ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the anti-heroic figure of the gangster, which originated in a specific American sociocultural setting of the 1930s, was adopted and adapted in Hindi films of the 1970s and 1980s. Against the backdrop of the fact that American gangsters were frequently portrayed as tragic figures that veered between the heroic and the anti-heroic, it argues that Indian gangsters were portrayed as even more tragic, due to the local combination of the imported gangster anti-hero plot with the romantic tradition of Bombay film. The chapter thus reveals that globalization often means localization and the establishment of analogies. However, in recent years Hindi film has innovated the genre and localized it more intensively by producing a series of films based on real-life gangsters of Bombay and other areas of India.
