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A specter is haunting Indian politics, the specter of cinema. To gain power, it seems that movie stars have nothing to lose except their makeup-and sometimes not even that. For years, the states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have been governed by film actors. In a land whose problems often appear insoluble, star-pols M.G. Ramachandran and N.T. Rama Rao (or M.G.R. and N.T.R., as they are known), and now Amitabh Bachchan, represent the kingdom of dreams, a vanguard of happy endings.
India not only leads the world in cinema production, but there is probably no country on earth where film is taken more seriously. Indian movies are culture, religion, and politics rolled into one.
In 1982, when Amitabh Bachchan suffered severe abdominal injuries shooting his latest epic, it was front-page news throughout the country, whipping the entire subcontinent into a frenzy. With distraught fans establishing a round-theclock vigil outside his hospital, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi canceled a foreign trip to visit the superstar's bedside. As half the nation prayed for his recovery morning and evening, Bachchan's doctors issued hourly bulletins on his condition, while newspapers ran detailed daily updates.
The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty aside, stars like Bachchan are India's only true national figures. Before her death, Indira might have played the Amitabh card, but he entered politics only after her assassination. Then, at Rajiv Gandhi's behest, Bachchan ran for Parliament in the Nehru family's home district. In December 1985, along with six other candidates from filmdom, he won a landslide victory. During his campaign in Allahabad, Bachchan dismissed his film life as make-believe. Once elected, however, he was no longer to be seen, having returned to Bombay to complete his film assignments. (Some constituents filed a missing persons report with the police, adding a twist to the designation MP. Meanwhile, militant fans formed associations to defend his reputation.)
What manner of films turn their stars into arbiters of a nation's destiny? For the vast majority of the 900-odd features made each year in India, the recipes hardly vary: dances and songs, cabarets and car chases, rape and mother-worship, fights and love scenes (inevitably played in the copious lap of nature), high-pitched melodrama with outrageous deus ex machina finales, thin storylines and sturdy actors connecting...