Aan to Lagaan: Bollywood in UK

Driven by diaspora communities, brand Bollywood has become a synonym for the world’s largest film industry, attracting newer audiences

The University of Oxford is known for its history, education standards, alumni and pioneering achievements. It registered another first some time ago: the university’s Examination Schools building, where final-year students sit for exams, resounded with Amitabh Bachchan’s iconic dialogues and songs. The occasion was the Annual Distinguished Ford Lecture, delivered by senior academic Rachel Dwyer with the title ‘Amitabh Bachchan: Emotion and the Star in Hindi Film’, when Bachchan, who was visiting Oxford, was the respondent. According to Dwyer, his name does more for India abroad than other known symbols such as the Taj Mahal, curry, or yoga. Bachchan was visibly embarrassed by some of the high praise, but used the occasion to highlight the growing popularity of Indian films abroad.

The packed-to-capacity event had several sub-texts. The lecture was by a British academic specialising in Indian cinema — a genre that was once seen in the West as too kitschy and melodramatic to be considered worthy of mainstream academic attention; there were more non-Asian people in the audience; and a leading Indian actor was being feted in a university that does not have a dedicated department for media studies, unlike several other British universities. The event was also symbolic of the growing appeal of Indian cinema not only in Britain — driven initially by diaspora communities, now attracting others — but also across Europe and elsewhere, challenging influential themes of West-driven cultural imperialism in discourses of globalisation in recent years.

As Bachchan said at the event, “Every time a nation does well economically, many aspects such as its... music, food, culture suddenly become important. The West saw Indian cinema with cynicism, but now the very factors that were criticised earlier are seen as unique. There is a vast patronage to Indian cinema abroad.” He saw cinema halls fostering a kind of integration that was fast losing ground in other parts of the world: “When we sit, laugh, cry and enjoy the same songs, we don’t ask who is a Hindu or Muslim or Christian. There are very few such examples in the world where cinema halls bring about such integration.”

Bachchan, awarded a doctorate by the De Montfort University in Leicester in 2006, is one of the many critics of the word ‘Bollywood’. He prefers the use of ‘Indian film industry’, since the former resonates with Hollywood, and insists that calling it ‘Bollywood’ belittles Indian films that have a unique identity. There are different claims to the origin of the word, but despite opposition by Bachchan and others, its usage has become so common that many incorrectly use it to refer to the entire Indian film industry, while others insist it should be only used for Hindi films produced out of Mumbai (mostly after 1990). Its usage has been equally contested and commended by those inside and outside the world of Indian films.

From humble beginnings, to cool

The 3 million-strong south Asian diaspora in Britain invariably refers to Indian films as Bollywood which, for many among the second- and third-generation immigrants, is the only connection with their cultural homeland (as Deepak Kaushal, 24, from Coventry, says: “India is too complex, Bollywood is simpler”). Across the country, the word and its derivative ‘Bollywoodisation’ today reflect and influence a wide range of cultural symbols and activity in the public and private spheres: films, clothes, music, dance, stage performances by actors and singers from India, popular magazines, events (‘Bollywood nite’), wedding styles and fashion.

It is fair to say that for a minority genre that had its first film release in London’s Rialto in 1952 (the Dilip Kumar-starrer Aan, released as The Savage Princess), to actor Rajendra Kumar getting the iconic polymath Bertrand Russell to make a special appearance in his 1967 film Aman, to the almost crossover success of Lagaan in 2001, when it reached the Top 10 in Britain — Indian films have come a long way.

Says Dwyer, who interacted with leading lights of the Indian film industry over three decades while teaching at the School of Oriental and African Studies: “In the UK, it was in the 1950s that Indian films began to be screened for Asian audiences. These were mostly on Sunday mornings and other ‘off-peak’ times at cinemas that mostly showed mainstream cinema. There were occasional events where the stars came over from India for ‘premieres’ and, though these attracted large audiences, they were few and far between and mostly ignored by the mainstream press. The 1960s saw the increasing presence of British Asians with major migrations from East Africa. These ‘twice migrants’ arrived already knowing how to develop infrastructures for maintaining their culture in alien environments and continued to watch Hindi films. In the 1980s, some Hindi films were screened on the BBC’s Network East, while Channel 4 showed programmes of song-and-dance numbers as well as full-length films. The explosion of new media changed the whole consumption pattern of Indian cinema from the early 1990s.”

As the size of the diaspora grew over the decades, so did the demand for Indian films and music. Cinemas began regularly screening Indian films in the 1960s, and, by the 1970s, dedicated cinemas showing only Indian films appeared in Asian areas such as Hounslow and Southall; the Himalaya Palace Cinema in Southall was a prominent centre of and socialisation. In parallel has been the exponential rise in students taking modules on Indian films and academics researching the field in UK universities, while actors such as Abhishek Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt campaigned for Labour’s Keith Vaz in Leicester during elections.

Asian radio stations, notably Sunrise Radio founded in 1989, played the latest film songs, while VCR and VHS technology made it possible for almost every corner shop to sell or hire out films in neighbourhoods and cities with large population of sub-continental origin, such as London, Leicester, Birmingham, Manchester and Bradford. The arrival of new media and satellite television since the early 1990s made it easier, with all major entertainment television channels from the sub-continent beaming into homes of diaspora communities. Multiplexes such as Cineworld and Odeon woke up to the large demand and dedicated screens to Indian films. Until the Covid-19 pandemic, Cineworld branches — particularly in Feltham and Ilford in London — and elsewhere drew large numbers of diaspora cinegoers, with major films being released simultaneously in India and the UK.

Daya K Thussu, senior academic who taught at British universities for over 25 years and is now based in Hong Kong, says: “As home to one of the world’s largest south Asian diaspora, Britain has been a focal point for global distribution of Indian films. The diasporic dimension of Bollywood is therefore very important, as many Bollywood films have a diasporic theme — often set in London — while Bollywoodised content: music, fashion, celebrity culture — are a regular feature of British life. Though regularly screened in multiplex cinemas in selected British cities, Bollywood’s primary audience has remained staunchly diasporic. Yet, the influence of Bollywoodised cinema on mainstream British films — notably Bride and Prejudice and Slumdog Millionaire — is also clearly observable.”

(Prasun is a journalist based in London. He tweets @PrasunSonwalkar.)