ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces an original system that will be referred to as a meta-hegemony, with the aim of facilitating a deeper understanding of the underlying historical hegemony involving Bollywood, other forms of Indian cinema. In elucidating the Indian cinema context of the meta-hegemony, it is possible to start with an ostensibly rudimentary, yet perennial, source of polemic the antecedents of the term Bollywood itself. Relating Balibar's proposition to the historiographical context, the nationalism of liberation accompanying India's post-independence nation-building exercise has transformed into the present post-globalisation domination of Hindu nationalist ideology, neoliberalism and Bollywood. The chapter argues that Bollywood has inscribed its meta-hegemony through reductionist representations of women and patriarchal imaginings of nation, which seems in accordance with the state agenda. The imperative of capital has led to global cinematic leviathans Hollywood and Bollywood being ratified by their respective nation-states as almost self-contained agents of soft power.
