Bollywood’s India: Hindi Cinema as a Guide to Contemporary India

Bollywood’s India explores the nature of mainstream Hindi cinema, now best known as Bollywood, and its non-realistic depictions of everyday life in India. Rachel Dwyer argues that Hindi cinema’s interpretations of India over the last two decades are the most reliable guide to understanding the nation’s changing dreams and hopes, fears and anxieties. She shows how escapism and entertainment function in Bollywood cinema, and what that reveals about Indian life and society. Bollywood’s India looks at the ways in which Bollywood has imagined and portrayed the unity and diversity of India–what it believes and what it feels; life at home and in public.