Rajesh James is an independent documentary filmmaker and an Assistant Professor of English at Sacred Heart College, Kochi, India. His major documentary films include In Thunder, Lightning and Rain (2019) Naked Wheels (2017) and Zebra Lines (2014). Shaped by the conventions of cinema verite and ethnography, his key thematic concerns are gender, caste and, subalternity as refracted through the prism of labour. He was awarded Riyad Wadia Award for the Best Emerging Filmmaker, India in 2017. Sathyaraj Venkatesan is Professor of English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India. He is the author of nine books and over hundred research publications that span African American literature, health humanities, graphic medicine, film studies, and other literary and cultural studies disciplines. He is most recently co-editor of Pandemics and Epidemics in Cultural Representation (Singapore: Springer, 2022).

• AcknowledgementsForewordAparna Sharma, University of California, Los Angeles, USAIntroductionRajesh James and Sathyaraj Venkatesan Decoding Ideology: Nationalism, Communalism and Its CritiquesAnand PatwardhanTapan BoseAmar KanwarRakesh SharmaGopal MenonNakul Singh SawhneyKasturi BasuThe Subversive Eye: Gender and Sexual IdentitiesDeepa DhanrajMadhusree DuttaSaba DewanParomita VohraRahul RoySurabhi SharmaNishtha JainSridhar RangayanRadical Inequality: Casting the CasteAmudhan R.P. Divya Bharathi“Be True to the Earth”: Mapping the Post-Natural India Sanjay KakMeghnathShriprakashBiju ToppoThinking through Regions: Nation and its DiscontentsIffat FatimaR.V. RamaniPankaj Rishi KumarAnjali Monteiro/K.P. JayasankarHaobam Paban KumarBilal A. JanStanzin Dorjai GyaRaja Shabir KhanMukul HaloiReading ListIndex

India Retold more than lives up to its title. The interviews with thirty politically committed independent filmmakers tell the inspiring history of an alternative filmmaking practice, detached from institutional funding and benefitting, over the years, from increasingly de-professionalised technologies. The films discussed cover a disturbing and equally alternative history of India, stretching from the 1970s’ Emergency years to 2020. The filmmakers’ stories make fascinating and compelling reading.

Rajesh James is an independent documentary filmmaker and an Assistant Professor of English at Sacred Heart College, Kochi, India. His major documentary films include In Thunder, Lightning and Rain (2019) Naked Wheels (2017) and Zebra Lines (2014). Shaped by the conventions of cinema verite and ethnography, his key thematic concerns are gender, caste and, subalternity as refracted through the prism of labour. He was awarded Riyad Wadia Award for the Best Emerging Filmmaker, India in 2017. Sathyaraj Venkatesan is Professor of English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India. He is the author of nine books and over hundred research publications that span African American literature, health humanities, graphic medicine, film studies, and other literary and cultural studies disciplines. He is most recently co-editor of Pandemics and Epidemics in Cultural Representation (Singapore: Springer, 2022).

• AcknowledgementsForewordAparna Sharma, University of California, Los Angeles, USAIntroductionRajesh James and Sathyaraj Venkatesan Decoding Ideology: Nationalism, Communalism and Its CritiquesAnand PatwardhanTapan BoseAmar KanwarRakesh SharmaGopal MenonNakul Singh SawhneyKasturi BasuThe Subversive Eye: Gender and Sexual IdentitiesDeepa DhanrajMadhusree DuttaSaba DewanParomita VohraRahul RoySurabhi SharmaNishtha JainSridhar RangayanRadical Inequality: Casting the CasteAmudhan R.P. Divya Bharathi“Be True to the Earth”: Mapping the Post-Natural India Sanjay KakMeghnathShriprakashBiju ToppoThinking through Regions: Nation and its DiscontentsIffat FatimaR.V. RamaniPankaj Rishi KumarAnjali Monteiro/K.P. JayasankarHaobam Paban KumarBilal A. JanStanzin Dorjai GyaRaja Shabir KhanMukul HaloiReading ListIndex

India Retold more than lives up to its title. The interviews with thirty politically committed independent filmmakers tell the inspiring history of an alternative filmmaking practice, detached from institutional funding and benefitting, over the years, from increasingly de-professionalised technologies. The films discussed cover a disturbing and equally alternative history of India, stretching from the 1970s’ Emergency years to 2020. The filmmakers’ stories make fascinating and compelling reading.

Rajesh James is an independent documentary filmmaker and an Assistant Professor of English at Sacred Heart College, Kochi, India. His major documentary films include In Thunder, Lightning and Rain (2019) Naked Wheels (2017) and Zebra Lines (2014). Shaped by the conventions of cinema verite and ethnography, his key thematic concerns are gender, caste and, subalternity as refracted through the prism of labour. He was awarded Riyad Wadia Award for the Best Emerging Filmmaker, India in 2017. Sathyaraj Venkatesan is Professor of English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India. He is the author of nine books and over hundred research publications that span African American literature, health humanities, graphic medicine, film studies, and other literary and cultural studies disciplines. He is most recently co-editor of Pandemics and Epidemics in Cultural Representation (Singapore: Springer, 2022).

• AcknowledgementsForewordAparna Sharma, University of California, Los Angeles, USAIntroductionRajesh James and Sathyaraj Venkatesan Decoding Ideology: Nationalism, Communalism and Its CritiquesAnand PatwardhanTapan BoseAmar KanwarRakesh SharmaGopal MenonNakul Singh SawhneyKasturi BasuThe Subversive Eye: Gender and Sexual IdentitiesDeepa DhanrajMadhusree DuttaSaba DewanParomita VohraRahul RoySurabhi SharmaNishtha JainSridhar RangayanRadical Inequality: Casting the CasteAmudhan R.P. Divya Bharathi“Be True to the Earth”: Mapping the Post-Natural India Sanjay KakMeghnathShriprakashBiju ToppoThinking through Regions: Nation and its DiscontentsIffat FatimaR.V. RamaniPankaj Rishi KumarAnjali Monteiro/K.P. JayasankarHaobam Paban KumarBilal A. JanStanzin Dorjai GyaRaja Shabir KhanMukul HaloiReading ListIndex

India Retold more than lives up to its title. The interviews with thirty politically committed independent filmmakers tell the inspiring history of an alternative filmmaking practice, detached from institutional funding and benefitting, over the years, from increasingly de-professionalised technologies. The films discussed cover a disturbing and equally alternative history of India, stretching from the 1970s’ Emergency years to 2020. The filmmakers’ stories make fascinating and compelling reading.