An Evolving Present Within A Past History Of Screenwriting Practice In Popular Hindi Cinema

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JOSC 2 (1) pp. 41–59 Intellect Limited 2010
Journal of Screenwriting
Volume 2 Number 1
© 2010 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/josc.2.1.41_1
ANUBHA YADAV
University of Delhi
An evolving present
within a past – a history of
screenwriting practices in
popular Hindi cinema
ABSTRACT
This article studies the mutual and exclusive relationship between the history of
popular Hindi cinema and the writing of the screenplay by finding dominant points
of reference in their individual and overlapping histories. It connects the unique
storytelling tradition of Hindi cinema with the subsumed creative identity of a
screenwriter. To do this the article focuses on significant historical markers in Hindi
cinema: the Silent era, the Talkies, the Golden era of the 1950s, the New Wave of
the 1960s, the Salim–Javed era of the 1970s and the New ‘New’ Wave of today.
The New ‘New’ Wave in Hindi popular cinema aims to recognize and legitimize the
presence of the story and the screenwriter. The article studies the evolution of this
recent phenomenon and examines the academic and industrial variants that have
led to the coming of this change in Hindi cinema.
India continues to be the largest film producing country in the world with an
annual output of about 800 films. Nearly 90 per cent of these films belong to
the popular cinema (Mishra: 2002: 1).1
KEYWORDS
Popular Hindi cinema
screenwriting
screenwriter
New wave
Mumbai
form
narrative
1. These films are viewed
by eleven million
people each day.
1.
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Anubha Yadav
42
2. The first New Wave in
Indian cinema came in
the 1960s.
Indian popular cinema is a fairy tale mix of melodrama, humor, spectacle
and song and dance. In Salman Rushdie’s words it is ‘Epico-Mythico-
Tragico-Comico-Super-Sexy-High-Masala-Art’.
(Mishra: 2002: 2)
This article studies the mutual and exclusive relationship between the
history of popular Hindi cinema and the writing of the screenplay by finding
dominant points of reference in their individual and overlapping histories. It
connects the unique storytelling tradition of Hindi cinema with the subsumed
creative identity of a screenwriter. To do this the article focuses on significant
historical markers in Hindi cinema: the Silent era, the Talkies, the Golden era
of the 1950s, the New Wave of the 1960s, the Salim–Javed era of the 1970s
and the New ‘New’ Wave of today. The New ‘New’ Wave in Hindi popular
cinema aims to recognize and legitimize the presence of the story and the
screenwriter.2
The article studies the evolution of this recent phenomenon and
examines the academic and industrial variants that have led to the coming of
this change in Hindi cinema.
It is only in the last decade that popular Hindi cinema has found itself
worthy of academic attention. Most of the studies on popular Hindi cinema
have focused on the evolution of its narrative theme, style and form. The
primary emphasis has been on tracing its borrowing from other art practices.
Thus, although we have learnt much about the evolution of the narrative style
and form of these popular films, we have barely touched on the evolution of
other creative and industrial practices, such as screenwriting traditions, which
are part of the collaborative nature of film production.
Mumbai’s popular Hindi cinema has been the dominant narrative form
and storytelling convention in Indian cinema for the last 80 years. Particular
formative and narrative influences include the ancient epics Ramayana and
Mahabharata, classical Sanskrit theatre, Parsi theatre and classic Hollywood.
The two religious texts of Ramayana and Mahabharata have influenced Hindi
cinema in terms of choice of thematics, narratives and ideology. Classical
Sanskrit theatre has lent its episodic nature with emphasis on spectacle, music
and dance. The vibrant, European Parsi theatre of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries provided a mixture of realism and fantasy with melodra-
matic narratives amalgamated in songs, while classic Hollywood cinema lent
codes and conventions such as the seamless narrative, eye-line match, the
star system and the studio system.
Unlike the West, which emphasizes change and development in the
narrative through the dialectics of conflict, the Indian narrative borrows
narrative themes from epic mythologies and inserts them into a syntactical
structure, which is familiar culturally and socially, songs being an inherent
element of Indian oral culture. This standardization has created a universal
and unique genre theory for the various popular cinemas of India: a genre that
is strongly influenced by melodrama and only marginally distinguishes itself
through themes to form narrative prototypes like romance, socials (narratives
oriented to exposing social malaise) and family films. The limited genre differ-
entiation of Indian cinema can be further understood with the ‘Rasa’ theory of
Indian dramaturgy. A rasa literally means ‘juice’ or ‘essence’. It represents the
dominant emotion in a work of art. It also aims to explain the primary feeling
that it evokes in the person who views, reads or hears it.
Bharata Muni theorized the eight rasas (emotions) in the Na
-tyasha
-stra/
Drama Treatise, an ancient work of dramatic theory. The Na
-tyasha
-stra
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An evolving present within a past – a history of screenwriting …
43
3. For more, see
Raghavendra (2006).
4. Raghavendra (2006).
5. Rajadhyaksha says,
‘In Phalke’s films,
the frame functions
neither centripetally
nor centrifugally but as
a holding ‘Constant’. Its
defining tangibility is
to the viewer’s gaze is
rather like a cane to a
blind person, locating
spaces as the gaze
feels itself plotting out
the universe of the
imaginary.
delineates a detailed theory of drama comparable to the Poetics of Aristotle.
It states that there are eight principal rasas (emotions): love, pity, anger,
disgust, heroism, awe, terror and comedy. Each rasa experienced by the
audience is associated with a bhava (mood) portrayed in the work of art.
The concept of rasa is a key element in many forms of Indian art, including
dance, music, theatre, cinema and literature.
Thus, in popular Hindi cinema a story does not offer a causal chain of
events like Hollywood, but instead unfolds in a pre-known sequence with the
aim of arousing different rasas (emotions) as it unfolds. This ‘non-repetitive-
sameness’ of a story is also enabled through film narratives that refute the
notion of linear continuing time.3
The curious fact about popular cinema in India is that history seems
to have created no myths of its own, and one is hard pressed to find more
than a film or two that uses the mythology of the freedom struggle of 1947
(Raghavendra 2006: 36).
This absence of the use of myths from history legitimizes a certain ahisto-
ricity of narrative, as now stories can choose to borrow from mythology rather
than history.4
The nature of this borrowing is everyday and omnisciently
unspecific in its presence. This is perhaps because of the way Indian culture
treats mythology:
… […] that in India, myth is a living tradition and it underlies much of
our contemporary storytelling, in cinema and elsewhere. […] Perhaps,
for us, we have to make no special effort to reach out to myths – not
only in terms of content/story material but also in terms of narrative
structures.
(Chakravarty 2006)
It is also important to mention that film technology arrived in India during
colonial rule. Film was seen as another stage of the same old indigenous
cultural practices, or was perceived in its physicality as a technique – a
projector, a screen and a dark room. Continuation of these old performative
practices through this new medium of film embedded narrative frameworks in
popular Hindi cinema:
In his insightful essay on the ‘Phalke Era’ (silent cinema), Ashish
Rajyadhyaksha considers the nature of neo-traditionalism as a way of
understanding and exploring the complex ways in which traditional
forms of cultural articulations and performativities were inflected by the
newly introduced technologies associated with the films.5
(Guneratne and Dissanayake 2004: 212)
The first Indian feature film, Raja Harishchandra/King Harishchandra (1913),
was the moral story of a truthful king from the epic Hindu religious text
Ramayana. Phalke’s use of textual cards in the narrative was the first attempt
to retell a foretold narrative to the audience. What followed was a decade
of melodramatic re-telling of myths, fables and legends as narratives in the
Silent era:
If there has ever been one easily recognizable narrative form in Hindi
Cinema, it is the mythological film – the oldest Hindi film genre. The
Father of Indian Cinema, Dada Saheb Phalke set the tone by using
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6. Singing Stars like KL
Saihgal, Suraiya and
Noor Jehan.
stories about legendary Heroes and Hindu Gods in films such as – Raja
Harishchandra/King Harishchandra (1913), Lanka Dahan/Capture of Lanka
(1917) (based on Ramayana), Krishna Janma/Birth of Lord Krishna (1918)
(a Hindu God who is a key character in – Mahabharata) and Kaliya
Mardan/Lord Krishna (1919) (based on mythic tales of Lord Krishna).
Although other genres like the ‘socials’ did emerge but mythological
films continued to be the dominant genre until the end of 1930s.
(Encyclopedia Britannica 2003: 25)
The mythological tales soon became a framework and have had a dominant
presence in the three film genres of family, romance and socials. For example,
popular Hindi cinema creates archetypes of the hero, the villain and the hero-
ine (the central female character) borrowing from the eternal characters of the
epics. Often the narrative premise emerges from the idea of the hero’s virtues
and the villain’s evil devices.
Thus, on one hand the Silent era saw pioneers conceiving and expanding
the scope of the ‘cinematic’, while on the other hand continuing to rely on
the mythic framework meant the limiting of cinematic narrative. The Silent
era provided a blueprint in which the idea of an original story was impossible
because of the reliance on using epics, mythology and oral tales.
THE SOUND FILM – SONG AND DIALOGUE
The first sound film was made in 1931 with Alam Ara/The Light of the World,
a love story adapted from a Parsi play by Joseph David. The ‘Talkies’ did two
critically significant things regarding the development of screenwriting in
popular Hindi cinema: they decided the nature and the relative relevance of the
‘song’ in the narrative structure of a popular Hindi film and also determined
a separate place of importance for the dialogic space in storytelling practice.
Alam Ara/The Light of the World (1931) became a huge success and much of
that was credited to its seven-song structure. Noted Indian film-maker Shyam
Benegal has pointed out, ‘It was not just a talkie. It was a talking and singing
film with more singing and less talking. It had several songs and that actu-
ally set the template for the kind of films that were made later’. The second
talkie, Shirin Farhad/A Persian Love Story (1931) had 42 songs and Indrasabha/
The Lord’s Court (1932) had 70 songs.
The success of film with songs created a need for singing stars, musi-
cians and songwriters from other performance arts, and many playback sing-
ers became legendary singing stars.6
As a consequence, illustrious Silent era
stars lost their jobs as now films needed voices, modulation and singing. As
silent cinema was fading, sound cinema was struggling to find its ideal form.
Narrative storytelling began to take a backseat and the most popular genres
were the romance and mythological stories, owing to the scope they provided
for musical interludes.
The coming of sound technology also led to many changes in the film
production process, and meant that much of the narrative information was
passed through dialogue, which decided the ‘cutting’ point. As Banwari Lal
Bedam writes in Filmland:
It is therefore necessary that only selected words, phrases and sentences
be used so that they can be understood by the learned and unlearned
alike and convey the same message to all […]. A really good talking
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7. Mukherjee (2007).
8. For more see, Trivedi
(2006).
9. Atma Ram (Guru Dutt’s
brother) in Kabir (2003).
picture must not have more than 350 words per reel […]. The dialogue
writer must use simple Hindi […]. Then comes pronunciation […]7
(Filmland, August 1932)
Producers needed ready sound scripts and so they began adapting popular
plays from Parsi theatre. As mentioned before, Alam Ara/The Light of the World
(1931) was adapted by Munshi Zaheer from a Parsi play, written by Joseph
David. Similarly, Aga Hashr Kashmiri’s plays like Seeta Banwas/Sita’s Exile and
Bharati Balak/Child of a Nation found their way on the screen with original
dialogue and songs. To adapt to the changing times, film directors started
employing Munshis (clerks) who knew Hindustani (a mix of Hindi and Urdu)
for dialogue.8
In no time this became the usual practice and dialogue writers
from Hindi and Urdu literature started writing dialogue separately from the
story. As Javed Akhtar explains:
You see we had writers from Bengal and South India working in the
Cinema. Now they understood the workings of Hindi/Urdu Cinema,
but they did not have a good enough command of either language to be
able to write dialogue. That’s how the different professions of a screen-
play writer and a dialogue writer became defined.
(Kabir 2006: 51–81)
This need for a grasp of the language for dialogue-writing enabled many writ-
ers of Hindi and Urdu literature to join the industry. As the Encyclopedia of
Indian Cinema tells us, ‘The PWA’s (Progressive Writer’s Association) influence
on film was both formal, signifying a populist vanguardism for the commer-
cial industry and economic. Giving virtually all the progressive Hindi–Urdu
writers employment as scenarists and lyricists in Bombay’ (Rajyadhyaksha
and Willemen 1999: 180).
For instance, writers like Ismat Chughtai, Kaifi Azmi, Rajinder Bedi, KA
Abbas, Javed Siddiqui, Sagar Sarhadi had successful backgrounds as poets,
journalists in Hindi and Urdu dailies or as writers of fiction, before they
entered the world of cinema. As their primary association was with ‘the lan-
guage of words’ they approached cinema with a particular linguistic style:
[…] Guru Dutt was a modern filmmaker, but he was working at a time
when there were still many old Urdu writers who had come from the
stage. Naturally Guru Dutt had to work with those writers in the begin-
ning. […] Those writers had no visual sense; they might have been
strong on characterization and dialogues, but they certainly did not
grasp the cinematic medium as Guru Dutt sensed it.9
(Kabir 2003: 45)
Due to this separate literary practice of dialogue-writing, screenwriting began
to be associated with ‘literary writing’, although clearly less ‘literary’ and more
popular in its nature.
LIGHTS, CAMERA, DIALOGUE! – A DIALOGIC SCREENPLAY
Dialogue has an overbearing presence in Indian film practice; a casual search
of the Internet will provide countless blog posts and websites that historically
trace and remember good dialogue from Hindi cinema. HMV, the popular
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Anubha Yadav
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record company, had put together the dialogue from the blockbuster film
Sholay/Flames (1975) in audio cassette form. Sholay’s dialogue tape sold a
record 500, 000 copies after the film’s first release.
Hindi film dialogue is part of the complex fabric of Indian popular culture.
It is used in everyday conversations, advertisements, on stationery, on t-shirts,
in theatre and in other aesthetic practices in urban cultures. For example, the
dialogue, ‘Basanti, in kutton ke saamne mat naachna’ (Basanti, do not dance for
these dogs) from the film Sholay/Flames (1975) is often recited by friends when
someone has been asked to do something undesirable by his or her boss. But
the one with the cult status is ‘[…] Mere paas ma hai’ (I don’t have the riches
of the world but I still have my mother). This dialogue from the film Deewaar/
The Wall (1975) is used variously. It is used as a kitsch-style statement on
tea coasters, pillows and cups; it is also used in advertising campaigns to sell
products like the DTH (a satellite television service) and AR Rehman made it
globally relevant by using it to thank his mother in his Oscar speech for Slumdog
Millionaire (2008).
Recently, writer Nasreen Munni Kabir compiled the dialogue of Raj Kapoor’s
Awaara/Vagabond (1951), Mehboob Khan’s Mother India (1957) and K. Asif’s
Mughal-e-Azam/The Greatest of the Mughals (1960) in both Urdu and Roman
Hindi. The importance of dialogue for Indian audiences is suggested by the fact
that these compilations are commonly found in bookshops.
The significance of this practice of dialogue-writing in Hindi film can be
further ascertained from the popular phrase ‘Dialogue-baazi’ – baazi, an Urdu
word literally meaning ‘to put something at stake’; thus, dialogue-baazi can
be interpreted as a war of words. These quick, witty, poetic or dramatic retorts
can raise a character actor to the status of a ‘star’. Dialogue-baazi’s intention
is word jugglery, which works as a punch line to the dialogue. The punchline
could become the line that functions to elaborate the aura of a character or
could add a rhetorical climax to a scene.
Harish Trivedi notes in his insightful essay on language in Hindi cinema:
[…] the dialogue too of Hindi films, especially from the so called ‘Golden
Period’ […] were so stylized and rhetorically stiff as to give the English
word ‘dialogue’, a peculiar and specialized meaning in Hindi language,
as in the popular phrase: ‘Kya ‘dialogue’ maar rahe ho?’(Why are you
spouting ‘dialogue’?) […] Though naturally to a lesser extent and only
selectively, dialogues of Hindi films could prove as memorable and
repeatable like the songs.
(Trivedi 2006: 63)
THE EVOLUTION OF THE DIALOGIC SCRIPT
Indian films are the only ones where story, screenwriter, dialogue writer and at
times dialogue director go as separate credits. The Hindi script is traditionally
written in two steps: first where scenes are written with the song situations
marked clearly and second when a dialogue writer is hired to write the dia-
logue. Even today there are writers who sit on the film set and do the dialogue
scenes. It is difficult to trace a definite pattern as the collaboration between
the dialogue writer and screenwriter varies; at times the screenwriter is part
of the team that writes the dialogue and the dialogue writer/s are frequently
different from the screenwriter/s. Most often the choice of a dialogue writer
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10. Observation- Interviews
of screenwriting
students at FTII (Pune),
India.
11. Both screenplays
can be read at http://
passionforcinema.
com/the-script-of-
manorama-six-feet-
under/. Accessed
18 March 2010.
12. Anwar Abbas (2002),
‘Author: Khwaja Ahmad
Abbas (1914–1987):
Communicator of
repute’, http://www.
dawn.com/weekly/
books/archive/021013/
books6.htm. Accessed
5 May 2010.
The term ‘Film
wallah’ (film person)
is used pejoratively
in India for film
professionals. In this
context it also implies
that film writing is an
inferior kind of literary
writing.
13. For detailed discussion,
see Anna (2007).
14. A playback singer is a
singer whose singing
is prerecorded for
use in films. Playback
singers record songs
for soundtracks, and
actors or actresses
lip-sync the songs for
the camera, while the
actual singer does not
appear on screen. This
is a usual feature when
a non-singing actor or
actress plays a singing
role in a film.
15. For more on the
evolution of languages
in Hindi popular
cinema, see Trivedi
(2006).
is governed by personal rapport and the type of linguistic richness the script
demands. One person writing the whole script is rare in the industry.
Today this industrial practice is also becoming an academic practice. At the
National Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) students add dialogue
when the screenplay is complete or even at times when the screenplay is
commissioned for production. A screenplay with dialogue is often referred to
as the complete ‘script’ instead of the popular term screenplay.10
As many screenwriters write screenplays in English today the practice
of a separate dialogue writer is finding another reason to sustain itself. The
English dialogue is later translated and rewritten in Roman Hindi with
the addition of certain linguistic inflictions.11
The most coveted Indian film
award, the Filmfare Award, has a separate category for story, screenplay,
dialogues and lyrics, even today.
These special practices as to the writing of Hindi popular script created a
division of the creative and industrial identity of the screenwriter. And owing
to this, the director became the only person who had the legitimacy to exploit
and innovate the visual formal grammar of ‘film’ as a medium. The status of
the screenwriter is best described by KA Abbas (journalist, writer, film director
and screenwriter of films directed by Raj Kapoor):
The novelists look down upon me as a short-story writer, while the
short-story writers condemn me as nothing more than a scribe, while
all of them together would contemptuously say that I am nothing more
than a film-wallah.12
(Abbas 2002)
THE IMPACT OF SONGS ON THE POPULAR HINDI SCREENPLAY
With the coming of radio and television, Hindi film songs became a very pop-
ular form of entertainment, and thus they evolved as popular tools to market
and pre-market a film. By 1960, songs started releasing two months before a
film was released. The coming of the cassette in 1970 further gave an inde-
pendent commercial identity to Hindi film songs. Today, a film’s songs are
released three months before the film’s release date.13
The importance of the Hindi film song industry meant that playback sing-
ers, music directors and lyric writers were of considerable importance (in that
order) in the hierarchy of film production.14
Stalwarts from Urdu poetry found
employment as lyric writers in Hindi cinema. Even today lyric-writing is strongly
influenced by the Urdu poetry tradition. The tradition has lent poetic forms like
the ghazal to Hindi cinema. In addition, popular film lyrics use imagery and
vocabulary of romance from Urdu poetry. As Madhav Prasad has observed:
The songs adopt a literary style which has a predilection for certain
recurrent motifs: the mehfil, shama, parwana, chaman, bahar and so on
(i.e private gathering, candle, moth, garden, spring).This repertoire of
images is drawn from the frozen diction of romantic Urdu Poetry.15
(Trivedi 2006: 63)
Most lyrics capture different moods and emotions around the theme of love with-
out playing a major role in forwarding the narrative. The lyricists rarely indulged
in any other form of film writing, although some like Kaifi Azmi, Javed Akhtar
and Gulzar did write screenplays, but they are primarily known as lyricists.
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16. Most lyricists and
music composers
have pre-written/
composed bank of
songs for producers
and directors.
17. SD Burman (music
director) plays
a pre-composed
tune; Guru Dutt, the
director, instructs
Kaifi (lyricist) to write
a song on the tune.
Note that Guru Dutt
was highly sensitive
to a song’s function
in his narrative. Most
of his songs took the
narrative forward.
By the 1940s, director, music director and lyricist teams became famous
for the kind of melodies they produced together. These teams established
themselves as Hindi film music brands, for instance Raj Kapoor (director)
famously worked with Hasrat Jaipuri (lyricist) and Shanker Jaikishan (music
director); Guru Dutt worked with Sahir Ludhianvi (lyricist) and Naushad
(musician); Bimal Roy worked with Salil Choudhury and S.D. Burman (music
directors) and Shailendra (lyricist).
Different directors of Hindi cinema developed their own distinct song gen-
res and styles. The popularity of film songs and their commercial viability soon
made them independent of the film. One can understand and experience these
melodies outside the film owing to the universal themes expressed. For exam-
ple, in the romantic genre, typical song situations present are a bachelor boy
seeking love from his destiny; a single beautiful girl delicately placing her need
to find her dream boy; a boy and girl as they meet for the first time; and, as
they confess their love for each other, a song of loneliness, separation or failing
romance. The introduction of songs in a Hindi script may be done in various
ways. Traditionally, a producer may be approached with a concept by a direc-
tor or a screenwriter or an established actor. If the producer agrees to finance
the film then the director, after discussion with the producer (or vice versa),
hires a screenwriter. Song production or lyric-writing and music composition
often happen as a screenplay is still being written or is in its final stages. The
screenwriter and director decide the points where there could be songs in the
screenplay. These situations are then sent to the lyric writer and music direc-
tor. Often a pre-written song if liked by the director is kept in the film inde-
pendently of the narrative and what the screenwriter requests or writes.16
Kaifi
Azmi, the noted poet and lyricist of the 1950s, boasts of his impromptu poetic
rendition for Guru Dutt’s Kagaaz Ke Phool/Paper Flowers (1959):
SD Burman played him a tune that everyone liked. But there was no
situation in the film for the tune. Guru Dutt said, ‘We must create
a situation.’ So I started writing […] I wrote – Waqt Ne Kiya Kya
Haseen Sitam … (What a beautiful torture time has done) … Guru Dutt
liked it’.
(Kabir 2003: 99)17
Also, if a music form like Qawwali (Sufi devotional music popular in South
Asia) is doing well commercially then a producer or director can ask a screen-
writer to construct a situation in the narrative for the musical form, independ-
ently of the nature of the story.
Commercial viability and the penetration of songs in popular culture made
the ‘singing film’ omniscient and displaced the focus on entertaining and
creative authorship considerably from storytelling towards film songs. Many
lyricists and music directors have made it to film posters and other publicity
material, a distinction accorded to only two screenwriters: Pandit Mukha Ram
Sharma and Salim–Javed.
THE GOLDEN PHASE: DIRECTOR–WRITER PARTNERSHIPS
Known as the Golden phase of Indian cinema, the 1950s saw the coming of
auteurs like Raj Kapoor (Awaara/Vagabond, 1951), Guru Dutt (Pyaasa/Thirst,
1957 and Kaagaz Ke Phool/Paper Flowers, 1959), Bimal Roy (Do Bigha Zamin/
Two Acres of Land 1953) and Mehboob Khan (Mother India, 1957). The Golden
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18. Guru Dutt directed
eight films. His style is
best seen in four films–
Aar-Paar/This Way or
that Way (1954), Mr. &
Mrs. ‘55 (1955), Pyaasa/
Thirst (1957) and Kagaaz
Ke Phool/Paper Flowers
(three of these have
dialogues by Abrar
Alvi). Alvi also wrote
the whole screenplay
and dialogues of the
fourth film, i.e Kaagaz
ke Phool. In those
days most writers
were present on
the sets. ‘Abrar Alvi
without doubt was
the filmmaker’s friend
and perhaps one of his
closest confidantes
within those last 10
years, which were the
most meaningful for
both the mentor and
his protégée’ (Saran
2008).
phase witnessed some memorable director–writer partnerships. Wajahat
Mirza and S. Ali Raza wrote Mother India, easily the most noteworthy work
of Mehboob Khan. Before Mother India, S. Ali Raza partnered with Mehboob
Khan to give blockbusters like Aan/Pride (1952) and Andaz/Style (1949). Also,
Wajahat Mirza penned the dialogues of numerous Mehboob Khan films; a
notable few are Bahen/Sister (1941), Aurat/Woman (1940) and Ek Hi Raasta/
Only One Way (1939). Similarly, Bimal Roy and Nabendu Ghosh together
worked on socially relevant themes that were commercial successes. They col-
laborated on classics like Sujata/Good Lineage (1959), Bandini/Imprisoned (1963)
Yahudi/The Jew (1958) and Devdas (1955). Abrar Alvi scripted much of the
most acclaimed work of Guru Dutt. He worked on Aar-Paar/This Way or That
Way (1954), Kaagaz Ke Phool/Paper Flowers (1959), Pyaasa/Thirst (1957) and
Mr. & Mrs. ‘55 (1955).
Similarly, K.A. Abbas went on to write scripts for most of the prominent
Raj Kapoor films, including Awaara/Vagabond (1951), Shri 420/Mr. 420 (1955),
Mera Naam Joker/My Name is Joker (1970), Bobby (1973) and Henna (1991).
But in spite of the significant contribution of these screenwriters, the era
did not play any role in affixing significance for the screenwriter or the screen-
play. Mother India, India’s first entry for the Academy Awards, had a credit for
story and dialogue only, and not for screenplay.
This failure to assert the role of the screenwriter in this era’s cinema could
be due to two key elements: first, Hindi popular cinema’s critical loss of gene-
alogy for the screenwriter where there has been a disjunction between literary
writing and film writing shared with song writing and dialogue writing; and
second, the emergence of independent directors and producers post 1950 after
the collapse of the studios. (All the directors mentioned above were mostly
producing and directing their films under their own banners). Thus, this
industrial combination of producer–director lent a far greater chance for them
to become the only ‘representatives’ of their films. An example that explains
the problem of screenwriter–director relationship, and its complex working,
can be found in the film Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam/The Master, the Wife and the
Slave (1962). The film was written and directed by Abrar Alvi, the screenwriter
of almost all Guru Dutt’s films. Guru Dutt produced and acted in the film. But
even today the film is surrounded by controversy over who actually directed
it; was it Abrar Alvi, the screenwriter for Guru Dutt, or Guru Dutt? The film
has a characteristic Guru Dutt style, and thus it is difficult to imagine that he
had no role in its authorship. But for academics studying screenwriting this
controversy is symbolic of more; Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam’s typical Guru Dutt
style should make us wonder as to the role of Abrar Alvi in Guru Dutt’s ‘said’
cinematic voice.18
Thus, one can argue that the 1950s sealed the notion that
cinematic form belonged to the director only.
By the 1960s, India had replaced Hong Kong as the largest producer
of films in the world. At the same time a new cinematic approach towards
Hindi films arose that chose to reinvent and experiment with traditional
narrative structure and themes. It denounced the episodic structure, the
song as an essential element of the narrative, and the star system. They
chose real themes right out of the Indian social milieu. These 1960s
‘New Wave’ film-makers, such as Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen and Basu
Bhattacharya, rejoiced in a thorough rejection of the conventional, popular
filmic codes. The films of the New Wave had strong individualistic storylines
and developed detailed screenplays. The significance of the screenplay in
parallel cinema (a term they were given due to their marginal box office
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19. See Raghavendra (2006). success as against popular cinema) – was due to three factors: first, most
film-makers in parallel cinema were seeking new storytelling practices and
thus devising a storytelling method for cinema seen as important; second,
these film-makers inherited the New Wave from Satyajit Ray, who was
known for his detailed scripts and storyboarding methods; third, most of
the parallel cinema struggled for funding and was primarily funded by the
regional state governments or national film production funds. Government
funding agencies needed a detailed screenplay before the film was accepted
for production. Thus, competition for funds made well-worked-out scripts
a necessity.
But this cinema found very little commercial success and thus came to be
looked upon as ‘art cinema’, which unfortunately meant that it was not suc-
cessful with the public or at the box office. This, in turn, also meant that these
high standards of screenwriting became exclusive to ‘art cinema’.
THE SCREENWRITER AND THE SALIM–JAVED ERA
It was in the 1970s that popular Hindi screenwriting saw its only Golden era
with the success of the writer duo Javed Akhtar and Salim Khan, also known
by their screen name Salim–Javed. Even today they are the sole representatives
of the possibility of ‘more’for the screenwriter. The duo made the screenwrit-
er’s role become so recognized that their names were used as brands on pub-
licity posters. Salim–Javed were a unique and isolated phenomenon in Indian
screenwriting history. Salim–Javed used the traditional norms of the Indian
Hindi filmic experience but still led a paradigm shift in the way screenwriting
was ‘looked at’ by the industry. Akhtar himself states,‘The requirement of an
Indian film writer is peculiar. He is supposed to write a totally original script
that has come before’. (Kabir 2006: 34). Interestingly that is exactly what the
duo mastered.
The Salim–Javed scripts led to the creation of the action melodrama genre.
The action melodrama consists of a generous mix of morality, romance, com-
edy and songs and still has a strong story element. If one studies Sholay/
Flames (1975), one of the biggest successes penned in Indian film history,
Salim–Javed negotiate gently from within the Mumbai cinema’s epic narrative
traditions and situate the film in ‘real’ spaces with seemingly ‘real’ characters.
This action melodrama borrows narrative references from classic Hollywood
Westerns like Leone’s classic Once Upon a Time in the West and Death Rides a
Horse and indigenizes them to meet Hindi film form. Although Leone’s film
is constructed around The Great Railroad to the West, but in keeping with the
requirements of Hindi Cinema Sholay/Flames (1975) abandons all claims to
historicity and sets itself in an unknown village – ‘Ramgarh’.19
Salim–Javed
also move away from theatrical dialogue but their films slip in and out of the
theatrical mode. Javed Akhtar explains, ‘I was much influenced by the Modern
American novel especially for the precision in one liners they provided and
thus in my screenplays unlike erstwhile Indian dialogues I wanted to make
understatement an art’. (Kabir 2006, 8: 41–2)
In the screenplays of Salim–Javed one notices two trends: first, they
almost always write complete screenplays; very rarely have they just con-
tributed dialogue or a story, which meant that their space in film production
design was of much consequence even before the film was celluloidal; second,
Salim–Javed did work with directors of acclaim, but, unlike the 1950s writ-
ers, they never became a ‘one director’ screenwriter. For example, they wrote
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20. Discussion with Mr
Raghunath, faculty
(FTII) Pune, India.
21. Discussions with
students and faculty,
FTII Pune, India.
22. Student Interviews, FTII
Pune, (Batch-
2010–2011).
23. Discussion with Mr
Raghunath, faculty,
Department of
Screenwriting, FTII,
Pune, India.
blockbusters like Trishul/Trident (1978) and Deewaar/The Wall (1975) for Yash
Chopra, Zanjeer/Chain (1973) for Prakash Mehra, and Sholay/Flames (1975),
Shakti/Power (1982) and Shaan/Pride (1980) for Ramesh Sippy, as well as vari-
ous other commercial successes for other producers.
SCREENWRITING BECOMES A DISCIPLINE
The two government institutes teaching film-making, the premiere FTII in
Pune and the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRIFT), have until
recently neglected screenwriting. SRIFT (Kolkata), started in 1995, teaches
screenwriting as a capsule in direction, reinforcing the model of director as the
only possible author of the filmic text. Even today, after more than a decade of
SRIFT’s existence, there is no dedicated faculty for teaching screenwriting in
the direction programme.
In 2004, after almost a century of existence of screenwriting as an industrial
practice, FTII decided to teach screenwriting as a separate academic discipline.
This one-year diploma course provides twelve trained screenwriters who in turn
bring their creative enterprise and formal knowledge to the industry. The Institute
calls its training approach a ‘six-pronged approach’, involving constant learning
through regular writing, theory lectures, weekly workshops on students’ writ-
ings, weekly film screenings, analysis and discussions, reading of the classics and
their interpretation, and visits by professionals from the film industry itself.20
The
approach is different from that of the typical American film school (with its clear
emphasis on the Hollywood mainstream script) or the East European style of film
training (which leans towards alternative cinema). The Institute amalgamates the
strengths of both these models into the curriculum and training approach, the
primary emphasis of which is on the popular narrative form of Indian cinema.21
In the course of my interviews, many screenwriting students explained how
the course enabled them to fully understand the three-act structure, especially the
problem of expanding the second act. Some others also mentioned that the train-
ing helped their understanding of the idea of exposition through action instead of
words.22
The course has enrolled about 70 postgraduates in six years. During the
one year of training, students are supposed to develop one feature-length script
(with dialogue), one treatment (fifteen to twenty pages, without dialogue) and
five developed stories (four page treatments). FTII also publishes a brochure of
these scripts and treatments for circulation in the industry every year. The Institute
invites key corporate players and producers to pick up talent. Also noticeable is
a newfound awareness and curiosity concerning the theory of dramatic writing
practices. Syd Field’s publications like The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver: How To
Recognize, Identify, and Define Screenwriting Problems (1998) and other similar man-
uals on screenwriting can be found in bookstores in India today.
Another example of the professional approach to screenwriting can also
be seen in the way these trained writers engage with the physical process
of writing. Hindi scripts are written in Roman Hindi today, on computer
software such as ‘Final Draft’, making the process more streamlined and
organized for submission, feedback, sharing on common platforms for dis-
cussion and academic research. The students of FTII until last year were
trained on Movie Magic screenwriting software. This year the Institute
plans to use Celtx, a free downloadable screenwriting software.23
Also,
because of the initiative of the screenwriting faculty at FTII (Pune) and
some industry veterans, a number of teaching workshops and short-term
courses are being conducted in various parts of India. Familiar Hollywood
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24. Read Kashyap,
‘New Wave is
Coming- Manorama
Six Feet Under &
Bheja Fry’ – http://
passionforcinema.
com/the-new-wave-is-
comingbheja-fry-and-
manorama-six-feet-
under/. Accessed
20 March 2010.
screenwriting gurus such as Syd Field have toured India. The respected
London-based Script Factory did a workshop in 2007, and Vancouver-based
Praxis Centre for Screenwriters has organized short courses at the Xavier
Institute of Communication and SRIFT. Many Indian writers/directors are
also putting together their own workshops. Anjum Rajabali, Head of the
Screenwriting Programme at FTII & Whistling Woods (Private Film Institute)
conducted short programmes in 2007 and 2008 at the Goa Film Festival.
In 2009, a new five-day screenwriting course was sponsored by the Indian
Institute of Technology, Chennai. Major writers and directors like Shekhar
Kapur, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Rituparno Ghosh, Anjum Rajabali and
Jean-Claude Carriere were facilitators at this course. This Chennai-based
course received about 1400 applications for 250 seats.
Moving a step further in August 2006, FTII organized the first-ever ‘All
Indian Screenwriters Conference’ on its campus and this was followed by the
Second Screenwriting Conference in December 2008. The conferences led to
many changes and the decaying and stagnating Film Writer’s Association (FWA,
Mumbai), a body that was founded to protect the rights of film and television
writers, was re-galvanized. Recently, at the Second National Screenwriter’s
Conference (2008), the Executive Committee of the Association announced its
model contract, which includes essential clauses on minimum payment by slabs,
credit and copyright protection, and royalties for the writer. The active position-
ing of this trade organization is tangibly changing the future of the creative proc-
esses of screenwriting professionals. At the Second Screenwriting Conference,
issues like the registration of scripts, a website for scriptwriters and possibly a
library that could give access to screenplays of Hindi movies were also raised and
discussed. There are currently deliberations within the film industry and with
the Government of India in order to include film writers in the purview of the
Copyright Act, 1957. At present, the Copyright Act of India (1957) considers the
cinematographic film as an indivisible product. The final film is the only product
created and its copyright belongs to the producer. The director, lyricist, dialogue
writer, screenwriter and music director have no authorship rights, as their work
is defined as underlying work. This, on one hand, leads to significant monetary
losses for them, and on the other it also raises questions on ‘authorship’ as to a
cinematic product. If an amendment comes in place and the film-writers come
into the purview of the Copyright Act (1957), then the screenplay will be consid-
ered for or treated as a product, separate and distinct from the final film. Thus, it
will certainly enable a more professional creative identity for the screenwriter.
Another change was enabled in September 2006: the website Passion for
Cinema (PFC) was launched and it now plays a significant role in the indie
film movement. It has brought together various young directors and screen-
writers who are seeking a new popular cinema with a defined role for the
screenplay. Kashyap writes on his blog on PFC:
[…] ‘Manorama Six Feet Under’ (2007) is India’s first truly original
noir […] it reminds me of Tavernier’s ‘Coup de Torchon’/Clean Slate
(1981) […] it reminds me of Jim Thomson and the way he looked at
America […] the New Wave is definitely coming and there is hope … we
will bloody rock … and naysayers be damned […].24
(Kashyap 2009/Blog- ‘My Diary’)
In 1998, film-making was recognized by the government as a legitimate
industry; in 2000 the Industrial Development Bank of India Act was amended
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25. Kashyap (2010).
to allow banks to lend money to producers. In addition, a new capital base,
the adoption of management techniques and Hollywood production styles are
playing a part in this transformation. Corporate ownership in the production
and distribution of films has made two pertinent differences: there is now
more accountability regarding cinematic enterprise and this has led to the
creation of a new business model. This business model works with low
production costs, completely finished screenplays (although in Hindi popular
cinema some directors also work with frameworks or partially completed
screenplays), minimal star presence, limited release, a medium target audience,
a specific marketing plan and reduced distribution costs.
This corporatization can also be seen in the exhibition end of the food chain.
Started in 1997, with the first multiplex in Delhi, smaller multiplexes are allow-
ing a certain product differentiation for the producer and distributor. The exhi-
bition model, which targets smaller urban audiences, has influenced the Hindi
script in two ways: first, after nearly a century, Hindi films have moved away
from their historically practiced 3-hour duration. This flexibility gives freedom
to the screenwriter to move out of the long-maintained traditions of Hindi cin-
ema; for example, now a film that has no songs and thus a shorter duration of
2 hours can be exhibited; second, a low-budget offbeat film can be exhibited in
urban theatres with 43 release prints only, as against 600-print mega releases
exhibited all over India. This limited release exhibition model allows a much
wider variety of scripts to go into production. Thus, Hindi scripts that had no
commercial value even a decade before are commercially viable today.
A SCREENWRITER IS IN BUSINESS – THE NEW ‘NEW’ WAVE
The last decade has seen events that have led to a tectonic shift in the industrial
and creative assertions of the commercial Hindi script. Hindi popular cinema is
in a self-reflective mode today, questioning its century-old inflexibility. To say the
least, the screenwriter is back in creative business. I choose to call this phenom-
enon in Hindi cinema The New ‘New’ Wave; perhaps retrospectively film-makers
and film theorists in India have begun to recognize this changing paradigm.
THE NEW ‘NEW’ WAVE AND EMERGING GENRES
From this complex, interconnected, multifaceted and fast-changing field,
one can observe a few genre trends as instances of an ideological shift that
in turn are privileging the role of the screenwriter. The New ‘New’ Wave
scripts balance Indian dramaturgy with classic Hollywood narrative logic.
The Hindi screenplay today is a site where two story traditions (Hollywood
and Bollywood) with their unique narrative semantic content and syntactical
structures are fused together, and the latter consciously and aggressively bor-
rows to produce a new genre and iconography. Film-maker Kashyap writes:
[…] Now is the time, we all have been waiting for – patronize it. From
13B (2009), to Little Zizou (to Gulaal/Colour (2009) to Firaaq/Implying
Quest (2009). All the Indie low budget movies are here, the kind we
want to make or watch and no one is going to the Theatres […]. Ignore
the reviews, make your opinions, love it, hate it, discuss it later but first
go and watch it. If none of these films work, then prepare yourself to go
back to the cinema we have tried so hard to leave behind […].25
(Kashyap 2009/Blog- ‘My Diary’)
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26. Birajdar (2009). Although the indie movies are not emblematic of the current transition, they
do constitute a new representational space that at moments overcomes the
dominant form. These genres were in existence before, but the nature of their
existence, the consistency and their market compatibility are of much greater
significance today. This ‘genre’ innovation can be traced variously across gen-
res and phenomena like the ‘Gangster’ film (Mumbai Noir), the ‘Suspense’
thriller, the Popular ‘Sequel’ and the expansive term ‘Middle Cinema’. Middle-
class cinema of the 1960s and 1970s was different from mainstream popular
cinema. These films had a realist tendency and followed a linear causal narra-
tive unlike commercial cinema.
The New ‘New’ Wave gangster films often revolve around crime in
Mumbai and visualize the rich tapestry of the hidden underworld. What
began in the late 1990s soon established itself as a stable filmic genre. Films
such as Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin/A Night with No Morning (1996), Shootout
at Lokhandwala (2007), Ab Tak Chhapan/56 So Far (2004), Sarkar/The Master
(2005) and Vishal Bharadwaj’s Maqbool/Adaptation of Macbeth (2003) are a
few that have garnered audience attention and critical acclaim in the last
decade. The first film in this genre that broke all box office records was Ram
Gopal Verma’s Satya/Truth (1998). Satya was a blend of Indian art cinema
and commercial cinema – with no star cast but the song and dance numbers
intact.
Over the last decade there has also been a marked increase in the
production of the ‘Suspense’ thriller. Suspense thrillers like Johnny Gaddaar/
Johnny – the Betrayer (2007) and Manorama Six Feet Under (2007) are gritty, fast-
paced morally ambivalent tales. Many such thrillers have found an audience
at multiplexes – Samay: When Time Strikes/Time (2003), Ek Hasina Thi/There
was a Beautiful Woman (2004) and Anthony Kaun Hai?/ Who is Anthony?
(2006) are some of the interesting examples of this re-emerging genre. Many
of these films are strongly influenced by the Film Noir movement in their
formal style and narrative choices. As Ranjani Majumdar explains:
The genre of noir is being dealt with by this new breed of filmmakers. It
tells stories and crises of the contemporary times. Examples like Kashyap’s
Dev D (2009)’, Adjania’s Being Cyrus (2005)’ and Pandey’s A Wednesday
(2008) explain this reality way too stylistically. They have watched world
cinema and are well-versed with the craft of filmmaking.26
(Birajdar 2009, Times News Network)
The journey of Middle Cinema is a journey of return: The new Middle Class
cinema chooses the same erstwhile formal and narrative devices such as real-
life-like characters, linear causal narrative, no song and dance spectacles or
melodrama and a collection of theatre actors. Some successful instances are
Khosla Ka Ghosla!/House of Mr Khosla! (2006), Dor/Thread (2006), Bheja Fry/
Scrambled Brain (2007), Oye LuckyLucky Oye!/Hello Lucky! (2008).
Another phenomenon that is symptomatic of the changes in contempo-
rary cinema is the emergence of the ‘Sequel’ in Mumbai cinema. Mishra points
out, ‘Mumbai films are moments of a grand narrative; each individual movie
is a play or a discursive practice which makes up the other unseen movie as
one massive unit’ (Mishra 2002: 158–9). He claims that the whole popular
‘Mumbai’ cinema is a grand syntagmatique that functions as one heterogene-
ous text under the sign of one transcendental dharmic principle. He says that
it is for this reason that the form is so patently ‘synchronic’ in the sense that
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27. Tendulkar et al. (2003).
anyone familiar with the syntagme can enter into this cinema at any point and
pick up its narrative.
The new sequel can thus be studied as a conscious separation from the
tradition of grand ‘syntagme’ found in the Hindi film narrative.
The most dominant forms in Hindi popular cinema are the romance and
family drama, with little variation in storyline and narrative form. One can
notice that most of the films that are sequelled are outside these two genres.
Thus, this sequel ‘ing’ allows genres like comedy, thriller and sci-fi to find a
presence in mainstream popular Hindi cinema. A multitudinal and specific
‘story brand’ is beginning to emerge.
CONCLUSION – HAS THE HINDI SCRIPT ARRIVED?
‘Has the Indian Script Arrived?’ This was the title of the last Indian Screenwriting
Conference held in Mumbai. The conference started with a tribute to the criti-
cally acclaimed writer/screenwriter Vijay Tendulkar, the author of the essay
titled ‘Writing Screenplays for Indian Cinema’. Vijay Tendulkar comments on
screenwriting in Hindi cinema:
A writer who wants to become a film scriptwriter must have the skill of
putting together the most absurd ideas into a proper story, with all or
most ingredients to make a jubilee film […] He need not be original, log-
ical, or literary […]. Respect for a film can affect him enough to not want
to lift bits and twist them to suit the film he is writing the story for.27
(Tendulkar 2003: 322)
Tendulkar states the difficulties of being a screenwriter of films in popular Hindi
cinema in this remarkably caustic essay. Tendulkar’s piece aptly describes the
inert status of the screenwriter in the Indian film industry. The essay is a part
of the Encyclopedia of Hindi Cinema and was written as a warning to young
people who wish to become screenwriters in Hindi cinema.
Perhaps it is time to say that Tendulkar’s dark prophesy for young screen-
writers is not so relevant now in Hindi cinema. The emerging genres of sus-
pense thriller, gangster films and the Indian sequel signal the development of
a new popular film aesthetic. Today the screenplay and the screenwriter are
emerging as a necessary and important part of Hindi cinema. Also, the teach-
ing of screenwriting in film schools today encourages the development of the
subject as a discipline of both academic study and industrial practice. Perhaps
the academic positioning of screenwriting will lead to its development as a
research area in the near future. Apart from the urgent need to research the
various screenwriting practices in Indian cinema, it is equally essential to
retrieve, revisit and archive old scripts. This could also create a separate theory
of Indian screenwriting methods as practiced for this unique national cinema.
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Navdeep Singh, India, 136 mins.
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SUGGESTED CITATION
Yadav, A. (2010), ‘An evolving present within a past – a history of screenwriting
practices in popular Hindi cinema’, Journal of Screenwriting 2: 1, pp. 41–59,
doi: 10.1386/josc.2.1.41_1
CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Anubha Yadav is an academic at the University of Delhi. She is also a writer
and film-maker based in Delhi. Her credits as writer include newspaper fea-
tures and short stories. She has worked as a television broadcaster for 5 years
and has made award-winning television documentaries. Her other areas of
interest include gender and film, popular Hindi cinema and media and privacy.
She is currently researching and compiling a book on women screenwriters
and directors of Hindi cinema. She is also working on her first screenplay.
Contact: Department of Journalism, Kamala Nehru College, University of
Delhi, Delhi 110064 India.
E-mail: anubhay1@gmail.com
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