University of Sussex
Browse

File(s) under permanent embargo

Bertrand Russell in Bollyworld: film, the Cold War, and a postmortem on peace

chapter
posted on 2023-06-09, 15:38 authored by Raminder KaurRaminder Kaur
In 1967, British philosopher and social critic, Bertrand Russell, made a cameo appearance in a Hindi popular film, Aman (Peace, directed by Mohan Kumar). At the frail age of 94, such a remarkable performance was not to be repeated, and neither has it merited scholarly attention. The scene with Russell seems to run counter to the expectations of this kind of Indian cinema as it does to expectations of a renowned British thinker. Nevertheless, his appearance imbues a certain gravitas to the masala aesthetic that makes Russell both culturally and politically relevant to the film, and to an analysis of the larger Cold War context of the 1960s through the film. Including a real-life and scripted characters, the excerpt is not simply a documentary nor a drama, yet it is a document and drama of the era – a period in which India’s stance against the nuclear bomb epitomised by the views of its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was beginning to show signs of change. Even though the statesman had died three years before the film’s release, Russell’s presence in the film was, as I demonstrate in this chapter, to keep the Nehruvian vision alive. Containing elements of historical document and (melo)drama, the excerpt is an interpenetrative assemblage of the real and fictional that I call ‘docu-drama-ment’ to distinguish it from its nearest cousins, docudrama or “true story” cinema.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Publisher

University of North Carolina Press

Pages

280.0

Book title

India and the Cold War

Place of publication

Chapel Hill

ISBN

9781469651163

Department affiliated with

  • Anthropology Publications

Research groups affiliated with

  • Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

Manu Bhagavan

Legacy Posted Date

2018-10-25

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2018-10-24

Usage metrics

    University of Sussex (Publications)

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC