Article

Melodramatic South Asia: In Quest Journal of Human Values

23(3) 1–11
of Local Cinemas in the Region © 2017 Management Centre
for Human Values
SAGE Publications
sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0971685816689742
http://jhv.sagepub.com
Dev N. Pathak1

Abstract
What is remarkably unique of the popular cinema in the region of South Asia? How does it lead
beyond the vexed notions of the contemporary milieu, namely, hybrid local? How does it transcend
the idea of nationally restricted local too? Looking through eclectic motley of popular cinema in the
region, this article seeks to unravel such questions with reflexive propositions. It paves the way to
comprehend cinematic identity of the region with the adjective of ‘melodrama’, as perceived through
the local sociocultural component. It is with the sweep of melodrama, arguably, that cinema of South
Asia transcends the notions attached with the category of ‘local’. In this backdrop, this article moots
a probing question: What is local in the regional cinemas? Does local mean merely a vexed category
in contemporary context of transnational flow? Or there is more to the category of local, beyond the
existing formulations? With these questions, this article seeks to participate in the available discourse
showing the regional cinema underpinned by the essentially dynamic nature and scope of the local.

Keywords
Cinematic melodrama, South Asia, popular cinema, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka

Melodrama characterizes popular cinema in the region of South Asia. It shows in the tools and tech-
niques deployed in cinema making, and most importantly by the vivid usage of socially recognizable
emotions in the narratives: love, anger, hatred, compassion, devotion, etc. All the stereotypical cinematic
images, performing good and evil, are embodiments of these emotions in variable proportions. Some
leitmotifs and usual refrains, impinging on the threshold of a critical reviewer’s patience, surface without
qualms in the melodramatic narratives in the region. The commonplace textual analysis, or deliberation
on stylistic issues, is not the intent in this article. It is rather to draw attention to the intersection of the
cinematic and social, cultural, historical and political in relation with the idea of melodrama. In other
words, it aids in locating the local, contextual, cultural scheme in which emotional and rational, mytho-
logical and historical, immortal and mortal, sacred and profane, appear in separation, at times in binary
oppositions, as well as in interaction, conflict and negotiation. This article does not follow the standard
style of textual analyses of cinema from a fixed time frame, nor does it indulge in comparison between
Western and Eastern cinemas, which could be a pursuit on some other occasion. Instead, it dwells upon

1
Department of Sociology, South Asian University, New Delhi, India.

Corresponding author:
Dev N. Pathak, Department of Sociology, South Asian University, Akbar Bhawan, Chanakya Puri, New Delhi 110021, India.
E-mail: dev@soc.sau.ac.in
2 Journal of Human Values 23(3)

the discussions about cinema from various parts of the region of South Asia. This leads us to understand
the region of South Asia, hitherto unexplored in terms of the distinctions of cinematic melodrama.
Arguably, the melodramatic context in the region is an a priori as the essay hints. This is precisely why
there arises an imperative to critically debate about the category of melodrama too. In what ways regional
cinema carries a distinct sense of melodrama? The regional–local context, arguably, gives rise to the
cinematic melodrama in South Asian cinema, whereby the local and nonlocal components negotiate.
What is this local in which cinematic melodrama emerges in South Asia? What’s the nature and scope of
the kind of melodrama prevalent in cinema in South Asia? These are the moot questions, which drive this
article for a preliminary quest of regional cinema, through the discussions about them. The essay moves
back and forth in space and time, with eclectic reference to cinema and national contexts, with a focus
on the key thematic question: how are we cinematically melodramatic?

Concept in the Context: Local, Melodrama and South Asia

To begin with, it is imperative to reflect over the ways in which this article is approaching the category
of local, placed in the framework of South Asia. Subsequently, it demarcates the distinctions of the cat-
egory of melodrama pertaining to local(s) in South Asia.
This is politically, and historically too, correct to say that each bit of local in the larger regional frame-
work consists of multiple fragments. If we take into account the implications of various formulations on
the category of local,1 the region connotes broken mirror, qua multiple meanings, with various pieces of
different shapes and sizes. This scheme of imagining South Asia is befitting for variety of reasons. It is
due to the fact that the region is a category, with a burden of history, in two senses. One is that it is a
coinage based on the nation-state model, strengthening the formation of a collaborative group of nations,
typically known as South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC). While this notion of
South Asia makes a room for intellectual laziness, a kind of convenience, in cartographic determination
of the region, it also raises questions about the politics of omission and commission, vis-à-vis hegemony
of India over other member countries.2 Second historical burden comes from the fact that South Asia is
a region of heavy historical contingencies: colonial encounter, traumatic instances of violence, ethnic
conflicts and the debilitating politics harnessing the concealed weaknesses of the democratic institutions.
Despite the ideologically charged claims of unity in diversity, the complexity of South Asia reflects in
the fact that, ‘over the millennia South Asia developed rich and complex layers of culture which, during
recent centuries, had a dramatic historical encounter with the West’ (Bose & Jalal, 2010, p. 5). In histori-
cal sense, South Asia becomes more available as a category of dispute among the fragments of nation-
states. This shows every now and then in the regional politics, and the most recent being the cancellation
of SAARC meet in the wake of the tension between India and Pakistan.3 With a fairly long trajectory of
politico-historical ups and downs, it is in the interest of this article to note that traditions, local sociocul-
tural components, have been recast in the trajectory of historical experiences.
Against this backdrop, it is indeed curious to note that the notion of cinematic melodrama assumes a
peculiarity of its own in the region. The category of melodrama, though originated to the European con-
text, finds a regional (re)socialization, as it were.4 Thereby melodrama also assumes the significance of
a turf of contesting values. It emerged from the European tryst with sociocultural fermentation in the
wake of the French Revolution. Calling it a product of modernity, Singer notes:

it emerged as a distinctive dramatic form almost exactly around the year 1800. Its appearance at that time
was possible only as a result of legal changes stemming from the French revolution, a crucial watershed event
marking the disintegration of traditional order and the advent of the modern era. (Singer, 2001, p. 11)
Pathak 3

The melodramatic mode in theatre performances, and then subsequently in Western cinema and televi-
sion serial, was ‘a cultural response to moral insecurity and material vulnerability’ (emphasis added) in
the wake of ‘anxiety and disarray of the post feudal, post sacred world of nascent capitalism’. But then,
this hints Euro-centrism in the concept of melodrama, which has been discussed aplenty (Dissanayake,
2009; Kapse, 2013; Zarzosa, 2010). For, the cinematic melodrama in South Asia assumes popularity due
to abundance of moral, if not material, security. The idea of post-sacred society is an illusion in South
Asian context where sacred resurfaces in old as well as new forms frequently in every historical epoch
(Babb & Wadley, 1997). Additionally, it is not something confined to urban seeking of spectacles as there
have been popular acceptances of melodramatic cinema among the masses in India and other parts of
South Asia. As an argument goes, ‘In most Asian societies melodrama has a distinguished history con-
siderably different from its history in the West and is intimately linked to myth, ritual, religious practices,
and ceremonies’ (2009, p. 3). It helps in mooting the point that it is the ‘a-priori abundance of cultural
resources’ vis-à-vis moral security that gives birth to a distinct form of melodrama in the region. Given
the multiple textual and oral traditions in the region, related to variety of religious world views, there
seems a plausible idea of surplus of sacred in the region.5 In this wake, it is significant to reason with a
tendency to underscore the proximity between the rasa aesthetics and popular melodramatic cinema
(Jones, 2009). It suggests that the essential rasas (roughly meaning emotions/expressions) of perfor-
mance or poetics, as enlisted by Bharata in his treatise on Natyashastra,6 could be traced in the popular
cinema in South Asia. This scheme of reasoning, however, amounts to twofold issues. First, the
perceived continuity between rasa and popular cinema also yields an essentialist understanding of the
cinemas of the region (Das Gupta, 2008; Mukherji, 2006).

It needs to be argued that such an unmediated continuity in an ancient country rapidly industrializing itself is
fraught with the dangers of fundamentalism, signs of which are evident among some sections of the urban public-
sections most devoted to popular cinema. (Das Gupta, 2008, p. 137)

Moreover, the Western understanding of the rasa theory reifies the binaries of East and West, rational
intellect and sensuous body, reason and emotion, and so on so forth. Schechner’s understanding of rasa,
Mukherji (2006, pp. 178–192) argues, presents the Eastern experience of aesthetics through the route of
‘snout-to-belly-bowel’, opposed to the Western experience through eyes and ears. This is problematic as
aesthetics and performances are also byproduct of the accumulated historical experiences. The rasa
theory in its pristine form, thus, does not aid in understanding the complexity of cinematic melodrama.
Second, if rasa theory has to be invoked to understand the local character of the regional cinema, it is
imperative to reason with the constituting components of rasas and their possible relation with cinematic
melodrama in the regional context. To begin with, it is requisite to look at the details of the emotions/
expressions counted as rasas. The rasa theory in Natyasastra presents eight key rasas, as Jones (2009,
p. 37) recounts: sringara (love or desire), hasya (humor or laughter), karuna (pity or grief), raudra
(anger), vira (vigour), bhayanaka (fear), bibhsta (disgust) and adbhuta (wonder). There was ninth rasa,
shanta (bliss), added in this list by the tenth-century philosopher Abhinavagupta. Out of all these rasas,
Jones translates Karuna into melodrama. It leaves one fumbling about the arbitrariness of the relation
forged between rasas and cinema for melodrama in popular cinema is not characterized by karuna alone;
instead, most of the rasas enlisted in the rasa theory surface, though in reconfigured forms, in the popular
cinematic narratives. The reconfiguration of the rasas is contingent upon the historical experiences, such
as colonial encounter, experiences of societal upheavals, economic and cultural transformations, socio-
religious harmony and violence, and so on so forth. Thus, it is not appropriate to trace rasas in pristine
forms or unconditionally return to the rasa theory to explain the ‘regional way of, thinking or experiencing,
doing, reading cinema’.7
4 Journal of Human Values 23(3)

To sum up, it is possible to reckon with the presence of rasas in the melodramatic cinematic narratives
in the region of South Asia. However, it needs to be seen as reconfigured through historical encounters.
The association of rasas with the regional cinema ought not to be de-historicizing of cinema and popular
culture in general. Moreover, the distinction of melodrama in regional cinema perhaps arises from the
motely of rasas, rather than one or other. It is almost akin to the observation that in one performance itself
one can experience variety of rasas. In this light, it seems probable to understand as to how the regional
version of cinematic melodrama exhibits its own idiosyncrasies. It, however, does not mean to suggest
that the regional variety of melodrama does not have any resemblance with the Western counterpart,
which needs analytical exploration elsewhere. With regard to distinction of melodrama in India, Vasude-
van (2010) and Kapse (2013) deliberated on the impact of local context of India on the first few genera-
tions of popular Hindi cinema. The idioms from traditional sources, such as mythology, epics and cultural
performances, made inroad and thereby emerged a particular variety of melodrama in Hindi cinema.
Similarly, Dadi (2010) notes in his reflection on the Urdu cinema in the post-independent and post-
partition Pakistan. It shows that not only the strands from the performance tradition but also the local–
contextual political regimes impacted the early Urdu cinema.
This background enables this essay to look at some of the available literatures, though few and far
between, on cinemas in the region. The attempt is made to do an analytical patchwork and get a sem-
blance of regional cinema thereby, moving back and forth in time and space. The focus is on the presence
of local–contextual component in the region’s cinema. But then, it is not to gloss over the translocalism
that underpins the dynamics of the cinemas in the region. This is despite the fact that Bollywood is often
perceived as a soft power in South Asia (Roy, 2012). This implies that the regional cinema exhibits per-
petual tendency to borrow motives, styles, as well as contents, from various parts of the world. In the
same breath, it has to be noted that cinema from India has been an immediately available source for
mimetic production in several parts of the region. But then, no mimesis is divorced from the local socio-
cultural context. And hence, it is improbable to dismiss the significance of the regional varieties of cin-
ema, which have imprints from various other sources. The proposition is to understand the significance
of the cinematic distinctions in the region without lamenting about the allegations of copying. The trans-
local character of regional cinema, in the spectral presence of Indian cinema, or a disagreeable term
Bollywood (Vasudevan, 2011), justifies the central argument: cinematic melodrama with its regional
distinctions connects the dots of South Asia. The following section attempts at sketchy trajectories of
cinema in various parts of the region. The purpose is not to do an intensive content analysis of the men-
tioned films, which could be a central exercise for some other occasion. The following section makes
mentions of the films from various parts of the region to highlight the significance of the local sociocul-
tural components in the cinematic melodrama.

Melodramatic Local: Despite the Spectre of Indian Cinema

The unrelenting urge to understand the distinction of cinematic melodrama in the region of South Asia
aids in underlining the local sociocultural and historical components in the region’s cinema. For exam-
ple, Kapse (2013), contrasting Brook’s (1976) notion with early Indian cinema, attempts to distinguish
South Asian variety of melodrama from the Western counterpart. While Brooks’ notion operates in a
post-sacred moral universe, the Indian cinematic notion of melodrama operates within the mythological
framework owed to the ancient epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. As Kapse argues:

taking its cue from melodrama itself, cinema sacralized anew that which was constrained or proscribed: a feminized
masculinity predicated on suffering (idealized by both Raja Harishchandra and Gandhi’s public campaigns
Pathak 5

and demonstrations), women’s education and empowerment, and widow remarriage. Above all, melodrama
manifested itself in a female or feminized social mobility, particularly through a widespread endorsement of
the woman’s new social role, as a respectable and responsible public figure, whether it was in cinema or the
independence movement. This new sacralization was dramatically opposed to traditional prohibitions against the
woman’s entry into public spaces such as theater or politics. (2013, p. 148)

Furthermore, Mishra (2002) has amply discussed the becoming of Dadasaheb Phalke an iconic represen-
tation of local ethos in early cinema. So much so that it amounted to the epithet of ‘Phalke Muni’, and he
was noted as saying, ‘my films are swadeshi in the sense that the capital, ownership, employees, and
stories are all swadeshi. It highlights the cultural-mythological idioms of the Hindu worldview underpin-
ning the Hindi cinematic narratives’ (ibid., p. 12). Moreover, the detailed account of the contextually
rooted melodrama in Hindi cinema aids in understanding the relation between sacred icons and melo-
drama (Vasudevan, 2010). Unlike the gods of Jatra performance in Bengal or Yakshgana performance in
Karnataka, who could not fly, burn or vanish, Das Gupta ruminated, ‘with Phalke’s Harishchandra in
1913, suddenly the gods and godlike men of mythology came to life’ (2008, pp. 24–29).
Emphasis thereby is on the two key components: one is the temporal-historical conditions and thereof
political commitments playing a role in the works of cinema. The other significant part is the cinematic
narratives carrying forward the slices of traditional ethos, stock of knowledge and mythological motifs.
In other words, it could be argued that historical reconfiguration of rasas, if one has to connect the argu-
ment with the idea of rasas following the discussion in the previous section, is evident in the regional
cinematic melodrama. These are the effects of the melodramatic strategy in the early Indian cinema.
The melodramatic framework, with relation to historically reconfigured local, was subsumed under the
genre called ‘social cinema’8 or devotional cinema, in the 1930s. A similar trend, without using the
mythological narratives, appears in the Urdu cinema in Pakistan in the decades of 1950s–1970s, which
Dadi (2010) characterizes as ‘Dastan mode’.9 Furthermore,

Melodramatic realism was employed in a number of films dealing with social issues starting in 1957, where
realism was achieved through a number of mise-en-scène devices, which include modern architectural interiors
and street scenes with staged elements of street life, while the melodramatic mode centrally emphasised the emo-
tional subjectivity of the characters. The melodramatic–realist plot usually moves towards a narrative resolution
based upon individual sentiments that also prefigured values of the larger social good. (ibid., p. 150)

Looking at two films, Armaan (Desire, dir. Pervaiz Malik, 1966) from the Ayub era and Anari (Awkward,
dir. S. Suleman, 1975) from Bhutto era,10 Dadi proposes to decipher the state propaganda of each regime,
aspiration of the Pakistani folk to achieve an ‘Americanized version of modernity’11 underpinning these
films. Both the films deal with the cultural subjectivity of the time prevalent in Pakistan. In this scheme,
melodramatic realism through the local art of Dastan was suitable framework for cinematic narration.
Besides, there has been intermittent recognition of the stiff competition to the popular cinema in Pakistan
given by the popular Hindi cinema of India. The popularity of cinema from India grew furthermore with
the intervention of the Video Cassette Recorder and Player (VCR/VCP) and television channels. Needless
to mention the market of pirated copies of Hindi cinema catering to the popular desire of the Pakistani film
consumers. The local components in Pakistani cinema, to dare generalizing, are not immune to the other
variants of local in the region, leading to the debatable notion of translocal thereby.
In the same vein, it is worth taking note of the discussions on the instance of Sinhala cinema, showing
the influences of Indian cinema, while highlighting the local sociocultural and historical component.
The popular Hindi cinema, Dissanayake (2006) candidly notes, impacted, or influenced, the Sinhala
cinema right from the beginning. It shows, right since the first-ever Sinhala film Kadauna Porondua
6 Journal of Human Values 23(3)

(Broken Promise, dir. Jyothish Singh, 1947) modelled upon the south Indian melodrama. Some of the
early Sinhala cinemas were frame-to-frame copy of the Hindi films, such as Sujatha (dir. T. Sundaram,
D. V. Chari, 1953), a copy of the Hindi film Badi Bahen (Elder Sister, dir. Ram Daryani, 1949).
The mimetic production of Sinhala cinema, thus, also popularized the melodramatic realism of Hindi
cinema, which became an easy choice for the generations of film-makers since the decade of 1970s.
But then, these films contributed to the genre of social cinema, highlighting family drama with local
ethos. It is only in the decade of 1990s that a host of art film-makers began to make a radical departure
in style and content of the Sinhala cinema. However, across the three broad decades, the Sinhala cinema
has unfolded the local/contextual specificity through the modern techniques of cinematic narration.

The uniqueness of Sinhalese popular cinema can be seen not only in its narrative structure, visual style, and
techniques but also in their thematic focus. These films, to a very large extent, bring into existence a commonly
shared world given shape by the following: the glamorization of rural culture, critiques of Westernization,
upholding of traditional social norms, triumph of good over evil and tradition over modernity, and (perhaps the
most important) the centrality of the family. (ibid., p. 114)

Nevertheless, there has been a searing criticism that Sri Lankan melodrama, largely owed to generic
formula borrowed from Indian cinema (largely Tamil and Hindi), is abysmally low in quality and
hindrance to the growth of Sri Lankan cinema in general. The prevalent kind of Sri Lankan melodrama,
Jayamanne notes, ‘has been castigated by local film critics and intelligentsia committed to the develop-
ment of a “truly indigenous national cinema”’ (1992, p. 145).
While this moralistic and nationalistic criticism is valid, it has been also recognized that the presence
of stylistic components borrowed from popular Indian cinema did not mean conspicuous absence of the
Sinhala context in Sri Lankan cinema. Hence, Jayasinghe and Dissanyake (1998) systematically trace
the presence of the sociopolitical issues in the Sinhala cinema in the post-independence Sri Lanka. And
it shows that stylistic innovations and a contextually informed cinema began to happen since early days
leading to the contemporary Sinhala cinema inclined to melodramatic realism.12 Suffice to say that
Sinhala melodrama fused mythological and historical motifs to narrate stories of everyday concerns.
To comprehend the fusion of mythological, sociocultural and historical in the category of Sinhala social
cinema, it is imperative to move back and forth rather than stick to a chosen time frame. It is also neces-
sary to note the imperative of moving beyond the mode of lamentation on copying from the Indian cin-
ema. That leads to understand the presence of the local sociocultural components in the Sinhalese
melodramatic realism. The films mentioned above present ample evidences of the rasas, emotions and
idiomatic expressions, being reconfigured through historical prism and thereby the category of social
cinema vouching for the distinction of locally substantiated melodrama.
In this scheme, it is befitting to place the instance of Bangladeshi cinema, now characterized by, and
criticized for, ‘Cut-Pieces’13 (Hoek, 2010, 2014). The trajectory of Bangladeshi cinema presents a case
of melodramatic narration assuming novel forms. The critics and scholars lament about the current
status, a blending of excessive song and dance sequence, tear-jerkers and obscene scenes. Particularly,
with reference to the example of Mintu the Murderer (a pseudonym for a so-called adult film released in
2005), arguably, Bangladeshi cinematic melodrama has acquired a new meaning. Dominated by the
‘Cut-Pieces’, allegedly out of the place scene of obscenity catering to the audiences’ desire for soft-
pornography, melodrama seems to have compromised on quality for successful business of cinema. But
then, this lament, arguable enough, has a background. The background shows the Bangladeshi melodra-
matic cinema inspired by folk imagination of love, sociocultural existence, divide of rural and urban, and
good and bad, in the initial days when the bhadralok logic (roughly, the world view of the Bengali elite)
reigned. With the historical experience of mobilization for liberation, the war and rapid economic
Pathak 7

transformation leading to the formation of the new classes in Bangladesh, the Bangladeshi cinema too
changed its face. The lamentation about the current status, thus, alludes to the waning of the bhadralok
aesthetics in Bangladeshi cinema, which underpinned cinematic attempts in the decades of 1970s and
1980s. The lamentation does not however mean an absolute absence, or disappearance of melodramatic
social cinema with contextual rootedness. For example, starting in the pre-liberation years, in the then
East Pakistan, Bengali audience watched Mukh O Mukhosh (The Face and The Mask, dir. Abdul Jabbar
Khan, 1956), which could be deemed as the earliest attempt at melodrama in Bangladesh. The film pre-
sented a high-pitch drama of heroic deeds in the nationalist framework.14 The trend assumes more sin-
cere attempts with due consistency in post-liberation Bangladesh. However, this is faintly visible due to
the dearth of adequate documentation or writings on the development of Bangladeshi cinema in early
phase. With The Father (dir. Kazi Hyat, 1979) Bangladeshi cinema, thereof melodramatic framework
and contextual rootedness, was noticed internationally. With the title of the film in English and the lead
role played by an American expatriate named John Napier Adams, the film highlighted socio-religious
notions attached to the benevolent patriarch in the Bangladeshi context. Curiously enough, the decades
of 1960s and 1970s are eulogized as ‘the glorious era of Bangladeshi cinema’ (Hoek, 2011, p. 82), and
yet there is sheer dearth of systematic studies on the cinema of these two decades. The passing references
to the works of Alamgir Kabir, a cultural activist and participant in the war of liberation, however, aid in
understanding the significant contributions of Kabir. Some of his films in the decades of 1970s and
1980s, such as Dhire Bahe Meghna (Quiet Flows the Meghna, 1973), Surya Kannya (Daughter of The
Sun, 1975), Simana Periye (Across The Fringe, 1977), Rupali Saikate (The Loner, 1979), Mohana
(The Mouth of a River, 1982), Mahanayak (The Great Hero, 1985), Parinita (The Wedded, 1984), car-
ried forward the contextually rooted melodramatic realism. In the same vein, it is worth mentioning that
in recent times there have been attempts to weave sociopolitical and historical occurrences, in a melo-
dramatic framework, dwelling upon the local sociocultural components.15 For example, Chitra Nodir
Pare (Quiet Flows River Chitra, dir. Tanveer Mokammel, 1999), dealing with the predicament of a
Hindu family in East Pakistan after the partition in 1947, merits a mention.16 And Lalon (dir. Tanveer
Mokammel, 2004), based on the life and poetics of the pioneer Baul singer Lalon Shah, emphasizing a
syncretic tradition, fusing Buddhist Tantricism, Hindu Vaishnavism and Islamic Sufism, is a relevant
example for contextually rooted melodramatic realism in contemporary Bangladesh. This suffices to
establish the presence of the melodramatic format in Bangladeshi cinema, underpinned by the local idi-
oms from traditional sources as well as the politico-social crises pertaining to the modern history of
Bangladesh. This has to be credited despite the allegations of borrowing the worst of popular cinema
from India (Raju, 2012).
Quite in sync with the above-mentioned instances, Nepali melodramatic cinema too reeled under the
heavy influence of Hindi cinema. The film viewing began in Nepal much before the advent of production
of Nepali films. It was initially restricted to the members of the royal family and the elites who could see
films in their private screenings at their own places (Maharjan, 2010; Pandey, 1988). ‘Generally Ranas
used to get cinema from Calcutta, India and these films were already certified by British Indian censor
board’ (ibid., p. 171). The acquaintance with cinema in Nepal, upon the opening of the public cinema
halls, was mostly through popular Hindi cinema. When the Nepali production began, with the state sup-
port, the film-makers realized that they would have to compete with the Hindi cinema with which the
Nepali masses were already familiar. Pandey suggests:

Nepali film producers have responded to this situation by molding their product in the Bombay model—song for
song and action for action. As a result, Nepalese films have hardly been able to set new trends or establish distinct
character or identity of their own. (1988, p. 5)
8 Journal of Human Values 23(3)

This aids in understanding the popularity of melodramatic cinematic framework in which stories from
local context unfolded. The first Nepalese film Aama (Mother, dir. Hira Singh Khatri, 1964), produced
by the information department of His majesty’s government of Nepal, carried the germs of melodrama
modelled upon Hindi cinema. The first privately produced Nepali film Maitighar (Natal Home of a Girl,
dir. B. S. Thapa, 1968) had heavy presence of the Hindi cinema actors such as Sunil Dutt and Mala
Sinha, and singers such as Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle and Manna Dey, while Jaidev composed
music. Mala Sinha in the lead role was cast opposite Chidambar Prasad Lohani, a Nepali actor, whom
the former married later on. In 1971, the government founded Royal Nepal Film Corporation, which
produced a range of Nepalese films dealing with the concerns of Nepalese society, using the folk idioms,
motifs and devices of storytelling in the backdrop of local ethos. Take for example, the narrative of the
very first Nepalese film produced in Nepal, Aama (Mother, dir. Hira Singh Khatri, 1964), which may
seem to be copying the melodramatic import of various Hindi cinema. The film, however, has music,
dance, costumes and narrative drama expressive of the Nepalese aspirations, longing, pathos and hope.
It becomes difficult to rule it out as an absolute copy of the Hindi cinema. There may be genuine issue
of ‘poor quality acting’ or stylistic errors in the cinematography and lack of direction in some of these
films, from past as well as present, in Nepal. But the continuous quest of the local in the cinematic
narratives continues till now. Hence, a Nepalese film like Himalaya (dir. Eric Valli, 1999), with the
involvement of the French production, attempts to repackage and present the Buddhist ethos for the
contemporary Nepalese world view. Similarly, some recent Nepali films like Gorkhali17 (dir. Gyanendra
Deuja, 2009), Dai Ko Sasurali (Home of Sister’s In-laws, dir. Dinesh DC, 2010), Jhola (Bag, dir.
Yadavkumar Bhattarai, 2013) and Naya Pidhi (New Generation, dir. Bhabindra Tamang, 2013) attempt
to revitalize melodrama to deal with the contemporary concerns in Nepal.
In most of the instances of cinema from the region of South Asia, eclectically mentioned and deliber-
ated above, the melodramatic emphasis on, as Dissanayake pointed out elsewhere, triumph of good over
evil in a heightened emotional overplay runs through the Asian cinema in general (2009). It is thus safe
to infer the distinctions of local/contextual idioms, despite the explicit or implicit hint of influence of
Indian cinema (mostly popular Hindi, Bengali, Tamil cinemas). It is also not far-fetched that melodrama
in cinema in South Asia has been intricately related with the local/contextual components in spite of the
translocal influences, mostly attributed to the popular Indian cinema.

Conclusion
There are areas, neatly flagged but eclectically, sometimes erratically, ventured in this essay. They are
local sociocultural components of the region, and comprehension of the representation or usage of them
in the cinematic narratives. They require elaborate explorations in an exclusive attempt some other time.
However, what the essay sought to achieve, by and large, is the comprehension of relation between the
local(s) and the cinematic melodrama in the debatable category called South Asia. This essay shows that
the rise of popular melodramatic cinema in the region, distinct in peculiarities from its Western counter-
part, stems from the a priori presence of sociocultural components. Furthermore, the melodramatic
narratives across the region are also interactive with the historical-material conditions. The studies on
cinema in the region have to be adequately reflexive to comprehend the biography of regional cinema,
consisting of biographies from various country contexts. In other words, the fragments of the local, turn-
ing the latter into a plural entity, do not eventuate into a narcissist celebration of its specific distinction
alone. This is in contrast with the lamentation: the cinema of country has failed to create its own identity,
due to the influence of translocal cinema, particularly popular Hindi cinema. Each instance of regional
Pathak 9

cinema is also a testimony to the spontaneous cross-country circulations of ideas, motifs, issues, narra-
tives, styles of cinema making, etc. The translocal character of local cinema, though largely veering
around the dominance of popular Indian cinema, arises from the fact that they are all in interrelation with
common narrative attributes. The conflicting moralities in the wake of surplus sacred too befit this
scheme of argument. Thus, it is fairly understandable if there are melodramatic narratives, motifs, songs
and dances, fights and romances, pride and prejudices, resonant across the regional cinema.
To return to the metaphor of broken mirror, the diversity of melodramatic cinema in the region does
reflect multiple fragments, though some larger in sizes and more pervasive than others. Each piece in the
broken mirror is distinct and all put together create a whole of the region. It is in this metaphorical notion
of South Asia that melodrama seems to be an apt connection running through the whole with broken
pieces. It indeed gives birth to an imperative to explore the region through melodramatic cinema, more
substantially.

Notes
1. To save the space, it is worth putting one possible trajectory of theorizing the local, in the midst of fairly
exhaustive corpus. A sweeping mention could be made of deliberations on the local vis-à-vis multiple fragments
(Chatterji, 2012; Guha, 1997), orientalized other (Said, 2003), hybridity of self (Appadurai, 1997; Bhabha,
1990). In the same breath, the apparent dead end of hybridity is equally questionable; hence, a revisiting of the
local (Bharucha, 2000; Cheah, 2004; Srivastava, 2007) makes sense. The trajectory solicits more exhaustive
exploration on some other occasion.
2. In short, a troubling question could be: Why is Maldives included in SAARC and Myanmar not. A discursive
anxiety along this line is available in Dixit’s (2012) collection of essays, which highlights the imperative to think
of South Asia beyond the geopolitical and cartographic logic, in terms of ‘Southasian sensibility’.
3. A report on this is available from the following website: Retrieved 24 November 2016, from http://indianexpress.
com/article/india/india-news-india/after-india-now-bangladesh-pulls-out-of-saarc-summit-in-islamabad/.
4. The concept of melodrama, originated to European context, is not familiar in the pre-modern textual or
performative tradition in the region (Dissanayake, 2009; Kapse, 2013). It solicits further exploration on the
possible alternative sense of melodrama present in the pre-modern performative tradition of the region. This
essay touches upon the performative traditions only in part, more to flag than to explain.
5. Elsewhere, Babb and Wadley (1997) have discussed the plethora of religious beliefs, sacred symbols, resurgent
visuals and sounds related to religions, in the wake of mediated religiosity. The perpetual reinvention of the
sacred with the intervention of print, video and audio media, more vociferously testifies the idea of surplus of
sacred in South Asia.
6. For more details, see Schechner’s (2001) rasa aesthetics, a key component in his performance theory.
7. I am informed by a convincing propositions made by Ramanujan on Indian way of thinking, which is, if there
is one, characterized by meaningful inconsistency, ambiguities and paradoxes. See Ramanujan (1989).
8. For wanting a definition of social cinema, though it is not the prime interest of this article, it could be said that it
is a category of cinematic narratives where the focus is on social relations, mainly constituted by family dramas.
Social cinema or for that matter any other category of cinema however are not devoid of melodramatic import.
Hence, this article hinges upon the category of melodrama, more than any other category.
9. To put it briefly, Dastan nigari (Narrating Dastan) was a popular form of performance in Urdu in pre-twentieth-
century Pakistan.
Dastans were epics, often oral in nature, which were recited or read aloud and in essence were like medieval romances
everywhere. Telling tales of adventure, magic, warfare, Dastans mapped new worlds and horizons, encountered the unseen
and protected the hero through many travails and lovers as he moved on his quest. The hero’s adventures could sometimes
parallel the mystic quest, and other times the story narrated a purely profane tale. In the process of telling the story the
narrators freely borrowed tropes and themes from other stories, thus it was that Rumi’s Masanavi and Arabian Nights both
came to contain many stories from the Panchtantra tradition. (Farooqui, 2010, quoted from http://dastangoi.blogspot.
in/2010/02/what-is-dastangoi.html)
10 Journal of Human Values 23(3)

10. I am using, for heuristic purpose, Dadi’s formulations, which identify the two examples from Urdu cinema to
suggest the unfolding local cultural framework and melodramatic realism with the then political status quo.
My objective is simply to underline the distinction of Pakistani cinematic melodrama.
11. Dadi implies the influence of American lifestyle shaping the sociocultural aspirations in Pakistan.
12. In this regard, it is worth mentioning the oeuvre of Lester James Peries among others, inclusive of landmark
melodramas such as Rekava (Line of Destiny, 1956) elucidating village life and dynamics of stereotypical roles
in the rural Ceylon and Nidhanaya (The Treasure, 1972) based on the story written by the reputed Sinhala
story writer G. B. Senanayake. Peries also earned critical acclaims, along with awards, for his other works of
contemporary concern such as Golu Hadawatha (Silence of the Heart, 1969) delving into the complicated love
of teenagers, and a renowned trilogy based on the novels by Martin Wikramsinghe, starting with Gamperaliya
(Transformation of a Village, 1963), Kaliyugaya (Age of Darkness, 1981) and Yuganthaya (Culmination of an
Era, 1983) dealing with the labour union in confrontation with the capitalist mode of production, a la proletariat
versus bourgeoisie struggle.
13. Hoek finds that there are small snippets of obscene scenes appearing in the middle of most of the Bangladeshi
films. He calls them ‘Cut-Piece’, which have no relation with the cinematic narratives in which they appear.
They are largely used as crowd puller devices. Hoek gives an example of a film, with a pseudonym Mintu the
murderer, without divulging the details of filmography, to highlight the celluloid obscenity in contemporary
Bangladeshi film.
14. This film is however highly debatable as the first in the history of Bangladeshi cinema. Raju (2000) has
illustrated that the film was more suitable for ‘pan-Pakistani nationalism’ with its rhetoric and political implica-
tions. However, I intend to underline the melodramatic intentions of the film.
15. In this regard, it is significant to note that the oeuvre of Tanveer Mokammel is testimonial to meaningfully melo-
dramatic narratives in Bangladeshi cinema even in the decade, which the critics have perceived as, dominated
by the Cut-Pieces.
16. Similarly, Rabeya (The Sister, dir. Tanveer Mokammel, 2008) and Lalsalu (A Tree Without Roots, dir. Tanveer
Mokammel, 2002) efficiently hover around the sociopolitical tensions before and in the immediate aftermath of
Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971.
17. Gorkhali is one of the languages of Nepal.

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