Bollywood and The English Language: A Case Study on Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001)
In this essay I set out to discuss English’s role in Indian pop culture and what this says about the social connotations of English in an Expanding Circle context. In my research on the role of English in media abroad, I remembered a film I had watched in my personal life– the classic melodrama Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and it struck me as being the ideal subject for examination. I am not Indian, and I do not speak Hindi, so as an outsider, I was acutely aware of when, and more importantly, in what contexts, English is spoken. Using these cues I was able to make some fascinating discoveries about what English, Hinglish, and pure Hindi seemed to signify to the intended Indian audience; what the choice in language says about inclusion, exclusion, class, and national identity. In Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, language is not neutral. Of course there is significance to what is being said, but I would argue that there is equal significance in what language is used to say it. Language was one of the strongest running motifs and continuously reinforced how the audience is meant to feel about the character who is speaking and their status within the larger society. Indian pop culture, and this film in particular, operates under the assumption that the viewer shares these cultural attitudes– creating a reception context unique to Bollywood. The role of English in Indian pop culture is as a “universally” recognized symbol for modernity and sophistication, but also of self-rejection; by extent creating further intricacies in the reception of Hinglish and Hindi.
For context, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham is a story of conflict between tradition and modernity, of the pull between looming expectations and personal desires. It centres ultimately on the disownment and exile of a young couple because they did not marry within an equal social class. The story begins with an exorbitantly wealthy and patriarchal Delhi family with two sons, Rahul and Rohan. Rahul is engaged to a match of his parents’ choosing, but falls in love with a lower-class girl named Anjali. They marry despite the wrath of his parents and they are subsequently thrown out of the household in a highly emotional scene. They flee to England, and years later, Rohan, who is now a young man, goes on a mission to bring his older brother home and mend their family. With all of this in mind, it is clear to see why the dichotomy of Hindi and English would play heavily in a story about being forced to leave India for England. In this film, and in Indian pop culture more broadly, Hindi is home. It embodies what is familiar and traditional. It is what is safe. Hindi acts as the literal and metaphorical starting point of this film. In one linguistic study presented by Vaish on page 30, the author states “She shows how the interlocutors try to bridge or increase social distance by switching between Hindi and English…interlocutors switch from English to Hindi to establish closeness and kinship,” This is in reference to the film, Monsoon Wedding, but rings equally true in the context of Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. The absence of English in the rising action of this film supports the image of a happy, close-knit, and securely Indian family. Rahul has not yet fallen in love with Anjali, and tradition reigns supreme. It is from this starting point that a parallel is established between the language being used and the social standing of the characters in relation to each othe.
Rahul and Anjali’s move to the UK and adoption of English, even at home, communicates rebellion, but also a deep loneliness and alienation. I noticed how surface level conversation and jokes are said in English like the iconic “Mom! Take a chill pill!” or “P. H. A. T. Pretty, hot, and tempting”, but moments of emotion are always in Hindi. After years isolated in England and largely speaking to each other in English, there is a pivotal scene between Rahul and Anjali where she mourns what she has lost entirely in Hindi “It’s too much now. This is not our country. These are not our people. We have set up a house here, but have you ever wondered what kind of a home this is that doesn’t have a mother’s warmth or a father’s blessings?” The idea of her saying this in English seems almost sacrilegious given the context we understand it in. LaDousa explores the role of the mother tongue when he says “[The] mother tongue has rested on the emotional attachment one feels to a language that is often grounded in ‘mother land,’ one’s nation or would-be nation,” He makes the argument that the concept of a mother tongue is indeed socially constructed, no one is born emotionally tied to a language or a nationality, but this does not discount the material impact of social constructions. Hindi means something to Anjali. And it is assumed to mean something to the audience. Thus why we feel the weight of her sadness magnified when it is spoken in her mother tongue.
In contrast, Hinglish and English mean something entirely different to the intended audience. It signifies that the character has upward social mobility and education. Despite Hindi being the standard matrix, the mixing of English words into sentences is everywhere in Bollywood. In fact, there has been a massive spike in English-heavy, and even English exclusive dialogue post 1990’s (Si 402). The simplest explanation for this change in pop culture is that it reflects the reality of urban Indian life. “The film has its characters flitting from English to Hindi with doses of Punjabi thrown in . . . that’s the way we speak at home in Delhi, I wanted to stay very true to that. I borrowed big-time from life,” (Si 403). I find the title of LaDousa’s book to be a very poignant metaphor for this phenomenon, “Hindi is Our Ground, English is Our Sky”. Meaning that for many Indians, Hindi represents the baseline and foundation of expression, but English represents the sort of “brave new world” of contemporary life. Coming back to Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, there is one character in particular who’s use of Hinglish and English supports these ideas in a really interesting way. When Rahul and Anjali fled to England years ago, they brought along Anjali’s younger sister, Pooja. Pooja spent her formative years in an English-speaking context. After the time skip, we are introduced to an early 2000’s diva complete with velour tracksuits and a posse of white girls– this is the new and improved, “Poo” (as she goes by). She speaks primarily English dappled with a few Hindi words and uses in an exaggerated posh English accent. Part of the humour of the film is just how outrageous Poo’s persona is, and part of it has to do with how she is a caricature of a whitewashed, English-speaking Indian girl. Beyond her appearance and mannerisms, it is her choice of language that hammers home ideas of youth, consumerism, and identification of England as a homeland. According to Sridhar in The Handbook of Asian Englishes, Indian English-speakers “consider themselves just speakers of British English, thank you. For them, Indian English stands for a marked, substandard variety of English, spoken by less sophisticated people,” While her sister and brother-in-law view themselves as Indians in a foreign land, she views herself with a blended identity, and maybe even a sense of superiority. We gather all of these cues through language rather than outright explanation. Through the frequency and context of code switching, the audience forms an understanding of the characters through the lens of Indian social politics.
Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham makes an extremely clear statement in a scene where Rahul and Anjali’s young son is doing a choir performance at school. In a sea of white kids, supposed to be singing Do-Re-Mi from The Sound of Music, suddenly all of the children begin to sing the Indian national anthem in Hindi, bringing tears to Anjali’s eyes. While this may be an example of Bollywood’s tendency for drama and outlandishness, it is no less a richly meaningful scene that reinforces all of the arguments previously made. Her son has never been to his “homeland” and she was forcibly removed, so the ability to have this gesture of familiarity preformed for her by English-speaking “strangers” is incredibly moving. The role of English in Indian pop culture complicated, but it can largely be placed as a symbol for what is posh and desirable, but also for what is foreign. Its steady rise in frequency among youth and higher classes has largely been the reason behind its prevalence in media as these are the people who sway what’s in fashion (as we see in Poo’s popularity). English is the emerging language of Indian media (Sridhar 252) , and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham does an excellent job of illustrating the nuances of language competition and has greatly educated me on Indian cultural contexts related to language reception. The film and many others like it act as mirrors to LaDousa’s claim: Hindi is our ground, English is our sky.
Works Cited
Sridhar, S.N., Bolton, Kingsley, et al. “Indian English.” The Handbook of Asian Englishes, Wiley Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ, 2020, pp. 241–277.
Johar, Karan, director. Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham . Yash Raj Films, 2001, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS_Cs84jOEs. Accessed 19 Oct. 2023.
LaDousa, Chaise. “Chapter 1. On Mother and Other Tongues: Language Ideology, Inequality, and Contradiction .” Hindi Is Our Ground, English Is Our Sky: Education, Language, and Social Class in Contemporary India, Berghahn Books, New York, NY, 2016, pp. 36–68.
Si, Aung. “A diachronic investigation of Hindi–English code-switching, using Bollywood film scripts.” International Journal of Bilingualism, vol. 15, no. 4, 2011, pp. 388–407, https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006910379300.
Vaish, Viniti. "Chapter 2. Terrorism, Nationalism and Westernization: Code Switching and Identity in Bollywood". Educational Linguistics in Practice: Applying the Local Globally and the Global Locally, edited by Francis M. Hult and Kendall A. King, Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters, 2011, pp. 27-40. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847693549-006