Cultural Politics of sports and nationalism in indian popular cinema

Abstract

The idea of India does not naturally happen. Like Benedict Anderson points out in his Imagined Communities, the media plays a huge role in ensuring that the public upholds certain notions of the nation. So, the imagining of a nation into existence as well as the sustenance of the collective are media-enabled. If print media had influenced people to envisage a nation by narrativizing a cultural commonality within members of a particular political setup in a particular geography (as in the case of 19th century Europe), the part played by popular cinema in independent India in feeding the imagining of Indianness cannot be considered less significant. Cinema texts based on war, terrorism, partition, etc. lend themselves for a nationalist treatment. Sports-themed Indian popular cinema too chooses to establish a marriage of convenience with nationalism. While sports and nationalism right from the first decade of the 20th century have had a history of helping each other thrive, - owing to nationality-based participation in Olympics and a similar format adopted by most other global events - it is in the 21st century that Indian Popular Cinema started exploiting the sports-nationalism relationship for its own progress. This research studies the discourse on Indian nationalism that three sports-themed texts of Indian popular cinema offer. Apart from proving to be huge box office hits, Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India, Chak De! India, and M S Dhoni: The Untold Story offer a lot for culture and nation theorists to ponder upon.