Bombay boys and girls: The gender and sexual politics of transnationality in the new indian cinema in english

This article interrogates the transnational and cosmopolitan cinema in English emerging recently in India. Made by and for an English-speaking bourgeoisie, this new cinema, characterised by such films as Bombay Boys and Hyderabad Blues, frequently seeks to dissect critically the increasing presence of diaspora within the postcolonial nation-state in the moment of increasing globalisation processes. The essay discusses how South Asian diasporic cultural production has become central to bourgeois national and cosmopolitan transnational cultures and communities in India. It also explores the filmmakers' attempts to challenge the dominant Bollywood cinema's representation and narratives of diaspora through the films' aesthetics and content. Focusing on the film Bombay Boys, I examine the gendered and sexualised logics of transnationality that characterise these films. Finally, I argue that this cinema marks the increasing centrality of diaspora to the postcolonial nation due to the deterritorialisation of the state and other global processes.