Cultural Appropriation

 If humanity is a shared experience, then is there any true cultural appropriation? The only objection I can see is the appropriation, which denigrates the originating party, which subsumes their humanity.

This I think of as good cultural appropriation: The British Bard and Bollywood by Aayushi Agarwal.

British influence on Indian art began with the building of the Calcutta Theater in present-day Kolkata around 1775. Shakespearean plays were performed in racially segregated theaters across the city. As British rule in India got stronger, attempts to “civilize” the “barbaric” native Indian population were made by sharing Western thoughts and ideas. 

Over the next few decades, the Indian elite were gradually granted permission to become part of the theater audiences. With this newfound accessibility to the plays, local students began to stage Shakespearean works. However, these only began to take root in Indian art after they were “Indianized.”

With theater came drama and with drama came film. One of the first talkies was a Hindi version of The Merchant of Venice, Savkari Pash in 1925. Some of Bollywood’s most popular adaptations of his plays include Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988), Maqbool (2003) and Omkara (2006). Other than retellings, a lot of themes and devices Shakespeare used, like the mousetrap device, have also been commonplace in Indian cinema.

However, only a fraction of these films gave explicit credit to the bard, indicating just how thoroughly his influence has permeated Indian narrative forms of art. The British had exported his work to India in hopes of creating a universal Shakespeare through which they could strengthen their colonial power, but this exact universality is what betrayed them. In their attempt to showcase their culture as superior and exclusive, they in fact shone a light on its plausible inclusivity.

While in prison, I became acquainted with Bollywood thanks to the inmates running the chapel's video library. I came to like them very much, even if I think the ones pushed my way were a bit subversive. of the Shakespearean Bollywood movies mentioned din the essay above, I was disappointed not to see Haider.  Think of it as Hamlet transferred to the Kashmir with a devastating plot change. Brilliant.

Whatever joins us in bettering the moral and spiritual aspects of humanity, whatever improves our empathy for others, is an appropriation that needs lauding.

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