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Films hold our fascination and are the flights of our immense imagination. Cinema can be termed as carriers of the folk elements of the nation of its origin. One cannot negate its presence and the deep impact that it has had on Indian society as well. India is the largest film producing country in the world producing about 900 films annually. Indian films, especially from the Mumbai-based industry called Bollywood, have a worldwide audience. Hindi films are seen as 鈥榗ollective fantasies鈥� since they have many features in common with fairy tales. Like fairy tales, Hindi films have the psychological function of producing a sense of security by upholding the picture of a world in which the family and dharma are safe and that there are parallels between Hindi film and certain popular myths (Gokulsing & Dissanayake: 1998: 44). One of the interesting observations made by Ashis Nandy, which has been mentioned in an essay by Shyam Benegal states about the duality of self (Benegal: 2010: 23). According to Nandy, human beings have a dual self which are鈥攖he rational self and the secret self. The rational self is modern, while the secret self is traditional. It is that secret self which gets reflected in contemporary Indian literature and films. He suggests that the secret self represents deep-seated traditional attitudes that appear as sub-texts in contemporary works. Through its combination of tradition and familiarity with the modern and the national, Indian cinema presents what Ashish Rajadhyaksha (1987) calls 鈥榥eo-traditionalism鈥� (Dwyer:2007:1). This neo-traditionalism deserves to be analyzed in regard to Indian cinema with an interdisciplinary approach.

It is possible to speak of not one India but many Indias. The India which is portrayed in the early Indian films is quite different from the country described in the accounts of the British travelers, missionaries, novelists and administrators. Then there is another India cinematized by the Western filmmakers. However all these Indias are very different from the one being depicted by filmmakers who are rooted in the soil and acclimatized with the folklife. Hence Indian cinema allows us to study the country contrastively from a different and distinct angle of vision (Gokulsing & Dissanayake: 1998: 9).

Regional film industries have freed the art of cinema in India from the homogenization, both in narrative and structuring, particularly in the Hindi films produced in Mumbai. Films made in regional languages have also represented the variety of people and cultures in India with their richly diverse modes of living, their legends, stories, clothes, climate, music and dance. With such large-scale impact of folklore and tradition on Indian cinema, it should have been an area much explored. However studies in this direction are very few in number. Against this backdrop, the researcher aims to analyse the selected sample of films and believes that this kind of study with the perspective of folklore can not only throw deeper insights into the medium but also open new lines of thinking.

Limitations of the Study

The array of folklore is so vast that encompassing a large number of films to study those through a folkloric perspective, taking into consideration all the elements and genres of folklore would be a herculean task. Hence keeping in view the limited number of literature that was available to the researcher and the time frame as well, it was decided to carry out the study upon a regulated sample size. Therefore in order to make the study fruitful, a sample size of eight films, made by a prominent filmmaker from Assam Dr. Bhabendra Nath Saikia, has been considered for the study.