ABSTRACT
The relationship between the film industry and the state in India can be characterized as a patron-client relationship, the foundation of which was built by colonial authority. The post-Colonial State maintains elitist attitudes towards popular culture in general and cinema in particular. The government of India’s intervention into the film industry, until the end of British colonial rule in 1947, was limited primarily to censorship of films. It was aimed at preventing the nationalists from employing the power of cinema to mobilize the masses. When political power passed on to the Indian rulers, censorship was kept intact and, under the rubric of development of indigenous arts, the central and state governments expanded their powers over the film industry. Documentary and newsreel production was monopolized by the central government and theatre owners were compelled under the law to exhibit them. 1 Furthermore, when the country was reorganized into states based on language in the early 1950s, it gave rise to language chauvinism on the one hand, but on the other helped promote local languages and various art forms, including cinema. This chapter is concerned mainly with the complex relationship between the state and the fast changing film industry in the country by examining the institutional mechanisms through which the state exercises its power.
