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Edited by Diana Dimitrova RELIGION IN LITERATURE AND FILM IN SOUTH ASIA Copyright © Diana Dimitrova, 2010. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-62225-8 All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States – a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-38396-2 ISBN 978-0-230-10552-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230105522 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Religion in literature and ﬁ lm in South Asia / edited by Diana Dimitrova. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-349-38396-2 1. Indic literature—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Motion pictures—India. 3. Religion in literature. 4. Myth in literature. 5. Religion in motion pictures. 6. Myth in motion pictures. I. Dimitrova, Diana, 1969– PK5410.R4R45 2010 891.4—dc22 2009041346 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by MPS Limited, A Macmillan Company First edition: February 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Katie This page intentionally left blank Contents

The Editor ix Contributors xi Note on Transliteration xv

On Myth and Mythologizing: An Introduction 1 Diana Dimitrova

PART I Religion, Myth, and Gender 1 Seeking God: Narratives of the Spiritual in Amrita Bharati’s Work and Hindi Poetry 23 Lucy Rosenstein

2 Who Is Afraid of Mı¯ra¯ba¯ı¯? Gulzar’s Antidote for Mı¯ra¯’s Poison 45 Heidi Pauwels

3 Religion and Gender in Bollywood Film 69 Diana Dimitrova

4 The Creative Modern and the Myths of the Goddess Mariyamman 83 Perundevi Srinivasan

PART II Religion, Myth, and Politics 5 Constructed Religious Feelings and Communal Identities in Hama¯ra¯ S´ahar us baras by Gı¯ta¯ñjalı¯ S´rı¯ 95 Alessandra Consolaro viii ● Contents

6 Dharma Reconsidered: The Inappropriate Poetry of Arun Kolatkar in Sarpa Satra 131 Laetitia Zecchini 7 From Otherland to the Divine Land: Exile, Mysticism, and Secularism in K. B. Vaid’s Dard la¯ dava¯ 153 Anne Castaing 8 In the Face of Even Lesser Breeds: Reading Nayantara Sahgal with Indian Christians 171 Clara Joseph 9 Censorship, Social Reform, and Mythological Drama in Colonial India 191 Nandi Bhatia

10 From Kuruks.etra to Ra¯mara¯jya: A Comparative Analysis of the Star Personas of Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan 213 Sunny Singh Index 223 The Editor

Diana Dimitrova obtained her Ph.D. in Modern and Classical Indology at the University of Heidelberg in 2000. She is Assistant Professor of Hinduism and South Asian Religions at Michigan State University. Her research interests are Hindi drama, Bollywood ﬁ lm, bhakti Hinduism, and Hindu reform movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is the author of Gender, Religion and Modern Hindi Drama (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008) and Western Tradition and Naturalistic Hindi Theatre (New York: Peter Lang, 2004). Her recent articles include “The Treatment of Women and Gender in the Plays Asharh ka ek din and Adhe adhure by Mohan Rakesh (1925–1972),” in ToÞwa-e-dil. Festschrift Helmut Nespital (Reinbek: Wezler, 2001), “Of satis, Sitas, and Miras: Three Female Protagonists in Modern Hindi Drama,” in Heroes and Heritage: The Protagonist in Indian Literature and Film (Leiden, Netherlands: Research School CNWS, Leiden University, 2003); “The Indian Character of Modern Hindi Drama: Neo-Sanskritic, Pro-Western Naturalistic or Nativistic Dramas?” In Theology and Literature: Rethinking Reader Response (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); “Upendranath Ashk’s Play Tufan se pahle and Hindu-Muslim Cultural Hybridity,” in Voices from South Asia (Zagreb: Bibliotheca Orientalica of the Croatian Philological Society, 2006); and “The Development of Sanatana Dharma in the Twentieth Century: A Radhasoami Perspective.” In The International Journal of Hindu Studies 1, no., 1 (2007) 89–98, “Neo-Sanskritic and Naturalistic Hindi Drama.” Modern Indian Theatre (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). This page intentionally left blank Contributors

Nandi Bhatia is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario. Her books include Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance: Theatre and Politics in Colonial and Postcolonial India (University of Michigan Press and Oxford University Press, 2004), Partitioned Lives: Narratives of Home, Dislocation, and Resettlement (Pearson, 2008, co-ed.), and Modern Indian Theatre: A Reader (Oxford University Press, January 2009). She has also guest-edited a special issue of Feminist Review on “Postcolonial Theatres,” and coedited a special issue of Fashion Theory on “Fashion and Orientalism.” Additionally, her articles on colonial and postcolonial theatre, ﬁ lm, and literature have appeared in Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, Centennial Review, Feminist Review, South Asia Graduate Research Journal, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, Gramma, and book collections.

Anne Castaing obtained her Ph.D. at Inalco, Paris. She is a lecturer of Hindi Literature in INALCO, Paris. She edited an anthology of Indian Literature, Ragmala, Anthologie des littératures indiennes traduites en français (Editions L’Asiathèque, 2005), and coedited the book La Modernité Littéraire Indienne en question, which includes critical articles and translations from Indian languages (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, forthcoming). She is also a translator of Hindi Literature: Intimités, a collection of poetry by Ashok Vajpeyi (Caractères, 2006); Lila, a novel by K. B. Vaid, translated with Annie Montaut (Caractères, 2005); “Musulmans, tous frères,” a story by Agyeya translated in collaboration (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, forthcoming).

Alessandra Consolaro obtained her MA in Sankrit at the University of Milan and in Hindi at the University of Turin, and her Ph.D. in History and International Relationships at the University of Pisa. In 1991 she received a Fulbright scholarship (University of Washington, Seattle). At xii ● Contributors present she teaches Hindi Language and Literature at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Turin. Her research interests include contemporary Hindi ﬁ ction: critical study and translation; decolonization in South Asia and its relations with the standardization of modern Hindi language and literature; South Asian history (twentieth century, nationalism, and postcolonial); and colonial and postcolonial theory. Her recent publications (not including four research articles in Italian and translations of literary Hindi texts into Italian) are “Evaluating Contemporary Hindi Narrative in Italy: A Random Approach and the Perpetuation of Stereotypes.” In A. Monti and M. Goglio, eds., Streaming Up Memory In- Between Past and Present: A River of Words; Meeting the Indian Writers Alka Saraogi and Anita Nair (Torino: L’Harmattan Italia Paradoxa/Texts, 2004), 62–71; “Rag-Virag: A Drama of Attachment and Nonattachment.” In A. Monti, M. Goglio, and E. Adami, eds., Feeding the Self, Feeling the Way in Ancient and Contemporary South Asian Cultures (Torino: L’Harmattan Italia Paradoxa/Texts, 2005), 94–113.

Clara A. B. Joseph is Associate Professor of English at the University of Calgary. Her publications include The Agent in the Margin: Nayantara Sahgal’s Gandhian Fiction (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008), Theology and Literature: Rethinking Reader Responsibility (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), and Global Fissures: Postcolonial Fusions (Rodopi, 2006). Her articles have appeared in journals such as World Englishes, Research in African Literatures, World Literature Written in English, and English Studies in Canada. She has been awarded an SSHRCC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) Standard Research Grant for her current research on Christian literary works of India. She serves on the editorial boards of ARIEL and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

Heidi Pauwels obtained her Ph.D. in Hindi in 1994 at the University of Washington. She is currently Associate Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her main research interests are Krishna and Rama bhakti, esp. Sita and Radha as role models in Sanskrit and medieval texts and contemporary ﬁ lm and television, and Nagridas alias Savant Singh of Kishangarh. She is the author of In Praise of Holy Men: Hagiographic Poems by and about Harira¯m Vya¯s (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 2002) and Kr..sn. a’s Round Dance Reconsidered: Harira¯m Vya¯s’s Hindi Ra¯s-pañca¯dhya¯nı¯ (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1996) Her recent publications include Indian Literature and Popular Cinema: Recasting Classics (London; New York: Routledge, 2007), “‘Only You’ The Wedding of Rama and Sita, Past and Present,” in Ramayana Revisited (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 165–218; Contributors ● xiii

“Is Love Still Stronger Than Dharma? What Ever Happened to Sita’s Choice and the Gopis’s Voice?” in Playing for Real: Hindu Role Models, Religion, and Gender (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), 117–140, and “Romancing Radha: Nagridas’s Royal Appropriations of Bhakti Themes,” South Asia Research 15 2005: 55–78.

Lucy Rosenstein obtained her Ph.D. at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London. She is a Senior Lecturer in Hindi at SOAS. Her publications include The Devotional Poetry of Sva¯mı¯ Harida¯s: A Study of Early Braj Bha¯s.a¯ Verse (Groningen, The Netherlands: Egbert Forsten, 1997), New Poetry in Hindi: An Anthology (Permanent Black 2003, Anthem 2004), and numerous translations of and articles on contemporary Hindi poetry. She is particularly interested in the theory and practice of translation and in gender issues, and the work of contemporary Hindi women poets has remained the focus of her research for the past seven years.

Sunny Singh holds a BA from Brandeis University, Waltham; an MA in English and American Literature; and a master’s degree in Spanish Language, Literature, and Culture from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is completing her Ph.D. from the Universitat de Barcelona. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at the London Metropolitan University London, UK and leads the BA in Creative Writing, but also teaches Indian cinema. Her fi rst novel—Nani’s Book of Suicides—was fi rst published by HarperCollins India in 2000. The Spanish translation of the novel won the Mar de Letras prize in Spain. Her second book, a work of nonfi ction titled Single in the City: The Independent Woman’s Handbook (2001), explored the lives of single women in contemporary India. Her most recent novel, With Krishna’s Eyes (2006), has been translated so far into four languages and commended for its “profound insights.” She has published creative and academic work in international anthologies, literary magazines, numerous academic journals, and newspapers worldwide. Her research interests include gender, postco- loniality, popular culture, and cinema.

Perundevi Srinivasan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Human Sciences Program at the George Washington University, United States. Her research focuses on the conceptions of the body and modernity within a framework of the goddess cult in Tamil Nadu, India. Perundevi is a Tamil writer and poet. Her publications include two poetry collections and short stories. She has published a review article on Madeleine Biardeau’s Stories about Posts in the xiv ● Contributors

Anthropological Quarterly (Summer 2005). Her article titled “Can We Cross the Chasm? Agency and Orientalist Discourse in the Colonial Tamil Context” is included in an anthology titled “Reorienting Orientalism” edited by Chandreyee Niyogi (New Delhi: Sage, 2006).

Laetitia Zecchini obtained her Ph.D. from the Sorbonne and Inalco, Paris, on the political dimension of contemporary Indian poetry in English and in Hindi in 2007. She is now working as a tenured researcher at the CNRS in Paris. She is coeditor of La modernité littéraire indienne: Perspectives post- coloniales (Rennes: PUR, forthcoming) and has published several articles on Indian poetry and on postcolonial theory. Her recent work has focused on Arun Kolatkar’s poetry. Her research interests include the politics of poetics, the representation of the subaltern in literature, speciﬁ cally poetry, strange- ness in Indian writing, and the literature of the Dalits. She has cotranslated the poet Kedarnath Singh into French (Dans un pays tout plein d’histoires) and is currently translating Kolatkar’s Kala Ghoda Poems. Note on Transliteration

The system of transliteration in this work follows a standard system for Hindi, in which long vowels are marked with a macron, for instance a¯ , and retrofl ex consonants with a dot beneath the letter, for example .d. Nasalization is indicated by the sign m. , which follows the nasalized vocal, for instance bham. var. No special symbol is used for anusva¯ra (superscript dot denoting homorganic or other nasal consonant) in the transliteration, the appropriate nasal consonant being written to avoid confusion in the pronunciation, for example ran. gmañc. All Hindi words and titles of works are spelled accord- ing to the transliteration system for Hindi, for example kavita¯. The titles of fi lms and the names of deities, of characters in fi ction and scripture, of languages, and of cities and countries have not been marked with diacritics.