Walsh J.E. A Brief History of India

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIA

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of the god Rama’s victory over the evil Ravana) have used both ﬁ lm

tunes and the style of the singers in their celebrations. In 1991 Peter

Manuel found local snake charmers using a theme song from a popular

1950s ﬁ lm to call their snakes (1993, 267).

“Cassette Culture”

In the 1980s the low-cost technology of audiocassette tapes and players

ended the hegemony of Bollywood ﬁ lm music and allowed the emer-

gence of a cottage industry in cassette recordings, one that catered to

the speciﬁ c interests of local and regional markets. This cassette culture

allowed different forms of popular music to emerge, from regional folk

music and nonﬁ lm “pop” music to devotional music and music used

for consciousness raising or political organizing.

By 1989, 500 indigenous Indian companies were involved in the

consumer electronics industry. Cassette music sales boosted sales of

Indian recorded music from $1.2 million in 1980 to $21 million in

1990. Indian consumers were purchasing 2.5 million cassette players

each year by the 1990s. In 1991 Indian-made cassettes sold 217 million

per year, making India the second largest producer of cassette tapes in

the world.

Doordarshan

Doordarshan’s new television programming gained Indian televi-

sion a large audience in the 1980s and 1990s. Beginning in 1982,

Doordarshan’s National Programme included sponsored shows and

new entertainment serials. The serials were set in India and focused on

the conﬂ icts and situations faced by modern Indians in the course of

their lives. The ﬁ rst serial broadcast was Hum Log (We people), a family

drama that told the story of a lower-middle-class urban family strug-

gling to survive. Another, Buniyaad (Foundation), followed a postparti-

tion family of middle-class Punjabi refugees as they began new lives in

India. The series Param Veer Chakra (Medal for highest military hero-

ism) told tales of nationalist and military martyrs. By 1987 40 serials

had been telecast. These serials were so popular that movie attendance

was ultimately cut in half; in New Delhi between 1984 and 1985 money

from movie ticket sales declined by 25–30 percent.

After the success of Hum Log, Bollywood professionals also began

to produce serials for Doordarshan. Among the television serials

later produced by Bollywood directors were the made-for-television

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versions of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The Ramayana was

shown in 78 weekly episodes that ran from January 1987 into 1988.

The Mahabharata was televised from September 1988 through July

1990. Both shows drew enormous audiences: 80–100 million for the

Ramayana and 200 million for the Mahabharata.

Hum Log and Maggi Noodles

Hum Log was the ﬁ rst Hindi-language television serial to be broadcast

on Doordarshan. It centered on the struggles of an alcoholic carpenter,

his long-suffering wife, and their ﬁ ve children in a small two-room ﬂ at

in a lower-middle-class urban neighborhood. The series consisted of 156

episodes that ran over 17 months during 1984–85. Each episode ended

with a commentary by the elderly Hindi ﬁ lm star Ashok Kumar pointing

out that episode’s moral and answering viewers’ letters.

Hum Log’s plots were didactic, emphasizing the importance of family

planning, the dangers of alcohol, the damage done by dowry demands,

the danger of disobedience to elders, and the importance of education.

One story line, for instance, detailed the fall of the second daughter,

Majhli, whose efforts to become a Bombay starlet (against her parents’

wishes) led to her sexual exploitation. The series’ moral hero was the

family patriarch, the grandfather, a traditional and sympathetic old man

whose continued efforts to help his family made a sharp contrast with

the selﬁ sh behavior of his modern, alcoholic son.

Hum Log was not only a success with audiences, it was also success-

ful in promoting its main sponsor’s new product, Maggi Noodles, a

foreign food being manufactured in India by a subsidiary of Nestlé. To

give its product greater visibility, the subsidiary underwrote the serial’s

production costs. During Hum Log’s 1984–85 run, Maggi Noodles com-

mercials were shown to an estimated audience of 50 million people.

Noodle sales jumped from 1,600 tons in 1983 to 5,000 tons in 1984.

The product’s success changed Indian advertisers’ minds about televi-

sion commercials. By 1985 there were 15 potential advertisers for every

prime-time Doordarshan slot. Between 1985 and 1988 Doordarshan

raised its advertising charges three times. In 1990 one estimate put

Doordarshan’s advertising revenues at the equivalent of $104 million.

Satellite Networks

Competition to Doordarshan’s monopoly on television came in the form of

transnational satellite television. In 1991 the U.S. Cable News Network’s

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIA

284

CONSUMING DOWRIES

t was in the mid-1980s that newspapers worldwide reported on the

increasing incidence of “dowry deaths” in India. These were deaths

in which a young woman was killed by her husband or in-laws (often

in a kitchen ﬁ re made to look like an accident) because the dowry she

had brought to the marriage was considered too small. In the late 1980s

dowry deaths were reported mostly in northern India, but by the 1990s

they were being reported throughout India. In 1986 the government of

India made dowry deaths a new kind of crime in order to facilitate pros-

ecutions. In 2000, according to a UNICEF (United Nations Children’s

Fund) report, dowry deaths numbered 5,000 a year. By 2007, according

to the Indian National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) the number of

dowry deaths had risen to 8,093. Even this number, however, may not

reﬂ ect the full scope of violent dowry deaths. In a 2009 article in the

British medical journal the Lancet, researchers estimated that in 2001,

106,000 ﬁ re-related deaths had occurred among women aged 15 to 34,

three times more than had occurred among men of the same age—and

many more than police records indicated.

Some observers have linked the growing incidence of dowry murder

to the rise of a consumer-oriented culture in India. Dowry has long

been a feature of Indian marriage, with gold jewelry, saris, and other

traditional objects accompanying a bride to her in-laws’ home. But in

recent decades dowry demands have escalated, leading even lower-

middle-class families to expect refrigerators, electric generators, cars,

and color televisions on the marriage of their sons. Dowry deaths occur

most often among lower-middle-class urban families in which the desire

for the consumer goods or the need for cash can be acute. As one New

Delhi working-class Muslim woman told an interviewer in 1992, “We

Muslims never had dowry deaths. . . . Now our culture is changing.

People see all sorts of things on TV; people are getting greedy; people

are losing respect for women” (Mankekar).

The need to provide escalating dowries for daughters may be one

reason for the declining birthrate of girls relative to boys on the sub-

continent. Demographers estimate that the normal, worldwide “sex

ratio at birth” (or SRB) of males to females is between 104–105 male

births to every 100 female births. Rising SRB values suggest human

intervention before or after pregnancy, such as the abortion of a fetus

before birth or infanticide (or neglect) after birth. In India, census

information from 1981 to 2001 shows a rising SRB of male infants

to 100 female infants. (India computes its sex ratio as the number of

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female children age 0–6 per every 1,000 male children aged 0–6, but

here the information is given following international usage.)

Year Total Rural Urban

1981 104.0 103.8 107.4

1991 105.8 105.5 107.0

2001 107.9 107.1 110.4

(Guilmoto)

Thus the sex ratio at birth has risen in all of India through the cen-

suses of 1991 and 2001. While the Indian 2001 SRB is not as high as in

countries such as China (where the SRB in 2005 was 120.5 boy infants

to 100 girl infants), it is a signiﬁ cant change from the previous 20

years. Census data indicates signiﬁ cantly higher SRBs in some Indian

states (such as the Punjab and Haryana), among urban residents and

residents with more education, and for speciﬁ c religious communities

(Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs in particular).

Analysts attribute this changing ratio to the growing use of ultra-

sound tests to determine the gender of a fetus, followed by abortion

if the test shows the fetus to be female. Although abortion because

of gender is illegal in India, such tests and abortions have become

common. In an article in the British medical journal the Lancet (2006),

authors estimated that as many as 10 million female fetuses had been

aborted over the past 20 years by families seeking to secure the birth

of sons. As one (now illegal) advertisement for an ultrasound test

reportedly put it: “Spend 500 Rupees Now, Save Five Lakhs [50,000

rupees] Later” (Rajan). In 2008, in a speech to a national conference

on this problem, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh denounced the

abortion of female fetuses as a “national shame” but made no speciﬁ c

suggestions for the increased implementation of laws forbidding this

practice (New York Times).

Sources: Gentleman, Amelia. “Indian Prime Minister Denounces Abortion

of Females.” New York Times, 29 April, 2008; Guilmoto, Christophe Z.

“Characteristics of Sex-Ratio Imbalance in India, and Future Scenarios.” In 4th

Asia Paciﬁ c Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights (Hyderabad,

India: United Nations Population Fund, 2007), p. 5; Mankekar, Purnima. Screening

Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in

Postcolonial India (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999), p. 45; Rajan, V.

G. Julie. “Will India’s Ban on Prenatal Sex Determination Slow Abortion

(continues)

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A Brief History of indiA

286

network’s (Cnn) satellite broadcast of the Persian gulf War spurred

wealthy indians to purchase satellite dishes for their homes. By 1992 an

estimated 1.28 million middle- and upper-class urban households were

watching star tV (satellite television for the Asian region). By 1997

many transnational satellite networks were available to indian homes,

among them star and star Plus, Zee tV, the BBC, Jain tV, sun tV, Asianet,

and Atn. By 2010 households in cities such as new delhi had as many as

515 channels available to them.

As doordarshan began to lose its core middle-class audience to the

satellite networks, it expanded the channels it offered to provide more

programming and more regionally focused programs. it also added 11

vernacular language channels to broadcast in regional languages and

focus on regional politics and issues.

Festivals

As india is a secular society, its three national holidays are secular and

celebrate days or heroes signiﬁcant in india’s struggle for independence:

republic day on January 26 was ﬁrst declared a holiday in 1930 by the

indian national Congress. today it is the occasion for a televised parade

in new delhi, a showcase for both indian military units and for ﬂoats

celebrating the cultural traditions of the many regions that make up the

republic of india. independence day on August 15 celebrates the date

on which india gained independence, and Mahatma gandhi’s Birthday

on october 2 is a day set aside for tributes to india’s greatest nationalist.

traditional religious festivals are celebrated by all of india’s major

faiths and have many regional forms and variations. over the last 50

of Girls?” 2003. Hindu Women’s Universe. Available online. URL: http://

www.hinduwomen.org/issues/infanticide.htm. Accessed October 9, 2004;

Sanghavi, Prachi, Kavi Bhalla, and Veena Das. “Fire-Related Deaths in India

in 2001: A Retrospective Analysis of Data.” Lancet 373, no. 967 (2009).

Available online. URL: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/arti-

cle/PIIS0140-6736%2809%2960235-X/fulltext#article_upsell. Accessed

January 26, 2010; Sheth, Shirish, Prabhat Jha et al. “Low Male-to-Female

Sex Ratio of Children Born in India: National Survey of 1-1 Million

Households.” Lancet 367, no. 9,506 (2006): 185–186, 211–218.

ConsumIng DowrIes (continued)

287

BOLLYWOOD AND BEYOND

KAUN BANEGA CROREPATI?

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

n 2000 and again from 2005 to 2006, the well-known ﬁ lm star

Amitabh Bachchan hosted a popular STAR TV game show Kaun

Banega Crorepati? (literally, Who will be a ten-millionaire?—a crore

being equal to 10 million rupees). This quiz show was based on the

British TV show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Amitabh’s catchy

Hindi phrases—such as “lock kiya jaye?” (is your answer ﬁ nal,

locked?)—enlivened the TV contest and entered popular Hindi

speech. The show stopped in 2006 when Amitabh fell ill and was

continued for an additional year in 2007 with a substitute host. At

that point four contestants had won one crore (that is 10,000,000

rupees).

KBC (as the show was known) was the inspiration for the 2008

Oscar-winning movie, Slumdog Millionaire. Based on the diplomat Vikas

Swarup’s 2005 novel, Q & A, the movie told the story of Jamal Malik,

an 18-year-old orphan from Mumbai’s slums and criminal world, who

(however improbably) succeeds in moving to the top of the movie’s

version of Kaun Banega Crorepati? and wins 20 million rupees in prize

money. Set in the slums of Mumbai but written and directed by a

British screenwriter and a British ﬁ lm director, the ﬁ lm combines the

use of Hindi—for early scenes about the young life of Jamal in the

slums—with English—for the scenes of his later life and encounters

with and escapes from Mumbai gangsters. Commercial releases in

both the United States and Great Britain led to the winning of eight

Academy Awards in 2009, including the awards for Best Picture, Best

Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. By the close of its release the

ﬁ lm had grossed $377,417,293.

In India, reaction was more mixed. Most reviews were favorable

and the box ofﬁ ce intake was more than $6 million—slightly more

than one-third of the $17 million taken in by Dhoom 2, a police action

Hindi ﬁ lm that has been one of the decade’s highest grossing ﬁ lms.

However, the ﬁ lm also generated both controversy and criticism. In

Patna, slum residents picketed the ﬁ lm with placards reading “I Am

Not a Dog” (Time.com). In Mumbai, Shyamal Sengupta, a local ﬁ lm

professor, criticized the ﬁ lm’s stereotypical portraits: “It’s a white

man’s imagined India. It’s not quite snake charmers, but it’s close. It’s

a poverty tour” (Magnier). One taxi driver interviewed in New Delhi,

however, disagreed: “It’s those who are making lots of money who

are cribbing about the ﬁ lm showing the dark side of India,” he said

(continues)

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIA

288

years, however, the Hindu festivals of northern India have become

more standardized in their forms and practices, as regional celebrations

are adapted to the forms and festivities described in the news media or

shown on television. Older festival formats—the pilgrimage to a holy

site, the procession of a deity in a chariot around a village’s perimeter—

“Those left behind are loving it because they can empathize with the

ﬁ lm’s hero” (Time.com).

Sources: Magnier, Mark. “Indians Don’t Feel Good about Slumdog Millionaire.”

Los Angeles Times, 24 January, 2009; Singh, Madhur. “Slumdog Millionaire, an

Oscar Favorite, Is No Hit in India.” Time.com (2009). Available online URL:

www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1873926,00.html. Accessed January

26, 2009.

Durga Puja pandal, New Delhi. The Bengali regional celebration of Durga Puja now takes

place in many different parts of India wherever Bengali people have settled. This pandal

(clay tableau) from a New Delhi celebration in 1978 shows the 10-armed goddess Durga

with her lion as she slays a demon. The pandals are ﬁ rst worshipped in temples or com-

munity halls, then paraded around the city before being brought to a local river (here, the

Yamuna River) and immersed.

(courtesy of Judith E. Walsh)

KAUN BANEGA CROREPATI?

(continued)

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have been widely used in political organizing in recent years, particu-

larly by the BJP and the VHP. And even decisions about public holidays

now become the occasion for communal sniping in the highly politi-

cized atmosphere that currently surrounds all religious observances.

Traditional Hindu Festivals

Traditionally Hindu festivals occurred either at harvest or planting times

within the agricultural cycle. They marked the seasonal appearances of

epidemic diseases (which they were held to ward off), celebrated events

in the lives of gods and goddesses, or marked signiﬁ cant astronomi-

cal changes such as the phases of the Moon, eclipses, and solstices.

The major Hindu festivals widely celebrated across northern India

are the 10-day celebration of Dassehra (“10th”), the festival of Diwali

(“lights”), and the spring festival of Holi. Dassehra occurs during the

ﬁ rst 10 days of the Hindu month Asvin (October) and coincides with

the harvest of the summer crop. The festival celebrates the victory of

the god Rama over the evil demon Ravana, and its celebration is often

marked—in larger villages and in urban centers—by performances of

the Ramlila, a dramatic presentation of major episodes from the god

Rama’s life, held over several evenings.

Diwali, which is celebrated in November, is an end-of-harvest

celebration and a festival for the worship of Lakshmi, the goddess

of wealth. In some regions it is also a festival celebrating the return

of Rama and Sita to their Ayodhya kingdom. Traditionally Diwali is

celebrated by placing lit lamps and candles throughout the village or

locale. Gambling with dice is also traditionally associated with Diwali.

Holi takes place in the spring, in Phalgun (March), the last month

in the traditional Hindu calendar. Scholars identify Holi as a spring

harvest festival and fertility rite. It is celebrated with bonﬁ res and the

roasting of grain. It is also the occasion for licentious behavior and

cross-class, cross-caste abuse; members of lower castes and/or younger

members of families splash red-colored water on caste superiors or

family elders.

Many more local, regional, and communal festivals are still com-

mon in India but too numerous to detail at length. The two major

Muslim festivals are the Id (feast day), which falls in the last month

of the Muslim calendar year and at which animals are sacriﬁ ced and

food shared within the community, and the second Id feast that follows

the monthlong dawn to dusk fasting of Ramadan. In western India,

since the 19th century, Maharashtrians have celebrated the birth of the

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIA

290

elephant-headed god Ganesh in August–September. In Tamil Nadu the

harvest festival of Pongal occurs in mid-January.

Political Yatras and Raths

In the 1980s and 1990s Hindu nationalists frequently adapted tra-

ditional Hindu ritual and festival forms for use in their campaigns.

Yatras, journeys or pilgrimages to a religious site, are a common form of

Hindu religious worship. Raths, the chariot processions of a god’s image

around a village, town, or city, are also common. The chariots them-

selves (raths) also carry associations with the Hindu gods and heroes

of the Hindu epics, particularly since the appearance on television of

versions of the Mahabharata and Ramayana.

The VHP’s ﬁ rst and most successful use of the yatra was the

Ekatmata Yatra (pilgrimage for oneness) in 1983. This yatra was to

demonstrate the unity of Hinduism, which it did symbolically by hav-

ing three separate processions simultaneously crisscross India, visiting

all of Hinduism’s major pilgrimage sites before converging in the city of

Nagpur at the end. One procession traveled from Nepal to Tamil Nadu;

a second, from Bengal to Somnath in Gujarat; and a third, from Uttar

Pradesh to Tamil Nadu. The yatras brought holy water, collected from

all the religious sites and carried in jars along the way by members of

Sarasvati Puja, Calcutta. A priest worships the goddess of learning, Sarasvati, in an outdoor

pandal as onlookers watch.

(courtesy of Judith E. Walsh)

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the Sikh, Jain, and Untouchable communities. The separate processions

met at Nagpur, the center of India (and not coincidentally the home

city of the RSS in India), where the waters were all intermingled—the

ultimate symbol of Hindu oneness. This ﬁ rst yatra brought together

312 separate processions, convened 4,323 meetings and rallies, and

reached all but three of India’s districts. RSS swayamsevaks, or volun-

teers, numbering 50,000 oversaw the logistics of the campaign and the

processions’ movements.

The processions also carried images of goddesses representing the

Ganges and Mother India installed on raths and encouraged devotees to

worship these images as they moved. The yatra was hugely successful

and became the model for a number of later yatras and raths organized

by both the VHP and BJP. The yatra was also a commercial success: In

one procession alone 6,000 images of Mother India and 70,000 bottles

of holy water were sold to devotees.

In 1990 L. K. Advani, leader of the BJP, used a different kind of proces-

sion, the rath yatra (chariot procession), to demonstrate the BJP’s support

for the Ramjanmabhoomi campaign. Advani traveled 10,000 kilometers

(6,200 miles) through eight states in a Toyota decorated to look like an epic

chariot, with the election symbol of the BJP and the Hindu symbol “Om”

painted on its side. Saffron-clad associates dressed to look like the monkey

god Hanuman accompanied the rath, as did women performing religious

dances. Advani’s speeches and Hindu militant songs were broadcast by

loudspeakers atop the car, urging supporters to action. In Ahmedabad,

Advani was met by a member of the Bajrang Dal who used his own blood

to put a tilak (symbolic religious mark) on Advani’s forehead.

Politicized Holidays

Modern religious holidays in India are often the occasion for public

contention. State and local governments publish lists of the general hol-

idays they recognize and the “restricted” holidays when their employees

may choose not to work. (Government workers may generally choose

two restricted holidays a year from the list offered them.) Restricted

holidays will include most religious festivals—Dassehra, Diwali, and

Holi for Hindus, Id for Muslims, Christmas for Christians—although

Hindu holidays are also likely to be among the general holidays given to

all workers. Restricted lists, however, can be used for political purposes

and communal division. Just before national elections in 2004, for

example, the BJP chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, removed

a number of holidays for Christians, Muslims, Parsis, and Sikhs from

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