Construction of Nation for Diaspora: A Study of Namastey London
Author : Dr. Naveena V
Abstract :
It is said that a nation is constructed in the minds of people. Several factors operate exclusively for this construction, the activity which is political as well as cultural. The construction of a nation is not always a naive exercise by the agencies who are in charge of such a vital enterprise, especially, when the target group is away from its homeland.
Cinema is one of the major entertainment media in India as in many other countries worldwide. Post globalization, there came a slew of Hindi movies that had Non Resident Indians in the lead characters. The movies tried to construct an India that could reconnect the Indian diaspora with it emotionally. They somehow tried to win back the lost love of the ‘imagined community’ of expatriates, especially belonging to second and third generations for their country. The movies tried to feed the staple diet of cultural nationalism to their viewers, not only from outside India, but even within.
The present paper tries to study the Hindi mainstream cinema ‘Namastey London’ in an attempt to explore how the movie constructs India for the Indian diaspora living in different parts of the globe. It attempts to prove that such a holy-construction of an all-good nation is not out of patriotism or not even out of jingoism. Several other issues are involved in this exercise which cannot be called innocent and the author wishes to unravel those aspects in the paper.
Keywords :
Nation, construction, culture, diaspora, patriotism.
