Gender, Nation, and Globalization in Monsoon Wedding and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge

Abstract

T he crossover success of Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding (2001), whose characters speak English, Hindi, and Punjabi, lies in the skill with which the film acquaints a Western audience with the sights and sounds of the new global India. Set in a burgeoning New Delhi suburb, the film uses a lavish Punjabi wedding as an occasion for staging the reunion of family members who are scattered across the globe. But the idea of a global India does not simply refer to the large numbers of Indians (known as Non-Resident Indians or NRIs) living in the diaspora.¹ The term also signifies the social and cultural transformation India has undergone since 1991, when a new economic policy eliminated the bureaucratic red tape restricting imports and foreign investment. For the first time, the marketplace became flooded with consumer goods that had previously been available only on the black market, and designer labels became commonplace. Indian television went from the two channels of state TV to the more than sixty channels available on cable and satellite in some urban areas. Whereas the state-controlled television programming promoted agricultural shows aimed at farmers, the new satellite TV channels broadcast sexually explicit music videos and Hollywood soap operas such as Santa Barbara and Baywatch that engendered Indian imitations. Sexual topics that were previously unmentionable were now being openly discussed, and television brought these discussions into the inner sanctum of the home.