P Arun

Arun is an experimental physicist and teacher by profession, and a cinephile by passion. As the years passed, cinema didn’t just signify the dark auditorium, the fascinating colors or fantasies, but also encrypted a story of the society that it represented. Using his basic training to question and search for an underlining story to connect the dots, the author tries to understand the encryption Bollywood wittingly or unwittingly carries with its films. A well-published author in his field, Arun hopes this contribution would also be well received.

1 1818 sonnet by Englishman Percy Bysshe Shelley

2 Alice Albinia, “Empires of the Indus, The Story of a River”, John Murray (London, 2009)

3 S.Ramasubramanian and M.B.Oliver, Portrayals of Sexual Violence in Popular Hindi Films, 1997-99, Sex Roles 48 (2003), 327-336.

4 Ragvendra Singh, “India’s Lost Frontiers”, Rupa Publications (Delhi, 2019)

5 Ankur Barua, “Revisiting the Gandhi–Ambedkar Debates over Caste’: The Multiple Resonances of Varņa”, Journal of Human Values 25 (2019), 25-40.

6 Arundathi Roy, “The Doctor and the Saint: The Ambedkar–Gandhi Debate: Caste, Race, and Annihilation of Caste”, Penguin-India (2019). 

7 Robert Forst, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” (poem published in 1923)

8 Mahatma Gandhi, “India of my Dreams”, Navajivan Publishing House (Ahmedabad, India) 1947.

9 D.M.Fahey and P. Manian, “Poverty and Purification: The Politics of Gandhi’s campaign for Prohibition”, The Historian 67 (2005) 489-506.

10 Raja Sekhar Vundru, “Ambedkar, Gandhi and Patel: The Making of India’s Electoral System”, Bloomsbury (2017).

11 Alex Rutherford, “Empire of the Moghul” (London)

1. Raiders from the North (2009).

2. Brothers at War. (2010).

3. Ruler of the World. (2011).

4. The Tainted Throne. (2012).

5. The Serpent's Tooth. (2013).

6. Traitors in the Shadows. (2015).

12 Jaimani Bhagwati, “The Promise of India”, Penguin (Delhi, 2019)

13 Philip Masan, “The Men Who Ruled India”, Rupa (India) 1992.

14 R. D. Lambert, “Hindu-Muslim Riots”, (Oxford University Press, 2013)

15 Amrik Singh, “The Hindu-Muslim Divide”, (Vitasta Publishing, 2007)

16 B.N. Mullik, “Chinese Betrayal: My Years with Nehru”, Allied Pubirs (Bombay) 1971.

17 Kuldip Nayar, “Between the Lines”, Konark Publishers (Delhi) 1969.

18 Half an hour Doordarshan program telecast on Wednesday and Friday with 5-6 popular film songs.

19 Tilak Devasher, “Pakistan: At the Helm”, Harper-Collins (Indian, 2018).

20 Anuj Dhar, “Your Prime Minister is Dead”, Vitasta (Delhi, 2019)

21 Shantanu Gupta, “Bharatiya Janata Party: Past, Present and Future: Story of the World’s Largest Political Party”, Rupa Publications (India) 2020.

22 Statement made by the then Congress Party President, Deb Kant Barooah

23 Katherine Frank (2002). Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

24 Kuldeep Nayar, “Emergency Retold”, Konark Publishers (Delhi) 2013.

25 Kuldeep Nayar, “The Judgement: Inside Story of the Emergency in India”, Asia Book Corporation of America (1977)

26 C.H.Brown, “The forced sterilization Program under the Indian emergency: Results in one settlement”, Human Organization, 43 (1984) 49-54.

27 Ajoy Bose and John Dayal, “For Reasons of State: Delhi Under Emergency”, Penguin Books (Delhi, 2018)

28Jaimani Bhagwati, “The Promise of India”, Penguin (Delhi, 2019)

29 Amit Upadhaya, “Mumbai’s not Hollywood, which is why we barely have films on the Emergency”, The Print, 25 June 2018

30 V. Kurien, “I too had a Dream”, Roli Books Pvt Ltd (Delhi) 2005

31 B.A. Soholten, “India’s White Revolution”, Bloomsbury (2010)

32 Sriram Iyengar, “Dilip Dhawan, the quiet everyday Indian in the 1980s”, Cinestaan 15 Feb 2020 (Mumbai)

33 Iqbal Narain, “India in 1985, Triumph of Democracy”, Asian Survey, Vol. 26, A Survey of Asia in 1985: Part II, University of California Press (1986), pp. 253-269

34 Ashwini Bhatnagar, “The Lotus Years: Political Life in India in the Time of Rajiv Gandhi”, Hachette India (2019).

35 P.V. Narasimha Rao, “The Insider”, Penguin (India) 2000.

36 D.R. Kaarthikeyan, “The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination: The Investigation”, New Dawn Press (India) 2004.

37 Bernard Imhasly, “Goodbye to Gandhi? Travel in the New India”, Penguin Books (2007) India.

38 Vinay Sitapati, “Half - Lion: How P.V Narasimha Rao Transformed India”, (Penguin-India, 2016)

39 Sanjaya Baru, “1991: How P. V. Narasimha Rao Made History”, (Aleph. 2016)

40 Jairam Ramesh, “To the Brink and Back: India’s 1991 Story”, Rupa Publications (India) 2015.

41 Sanjaya Baru, “The Accidental Prime Minister”, Penguin-India (2015).

42 T.N. Seshan, “The Degeneration of India”, Viking (India) 1995.

43 Mamta Chaudhari, “Pitfalls of Young Love”, Part Ridge Publishing, India 2016.

44 Najeeb Jung, “Arjun Singh, the CM”, Indian Express 8th March 2011.

45 Lekshmy Rajeev, “Bringing back structural past of a religious monument”, The Hindu (November 09, 2019)

46 Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, “Freedom at Midnight”, HarperCollins (UK, 1975)

47 Narayani Basu, “VP Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India”, Simon & Schuster (India, 2020)

48 Tilak Devashar, “Pakistan: The Balochistan Conundrum”, Harper-Collins (India) 2019.

49 Icki Iqbal, “The Tebbit Test”, DDKM Publishing (UK) 2011.

50 Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, “Freedom at Midnight”, HarperCollins (UK, 1975)

51 Rizwan Ahmad, “My name is Khan… from the epiglottis: Changing linguistic norms in Bollywood songs”, South Asian Popular Culture, 16 (2018), 51-69

52 Shoma A Chatterji, “100 Years of Jump-Cuts and Fade-Outs: Tracking Change in Indian Cinema”, Rupa (New Delhi) 2014.

53 R.R. Bhattacharya and A. Arya, “Bimal Roy: The Man Who Spoke In Pictures” Penguin-India (2017)

54 Halala is the procedure which involves the divorced woman marrying someone else, consummating the marriage and then getting a divorce - after which she can remarry her first husband.

55 widows in India are made to wear white, renouncing color and hence any possibility of arousing passion (sic)

56 "Tryst with Destiny" speech was delivered by Jawaharlal Nehru, to the Indian Constituent Assembly on the eve of India's Independence, towards midnight on 14 August 1947.