid
may often turn out to be rather a wild hermeneutic adventure. This inherent risk is,
however, unavoidable. It is crucial to use both the above prongs to catch social reality
in its most interesting moments. Refusing to comment on the silences or the unsaid
aspect of cinema may reduce the researcher to duplicating the same old results and
insights of empirical sociology under a different but redundant rubric of cinema. One
would expect that a study of cinema should frequently, if not regularly tell us things
about society that often slip out of the grasp of the more direct approach of empirical
sociology. Using cinema only to confirm findings from other empirical sources, in
brief, seems such a waste.
To conclude on a more mundane and specific note, at the end of these discussions
it would seem that relation between (a) Hollywood-Bombay-Bhojpuri as genres is
somewhat similar to the relation between (b) English-Hindi (or Tamil, etc. in a
different context), Bhojpuri with a structural sociological parallel in (c) upper
castesmiddle casteslower castes/untouchables. While we may continue to use
independent models and metaphors for the three different realms of experience, it
would be interesting to use them as models for each other in order to give due focus
to the hierarchies and their dynamics.35 The shifting relation between the elements of
the three continuums/lacunae may lead to insights relevant exclusively to each
domain as well as those that may be applicable to wider public life. There is a strong
basis to suspect that through a series of comparisons and contrasts between these
inter-relationships, one would be able to delineate not simply a set of fruitful
hermeneutic stances, but also an inchoate functional model with some causal content,
in however, limited or weak sense.

Notes
1

2
3

For the Indian film industry, 2006 was a watershed year. It produced the largest
number of films evera staggering 1,091 With 76 films produced in 2006,
Bhojpuri films have recorded the fastest growth ratea 100 per cent increase over
2005. They also account for 7 per cent of the total number of films produced, only
marginally behind Malayalam and Kannada films, according to figures released by
the Central Board of Film Certification (Singh 22 February.).
For a clear idea of the regressive metaphors and tendencies, specifically
deindustrialization, see Bihar Development Report, 2006, Institute of Human
Development, New Delhi, 2007.
Kishore provides a keen diagnosis of the ailment.

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4
5
6
7
8
9

10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17

18

19
20

Kidnapping Industry Continues to Thrive. The Times of India (Patna) 22 March

2007.
Redistributive reasoning and political action based on it makes limited sense in a
rural economy often driven by cost recovery as the target of ones hard work, a
term tellingly used by Tushar Shah, quoted in Kishore.
This is based on the authors recent conversations with film viewers at a cinema hall
in Patna, Bihar. The conversations form part of empirical work for an ongoing
research project on Bhojpuri cinema.
Deshingkar and Priya et al.
Dasgupta, Barun and agencies
there were 27.69 per cent households reporting migration in 198283. By
19992000, there is a steep increase in the number of households with at least one
migrating family member (hereby referred to as migrating households) and their
percentage jumped to 48.63. It means approximately every alternative household is
effected by migration, whether for a short or long duration, depending upon the
whole host of circumstances in Saran and Anup.
A casual visitor to Bihar will feel puzzled at the amount of newspaper reporting on
fracas caused by delays and glitches at the railway stations on a daily basis.
Parthasarathi.
I will offer you a yellow sari, O Ganges if you unite me with my lover was the
theme song of the film
Bhaiya dooj is a festival celebrating the sister-brother relationship.
The movie titles have been translated to underline a clear contrast with Hindi film
titles for those familiar with these matters.
Tewary, Amarnath Move Over Bollywood Heres Bhojpuri, Story from BBC,
published: 15 December 2005 09:28:12 GMT.
Shankar.
This oversimplified depiction of Bombay cinema would have been more valid until
the late 1990s. With Bombay cinema itself going through a serious transition and
redifferentiation, we are on shifty grounds. This study however focuses on the
stable Bombay tradition to highlight the thematic departures characterizing Bhojpuri
cinema. Recent changes in Bombay cinema clearly require a separate study apart
from the comparisons with Bhojpuri cinema.
Production standards and budgets are fast changing however Firangi Dulhaniya
is shot extensively in foreign locations, which is quite rare for Bhojpuri films. Tanya
is making history because she is the first foreign actress in a Bhojpuri movie, says
director Rajan Kumar Singh. The film is inspired by the real-life story of a student
in Patna, who went to study in Russia, fell in love with a Russian girl, married her
and brought her here, he adds. Tanya plays the young bride who tries to adapt to
an alien culture, language and food. She learnt to speak Bhojpuri from a teacher and
Bhojpuri language expert from Fiji Sahay.
Within three months after writing these lines, the author discovered that Spiderman
III has been dubbed in Bhojpuri and it is receiving an excellent run in the cinema
halls.
It is interesting to note that among the Hindi speaking states, consolidation of
regional identities has often proved to be problematic. While Haryana, Rajasthan
and Punjab seem to have strong identities, Bihari identity continues to be defined
vividly by the outsider with reluctant validation from the Bihari populace as almost

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21

22
23

24

25

26
27
28
29
30

31

32

an afterthought. Culturally, eastern Uttar Pradesh, the very heart of the state seems
to have more in common with Bihar than western Uttar Pradesh does.
The city media tries to brush aside such cinema as loud and obscene, but Ravi
argues, These films are propagating values that are long lost in Hindi cinema like
the respect for bhabhi, the relevance of ghoonghat. Even how rivers like Ganga have
been part of our lifeline. See Kumar 7 October.
A parallel observationthere are times when even a desperate social niche and
known status in a village may seem more secure than the possibility of moving out
into the unknown chaos of an urban job market.
It follows, then, that a logical technology choice for India is electronic cinema.
Electronic presentation systems can be installed for considerably less money
than high quality digital cinema systems. Such systems will not be as stellar in
presentation as digital cinema, but will could offer enough improvement over
the worn film prints and low quality film projection systems of the B and
C-grade centres to attract patrons back to these cinemas. See Karagosian and
Shah.
Homi Bhabhas notion of the interstices, the hybrid in culture, and some of the
spatial metaphors form the basis for some of the concepts used here. However, the
idea of ambivalence was elaborated and interpreted in this specific sense in my
doctoral thesis Freud and the Theory of Culture (unpublished) submitted to the
University of Poona, India in 1987.
The audience erupted deafeningly at this scene, with applause and whistles lasting
several minutes. It later turned out that this same sequence was to be found in many
of Tiwaris films, beginning with his first, the 2005 blockbuster Sasura Bada
Paisawala. Explains Aslam Sheikh: The point is to show an image of what can
happen when the cobbler learns English. Many Scheduled Castes are now
educated. In Nelkantan.
Of late Bhojpuri films have shown a tendency to name castes. Over time if the
audience is able to stomach the candour without breaking into riots, this may be a
seminal contribution to the process of democratization in the society.
This confession occurs not on the analysts couch but in a face-to-face conversation
between a husband and his dying wife.
See Orsini.
Bombay Hindi combines Bhojpuri, Marathi, and some south Indian languages.
The author is indebted to two works noted for their sweep as well as numerous
insights The Otherness of English, Indias Auntie Tongue Syndrome by Probal
Dasgupta, and the more recent The Language of Gods in the World of Men by Sheldon
Pollock. The original purpose of the two volumes, however, is not directly
related to the discussion here despite their highly relevant ramifications and
implications.
This is not just a general moral issue. Prolonged absence of migrant men from the
village creates a wide variety of family crises, some of which seem routine. Clearly,
there are situations that can turn the sweetness of nostalgia quite bitter. For
example, what if a story line tries to make place for a young wife who having run
out of tears, decides to have some fun with other men. While it is easy to decry the
silences of a popular form, one needs to appreciate the difficulties faced by the
storyteller.
In the Bombay film trade, the word masala (combination of spices or recipe) refers
to the strange alchemy of narrative strategies that moves between the horizons of

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the dos and donts to the higher plane of commercial success, rather than just
acceptance. In a sense, with every success, the masala/s get redefined all over again,
in turn modifying the dos and donts to some extent.
Majumdar 28 May.
It would be interesting to conduct an in depth inquiry to explain the gap of two
decades between the rise of the middle castes/Dalits in the region and the rise of
Bhojpuri cinema in the new millennium. Perhaps Bhojpuri cinema had to wait
before the political noise associated with caste strife settled into a more positive
cultural resonance.
One would suspect that the discrepancies between the three would prove more
interesting than similarities. While similarities and simple analogies tend to blunt
hermeneutic and causal analysis, differences pose unavoidable but worthwhile
challenges difficult to subdue.

References
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London; New York: Routledge, 1994.
Dasgupta, Probal. The Otherness of English, Indias Auntie Tongue Syndrome. New Delhi: Sage,
1993.
Dasgupta, Barun and agencies. 16 More Biharis killed in Assam. The Hindu (online
edition), Sunday 23 November 2003.
Deshingkar, Priya et al. The Role of Migration and Remittances in Promoting Livelihoods in
Bihar. London: Overseas Development Institute, 2006.
Karagosian, Michael and Shah Nirav. Mon, Digital Cinema in India., white paper,
MacCalla Partners, 4 July, 2005.
Kishore, Avinash. Understanding agricultural Impasse in Bihar. Economic and Political
Weekly (31 July 2004).
Kumar, Anuj. King Bhoj Speaks. The Hindu (online edition) 7 October 2005.
Majumdar, Sudip. An Unlikely Alliance: How one politician has begun reordering the
countrys politicsand its notorious caste system. Newsweek International edition,
28 May 2007.
Nelkantan, Latika. The Heartland Values of Bhojpuri Cinema. Himal Kathmandu,
October, 2006.
Orsini, Francesca. The Hindi Public Sphere 19201940: Language and Literature in the Age of
Nationalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Parthasarathi, Vibodh. Construing a New Media Market: Merchandizing the Talking
machine c. 190091. Media and Mediation 2005. Ed. Bernard Bel et al. India: Sage,
2005.
Pollock, Sheldon. The Language of Gods in the World of Men. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007.
Sahay, Anand Mohan. Russian Actor in Bhojpuri Film, Rediff India Abroad 16 September
2005. 23 Apr. 2007 ,http://www.rediff.com//movies/2005/sep/16bhojpuri.
htm..
Saran, K., Anup. Changing Pattern Migration from Rural Bihar, Bihar Times 2 Jan. 2007
,www.bihartimes.com..
Shankar, A. The Rise of Bhojpuri Cinema, Business Standard (New Delhi) 21 February
2007.
Singh, Gurbir. Bollywood Turns into Bhojywood, Hindustan Times (Mumbai) 22
February, 2007.

BHOJPURI CINEMA

Ratnakar Tripathy Shanta Sadan, Ghagha Ghat Lane, (Professor Vermas

Compound), Mahendru, Patna 800006, Bihar, India. [email: tripathy.ratnakar@gmail.
com]

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