Papers by Vikrant Dadawala
JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 2023
This article explores the rise and fall of the Hindi literary film, circa 1969-1995. I discuss th... more This article explores the rise and fall of the Hindi literary film, circa 1969-1995. I discuss three hybrid genres that emerged from collaborations between modern Hindi writers and Indian New Wave filmmakers: lighthearted, middlebrow comedies about urban life; an avant-garde cinema characterized by a mofussil modernism; and an activist cinema concurrent with the Indian human rights movement. The article concludes by identifying the factors that pushed Hindi literature and cinema apart in the 1990s, with changes in state policies, the growth of private television channels, and the provincialization of Hindi literary culture.
South Asia, 2022
From 1948 to 1994, the newsreels and documentaries produced by the Films Division of India (FD) w... more From 1948 to 1994, the newsreels and documentaries produced by the Films Division of India (FD) were a ubiquitous presence in Indian public life. Even as some audiences learnt to avoid sitting through yet another newsreel about the benefits of economic planning, the FD vision of harmonious, planned development continued to haunt the collective unconscious of post-colonial India well into the 1980s. Drawing on examples from documentary cinema, Indian New Wave films, and modern Hindi literature, this article explores three scenes of disillusionment with the FD’s version of the Nehruvian dream. I argue that the FD archive is a particularly productive site from which we can ask uncomfortable questions about the experience of Nehruvian socialism: the ‘illusions’ of the past continue to haunt FD films even in moments of disillusionment, prompting a form of self-reckoning whose full implications can only be grasped now, in retrospect.
South Asia, 2021
This essay traces the literary afterlife of Hindi writer Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh (1917-64). Like... more This essay traces the literary afterlife of Hindi writer Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh (1917-64). Like many in his generation, Muktibodh's life and world-view were transformed by his encounter with communism during the years of World War II. Though much of his poetry remained unpublished while he was alive, Muktibodh was posthumously recognised as one of the most significant writers of the Nehruvian period and has been a cult figure in the Hindi literary world since the 1970s. By tracking the influence of Muktibodh's elliptical poetry and prose on modern Hindi literature and cinema, this essay reconstructs the rise and fall of the late colonial vision of a possible 'Soviet India'.
Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, 2020
This article is a reflection on the “Indian” angle of South Africa’s “state capture” scandal. I a... more This article is a reflection on the “Indian” angle of South Africa’s “state capture” scandal. I argue that it is the Indian-born Gupta brothers – rather than Presidents Trump or Zuma – who offer us a model for a new kind of comparative inquiry that maps emerging geographies of corruption, power, and influence.
Book chapters by Vikrant Dadawala
The Cultural Cold War and the Global South: Sites of Contest and Communitas, ed. Kerry Bystrom, Monica Popescu, and Katherine Zien (New York: Routledge, 2021), 2021
This chapter analyzes the archives of the People’s War, the weekly newspaper of the Communist Par... more This chapter analyzes the archives of the People’s War, the weekly newspaper of the Communist Party of India from 1942 through 1945, in order to recreate the late colonial imagination of a possible “Soviet India”—in all of its optimism, ambition, and hubris.
Occasional Writing by Vikrant Dadawala
The Point Magazine, 2023
on Hinduism, Islam, and Indian History
The Point, 2023
On Vinod Kumar Shukla, the winner of the 2023 PEN/Nabokov award for achievement in international ... more On Vinod Kumar Shukla, the winner of the 2023 PEN/Nabokov award for achievement in international fiction
The Point, 2022
On the global South Asian diaspora
The Point, 2022
On Salman Rushdie
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2020
Translations by Vikrant Dadawala
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Papers by Vikrant Dadawala
Book chapters by Vikrant Dadawala
Occasional Writing by Vikrant Dadawala
Translations by Vikrant Dadawala