ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to interpret the internal and external dynamics of Bollywood's popular geopolitics–its contrarian double-Orientalist logic of cinematically asserting a majoritarian Hindu-based version of Indianness, whilst assiduously selling a self-exoticised product in the global market. It reveals how the popular geopolitics of Bollywood's outward-facing neoliberal narrative is dissonant with the turbulent inner divisions occurring within the Indian geopolitical space–a disconcerting reality that Bollywood consistently glosses over in the greater interests of fulfilling its commercial interests. The chapter examines the emergence of alternative articulators–new wave Indian 'Indie' films and Bollywood/Indie 'hybrids' that are increasingly interrogating the normative precepts of Bollywood's popular culture and the ruling establishment's geopolitics. It analyses contradictions between Bollywood's outward-facing popular geopolitics and the turbulent internal religio-political dimensions, drawing from discourse analysis and comparative intercultural perspectives on popular geopolitics, citing key discursive events that exemplify the instability and incommensurability of India's internal geopolitical narrative with Bollywood's sanitised and apolitical external articulation of popular geopolitics.
