Page - 77 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

rity?4 According to Lal and Nandy, “With many old ideas collapsing and conventional social sciences failing to respond to the changing content of Indian politics, many began to explore the myths and fantasies that seemed to shape public expectations from politics, politicians, and the state.”5 By the 1980s it had become clearer to Indian and international scholars alike that the media-exposed Indian public was accessible and in fact exploitable through use of religio-cultural symbols and structures in media such as popular cinema.6 In short, popular culture, and popular film in particular, offered clues for understanding the contemporary public on the verge of a critical time in the country’s development – the shift away from socialism in favor of neo-liberal economics and concomitant rise of Hindu nationalism.7 By the late 1990s, given earlier nationalist movements, one might have expected Hindu nationalists to favor economic protectionism. Instead, the BJP governments furthered the liberalization agenda first implemented by the Gandhi and Rao Con- gress Party governments – privatizing many central government corporations, lib- eralizing trade in accordance with the World Trade Organization, opening the skies to private airlines and the country to overseas investment. It was under the BJP that Bangalore became India’s Silicon Valley and Hyderabad became “Hi-Tech City” (thanks also to Andhra’s Chief Minister, Chandrababu Naidu). Significantly for Indian cinema, under the BJP the Government of India finally granted filmmaking “industry” status, thereby allowing it to receive, among other things, reduced electricity rates and eligibility for bank finance.8 That the BJP would grant industry status is not too surprising, since, as Tejaswini Ganti notes, “the par- ty’s support base is heavily drawn from petty trader’s and small businessmen who also comprise the vast distribution, exhibition, and finance apparatus for Hindu film- making”.9 Filmmaking’s new legitimacy is a significant departure from the norm. For years, the government’s treatment of the industry had been paternalistic and puritanical, a medium to be monitored and manipulated. Its tax policy placed film- making in the same categories of “vices” like tobacco and alcohol consumption. But with its new respectability in a BJP-dominated India, popular film became an ex- 4 This question is posed by Lal/Nandy 2006, xxiii. 5 Lal/Nandy 2006, xxiii. 6 Lal/Nandy 2006, xxiii. 7 Harish Trivedi partially echoes Lal and Nandy by noting that Hindi cinema only became a respectable field of academic enquiry in the 1990s, especially with the publication of what became the canonical Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, edited by Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen, in 1995. He notes that such interest was inspired by the common desire, exemplified by cultural studies, to understand popular and mass cultures. See Trivedi 2006. 8 Ganti 2004, 50. 9 Ganti 2004, 51. 76 | Kerry P.  C. San Chirico www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 73–102