Abstract
Nationalism is an evocative concept with multiple philosophies around its meanings, purposes and contentions. Symbols, imagery, and spectacle play an important role in cultural expressions of nationalism that sustain an emotional response. The paper argues that imaginative constructs of nationalism in India are primarily constructed around women’s bodily metaphors, sexual norms, and their maternal roles in families. Popular culture, particularly cinema, tends to reinforce power hierarchies in which women symbolizing the nation are in need of protection by men or the state as a masculine authority. Hindi cinema has been an integral part of the socio-cultural lives of people in India, and this paper traces a common equation of women with motherhood and the nation, beginning with the film Mother India (1957), which etched gendered ideas of nationhood on the national consciousness. This paper has two objectives: first, to establish, through a brief review of literature, that the foundational edifice of nationalist discourse in India is embedded in hegemonic masculinity. Further, imagined landscapes of nationalism enforce sexual norms and gender roles, played out on the terrain of women’s bodies. The second objective is to offer a survey of Hindi films responding to different moments in the historical trajectory of nationalist discourse in India, through their portrayals of women characters, their sexual moralities, and normative roles of motherhood. The paper takes a feminist approach to analyze prominent Hindi movies that have reinforced and consolidated gendered constructions of nationalism. By looking at how women’s bodies have become sites of symbolism and sites for discursive constructions of sexuality and motherhood, the paper shows how Hindi cinema’s body politics are embedded in hegemonic masculinity. The paper also recognizes moments of rupture and erosion of these tropes in Hindi films that challenge this hegemony and transform female bodies from sites of coercion and hegemonic nationalism to sites of transformational agency, resistance, and freedom.
Recommended Citation
Ray, Nupur
(2023)
"Masculinist Constructions of Nationalism in India: Gender, Body Politics, and Hindi Cinema,"
Journal of International Women's Studies: Vol. 25:
Iss.
3, Article 5.
Available at:
https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol25/iss3/5