Phir bhi dil hai Hindustani (Yet the heart remains Indian): Bollywood, the ‘homeland’ nation-state, and the diaspora

Hindi cinema offers a means of examining the evolving geographies of the multisited, multi-national Indian diaspora and its relationship to the ‘homeland’. The paper seeks to elaborate an understanding of Bollywood’s visibility in the new diaspora as a response to political, economic, and technological transformations that have taken place in India. It maps these shifts and the reconfigured relationship between the Indian diaspora in the UK and its imagined ‘homeland’: the relationship between territory, location, and identity. The paper considers how women’s bodies are deeply implicated in—indeed, essential to—the negotiation of these shifts.