Page - 99 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

gued their narrative traditions to various contested ends. The aforementioned ep- ics themselves demonstrate the diversity of South Asian narrative traditions. Since the early 1990s, religion scholars have focused on the epics not primarily as texts, but as traditions living in oral/aural, performance, ritual, and literary modalities. As such, each epic represents a complex and dynamic web of signification through which South Asians understand their world and their place in it over millennia. So, while the epics are open-ended and polysemous organisms cutting across sectarian boundaries, Indian screenwriters and producers have only scratched the surface of the epic traditions, to say nothing of other traditions What, for example, is dharma in the Mahābhārata? For those who encounter the Mahābhārata in its multiple re- gional, linguistic varieties and modes, there might be more than one answer. Yet one would not know that by common representations from members of the Sangh Parivar, where an often flattened, sanitized, sanātanized, and indeed Vaiṣṇavized Hindu dharma is presented as normative.49 Thus, to write of dhārmik “constraints” said to pervade Hindi popular film earlier in this essay is to denigrate not Hindu dharma as such, but the narrow way the notoriously capacious concept is being applied. In other words, Hindu dharma is not an artistic, narratival, or even ideolog- ical obstacle to be abandoned, as if that were even possible. Indeed, “obstacles” – variously called techniques, norms, rules, or conventions – can provide the neces- sary constraint for the flourishing of any art form, even when reacted to or pushed against. This is how all traditions adapt and change. The real problem, if I may be bold enough to call it that, is that the film industry has failed to plumb the full depths of India’s dhārmik treasury, which is a nearly limitless repository. I am arguing that Hindu traditions have the resources within themselves, in interaction with the lib- eral ideologies of modernity, to ensure the flourishing of multiple communities in a pluralist democracy. They need not resort to the denial of these identities in the name of a secular nationalism that denies difference, or that foregrounds national identity over all other identities, or that forces persons and communities to check their ultimate commitments at the door marked “civil society”. Finally, with regard to representations of religious minorities in Hindi popular cinema, it bears repeating that even a cursory glance at the names of actors, directors, editors, composers, producers, and playback singers reveals the cosmopolitan and multi-religious (if not 49 In recent years, various Hindu groups have presented Hinduism as a largely monolithic tradition along the lines of perceived Christianity and Islam, contrary to the long history of South Asia reli- gions, wherein a diverse collection of traditions flourished without the novel designation “Hindu- ism”. Historian Romila Thapar made this point in her seminal essay “Syndicated Hinduism”, which subsequently sparked further reflection by Paula Richman and others. Such authors demonstrated that among Hindu nationalists a new “normative” Hinduism was being presented as sanātana (eter- nal and unchanging) and Vaiṣṇava (centered around Viṣṇu, particularly Rāma, an avatar of Viṣṇu). See Thapar 1997 and Richman 1991. 98 | Kerry P.  C. San Chirico www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 73–102