How Shakespeare became a part of Bollywood

It's been a while since my last post, but being a grad student can make one lose track of time. There's a lot happening in the world of Shakespeare and Bollywood what with Issaq (directed by Manish Tiwari) being released earlier this year and Ram Leela (directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali) being released this month and Vishal Bhardwaj beginning work on his third Shakespearean adaptation (of Hamlet) also this month. There's also Bollywood Shakespeare, edited by Craig Dionne and Parmita Kapadia, the first academic volume on the topic, to look out for later this year.

Too much stimulation for a budding researcher...and then there was all that indecision about what to write.

Since this is only my second post, I thought I'd write a little about how Shakespeare came to be part of Bollywood in the first place. There were three main ways in which the Bard slowly permeated the Hindi film Industry - through the Parsi Theatre Tradition, through Hollywood, and through the literary absorption of Shakespeare after the English Education Act of 1835. 

The Parsi Theatre tradition dominated the beginnings of the Hindi film industry from the silent era up to about the mid 1950s. Shakespeare was one of the many sources from which isolated scenes, themes, characters or plots were borrowed and merged with other isolated scenes, themes, characters or plots from European, Persian and Sanskrit sources in the Parsi Theatre tradition. Bollywood is still known to follow this tradition of mash-ups from various sources and perhaps this is the reason that Shakespeare has been ingested by film audiences, especially Bollywood fans, often without the realisation that what they are watching is Shakespeare. Most of these films were based on successful contemporary stage productions which merged Western theatrical traditions with traditional narrative and cinematic techniques. Dil Farosh (1927), for example, thought to be the earliest Indian Shakespearean film, was based on a popular stage adaptation of The Merchant of Venice. 

The Hollywood influence has also resulted in the absorption of Shakespeare into the Hindi film industry, though not usually with very successful results. One of the best known Shakespearean films in India, Kishore Sahu's 1954 Hamlet, was a shot-by-shot imitation of Olivier's 1948 Hamlet. The 1947 Romeo and Juliet starring Nargis as Juliet, was a copy of the Hollywood version with Norma Shearer and the Hindi Cleopatra in 1950 was a copy of Cecil B. De Mille's film. In recent years, the Rani Mukherjee starrer Dil Bole Hadippa! (2009) was a loose copy of She's the Man (2006) based on Twelfth Night, starring Amanda Bynes. Sanjay Leela Bhansali has also claimed that his Ram Leela (2013) owes more to Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996) than to Shakespeare.

 

After the introduction of English medium education in India in 1835, Shakespeare gained importance as a literary figure, especially in the wake of the Bengal Renaissance, and was translated into several vernacular languages in India. The Bengali Bhranti Bilas in 1963, based on Vidyasagar's Bengali prose translation of The Comedy of Errors, directed by Manu Sen starring Bengali superstar Uttam Kumar, incidentally, is the first filmed adaptation of The Comedy of Errors in the world. This is also the film which indirectly led to the making of Angoor (1982). The literary prominence that Shakespeare gained, however, led to more Indian Shakespearean films being made in the Art film/Parallel Cinema genre than in the commercial film sphere. Commercial film makers were wary of films adapted from Shakespeare; Vishal Bhardwaj had problems finding funding for Maqbool (2004). The unprecedented success of Maqbool and Omkara (2006) has recently brought Shakespeare back into Bollywood.

So, these were the ways in which Shakespeare was brought into the Hindi film industry, intentionally and unintentionally, and remains very much a part of it today.

Shakespeare and Bollywood: what's the connection?

It's been a year since I started officially working on my PhD. When I tell people that I'm a full time research student, they usually either react with awe ("Really? A PhD? I think you're really brave!") or they're very sympathetic ("Oh poor you! I would hate to be pouring all that hard work into what maybe 3 people in the world will ever read, not counting your parents, of course!"). However, the reaction I usually wait for is the one that I invariably get when I tell them my thesis subject...and yes I hear a muted drum roll in my head when I sheepishly and often apologetically announce my working title "The influence of Shakespeare on Bollywood" (Because really, how many people get the chance to actually work on a topic as cool as that?) And that's when the eyes widen, the sympathy turns into envy, and the polite interest turns into avid curiosity with almost complete strangers suddenly interested in reading what I'm working on.

Once the double takes are done and I've shattered some of the stereotypes that people often associate PhD students with, the most frequent question I'm asked is: "So is there an influence of Shakespeare on Bollywood?" I suspect several people who have asked me that question have lived to regret it, but one of my friends suggested I should blog about the topic. So I decided I would - to balance out the research-student-like heavily academic writing that I usually have to do on the topic.

When we think of Shakespeare in Bollywood we automatically think of the handful of movies commonly held to be Shakespearean adaptations - Gulzar's Angoor [Grapes] (1982), Bhardwaj's Maqbool (2003) and Omkara (2006) and Manish Tiwary's Issaq [Love] (2013). Some others would remember Shakespeare related movies such as Merchant-Ivory's Shakespeare Wallah (1965), Aparna Sen's 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981) or Rituparno Ghosh's The Last Lear (2007). Avid cineastes would recall that the Parsi theater tradition which heavily influenced Bombay cinema was one of the main agencies through which Shakespeare entered into popular culture in India. Some would also recognise the stock themes of Hindi cinema which originate in Shakespeare - all the movies about twins separated at birth, star crossed lovers, and of taming the shrewish wives (or mother-in-laws). Plot devices like cross dressing from Shakespearean comedies or the popular mouse trap device from Hamlet have also been used in Bollywood.

Even more interesting to me are the subtle and often unnoticed references to Shakespeare embedded in several films. Deewar [The wall] (1975) is one such case in point - where the mother disapproves of her son's nefarious doings and tells him that "all the water in the world cannot wash your hands clean of your sins". Another example is in Dil Chahta Hain [My heart wants] (2001) during the song "Jaane kyu log pyar karte hain" [I wonder why people fall in love]. While Preity Zinta stands on scree left, we see a boat on screen right named 'Much Ado'.

So to answer the question - yes Shakespeare and Bollywood have had a long and eventful relationship, one that is set to become even stronger with two versions of The Comedy of Errors, three versions of Hamlet (including one by Bhardwaj and one rumoured to star Hrithik Roshan), Ram Leela Bhansali's version of Romeo and Juliet to keep company with Manish Tiwary's just released version titled Issaq to make their appearances within the next couple of years.

Therefore, if the subject interests you...watch this space! This is just the beginning.

Note: All images used are freely available on the internet.