Beyond the Nation and the Diaspora

The MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region has long been a site of Hindi film consumption and circulation, with Dubai emerging in recent years as a potent hub for Bollywood’s overseas distribution and marketing. Though the role of the “Gulf” in articulating immigrant experiences and regional identity among Malayali Indians is well documented (Radhakrishnan 2009), Hindi cinema’s popularity in the region has rarely received any scholarly attention. In the past decade, UAE has witnessed the launch of three cable and satellite television channels—Zee Aflam (2009), Zee Alwan (2012) and MBC Bollywood (2013)—with dedicated Bollywood content, much of which is dubbed in Arabic and targeted primarily at the local Emirati audience. This paper examines the consumption and dissemination of this dubbed Indian content, which includes Bollywood films as well as Hindi television series, among the Arabic-speaking audience. As I argue, the current popularity of “Bollywood in Arabic” can be historicized and traced back to popular Hindi cinema’s consumption in the Gulf during the sixties and seventies, particularly among the local Emirati audience. In doing so, I not only extend the scope of Hindi film scholarship beyond the hegemonic parameters of the nation and its citizens, but also, interrogate the role of Dubai and the “Gulf” as a cultural capital of transnational media economics.