ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the lineaments of the cinema and television in India, which together constitute the most visible and powerful agency in the creation of a national mythology of heroism, and indeed of a modern national identity. India’s popular cinema—taken collectively, in all its regional language variants—is undoubtedly the most striking example of Indian public culture in the 20th century. The Parsis were a small but strikingly successful community of merchants and entrepreneurs who had carved out a special commercial relationship with the British on the western seaboard centered around Bombay. The talkie required actors who could sing for their supper, and it found most of them on the professional Parsi stage. The art cinema—or the “parallel cinema,” as it is more commonly referred to in India—is surprisingly high-profile and influential for a genre that has fared poorly at the box office and has rarely been seen outside festival screenings.
