Mumbai, a sprawling metropolis of over 13 million and the worlds fifth most populace urban area, is often termed as the New York of India. However it is another American metropolis that is most oft associated with Mumbai. The fact that Mumbai plays host to India’s Hindi film and television industry helped coin it the nickname of Bollywood which is a colloquial term that it sniped for itself from the city of Los Angeles and its most infamous Hollywood district and the centre of American film industry.

Bollywood pumps out a whopping thousand motion pictures each year to an audience of over 14 million each day making it the largest in the world. Since the partition of India, Mumbai has gained hegemony over the Indian film industry save only a minor rival in southern India and that too in the regional language of Tamil. Lahore that conceded to the Pakistani side gained sole control over Pakistan’s film industry leaving Mumbai without a rival on the opposite side of the border. Over the years Bollywood has become synonymous with the term masala films deemed so for the fact that Bollywood films contain highly ambrosial quality to them. Their quality of being vastly stylized with a distinct aspect of glamour, ostentatious dance sequences and sensational dialogue delivery give them a certain air of escapism.

Recently though, Bollywood movies have taken on a new life and some renowned and well-established Indian film makers have dared to set foot on rather shallow waters with films such as Ram Gopal Varma’s Sarkar - and his self professed tribute to the Francis Ford Coppala masterpiece The Godfather - and Rakesh Roshan’s Koi... Mil Gaya - a remake of the American Cult Classic, E.T. - among hosts of others dictates a trend of Indian films taking inspiration from their American counterparts.

Apart from Indian films taking entire screenplays from American films, there has also been a trend of Indian films taking themes, characters and ideas from Hollywood that has suddenly brought them Hollywood’s attention. First on the Indian bandwagon being GQ with their report on Hrithik Roshan as “the most famous person you have never heard of” in their march 2002 issue followed closely by the craze surrounding Aishwarya Rai after Julia Roberts boasting her as the most beautiful woman in the world .

To say that anything that Bollywood has done can be classified as stealing is to an extent a matter of opinion but to a larger extent as blind sightedness. It is the objective of this paper to show that to show that the Indian film industry is merely adapting to the current trend in world in a variety of aspects and to call it stealing would be an example of reactionary fundamentalism. On a sociological basis, the trend can be classified as global interactive forces bringing cultural homogenization to the people of the world. That is to say that as cultural interaction among people increases, their choices change in regard to their interactions. It outlines how the global hegemon and its use of that relationship allows for the world to adapt in essence to the changes that occur within the hegemon and the world aligns itself to those changes.

On an economic level it is just the movement of a capitalist industry like any other to understand the higher gross earnings prospected to lie in the change. For example any reader of Business Week online will be able to identify that though Hollywood made only three quarters the number of movies that Bollywood made and sold tickets to approximately the same ratio. It grossed nearly forty times more than its Indian counterpart and therefore outlines clearly that the American film industry is doing something right and this is only an effort to cash in on the appeal of American movies .

And is it really true across the board that they have been stolen? First of all, Indian copies of American films often have interesting deviations from the American plots, generally in a conservative, pro-family direction, something that was especially marked in Murder, the adaptation of Adrian Lyne’s Unfaithful, but which can also be seen in loose adaptations like Salaam Namaste. And one suspects the more conservative ending of Murder had more to do with the censor board than with the vision of the director. For some the recent trend of Bollywood movies and the amount of unnecessary violence and overt sexual innuendos are cause for concern because of the transplantation of western ideas. This argument begins with the comments made by the Film Federation of India, a regulatory body that presides over film content. Their complaints were that the films made in Bollywood were too westernized and that they are degrading and diminishing India’s true cultural identity.

Isn’t it that these films are being made signify that a demand has been developed? What does it say when the number one protector of "Indian values" in Bollywood cinema is actually an obsolete and repressive institution like the censor board? Does it not point to the act that Indian films have out-grown the occasional wet-sari fantasy and as their exposure to concepts from other parts of the world increase so do their choices mature away from the need of a defender and require open expression and a far more liberal movie-going experience. And even still such efforts to indianize the movies dictate a trend that themes have rather inspired Hindi remakes than the screenplay being flagrantly stolen and reproduced in another language and the script being bamboozled.

Analogously, isn’t it true that B-grade Bollywood movies (which dominate the industry) have always taken intellectual inspiration from foreign films? And at the opposite side of the same coin, haven’t more serious efforts, such as Pakeezah (then) or Parineeta (now) existed for as long as the industry has been though they have been few and far between.

This trend however has not been one sided as American film-makers have started to catch hint of the brush-fire that is masala films spreading throughout the worldwide film market and have resultantly widened the spectrum of movies being made . Traditionally Hollywood movies had been such with directorial emphasis on substance and Bollywood movies had an artful and humanist feel to them. But recent efforts such as 21 grams and Mystic River have shown a different side of movie making with their emphasis on the human condition and relational dynamics. Also many film critics cite the creation and success of movies like Chicago and Moulin Rouge and the re-birth of American musicals as being undoubtedly affected to a certain extent by the mass acceptance and patronage that Bollywood movies have started to gain among American movie going audience .

It appears that these samples of Bollywood’s flavor are going down well in the United States. But thus far, these tastes have been visual or directorial - and not musical. Thus, the success of a film such as Monsoon Wedding is yet another advance perfect. Director Mira Nair’s film not only adopts the stylistic strategies of Bollywood films, but it gives its audience a taste of the Indian music as well. The soundtrack to Monsoon Wedding includes a variety of music from India and its environs - including a passionate and soulful anthem from the Pakistani master Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and updated and remixed dance versions of traditional Punjabi love songs.

While the Indian movie business has experienced films like Mangal Pandey which by any criterion seems a great deal like any big budget Hollywood studio movie while maintaining complete autonomy, others can be seen as being typical Bollywood like Bunty aur Bubbly while being clearly adapted from Hollywood classics like Bonnie and Clyde. Yet another example of themes being adapted from American to Indian cinemas is the recent sensation Krrish taking essence and characters from movies like Spiderman and Superman. And as Hollywood latches on to the escapist aesthetic of Bollywood, Bollywood is attempting to turn out sophisticated fare. The success of films like Lagaan (nominated for an Oscar in 2002) has spurred mass interest in the Indian film industry to try their luck elsewhere.

Whereas Hollywood has received mass acclaim for their more soulful works and many critics cite it as making movie-going a more personal experience. Bollywood however has faced a lot of bad press from traditional movie critics and patrons as being westoxicated. Although authors like the globalist Iriye Akira stresses that cultural interaction shares a commitment towards mutual understanding and so the flow of film-making philosophies between the woods others like Kuldip Rampal find it to be serving the interests of cultural imperialism .

Further argument to acquit the Indian film industry of any blame can be seen in the ambitions of one Indian actor, A Mr. Aamir Khan whose Oscar nominated work “Lagaan’s success may make it the Indian equivalent of Star Wars” , but for Mr. Khan, it is only a stepping stone towards a gradual re-ordering of the world film industry out of Hollywood and into the western province of Maharashtra. He wants to change the way that Bollywood works and challenge the perception abroad that it is a low-tech film industry which only produces cheap films. He, at the same time wants to maintain his movies Indian-ness and work from the inside out.

Furthermore, Bollywood movies taking inspiration from Hollywood movies can also be debated to be no more different from adapting a book, or a comic, or a play and adapting it into a screenplay for a movie. Critics are too quick to pass judgment on Indian movies and refer to them as stolen and cheated. While at the same time, we deem it appropriate for Hollywood studios to re-make their old movies and come up with prequels and sequels to an already profitable franchise. Who died and made them king? Can’t that to the same extent be classified as milking every drop out of a cash cow as much as any Bollywood producer adapting the screenplay of an American film? Is it somehow acceptable to do every form of screenplay arbitrage as long is not international?

We realize that Hollywood is not a philanthropic industry and is based on profiteering from story-telling. Why is that when it comes to the Indian film industry, that this position is so indefensible? In that case, what film is truly not having a stolen idea? Shindler’s list stole the idea of the holocaust to sell tickets. Francis Coppala pinched the idea off of a Mario Puzo’s best-selling book to make his movie. The concept of Mission Impossible is taken from the CIA. The list is endless, for we do not live in isolation in this world and every decision that is made is influenced by changes the world round and in turn our actions are felt the world over. This is truly globalization, a complex network of relationships and associations feeding into each other and taking inspiration from actions all round the world .