Devotional Transformation

Miracles, Mechanical Artifice, and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema

Authors

  • Ravi Vasudevan Centre for Developing Societies, Delhi

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v1i2_3.237

Keywords:

Hindu devotional film, Prabhat Studios

Abstract

This article focuses on the specific Indian cinematic form of the Hindu devotional film genre to explore the relationship between cinema and religion. Using three important early films from the devotional oeuvre—Gopal Krishna, Sant Dnyaneshwar, and Sant Tukaram—as the primary referent, it tries to understand certain characteristic patterns in the narrative structures of these films, and the cultures of visuality and address, miraculous manifestation, and witnessing and self-transformation that they generate. These three films produced by Prabhat Studios between the years 1936 and 1940 and all directed by Vishnupant Damle and Syed Fattelal, drew upon the powerful anti-hierarchical traditions of Bhakti, devotional worship that circumvented Brahmanical forms. This article will argue that the devotional film crucially undertakes a work of transformation in the perspectives on property, and that in this engagement it particularly reviews the status of the household in its bid to generate a utopian model of unbounded community. The article will also consider the status of technologies of the miraculous that are among the central attractions of the genre, and afford a reflection on the relation between cinema technology, popular religious belief and desire, and film spectatorship.

Author Biography

  • Ravi Vasudevan, Centre for Developing Societies, Delhi

    Ravi Vasudevan is Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, and is a co-initiator of the Centre's Sarai programme on urban and media research. Vasudevan studies history at Jawaharlal Nehru University and film studies at the university of East Anglia. He is on the editorial board of the British film studies journal Screen, and a member of the editorial collective of the Sarai Reader series. He has edited Making Meaning in Indian Cinema(Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2000). Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110054 India

References

Abbas, K. A. “Sant Dnyaneshwar—His Miracles and Manushya Dharma.” Bombay Chronicle, May 25, 1940. Reprinted in Watve, V. Damle and S. Fattelal, 33–35.

———. I Am Not an Island. Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1977.

Cosandey, Roland, André Gaureault, and Tom Gunning, eds. Une invention du diable? Cinéma des premiers temps et religion. Sainte-Foy: Les Presses de L’Université Laval, 1992.

Dyer, Richard. “Entertainment and Utopia.” In Movies and Methods, ed. Bill Nichols, 2:220–32. 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.

Gledhill, Christine, ed. Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. London: British Film Institute, 1987.

Gunning, Tom. “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde.” In Early Film: Space—Frame—Narrative, ed. Thomas Elsaesser and Adam Barker, 56–62. London: British Film Institute, 1989.

———. “An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the [In]Credulous Spectator.” In Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film, ed. Linda Williams, 114–33. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995.

Kapur, Geeta. “Mythic Material in Indian Cinema.” Journal of Arts and Ideas (Delhi) 14–15 (July–December 1987): 79–108. Reprinted as “Revelation and Doubt in Sant Tukaram and Devi.” In When was Modernism?: Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in India, 233–64. Delhi: Tulika Books, 2000.

Rajadhyaksha, Ashish, and Paul Willemen. Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema. Rev. ed. London: British Film Institute, 1999.

Staiger, Janet. “Conclusions and New Beginnings.” In Cosandey, Gaureault, and Gunning, Une invention du diable?, 353–60.

Vasudevan, Ravi. “The Politics of Cultural Address in a ‘Transitional’ Cinema: Indian Film.” In Reinventing Film Studies, ed. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams, 130–64. London: Edward Arnold, 2001.

Watve, Bapu. V. Damle and S. Fattelal. Pune: National Film Archive of India, 1985.

Published

2005-12-03

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Vasudevan, R. (2005). Devotional Transformation: Miracles, Mechanical Artifice, and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema. Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, 1(2-3), 237-257. https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v1i2_3.237