Current Research

Epic Bollywood: Religion and Representation in Modern Indian Cinema

For over a thousand years, two epic narrative traditions have captivated the hearts and minds of the people of South Asia. These epics are the Ramayana or the “Journey of Rama” and the Mahabharata or the “Great Bharatas.” The Ramayana is about Rama, an exiled warrior-prince who teams up with his younger brother Lakshmana and the divine monkey Hanuman to rescue Rama’s wife Sita after she is kidnapped by the demon king Ravana. The main plot of the Mahabharata centers on the horrific war fought over the Bharata Kingdom between two sets of princes: the five Pandava brothers and their one hundred paternal cousins, the Kauravas.

The oldest iterations of these narratives are two ancient Sanskrit epic poems. While Hindu traditions play a major role in the Sanskrit Ramayana and the Sanskrit Mahabharata, retellings of these epics have also been created by Buddhists, Jains, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Zoroastrians, and members of caste-oppressed communities including Dalits (those formerly known as “Untouchables”) and Adivasi (Indigenous) people. There are innumerable Ramayanas and Mahabharatas from the realms of literature, poetry, theater, music, dance, and visual arts.

In modern India, one of the most common mediums used to retell the epics is film. India is the largest producer of movies in the world with over one thousand films being released each year. The country boasts several different film industries including Bollywood, India’s immensely popular Hindi movie industry based in Mumbai.

Epic Bollywood: Religion and Representation in Modern Indian Cinema is a study of films that draw heavily from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata traditions. In this book, I focus on Ramayana and Mahabharata movies that were created from 1990 onwards. While most of the films I analyze are Bollywood movies, I also discuss Bengali, English, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu films as well as movies produced outside of India. Along with closely examining over forty films, I investigate how these movies were received by general audiences and film critics.

Films I examine in Epic Bollywood include: Thalapathi (1991), Khal Nayak (1993), Karan Arjun (1995), Fire (1996), Hum Saath-Saath Hain (1999), Hey Ram (2000), Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001), Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham...(2001), Lajja (2001), Pinjar (2003), Main Hoon Na (2004), Swades: We, the People (2004), Eklavya: The Royal Guard (2007), Raajneeti (2010), Raavan (2010), Raavanan (2010), Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish (2012), Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (2015), Kaala (2018), Kalank (2019), Kurukshetra (2019), Karnan (2021), Sita Ramam (2022), RRR (2022), Gadar 2 (2023), Paradise (2023), Adipurush (2023), Hanu-Man (2024), Kalki 2898 AD (2024), Monkey Man (2024), and Singham Again (2024).