Review
Culture
Film & TV
10 min read

Beyond Bollywood: how Indian cinema depicts Christians

India’s film industry tackles the complexities of life, morality, harmony and violence, as experienced by its Christian community. Indo-Christian Culture’s Sha reviews.
A man sits on the top of a building and looks out over the view of an Indian city as the sun sets.
Ashand Raju, the taxi driver in Ave Maria, contemplates.
Eka Cinemas.

Introduction

For many people, Christianity and India appear as two distinct identities with Christianity being as foreign to India as India is to Christianity. They are surprised to learn that Indigenous Christians have maintained a continual existence in India since the time of the Apostles. And that, for centuries, Christianity has played a tremendous, yet underrecognized role, in shaping India’s artistic and intellectual history.  

Examples of this include the vast collection of Christian artworks, produced by Hindu and Muslim court artists, of the Mughal Empire.  And the synthesis of Christian social teaching and Gandhi’s political and philosophical views into a field now known as Gandhian economics, initially developed by the Indian-Christian, J.C. Kumarappa, who was an economist an activist for Indian independence.  

This centuries old interaction between Christianity and broader Indian society continues into the present day with Indian cinema being a major arena for this. Despite its enormity and tremendous success across the Global South the attitude of many Westerners towards Indian movies lies somewhere between apathy and condescension. With the industry often erroneously perceived as a homogenous genre defined by three-hour run-times, over-the-top dance routines, syrupy dialogue, melodramatic acting, and campy fight scenes.  

These stereotypes mask the sheer diversity of Indian cinema which since its inception, more than a century ago, has sought to depict the diversity of India and explore a vast array of ideas, including Christian themes and ideals, through creative storytelling. In many cases these films defy clear cut genres. We typically imagine a Christian film as possessing an explicitly religious message which it aims to impart on an exclusively Christian audience. These films exist in India but coexist with a parallel stream of movies featuring authentically Christian characters and themes targeting a primarily non-Christian audience where the aim is to illustrate Christian ideals to an unfamiliar audience. This creates a sense of subtlety in the film’s messaging that can be hard to find in many Western Christian films.  

The goal of this article is to introduce readers to the relatively unknown world of contemporary Indian Christian cinema by highlight five films which depict the lives of Indian Christians and explore the challenge of living by Christian ideals in a chaotic world where right and wrong are not so clear cut. For context, the term Indian cinema refers to all cinema produced in India and encompasses films made in over two dozen languages. Bollywood is a nickname given to India’s Hindi language film industry which coexists alongside several other competing linguistic industries. For example, the 2022 film RRR, which one Best Song for the musical number Naatu Naatu at the 2023 Oscars, is a Telugu language film. This makes it an Indian movie, but not a Bollywood movie. 

Kuttram Kadithal  

A woman in a classroom stares intensely at a person in front of us.
Radhika Prasidhha plays a teacher, who is haunted by her mistake.

Kuttram Kadithal is an independent Tamil language film which serves as a thought-provoking meditation on the complexities of morality, guilt and blame in an era where the public discourse is dominated by social media and 24/7 news cycles. Directed by Bramma, a newcomer director, and starring newcomer Radhika Prasidhha the film received significant film festival attention going on to receive several awards including the 2014 National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Tamil. 

Merlin, a schoolteacher, administers corporal punishment, a practice that remains relatively common and accepted in India, on a student with an undiagnosed health condition. Though the actual punishment itself, a single slap on the cheek, was relatively harmless it causes the child to fall into a coma. The incident quickly erupts into a full-on media circus with Merlin, being advised by her school’s administration, to go into hiding until the situation calms down.  

All the while, Merlin must come to terms with the range of emotions. Overcome by tremendous guilt and desperate for redemption she is also keen to avoid falling into the cross hairs of the media who have whipped up the incident with outrageously false allegations. It’s an interesting exploration of how people’s personal notions of right and wrong must be reconciled with society’s own judgement, regardless of how accurate or fair that assessment is. Merlin does feel remorse for her actions, but her assessment of the situation differs drastically from the sensationalist condemnations she was dealt from the media. Ultimately Merlin realizes that the path to forgiveness lies not with the media driven public perception of her by her own relationship with her victim and his grieving mother. 

Ave Maria

Looking through the windscreen of a taxi to see a man and a woman talking.
Road trip to Velankanni.

Ave Maria is a 2018 Malayalam language film, not to be confused with a 2015 Palestinian short film with the same name. Set in Velankanni, a famous Roman Catholic pilgrimage site in South India, which attracts millions of pilgrims annually the film, follows the unlikely friendship of two very different people.  

Maria Gomez, a young woman and devout Catholic from a well-off background, is now contemplating an abortion due to exceptional, and highly unique, circumstances. Believing it to be a sin, she decides to pre-emptively seek forgiveness and atone for the planned abortion by making a pilgrimage trip to the Catholic Shrines of Velankanni where she also plans to use her money to help transform the lives of a select few individuals in poverty or crisis. To do this, she enlists the help of Rex, a taxi driver and lapsed Christian, and the two set off to achieve Maria’s plan for atonement which goes disastrously and forces Maria to reevaluate her faith more closely.  

At its core the film is an exploration on whether you can offset the harm of one sin, as Maria believes abortion is a sin even though she intends to have one, by committing good deeds elsewhere? Theologians will likely have a lot to say on this topic but the movie is more interested in the perspective devout but theologically uninformed believer. Her objective is further complicated by the messy reality of life. In one instance, Maria makes a sizable donation to a charitable old age home in exchange for housing an elderly beggar who has spent years on the streets of Velankanni. She is dumbfounded when she discovers the elderly woman back on the streets a little while later. When questioned, the old lady apologetically confesses that after years on the streets she simply cannot adjust to the regimented life of the old age home. Maria is now unsure as to whether this development undoes her previous good deed. 

 Kunju Daivam  

A child astride a stopped bicycle stares to the side.
Adish Praveen plays Ouseppachan.

Kunju Daivam is a 2018 Malayalam language children’s film. The film begins with a young boy, named Ouseppachan, who believes his prayers to postpone a math exam by any means necessary led to the death of his beloved grandfather, whose demise gets him pulled out of class right before the math exam begins. Upset by this, the boy takes to reading Bible scripture which leads him down the path of trying to find a kidney donor for a terminally ill neighbor, something most would agree is beyond the capacity of a young child. Along the way he eventually learns to make peace with his previous conviction that he was responsible for his grandfather’s sudden demise.  

The film is an interesting exploration of the parable of the Good Samaritan, as understood by an innocent child. We all agree it’s good to help others, but society has also conditioned us to believe there are unspoken practical limits to helping others.  Ouseppachan encounters this time and again in his quest, which the adults in his life look upon with admiration that turns to irritation when he refuses to give up. In one scene a priest, losing patience with his antics, admonishes the boy’s fixation on finding a kidney donor and directs him to more age-appropriate concerns like doing well in school. Ultimately Ouseppachan’s childlike dedication, forces us to reconsider our own attitude towards charity and helping others. 

The Sky is Pink

Parents and teenagers with their arms around each other stand on a beach and stare out to sea.
The Chaudhary family at the heart of the film.

This 2019 Hindi language film retells the love story between a married couple from the perspective of their daughter who is living with terminal pulmonary fibrosis and a severe immunodeficiency. The film is based on the true story of Aisha Chaudhary (1996 – 2015), whose memoir My Little Epiphanies was released just one day before her death.  

The film is a depiction the struggles that families and children living with severe chronic illnesses and also a meditation on the inherent value of human life, even in the face of severe illness and hardship. These beliefs are most strongly held by Aisha’s mother, Aditi, whose conversion to Christianity allowed her to embrace the perspective that all human life is inherently valuable. This allows Aditi to come to terms with Aisha’s health issues and the death of a previous child who died shortly after birth. Aisha herself credits this belief as being the reason for her own existence. 

I was also personally impressed by the decision of director Shonali Bose to depict Aisha’s mother’s conversion to Christianity and how these Christian beliefs impacted her parenting and perspective on life. Religious conversions, particularly to Christianity, had always been a contentious topic in India and at the time of this movie’s release the issue had transformed into an all-out moral panic with conspiracy theories claiming foreign funded churches had converted hundreds of millions with the intent of fueling social discord and separatist violence. Bose isn’t Christian and The Sky is Pink was never intended to be a Christian film. Bose was likely aware that by including the Christian aspect of this true story in her film she was opening herself up to the possibility of public outrage, boycotts and even political censorship, which have all grown increasingly common since India’s post-2010 majoritarian turn. Despite these risks, she opted to incorporate Aditi’s Christian beliefs into the film which aside from ensuring the film’s authenticity introduced many non-Christian viewers to an alternative perspective on Christian conversion. 

Kaya Taran 

A standing nun points towards a seated mother and child.
Neelamari and Neeta Mahendra play the mother and son.

Explorations of religious violence and interreligious harmony are nothing new to Indian cinema. Even Western films set in India, like the 2008 British blockbuster, Slumdog Millionaire, feature depictions of the brutal violence that interreligious riots periodically unleash 1992. But the majority of these films tend to focus solely on the experiences of Hindus and Muslims during these riots.  

The 2004 Hindi language film Kaya Taran takes an alternative approach. Set in a Catholic convent during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots which led to the deaths of hundreds of innocent Sikhs at the hands of rioters seeking revenge over the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. It follows the lives of a group of nuns who offer shelter to a Sikh woman and her eight year old son seeking refuge from the riots and killings outside.  

The film explores the growing relationship between the Sikh mother, her son Jaggi, and the nuns who especially grow to adore Jaggi and the shared sense of vulnerability they all face as religious minorities in a country where discriminatory violence is a very real threat. This is especially true for those who wear outward identifiers of their faith. For the nuns, it’s their religious habits, and for Jaggi it’s his long uncut hair and turban which the nuns initially cut to conceal his Sikh identity. The film concludes with a nun helping the young boy retie his turban, the boy no longer willing to hide his religious identity in the face of majoritarian intimidation and discrimination. His convictions serve as an inspiration for the viewers, many of whom have never experienced a situation where we were made to choose between our religious beliefs and our personal safety. 

Conclusion

In this article we explored five Indian movies and their engagement with Christian themes. However, I should also mention that not all Indian cinema’s depictions of Indian Christians have been positive ones. For example, the long-standing trend of depicting Indian Christian women as hypersexual hedonists, whose behaviour is usually contrasted negatively against a more virtuous Hindu woman.  

There is also the tendency to reverse exoticize Indian Christian society as White people in brown bodies for an audience that has had little personal contact with Indian Christians and tends to view the religion as a foreign import. One trope is to have Indian Christian characters speaking Indian languages in an inexplicably foreign sounding accents despite having grown up entirely within India. 

The Indian audience is unique for its willingness to watch movies that present deeply spiritual messages from faith traditions which they themselves do not adhere to. 

But, in an era where the Indian Christian community finds itself increasingly maligned in the public discourse, movies like the ones discussed above can play an important role in helping to present an alternative narrative. One rooted in the authentic, diverse experiences of Indian Christians themselves. The Indian audience is unique for its willingness to watch movies that present deeply spiritual messages from faith traditions which they themselves do not adhere too. A quirk which speaks to the inherently multicultural nature of Indian society where which has always consisted of diverse communities living side-by-side one another. 

Article
Books
Culture
Morality
Sin
7 min read

After the Salt Path revelations I’m liking it even more

We edit our own reality by the stories we tell ourselves

Roger is a Baptist minister, author and Senior Research Fellow at Spurgeon’s College in London. 

A newspaper front page shows its title and a falling sea bird
How The Observer broke the story.

The Observer held nothing back in its exposé headline:

“The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were spun from lies, deceit and desperation”

The truth behind the summer’s feel-good movie and the reputation of author Raynor Winn lie in tatters, shredded by the revelations unearthed by relentless investigative journalism.

The uplifting story of how a couple face financial ruin, homelessness and a terminal illness by walking the South West Coast Path has been an inspiration for many who’ve either read the book or seen the film, or both. The story works because it reflects back to us the life we know, the lives we live. And when you add the seaside of Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Dorset, what’s not to love?

But now it needs to be seen in an altogether different light.

The article beneath the headline was thoroughly researched, carefully constructed and uncompromising in the allegations implied by the discoveries, observations and commentary of its narrative.

“… not her real name”

“… she was a thief … embezzled the money”

“… arrested and interviewed by the police”

“… five county court judgements”

“… they owned land in France”

“… nine neurologists … were sceptical”

Point by point the back story of the Salt Path is pulled apart.

First, Raynor and Moth Winn are not the “real”, “legal” names of Sally and Tim Walker.

Second, The Observer uncovered that the couple had money troubles for reasons other than the failed business investment they had claimed. Rather, as a part-time bookkeeper for an estate agent and property surveyor, Sally was accused of syphoning off £64,000 from the company’s accounts. Concerning which, it was reported that she was arrested and interviewed by the police.

Third, it was mounting debts from settling the matter with her former employer, alongside other debts, that actually led to the repossession of their home and their resulting homelessness. Not the failed business venture.

Fourth, they weren’t actually homeless as they owned a property in France, near Bordeaux. While it was in a state of disrepair and not habitable, they had previously stayed on site in a caravan.

And then finally, in a revelation that undermined the very heart of the story of their journey together, medical experts observed that it was extremely doubtful that Moth had suffered from corticobasal degeneration (CBD) for 18 years. The journalist had consulted nine neurologists, and this was the reported consensus. Not only were Moth’s presenting symptoms not what were expected, the normal life expectancy with the condition was tragically short at six to eight years.

Pulling the various strands of its investigation together The Observer thumps the tub about the importance of ‘truth’. It is not acceptable to be mis-sold an idea of truth where important passages of the book are invented. There are both “… sins of omission and commission”:

“The story, no doubt, has elements of truth, but it also misrepresents who they were, how they started out on their journey and the financial circumstances that provided the backdrop.”

However, life is complicated and there are always two sides to a story.

In a response posted to her website Raynor Winn answers each of the accusations in turn. Amid the storm of vitriol and threat unleashed online by the article, she protests that, “… [it] is grotesquely unfair, highly misleading and seeks to systematically pick apart my life.”

Most distressing has been how Moth has been traumatised by the suggestion his diagnosis was made up. Along with her online statement Winn has posted appropriately redacted letters from the neurologists treating Moth that confirm his diagnosis and the narrative of the book.

As for the charges of embezzlement, she does concede that there were difficulties with a former employer. Allegations were made to the police, and she was questioned about them. However, no charges were brought, and a settlement was reached that included her paying back money on a “non-admissions basis”.

“Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret, and I am truly sorry.” Raynor Winn

This, however, was not the failed business deal that lay behind their financial difficulties and which triggered their homelessness and the Salt Path story.

Winn reports that the property in France is an “uninhabitable ruin in a bramble patch” with its own, unrelated, back story. When they did explore selling it at the height of their difficulties, a local French agent valued it as virtually worthless and saw marketing it as pointless.

Ultimately, they chose not to declare themselves bankrupt and simply wipe out their debts. Rather, they made an agreement with their creditors for minimal repayments. The success of the book has enabled all their debts to be cleared.

Which leaves the implicit accusation of not being who they said they were, of hiding behind pseudonyms and not owning their “real”, “legal” names. She explains that the reasons Sally Ann and Tim Walker are Raynor and Moth Winn is really quite straightforward.

In the early years of their relationship she told Moth how much she disliked being called Sally Ann and would have preferred the family name, Raynor. Moth called her Ray from that point on. Winn is her maiden name. As for Moth, well his name is Timothy, get it? Friends and family use the names interchangeably, Sal/Ray, Tim/Moth.

Having read the book and seen the film earlier this summer I was particularly taken with The Salt Path. The humanity of their story, the journey they’d been on and the insights to a life well-lived that it offered.

Goodness, which one of us has never made a mistake, a bad call, or a wrong choice, “through weakness, through ignorance or through our own deliberate fault”?

When The Observer’s bombshell broke my heart fell. Moral high horses were being mounted and outrage expressed. Raynor Winn was being cancelled, literally cancelled.

She pulled out of her forthcoming Saltlines tour, which would have seen her perform readings from her books alongside the music of the Gigspanner Big Band during a string of UK dates. There were also calls for Penguin to cancel her next book, On Winter Hill, set for publication in October.

But do you know what? On reflection, after the revelations about the Salt Path story I’m liking it even more. And for exactly the same reasons I liked it before. Because it reflects back to us the life we know, the lives we live.

For a start, life is messy. Sometimes it’s even murky, full of misunderstanding, misinterpretation and constructed narratives. Goodness, which one of us has never made a mistake, a bad call, or a wrong choice, “through weakness, through ignorance or through our own deliberate fault”? Skeletons and cupboards come to mind.

Then, on the back of that, we all fashion the story of our lives. Whether it’s curating our online presence with the images we post to social media, or the anecdotes we share and the face we present to those who are part of our day-to-day lives. The pull is always towards a version that shows us in the best light.

In fact, it can even go right down to the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves. The interpretation of what has happened to us and why. Interpreting how much of our experience is down to what has been done to us or is the fruit of our own responsibility.

Now, I may not want to go as far as University of Sussex Professor of Neuroscience, Anil Seth, whose books, articles and Ted Talks see us living in a kind of ‘controlled hallucination’. An interpreted version of reality constructed and calibrated by our brains out of our experience. But there is no doubt in my mind that we edit our own version of reality by the stories we tell ourselves and each other.

This is how things are. This is what it means to be human. Some bits are edited in, others edited out. Some experiences we can interpret in one way, while others might view them very differently from where they stand.

When we feel the temptation to write someone off because of what they’ve done we do well to reflect on our own experience. Then we may well be grateful that we haven’t been cancelled because of our past indiscretions.  As the old saying goes, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

I’m reminded of how Jesus handled himself is such circumstances. When a self-righteous crowd were swiftly wanting to rush to judgement on a woman’s flawed sexual choices, Jesus encouraged those who were without fault to be the first to act. Slowly they all realised what he was saying and backeddown.

For myself, I have always found the prayer of confession to be profoundly helpful. It keeps us grounded in the reality of our own experience and should caution us about cancelling others and writing them off.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father,

we have sinned against you

and against our neighbour

in thought and word and deed,

through negligence, through weakness,

through our own deliberate fault.

We are truly sorry

and repent of all our sins.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,

who died for us,

forgive us all that is past

and grant that we may serve you in newness of life

to the glory of your name.

Amen.

For our skeletons there is forgiveness.

For what lies ahead, we have the possibilities of starting over.

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