Bollywood’s soft power under-utilised but business-savvy stars took it global: Swapnil Rai

Diplomacy is not always about govts, or even intentional. Raj Kapoor’s ‘Awara’ enamored Mao Zedong, Big B was mobbed in Egypt, and SRK became a sensation in Germany. Swapnil Rai, a professor at the University of Michigan who has dived deep into this topic in her book ‘Networked Bollywood: How Star Power Globalised Hindi Cinema’, talks to Sunday Times about cinema as a potent tool for diplomacy

Last month, a delegation from Indonesia surprised everyone by singing ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’ at a banquet hosted by President Murmu. How influential is Bollywood as a tool for cultural diplomacy and have we used it well?

Since its inception, the mainstream Hindi film industry, or Bollywood, has had a very global value chain. Its films became popular in a lot of non-Anglophone regions, and that created soft power. However, that soft power remained very dissipated and stayed as a sort of undercurrent. It was never utilised in the way that it could have been by the Indian state or our embassies. Their programming was mostly focused on very traditional mediums like classical music, or classical dance. Even in terms of cinema, only parallel cinema was thought of as high culture. However, mainstream cinema has existed and circulated — especially with certain stars as its key drivers — outside of the nation state. This is quite different compared to countries such as China, that always wants to cultivate a kind of soft power through its English news channels like CGTN, or even the US through shows like Voice of America. In the 1960s, for instance, a lot of American TV shows like Dallas were heavily subsidised and travelled around the world. India did not do any of that.

So then how did a film like Raj Kapoor’s Awara or Aamir Khan’s 3 Idiots become so popular in China?

Bollywood’s soft power has existed outside the confines of the nation-state. To understand its influence, it’s good to go back to archives. For instance, in 1952, India was sending a cultural delegation to China, being the first country to recognise Mao Zedong’s govt. Mao asked for mainstream films to be sent along so he could understand India and its culture through cinema. I found a few letters that were exchanged, showing how everybody was scrambling, and mulling over which films to send. Eventually, they picked ‘Awara’ and Marathi film ‘Amar Bhoopali’. Of course, ‘Awara’ then went on to become one of Mao’s favourite films.

Why was the influence of stars like Raj Kapoor so potent?

My theoretical framework is that these stars hold ‘switching power’. To put it simply, a star can be a switch, which connects a circuit and illuminates a connection that did not exist before, in this case, new global markets. Hindi cinema has been very unique in the way that it has evolved because stars have been so central to the industry as businessmen, right from Raj Kapoor’s RK Films to SRK’s Red Chillies Productions. These are more than production companies; they often act as vertically integrated large conglomerates that have a lot of influence. Even today, when Netflix comes to India, they first meet SRK and Aamir Khan to strike deals. By combining their business acumen with their emotional and market pull, these male megastars have helped cinema go global. Interestingly, Hollywood has always been based on conglomerate-led productions, and only now do we have productions led by stars like Brad Pitt and Reese Witherspoon. There’s almost a Bollywoodising of Hollywood.

The Khans turn 60 this year and many have talked about whether this is the end of the superstar era. Do you agree?

These stars have established themselves so much within the business that they will continue to have that power. The question is what is going to happen with a new crop of actors? The industry is now different than before. A lot of intermediaries such as casting and talent agencies have come into play. The kind of power that the older stars could possess doesn’t exist anymore. But with the coming of streaming platforms, a lot of the hierarchies based around networks of families, friends and kinships that existed before are being recreated. It’s just a different kind of power and it’s not as expansive as it was before.

Why has this nature of cross-border influence mostly excluded female Bollywood stars?

It’s very interesting how female stars are perceived through a very gendered lens, not just in India but abroad as well. When ‘Awara’ became popular, Nargis also became a huge star, travelling to the Soviet Union as part of delegations. ‘Pardesi’, one of the first Indo-Soviet collaborative films, had her as the female lead with a Russian as the male star. But despite all that, she wasn’t received in the same way as Raj Kapoor. I cite a particular letter about how nobody bothered to even drop her off at the airport in Moscow. In contrast, in an interview I did with the late Shyam Benegal, he told me how when he was in the Soviet Union with Raj Kapoor, they travelled in a train coupe used for the tsars! Years later, there was Aishwarya Rai who had the global press gushing about her superlative beauty, her eyes, and the fact that she spoke English better than the Royals. But even then, she did not have the same kind of direct business power as the male stars. It’s only in moments of flux, when industry structures change, that women get to have momentary agency. When Priyanka Chopra went to Hollywood, things were in a state of flux with the coming of streaming and she found a talent manager in Anjula Acharia, who made her a crossover star. There was another moment of change in the ’90s with liberalisation, which is when people like Juhi Chawla got into production with SRK.

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