The Films Division of India and the Nehruvian Dream

From 1948 to 1994, the newsreels and documentaries produced by the Films Division of India (FD) were a ubiquitous presence in Indian public life. Even as some audiences learnt to avoid sitting through yet another newsreel about the benefits of economic planning, the FD vision of harmonious, planned...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	South Asia 2022-03, Vol.45 (2), p.220-235
Main Author:	Dadawala, Vikrant
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Documentary films Economic planning Films Division of India Hindi literature history and criticism Illusions India Indian New Wave Motion pictures Nehruvian imagination post-colonial disillusionment Postcolonialism Public life Socialism Unconscious
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Summary:	From 1948 to 1994, the newsreels and documentaries produced by the Films Division of India (FD) were a ubiquitous presence in Indian public life. Even as some audiences learnt to avoid sitting through yet another newsreel about the benefits of economic planning, the FD vision of harmonious, planned development continued to haunt the collective unconscious of post-colonial India well into the 1980s. Drawing on examples from documentary cinema, Indian New Wave films, and modern Hindi literature, this article explores three scenes of disillusionment with the FD's version of the Nehruvian dream. I argue that the FD archive is a particularly productive site from which we can ask uncomfortable questions about the experience of Nehruvian socialism: the 'illusions' of the past continue to haunt FD films even in moments of disillusionment, prompting a form of self-reckoning whose full implications can only be grasped now, in retrospect.
ISSN:	0085-6401 1479-0270