Indian literature and cinema are no longer diluting their offerings to cater to a global audience

What are Indian storytellers across mediums and genres doing differently now that they are becoming increasingly visible to a global audience?

When Geetanjali Shree’s book Ret Samadhi (Tomb of Sand) became the first Hindi novel to win the prestigious International Booker Prize in 2022, she was in the august company of Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka, who also won the Booker for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida last year. It marked an important moment for South Asians on an international stage—the wins were rather unexpected. Daisy Rockwell, the English translator for Ret Samadhi, said in an interview to The Guardian, that such prize-winning patterns are “sometimes flukes”. However, the phenomenon also aligns with a larger paradigm shift in the way indigenous South Asian narratives across the arts are being acknowledged today.

Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever—a young-adult show centred on the lives of an Indian family in America—concluded its four-season run in June this year, and was ranked second on the list of most-viewed shows on Netflix the week it debuted globally. In 2022, singer Arooj Aftab became the first Pakistani artiste to win a Grammy, while earlier this year, Kartiki Gonsalves’s documentary The Elephant Whisperers won an Oscar. Additionally, S.S. Rajamouli’s Telugu magnum opus RRR bagged an Oscar for its song Natu Natu, and became the first Indian film song to win the honour. Indian and South Asian stories, quite evidently, are garnering unprecedented attention. But is the momentum enough to carry our native tales to shores further away from known linguistic and cultural terrains?

No child’s play

“There is some curiosity (about stories written in India and in Indian languages) that has begun. There was a moment of enthusiasm about literature in other Indian, or even South Asian languages, which is a whole area that needs to be explored. And there are writers also who feel that they can write in their own language; it doesn’t have to be limited to their own linguistic spaces, and can go beyond it. So that initial momentum is there,” says Shree. However, she doesn’t think that is enough. “I believe this is not about one little spurt of excitement. It has to be more sustained and sober, and it has to be well funded, supported, and thought about. A whole network has to build up to take this forward,” she adds.

So far, translations of works written in Indian languages have largely been passion projects, according to Shree, as big publishers continue to be skeptical about them. This leads to a lack of resources and funding, which, in turn, limits the reach of Indian stories beyond their linguistic and geographical boundaries. 

“Translation has to be taken very seriously, and that process began at least a decade ago in India. I think people then realised that it’s not enough to know a smattering of English to be equipped enough to take on translations, so the idea is to make sure that people understand that translation is serious business,” she says. However, even if the essence of a story is sometimes lost in translation—leading to a “good, bad, or even indifferent” version of the original—it is still a worthy exercise to undertake, according to the writer.

At large, storytelling demands a collaborative process, especially when it travels through different linguistic and cultural terrains; however, an author and their book may not always be granted that privilege. Former Indian diplomat and writer Vikas Swarup—author of books Q&A (which was adapted on screen by Danny Boyle into the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire in 2008) and Six Suspects (adapted on screen by Tigmanshu Dhulia as the web series The Great Indian Murder in 2022)—found the Hindi translation of Q&A rather disappointing. So he took it upon himself to translate it correctly without monetary compensation or credit, but he feels satisfied that it is “aligned with his vision.”

“Countries like Italy and France read most of their literature in translation, so people who know both English and these European languages into which my books have been translated have told me those were done well. So we need to build a culture of translation within India. I keep getting a lot of offers from individuals saying they would love to translate my work, but I tell them that even if I do allow them to do so it will not travel unless they get a publisher to pick it up,” says Swarup. A translated text is a work of literature in its own right that goes beyond the original, according to the writer, so a badly translated work will fail to attract a larger pool of readers if it isn’t done well.

Stories travelling through cinema

However, when it comes to works of literature travelling through a different medium, like cinema, Swarup believes it’s important to allow filmmakers the freedom to adapt them the way they deem fit. “An exact transliteration of a novel while turning it into a film will not be successful. In Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle may have changed some details and nuances of the story, but the larger essence remained intact, which is what worked in its favour,” he says.

The increasing visibility of people of colour—especially South Asians—and their stories on global platforms can also be attributed to more conscientious and mindful writing of such characters, who aren’t reduced to their lazy caricatures. “It’s because our generation questions everything, as they should,” says actor Tara Sutaria, who feels grateful to be working in the film industry during a time when it’s easier to challenge and even subvert certain questionable norms. “People want to see the real stuff. They want to know stories of real people; yes, we still want to escape into fantasies through cinema, but people world over also want to feel a sense of belonging and familiarity when they watch something,” says Sutaria, in a nod to Swarup who insists that “there are no global stories, but local stories that have gone global.” Therefore, in order to find bigger audiences on foreign shores, the secret may not necessarily be to water down our indigenous cultural nuances to make our stories more digestible for global readers and viewers. “With OTT, it has become easier to do that because subtitles come in, and that helps stories travel in their original essence, but to audiences speaking different languages,” Swarup points out.

How non-fiction travels

Interestingly, for a country whose diverse cultural nuances have been traditionally reduced to the cliched song-and-dance tropes in Hindi fiction films, the global West is now taking note of India’s non-fiction cinema as well. The spate of international honours received by documentary filmmakers from India in the recent past is testament to that fact. At the Academy Awards this year, the unexpected winners were filmmakers Kartiki Gosalves, whose documentary film The Elephant Whisperers won in the Best Documentary (Short Film) category, while Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes was nominated for Best Documentary Feature. Sen’s film had also been awarded the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022, while this year, Sarvnik Kaur’s Against the Tide took home the Special Jury prize in Verite filmmaking.

Economist and writer Shrayana Bhattacharya’s debut work of non-fiction Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence (2021) was published by HarperCollins India. It came as a shock that her book had found readers across Indian borders, even in Pakistan. “It came out in Pakistan through Liberty Books, and funnily enough, there is a Pakistani pop-star named Hasan Raheem who put up a photo of himself with the book on his social media!” she says.

Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh charts the economic and personal trajectories of a heterogeneous group of Indian women, who are separated by class, but are united in their love for Shah Rukh Khan, which helps them remain consistent in their search for intimacy and independence. Embracing the Indian film icon allows them a small respite from an oppressive culture, and provides them with a catalyst to their fantasies of a friendlier masculinity in Indian men.

Bhattacharya, a fan of Khan herself, believed her book was confined within the orbits of her own lived experiences, until she learned otherwise. “There are such lovely reviews of the book in the Pakistani press. In fact, I think Pakistan took the book to heart much quicker (than India) and it travelled more through Pakistan that way. This really surprised me, because I thought I was speaking to a context that was very rooted not even in India, but the realities that only I was describing,” she says. The book also got featured in a Chinese lifestyle magazine, and the journalist who wrote the piece has now offered to do a translation for it. “It was then mentioned in Le Monde (a French newspaper), and also a German publication. What I mean to say is that none of this happened because we actively went and put ourselves out there—it was all organic, and your readers will find you. My job was just to tell the stories that were being brought to me with utmost dignity and honesty, and that is what I hopefully did,” Bhattacharya says, driving home the significance of remaining true to the ‘Indianness’ of Indian stories, even and especially when they encounter success on foreign turf.

The author conducted the interactions with all the interviewees at Bhutan Echoes 2023, the 12th edition of Drukyul's Literature Festival held in Thimphu earlier this month.

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