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[Full title: Folklore and Genres of Indian Cinema (1) Cinematic Genres of Mythology and Devotion in India]

In every era of filmmaking, Indian cinema has had a deep assimilatory relationship with folklore and folklife. It is on the basis of this fact that Indian cinema has had many more genres in comparison to its British or American counterparts. Gokulsing and Dissanayake opine that, 鈥淚ndian filmmakers have created genres and styles that are distinctively their own. This is clearly discernible in the popular tradition of filmmaking in India鈥� (Gokulsing & Dissanayake: 1998: 10). On the basis of this relationship, Indian cinema can be divided into several genres, emphasizing on the nature of the folkloric aspects which served both as primary and secondary constituents in the narrative. Let us now discuss these genres in detail.

Study of a religion is not confined inside the philosophies and ideologies of a cult. Rather it has to embark upon the extensions through which it maintains its existence. There comes the aspects of ritualistic behaviour of a group, which in turn shapes its culture. Therefore, religion shapes culture and has to be dealt with carefully when it comes to a folkloristic perspective.

While discussing religion, ethnicity and caste in Indian cinema, Gokulsing and Dissanayake opine that although the central teachings of a religion might be universal, the modes of their cultural articulation depends upon the land in which they flourish. They cite the example of Islam, which, in spite of the fact of being a universally practised religion, differs in many aspects depending on the country under consideration. Thus Islam in India differs from Islam in Saudi Arabia, which in turn is not identical to Islam in Iraq or Indonesia. This is where the folklore of a region comes into play. The authors have dwelt upon the aspects of religious explicitness in regard to different religions being practised in India.

In regard to the influence of the key concepts of Hinduism, like karma, dharma, maya, samsara, moksha, rebirth and renunciation on Indian cinema, the authors have divided cinema with Hindu religious themes and motifs under some categories, which are as follows (Gokulsing & Dissanayake: 1998: 55-62)鈥�

a) The first category consists of films which exclusively draw their narratives from religious sources, including the two epics -Ramayana and Mahabharata.

b) The second category of films is based on the life and philosophy of saints.

c) Thirdly, there is a category of films which employ religious concepts and motifs to present an otherwise contemporary theme.

d) The fourth category consists of films that portray religious cults.

e) The fifth and last category of films is made as criticisms towards religious practices, institutions and more or less seeks to present the narrative as a tool against superstitions and religious hypocrisy.

The mythological and the devotional have been the founding genres of Indian cinema. The silent era of cinema in the country was dominated by mythological filmmaking. Filmmakers not only believed this genre to be closer to the public mind but also a strong mode to communicate nationalist sentiments. On the portrayal of the epics on the Indian silver screen, Philip Lutgendorf quotes film scholar Rosie Thomas, 鈥渋t is common to hear filmmakers say that every film can be traced back to these stories (the two Indian epics), and even that there are only two stories in the world, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (Lutgendorf: 2007: 19). The Ramayana and its various sub-plots have been extensively used by Indian filmmakers since early ages starting from Phalke鈥檚 silent films. Among the early bunch, Vijay Bhatt was one of the great makers of mythological films in Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati. His successful ventures based on the Ramayana include Bharat Milap (1942) made in two versions with Hindi and Marathi, Ram Rajya (1943) which was another Hindi-Marathi bilingual, and Vikramaditya (1945).

An advertisement for Bharat Milap (1942), published on page 10, in the Bombay Chronicle, dated Saturday, 14 February, 1942 clearly depicts how ancient Indian culture was being held as the Unique Selling Proposition or USP for films during those times. It says:

Prakash Pictures Divine Message to Humanity, Bharat Milap

A golden page from great epic Ramayana, a picture of ancient art and culture, a gorgeous picture that recaptures the glory of ancient days on screen, see at Majestic (name of the theatre). 

(Dwyer: 2007: 37)

Apart from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata has also been an important source for Indian cinema. Sairandhri (1933, Dir. V. Shantaram), which is the debut film of Maharashtra Film Company (later known as Prabhat Film Company) is based on an episode from the Mahabharata in which the Pandavas are in the twelfth year of their thirteen year long exile. During the entire period, Pandavas鈥� wife Draupadi had to change identities along with her husbands as per the rules of the exile. The film narrates how Draupadi lived as Sairandhri (maid) to Queen Sudeshna in the palace of King Virata. This bilingual film in both Marathi and Hindi has been cited as one of the 21 鈥榤ost wanted missing Indian treasures鈥� by P K. Nair, founder of the National Film Archive of India (NFAI). Similarly, different episodes from the epic Mahabharata have been made into films either as a direct narrative or as the underlying story structure throughout the history of Indian cinema.

Other episodes from the Puranas like the tale of Shakuntala whose husband forgets about her till he finds the ring gifted to her as a sign of companionship, the story of Bhakta Prahlad and the Narasimha incarnation of Vishnu, have been adopted by filmmakers of the early eras in films like Shakuntala (Hindi, 1943, Dir. V. Shantaram) and Bhakta Prahlada (Telugu, 1967, Dir. Chitrapu Narayana Rao).

Indian myths and epics have been constantly retold. However, one film that deserves special mention in regard to re-interpretation of the mythical Rama, the male protagonist of Ramayana, is Kanchana Sita (Golden Sita) (Malayalam, 1977, Dir. G. Aravindan). 

The film, adapted from a play with the same title by Sahitya Academy Winner C.N. Sreekantan Nair, was brought to the celluloid by renowned director G. Aravindam. The opening scroll of the film reads,

鈥�This film is an interpretation of the Uttara Kanda of the Ramayana. Our mythologies and the epics are constantly re-created in retellings. The epic is the basis for this visual interpretation as well. This film deviates from established norms in how it visualizes the protagonists and portrays the course of events in the epic鈥� (Zacharias: 2008: 1-2).

The film interprets a story from the Uttara Kanda of the epic poem Ramayana, where Rama sends his wife, Sita, to the jungle to satisfy his subjects. The film retells the epic from a feminist perspective. Sita is never actually seen in the film. She is not portrayed in a human form but as a representation of the philosophical concept of Prakriti, the procreating force of the natural world which is conceived as female. In the film, Sita speaks only through movement in nature, through different moods and elements of the forest such as when leaves rustle or the surface of the river ripples.

This film significantly differs from all other adaptations of Ramayana in building the character arches of the central characters, including Rama and Lakshmana. The characters are humanized, contrary to the way divine characters from Indian mythology are usually depicted in visual media. Rama has a pot belly, while Lakshmana has pockmarks on his face. The roles of the epic heroes are played by Rama Chenchu tribal people, aboriginal hunter-gatherers of southern forests, who claim that they are the descendants of the Ikshvaku clan, to which the mythical Rama belonged. The film ends with an epilogue depicting Rama's last journey, the Mahaprasthanam. He walks into the Sarayu river with the sacrificial fire from the Ashwamedh yajna, calling out for Sita, and disappears into the depths of the waters. This interpretation of Rama, as a common man, commiting suicide in utter loss and lonliness, is never seen in any of the adaptations of the epic. This interpretation makes Kanchana Sita a unique retelling of mythology in Indian cinema. The film became a major critical success and has been credited as the forerunner of independent filmmaking in South India. The film earned Aravindan the National Film Award for Best Direction in 1978. In his later ventures like Chidambaram (1985), the director explored religious motifs and mythic consciousness through metaphysical dimensions, placing modern characters in contemporary plots, while maintaining the sub-texuality in his films intact.

Films portraying religious cults have also been made in India in quite a large number. Films based upon the adventures of gods belonging to the Hindu pantheon such as the elephant-god Ganesha and the monkey-god Hanuman have been made innumerable times. However this category of movies emphasized more on the stunt part with technical mechanisms rather than the belief. Apart from this, the upholding of mother goddess figures in Indian cinema has been a popular trend. A series of such films based on vrat kathas gained popularity from the 1960s. However, Jai Santoshi Maa (1975, Dir. Vijay Sharma) is a film of this genre that attained a cult status in the country. Films like Jai Santoshi Maa are such mythological films which produce a 鈥榥eo-traditionalism鈥� through creation of new deities. Here is an interesting point to note. Though the legalization of the Third gender comprising LGBTQ communities has been a recent phenomenon, yet the film industry had ventured into the subject long ago. Following the massive success of goddess mythological films in the late 1970s, the story of a Gujarati goddess, who is believed to be the patron goddess of the hijras, was made into a Gujarati film Jai Bahuchar Maa (1980, Dir. Ramkumar Bohra). These incidents infer into two directions鈥攑opular beliefs have been a favourite genre of Indian cinema and cinema can also lead to the creation of popular belief.

Making of mythological films involving local deities is however the forte of the South Indian movie industry. Mythological films are dubbed into several regional languages, owing to their immense popularity in India and released by the regional industries.

It would be quite significant to mention here the model of Monomyth, or the hero鈥檚 journey, which was introduced by famous mythology scholar Joseph Campbell in his widely known book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. According to Campbell, many myths of various cultures follow a particular model of the cultural hero, who is called upon to perform some adventure or quest, leaving his home sphere and descending into the mythical world, where he has to tackle various dangers and obstacles to reach some particular goal. In the course of his adventure, the hero learns a lot about himself and his surroundings, thus acquiring the capability to progress and transform. In the course of the progress of his transformation, he is able to reach the goal (Valan i nas: 2008: 166). This model of Monomyth has been exclusively used in Indian cinema to develop the hero image both in male and female characters, especially in the films based on lives of saints.

The bhakti tradition, that sprang up like a religious reform movement in the entire medieval India by a large number of mostly Hindu saints, has been reflected in the films in varied forms ranging from films based on 鈥榞odmen鈥� and saints to the legendary or hagiographical figures. The devotee, usually a saint (sant in Hindi), is being held by a community of worshippers as a messenger of the almighty. During the period of silent cinema, Dadasaheb Phalke made films like Sant Namdev (1922) and Bhakta Prahlad (1926) that belonged to the devotional genre.

Most of the saints were famous poets of medieval India whose work is valued not only for its religious content but also for its poetic expression (Dwyer: 2007: 65). With the coming of sound, the devotional films flourished, often being popular with the music and newly launched singing actors. The rich diaspora of devotional songs sung in tune with the folk tunes provided readymade music for the films. Films like Sant Tukaram (1936, Dirs.Vishnupant Govind Damle, Sheikh Fattelal), Bhakta Kabir (1942, Dir. Rameshwar Sharma), and Bhakta Surdas (1942, Dir. Chaturbhuj Doshi) were important carriers of the message of anti-communalism and national integration, ingrained in the folk mind of the Indian masses. Other prominent films based on saints in early eras of cinema in India include Sant Tulsidas (1939, Dir. Jayant Desai), which was a big-budget Hindi film of the time, and Sant Sakhu (1941/42, Dir. Vishnupant Govind Damle, Sheikh Fattelal & Raja Nene), based on the life of a saint woman, holding up the flag of female-centric films in the country.

While talking about saint films, one has to mention director G.V. Iyer鈥檚 cinematic creations like Adi Shankaracharya (1983), which is the first ever Sanskrit film. Based on the life of eighth century Advaita Vedanta scholar Shankaracharya, this National Award winning film portrays the life and philosophy of a saintly man, without colouring it much in religious shades. After making two other saint films in his career, about Madhavacharya (Kannada,1986) and Ramanujacharya (Tamil, 1989), the director made one of the finest cinematic portrayals of the ancient Indian text in 1993 with the film called Bhagavad Gita. In this film Iyer does not deal with Bhagavad Gita as a narrative of war, where Krishna explains every event of it in the light of human evolution to Arjun. Rather, it has been considered as 鈥榓 text with a universally valid message鈥� (Gokulsing & Dissanayake: 1998: 57).

There has been a class of filmmakers who have been using religious concepts and motifs to present an otherwise contemporary theme. The 1930s saw the emergence of a fascination with social themes affecting day to day living among the Indian filmmakers. While doing so, emphasis was laid upon retelling mythology as 鈥榤odern narratives of Freudian psychoanalysis鈥� (Dwyer: 2005: 146). For instance, the narrative in the film Amrit Manthan (Hindi & Marathi, 1934) by V. Shantaram focuses on a reformist king who bans the sacrifice of animals and humans in his kingdom. The film scrutinized the theological absolutisms and ritualistic excesses of the society and was a pathbreaker of that period. The film was based on the legend of churning of the sea by Demi gods and demons for a pot filled with Amrit (liquid which is believed to give immortal qualities) which is told twice in the film.

An advertisement for Amrit Manthan published in the Illustrated London News says:

Amrit Manthan has been appreciated not only in India but all over the world

The Illustrated London News 鈥斺赌�India is on the way to becoming a serious competitor in the film-producing world, to judge by these interesting photographs taken in the new establishment of Prabhat Cinetone at Prebhatnagar, Poona, near Bombay鈥� claimed to be the largest and the only self-contained studio in India, with high reputation both among Indians and Europeans. As our illustrations show, the studio is well equipped with modern technical apparatuses while the skill of the Indian artist and craftsman shows great advantage in the sculptural and architectural work. The examples illustrated and the big set on the full page opposite, belong to a new picture on the grand scale entitled Amrit Manthan. It is a drama of the Vedic period.

(Dwyer: 2007: 33 sourced from Bombay Chronicle, Sat. 16 March, 1935, Page 8)

It is worth mentioning that this tremendously successful film ran in one Bombay theatre for thirty weeks. The production company Prabhat's distributor, Baburao Pai, coined the term silver jubilee when Amrit Manthan completed its twenty-fifth week鈥攁 first in the Indian film industry.

Another category of mythological films in India include those that rather than aiming at the religious audience, emphasized more upon philosophical aspects of religion. The light of Asia (1925, Dir. Franz Osten) was based upon Buddhism. This Indo-German coproduction ran for only two weeks in India but it had a successful ten months of shows in London (Dwyer: 2005: 21). Another film based upon Buddhist philosophies of light and darkness is Angulimaal (1960, Dir. Vijay Bhatt). Based on a famous Buddhist story, the notorious Angulimaal, who wears a garland of fingers cut from the hands of his victims, encounters Buddha and later turns into a compassionate follower of his teachings. The Buddhist teachings and beliefs have been incorporated many times in Indian cinema either as the theme or in building character arches. One such film quoted by scholars is Shree 420 (1955, Dir. Raj Kapoor) which blended traditional Buddhist ideals of renunciation with sensuality (Saari: 2009: 31). Similarly religious cults pertaining to Islam, Sikh and other religions have also been filmed by Indian filmmakers.

Though Parsi theatre was quite influential in shaping the Indian cinema scene during the early years, yet the community and its culture have not been depicted much through the decades. Yet Bollywood films had representation of the Parsis through some minor characters in the films, depicting their culture to some extent with sophisticated lifestyle components, such as the typical Parsi 鈥榯opi鈥� over the men鈥檚 head, pastel coloured sarees for women, pearl jewellery and vintage cars. Some films based upon Parsi culture which are still remembered by the Indian audience include Basu Chatterjee's Khatta Meetha (1978) which was a musical success, and Vijay Mehta's Pestonjee (1988) depicting a close friendship. More recent releases include 1947 Earth (1999, Dir. Deepa Mehta), Being Cyrus (2006, Dir. Homi Adajania), Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi (2012, Dir. Bela Segal), and magic realism based film The Path of Zarathustra (2015, Dir. Oorvazi Irani) which outlines the core beliefs of Zoroastrianism.

In fact, though culturally represented on a large scale, yet films depicting the religious shades of Sikhism and Christianity in India have been very less in number. However, the folk societies which follow these religions have found a core place in the entire Bollywood history with Punjabi culture, music, characters, churches and Christian celebrations being used by a lot of filmmakers.

In Indian cinema, the mythological connection might be understated but it can be felt by the audience throughout the story. The filmmaker might name his characters after mythological figures to emphasize on different shades of human nature or might reflect upon chapters from the epics as plots or sub-plots of films. For example, the legend of Savitri and Satyavan, which appears in the Vana Parva of the Mahabharata, has been retold many times in Indian cinema. Savitri is a virtuous wife who pleaded with Yama, the God of Death in Hindu mythology, and succeeded in bringing back her dead husband Satyavan to life. Dadasaheb Phalke had made a silent film called Savitri Satyavan (1914) based on this legend. Two such recent films which are based upon different interpretations of this legend in which an Indian woman fights with adversities to save her husband are鈥�Roja (Tamil, 1992, Dir. Mani Ratnam) where the wife faces extremists who have abducted her husband, and Raaz (Hindi, 2002, Dir. Vikram Bhatt) where the wife has to face a female ghost who tries to snatch her husband. Both the films were commercially very successful.

Finally there is a category of films that are made as critiques of religious practices, institutions and orthodoxy. This also includes social themes like untouchability, casteism, and other superstitions. Beginning with films such as Achhut Kanya (1936, Dir. Franz Osten), this trend continued on the Indian celluloid. Directors explored themes of religious orthodoxy with films like Devi (Bengali, 1960, Dir. Satyajit Ray), Samskara (Kannada, 1970, Dir. Tikkavarapu Pattabhirama Reddy), Ghatashraddha (Kannada, 1977, Dir. Girish Kasaravalli), and the Elements trilogy by Deepa Mehta with Fire (1996), Earth (1998) and Water (2005) criticizing controversial issues of religion and social reform. More recently Oh My God (2012, Dir. Umesh Shukla), PK (2014, Dir. Rajkumar Hirani), and Dharam Sankat Mein (2015, Dir. Fuwad Khan) have questioned religious beliefs. It is worth mentioning that the trend of setting the story in a religious background still continues in Bollywood, with latest releases like Kedarnath (2018, Dir.Abhishek Kapoor) which depicts a love story set in one of India鈥檚 popular holy places, Kedarnath.