Allegory, nationalism and cultural change in Indian cinema: Sant Tukaram

Literature and Theology

Volumn 12, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 50-69

  Bhaskar, Ira ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 43849092777     PISSN: 02691205     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/litthe/12.1.50     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. Deborah Madsen, Rereading Allegory: A Narrative Approach to Genre (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), p. 135
2. Ousmane Sembene, 'An Interview with Sembene Ousmane', Cinema 76 no. 208 (April, 1976)
3. cited by Philip Rosen in 'Making a Nation in Sembene's Ceddo', Otherness and the Media, ed. Hamid Naficy & Teshome Gabriel (Chunz, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Press, 1993), p. 147
4. The term refers to the use of myths, stories and legends from the Puranas, collections of ancient stories and myths, that were used as material for the first narrative films that were made by Phalke. Since the stories were a part of a well-developed oral tradition, they provided popular themes and symbols of identification during the national struggle. Before film, the genre had predecessors in the visual arts (the painting of heroic tales from the myths), as well as in theatrical traditions, both folk and later popular traditions like the Parsee theatre of Bombay. Phalke viewed the mythological as the aesthetic dimension of his 'swadeshi' effort at cinema. See Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen, eds. Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 145, 164
5. Ashish Rajadhyaksha, 'The Epic Melodrama: Themes of Nationality in Indian Cinema', Journal of Arts & Ideas, Nos. 25-6, December, 1993, p. 61
6. Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (1986, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), pp. 73-9. See Chatterjee for a history and interpretation of nationalist discourse both in the colonial and post colonial period. He uses the Gramscian paradigm to divide the discourse into three periods - the colonial period: 'the moment of departure', symbolically summed up through the work of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee; the phase of the national struggle for independence and the intervention of Gandhi as 'the moment of manouevre'; and the post-Independence phase through the writings of the first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as 'the moment of arrival'
7. For the historical and political details of the national movement, see Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1885-1947 (1983; London: Macmillan Press, 1989)
8. and essays by Bipin Chandra, Nationalism and Colonialism in Modern India (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1979)
9. Quoted in Indian Cinematographic Committee Report, 1928
10. Cited by Rajadhyaksha, 'The Epic Melodrama', Op. cit., p. 62
11. Bhakta Kabir (Hindi, '42)
12. Bhakta Potana and Thyagayya (Telugu, '42, '46)
13. Meera (Hindi/Tamil, '45)
14. The famous saint films of the Prabhat film company are Dharmatma, Sant Tukaram, and Sant Dnyaneshwar, all in Marathi and made in '35, '36 and '40 respectively. See Rajadhyaksha, Encyclopaedia, p. 189
15. Frederic Jameson, 'Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism', Social Text, no. 5, Fall '86: 'Third-world texts, even those which are seemingly private and invested with a properly libidinal dynamic, necessarily project a political dimension in the form of national allegory: the story of the private individual destiny is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the public third-world culture and society', p. 69
16. Aijaz Ahmad, 'Jameson's Rhetoric of Otherness and the "National Allegory"', In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London, New York: Verso, 1992), pp. 99-100. Ahmad has challenged the theoretical soundness of the concept of the Third World as characterised by a mode of production and then related to geographical areas, the experience of colonialism and imperialism, as well as culture, since the areas that are so designated are not in the least bit homogenous either culturally, historically or politically, and also contain features of both the first world as well as the second. The attempt to characterize differences on the basis therefore of concepts like Orientalism or essentialist difference between cultures is problematic, for as Ahmed points out 'we are not each other's civilizational Others', p. 122
17. Deborah Madsen, quoting AC. Charity on typology, Op. cit., p. 44
18. The word 'bhakti' literally means 'devotion', and is used here to signify the Bhakti cult, the cult of personal devotion as a means of realising God. The radical nature of the Bhakti movement is centered in its rejection of the ritualistic structure of the Brahmanical religion that denied entry to the temple to lower castes, therefore denying them the means of worship and indicating their spiritual inferiority. See also note 18. For an understanding of the four-fold caste system that structured society and the professions that individuals could choose (Brahmans - the learned class, the teachers as well as the priests who performed religious rituals; the Kshatriyas - the warrior class and the administrators; the Vaishyas - the merchants and traders; and the Shudras - the lowest class that performed menial jobs and that also included the Untouchables), see Richard Lannoy's The Speaking Tree: A Study of Indian Culture and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971)
19. Another name for the Bhakti cult, since the term means relating to or coming from Bhagavat i.e. Vishnu or Krishna. It signifies the theistic cults of the Bhakti movement that advocated devotion to a personal God, generally an incarnation or 'avatar' of Vishnu, and stressed the importance of worship rather than ritualistic sacrifice. See Margaret and James Stutley's A Dictionary of Hinduism: It's Mythology, Folklore and Development - 1500 AD-BC 1500 (New Delhi: Heritage Publishers, 1986), p. 40
20. The Marathi term 'sant', as indeed in other Indian languages as well, is derived, as Dilip Chitre points out, 'from the Sanskrit "sat" which denotes being and awareness, purity and divine spirit, wisdom and sagacity, the quality of being emancipated, and of being true. The relative emphases are somewhat different in the Christian concept of sainthood, though there is an overlap.' See Dilip Chitre's Introduction to Says Tuka: Selected Poetry of Tukaram (New Delhi: Penguin Books, India Ltd, 1991), p. xviii
21. See Eleanor Zelliot, 'Gandhi and Ambedkar: A Study in Leadership' in From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on Ambedkar Movement (New Delhi: Manohar, 1992), pp. 150-83
22. M.G. Ranade, Rise of Marathi Power & Other Essays (1900; Bombay: University of Bombay, 1961), p. 5
23. Cited by Eleanor Zelliot, Op. cit., pp. 8-9
24. Geeta Kapur, 'Mythic Material in Indian Cinema', Journal of Arts & Ideas, Nos 14-15, July-December, 1987, p. 90
25. On the deification of Gandhi, see Shahid Amin, 'Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern U.P., 1921-22' in Ranajit Guha & Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, eds. Selected Subaltern Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). The word 'mahatma' literally means 'a great soul' and could be equated with 'saint' though the Indian word 'sant' is closer in meaning. See also note 32
26. See Partha Chatterjee's discussion of an early 19th century British traveller's account of his impressions of India in The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 118-19
27. The Bhagavad Gita, the 'Lord's Song' or the Song of Krishna in the Indian epic the Mahabharata. The Gita is a philosophical discourse on the nature of dharma(duty) and bhakti (devotion). Krishna reveals to Arjuna, on the battlefield of Kurukshetra as he wonders about the futility of battle, that the path to freedom and a realisation of God is through unselfish action in order to fulfil one's duty, devotion to God, and faith in his grace. See Stutley's A Dictionary of Hinduism, Op. cit., p. 40
28. See Stutley's A Dictionary of Hinduism, p. 76 for further clarification
29. Madsen, Op. cit., p. 39
30. For further discussion of the term see Madsen, pp. 35-56
31. Kumar Shahani, 'The Saint Poets of Prabhat' in T.M. Ramachandran, ed. 70 Years of Indian Cinema: 1913-1983 (Bombay: Cinema India - International, 1985), p. 198