Big countries, little people: Indian diaspora as seen in Bollywood films

As we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the iconic Bollywood film 'Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge', the Indian diaspora that it had wooed is in troubled waters

During a two-day visit to India earlier this month, UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer dropped in at the Mumbai studio of Bollywood’s leading production company, Yash Raj Films (YRF). Later, YRF released a video on social media where Starmer can be seen listening to the song “Tujhe dekha toh yeh jana sanam…”. Sung by Kumar Sanu and Lata Mangeshkar, with music by Jatin-Lalit and lyrics by Anand Bakshi, the song was picturised on Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol, the lead actors of the iconic Hindi romantic drama, ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’ (DDLJ). Directed by YRF’s current head Aditya Chopra, the film released on 20 October 1995, marking its 30th anniversary this month. Since its release, its shows have never stopped at Mumbai’s Maratha Mandir cinema, making it the longest-running Hindi film in history.

 

 

Starmer also announced that three new Bollywood films would be shot in the UK next year and Yash Raj would bring some major productions to the country from early 2026, after an eight-year-long break. “Bollywood is back in Britain, and it’s bringing jobs, investment and opportunity, all the while showcasing the UK as a world-class destination for global filmmaking,” said Starmer. He is, of course, not the first major Western political leader to be seduced by the charms of DDLJ. Ten years ago, during a visit to India, former US President Barack Obama had struggled with an iconic dialogue from the film: “Bade, bade deshon mein, aise chhoti chhoti batein hoti reheti hain, senorita. (In big countries, such little things keep happening, senorita).”

 

Starmer’s visit to India comes at a difficult time for the Indian diaspora in the UK — in fact, all over the world. A few days before travelling to India, Starmer declared that his government would not relax visa rules for Indian jobseekers or students. The UK government earlier this year also tightened skills and salary thresholds for jobseekers in the country and is planning to double the time needed by most migrants to apply for permanent residency (Indefinite Leave to Remain) to 10 years. India is the single-largest source country of migrants to the UK at 965,000 people, according to its 2021-22 Census. The 100,000-strong anti-migrant protest in London on 13 September this year showed the rising sentiment against migrants in the country.

 

Similarly, US President Donald Trump’s recent executive order increasing the fee to apply for the coveted H1B visa for non-immigrant workers in America will significantly affect Indians. In the financial year 2024, Indians made up about 71 percent of the total H1B visa approvals, at 283,397; China is a distant second, with 46,680 H1B visa approvals. Violence against Indians and anti-immigrant protests have also been reported in recent months from Canada, the Republic of Ireland and Australia. Chicago-based journalist Madhu Bhatia Jha writes in a recent article that Indians in the US, many of whom have a university education and a median income of $151,200 (much higher than the national average of $74,500), have been made into a convenient scapegoat for majoritarian politics.

 

But why am I talking about the Indian diaspora and its current problems in an article purportedly marking the 30th anniversary of DDLJ? Because it is impossible to talk about one without referring to the other. Since the release of the film, scholars and film critics have established beyond a shadow of doubt that DDLJ coalesced the diaspora audience for the Hindi film industry, creating a new market and essential revenue source for it beyond the country’s geographical and political borders. In a 1998 paper, scholar Patricia Uberoi writes that films like DDLJ and ‘Pardes’ (1997), directed by Subhash Ghai and also starring Shah Rukh Khan in a leading role, addressed the anxieties of India’s growing middle-class as well as influential diaspora, offering various solutions to dispel it. In DDLJ, this is done through three interlinked layers of rituals — homecoming, wedding and Karva Chauth — ensconced into each other like Matryoshka dolls.

 

The film opens with a monologue by convenience store owner, Chaudhury Baldev Singh (Amrish Puri), as he feeds pigeons at the Trafalgar Square. Baldev informs the audience that though he has lived in London for 20 years, he yearns to return to his native Punjab. At home, he is a petty dictator over his wife, Lajwanti (Farida Jalal), and daughters, Simran (Kajol) and Chutki (Pooja Ruparel). When Simran meets and falls in love with another second-generation British Indian boy, Raj (Khan), Baldev packs up his family and returns to his village in India, planning to get his daughter married to his friend Ajit’s (Satish Shah) son, Kuljeet (Parmeet Sethi). The ritualistic homecoming, celebrated with music — particularly the song ‘Ghar aaja pardesi, tera desh bulaye re (Come home stranger, your nation is calling you) — exorcises the anxieties of identity loss, in both the diaspora and the domestic audiences, in a newly globalised world.  

 

If the first half of the film is set in London and different parts of Europe, the action in the second half is situated in the diegetic space of a Punjabi village, marked most notably by yellow mustard fields. The narrative is overtaken by elaborate preparations for Kuljeet and Simran’s wedding. But Raj, who has followed them to India, befriends Kuljeet and implicates himself into the rituals. As he explains to Simran, he intends to win over her family, particularly her father, Baldev. When Simran proposes that they elope, Raj refuses to do so, declaring that is not the Indian way. His claim, however, belies the entire legacy of very successful Hindi films where lovers elope, at times with Romeo-and-Juliet-type tragic consequences (‘Ek Duuje Ke Liye’, 1981; ‘Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak’, 1988). Rachel Dwyer, in a 2015 paper, argues that Khan’s characters in DDLJ and other films are simultaneously cosmopolitan and uncompromisingly Indian, essentially embodying an idealised answer to the anxieties in the audience.

 

The wedding, yet again, exorcises anxieties of identity loss and satisfies various desires of the audience. Hindu weddings featuring in Hindi films was, of course, not a novelty at all in the mid-1990s. The 1994 blockbuster ‘Hum Aapke Hain Koun…!’ (HAHK), directed by Sooraj Barjatya, featured an elaborate and lengthy wedding sequence, with multiple songs. Philip Lutgendorf, in a 2012 paper, compares HAHK’s success to the popular 1975 film ‘Jai Santoshi Maa’, directed by Vijay Sharma. Lutgendorf argues that the mimetic behaviour in the audience that both films inspired — widespread worship of the Hindu goddess Santoshi; rituals like stealing the groom’s shoes — satisfied the contemporary if “impossible dreams for many of the films’ enthusiastic fans”. The wedding in DDLJ, too, performs a similar task, with SRK’s character emerging as the ideal cosmopolitan-yet-Indian subject.

 

Like ‘Jai Sanotshi Maa’ popularised the worship of goddess Santoshi, DDLJ also popularised Karva Chauth, a Hindu ritual during which married women keep a daylong fast for the longevity of their husbands. In DDLJ, Simran keeps a fast — apparently for Kuljeet, but actually for Raj; unknown to her, Raj also keeps a sympathetic fast. The two of them breaking their fasts together creates a romantic moment in the film. The scene was so popular among audiences that the ritual was incorporated in the narratives of several other films — ‘Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam’ (1999), ‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham’ (2001), ‘Baghban’ (2003) and ‘Animal’ (2023). The ritual is popular even among the diaspora. Gender studies scholar Mukta Sharangpani, in a 2022 paper, explores the popularity of the ritual among dominant caste, working Indian women in the San Francisco Bay area, finding that “it privileges gendered experiential knowledge… and [creates] a nuanced understanding of agency, power and self-expression.”

 

The rituals of homecoming, wedding and Karva Chauth helped domesticate the anxieties of globalisation, but they also reinforced conservative ideals of gender, family and identity. Three decades since its release, DDLJ persists as both a cultural milestone and a contested symbol of India’s global identity. In the 2023 Netflix documentary ‘The Romantics’, directed by Smriti Mundhra, the actor Anupam Kher, who played SRK’s father in DDLJ, makes the bold claim that the film cleaved Bollywood’s history into two. There was one Bollywood before DDLJ; it created another one in its wake. Starmer’s overtures demonstrate how such cultural products continue to be used for utilitarian diplomacy. Yet, beneath the cute moment of a British PM listening to a Hindi film song lies the fractures of migration, class and exclusion.  Uttaran Das Gupta is an independent writer and journalist