Lecture in English will be held on Friday, 24 February 2017 at 16:00 in the lecture hall AMEU-ISH, Kardeljeva ploščad 1 (ground floor), Ljubljana.

The lecture will focus on the following topics:

How and why Hindi films raced past competion from other rival film industries in diverse Indian languages and how it occupied the centre-stage just before India became Independent in 1947;
The problem that confronted India after Independence with 22 major languages and cultures that refused to subsume regional identities: even after Muslim majority provinces broke off to form Pakistan through bloodbaths;

How songs and lyrics of Hindi films in post-Independence India reached a much larger audience than their 'original films' and how this advantage snowballed through succesive technolgies and events, overcoming a certain amount of resistance as well;

How these Hindi film songs as also their 'original films' consolidated their paramont position, through the mediums of radio and then the television;

How this actually moulded a pan-Indian identity that rose above the diversity of, and conflicts with, other Indian languages, cultures and centrifugal forces, that also had equal access to the masses through theatres, radio and television.

The gradual process through which Hindi films distanced themselves from the Indian establishment, often criticising it and the political classes rather. severely, and managed to create and nourish a mass-level national identity that voiced the strong concerns of the people, emerging thereby as their 'voice';

The mesmerising attraction that pulled even those Indians who could barely understand the Hindi language;

The final consolidation of a pan-Indian that emerged quite undisputed after that the second, and third generations of Indians were born after Independence, whose 'Indian identity' and pan-Indian cultural preferences superseded regional identites and pushed into amnesia the history of earlier regional  antagonisms and jealousies.

The lecture will be within Humanities II module. The lecture is intended for doctoral students and students of Humanities program, and other interested public.

Please confirm your presence at: gita.zadnikar@almamater.si

Welcome!