Page - 79 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

now their children – display all these through a medium as bright and seemingly transparent as a Delhi marching band. Yet just as boisterous marching-band kitsch can blind us to the intricacies of the socio-cultural phenomenon itself – note, for example, the colonial vestige of a British marching band, the Bollywood songbook, the musicians and their ragtag dress, and the poor women and adolescents carrying fluorescent torches precariously attached to a moving generator – so too can the glare of the glossy masālā film blind us to the things that are. As many now take for granted, the genre has something to teach us. The final pivot that would make pop Indian film pakkā (legitimate) was the growth of India’s diaspora. By the mid-1990s, given years of immigration, an Indian diasporic middle class in the tens of millions reached around the globe, from Lon- don to New York to Melbourne. Bollywood films had become an important link to janmabhūmi (lit: “birthland”), a fact not lost on producers like Yash Chopra, founder of Yash Raj Films (YRF). According to Avtar Panesar, Vice President, International Operations, Yash Raj Films, two films made a huge impact: The overseas success of DDLJ and HAHK became the catalyst for international business resurgence and YRF were at the forefront. It was only a natural pro- gression for YRF to control its own destiny. YRF became the first India studio to set up its international distribution arm.13 More studios would follow suit. The result? Kucch Kuchh Hota Hai (Something Hap- pens, Karan Johar, IN 1998), Pardes (Foreign Land, Subhash Gai, IN 1997), Kal Ho Naa Ho (Tomorrow May Never Come, Nikhil Advani, IN 2003), and Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (Never Say Goodbye, Karan Johar, IN 2006) were written with the diasporic audience in mind. So at the same time as Indian middle-class, caste Hindus were feeling no small anxiety about their place in contemporary India, diasporic Indians were struggling with their own demons, especially the ambivalences of identity and belonging in the United Kingdom and North America.14 As the first generation made Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, a law allowing a degree of autonomy in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan banned all Indian films. See “It’s Pakistan’s Loss, Says Bollywood on Films Being Banned Across the Border”, in News 18, 8 August, 2019, https://www.news18.com/news/ movies/its-pakistans-loss-says-bollywood-on-indian-films-being-banned-across-border-2263587.html [accessed 13 November 2019]. Historically, film bans are a regular practice of the Pakistani govern- ment, though past films were banned on an ad hoc basis, mostly owing to depictions of Muslims, Islam, and Pakistan. 13 With these common acronyms, Panesar refers to Hum Aapke Hain Kaun? (“Hahk”, What Am I to You?, Sooraj Barjatya, IN 1994) and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (“DDLJ”, The Big Hearted Will Take Away the Bride, Yash Chopra, IN 1995). See Verma 2017. 14 In 2007 a BBC poll found that 38% of all South Asians living in Britain said they “don’t feel British”, while half believed they were not treated as British by white Britons. “Over a third British Asians 78 | Kerry P.  C. San Chirico www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 73–102