1. „„I NEED AN INDIAN
TOUCH‟‟
• Glocalization and Bollywood Films
by Shakuntala Rao

2. OBJECTIVE
 Researcher and writer Shakuntala Rao studied the responsiveness of the
Indian population to the Westernization of Indian movies, culture, clothing
and language in the article ‘‘I Need an Indian Touch’’: Glocalization and Bollywood
Films (2010). This article examines and presents evidence of glocalization
(global and local fusions) in Indian “Bollywood” films (made in Mumbai). The
emphasis is on “the influence of global … trends on the look of traditional
Indian clothes” language, music and lifestyles (Rao, 2010, p. 8) in the Indian
movie industry which has been influenced by Hollywood.

3. METHOD & PROCESS
Rao conducted the research during “seven months of fieldwork, which I
conducted in the state of Punjab in Northern India in 2005 and 2006. I
documented 49 formal and informal interviews with young men and women,
between the ages of 22 and 39 years. Most subjects were students at Punjabi
University and their family members” (p.5). The interviewees were self
described as “moderate viewers of films” (p. 5).

4. GLOCALIZE ME
 “A recognition that when ideas, objects, institutions, images,
practices, and performances, are transplanted to other places, they
both bear the marks of history as well as undergo a process of
cultural translation” ( p. 5). Glocalization is the combination of
global influences on (Indian) local tradition, custom, language,
clothing, and changing the local experience by blending in a
Westernized lifestyle and approach.

5. TORN BETWEEN TWO VALUES
 The majority of Indians have welcomed the Western influences of a
“consumerist lifestyle” and a growing Indian middle class (p.3). The
Westernized anxiety for Indians is the conflict between the desire for wealth,
market-driven consumerism and affluence with the traditional or modest
Hindu (religious) values. Do you feel this conflict is universal in the world
today, the conflict of consumerist and religious values, has the Western culture
lost economic conservative values?

6. HINGLISH
 Hinglish is a blend of two languages: Hindi and English. “Hinglish is
steadily gaining acceptance among the urban youth across the country ‟‟ (p. 11).
 Indian music in movies and media “used to be classical and slow” yet has
seen “changes in the types of music given an increasing influence of global
musical trends such as Salsa, Pop, and Hip Hop” (p. 11). An interviewee said
“Gone are the days of songs with one sitar and one tabla. Now they have
synthesizers, voice modulators, and other instruments to add beat and rhythm
to the song” (p 12).

7. MATERIAL WORLD
 The “economic liberation of India in the 1990s” (p. 3) brought in Western
media, trends, “increasingly consumerist lifestyle of India‟s elites and wealthy
Indians living in the West has led to frequent depiction in films of hugely
extravagant interiors, lavish jewelry, designer clothes, shopping at malls, eating
and drinking out at clubs and bars…” (p. 3).
 Sao reports that “films increasingly began to depict India‟s shifting
relationship with the world economy” (p. 3) which has changed the cultural
norm in India to a cultural hybrid between Hindu values and Western living.

8. I SECOND THAT EMOTION
Indians feel that Hollywood films are “dry …lacking emotion” (Sao, p. 14). They
value familial “emotional connection” in films and “experience their true identity
which is social and emotional (Indian culture) rather than individual and rational
(Western cultures)” (p. 14). Bollywood films depict “Western Anglo women as
primarily immoral, sexually accessible to the Indian male…as embodiments of
unbridled sexuality” (p. 13). The Anglo dancers “can be sexy but the Indian
heroines and heroes have to maintain the decorum of modesty and tradition”
(p.12). How has Hollywood marginalized other cultures in a similar way Indians
depict Anglo women?

9. FROM VIRTUOUS TO VAMP
The Westernization of Indian Dress
Traditional salwar kameez Modern salwar kameez

10. REFRENCES
 Martin, J. & T Nakayama. (2010). Intercultural Communication In
Contexts. New York: McGraw-Hill.
 Rao. S. (2010). “„I Need an Indian Touch‟‟: Glocalization and
Bollywood Film. Journal of International and Intercultural
Communication Vol. 3 (No. 1), pp 1-19.