ABSTRACT
I remembered Gazi Khan’s words in 2016 when, with a decade of hindsight, I was struck by the sheer number of Bollywood films shot in western Rajasthan in the first decade of the twenty-first century.1 Why was the Thar Desert being
filled with Bollywood sets, and why was this happening at the beginning of the twenty-first century? What do these films capture about Rajasthan in particular, and what do they say about contemporary representations of a broader India to its own citizens, Indians living abroad, and international audiences?
