Abstract:
The proposed project aims to study select masala Hindi films popular during the 1980s in India.
The purpose is to analyze how the films of this genre negotiate with the impending threat to the
existing national identity in the wake of the post-emergency politics of separatism, regionalism, and
representation. Placed right before the 1990s neoliberal drive in the Indian economy, the 80s middle-
class– hitherto a socialist and hermetic community– was paranoid by an ‘invasive’ global culture,
permissiveness, politics of rights, and reform. This study shows that the cinematic resolution of this
crisis is a grudgingly lenient orthodoxy negotiating with the limits of cultural inclusion, represented
through the questions of agency, gender, class, caste, and ethnicity abounding in the middle-class
domestic sphere, the city, and the national spectrum. The study posits that irrespective of the genre,
the majority of the 1980s Hindi films can be considered as a microcosm of India’s national identity
going through a crucial transition manifested as a crisis of middle-class domesticity. Despite a latent
narrative strain of begrudging mediation with the demands of a new and libertarian time, this meta-
genre normalizes duty, fidelity, and caste/gender/racial archetypes in service of a traditional
domestic hierarchy at their climax, and successfully foretells India’s continuing struggle with
modern liberalism, individual agency, identity conflicts, and inclusivity.
