Between Text and Screen: The Hindi Film Industry’s Engagement with English Novels

Abstract

This paper examines the dynamic process through which the Hindi film industry adapts English literary classics, moving beyond direct translation to culturally rooted transcreation. It investigates how and why English novels—particularly from the British canon—resonate with Indian filmmakers and audiences, and what specific strategies are employed to localize these narratives within Indian socio-political and aesthetic contexts. Key research questions include: What historical and cultural factors drive the appeal of English classics in Hindi cinema? How do filmmakers navigate the space between fidelity ("adaptation") and transformative reinterpretation ("transcreation")? What role do shifting Indian contexts of gender, class, identity, and politics play in reshaping these narratives? The analysis reveals that the enduring appeal stems from India's colonial education legacy, which embedded these texts in the elite consciousness, coupled with their exploration of universal themes (love, ambition, betrayal) that echo Indian social narratives. Filmmakers like Vishal Bhardwaj (Maqbool/Macbeth, Omkara/Othello, Haider/Hamlet) and others (Aisha/Emma , Lootera /The Last Leaf) employ transcreation, radically relocating settings (e.g., Scottish highlands to Mumbai underworld, Venice to UP badlands, Denmark to Kashmir), replacing core conflicts (racial tension with caste politics), and infusing local aesthetics, language, and music to make the stories resonate deeply with contemporary Indian realities. It leads to the transformation of English archetypes into the Indian prisms of gender expectations, feudal dissolution, postcolonial trauma, and regional identity and proves that Hindi cinema relates to these classics not as a source material, but as an equal partner in a cross-cultural conversation, constructing a story that is simultaneously global and unmistakably Indian. The future indicates the direction of additional hybridization through the digital platform and modern reinterpretation.