Sutoris Intro PDF

Introduction
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
Visions of Development: Films Division of India

and the Imagination of Progress, 194875
Peter Sutoris
Print publication date: 2016

Print ISBN-13: 9780190608323
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2017
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190608323.001.0001
Introduction
Peter Sutoris
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190608323.003.0001
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter outlines the existing literature on development during the Nehruvian era
and its colonial origins, discusses the contribution of this book to understanding the
limitations of the project of development undertaken by the Indian state during this
period and sets out the novel methodology (analysis of government-sponsored film) that
illuminates the ideological underpinnings of these limitations. It also summarizes the
theories drawn on throughout the book, including Edward Saids concept of
Orientalism, David Luddens notion of the development regime, and Bill Phillips idea of
the expository mode of representation in documentary film. The introduction argues
that due to its very nature as a collaborative medium that brings multiple parties
together in the process of production, documentary film provides unique insights into
issues surrounding development that cannot be derived from other kinds of source
material.
Keywords: Jawaharlal Nehru, Development ideology, Edward Said, David Ludden, Bill Phillips, Orientalism,
Development regime
True democracy could not be worked by twenty men sitting at the centre.
Page 1 of 30
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Introduction
It had to be worked from below by the people of every village.
M. K. Gandhi1
Nagarjuna Sagar. So strong, a symbol of todays striving and a symphony of change

where moves the wheel of time giving birth to a new dharma, a way of life. This is what
Indian cinema-goers across the country heard in 1967 during screenings of a
government film on Nagarjuna Sagar, Indias largest dam.2 Those among them old
enough to remember watching movies during World War II might have recalled hearing
a similar line in The Conquest of the Dry Lands (1944),3 a film that contrasted the
waterless landscapes of the Punjab with the snowy heights of the Himalayas. The
narrator of this earlier documentary explained that the river was a magician that
could turn the snow into water, which would transform the barren fields of the Punjab
into fertile ground hospitable to prosperous human habitation. Dams and irrigation
systems were a necessary step in developing the irrigated fields, heavy crops,
electrification and the textile and timber mills showcased in the film. In 1967 and 1944
alike, dams meant development, and development meant total transformation.
Audience members who were attentive to the ending credits would have noticed that
the two films originated with two very different producers. The Conquest of the Dry
Lands was a product of Information Films India (IFI),4 a colonial-era production unit,
which many saw as part of (p.4) an effort to dragoon an unwilling nation to the war.5
IFI produced films and newsreels on multiple issues, including war propaganda,
industrial and agricultural development6 and Indias history and culture. Initially
focusing on Western audiences, the unit soon recalibrated its production to include
domestic audiences in India.7 Completed in 1946, shortly before IFIs dissolution, The
Conquest of the Dry Lands represents one of its late productions.8 Nagarjun Sagar, on
the other hand, was made by the Films Division of India, a filmmaking unit created in
1948 by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India, to promote
national unity and development. Established only months after India gained
independence on 15 August 1947, the FD made documentaries and newsreels9 on a
wide variety of subjects. This included films about various development efforts, family
planning and agriculture schemes, programmes designed to uplift marginalised groups
of people, and government construction of large dams, irrigation systems, railways and
ports, as well as explorations of Indias culture and history and biographical
documentaries that highlighted the lives of nationalist leaders. Expanding from 28
newsreels in 19489, to 132 documentaries and newsreels in five languages in 19567,
to 227 films dubbed in more than 15 languages made in 1973,10 FD grew at an
exponential rate. By the end of Indias second decade of independence, the unit had
become an integral component of the governments development machinery. Despite
the differences between IFI and the FD, the parallels ran deep: both organisations used
spoken commentary in lieu of giving voice to the development subjects; both
suppressed their directors creative freedom; and both saw themselves as instruments
that could unite India against a common enemyunderdevelopment.
Page 2 of 30
Introduction
Do these films, then, demonstrate that achieving independence made no difference to
ideas about development that prevailed among Indias ruling elites? Or that the states
development policies during the Nehruvian period were modelled on the British
colonial ideology of bringing progress and civilisation to the masses? Do they
illuminate the degree of inclusiveness found in the states development ideology during
this period? Analysis of Indian government films offers unique insights into these
debates, which are pivotal to the economic and social history of twentieth-century
India, and into questions related to the theory, practice and study of development and
filmmaking. To what extent did the post-independence Indian Documentary Film
Movement succeed in creating an alternative to the British colonising documentary of
the (p.5) 1940s? In what ways can film analysis illuminate the study of development?
Is creative freedom possible for filmmakers in a government-run production house?
And, finally, can documentary film be an effective tool for development?
The answers to these questions are more complicated than the above comparison of the
two films would suggest. On the one hand, colonial ideology had a strong influence on
the practices of the post-independence FD. However, these lingering tendencies co-
existed with contradictory forces that clashed with colonial influences. Even though the
diverse influences were present from the establishment of the organisation, they did
not have a transformative effect on lingering colonial traditions until the late 1960s.
During this later stage, a style that allowed those affected by development projects to
express their views replaced the omniscient perspective of the films commentaries.
As a result, a number of FD documentaries presented a much more nuanced,
ambiguous view of state-led development, which allowed viewers to reach their own
conclusions about the value of these projects. This was, however, a short-lived
phenomenon, as the production of such films had dwindled by the mid-1970s.
The Burning Sun,11 a 1973 documentary on slum clearance in Mumbai, is one example
of a departure from the conventions of colonial filmmaking. The film contrasted
politicians statements to interviews with slum-dwellers who were highly critical of the
implementation of Garibi Hatao, Indira Gandhis 1970s anti-poverty policies. In a
sequence of shots juxtaposing slum dwellings in the foreground with high-rises in the
background (Fig. 1), S. N. S. Sastry, the films director, inserted a voice-over of one
slum inhabitant who expressed his opinion on Garibi Hatao by reciting a poem:
Oh, lovers of the country, progress and happiness

Just your words are not going to satisfy a hungry man
Your words speak of progress, but your heart is corrupted
Oh country men, you cant swallow someones pain12
In this documentary, both the agency of the supposed beneficiaries of development

efforts and the directors subjective viewpoint became central to the films meaning.
The Burning Sun is not a lone example: the 1950s had already seen the first subtle
Page 3 of 30
Introduction
departures from the colonial pattern of filmmaking associated with IFI and the British
Documentary Film Movement. (p.6)
The coexistence of colonial influences

and these contradictory forces is a
manifestation of the interplay of
multiple agentsincluding politicians,
civil servants and filmmakerswho
shaped the content and form of each
individual film. The political elites
definitions of development,13 the
visions of modernity held by civil
servants involved in the production
process, and individual directors
notions of aesthetics and of the Figure 1: Sastrys visual metaphor for
purpose of film were among the Indias lopsided development in The
factors that intersected at the FD. Burning Sun
Despite their differences, each of these
factors was significantly coloured by
the experience of colonialism. This commonality explains the powerful forces
maintaining continuity within the FD, yet the differences between the groups, which
widened over time, created contradictory tendencies within the organisation and
subverted the persistence of colonial ideologies. The subversion was not complete,
however, and important continuities remained throughout the entire period covered in
this volume.
This book has three major goals. First, it examines the ideology that informed
government development efforts from 1948 to 1975 by analysing FD documentary films
made during those years.14 In so doing, it complicates the historiography of state
conceptions of development during (p.7) the Nehruvian period and illustrates that this
ideology consisted of both notions of development inherited from the colonial era and
forces that challenged these conceptions. Second, as the first book-length academic
study of the Indian Documentary Film Movement, it brings scholarly interest to the
previously under-researched field of Indian documentary film history. By analysing the
colonial origins and institutional practices of the FD, the relationship between the state
and the filmmaker, and the evolving interactions among documentary, animation and
experimental forms, the book articulates an exploratory framework for the study of
Indian documentary film history. Finally, it makes a case for incorporating film analysis
into the study of development and explores the benefits, as well as some of the
limitations, of such a methodology. The book hopes to spark scholarly interest in the
subject of the Indian Documentary Film Movement and in the method of inter-
disciplinary research that lies at the intersection of film studies and development
studies.
Page 4 of 30
Introduction
Fighting for Modernity: Nehru and the Development Documentary

Ideas about development that stemmed from the colonial period strongly affected
documentaries made by the FD. Sources point to several key continuities between the
colonial-era IFI and the FD. Similarities existed not only in the content and cinematic
form of documentaries, but also in the policies that regulated the production and
distribution of films. Some of the FDs key personnel had previously worked for IFI, and
in some cases had been trained by the British. It is thus not surprising that a large
number of the films invoked colonial-era notions of progress in depicting the Nehruvian
development vision.
Under Nehrus leadership, the government sought to promote development by

implementing a mixed economic model influenced by the Soviet Unions economic
planning policies, which allowed private enterprise to coexist with state-led
development efforts. The state cast itself as the primary mover in the process of
development, charged with controlling the production and distribution of resources.15
Indias ultimate goal for development was inspired by the experiences of Western
Europe and North America. According to Nehru, [t]he progress made by a country can
be judged by the electric power it has.16 The colonial aim of linear progress toward a
singular concept of industrial modernity remained at (p.8) the core of the Nehruvian
ideology for decades after Independence,17 shaping the Indian states development
policy well after Nehrus death.18 Large dams, power plants, steel factories, research
institutes and other symbols of independent India became identified with modernity
in the ruling elites imagination of the countrys futurean imagination the FD
documentaries attempted to spread across India.
These films are a case study of the cultural dimension of Nehruvian developmentalism.
According to Sumit Sarkar, this encompassed discourses of modernity, scientific
rationality and a high value set on a basically bureaucraticstatist thrust operating
uneasily alongside with democratic and populistsocialistic impulses.19 Although
material progress in the direction of a technocratic model of development was key to
this ideology,20 an effort to instil in audiences a shared national identity was equally
important. FD documentaries made the state, with all its contradictions, visible to
Indias citizens, turning the state-building effort into a spectacle and individual viewers
into stakeholders in the drama of development. Infused with a sense of national
adventure and excitement for building a new India, these films show that Nehruvian
developmentalism was as cultural as it was political.
Film analysis presented in this book shows that the Nehruvian vision was coloured by
what Edward Said called Orientalism. This term refers to the preconceived notions
and archetypes that are the foundation of Western knowledge about the East.
According to Said, in the system of knowledge about the Orient, the Orient is less a
place than a topos, a set of references, a congeries of characteristics, [] or some bit of
previous imagining, or an amalgam of all these.21 Said attacked the idea of the very
categories of Orient and Occident, and criticised the concept of Otheringthat is,
Page 5 of 30
Introduction
defining a cultural system by its otherness from another system by using Orientalist
imaginationwhich in his view led to the creation of stereotypes and misconceptions.
As evidenced by FD films, remnants of these cultural projections outlived the process of
decolonisation in India and were absorbed into the development ideology of the
postcolonial state.
Independence brought a shift in the operational binary of Orientalism away from the
East/West dichotomy toward the state planner/development subject binary. Films on
indigenous groups, for example, constructed images of the undeveloped other that
elevated the virtues of industrial modernity brought about by state development
projects. (p.9)
Family planning shorts, based on

assumptions of Indians unchecked
sexuality, presented the irrational
development subject as the polar
opposite of the enlightened state
planner. Even films aimed at urban
audiences, such as documentaries
about economic planning or Indias
history and culture, assumed a highly
didactic tone, pointing to the FDs
imagination of its audiences as the
uneducated Orient that contrasted Figure 2: Government experts planning a
with the state as an omniscient large dam in Project for Plenty22
Occident.
Through the process of Othering and

an omniscient perspective, the FDs development documentaries aimed to replace
local knowledge with a scientific view of modernity held by the countrys planners. An
unquestioned belief in the ability of science and technology to meet human needs and
bring about progress permeated the FDs portfolio of films, which points to the
marriage of Nehruvian developmentalism with the ideology of high modernism. James
Scott defined this term, which refers to a strong, one might even say muscle-bound,
version of the self-confidence about scientific and technical progress, the expansion of
production, the growing satisfaction of human needs, the mastery of nature (including
human nature), and, above all, the rational design of social order commensurate (p.10)
with the scientific understanding of natural laws.23 FD films that portrayed the merits
of industrial modernityby calling large dams temples of tomorrow, for example
became a tool the government used to convince Indians of the virtues of high
modernism.
Like IFI, its colonial-era predecessor, the FD often depicted underdevelopment as an

enemy to be combated by the state. The often unspoken justification for the heavy-
handed government efforts shown in its films was that underdevelopment was an
Page 6 of 30
Introduction
indication of a state of crisis, the solution for which demanded exceptional measures.
Using film to perpetuate this crisis in the minds of the viewers allowed the FD to
portray the agency of individual citizens as secondary to that of the state in the
development process. This narrative rendered the suppression of civil liberties, which
was characteristic of wartime and other national emergencies, an acceptable weapon
against poverty and backwardness.
Some of the participatory actions advocated by FD shorts were thus not dissimilar to
those championed by IFI documentaries during World War II. As Srirupa Roy has
pointed out, sacrifice, restraint and renunciation24 were among the attitudes
encouraged by these films. According to Roy, individuals were motivated to re-align
their private values with public ones, and to redefine self-interest in terms of the
national rather than the individual self.25 As a result, citizens would refrain from
criticising the failures, incompleteness, and exclusivity of the nation at the present
moment: after all, we are still developing.26
The Nehruvian vision not only attempted to block opposition, it excluded certain groups
in India from the project of development. Benjamin Zachariah has applied the idea of
peripheralisation, a concept closely linked to world systems and dependency theories of
development,27 to argue that Nehruvian development ideology contained exclusionary
tendencies.28 Drawing on the example of the north-eastern region of India, which is
inhabited largely by indigenous populations and was only loosely connected to India
before 1947, Zachariah shows that the Nehruvian vision took on its most brutal and
violent forms in this particular area.29 According to Zachariah, using a development
agenda to convince reluctant populations to become citizens of India was bound to fail,
as long as the governments modernising agenda depended on the prior interpretation
of that agenda by outside agents.30 In some cases, brute force replaced development
as a way to foster nationhood, as demonstrated by the emergency powers given to the
Indian Armed (p.11) Forces in the north-east in 1958 and the ensuing war between the
Naga peoples and the Indian state.
Another exclusion was intellectual. The absence of alternative development models in

the FDs portfolio of films points to the governments attempt to secure a hegemonic
standing for Nehruvian developmentalism in India. For example, Gandhian ideals of
rural agricultural development and a rejection of Western-style modernity were
neglected, even in biographical films about Gandhi himself.31 Some of the FD films
openly attacked government critics, dismissing any opposition to mainstream
development ideas as hindering progress.
The content of FD films brings into question the nature of Indian democracy during this
period.32 FD documentaries omniscient perspective rarely acknowledged the role the
subjects of development projects played in shaping the process of development. They
focused instead on the role that government-appointed experts played in defining the
future of the country as the rest of the population followed the blueprints designed by
the experts. This polarised perspective is in line with Ayesha Jalals interpretation of
Page 7 of 30
Introduction
Indias post-Independence political regime as an authoritarian democracy33 that was

shaped by the inherited bureaucratic and military establishments of the British Empire.
These authoritarian tendencies are reflected in the lack of participation of Indians in
the decision-making process of the government. This trait is consistent with the
interpretation of Nehrus government as a development regime, which the historian
David Ludden defined as an institutionalized configuration of power within a state
system ideologically committed to progress that draws its material sustenance from the
conduct of development.34 This regime, he argued, was rooted in colonial perceptions
of the concept of development. Ludden identified four paradigms that he saw as
remarkably stable in the Indian discourse on development throughout much of the
nineteenth century and into the second half of the twentieth:
(1) Ruling powers that claim progress as a goal,

(2) A people whose condition must be improved,
(3) An ideology of science that controls principles and techniques to effect and
measure progress, and
(4) Self-declared, enlightened leaders who would use state power for
development and compete for power with claims of their ability to effect
progress.35
(p.12) Adopting an ideology of science to convince the development subjects of the

experts intention and ability to engineer progress thus became a tool the government
used to gain the subjects support. As a result, the development regime divided the
society into a small group of development experts and a much larger group of
development subjects. This division insulated the subjects from the government and
precluded any open debate on the definition of progress. The development regime
sought to limit the emergence of a plurality of views and keep the definition of this
term in the hands of the government.36
The cinematic form used in the vast majority of these documentaries further underlines
the Nehru governments propensity to derive its legitimacy more from a self-perception
of technocratic superiority than from the democratic process. The FDs directors and
producers employed what Bill Nichols has called the expository mode of
representation to immerse the audiences in the Nehruvian vision. This mode
addresses the viewer directly, with titles or voices that propose a perspective, advance
an argument, or recount history, often adopting a voice-of-God style of commentary.37
As Nichols points out, such documentaries rely heavily on spoken word, while in a
reversal of the traditional emphasis in film, images serve a supporting role.38 The
commentary in fact represents the films perspective, as it comes from a place that
remains unspecified but associated with objectivity or omniscience.39 The FD often
used the expository mode in combination with staged scenes shot in the studio. Rather
than relying on real-world footage, many of these films incorporated stories (at times
acted out by FDs own employees)40 that illustrated their messages. Although the
Page 8 of 30
Introduction
fictional nature of some of these films was frequently blatant, the FDs objectivist
commentary nevertheless guided audiences toward a single interpretation.
The expository mode was a vehicle well suited for disseminating the development
regimes agenda. Both paradigms rely on restraining individual agency. In FD
documentaries, this restraint rested on an economy of analysis characteristic of the
expository mode of representation. Aside from monetary considerations,41 this
economy sought to prevent audiences from questioning the existing framework:
according to Nichols, a film employing the expository mode will add to our stockpile of
knowledge but not challenge or subvert the categories by which such knowledge gets
organized.42 It was precisely the FDs propensity to legitimise the development regime
by reinforcing the expertlayman divide that (p.13) made the expository mode a
weapon of choice in the war against underdevelopment.
Page 9 of 30
Introduction
The Tree in Front of the Films Division

At first glance, an analysis of the FDs film portfolio indicates that the organisations
output was consistent with the ideology of the colonial development regime. However,
a closer reading that takes into account the departures from this dominant pattern
suggests that the reality was more complex. Some of the films used techniques not
associated with the expository mode of representation, such as interview footage,
montage or silent commentary. A number of documentaries produced in the late 1960s
questioned the implementation of state policies, and some even hinted at criticism of
the ideas behind Nehruvian developmentalism. Therefore, the FDs output of films from
1948 to 1975 cannot be seen as fully analogous to the earlier colonising documentary
of the 1940s.
Gerson da Cunha, one of the voice artists associated with the FD in the 1950s and
1960s, spoke in an interview of a large tree in front of the organisations offices where
many of the employees would meet during lunch breaksa modern-day agora where
ideas and opinions were exchanged.43 He recalled a creative working environment
filled with enthusiastic artists. Others had similar recollections: Ram Mohan and
Bhimsain, two pioneers of Indian animation whose careers started at the FD,
remembered the invaluable training they received that allowed them to become
successful animators, while Govind Saraiya spoke of the absolute freedom he
experienced as a director in the late 1950s. Radha Chadha, the daughter of Jagat
Murari, who directed and produced for FD between 1948 and 1961, recalled a sense of
shared enthusiasm, pride and concern for Indias future among the creative staff in the
initial years.44 Prem Vaidya, a cameraman and director, told me the story of Report on
Drought (1967),45 a film whose realistic depiction of the 1967 Bihar famine became a
vehicle for a major fundraising effort by a TV station in Norway. Several of the FDs
earliest films won awards at some of the worlds most prestigious festivals, and FD has
been heavily involved in bringing international cinema to India by hosting film festivals
of its own.46 Even the famous India 67, a landmark of Indian documentary that
exposed the social realities of India twenty years after Independence, was produced by
the FD. This raises the question of why (p.14) an organisation with colonial influences
written into its DNA would become involved in projects so markedly different from
those of the colonial era.
Part of the answer can be found in the recruitment of filmmakers who were associated
with the FD. In post-1947 India, the FD was one of only a few organisations offering the
opportunity to participate in making non-fiction films. It thus attracted many
individuals with creative impulses and potentially non-conformist views. Even though
many among the first batch of directors were trained in the 1940s at the IFI, others
who joined soon after came from different backgrounds. A batch of filmmakers who
joined the FD within the first two years had trained at the University of Southern
California in 1946847 as part of the Indo-American Technical Cooperation Mission.
They brought with them a wide exposure to Hollywood cinema.48 M. V. Krishnaswamy,
one of the FDs early directors, had received training under Roberto Rossellini at the
Page 10 of 30
Introduction
Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, while Paul Zils, an independent
filmmaker trained in Germany and one of the directors at IFI, also influenced the FD
through his films.49 Many artists who became associated with the institution in the late
1960s had worked in advertising and as independent filmmakers, and their concepts of
cinema were markedly different from those of the colonial era. For example, the
frequent use of narrative in these documentaries points to a cross-fertilisation of ideas
between Bombay film, the advertisement industry and the FD. It is thus not surprising
that the governments conception of film as a creative enterprise, which led to the
recruitment of a particular demographic, contributed over time to the erosion of the
authoritarian character of the development project.
As a result, the cinematic form utilised by the FD began to incorporate tendencies that
departed from earlier traditions. Even though the colonialism-infused expository mode
of representation dominated the organisations film output throughout the entire period
covered in this book, the 1950s already saw occasional departures from this pattern.
For example, thanks to its emphasis on images over words, Radha and Krishna,50 an
award-winning 1957 short that portrayed the legend of Radha and Krishna through a
series of miniature paintings of the Pahari tradition, presents a stark alternative to the
run-of-the-mill colonising FD documentary. Having initially shaped films on politically
neutral subjects such as Indian art and culture, alternative cinematic approaches also
entered (p.15)
the domain of the development

documentary. For example, Towards a
Better Society,51 a 1953 short that
critiqued untouchability, told the story
of a fictional villager who took the
initiative to fight against the practice
(Fig. 3). Even though this documentary
highlighted the many ways in which
measures taken by Nehrus
government aided the villagers
efforts, the films recognition of
individual agency and its appreciation Figure 3: A dalit home-schooling his
for a grassroots initiative in social children in Towards a Better Society
development represented a break from
the conventions of colonial filmmaking.
Formal experimentation reached its height during the late-1960s golden period of FD
history, which is associated with the tenure of Jehangir Bhownagary, who was invited
by the then Minister of Information and Broadcasting Indira Gandhi to revive the FD.
At the time, a number of creative artists and independent filmmakersincluding S.
Sukhdev, Pramod Pati and S. N. S. Sastrywere bringing fresh treatments of the
cinematic medium to the forefront of government filmmaking. Visual story-telling, non-
linear editing, interviews with the common man, pixilation, stop-motion animation and
Page 11 of 30
Introduction
other techniques (p.16) entered the FDs formal repertoire. The artists associated with
this golden period openly criticised the implementation of government policies by
including in their films interviews with citizens who were dissatisfied with Indias (lack
of) development. As elaborated in Chapter 6, S. N. S. Sastry, one of the directors active
during this period, even began to question the philosophical foundations of Nehruvian
developmentalism. A formal departure from the expository mode of representation thus
eventually led to a departure from thematic agendas strictly linked to the ideology of
high modernism.
These trends complicate Luddens notion of Nehrus government as a development

regime. Luddens argument is largely based on applying a nineteenth-century notion of
colonialismone associated with imperial hegemony, the civilising mission and a
singular vision of modernityto a post-1947 context. The colonialism of the first half of
the twentieth century, however, differed from this conception in several important
respects. Growing participation in the colonial project by Indians themselves52 (as
evidenced, for example, by the involvement of Indian film-makers in IFI), technological
advancements (including the advent of film, a medium inherently influenced by trans-
national cultural trends) and the growing tension among the various strands of the
nationalist movement were among factors that set apart twentieth-century colonialism
from its earlier forms.
The changes initiated by the MontaguChelmsford reforms of 1919 significantly

boosted Indians participation in provincial legislative councils. The Simon Commission,
a group that included seven members of the British Parliament who were sent to India
in 1929 to develop a proposal for Indias constitutional reform, advocated the
establishment of representative provincial governments. The Government of India Act
1935, which largely adopted the Simon Commission findings, established direct
elections and bestowed additional powers on self-governing provincial bodies. Indian
nationalists took advantage of these reforms to engage in many aspects of governing
the Indian polity. Luddens argument does not fully consider these shifting dynamics,
which meant that multiple layers of overlapping agencies were already involved in
governing India prior to 1947.
It is thus not surprising that the FD did not speak to its perceived development subjects
with a single voice. The films point to a complex interplay among at least three groups
of actors who brought different (p.17) agendas to the table: political elites (Nehru and
the Congress leadership), civil servants representing the middle layer of state
bureaucracy (employees of the various ministries sponsoring production of individual
films), and filmmakers employed by the FD. The tensions between these three groups
at times created space for a fourththe subjects of development projects themselves
to exert agency in the production process, particularly through the interview film of
the late 1960s. Each film was the result of a complex interplay between a multitude of
agents, whose adherence to the official government line varied. The extent to which the
FDs institutional culture and production policies allowed these different agendas to
interact increased over time, for example, with much greater openness to filmmakers
Page 12 of 30
Introduction
agendas during the golden period. This book argues that the FD was not a monolithic
structure throughout the period from 1948 to 1975, but an institution that represented
a battlefield of ideas about development that enabled heterogeneous influences, voices
and agendas to enter the arena.
Page 13 of 30
Introduction
Toward a Postcolonial Development Ideology

Colonialism had a differential impact on the political elites, state bureaucrats and
filmmakers involved in the production of FD documentaries. Luddens analysis focuses
on the ways in which the colonial ideology of progress influenced the political elites.
This book elaborates on his concept of the development regime by illustrating some of
the ways in which colonialism mediated the understanding of development by the other
two sets of actors: government bureaucrats and filmmakers. Through an analysis of FD
documentaries, this book offers an alternative interpretation of the concept of a
development regime.53
State bureaucrats brought a distinct vision of development to the discourse that shaped
FD films. As Chapter 3 explains, the Indian government assigned consultants to a vast
majority of FD films. They were usually ministry employees with expertise in the
subject covered by a film. While the consultants influence varied, a number of sources
show that they often enjoyed a great deal of freedom in moulding not only the content
but also the form of a film. The literature on Indian civil servants of this period points
to this groups highly homogeneous demographics: they were predominantly male,
upper-caste urban-dwellers, English speakers, and often trained at Western education
institutions.54 (p.18) These government servants brought into the FD middle-class
visions of modernity that broke away from the traditional lifestyles of the past. As a
result of these bureaucrats role in shaping many early FD films, some of the
documentaries surpassed Nehru himself in their enthusiasm for the virtues of industrial
modernity.
Yet it was the bureaucratic overseeing that facilitated, and in some cases initiated, the
internal dialogues within FD during the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as the more
substantial opening for artistic creative freedom in the second half of the 1960s.
Despite the seemingly uniform demographic character of the middle class, its
commitment to Nehruvian developmentalism appears to have fluctuated. As Sanjay
Joshi has argued for the colonial period in northern India, the project of the middle
class was constantly in the making rather than a sociological fact.55 Characterized by
its access to educational opportunities, commitment to modernity and extensive
involvement in government employment as well as in the emerging corporations, the
middle class became increasingly complex in its ideology after Independence. It turned
into a coalitional and internally disjointed constituency with a varying degree of
commitment to the states visions of development. The state bureaucracy, for example,
frequently failed to implement government policies effectively, due to conflicting
interests. Sudpita Kaviraj has argued that the massive expansion of the bureaucracy
without a corresponding change in its culture by the end of the 1960s led to the
familiar paradox of the over-extended state56 characterised by corruption and other
forms of misconduct. Resistance from non-state actors also compounded the tension
within the state. As Vivek Chibber has pointed out, opposition to the states model of
economic planning from the Indian capitalistsand the states inability to discipline the
business classwas largely responsible for the stunting of industrialisation in India.57
Page 14 of 30
Introduction
The FD films coexisting and at times contradictory visions of development can
therefore be interpreted not merely as a reflection of the fragmented and evolving
nature of the middle class, but also as a tool to promote Nehruvian economic policies in
an environment hostile to their implementation.
The filmmakers complemented these conflicting visions of modernity with an

increasingly heterogeneous set of assumptions about the aesthetics and purpose of the
documentary medium. Although a vast majority of the directors shared a commitment
to the idea of useful film (as opposed to film as an artistic form with intrinsic value) and
were inspired (p.19) by John Grierson and the British Documentary Film Movement,58
their artistic influences and political views differed. This variation increased over time,
peaking in the late 1960s. As Chapter 3 demonstrates, creative personnel active in the
FD in the 1950s were exposed to and found inspiration in a range of European, Asian
and American cinematic traditions. The group of artists associated with the late-1960s
FD golden period further broadened the spectrum of influences, from French New
Wave to Czech puppet animation. These influences sometimes led the film-makers to
give the development subjects a voice, thus adding content to the films that could not
be fully controlled by the state. The cinematic medium as a marker of modernity (and
modernisation) also became a platform for the expression of elite filmmaking practices
through the process of experimentation. As a result, the filmmakers of this period
created a small sphere of autonomy independent from the interests of state patronage.
Nevertheless, as Chapter 6 illustrates, even the most radical outliers among the FD
directors rarely overstepped the philosophical boundaries of Nehruvian
developmentalism. Although directors such as S. Sukdhev, Pramod Pati, K. S. Chari,
Vijay Chandra and T. A. Abraham revolutionised the cinematic language of Indian
documentary, they focused their critiques on the implementation of policies rather than
on the philosophical assumptions behind them. Their films often portrayed the harsh
realities of poverty without identifying the causes, and in some cases suggested to the
viewer that patience, rather than a shift in approach, was needed to change these
realities. Furthermore, during this period India became perhaps the only country in
history where, through the policy of compulsory exhibition in cinemas, audiences were
forced to watch experimental shorts. The FD leadership believed in the didactic idea
that exposing viewers to such films would increase their film literacy, which suggests
that the FDs elitism outlived the 1960s reforms.
What these various actors perspectives on development had in common was the
influence of ideologies that had grown out of colonial perspectives. However, this
influence was not static, as different groups views changed over time in response to
changing circumstances. Politics was subject to both internal shocks (e.g. the death of
Nehru in 1964) and external ones (e.g. the Sino-Indian war of 1962). The conflicting
middle-class notions of modernity responded to global post-World War II trends, such as
the rise of consumerism, while filmmakers were influenced by (p.20) trans-national
cultural trends, such as the 1960s counter-culture as well as advancements in
technology, in particular portable cameras and sound recording equipment. The multi-
Page 15 of 30
Introduction
layered nature of the agencies shaping FD films meant that the organisations output
was dynamic. This book thus does not assume a linear continuity in development
ideology from the colonial into the postcolonial period. It argues, rather, that the post-
colonial development ideology evolved from its colonial-era predecessor through a
complex set of interactions between colonial ideas and post-Independence realities.
The two strands of Nehruvian developmentalismits political goal of achieving

technocratic progress and its cultural project of moulding a new Indian identitydid
not move in tandem. While the commitment to industrial modernity and state-led
planning defined the Indian states development policy for decades after Independence,
the cultural representation of this ideology kept shifting due to the diverse agendas of
various actors involved in the making of the films. The interpretation of the ideology of
Nehruvian developmentalism thus to some extent depended on the individual charged
with implementing the project of development, leading to a heterogeneous set of
outcomes. Yet, colonial perspectives continued to influence the FD during the period
covered in this book.
To advance this argument, Chapter 2 identifies a set of colonial cinematic influences in

India through an analysis of several colonial-era films produced by the British. Chapter
3 traces institutional continuity and departure from the organisational set-up of IFI as it
transitioned into the FD. Chapter 4 examines the influence of colonial ideologies on
films designed to bring about behavioural changes among the audience, including
documentaries on family planning, civic education and indigenous populations. Chapter
5 considers the model of development which the government intended to achieve
through this behaviour reform, as reflected in FD films on economic planning, building
large dams and clearing slums. Chapter 6 analyses films made by directors associated
with the FDs golden period, critically interrogating how far these documentaries
departed from the conventions of colonial filmmaking. As revealed in this chapter, the
FD never fully freed itself from the influence of colonial development ideologies, even
as filmmakers found more room to experiment with new techniques and adopt new
perspectives.
(p.21) (Re)Writing the History of Indian Documentary
Few works have been published on post-Independence documentary film in India in

general, or on the FD in particular. Although Jag Mohan, Sanjit Narwekar and B. D.
Garga have written the most comprehensive histories to date, they have not engaged in
scholarly analysis.59 The FD has also received limited attention in Barnouw and
Krishnaswamys history of Indian film.60 Indian newspapers and periodicals, including
The Statesman, Filmfare and Journal of the Film Industry, have published short pieces
on some of the FD films, including several particularly critical reviews by the Indian
film critic Amita Malik. While these accounts offer invaluable sources of facts about the
FDs early history, they do not engage in a critical analysis of the organisations films.
Page 16 of 30
Introduction
The scholarly literature on the FD is limited to a few articles and book chapters, all of
which are consistent with the key arguments presented in this book. Srirupa Roys
study elucidated the link between FD documentaries and Indias postcolonial
nationalism, pointing out the ways in which Nehrus government used documentary
film to solidify Indian national identity.61 An essay by Paromita Vohra focused on the
politics of self-less-ness in Indian documentary practice, arguing that the formal
straitjacket of the FD suppressed the subjective individual voices of the filmmakers
directing the organisations documentaries.62 Camille Deprez, in her article on the
British Documentary Film Movements influence on the FD, argued that despite its
strong links to Griersonian documentary, themes of nationalism fostering national unity
as well as social and economic development came to dominate the organisations
output during Nehrus tenure as prime minister (194864).63 Anuja Jains essay
challenged the interpretation of the FD as a purely statist tool and pointed to a complex
interplay of factors that influenced the organisations genesis, including its colonial
origins, postcolonial realities and international influences.64 In her account of Indian
documentary, Nicole Wolf noted the lively debates [] evok[ing] critical voices, from
within and outside the FD[I], who mourned the lack of [] real life in the films.65 All of
these accounts are based on limited samples of films and do not provide an in-depth
analysis of the FDs institutional history.
My line of argument incorporates the existing narratives of FD history and expands on

them by including a body of primary sources that has not yet found its way into the
scholarship on Indian film. The arguments proposed by Roy and Vohra are both in line
with my key arguments; (p.22) seen through the prism of the analytical framework
presented here, the notions of postcolonial nationalism and the politics of selfless-
ness both become manifestations of the lingering colonial cinematic influences in post-
Independence India. Camille Deprezs arguments about the similarities between
Griersonian documentary and the dominant themes of nationalism in early FD films
also align with my argument about the evolving ideology of development, of which
nationalism became an inextricable component. The claims made by Jain and Wolf,
whose essays have problematised the conventional perception of the FD as merely a
statist tool of propaganda, align with my interpretation of the organisation as a
battleground of ideas in which many agendas interacted to produce the resulting films.
This interpretation is seemingly at odds with the work of Denis Vidal, another scholar
who studied early Indian documentary film. Vidal has argued that Indian documentary
films should not necessarily be seen as reflections of the social, historical or cultural
backdrop against which they were made.66 Using a case study of Paul Zils, a
documentary film-maker of German origin, whose work in India had a strong influence
on Indian documentary, Vidal argued that filmmakers were often able to create a
sphere of at least partial autonomy independent from the interests of either the patrons
sponsoring the films or the expectations of the people watching them. According to
Vidal, such autonomy had nothing to do with filmmakers wanting to identify with an
ideology of pure art; but rather [] was linked to their ability to convince others that
Page 17 of 30
Introduction
they were best placed to know how to express their interests.67 This argument mirrors
my point about the governments tendency to hire filmmakers whose creative
tendencies and non-conformism over time eroded the FDs simplistic visions of
development driven by orientalist binaries. The artists associated with the golden
period in particular were successful at convincing the government of their ability to
further its agendas while maintaining a sphere of creative autonomy that allowed them
to experiment with both the form and the content of their films. Taking Vidals
argument to its extreme, however, would overlook the ways in which the social and
cultural milieu continued to condition the Indian Documentary Film Movement.
In light of these arguments, is it possible to speak of a truly Indian documentary from

this period? Even though a history of the Indian Documentary Film Movement that
would fully answer this question is (p.23) beyond the scope of this volume, I offer
several hypotheses and develop a number of arguments relevant to film history. In my
attempt to identify patterns that set Indian documentary of this period apart from other
cinematic traditions, I have found three distinct threads that, individually and through
their interactions, contributed to the uniqueness of the Indian Documentary Film
Movement.
A preoccupation with the idea of development linked to a semi-perpetual state of crisis

represents the first thread. Flipping through both official government publications and
Indian Documentary, a magazine for independent documentary filmmakers published
by Paul Zils in the 1950s, Indian documentarians fixation on the idea of useful film as a
tool for the advancement of society becomes very clear. Even though a utilitarian
approach to the medium permeated other cinematic movements, not least the British
Documentary Film Movement, linking film to a state of semi-perpetual emergency, in
which its usefulness is dictated by the urgency of social realities, seems to be unique to
India in this period.
The double-edged sword of state patronage constitutes the second thread. As I have
discussed earlier, the state significantly constrained artists creative freedom, but at
the same time it was state patronage that allowed the medium of documentary to
develop in India in the first place. The nature of FDs recruitment process also
encouraged the acquisition of filmmakers who would at least occasionally be tempted
to press the boundaries and experiment with the medium. This paradox resulted in
tensions not only within the FD, but also between the FD and the independent
filmmakers who were hired to work on government-sponsored films through a system
of tenders.68 The governments agendas thus infiltrated not only the work of directors
employed by the FD but also of those trying to maintain an independent status. The
resulting tension between the independents and the government, and the audiences
identification of the documentary medium with government agendas, are further
unique characteristics of Indian documentary of this period.
Page 18 of 30
Introduction
The final thread lies in the complex relationship between animation and documentary
film. Animation, a medium that was pioneered in India by the FD, initially liberated the
organisation from the need to rely solely on real-life footage, and thus made possible
depictions of Indias future development that were entirely devoid of contemporaneous
points of reference. It later helped to fuel the experimental film movement of (p.24) the
late 1960s, which challenged both the form and content of earlier FD films. Some of
these films blurred the line between real-life footage and animation, raising questions
about the objectivity of film and about the authority of the state as filmmaker.
Animation thus became another double-edged sword in the history of Indian
documentary.
Even though these three threads provide a basic framework for studying post-
Independence Indian documentary film, further research is needed to achieve a more
comprehensive history of this movement. An analysis that incorporates independent
film and other patrons active in India during this periodincluding the Burmah-Shell
film unit, the Indo-American technical cooperation mission, and UNESCOis needed to
develop a deeper understanding of the ways in which the FD shaped the ideological,
economic and institutional landscapes navigated by filmmakers in this period. The
history of Indian animation merits a separate volume, as does the work of some of the
prominent figures of the golden period, in particular S. N. S. Sastry, whose critique of
the development regime seems to have extended further than anyone elses (Figs. 45).
A more nuanced study of themes of nationalism in the films and a feminist reading of
the documentaries focused on womens issues are other projects well worth
undertaking. It is my hope that the initial inroads my research makes will help spark
interest in some of these questions and bring more scholarly attention to this so far
largely neglected field.
Film Analysis and Development

The study of the FD is relevant not merely to film history, but also to development
studies. By analysing FD documentaries, it is possible to gain insight into the dual
nature of Indias development regime: the constraining character of the Nehruvian
vision and its rootedness in colonial frameworks on the one hand, and on the other
hand the ways in which a variety of agents operating within the state contested the
limits of that vision.
Filmsgovernment-sponsored films in particularare almost by definition

collaborative efforts that bring together a variety of actors and interests. Studying the
moving image can thus improve understanding not only of the various agendas at play
in the process of development, but also of the complex ways they interact. Such
analysis makes it possible to go beyond sweeping claims and overarching conceptsfor
(p.25)
Page 19 of 30
Introduction
(p.26) example, high modernism or
development regimein an effort to
under stand the power dynamics not
only between the state and its citizens,
but also within the state.
Few scholars have paid close attention

to film as a relevant source for the
study of development.70 Historically,
economics has dominated the field of
development studies, with sociology,
anthropology and history more
Figure 4: An image of industrial
recently joining the mainstream. Social
modernity in Sastrys Yes, Its On (1972)69
sciences that focus on cultural
analysis, such as film studies and
visual anthropology, remain on the
fringes. Yet, many academics see
development as inextricably linked to
modernitya cultural concept
frequently expressed and disseminated
through the language of visuals. It
thus makes a great deal of sense to
bring the study of film closer to the
mainstream of development studies.
The moving image makes it possible to

analyse depictions of development
Figure 5: An anonymous Indian in Yes,
the projections of what the future
Its On
holdsin ways that no other sources
do. Choices of film language (such as
framing, editing techniques and sound design)71 offer unique insights into the
definition of development envisioned by the makers (in this case, the government), and
into their imagined target audiencesthe people who are meant to participate in and
benefit from the process of development. The insights found at the intersection of film
studies and development studies can enrich the understanding of development
ideology. For example, by applying Bill Nichols classification of modes of
representation to the FDs portfolio of documentaries, it is possible to gain insights into
the multi-layered nature of Luddens development regime.
In some cases, the value of studying film to understand development is heightened by

the cinematic mediums ability to reach people unreachable by any other mode of
communication. In India, film was used extensively to communicate with the subjects of
development efforts, as their low literacy levels limited the use of written material. In
the period covered in this book, mobile projection vans screening FD films were the
Page 20 of 30
Introduction
only method available to the government to communicate with people in many rural
areas of the country, which rendered documentary a unique source for insight into the
relationship between the government and these populations.
This book offers two methodologies that incorporate film analysis into the study of
development. My primary research methodology rests on the triangulation of three
different sets of sources: individual documentaries, for a critical interrogation of their
content and form; written primary (p.27)
archival material and oral history

interviews, to illuminate the
ideological backdrop of the films; and
secondary sources that trace the
overarching historical trends and
dominant paradigms of the period in
which the films were made. In some
cases I was not able to triangulate.
The second set of sources in particular
written primary archival materialis
scarce for many of the films analysed
in this book. In such cases I used a Figure 6: Projecting Films Divisions
secondary methodology that documentaries to the nation, as shown in
considered individual films in the Flashback72
context of the FDs portfolio, tracing
longitudinal trends that shaped FD
production across a large sample of films.
My argument relies on a diverse body of sources. A sample of approximately 250

documentary films, made by the FD, IFI and British colonial film units in other parts of
the Empire, form the core material analysed in this book. Most of these films are kept
at the internal FD archive in Mumbai, India. While researching at this archive, I was
able to access a complete catalogue of approximately 6,000 titles, from which I
identified several hundred that dealt most directly with the concept of economic and
social development and originated in the relevant period.73 Even though many of these
films were not accessible, a majority of the relevant (p.28) documentaries found their
way into the book. The sample is thus a representative one. The book contains
numerous still images taken from original 35mm celluloid held in FDs vaults that have
been scanned and digitally restored with FDs generous permission. I have also
consulted a number of non-FD films stored at the National Film Archive in Pune and at
the Imperial War Museum and the British Film Institute film archives in London. These
titles include documentaries made by IFI and British film units, such as the Crown Film
Unit, the Empire Marketing Board and the Colonial Film Unit, as well as several
imperial film units based in Africa.
Page 21 of 30
Introduction
A second body of sources comes from document archives in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi,
London and Stirling. These documents include production notes, unpublished
government reports, correspondence between government officials, minutes of
meetings of government committees and other relevant written primary sources.
Further documents related to FD films came from several personal collections kept by
the filmmakers themselves, or by their relatives. The most notable collections I
accessed for the purposes of this research include the papers of K. L. Khandpur (the
chief producer of FD for much of the 1960s), Samuel Theodore Berkeley-Hill (a British
commentator who wrote many of the commentaries for the FDs 1950s documentaries)
and Jehangir Bhownagary (whom Indira Gandhi invited to reform the institution in
19657). The source base also includes extensive interviews with some of the key
figures in the FDs history, including Shyam Benegal, Bhimsain and Ram Mohan (two of
Indias earliest animators who helped to establish the FDs cartoon film unit) and K. L.
Khandpur, as well as contemporary documentary film-makers including Paromita
Vohra, Anand Patwardhan and Avijit Mukul Kishore. The films themselves, however, are
the richest and most illuminating sources and they form the backbone of all my
arguments.
This book can be read as a case for incorporating film into the study of development.
This methodology can be used to conduct similar analyses in other countries with a
history of government-sponsored filmmakingfor example, a postcolonial analysis of
films made in other former colonies.74 Its use is not limited to government film;
documentaries have been made by many development actors, including international
organisations, NGOs, grassroots initiatives and indigenous movements. The same set of
analytical tools can be applied to understanding the agendas and ideologies informing
these agents efforts. Using film as a source for understanding the dynamics at play in
development is as relevant today as ever.
Notes:
(1.) Gandhijis post-prayer speeches, Harijan 11:51 (18 January 1948): 519.
(2.) Nagarjuna Sagar (1967), dir. Nishith Banerjee, prod. Ramesh Gupta, FDFA.
(3.) Dir. and prod. Ezra Mir, 35mm film print, CIN 226, IWMFA. To my knowledge this is
the only existing print; it has lost almost 90 percent of its soundtrack, and the IWM
archive does not hold the commentary sheets for this film. My analysis relies on a
scrutiny of the visuals and the segments of the soundtrack that have survived.
(4.) For literature on IFI, see Philip Woods, From Shaw to Shantaram: The Film
Advisory Board and the Making of British Propaganda Films in India, 19401943,
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 21:3 (2001): 293308. See also Philip
Woods work on IFI newsreels in general, especially Chapattis by parachute: The use
of newsreels in British propaganda in India in the second world war, South Asia:
Journal of South Asian Studies 23:2 (2000): 89110; and The British Use of Film
Propaganda in India in the Second World War, Indian Horizons (JanuaryMarch 2001):
Page 22 of 30
Introduction
1124. See also Jag Mohan, Documentary Films and National Awakening (New Delhi:
Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1990); Sanjit
Narwekar, Films Division and the Indian Documentary (New Delhi: Publications
Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1992); and the essays in Wolfgang
Klaue, ed., Dokumentarfilm in Indien (Berlin: Staatliches Filmarchiv der DDR, 1988).
(5.) Mohan, Documentary Films and National Awakening, p. 18.
(6.) India was not the only part of the British Empire in which government film units
made documentaries about development. For other colonies, see Rosaleen Smyth, The
Development of British Colonial Film Policy, 19271939, with Special Reference to East
and Central Africa, Journal of African History 20 (1979): 43750; eadem, The Central
African Film Units Images of Empire, 19481963, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and
Television 3:2 (1983): 13147; Kedmon Hungwe, Southern Rhodesian Propaganda and
Education Films for Peasant Farmers, 19481955, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and
Television 11:3 (1991): 22941; James Burns, Flickering Shadows: Cinema and Identity
in Colonial Zimbabwe (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002); and Olivier Barlet, African
Cinemas: Decolonizing the Gaze (London: Zed Books, 2000).
(7.) Woods, From Shaw to Shantaram, p. 300.
(8.) Narwekar, Films Division and the Indian Documentary, p. 22.
(9.) See Peter Bchlin and Maurice Muller-Strauss, Newsreels Across the World (Paris:
UNESCO, 1952), p. 59, for an overview of the production and exhibition of newsreels in
India by FD in the early 1950s. The film analysis in this book focuses on documentaries
rather than newsreels. The production process for documentaries was usually
considerably longer and more elaborate than for newsreels. The resulting films reflect
a high degree of intentionality and more nuanced representation of their subjects, and
are therefore more suitable for the study of development ideology.
(10.) Aruna Vasudev, Liberty and Licence in the Indian Cinema (New Delhi: Vikas,
1978), p. 111.
(11.) Dir. S. N. S. Sastry, prod. Shanti Varma, FDFA.
(12.) Translated from Hindi by Shikha Pandey.
(13.) This volume focuses on Nehrus views and the policies his governments
implemented. C. A. Bayly has pointed out, however, that those in Nehrus circle,
including G. B. Pant, D. R. Gadgil, P. C. Mahalanobis and S. Radhakrishnan, differed in
their views on development policy. Bayly contends that Nehrus governments in 1947
64 are best described as a complex amalgam of political ideologies and sentiments (C.
A. Bayly, The Ends of Liberalism and the Political Thought of Nehrus India, Modern
Intellectual History 12:3 (2015): 605). Even though a detailed analysis of the different
Page 23 of 30
Introduction
views of individual political leaders is beyond the scope of this volume, some of the
divergent visions of development reflected in FDs documentaries could indeed be seen
as a manifestation of disagreement at the highest political level.
(14.) Most of the films analysed in this book are available for free online streaming
through Film Divisions YouTube channel. Please see the books companion website,
www.visionsofdevelopment.com, for links to the films mentioned in each chapter of the
book.
(15.) For literature on Indian planning after Independence, see for example Sukhamoy
Chakravarty, Development Planning: The Indian Experience (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1987); and Pranab Bardhan, The Political Economy of Development in
India (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1984).
(16.) Jawaharlal Nehru, Economic Democracy, Speech in Parliament, New Delhi, 15

December 1952, Jawaharlal Nehrus Speeches, 19491953 (New Delhi: Publications
Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1954), p. 99.
(17.) For an analysis of the origins of Nehrus thought on material progress, see
Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 197684); and Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux,
1998). A biographical film, Nehru (1984, FDFA), divided into three parts (The
Awakening, The Struggle, Freedom) about Jawaharlal Nehru, was also produced by
FD under the direction of Shyam Benegal and Yuri Aldokhin. For an analysis of this
film, see Sangeeta Datta, Shyam Benegal (London: British Film Institute, 2002).
(18.) This argument was made by Vivek Chibber, according to whom a window of
opportunity for reform opened in the mid-sixties, when, after the death of Jawaharlal
Nehru, calls were made for overhauling the planning institutions, in clear
recognition of their inadequacy. Yet, the reform impulse exhausted itself, and Indian
development policy continued within the old groove for another decade and a
half (Vivek Chibber, Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003, p. 11). It is, however, also important to
recognize that Nehruvian developmentalism was not fully static. According to Sumit
Sarkar, processes of erosion could be detected as early as the late-1960s, with land
reforms or cooperatives being given up for green revolution and more coercive
population control (Sumit Sarkar, Nationalism and Poverty: discourses of development
and culture in 20th century India, Third World Quarterly 29:3 (2008): 432).
(19.) Sumit Sarkar, Nationalism and Poverty, p. 432.
(20.) See Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), for a nuanced study of the technocratic
model of development in a postcolonial context.
(21.) Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), p. 177.
Page 24 of 30
Introduction
(22.) Dir. V. R. Sarma, prod. M. Bhavnani, FDFA.
(23.) James Scott, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human
Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 4.
(24.) Srirupa Roy, Moving Pictures: The Postcolonial State and Visual Representations
of India, Contributions to Indian Sociology 36 (2002): 246.
(25.) Srirupa Roy, Beyond Belief: India and the Politics of Postcolonial Nationalism
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), p. 45.
(26.) Roy, Moving Pictures, p. 246.
(27.) See Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1979); and Andre Gunder Frank, Dependent Accumulation
and Underdevelopment (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979), for an overview of the
dependency and world systems theories of development.
(28.) Benjamin Zachariah, Developmentalism and its Exclusions: Peripheries and

Unbelonging in Independent India, in Peripheralization: The Making of Spatial
Dependencies and Social Injustice (Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien, 2013), pp. 5576.
(29.) Ibid., p. 70.
(30.) Ibid.
(31.) Amrit Gangar, a film scholar who was responsible for compiling FDs catalogue of
films, observed that themes of decentralisation in the economy that were key to
Gandhian thought on development were lacking in FDs output (Amrit Gangar, personal
interview, 21 May 2011, Mumbai). My own analysis confirms this view. For example, in
the film A Voyage of Discovery (1974, dir. Lalit Upadhyaya and P. C. Sinha, prod. P. N.
Paul), the commentator pointed out that in the countrys reconstruction, Gandhiji did
not rule out large industries and public utilities. He said: I have not contemplated,
much less advised, the abandonment of a single life-giving industrial activity.
Machinery has its place. It has come to stay, but it must not be allowed to displace
human labor. Yet the film did not mention the alternatives to industrial modernity
proposed by Gandhi. Other films, such as Wheel of Prosperity (1955, dir. P.R.S. Pillay,
prod. J. Bhownagary) and Ambar Charkha (1959, dir. Nilkanth Magdum, prod. Cine Unit
of India, Pune), focused on self-sufficiency in cloth production as one of the
fundamental tenets of Gandhis philosophy. These films did not, however, explicate
Gandhis beliefs in the superiority of artisan production over large-scale industry. For
early FD films on Gandhi, see also Glimpses of Gandhiji (1949, dir. N.K. Paralkar, prod.
M. Bhavnani) and a five-hour biographical feature produced in cooperation with the
Gandhi National Memorial Fund, Mahatma: Life of Gandhi (1969, dir. Vithalbhai K.
Jhaveri).
Page 25 of 30
Introduction
(32.) For a discussion of the early years of Indian democracy, see Ramachandra Guha,
India after Gandhi: The History of the Worlds Largest Democracy (New York: Ecco,
2007). See also R. B. Jain, Participation and Development: Emerging State-Civil
Relation in India, in Claude Auroi, ed., The Role of the State in Development Processes
(London: Frank Cass, 1992), p. 70, for a discussion of the Indian nationalist thought on
participatory development; and R. C. Dutt, Socialism of Jawaharlal Nehru (New Delhi:
Abhinav Publications, 1981), for an analysis of Nehrus socialist thought. For an early
example of FDs treatment of the idea of democracy and the process of elections, see
Democracy in Action (1951, dir. V. R. Sarma, prod. M. Bhavnani, FDFA).
(33.) See Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative
and Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
(34.) David Ludden, Indias Development Regime, in Nicholas Dirks, ed., Colonialism
and Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), p. 252.
(35.) Ludden, Indias Development Regime, pp. 2512.
(36.) For Luddens more recent work on development regimes across the twentieth
century, see David Ludden, Development Regimes in South Asia: History and the
Governance Conundrum, Economic and Political Weekly 40:37 (1016 September
2005): 404251. In this essay, Ludden complicated his earlier concept by arguing that
in the second half of the twentieth century the development regime became
transformed due to globalisation and the rise of the middle class. As a result, each
country in south Asia now inhabits more than one development regime. National
regimes still operate, but each has various local and regional sub-units with distinctive
rules of operation, and each must also abide by international rules (p. 4049). This
thesis mirrors my point about the role of the middle class in shaping the development
regime, elaborated in this book.
(37.) Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

2001), p. 105.
(38.) Ibid., p. 107.
(39.) Ibid.
(40.) Samuel Berkeley-Hill, one of the FDs staff commentators, for example, recalled in
his diary that he acted in several FD shorts (Berkeley-Hill diary, Owen Berkeley-Hill
personal collection, Farningham).
(41.) One of the pressing economic problems of India throughout the period covered in
this volume was a shortage of foreign exchange. As India did not have its own facility
for manufacturing film stock in this period, film had to be imported from abroad and
was strictly rationed by the government. It was thus desirable to keep the films as short
Page 26 of 30
Introduction
as possible, so most FD films from this period were one-reelers (1,000 feet of footage,
approximately 11 minutes running time).
(42.) Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, p. 109.
(43.) Gerson da Cunha, personal interview, 19 January 2014, Mumbai.
(44.) Radha Chadha, personal interview, 8 August 2015, New Delhi.
(45.) Dir. Krishna Kapil and Prem Vaidya, prod. J. S. Bhownagary, FDFA.
(46.) See Mira Binford, Media Policy as a Catalyst to Creativity: The Role of
Government in the Development of Indias New Cinema, PhD dissertation, University
of Wisconsin-Madison (1983), pp. 8890, for a discussion of the involvement of Mohan
Bhavnani (FDs first chief producer) and K. L. Khandpur (one of its later chief
producers) in organising Indias first international film festival in 1952. See
publications listed under Film Festival Publications in the Bibliography for literature
on the Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary, Short and Animation
Films, a biannual festival organised by FD since 1990.
(47.) Radha Chadha, personal interview.
(48.) According to Jagar Muraris daughter, upon his return to India he published an
article entitled Plan Your Production: How It Is Done in Hollywood in the magazine
Film Pictorial in April 1948. Radha Chadha, personal interview.
(49.) See B. D. Garga, From Raj to Swaraj (New Delhi: Viking, 2007), p. 150, for a
discussion of Krishnaswamy; and p. 157 for Zils.
(50.) Dir. and prod. J. Bhownagary, FDFA.
(51.) Dir. Krishna Gopal, prod. M. Bhavnani, FDFA.
(52.) See, for example, Douglas Haynes and Nikhil Rao, Beyond the Colonial City: Re-
Evaluating the Urban History of India, c.19201970, South Asia: Journal of South Asian
Studies 36:3 (2013): 31735 for a discussion of the increasing participation of Indians
in urban governance and planning in the last three decades of British rule.
(53.) A word of caution is needed before proceeding further. Understanding the

agendas of different parties involved in shaping a documentary is not possible without
access to sources illuminating the production process of the film. Many of these
sources have been lost or are inaccessible to researchers, and oral history alone is
often insufficient to establish the contribution of each set of actors to the final shape of
a film. The claims related to the interplay among political elites, civil servants and
bureaucrats should be seen as hypotheses that require further research, rather than
ones that are conclusively demonstrated. While this book relies on a variety of sources,
including production files, written correspondence, personal interviews and official
Page 27 of 30
Introduction
government publications, it is exploratory in nature. The sheer number of films
analysed herein, the time period covered and the relative lack of prior research on
Indian documentary film limit the extent to which it can disentangle the complex net of
agencies shaping any single film. In spite of these limitations, however, close analysis of
films themselves, even in the absence of other sources, can provide strong evidence for
contradictory tendencies operating within the states development ideology.
(54.) See David Potter, Indias Political Administrators, from ICS to IAS (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1996), for an analysis of the continuities between colonial-era
Indian Civil Service and post-Independence Nehruvian bureaucracy. For an analysis of
the demographics of the Indian Administrative Service, see also V. Subramaniam, Social
Background of Indias Administrators: A Socio-economic Study of the Higher Civil
Services in India (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting, 1971). See also Vivek Chibber, Bureaucratic Rationality and the
Developmental State, American Journal of Sociology 107:4 (January 2002): 95189 for
an analysis of the shortcomings of the state bureaucracy during the Nehruvian years.
(55.) Sanjay Joshi, Fractured Modernity: Making of a Middle Class in Colonial North
India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 2.
(56.) Sudipta Kaviraj, The Imaginary Institution of India: Politics and Ideas (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2010), pp. 2234.
(57.) Chibber, Locked in Place, pp. 2932.
(58.) For example, Samuel Berkeley-Hill, one of the FDs staff commentary writers and
voice artists for much of the 1950s, was fascinated by some of the films of the British
Documentary Film Movement. In an interview, his son recalled that Berkeley-Hill
memorised W. H. Audens poem from the famous montage in the ending of Basil Wright
and Harry Watts Night Mail (1936), and frequently recited the poem while shaving
(Owen Berkeley-Hill, personal interview, 16 December 2013, Farningham).
(59.) Narwekar, The Films Division and the Indian Documentary; Mohan, Documentary
Films and National Awakening; B. D. Garga, From Raj to Swaraj.
(60.) Erik Barnouw and Subrahmanyam Krishnaswamy, Indian Film (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1980). The treatment in this volume is focused mainly on the
controversial compulsory theatrical exhibition scheme and on the FDs relationship to
independent documentary filmmakers.
(61.) Roy, Moving Pictures.
(62.) Paromita Vohra, Dotting the I: The Politics of Self-less-ness in Indian

Documentary Practice, South Asian Popular Culture 9:1 (2011): 47.
Page 28 of 30
Introduction
(63.) Camille Deprez, The Films Division of India, 19481964: The Early Days and the
Influence of the British Documentary Film Tradition, Film History 25:3 (2013): 14973.
For another version of this essay, see Camille Deprez, John Grierson in India: The Films
Division under the influence?, in Deanne Williams and Zo Druick, eds., The Grierson
Effect: Tracing Documentarys International Movement (London: BFI/Palgrave
Macmillan, 2014), pp. 15368.
(64.) Anuja Jain, The Curious Case of the Films Division: Some Annotations on the
Beginnings of Indian Documentary Cinema in Postindependence India, 1940s1960s,
The Velvet Light Trap 71 (2013): 1526.
(65.) Nicole Wolf, Foundations, Movements and Dissonant Images: Documentary Film
and its Ambivalent Relations to the Nation State, in K. Moti Gokulsing and Wimal
Dissanayake, eds., Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas (New York: Routledge,
2013), p. 365. Emphasis in original.
(66.) Denis Vidal, The Uncertainties of Patronage: About the Origins of Documentary
Cinema in India and the British Empire, in Amrit Gangar, ed., Paul Zils and the Indian
Documentary (Mumbai: Goethe Institute, 2003), pp. 219.
(67.) Vidal, The Uncertainties of Patronage, p. 29.
(68.) See Chapter 3 for a more detailed discussion.
(69.) Dir. S. N. S. Sastry, FDFA.
(70.) Communications for development has been subject to scholarly research, but
rarely with a focus on documentary film. See Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional
Society: Modernizing the Middle East (Glencoe: Free Press, 1958), for one of the most
influential works of the second half of the twentieth century on the use of mass
communications to promote development. See also Srinivas Melkote, Communication
for Development in the Third World: Theory and Practice (New Delhi: Sage
Publications, 1991), for an overview of scholarly research on communications for
development in the second half of the twentieth century.
(71.) See Vijay Raghav Rao, Music for Short Films, in Four Times Five, a souvenir
issued on the occasion of FDs 20th anniversary (Bombay: Films Division, 1969, pp.
1012), for a perspective by a prolific composer, who created musical scores for many
of FDs early films, on how music and sound design can contribute to the message of a
film.
(72.) Dir. S. N. S. Sastry, prod. Arun Chaudhuri, FDFA.
Page 29 of 30
Introduction
(73.) The films I chose centred mostly on the themes of industrialisation, economic
planning, large dams, slum clearance, civic education, indigenous populations and
family planning. Many other categories of films, including, for example, those about
agriculture, social welfare or health, are also relevant to the study of development, yet
are beyond the scope of this book. Documentaries about Indias culture and history are
also an integral part of the Nehruvian joint project of development and nation-building.
As the freelance writer and film critic Alexander Keefe pointed out to me in a phone
interview (6 August 2015), these films constructed Indian antiquity in a way that
allowed the state to cast itself as a modern-era heir of precolonial tradition. At the
same time, the documentaries juxtaposed the states vision of folk tradition to the
cosmopolitan modernity created by the project of development. The state could thus
claim to represent the best of both worldstradition as well as modernity. See Keefes
website, Sarkari Shortshttp://filmsdivisionindia.tumblr.com/ (accessed 16 August 2015),
for more commentaries on FDs documentaries. A review of the website that considers
its implications for how audiences engage with FD film archives can be found in Shanay
Jhaveri, Reel World: Sarkari Shorts and the Films Division of India, Frieze 164
(JuneAugust 2014), available online at http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/reel-world/
(accessed 16 August 2015). See also Clive Bell, Unofficial Channels, Wire 366 (August
2014): 17.
(74.) For the Nigerian case, see I. Obiaya, A Break With the Past: The Nigerian Video-
film Industry in the Context of Colonial Filmmaking, Film History 23 (2011): 1367.
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University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online

Visions of Development: Films Division of India

Print publication date: 2016

Abstract and Keywords

Nagarjuna Sagar. So strong, a symbol of todays striving and a symphony of change

Oh, lovers of the country, progress and happiness

In this documentary, both the agency of the supposed beneficiaries of development

The coexistence of colonial influences

Fighting for Modernity: Nehru and the Development Documentary

Under Nehrus leadership, the government sought to promote development by

Family planning shorts, based on

Through the process of Othering and

Like IFI, its colonial-era predecessor, the FD often depicted underdevelopment as an

Another exclusion was intellectual. The absence of alternative development models in

Indias post-Independence political regime as an authoritarian democracy33 that was

(1) Ruling powers that claim progress as a goal,

(p.12) Adopting an ideology of science to convince the development subjects of the

The Tree in Front of the Films Division

the domain of the development

These trends complicate Luddens notion of Nehrus government as a development

The changes initiated by the MontaguChelmsford reforms of 1919 significantly

Toward a Postcolonial Development Ideology

The filmmakers complemented these conflicting visions of modernity with an

The two strands of Nehruvian developmentalismits political goal of achieving

To advance this argument, Chapter 2 identifies a set of colonial cinematic influences in

(p.21) (Re)Writing the History of Indian Documentary

Few works have been published on post-Independence documentary film in India in

My line of argument incorporates the existing narratives of FD history and expands on

In light of these arguments, is it possible to speak of a truly Indian documentary from

A preoccupation with the idea of development linked to a semi-perpetual state of crisis

Film Analysis and Development

Filmsgovernment-sponsored films in particularare almost by definition

Few scholars have paid close attention

The moving image makes it possible to

In some cases, the value of studying film to understand development is heightened by

archival material and oral history

My argument relies on a diverse body of sources. A sample of approximately 250

(5.) Mohan, Documentary Films and National Awakening, p. 18.

(7.) Woods, From Shaw to Shantaram, p. 300.

(8.) Narwekar, Films Division and the Indian Documentary, p. 22.

(11.) Dir. S. N. S. Sastry, prod. Shanti Varma, FDFA.

(12.) Translated from Hindi by Shikha Pandey.

(16.) Jawaharlal Nehru, Economic Democracy, Speech in Parliament, New Delhi, 15

(19.) Sumit Sarkar, Nationalism and Poverty, p. 432.

(20.) See Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity

(26.) Roy, Moving Pictures, p. 246.

(27.) See Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy (Cambridge:

(28.) Benjamin Zachariah, Developmentalism and its Exclusions: Peripheries and

(29.) Ibid., p. 70.

(35.) Ludden, Indias Development Regime, pp. 2512.

(37.) Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

(38.) Ibid., p. 107.

(42.) Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, p. 109.

(43.) Gerson da Cunha, personal interview, 19 January 2014, Mumbai.

(44.) Radha Chadha, personal interview, 8 August 2015, New Delhi.

(47.) Radha Chadha, personal interview.

(50.) Dir. and prod. J. Bhownagary, FDFA.

(51.) Dir. Krishna Gopal, prod. M. Bhavnani, FDFA.

(53.) A word of caution is needed before proceeding further. Understanding the

(57.) Chibber, Locked in Place, pp. 2932.

(61.) Roy, Moving Pictures.