ABSTRACT
Bollywood adaptations of William Shakespeare’s plays are as old as the industry itself, dating back more than a 100 years. This chapter provides an overview of Bollywood adaptations of Western literature more broadly, and then focuses on adaptations of Shakespeare’s works. Taking examples from two of the latest screen adaptations of the Bard’s plays, Omkara and Goliyon ki Rasleela: Ram-Leela, the chapter argues that as the plays are translated from the original Shakespearean texts to the Hindi Bollywoodian texts, they morph into new cultural texts – ones where the natives adapt the texts for their own pleasure, and no longer see them as texts from elsewhere. The colonial source text, once appropriated and translated to the postcolonial cultural context, is re-created for local audiences. When a written word is adapted into a visual medium, multiple levels of translations take place. The chapter explores Ram-Leela in the context of gender and tribal politics.
