unique achievement in life is that I
watched practically all Bollywood movies
well at least 95 to 98% of them that are
released in theaters from 9 2004 to 2007
game of course that gives me some sort
of cred to talk about Bollywood also
tells you that I am extremely jobless
person or maybe that’s my job I am a
film critic here of course I’m going to
be talking about the globalization or
the lack of it so far as Bollywood is
concerned and of course I could go into
all the cliches that you’ve heard in the
past in your life which is about how
India produces the maximum number of
movies in the world of course it would
India has the maximum number of
languages in the world
India has 12 film industries within it
Bollywood is a subset of Indian cinema I
could also tell you about how in 2002
3.6 million tickets were sold for
Bollywood movies whereas that number for
Hollywood was 2.6 billion I could talk
about how Bollywood’s growth rate has
been much higher than Hollywood in the
past many years but I think Bollywood is
far more than its box office it is far
more than films also of course it is
about storytelling and it is about
emotions but it’s also about music it’s
also about locations in fact it has a
direct impact on the tourism industry as
has been established in the past it’s
also about fashion so it is about the
nightlife of the young it is about the
celebrations among the old and in my
mind it is the most dominant pop culture
in the world which is not American and
why do I say that because I’m Indian and
there are 1.3 billion Indians who’ve
been touched in some form or the other
by Bollywood and as an Indian as you
step outside India the first thing you
realize is some one or the other it
doesn’t matter which part of the world
you’re in some one or the other
we’ll tell you how they’ve been touched
by Bollywood themselves now every Indian
has that story the travel story about
who they met and what the cabbie told
them mine was a more recent one this was
you know last year I was going to Turkey
for Christmas and I tweeted that fact a
girl from Istanbul which is where I was
headed to she wrote to me she was a
Bollywood fan and she said that she
wanted to meet me she said that she
wanted to show me around we got chatting
we chatted on Twitter for at least week
to ten days and finally when I landed
she was there at the airport to pick me
up I realized that she did not know a
word of Hindi or English I hung out with
her and her friends we sat in a coffee
shop we discussed stuff for many many
hours over the few days as well and we
did this through Google Translate one of
the first songs that I heard thanks to
all these people was this one
of course you’ve heard this song before
it’s from the film job we met this is
the Turkish version of that track now
this is not how traditionally Bollywood
has been known across the world I don’t
know how many non-indians know this but
for the longest especially through to
the 80s and up until the mid 90s the
upper-class Indians themselves were
completely ashamed of Bollywood they
look down upon it and the point of my
talk today is actually to prove to you
that all those reasons why they look
down upon Bollywood was actually the
reason for its global influence the
first reason there are a lot of us near
the Bollywood back in the day was its
moral conservatism the fact there’s so
much melodrama between the father or the
son the son and the mother between the
boy and the girl well mother India for
instance was a huge hit also in India in
1957 according to all anecdotal evidence
–is Mother India remains one of the
most loved films in the entire African
continent and for the same reasons the
other thing is of course the sexual
liberation aspect of it or the sexual
conservatism in our films we’ve all
laughed for so many years about how the
hero and the hero in make out and
suddenly this flower shows up and that’s
supposed to be lovemaking now that in
itself actually resonated with a lot of
conservative societies in the world
especially in the third world especially
in Islamic societies they saw that as
being far truer to their culture than
they did with the sexually liberated
characters and films and stories of
Hollywood the other thing is songs we
have too many songs is what we’ve
complained about all through the earth
the fact is you remember songs you may
forget the films there are known cases
of huge hardcore volume
buff’s in russia and the CIS countries
who keep talking about me rujuta hi
Japan II and they start singing or right
away they talk about awara who was
supposed to be an anthem in Turkey the
third thing and an equally important
thing in my head is the star system and
Bollywood and we all know it because
these are actors who are treated like
gods and everywhere you go it’s is this
idol-worshipping culture that we’ve all
hated because you know we need to get
more realistic about our cinema you see
the fact is also that it’s easier to
remember stars and to project our love
for Bollywood through one person
everyone across the world or at least
most of them know Amitabh Bachchan in
2004 in Baghdad a few construction
mining workers were abducted by
terrorists in Baghdad and when those
guys realized who these people were
Indians of course all that they wanted
for ransom was a phone call with Asha
Parekh now I don’t know how many of you
even know what Asha Parekh looks like
but those guys still remember it then
comes the other huge aspect and not to
say that all these reasons we decided
not to like Bollywood in the 80s up
until the mid 90s were not legit but
this was pretty far more legit than that
is Hollywood ripoffs which is where
Bollywood gets his name the fact that we
stole stories that were being told by
Americans and we made it our own now
there are numerous examples of how that
can be a good thing because you’re what
you’re essentially doing is marrying
East and the West in my in my head and
that’s my theory
I think Russia’s love to a huge extent
comes from that fact alone you have to
understand that the reason why Raj
Kapoor is also a huge and Russia is
because in the 50s during the Cold War
Russians were not allowed to watch
Hollywood movies 20 Indian movies could
release in the theaters every year and
that’s when they fell in love with Raj
Kapoor to start with but they also fell
in love with the character of the tram
which is Chaplin Chaplin they could not
access Raj Kapoor they God up until the
80s you know come across at least if you
go to any of these CIS countries which
in Central Asia you will find fans
hardcore fans of Jimmy which was Mithun
Chakraborty’s character in a film called
disco dancer now disco dancer while is a
great film for all those who loved it
was essentially a Hollywood ripoff of
the disco generation that was the 80s
out there I think the Russians accessed
disco through us so that explains the
ripoffs wasn’t such a bad thing after
all
now something changed in the 90s door
and it just changed for the good which
explains the turkey I just explained to
you about and a turning point in film so
far as I mean one of the theories of
it’s not once in a while quite often you
come across films that make you laugh
they make you cry what was very special
about this particular film Yash Chopra’s
LeMay this happened in the 90s
is that the producers themselves had no
clue that there was this movie that went
abroad and did far better business than
it did in India the suddenly saw that
there was a huge non-resident Indian
population that was loving the stuff
whereas India had remained in a certain
way loving the old Bollywood movies as
they’ve always done now this India there
was outside was very close to the India
and the upper-class India that had
looked down upon Bollywood for at least
a decade and a half and therefore
started a whole new market what exactly
happened in 90s again first thing
internet second thing and more
importantly in the context of this
country satellite communication so from
one channel you had various television
channels these same television channels
will be broadcast in the United States
and United Kingdom those films therefore
were being accessed not just by those
seeking nostalgia which has always been
the case by the second generation
Americans in my American Indians third
generation American Indians four
generation American Indians because they
were watching stories now which was also
set in exactly their neighborhood and
the reason why they were doing that is
because they could pay eight dollars
they could pay eight pounds to watch a
film that would be equal to a lot more
Indians who were paying much lesser in a
single screen theater so you see from
the mid-90s onwards a whole influx of
what is called the NRI film and that was
one phase that split Bollywood into what
then became the multiplex film and the
single screen film now what’s a
multiplex film multiplex film that
started sometime the 2000s was a film
that could be seen in the malls and
therefore the upper-class Indians who
would either watch in a VHS and
therefore the money would not come to
the producer was actually going to the
theater to watch a movie that would show
up in the box office what did they do to
Bollywood per se it made
the upper-middle class and the middle
class more and more a stakeholder in the
kind of films we wanted to watch that
changed completely the dimension of the
kind of movies that we would catch it
was no more the same repetitive stuff
which was about good versus evil it was
no more the same thing about rich boy
poor girl poor boy rich girl this is
something that the old Bollywood weather
in Africa or in Central Asia or West
Asia may have loved forever but this was
new Bollywood which was being loved by n
our eyes which is being loved by the
upper-middle classes and that led to a
split a new one which is a Bollywood
that is far more responsive to our
upper-class tastes and therefore more
globalized A’s and that explains few
things one explains that the new fans of
Bollywood that you meet whether in
Germany they love Kabhi Khushi Kabhi
Gham that is their favorite film and the
reason they love it is of course because
of the melodrama but also because the
stuff looks great the stuff looks glitzy
the stuff looks glamorous in the same
way the West was looking at India and
would have liked to because the markets
had opened up that’s another thing that
happened 1991 the economic boom as it
were or the economic liberalisation so
that’s a new crowd that you’ll see that
also wants the love stories most of us
don’t know that the movie saw this as a
hit in Germany and the reason it’s a hit
is because they cut a new version of it
and they made it into a romantic film
most of us don’t know or did not know
until now that Bollywood is huge in
Turkey that’s because they love the
beats they love a film called three
idiots a film like three idiots is about
what it’s about how the education system
can rub you and kill your dreams that
can be true for a lot of young people
across the world most of us did not know
until just a few months back then a film
like jungle would do close to 200
million dollars business in China not
because they saw it as a Bollywood film
but because they saw it as a film about
a girl who then
makes it in sport because a father
really wants her to most Chinese kids
have to make it in sport because the
communist regime wants them to they saw
connection there so now coming back to
where I started from which is damla my
friend from Istanbul now after four or
five days that we were there she showed
me around she let me pay for anything in
Istanbul she she and her friends came to
drop me at the airport
great thank you very much I’m going home
now I walk into the immigration I can
still feel that she’s probably still
standing there I turn around to check if
she’s still there very much is looking
at me she sent me a message to say I was
waiting for Pilate Pilate Pilate talking
of Shahrukh Khan one of the top hits in
2011 was a song called chammak challo
I’m sure all of you have heard it before
it’s sung by a Khan what is so
interesting about icon singing this song
is the fact that icon is Senegalese by
origin he grew up singing hindi songs
without quite knowing the language then
he goes to the US and he becomes a pop
sensation then Bombay calls him to
become the voice for Shahrukh and he
sings a song in Hindi a song in a
language that it’s sung all through his
life so from Senegal to North America to
India Africa North America Asia if this
is not globalization frankly speaking
ladies and gentlemen I do not know what
it is I leave you with this track of
course
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music] thank you