Table Of ContentAll You Want Is Money,
All You Need ls Love
Sexuality and Romance in Modern India
Rachel Dwyer
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CASSELL
London and New York
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PR. ...- /
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For Michael
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Like a dear friend, like all one's kin,
Like all desires, like a fortune, like life itself
Is her husband to a woman, and his wedded wife to a man.
Kalidasa, Malati and Madhava, VI, 18
Cassell
Wellington House, 125 Strand, London WC2R OBB
370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6550
First published 2000
©
Rachel Dwyer 2000
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-304-70320-6 (hardback)
0-304-70321-4 (paperback)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dwyer, Rachel.
All you want is mon~y, all you need is love / Rachel Dwyer.
P- cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-304-70320-6 - ISBN 0-304-70321-4 (pbk.)
1. lndic fiction (English)-History and criticism. 2. Upper class-India
-20th century-Social conditions. 3. Elite (Social sciences)-lndia-20th
century-History. 4. Love in literature. 5. Love in motion pictures. I. Title.
PR9499.3.D99 A79 2000
8234-dc21
99-047860
Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, Guildford & King's Lynn
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Contents
Foreword by Amitabh Bachchan
V
..
Acknowledgements
Vil
Note for the Reader
VIII
1. Introduction 1
2. Tales of Love 8
3. The Rise of the Middle Classes of Bombay 58
4. Industry of Desire: The Hindi Cinema 96
5. The Flowering of Romance: Ya sh Chopra and the
Hindi Romantic Film 147
6. Shooting Stars: The Film Magazine Stardust 168
7. Pulp Fiction? The Books of Shobha De 202
Appendix
217
Film Synopses
220
Films Discussed
222
Filmography of Ya sh Chopra
224
Glossary
225
Bibliography
244
Index
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Foreword
Sexuality and romance in Modern India? But of course. The Ancient India
one has been done and written to death. Trust the English to even think of
wanting to pick such a topic for research. But Dr Rachel Dwyer's work in
All You Want ls Money, All You Need ls Love is truly remarkable. As
page after page unfolds one cannot but admire the author's acute and
painstaking effort at unravelling, with almost scientific precision, what
the topic means to her and thereby indeed to all of us.
As a professional actor, what interests me most, of course, is her
inclusion of Hindi cinema as one of the subjects of discussion. The Indian
cinema from its origin almost one hundred years ago has for most of its
life been a medium that has traditionally been looked down upon
culturally and referred to as something cheap and frivolous. It is to the
credit of the film industry and its resilience that today Hindi cinema has
almost become a parallel culture. Its phenomenal reach, not only in India
but outside Indian shores as well, has suddenly provoked the so-called
elitist and the purist culture-vulture to sit up and take notice. Hindi
cinema has now become an integral part of our national existence.
It is extremely creditable, therefore, to find Dr Rachel Dwyer, a
Britisher from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London,
coming out with a very precise and analytical dissertation on an area
totally alien to her. It has the capability of surprising the severest critic.
Issues, events and research that were perhaps hitherto done and looked
at almost with casual disdain have been picked up by her and analysed, in
so typically Western a manner. As an Indian I would perhaps have
overlooked a great deal of what Indian cinema has produced, but the
author's clinical manner backed up by severe theory makes you shift rather
sheepishly in your chair, with mouth wide open. The only grey areas are the
assumptions derived through information that Dwyer has picked up from
film glossies. This is unfortunate, since they are not the true representations
of many of the happenings that she refers to. That apart, this is incredible
documentation, meant for serious notice and not just for posterity.
Amitabh Bachchan
Mumbai, October 1999
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Acknowledgements
I should like to acknowledge my thanks to the following:
My friends in India who have provided me with warm hospitality, and
sound advice at so many levels: in Bombay, Shaad Ali, Pamela Chopra,
Shobha De, lmtiaz, Anil and Ayesha Dharker, Reima and Owais Husain,
Udita Jhunjhunwala, Aamir and Reena Khan, Maithili Rao, Amrut,
Rekhi, Monisha and Sonal Shah; in Delhi, Suzanne Goldenberg, Ashis
Nandy, Ranjana Sengupta, Patricia Uberoi and Ravi Vasudevan.
Those who provided materials and other information: the indefatigable
Jerry Pinto; Suresh Chabria and the library staff of the National Film and
Television Archive, Pune; Ashok Row Kavi of Bombay Dost; Khalid
Mohamed and the staff of Filmfare; and Ashwin Varde and the staff of
Stardust; Titu Ahluwalia and his colleagues at MARG organization; Roy
Singh for his advice on Chapter 3; and the late Iqbal Masud. Thanks to
Karan Johar for allowing me to use images from his film Kuch Kuch Hota
Hai for the cover of the book.
The people who gave me their advice and often extended interviews:
Yash, Pamela, Aditya and Uday Chopra, Kiddy and Beena Chadha; the
staff of Yashraj Films (especially, Sally Fernandes, Sahdev Ghei, Avtar
Panesar and Mr Vakil); Shobha and Dilip De; Javed Akhtar, Amitabh
Bachchan, Madhuri Dixit, M. F. Husain, Rishi Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor,
Aamir Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Khayyam, Dilip Kumar, Rekha, Sadhana
and Javed Siddiqui.
SOAS Research Committee for funding most of my fieldwork; the
British Academy for the Ya sh Chopra project.
Those who invited me to present this work at conferences and
seminars, for their advice and hospitality: Mihir Bhattacharya, Harsh
Dehejia, Theo D'haen, Mark Hobart, Ron Inden, Rohit Khattar, Jim
Masselos, Laura Mulvey and Cary Rajinder Sawhney.
My colleagues for their support and encouragement: Faisal Devji,
Michael Hutt, Ron Inden, Christophe Jaffrelot, Sudipta Kaviraj,
Francesca Orsini, Chris Pinney, Peter Robb and Christopher Shackle.
Vll
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
.
Two pioneers who introduced me to the study of Indian cinema:
Nasreen Munni Kabir and Asha Kasbekar Richards.
Former and present students who have witnessed much of this work in
progress, in particular Kaushik Bhaumik, Jessica Hines, Anna Morcom,
Kush Varia and Valentina Vitali-West.
My family and other friends, especially mere hamsafar, Michael.
Earlier versions of the last three chapters have been published elsewhere:
Chapter 5 'Hindi romantic cinema: Yash Chopra's Kabhi Kabhie and
Silsila', South Asia 21(1), June (1998), Special volume:
'Translatings: Images from India's Half Century': 181-212.
Chapter 6 'Shooting stars: the Indian film magazine Stardust', in Rachel
Dwyer and Christopher Pinney (eds), Pleasure and the Nation:
The Politics and Consumption of Popular Culture in India.
Delhi: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
Chapter 7 '"Starry nights": the novels of Shobha De', in Theo D'haen
(ed.), (Un)writing Empire, Cross/cultures: Readings in the
Post/colonial Literatures in English, number 30. Amsterdam
and Atlanta: Rodopi, pp. 117-33.
Note for the Reader
Rather than employ a complicated transliteration system which might be
confusing for the general reader, I have used a simplified scheme broadly
similar to that found in many Indian publications.
All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
VIII
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I
Introduction
The idea for this book came to me while I was living among the modern,
metropolitan Indian bourgeoisie. As a student of classical Indian culture,
my initial reaction to this culture was one of bewilderment. It took much
kindness and patience from these people, much work on my part, not least
in learning some of their languages, before I began to experience not only
the pleasure of their culture, but an understanding of wider aspects of
Indian culture and society as a whole.
My basic point of departure is that the modern, metropolitan Indian
middle classes are very different from their western equivalents. Given the
different historical, social and cultural trajectories of these classes, it may
seem a facile point to make, but one must start by underlining such basic
facts. While this study is not comparative, some comparisons are
inevitable and will recur throughout the book.
Academic research on India has focused on elites or subalterns rather
than on the seemingly universally despised middle classes. In this book, I
argue that a new middle class, emerging from the lower-middle classes in
metropolitan centres such as Bombay, is actively producing and
consuming a new public culture. This class has a good deal of economic
capital but is regarded as low in cultural capital by the old middle classes,
who see its members as vulgar and nouveau riche. Since the latter forms a
national bourgeoisie which defines cultural legitimacy, their views,
expressed in national institutions and the print media, have been taken
for fact. This book is the first study to discuss the culture of the new
middle class, tracing its roots in a number of Indian and other traditions,
and its own distinctive aesthetic style, and looking at why it is becoming
the dominant form of popular or public culture in India and yet is denied
cultural legitimacy.
Chapter 2 looks at love and romance among the Indian middle classes,
as part of the creation of a bourgeois consciousness with new concepts of
the person and of individuality. Specific texts are examined for their
reinterpretation in different tellings, ranging from Sanskrit prose and
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ALL YOU WANT IS MONEY, ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE
poetry to film and television, concentrating on tensions between the
family and the individual that revolve around love, romance and
.
marriage.
There has been relatively little serious academic study of love and
romance in India, and this book can, at best, only offer preliminary
conclusions. Perhaps this absence is because it is regarded as a trivial
topic, in the face of social realities, such as violence against women,
including rape, bride-burning, female foeticide, infanticide, and domestic
violence. But love is important, being one of the central parts of individual
and social existence, which can reveal much about the concept of the
person, the importance of relationships, sexuality, eroticism and romance.
I also stress the centrality of the family, which the new middle classes
celebrate as an institution that makes them different from their western
counterparts.
I have not written as much about sex as some readers may have
expected. Rather, I look at textual representations of eroticism instead of
the actualities of sexual encounters. Even these sections on eroticism
(pleasure and desire) have been largely subordinated to romantic love.
This is because eroticism deals with fantasies which can be fulfilled, rather
than ways of thinking about relationships and other people which are
always incomplete.
I have made no attempt to define a single Indian sexuality or romantic
view but I do suggest some small steps towards looking at histories of
textual representations. My work needs to be supplemented by the study
of medical books, scientific texts, government legislation, and deviant and
criminal sexuality.
In Chapter 3, I look at the middle classes of Bombay. I have chosen to
focus on Bombay for several reasons. One is that it is the richest city in
India, being its commercial and financial capital. It offers a number of
contenders for economic, political, social and cultural dominance, being
India's most ethnically mixed city, with no majority population, and has a
diversity of languages (including languages not originally from this area -
English and Hindi), and religions (a variety of Hindu practices are found
along with Shi'ite and Sunni Islam, Zoroastrianism and several
denominations of Christianity). Bombayites view their city, which is
physically a peninsula, almost as an island in terms of culture. They often
regard the rest of India as an undesirable place, apart from a few key
locations, and are proud of the modernity of their great city. Bombay is the
city in which a great deal of India's public, and often national, culture is
produced, notably its Hindi/Urdu film industry. Other metropolitan cities
have very different cultural lives: Delhi, as the seat of government, is
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