Explanation:

For a large population of India, which is celebrating its 71 st Republic Day this Sunday, cinema is synonymous with Bollywood—the popular moniker for the Hindi cinema. If we look at our early films we realize that Hindi cinema has played a big part in helping Indians imagine an entity binding them together, i.e. the Indian nation. The National Award-winning film critic and scholar, M K Raghavendra, confirms this in his book, ‘The Politics of Hindi Cinema in the New Millennium: Bollywood and the Anglophone Indian Nation’. He highlights how Hindi films made during the first couple of decades after independence show a strong influence of Nehruvian socialism which was deeply invested in the idea of a deep sense of nationalism that’s all inclusive.

Some important films from the era that come to mind are Andaz (1949), Naya Daur (1957), Mother India (1957), and Howrah Bridge (1958). These films are true to India’s first prime minister Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru’s ideals of modern India—developing cities, roads, dams, bridges, doctors, and engineers being the emblem of modernity. This trend continued as Hindi cinema never failed to capture the nerve of the important historical events in post-colonial India. However, there is no denying that the Hindi cinema experienced a metamorphosis of sorts around the ‘90s. But, has anyone ever tried to study or analyze this turnaround? Well, if we analyze Hindi cinema closely, we observe that the 1990s proved to be the tipping point with Nehruvian socialism making way for economic liberalization in India. As the Indian economy gradually opened up to the world, the Hindi cinema started catering to the growing influence of the Indian diaspora. Later on, filmmakers like Vishal Bhardwaj, Anurag Kashyap, and Tigmanshu Dhulia made efforts to make films set in the Hindi heartland.