History: social science

History (from Greek ἱστορία - historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation") is the discovery,
collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time
after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians. It is a field of research which uses
a narrative to examine and analyse the sequence of events, and it sometimes attempts to investigate objectively the
patterns of cause and effect that determine events. Historians debate the nature of history and its usefulness. This
includes discussing the study of the discipline as an end in itself and as a way of providing "perspective" on the
problems of the present. The stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as
the legends surrounding King Arthur) are usually classified as cultural heritage rather than the "disinterested
investigation" needed by the discipline of history. Events of the past prior to written record are considered
prehistory.

Amongst scholars, the 5th-century BC Greek historian Herodotus is considered to be the "father of history", and,
along with his contemporary Thucydides, forms the foundations for the modern study of history. Their influence,
along with other historical traditions in other parts of their world, have spawned many different interpretations of the
nature of history which has evolved over the centuries and are continuing to change. The modern study of history
has many different fields including those that focus on certain regions and those which focus on certain topical or
thematical elements of historical investigation. Often history is taught as part of primary and secondary education,
and the academic study of history is a major discipline in University studies.

Historians write in the context of their own time, and with due regard to the current dominant ideas of how to
interpret the past, and sometimes write to provide lessons for their own society. In the words of Benedetto Croce,
"All history is contemporary history". History is facilitated by the formation of a 'true discourse of past' through the
production of narrative and analysis of past events relating to the human race. The modern discipline of history is
dedicated to the institutional production of this discourse.

All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form constitute the historical record. The task of
historical discourse is to identify the sources which can most usefully contribute to the production of accurate
accounts of past. Therefore, the constitution of the historian's archive is a result of circumscribing a more general
archive by invalidating the usage of certain texts and documents (by falsifying their claims to represent the 'true
past').

The study of history has sometimes been classified as part of the humanities and at other times as part of the social
sciences. It can also be seen as a bridge between those two broad areas, incorporating methodologies from both.
Some individual historians strongly support one or the other classification. In the 20th century, French historian
Fernand Braudel revolutionized the study of history, by using such outside disciplines as economics, anthropology,
and geography in the study of global history.

Traditionally, historians have recorded events of the past, either in writing or by passing on an oral tradition, and
have attempted to answer historical questions through the study of written documents and oral accounts. For the
beginning, historians have also used such sources as monuments, inscriptions, and pictures. In general, the sources
of historical knowledge can be separated into three categories: what is written, what is said, and what is physically
preserved, and historians often consult all three. But writing is the marker that separates history from what comes
before.

Scope and Significance of History

History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty. History
should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty. There are many
ways to discuss the real functions of the subject—as there are many different historical talents and many different
paths to historical meaning. All definitions of history's utility, however, rely on two fundamental facts.

History Helps Us Understand People and Societies

In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies behave. Understanding
the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a number of disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive
reliance on current data would needlessly handicap our efforts.. Major aspects of a society's operation, like mass
elections, missionary activities, or military alliances, cannot be set up as precise experiments. Consequently, history
must serve, however imperfectly, as our laboratory, and data from the past must serve as our most vital evidence in
the unavoidable quest to figure out why our complex species behaves as it does in societal settings.

History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be

The second reason history is inescapable as a subject of serious study follows closely on the first. The past causes
the present, and so the future. Any time we try to know why something happened—whether a shift in political party
dominance in the American Congress, a major change in the teenage suicide rate, or a war in the Balkans or the
Middle East—we have to look for factors that took shape earlier. History, then, provides the only extensive
materials available to study the human condition. It also focuses attention on the complex processes of social
change, including the factors that are causing change around us today. Here, at base, are the two related reasons
many people become enthralled with the examination of the past and why our society requires and encourages the
study of history as a major subject in the schools.

The Importance of History in Our Own Lives

These two fundamental reasons for studying history underlie more specific and quite diverse uses of history in our
own lives. History well told is beautiful. Many of the historians who most appeal to the general reading public know
the importance of dramatic and skillful writing—as well as of accuracy. Biography and military history appeal in
part because of the tales they contain.

History Contributes to Moral Understanding

History also provides a terrain for moral contemplation. Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the past
allows a student of history to test his or her own moral sense, to hone it against some of the real complexities
individuals have faced in difficult settings. People who have weathered adversity not just in some work of fiction,
but in real, historical circumstances can provide inspiration.

History Provides Identity

History also helps provide identity, and this is unquestionably one of the reasons all modern nations encourage its
teaching in some form. Historical data include evidence about how families, groups, institutions and whole countries
were formed and about how they have evolved while retaining cohesion. \

Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship

A study of history is essential for good citizenship. This is the most common justification for the place of history in
school curricula. Sometimes advocates of citizenship history hope merely to promote national identity and loyalty
through a history spiced by vivid stories and lessons in individual success and morality. But the importance of
history for citizenship goes beyond this narrow goal and can even challenge it at some points.

Historiography

Historiography has a number of related meanings. In the early modern period, the term historiography tended to be
used in a more basic sense, to mean simply "the writing of history". Historiographer therefore meant "historian", and
it is in this sense that certain official historians were given the title "Historiographer Royal", in Sweden (from 1618),
England (from 1660), and Scotland (from 1681). The Scottish post is still in existence.

 Firstly, it can refer to how history has been produced: the story of the development of methodology and
practices (for example, the move from short-term biographical narrative towards long-term thematic
analysis).
 Secondly, it can refer to what has been produced: a specific body of historical writing (for example,
"medieval historiography during the 1960s" means "Works of medieval history written during the 1960s").
 Thirdly, it may refer to why history is produced: the Philosophy of history. As a meta-level analysis of
descriptions of the past, this third conception can relate to the first two in that the analysis usually focuses
 on the narratives, interpretations, worldview, use of evidence, or method of presentation of other historians.
Professional historians also debate the question of whether history can be taught as a single coherent
narrative or a series of competing narratives.

Historiography refers either to the study of the methodology and development of "history" (as a discipline), or to a
body of historical work on a specialized topic. Scholars discuss historiography topically – such as the
"historiography of Catholicism", the "historiography of early Islam", or the "historiography of China" – as well as
specific approaches and genres, such as political history and social history. Beginning in the nineteenth century, with
the ascent of academic history, a corpus of historiographic literature developed.

The research interests of historians change over time, and in recent decades there has been a shift away from
traditional diplomatic, economic and political history toward newer approaches, especially social and cultural
studies.

Sources of History

Historians get their information from two different kinds of sources: primary and secondary. Primary sources are
first hand sources; secondary sources are second-hand sources. For example, suppose there had been a car accident.
The description of the accident which a witness gives to the police is a primary source because it comes from
someone actually there at the time. The story in the newspaper the next day is a secondary source because the
reporter who wrote the story did not actually witness it. The reporter is presenting a way of understanding the
accident or an interpretation..

Using Primary Sources

Primary sources are interesting to read for their own sake: they give us first hand, you-are-there insights into the
past. They are also the most important tools an historian has for developing an understanding of an event. Primary
sources serve as the evidence an historian uses in developing an interpretation and in building an argument to
support that interpretation. You will be using primary sources not only to help you better understand what went on,
but also as evidence as you answer questions and develop arguments about the past.

The best sources are primary sources, that is written sources from the period you are studying. Letters, books,
inscriptions, etc. There tend to be more of these for some periods and cultures than others, depending on how
widespread written material was in the period concerned, and how much of it has survived. From more recent
historical periods of course, newsreels, radio broadcasts, TV broadcasts etc would count as primary sources.

Source of History:

Historians collect information from various trails for reconstructing history. The 'trails' are both written documents
and archaeological evidences. These trails or clues taken together are known as the 'source materials of history'. The
source materials are as essential part of history-writing. The source materials may differ from time to time and from
country to country. Since the characteristics of ancient, medieval and modern times of a certain country differ, the
source materials of these three periods are also different.

b. Importance of the Archaeological Source:

Recently historians attach much importance to the coins as source materials for reconstruction of ancient Indian
history. For, the study of coins reveals such information which no other source does. For example, the metal or alloy
of metals used in the coins give us an idea about the advancement made in metallurgy during the contemporary
period.

Coins also throw light on the economic history. Distribution of coins is an indication that the economic activities
under a particular king or kings had been extended to these areas. Again the coins in which names of kings have
been mentioned enable us to know about the chronology of a ruling dynasty The Kushana kings had circulated
different types of coins in which not only the name but also the year of accession has been mentioned. This has
enabled us to fix the dates of various Kushana kings who ruled over India. The coins are a helpful in reconstruction
the cultural history of a particular period.
Thus the importance of coins can hardly be minimized.

c. Accounts of the Foreign Travelers:

Though the Himalayas have separated India from the outside world it never proved to be an insurmountable barrier
to establish cultural contact with other countries. In fact, from the earliest times travelers from different countries
visited India. Though the travelers came with various purposes almost each one of them have written down their
experiences in the form of books.

These accounts of the foreign travelers are important source of our- knowledge about ancient Indian history. Of the
foreign accounts mention may be made of Indika by Megasthenes. Two important Chinese travelers were Fa- liien
and Hiuen Tsang. It must, however, be remembered that the accounts of the foreign travelers are to be used
cautiously.

For, some of the travelers made certain observations about India which are not correct. Possibly in some cases the
foreigners had failed to assess correctly the Indian ways of life due to lack of their knowledge about the Indian
languages, and hence the misrepresentation.

Ideally, a historian will use all available primary sources created by the people involved, at the time being studied.
In practice some sources have been destroyed, while others are not available for research. Perhaps the only
eyewitness reports of an event may be memoirs, autobiographies, or oral interviews taken years later. Sometimes the
only evidence relating to an event or person in the distant past was written or copied decades or centuries later.
Manuscripts that are sources for classical texts can be copies of documents, or fragments of copies of documents.
This is a common problem in classical studies, where sometimes only a summary of a book or letter has survived.
Potential difficulties with primary sources have the result that history is usually taught in schools using secondary
sources.

Historians studying the modern period with the intention of publishing an academic article prefer to go back to
available primary sources and to seek new (in other words, forgotten or lost) ones. Primary sources, whether
accurate or not, offer new input into historical questions and most modern history revolves around heavy use of
archives and special collections for the purpose of finding useful primary sources. A work on history is not likely to
be taken seriously as scholarship if it only cites secondary sources, as it does not indicate that original research has
been done.[4]

However, primary sources – particularly those from before the 20th century – may have hidden challenges. "Primary
sources, in fact, are usually fragmentary, ambiguous and very difficult to analyse and interpret." Obsolete meanings
of familiar words and social context are among the traps that await the newcomer to historical studies. For this
reason, the interpretation of primary texts is typically taught as part of an advanced college or postgraduate history
course, although advanced self-study or informal training is also possible.

The following questions are asked about primary sources:

What is the tone?

Who is the intended audience?

What is the purpose of the publication?

What assumptions does the author make?

What are the bases of the author's conclusions?

Does the author agree or disagree with other authors of the subject?

Does the content agree with what you know or have learned about the issue?

Where was the source made? (questions of systemic bias)

In journalism, education, and other fields, these are sometimes known as the five Ws – who, what, when, where and
why

Secondary sources are books, articles etc, written by people in a later period than the events they are writing about.
Some of these are more reliable than others, depending on ho wmuch research the authors have done into primary
sources. If you are buying a book, or borrowing one from the library, it is always a good idea to check the
bibliography to see how much research the author has done into primary sources.

A secondary source is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere.
A secondary source contrasts with a primary source, which is an original source of the information being discussed;
a primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation, or a document created by such a person.

Secondary sources involve generalization, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, or evaluation of the original
information. Primary and secondary are relative terms, and some sources may be classified as primary or secondary,
depending on how it is used.An even higher level, the tertiary source, such as an encyclopedia or dictionary,
resembles a secondary source in that it contains analysis, but attempts to provide a broad introductory overview of a
topic.

I. Reading a primary source. Primary Sources do not speak for themselves, they have to be interpreted.
That is, we can't always immediately understand what a primary source means, especially if it is from a
culture significantly different from our own. It is therefore necessary to try to understand what it means
and to figure out what the source can tell us about the past.
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HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION

Mesopotamia and Egypt: 3100 BC

In about 3200 BC the two earliest civilizations develop in the region where southwest Asia joins northeast Africa.
Great rivers are a crucial part of the story. The Sumerians settle in what is now southern Iraq, between the mouths of
the Euphrates and the Tigris. Egypt develops in the long narrow strip of the Nile valley.

Rivers offer two main advantages to a developing civilization. They provide water to irrigate the fields, and they
offer the easiest method of transport for a society without paved roads. Rivers will play an equally important role in
two other early civilizations - those of the Indus and of northern China.

The Indus: 2500 BC

It is not known whether contact with Mesopotamia inspires the first civilization of India or whether it is a
spontaneous local development, but by about 2500 BC the neolithic villages along the banks of the Indus are on the
verge of combining into a unified and sophisticated culture.

The Indus civilization, with its two large cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, expands over a larger region than
Egypt and Mesopotamia combined. It will survive, in a remarkably consistent form, for about 1000 years.

The Aegean: 2000 BC

The next region to develop a distinctive civilization centres on the Aegean Sea. The bays and inlets of the rugged
coastal regions of Greece, and the many small islands strung like pearls across this relatively sheltered sea, combine
to make this an ideal area for trade (and piracy) among people whose levels of nautical skill make short hops a
necessary precaution.

The Aegean civilization stands at the start of the very lively tradition of Mediterranean culture. It begins in the large
island which is perfectly placed to guard the entrance to the Aegean - Crete.

China: 1600 BC The longest consistent civilization in the human story so far is that of China. This vast eastern
empire seems set apart from the rest of the world, fiercely proud of its own traditions, resisting foreign influences.
Its history begins in a characteristically independent manner.
There are no identifiable precedents for the civilization of the Shang dynasty, which emerges in China in about 1600
BC. Its superb bronze vessels seem to achieve an instant technological perfection. Its written texts introduce
characters recognizably related to Chinese writing today. This is a civilization which begins as it will continue - with
confidence.

America: 1200 BC

Around this time the earliest American civilizations have their beginnings, with the Olmecs in central America and
the Chavin in the Andes.

Both these cultures develop large towns, centred on temples. Both are now famous for their sculpture. And each, in
its own region, is at the start of a succession of civilizations leading directly to the two which are discovered and
destroyed in the 16th century by the Spanish - the Aztecs in central America and the Incas in the Andes.

The Mediterranean: from 1000 BC

The first distinctively Mediterranean civilization, that of the Aegeans, comes to a sudden and still unexplained end
in around 1200 BC. Some 200 years later an energetic seafaring people, the Phoenicians, become extensive traders.
From their base in Lebanon they establish colonies along the coast of Africa and even into the Atlantic.

Their example, as Mediterranean imperialists, will be followed by the Greeks and then by the Romans. The
Mediterranean becomes the world's most creative arena for the clash and synthesis of civilizations - a status which it
has never entirely lost.

Regional civilizations: AD 400 - 1500

With the dominance of Greece and Rome in the west (both successfully managing a transition from pagan to
Christian empires), of China in the east, and of strongly individual cultures in central and south America, each
successive civilization in any region tends at this time to be a variation on local traditions. But sometimes there are
upheavals which introduce an entirely new culture within already long-civilized parts of the world.

One such is Islam. The establishment of the caliphate in Damascus and then Baghdad leads to distinctively Muslim
civilizations in an unbroken belt from north Africa to north India.

Global civilization: 16th - 20th century AD

The first sustained contact between Europe and America, in the 16th century, opens the door to a new concept -
world-wide civilizations, evolving through colonies and empires. Spanish civilization is exported to Latin America.
English culture spreads even further, in an empire which includes India, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and
eventually many parts of Africa.

From the 16th to the 19th century it is this imperial impulse which carries European civilization round the world,
often as a thin veneer over older and very robust local cultures. But by the 20th century there are different forces at
work.

For much of the 20th century ideology has been the driving force in the export of two very different concepts of
civilization, American capitalism and Russian Communism. At the same time mass communication has made it
possible to export a region's popular culture to the rest of the world - notably that of America through radio, cinema
and television.

Other influences, whether multinational companies or the internet, have a similar effect. The danger is of a
worldwide sameness. But there is a corresponding benefit. Within economic limits, human communities are now
free as never before to adopt the aspects of civilization which appeal to them - regardless of where they happen to be
on the planet.

Modern history
"Early modern period" is a term used by historians to refer to the period in Western Europe and its first colonies that
spans the centuries between the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution – roughly 1500 to 1800. The early
modern period is characterized by the rise to importance of science and by increasingly rapid technological progress,
secularized civic politics, and the nation-state. Capitalist economies began their rise, initially in northern Italian
republics such as Genoa. The early modern period also saw the rise and dominance of the mercantilist economic
theory. As such, the early modern period represents the decline and eventual disappearance, in much of the
European sphere, of feudalism, serfdom and the power of the Catholic Church. The period includes the late decades
of the Protestant Reformation, the disastrous Thirty Years' War, the Age of Discovery, the European colonization of
the Americas, and the peak of European witch-hunting.

This period saw a decline in many African civilizations and an advancement in others. Ethiopia entered the Zemene
Mesafint (Age of Princes) in 1769 when the Emperor became a figurehead and the country was ruled by warlords,
though it later recovered under Emperor Tewodros II. The Swahili Coast declined after coming under Portuguese
and Omani contol. The Songhai Empire fell to the Moroccans in 1591 when they invaded with guns. The kingdom
of Zimbabwe gave way to smaller kingdoms such as Mutapa and Butua. Other civilizations in Africa advanced
during this period; the Oyo Empire went through its golden age, as did the Benin Empire. The Ashanti Empire rose
to power in what is modern day Ghana in 1670. The Kingdom of Kongo also thrived during this period. European
exploration of Africa reached its zenith at this time.

Renaissance

Europe's Renaissance, beginning in the 14th century,[91] consisted of the rediscovery of the classical world's
scientific contributions, and in the economic and social rise of Europe. But the Renaissance also engendered a
culture of inquisitiveness which ultimately led to Humanism[92] and the Scientific Revolution.Although it saw
social and political upheaval and revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, the Renaissance is perhaps known best
for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who
inspired the term "Renaissance man".

European expansion

During this period, European powers came to dominate most of the world. One theory of why that happened holds
that Europe's geography played an important role in its success. The Middle East, India and China are all ringed by
mountains and oceans but, once past these outer barriers, are nearly flat. By contrast, the Pyrenees, Alps, Apennines,
Carpathians and other mountain ranges run through Europe, and the continent is also divided by several seas. This
gave Europe some degree of protection from the peril of Central Asian invaders. Before the era of firearms, these
nomads were militarily superior to the agricultural states on the periphery of the Eurasian continent and, if they
broke out into the plains of northern India or the valleys of China, were all but unstoppable. These invasions were
often devastating. The Golden Age of Islam[ was ended by the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258. India and China
were subject to periodic invasions, and Russia spent a couple of centuries under the Mongol-Tatar yoke. Central and
western Europe, logistically more distant from the Central Asian heartland, proved less vulnerable to these threats.

Geography contributed to important geopolitical differences. For most of their histories, China, India and the Middle
East were each unified under a single dominant power that expanded until it reached the surrounding mountains and
deserts. In 1600 the Ottoman Empire[97] controlled almost all the Middle East, the Ming Dynasty ruled
China,[98][99] and the Mughal Empire held sway over India. By contrast, Europe was almost always divided into a
number of warring states. Pan-European empires, with the notable exception of the Roman Empire, tended to
collapse soon after they arose. Another doubtless important geographic factor in the rise of Europe was the
Mediterranean Sea, which, for millennia, had functioned as a maritime superhighway fostering the exchange of
goods, people, ideas and inventions.

Nearly all the agricultural civilizations have been heavily constrained by their environments. Productivity remained
low, and climatic changes easily instigated boom-and-bust cycles that brought about civilizations' rise and fall. By
about 1500, however, there was a qualitative change in world history. Technological advance and the wealth
generated by trade gradually brought about a widening of possibilities.

Many have also argued that Europe's institutions allowed it to expand, that property rights and free-market
economics were stronger than elsewhere due to an ideal of freedom peculiar to Europe. In recent years, however,
scholars such as Kenneth Pomeranz have challenged this view, although the revisionist approach to world history
has been met with criticism for systematically "downplaying" European achievements.[

Europe's maritime expansion unsurprisingly — given the continent's geography — was largely the work of its
Atlantic states: Portugal, Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands. Initially the Portuguese and Spanish Empires
were the predominant conquerors and source of influence, and their union resulted in the Iberian Union, the first
global empire, on which the "sun never set". Soon the more northern English, French and Dutch began to dominate
the Atlantic. In a series of wars fought in the 17th and 18th centuries, culminating with the Napoleonic Wars, Britain
emerged as the new world power.

This era in European culture saw the Age of Enlightenment[\which led to the Scientific Revolution.[116]

Modern period

18th century and 19th century

The Scientific Revolution changed humanity's understanding of the world and led to the Industrial Revolution, a
major transformation of the world's economies. The Scientific Revolution in the 17th century had made little
immediate impact on industrial technology; only in the second half of the 18th century did scientific advances begin
to be applied significantly to practical invention. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain and used new
modes of production — the factory, mass production, and mechanisation — to manufacture a wide array of goods
faster and using less labour than previously. The Age of Enlightenment also led to the beginnings of modern
democracy in the late-18th century American and French Revolutions. Democracy and republicanism would grow to
have a profound effect on world events and on quality of life.

After Europeans had achieved influence and control over the Americas, the imperial activities of the West turned to
the lands of the East and Asia.[] In the 19th century the European states had social and technological advantage over
Eastern lands.] Britain gained control of the Indian subcontinent, Egypt and the Malay Peninsula; the French took
Indochina; while the Dutch cemented their control over the Dutch East Indies. The British also colonized Australia,
New Zealand and South Africa with large numbers of British colonists emigrating to these colonies.] Russia
colonised large pre-agricultural areas of Siberia.[] In the late 19th century, the European powers divided the
remaining areas of Africa. Within Europe, economic and military challenges created a system of nation states, and
ethno-linguistic groupings began to identify themselves as distinctive nations with aspirations for cultural and
political autonomy. This nationalism would become important to peoples across the world in the 20th century.

During the Industrial Revolution, the world economy became reliant on coal as a fuel, as new methods of transport,
such as railways and steamships, effectively shrank the world. Meanwhile, industrial pollution and environmental
damage, present since the discovery of fire and the beginning of civilization, accelerated drastically.

The advantages that Europe had developed by the mid-18th century were two: an entrepreneurial culture,[120][124]
and the wealth generated by the Atlantic trade[120] (including the African slave trade). By the late 16th century,
silver from the Americas accounted for the Spanish empire's wealth.[125] The profits of the slave trade and of West
Indian plantations amounted to 5% of the British economy at the time of the Industrial Revolution.[126] While some
historians conclude that, in 1750, labour productivity in the most developed regions of China was still on a par with
that of Europe's Atlantic economy (see the NBER Publications by Carol H. Shiue and Wolfgang Keller[127]), other
historians like Angus Maddison hold that the per-capita productivity of western Europe had by the late Middle Ages
surpassed that of all other regions.

Contemporary history

1900-45

History's only use of nuclear weapons in war—Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945

The 20th century opened with Europe at an apex of wealth and power, and with much of the world under its direct
colonial control or its indirect domination. Much of the rest of the world was influenced by heavily Europeanized
nations: the United States and Japan.] As the century unfolded, however, the global system dominated by rival
powers was subjected to severe strains, and ultimately yielded to a more fluid structure of independent nations
organized on Western models.

This transformation was catalysed by wars of unparalleled scope and devastation. World War I[134] destroyed many
of Europe's empires and monarchies, and weakened Britain and France.[135] In its aftermath, powerful ideologies
arose. The Russian Revolution[ of 1917 created the first communist state, while the 1920s and 1930s saw militaristic
fascist dictatorships gain control in Italy, Germany, Spain and elsewhere.

Ongoing national rivalries, exacerbated by the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, helped precipitate World
War II. The militaristic dictatorships of Europe and Japan pursued an ultimately doomed course of imperialist
expansionism. Their defeat opened the way for the advance of communism into Central Europe, Yugoslavia,
Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, China, North Vietnam and North Korea.

1945-2000

After World War II ended in 1945, the United Nations was founded in the hope of allaying conflicts among nations
and preventing future wars.[142][143] The war had, however, left two nations, the United States[144] and the Soviet
Union, with principal power to guide international affairs.[145] Each was suspicious of the other and feared a global
spread of the other's political-economic model. This led to the Cold War, a forty-year stand-off between the United
States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies. With the development of nuclear weapons[146] and the
subsequent arms race, all of humanity were put at risk of nuclear war between the two superpowers.[147] Such war
being viewed as impractical, proxy wars were instead waged, at the expense of non-nuclear-armed Third World
countries.

The Cold War lasted to the 1990s, when the Soviet Union's communist system began to collapse, unable to compete
economically with the United States and western Europe; the Soviets' Central European "satellites" reasserted their
national sovereignty, and in 1991 the Soviet Union itself disintegrated. The United States for the time being was left
as the "sole remaining superpower".

In the early postwar decades, the African and Asian colonies of the Belgian, British, Dutch, French and other west
European empires won their formal independence.[ These nations faced challenges in the form of neocolonialism,
poverty, illiteracy and endemic tropical diseases.[

Many Western and Central European nations gradually formed a political and economic community, the European
Union, which expanded eastward to include former Soviet satellites.

Last Moon landing — Apollo 17 (1972)

The 20th century saw exponential progress in science and technology, and increased life expectancy and standard of
living for much of humanity. As the developed world shifted from a coal-based to a petroleum-based economy, new
transport technologies, along with the dawn of the Information Age,[162] led to increased
globalization.[163][164][165] Space exploration reached throughout the solar system. The structure of DNA, the
template of life, was discovered,[166][167][168] and the human genome was sequenced, a major milestone in the
understanding of human biology and the treatment of disease.[169][170][171][172][173] Global literacy rates
continued to rise, and the percentage of the world's labor pool needed to produce humankind's food supply continued
to drop.

The technologies of sound recordings, motion pictures, and radio and television broadcasting produced a focus on
popular culture and entertainment. Television spots sold both commercial products and political candidates. Then, in
the last decade of this century, a rapid increase took place in the use of personal computers. A global communication
network emerged in the Internet. One-way mass media gave way to individual communication in what has been
called a shift from the fourth to a fifth civilization.[174]
The century saw the development of man-made global threats, including nuclear proliferation, global climate
change,[175][176] massive deforestation, overpopulation, and the dwindling of global resources (particularly fossil
fuels).[177]

Further information: American Century and Pax Americana

[edit]21st century

Depiction of the Internet, a source of information and communication

Main article: 21st century

The 21st century has been marked by economic globalization, with consequent risk to interlinked economies, and by
the expansion of communications with mobile phones and the Internet. Worldwide demand and competition for
resources has risen due to growing populations and industrialization, mainly in India, China and Brazil. This demand
is causing increased levels of environmental degradation and a growing threat of global warming.[178] That in turn
has spurred the development of alternate or renewable sources of energy (notably solar energy and wind energy),
proposals for cleaner fossil fuel technologies, and consideration of expanded use of nuclear energy

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Economics nature and scope

People are confronted with innumerable wants from the cradle to the grave. If one want is satisfied, other wants
emerge in succession. To satisfy these wants people are engaged in different activities in the society. But the means
are limited in relation to unlimited wants. So people are constantly striving to satisfy unlimited wants with limited
means. The science of Economics has emerged as a discipline to discuss how people are engaged in different
activities to earn money and how do they endeavor to satisfy unlimited wants with limited means. The knowledge of
economics is indispensable to know about how best to solve the manifold economic problems by the proper
utilization of resources in the society.

Definition of economics
The English term ‘Economics’ is derived from the Greek word ‘Oikonomia’. Its meaning is ‘household
management’. Economics was first read in ancient Greece. Aristotle, the Greek Philosopher termed Economics as a
science of ‘household management’. But with the change of time and progress of civilization, the economic
condition of man changes. As a result, an evolutionary change in the definition of Economics is noticed. Towards
the end of the eighteenth century Adam Smith, the celebrated English Economist and the father of Economics,
termed Economics as the ‘Science of Health’. According to him, “Economics is a science that enquires into the
nature and causes of the wealth of nations”. In other words, how wealth is produced and how it is used, are the
subject-matter of economics. In the subsequent period Alfred Marshall defined Economics by saying, ‘Economics is
a study mankind in the ordinary business of life’. In other words, according to Marshall, Economics studies not only
the wealth but also the activities centering the wealth. In modern times more realistic definitions have been given to
economics. In social life human wants are unlimited, but the means to satisfy those wants are scarce. Economics
studies how to use the limited resources to satisfy the unlimited wants of men. In the words of Lionel Robins, the
modern economist, ‘Economics is a science which studies human behavior as relationship between ends and scarce
means which have alternatives uses’. So, Economics as a social science studies how people perform economic
activities and how they try to satisfy unlimited wants by the proper use of limited resources. Economics is the study
of how societies use scarce resources to produce valuable commodities and distribute them among different people.

Scope of economics
Economics is a social science. The subject matter of economics deals with the analysis of economic problems of
people in the society and the satisfaction of their wants. With the evolutionary changes of the society and its
civilization, the subject matter scope of economics has expanded.Scope of economics is discussed below:

1. As social science economics deals with the economic activities of human being. One person day to day
money earning and money spending activities constitute the subject matter of economics. For example,
parents’ affection and nursing service for their children are not the subject matter of economics.
2. Resources are needed to satisfy people's wants. So, the availability of resources and their use are important
subject matter of economics. Adam Smith has termed economics as the “Science of Wealth”.
3. People's wants are unlimited. But the resources to satisfy the wants are scarce. Economics discusses how
men can get the maximum satisfaction by using the scarce means to satisfy wants on the basis of priority.
So, as subject matter of economics, the scarcity of resources is considered very important.
4. People's wants are related to production, exchange, distribution and consumption. Again, currency, banking
system, public finance, trade etc is also parts of economic activities. Economics discuss these issues also.
Besides, how economic development of the country is achieved through the means of economic planning
is also included in the subject matter of economics.
5. Economics discusses the economic problems and economic activities and indicates proper solution to these
problems. Economics also discuses about the value judgment of human actions and behavior.
Importance of the study of economics
In modern times the importance of the study of economics is infinite. It is not only provides us knowledge, but also
helps to solve the different problems in real life. The importance of economics in different areas of human life is
discussed below:
In the daily life of people: People are confronted with manifold wants in their daily life. But the resources to satisfy
those wants are limited. By studying economics we can know the use of limited resources to satisfy alternative
wants on the basis of priority.
In the proper use of resources: We can learn about the use of resources with the knowledge of economics. Study
of economics helps us to understand about how to produce the maximum output by the proper use of limited
resources.
In state management: The knowledge of economics is indispensable to manage the economic and development
activities of a state. For this reason the politicians and the govt. officers need to have proper knowledge of the
currency system, banking system, tax system, industrial and trade policy, budgeting etc. The knowledge of
economics helps in managing the state affairs.
To social workers: Economic causes lie at the roots of maximum social problems. The social workers need to have
knowledge of economics to diagnose and solve the problems of poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, excessive growth
of population, lack of housing and medical facilities etc.
To the labor leaders: The leaders of the workers should have the knowledge of economics for improving their
bargaining capacity in respect of the formation of trade unions, the increase of wage and other benefits, the
improvement of their working conditions etc. In economic planning: It is necessary to have sound knowledge of the
economic problems and the available resources for the formulation and implementation of economic plans for the
country. For this reason the knowledge of economics is indispensable.
Acquisition of knowledge of international issues: The knowledge of economics is necessary to know and understand
the socio economic events of different countries, international relationship, commerce etc.
Microeconomics Vs. Macroeconomics
Economic analysis is divided into two main branches: microeconomics and macroeconomics. These two branches
are important for scarcity problem.
Greek word Micro means ‘small’. Microeconomics is the study of decisions of people and business and the
interaction of those decisions in markets. The goal of microeconomics is to explain the prices and quantities of
individual goods and services. Microeconomics also studies the effects of government regulation and taxes on the

Example:
Microeconomics studies the factors that determine the prices and quantities of a product (say cement) of
cement factory.

prices and quantities of individual goods and services.

On the other hand, Macro means ‘big’. Macroeconomics is the study of the national Economy as well as global
Economy and the way that a Economic system work. The goal of macroeconomics is to explain general price level,
national income, employment, production. Macroeconomics also studies the effects of Government actions-taxes,

Example:
Macroeconomics studies the forces that determine the average cost of living , the total value of production in a
country.

spending and the deficit –on total incomes and price level.

Basic economic pblm

In the previous section we have learned about the scarce means of a economy and the unlimited wants of
people.Because an economy’s production is limited by its resources and technological knowledge, every society, no
matter how rich or poor, makes choices; between health care and yachts, between highways and tanks, between
education and restaurant meals.That means every society must have a way of determining what goods are produced,
how these goods are made, and for whom these goods are produced.

The three problems of economic organization

Every society must have to determine what goods are produced, how these goods are made, and for whom these
goods are produced. These three fundamental questions of economic organization- what,how and for whom are as
crucial today as they were at the dawn of human civilization. Now we know details about them.
What goods are produced and in what quantities? A society must determine how much of each of the many
possible goods and services it will make, and when they will be produced. Will we produce paddy or jute in our
field? A few high-breed paddy or much more local paddy will be produced? will we use scarce resources to produce
manu consumption goods? will we produce fewer consumption goods and more investment goods. Every society
has to face this type of questions or problem. We may call this problem as problem of choice.
How are goods produced? A society must determine who will do the production,with what resources, and and what
production techniques they will use.Is electricity genereted from natural gas, coal, or solar power. These problem is
called to be technological problem.
For whom are goods produced? One key task for an society is to decide who gets to eat the fruit of the economic
efforts. Or, how is the national product divided among different households? Are many people poor or rich? Do high
incomes go to teacher, doctor, businessman or landlords? These type of problem is called to be problem of
distribution.

Proper Utilization of Resources

In every society the resources are scarce in relation to demand. The scarce resources should be utilized in such a way
as to maximize the welfare of the society. In production, resources should be employed in such a way that they give
maximum output at a minimum cost. This is called the proper utilization of resources. Proper utilization of resources
is neccessary for solving the economic problems of the society. Even in personal life, scarce resources should be
used for meeting the neccessaries of high priority in order to get the highest satisfaction.

Economic System

One key task for Economics is to study & explain the different ways that a society can answer the questions
what,how and for whom. Different societies are organised through alternative economic systems and econmic
studies the different machanasim that a society can use to allocate its scarce resources. Different type of Economic
systems prevail in different countries of the world. They are:1.market economy 2.command economy 3.mixed
economy.
Market Economy: A market economy is one in which indivuals and private firms make the major decessions about
production and consumption. In this market consumer are soverein. Firms produce the commodity that yield the
highest profit. From here you can get answer of the question what. Firms use the techniques of production which are
least costly.From here you can get answer of the question how. Consumption is determined by individuals'decisions
about how to spend the wages and property ownership. We get the answer of question for whom.Like United States

Example:
In the united State of America most economic questions are solved by the market. Hence their economic
system can be treated as Market Economy.

most of the democratic coutries, most economic questions are solved by the market.

Command Economy: A command is one in which the government makes all decisions about production and
distribution. Soviet Union during most of this century, the government owns most of the means of production (land
and capitl);it also owns and directs the operations of enterprise in most industries; it is the employer of most workers
and tells them how to do thier jobs; and the governmentin a command economy decides how the output of the
society is tobe divided among different goods and services. In this economy, the government answers the major

Example:
During the most of the 20th century Soviet Union is operated by Command Economy.

economic questions through its ownership of resources and its power to enforce decisions.

Mixed Economy:In recent time no contemporary society falls completely into either market economy or command
economy. Rather all exeption of two or three societies are mixed economies with element of market and command.
Like market economy, here the private ownership of property, earning of profit and individual initiativa prevail. But,
there is also govt. control over the economic activities at the private level.Besides, some large scale and basic

Example:
Though most decisions in the USA,UK and Japan are made in the marketplace but the government plays an
important role in modifying the functioning of the market.Mixed Economy also exsists in Bangladesh where both
market and government plays role simultaneously in production, distribution, consumption etc.

industries and important commercial venture are run in the public sector.

India economy, the third largest economy in the world, in terms of purchasing power, is going to touch new heights
in coming years. As predicted by Goldman Sachs, the Global Investment Bank, by 2035 India would be the third
largest economy of the world just after US and China. It will grow to 60% of size of the US economy. This booming
economy of today has to pass through many phases before it can achieve the current milestone of 9% GDP.
The history of Indian economy can be broadly divided into three phases: Pre- Colonial, Colonial and Post
Colonial.

Pre Colonial: The economic history of India since Indus Valley Civilization to 1700 AD can be categorized under
this phase. During Indus Valley Civilization Indian economy was very well developed. It had very good trade
relations with other parts of world, which is evident from the coins of various civilizations found at the site of Indus
valley.

Before the advent of East India Company, each village in India was a self sufficient entity. Each village was
economically independent as all the economic needs were fulfilled with in the village.

Then came the phase of Colonization. The arrival of East India Company in India ruined the Indian economy. There
was a two-way depletion of resources. British used to buy raw materials from India at cheaper rates and finished
goods were sold at higher than normal price in Indian markets. During this phase India's share of world income
declined from 22.3% in 1700 AD to 3.8% in 1952.

After India got independence from this colonial rule in 1947, the process of rebuilding the economy started. For this
various policies and schemes were formulated. First five year plan for the development of Indian economy came
into implementation in 1952. These Five Year Plans, started by Indian government, focused on the needs of Indian
economy.
If on one hand agriculture received the immediate attention on the other side industrial sector was developed at a
fast pace to provide employment opportunities to the growing population and to keep pace with the developments in
the world. Since then Indian economy has come a long way. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at factor cost,
which was 2.3 % in 1951-52 reached 9% in financial year 2005-06

Trade liberalization, financial liberalization, tax reforms and opening up to foreign investments were some of the
important steps, which helped Indian economy to gain momentum. The Economic Liberalization introduced by Man
Mohan Singh in 1991, then Finance Minister in the government of P V Narsimha Rao, proved to be the stepping-
stone for Indian economic reform movements.
To maintain its current status and to achieve the target GDP of 10% for financial year 2006-07, Indian economy has
to overcome many challenges.
Challenges before Indian economy:

 Population explosion: This monster is eating up into the success of India. According to 2001 census of
India, population of India in 2001 was 1,028,610,328, growing at a rate of 2.11% approx. Such a vast
population puts lots of stress on economic infrastructure of the nation. Thus India has to control its
burgeoning population.
 Poverty: As per records of National Planning Commission, 36% of the Indian population was living Below
Poverty Line in 1993-94. Though this figure has decreased in recent times but some major steps are
needed to be taken to eliminate poverty from India.
 Unemployment: The increasing population is pressing hard on economic resources as well as job
opportunities. Indian government has started various schemes such as Jawahar Rozgar Yojna, and Self
Employment Scheme for Educated Unemployed Youth (SEEUY). But these are proving to be a drop in
an ocean.
 Rural urban divide: It is said that India lies in villages, even today when there is lots of talk going about
migration to cities, 70% of the Indian population still lives in villages. There is a very stark difference in
pace of rural and urban growth. Unless there isn't a balanced development Indian economy cannot grow.

These challenges can be overcome by the sustained and planned economic reforms.

These include:

 Maintaining fiscal discipline

 Orientation of public expenditure towards sectors in which India is faring badly such as health and
education.
 Introduction of reforms in labour laws to generate more employment opportunities for the growing
population of India.
 Reorganization of agricultural sector, introduction of new technology, reducing agriculture's dependence on
monsoon by developing means of irrigation.
 Introduction of financial reforms including privatization of some public sector banks.

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Ownership

Ownership of property may be private, collective, or common and the property may be objects, land/real
estate or intellectual property. Determining ownership in law involves determining who has certain rights and duties
over the property. These rights and duties, sometimes called a 'bundle of rights', can be separated and held by
different parties.

The question of ownership reaches back to the ancient philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, who held different opinions
on the subject. Plato (428/427BC-348/347BC) thought private property created divisive inequalities, while Aristotle
(384BC-322BC) thought private property enabled people to receive the full benefit of their labor. Private property
also circumvents what is now referred to as the “tragedy of the commons” problem, where people tend to degrade
common property more than they do private property. While Aristotle justified the existence of private ownership,
he left open questions of (1) how to allocate property between what is private and common and (2) how to allocate
the private property within society.[1]
Over the millennia, and across cultures what can be property and how it is regarded culturally have varied widely.
Ownership is the basis for many other concepts that form the foundations of ancient and modern societies such
as money, trade, debt, bankruptcy, the criminality of theftand private vs. public property. Ownership is the key
building block in the development of the capitalist socio-economic system. Adam Smithstated that one of the sacred
laws of justice was to guard a person's property and possessions. [2]

The process and mechanics of ownership are fairly complex: one can gain, transfer and lose ownership of property
in a number of ways. To acquire property one can purchase it with money, trade it for other property, receive it as
a gift, steal it, find it, make it or homestead it. One can transfer or lose ownership of property by selling it for
money, exchanging it for other property, giving it as a gift, being robbed of it, misplacing it, or having it stripped
from one's ownership through legal means such as eviction, foreclosure, seizure or taking. Ownership is self-
propagating in that the owner of any property will also own the economic benefits of that property.

Ownership of property may be private, collective, or common and the property may be objects, land/real
estate or intellectual property. Determining ownership in law involves determining who has certain rights
and duties over the property. These rights and duties, sometimes called a 'bundle of rights', can be
separated and held by different parties

A Sole Proprietorship is one individual or married couple in business alone. Sole proprietorship's are
the most common form of business structure. This type of business is simple to form and operate, and
may enjoy greater flexibility of management and fewer legal controls. However, the business owner is
personally liable for all debts incurred by the business.

A General Partnership is composed of two or more persons (usually not a married couple) who agree
to contribute money, labor, and/or skill to a business. Each partner shares the profits, losses, and
management of the business and each partner is personally and equally liable for debts of the partnership.
Formal terms of the partnership are usually contained in a written partnership agreement.

A Limited Partnership* is composed of one or more general partners and one or more limited
partners. The general partners manage the business and share fully in its profits and losses. Limited
partners share in the profits of the business, but their losses are limited to the extent of their investment.
Limited partners are usually not involved in the day-to-day operations of the business.Note: Beginning in
January 2010 a limited partnership may opt to become a Limited Liability Limited Partnership* by
including a statement to that effect in its certificate of limited partnership. Status as a limited liability
limited partnership provides general partners with a shield from liability for obligations of the limited
liability limited partnership.

A Limited Liability Partnership* is similar to a General Partnership except that normally a partner
does not have personal liability for the negligence of another partner. This business structure is used most
commonly by professionals such as accountants and lawyers.

The Limited Liability Company (LLC)* An LLC is formed by one or more individuals or entities
through a special written agreement. The agreement details the organization of the LLC, including:
provisions for management, assignability of interests, and distribution of profits or losses. Limited
liability companies are permitted to engage in any lawful, for profit business or activity other than
banking or insurance. Doing business as an LLC may yield tax or financial benefits.
A Corporation* is a legal entity, a corporation has certain rights, privileges, and liabilities beyond those
of an individual. Doing business as a corporation may yield tax or financial benefits, but these can be
offset by other considerations, such as decreased personal control. Corporations may be formed for profit
or nonprofit purpose.

A Nonprofit Corporation* A nonprofit corporation is a legal entity and is typically run to further some
sort of ideal or goal, rather than in the interests of profit. Many nonprofits serve the public interest, but
some do engage in private sector activities. If your nonprofit organization is or plans to fundraise from the
public, it may also be required to register with the Charities Program of the Washington Secretary of
State.

The Charitable Solicitations Program* registers individuals, organizations, and commercial

fundraisers that solicit charitable donations from the general public. Both the benefiting charities as well
as independent, for profit entities soliciting funds must, in most cases, register annually.

The Charitable Trust Program* registers individuals and organizations that are holding assets in
Washington State in trust for a charitable purpose. The assets are invested for income-producing
purposes. The income is then designated and distributed for a charitable purpose according to the terms
and conditions of the trust agreement.

Charitable Solicitation and Charitable Trust registrations are separate from and in addition to corporate
filing requirements.

Items marked with * must register with the Secretary of State, Division of Corporations and Charities.

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Literatre

Abhijñānashākuntala or Abhijñānaśākuntalam) is a well-known Sanskrit play by Kālidāsa. Its date is

uncertain, but Kalidasa is often placed in the period between the 1st century BCE and 4th century CE.

The Sanskrit name means "pertaining to abhi-jñâna-Śakuntalā", which means "token-recognized-Śakuntalā", so a

literal translation could be Of Śakuntalā recognized by a token.

Synopsis

Although Kalidasa makes some minor changes to the plot, the play elaborates upon an episode mentioned in the
Mahabharata. The protagonist is Shakuntala, daughter of the sage Vishwamitra and the apsara Menaka. Abandoned
at birth by her parents, Shakuntala is reared in the secluded, sylvan hermitage of the sage Kanva, and grows up a
comely but innocent maiden.

Long ago, the powerful sage Vishwamitra was engaged in concentrated meditation. Fearing that he may gain more
power than Gods, Lord Indra decided to send down one of the most gorgeous heavenly damsel named Menaka to
earth to disturb his meditation. She succeeds in seducing him and they have a beautiful daughter. But Menaka has to
return to heaven, so they leave the child amidst a beautiful garden near a lake. A swan in the lake sees the crying
child and gives it some water. Just then a sage named Kanava who is passing by sees the swan giving water to the
child. He decides to take the child home and names it "Shakuntala", which means one fed by a swan.

Shakuntala grows up to be a beautiful young lady just like her mother Menaka. One day, King Dushyanta sees her in
the forest and immediately falls for her. He asks her to marry him and he stays with her in the ashram. After some
days, the King gets news of unrest in the capital city and he is summoned to return soon to handle the situation. He
leaves half-heartedly but promises to return soon and take his beloved with him. As a token of love, he gives her a
ring and promises to come back soon.

One day, when Shakuntala is sitting right outside the house, sage Durvasa known for his anger comes visiting in the
ashram. Lost in her thoughts, Shakuntala fails to acknowledge his presence. He gets

infuriated and curses Shakuntala saying that the one whom she is thinking about will forget her face. Shakuntala
begs for mercy and explains her situation. The sage softens a bit and says that if the king sees the ring he gave her,
he will remember everything. Shakuntala gets ready to travel to the kingdom, as there is hardly any news from the
king.

She stops at a lake to drink water and unfortunately the ring slips out of her finger and a fish swallows it. She
reaches the royal palace but Dushyanta fails to recognize her. She then remembers the ring and when lifts her hand
to show him the ring, she realizes that she has lost it somewhere. Dejected, she returns back to the forest. After
sometime, a fisherman in the royal palace finds the ring in the stomach of a fish he has caught. He immediately
recognizes the ring and rushes to the King to show it to him. Dushyanta recalls everything and rushes to apologize to
Shakuntala. She forgives him and thy love together happily.

Adaptation

In other versions, especially the original one found in the Mahabharata, Shakuntala is not reunited until her son
Bharata is born, and found by the king playing with lion cubs.Dushyanta enquires about his parents to young
Bharata and finds out that Bharata is indeed his son. Bharata is an ancestor of the lineages of the Kauravas and
Pandavas, who fought the bloody war of the Mahabharata. It is after this Bharata that India was given the name
"Barathadesam". However, Kalidasa's version is now taken to be the standard one.

Translations

The play was the first Indian drama to be translated into a Western language, by Sir William Jones in 1789. In the
next 100 hundred years, bnthere were at least 46 translations in twelve European languages.[1]

English translations include:

• Sacontalá or The Fatal Ring: an Indian drama (1789) by Sir William Jones [2]

• Śakoontalá or The Lost Ring: an Indian drama (1855) by Sir Monier

Monier-Williams [3]

• Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works (1914) by Arthur W. Ryder [4]

There are about 25 translations into Malayalam including,

• Abhijnanasakuntalam by Kerala Varma Valiyakoyithampuran - the first

translation

• Malayaalasaakunthalam (1912) by A.R. Rajarajavarma

• Abhijnanasakuntalam (1970) by K. S. Neelakantan Unni

• Abhijnanasakuntalam (1999) by Thirunalloor Karunakaran

• Sakunthalam by Attoor Krishna Pisharody

Bengali translations include:

• Shakuntala (1854) by Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar

• Shakuntala (1895) by Abanindranath Tagore

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Thiruvalluvar( Tamil)

Thiruvalluvar

Thiruvalluvar is a celebrated Tamil poet .who wrote the Thirukkural, a work on ethics in Tamil literature.He is also
known by other names like Theiva Pulavar (Divine Poet), Valluvar and Poyyamozhi Pulavar, Senna Pothar, Gnana
Vettiyan.
His wife Vasuki was a chaste and devoted lady, an ideal wife, who never disobeyed the orders of her husband, but
always carried them out implicitly. Thiruvalluvar showed people that a person could lead the life of a householder,
and at the same time, lead a divine life or a life of purity and sanctity. He showed people that there was no necessity
to leave the family and become a Sannyasin to lead a divine life of purity and sanctity. All his wise sayings and
teachings are
now in book form and known as ‘Thirukkural’. The Tamil Calendar is dated from that period and referred as
Thiruvalluvar Aandu (Year). The time period of Thiruvalluvar's existence has been based on mostly linguistic
evidences rather than archeological evidences since none such has been determined. His period has been estimated
to be between 2nd century BC and 8th century AD.

Traditional accounts

Thirukural itself does not name its author or authors. The name Thiruvalluvar is first mentioned several centuries
later in the 10th century in a text called Thiruvalluvarmaalai (Thiruvalluvar's garland). Most of the traditions of
Thiruvalluvar appear after this text had been written. It is generally believed that the name Thiru-Valluvar consists
of Thiru (a Tamil word meaning honorable,
similar to Mr) and Valluvar (a polite name for Valluvan, according to Tamil tradition). The name Valluvan is a
common name representing his caste/occupation rather than his proper name. However, the question of
whether the author of Thirukkural (Valluvan) is named after his community or vice versa remains unanswered.
There are several claims regarding where he lived. But none of them could be verified. One legend associates him to
Madurai, the ancient capital of the Pandya rulers who vigorously promoted Tamil literature. According to another he
was born and lived in Mylapore, a part of present day Madras city and traveled to Madurai to submit his work, the
Thirukural, for approval of the king (Pandian) and his college of poets. His wife is named Vasuki.
Thiruvalluvar might have spent most part of his life in Madurai because it was under the Pandiya rulers that many
Tamil poets flourished. There is also the recent claim by Kanyakumari Historical and Cultural Research Centre
(KHCRC) that Valluvar was a king who ruled Valluvanadu in the hilly tracts of Kanyakumari District of Tamil
Nadu.
Thirukkural is one of most revered ancient works in the Tamil. Kural is considered as 'common creed', as it shows
the way for human morals and betterment in life. The Kural has been translated into several languages.]. The Latin
translation of Thirukkural made by Constanzo Beschi in 1730 helped somewhat to make known to European
intellectuals

Tamil literature.
Thirukkural is a combined word formed by joining the two words Thiru and Kural, i.e. Thiru + Kural = Thirukkural.
Thirukkural is divided into three sections. Section one deals with Aram, good ethical behavior with conscience and
honor ("right
conduct"), Section two discusses Porul, the right manner of conducting worldly affairs, and Section three dwells on
Inbam, love between man and woman. The First section has 38 chapters, Second has 70 chapters and the Third 25
chapters. Each Chapters consists of 10 couplets or kurals thus making 1330 couplets in total. Although two section,
Aram and Inbam are devoted to private life of an individual more than half the couplets in Thirukural are grouped
under Porul which discusses ethics in public life. Thus Thiruvalluvar gives more importance to
righteous living in public life.

Other works
Other than Thirukural, Thiruvalluvar is attributed as the author to two other Tamil texts in medicines Gnana
Vettiyan and Pancharathnam; although many scholars claim that there might have been another a later author with
the same name. Morever, these later texts are found to on Siddha medicine written in the sixteenth and seventeenth
century
Memorials
A temple like memorial has been built in Chennai called Valluvar Kottam. This 1976 monument complex consists
of structures found usually in Dravidian temples including a temple car carved from three blocks of granite and a
shallow rectangular pond. The auditorium adjoining the memorial is one of the largest in Asia and can seat up to
4000 people. The site was once an abandoned lake turned garbage dump which was reclaimed by the Chennai
Corporation to build the
monument.
There is a 133 feet tall statue of Thiruvalluvar erected at the southern tip of Indian subcontinent (Kanyakumari)
where the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, and the Indian Ocean converge. The 133 ft denotes Thirukkural's 133
Chapters or athikarams and the show of three fingers denote the three themes Aram, Porul, and Inbam i.e. the
Sections on Morals, Wealth and Love. The statue was designed by V. Ganapati Sthapati, a temple architect from
Tamil Nadu.
There is a statue of Thiruvalluvar outside the School of Oriental and African Studies in Russell Square, London.
The government of Tamil Nadu celebrates the 15th January as Thiruvalluvar Day as part of the Pongal celebrations
in his honour.

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Vemana
Born c. 1352 Died c. 1430 Occupation Achala Yogi, Poet, Social Reformer

Kumaragiri Vema Reddy popularly known as Vemana) was a 14th century Telugu poet. His poems were written in
the popular vernacular of Telugu, and are known for their use of simple language and native idioms. His poems
discuss the subjects of Yoga, wisdom and morality. He is popularly called Yogi Vemana, in recognition of his
success in the path of Yoga.

Early life and background

There is no consensus among scholars about the period in which Vemana lived. C.P. Brown, known for his research
on Vemana, estimates the year of birth to be the year 1352 based on some of his verses. Vemana was the third and
youngest son of Kkjumaragiri Vema, then the king of Kondaveedu in present-day Andhra Pradesh. He was named
Vemareddy after his father.

Teachings

Vemana came into contact with Lambika siva yogi in Kondaveedu, who initiated him into the path of Yoga. After
this, Vemana travelled across the state, composing poetry and attaining success in yoga.

Poetry and Fame

Vemana composed numerous poems in the vernacular of Telugu. His poems
are four lines in length. The fourth line is, in majority of the cases, the chorus Viswadabhirama Vinura Vema - he
thus conveyed his message with three small lines written in a simple vernacular. He traveled widely across south
India, acquiring popularity as a poet and Yogi. People really took to Vemana's poems owing to their simple
language and sweet message. So high was the regard for Vemana that a popular Telugu saying goes 'Vemana's word
is the word of the Vedas'.
He is celebrated for his style of Chaatu padyam, a poem with a hidden
meaning. C.P. Brown translated most of Vemana's poems into English, during the
British occupation of India. A large selection of his poems are a part of the present High School curriculum of
Telugu in Andhra Pradesh. In his honor, The Andhra Pradesh government named a University in Kadapa the Yogi
Vemana University in 2006. Vemana was believed to have lived for some time in the Gandikota area of Kadapa.

Death
There is a headstone marking the grave of Yogi Vemana in kataru palli (Kadiri Town), a village in [Kadiri Taluk,
Anantapur dt., Andhra Pradesh]. It is believed widely that Vemana died in this village. Being a Yogi, he was buried
and not cremated.

Poetic Style
Many lines of Vemana's poems are now colloquial phrases of the Telugu language. They end with the signature line
Viswadhaabhi Raama, Vinura
Vema, literally Beloved of Vishwadha, listen Vema. There are many
interpretations of what the last line signifies. Vemana's poems were collected and published by C.P.Brown in the
19th century. His poems are of many kinds, social, moral, satirical and mystic nature. Most of them are in Ataveladi
(dancing lady) meter.

Sample poetry
Uppu Kappurambu nokka polika nundu ........... ఉప్పు కప్పు రంబు నొకక పోలిక నండు
Chooda chooda ruchulu jaada veru .................. చూడ చూడ రుచుల జాడ వేరు
Purushulandu Punya purushulu veraya ............. ఫురుషులందు ఫుణ్య ప్పరుషులు వేరయ
Viswadhaabhiraama, Vinura Vema .................. విశ్వ ధాభిరామ, వినర వేమ
Salt and camphor look similar,
but closer observation shows their taste is different
Among men, virtuous people stand apart
Beloved of the Bounteous, Vema, listen!
The films

• Yogi Vemana is a 1947 Telugu film directed by Kadiri Venkata Reddy

and starring Chittor V. Nagaiah.
• Yogi Vemana is again made as Telugu film in 1988 directed by C. S.
Rao and starring Vijayachander.

Kumara Vyasa

Kumara Vyasa) is the pen name of Gadhugina Veera Naranappa , a classical poet of Kannada. His pen name is a
tribute to his magnum opus, a rendering of the
Mahabharatha in Kannada. Kumara Vyasa literally means Little Vyasa or
Son of Vyasa.

Place and Time

The period of Kumara Vyasa's life had been a subject of scholarly dispute. Scholarly opinion placed his time in
varying periods starting from the 12th Century to 16th Century. However, opinion has now agreed that Kumara
Vyasa lived during the late 14th and early 15th Centuries. His magnum opus, Karnata Bharata Kathamanjari was
completed in 1430 when Deva Raya II was ruling the Vijayanagara empire. Kumara Vyasa earned high esteem as a
poet in his court. Kumara Vyasa's historicity is also based on the fact that other prominent poets of the 15th century,
such as Kanaka Dasa and Timmanna Kavi, have mentioned his
works.
Kumara Vyasa lived in Koliwad a village 20 km from Gadag in North Karnataka. He is also called Narayanappa. A
pillar in the Veera Narayana temple of Gadag exists till date. According to popular legend, Kumara Vyasa is said to
have composed his work at the temple. This pillar is also known as Kumara Vyasa's pillar.

Works
Kumara Vyasa's most famous work, the Karnata Bharata Kathamanjari (The Mahabharata of Karnataka)is popularly
known as Gadugina Bharata and Kumaravyasa Bharata. It is a sublime adaptation of the first ten Parvas (chapters) of
the Mahabharata. A devotee of Krishna, Kumara Vyasa ends his epic with the coronation of Yudhishtira, the eldest
of the Pandavas. The work is easily the most celebrated in Kannada literature. Its fame arises due to its universal
appeal. Gadugina Bharata is composed in the Bhamini Shatpadi meter, a form of
six lined stanza. Kumara Vyasa explores a wide range of human emotions, examines values, and displays extensive
mastery over vocabulary. The work is particularly known for its use of sophisticated metaphors. It has earned him
the honor of Rupaka Samrajya Chakravarti (Emperor of the World of Metaphors Kumara Vyasa is also renowned
for his characterization. Karnata Bharata
Kathamanjari is also known as Dasha Parva Bharata because itoriginally had only 10 parvas as opposed to the 18 in
the original Mahabharata.Kathamanjari was not complete. Reliable sources of information goes like this - The lord
Narayana would narrate the story of Mahabharata that took place several years ago from behind the temple's statue.
Kumaravyasa would listen to the story and translate it into poetry. Lord had laid down a condition that Kumara was
to only listen to this voice without attempting to see the source or the spirit narrating the story. This was a daily
routine and went on for years. One day, at the stage when the 10th parva of his work was complete, Kumara
developed deep curiosity with impatience and wanted to desperately see the narrator.
Much to his surprise, it is said he saw the lord himself narrating the story. He also saw a scene of kurukhsetra battle
and it seemed it was happening in front of him again. However, Kumara had violated the condition of not exploring
the source of the voice. At that point, the lord disappeared and the narration of mahabharata story stopped forever.
Kumara's Kathamanjari covers only till the Gadayuddha, the battle between Duryodhana and Bheema, killing
Duryodhana. The subsequent parts of the original Mahabharata like the Yudhisthira Pattabhishekha, Ashwa Medha
yaaga and the Swargaarohana parva are not included.
It may be noted that Lakshmeesha, another great poet who was born a few decades after Kumara's death, took up
and completed AshwaMedha yaaga parva alone in his work "Jaimini Bharata" in kannada. This spiritual work was
considered equal to Kathamanjari for its literatural ecstasy and the fragrance of narration it emits.
There is a strong belief among locals that Kumaravyasa was a blessed poet of Sri Veera Narayana i.e Lord Vishnu.
The poet used to sit in front of sanctum sanctorum in the temple and the Lord himself narrated the story of the
ancient Mahabharatha from behind the statue. The poet transformed the story into an excellent poetry.
Kumaravyasa has shown an exemplary style of writing in the introduction. He proudly claims that his poetry is
matchless and that it caters to the taste of all kinds of readers. He writes "A king enjoys the valor in the poetry, A
brahmin the essence of all vedas, Philosopher, the ultimate philosophy, ministers and state
administrators the tact of rule, Lovers, the inspiration. Besides this he proudly acclaims that this work of his is the
"GURU" of the works of all other great scholars." However, his self-lessness may be noted when he says he merely
noted all that was narrated by his lord, his actual poet".
The other, lesser-known work of Kumara Vyasa's is Airavata.

Influence on Kannada Literature

Kumara Vyasa's works belong to the Kannada language#Phases of evolution Nadugannada (Middle-age Kannada)
period of Kannada literature. His influence on later Kannada literature is significant. Gadugina Bharata is still
widely read. It is popularly sung in a unique style known as Gamaka.

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Sant Tukaram (1608–1650) was a prominent Varkari Sant and spiritual poet during a Bhakti movement in India.

Tukaram was born in the small village of Dehu in the West Indian state of Maharashtra to Bolhoba and Kanakai a
couple belonging to the lower Sudra class. His real name is Tukaram Vhilhoba Aambe. Rather, in accord with
another tradition in India of assigning the epithet "sant" (सं त) to persons regarded as thoroughly saintly, Tukaram is
commonly known in Maharashtra as Sant Tukaram (सं त तु काराम). He is known as Bhakta Tukaram to southern
Indian people. He had two other brothers. Despite their lower class status the family was well to do and enjoyed
good social standing in the village. Tukaram's troubles started with the illness of his father, due to which he had to
start supporting his family at the tender age of thirteen. Shortly thereafter, both his parents died. Tukaram's problems
only mounted; death of his family members and economic hardship seemed to plague him. Scholars assign various
birth years to Sant Tukaram: 1577, 1598, 1608 and 1609 CE. The year of Sant Tukaram's death —1650 CE— is
much more certain.

Family Life: Tukaram was married twice, his first wife Rakhumabai died in 1602 in her early youthdue to
starvation during a famine, his second wife Jijabai or Avali as she was called, was much younger than his first had
been and had little patience with his devotion and for God and she nagged him continuously. Sant Tukaram and his
second wife, Jijabai had three sons: Santu or Mahādev, Vithobā, and Nārāyan.

Spiritual Life and Poetry: Sant Tukaram was initiated without any intermediaries as the other saints usually were.
He dreamt that he was initiated by the Lord Hari himself dressed as a Brahman.

Tukaram continuously sang the praises of the Lord, he sang it in the form of abhangs which he wrote. These were in
his mother tongue Marathi. The abhangs express his feelings and philosophical outlook. During his 41 years,
Tukaram composed over 5,000 abhangs.Abhang or Abhanga is a form of devotional poetry sung in praise of the
Hindu god Vitthala also known as Vithoba. Bhajans focus on the inward journey, abhangs are more exuberant
expressions of the communitarian experience. Many of them speak of events in his life, which make them somewhat
autobiographical. Yet, they are focused on God, Pandurang, and not Tukaram. His abhangs became very popular
with the masses of common people. It was this very popularity that caused the religious establishment (the high
caste Brahmins) to hate and persecute Tukaram. as, he was causing them to lose their power over the people.

Tukaram leaves for Vaikuntha, abode of Vishnu Sant Tukaram was a devotee of god Vitthala or Vithoba, a form of
Krishna. Sant Tukaram is considered to be the climactic point of the Bhagabata Hindu tradition, which is thought to
have begun in Maharashtra with Namdev. Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Janabai, Eknath, and Tukaram are revered
especially in the Varkari (वारकरी) sect in Maharashtra. Most information about the lives of the above saints of
Maharashtra comes from the works Bhakti-Wijay and Bhakti-Leelāmrut of Mahipati. Mahipati was born 65 years
after the death of Tukaram, (Tukaram having died 50 years, 300 years, and 353 years after the deaths of Ekanath,
Namdev, and Dnyaneshwar, respectively.) Thus, Mahipati undoubtedly based his life sketches of all the above
"sants" primarily on hearsays.

Namdev as Guru: Saint Tukarm accepted Sant Namdev as his Guru. One of his abhanga is proof for this.[नामदे वे
केले स्वप्नामाजी जागे ....सवे पां डुरं गे ये वूननया.] Namdev gave knowledge, who came along with Lord Vitthal in Dream of
Tukaram.

Basic Tenets of His Message

 The Mantra Gita, a translation of the Bhagavad Gita in the abhanga form is ascribed to Tukaram. It is an
interpretation of the Gita from a Bhakti perspective. Another work ascribe to him is the Ghata, a collection
of 4,500 abhangas.
 Make God the Center of your life. Walk the Path of Love. Serve mankind, and thus see God in all.
 Cast away your clothes of traditions that you have inherited, for often those can restrain you from growing
in the Love of God.
  Tukaram did not favour elaborate rituals, displays of asceticism or preoccupation with austerities. He
would say, "even dogs come in saffron colour and bears have matted fur. If living in caves is being spiritual
then rats who inhabit caves must be doing sadhana (or, spiritual practice)."
 He was opposed to the acquiring of siddhis (or spiritual attainments) as these were obstructions to authentic
sadhana.
 Faith in Nature was crucial to sadhana. He believed that He who facilitates the milk from the breast for the
infant and the One who permits the bursting of foliage from the branches will certainly take care of me.
 Most important of all was the Privilege of being a Bhakta and to exercise in life, nama japa. He would say
that even God does not know the value of His Name. Even God is not aware of the power of His Name.
How can He be? The lotus cannot smell its own fragrance, only the bee can. The cow knows not the
sweetness of its milk, only the calf can. The oyster knows not the value of its pearl, only the jeweler can.

Final days: There are many miracles attributed to Tukaram.

There is disagreement about Tukaram's final day. Some say that he informed his wife early in the day about going to
Vaikuntha (the Divine Abode). His wife laughed at him. He went up the hillock and waited for Vithoba. By that
time, news had spread around Dehu and people had gathered around the hillock, waiting for the Divine event. From
eyewitness accounts, a large vehicle emerged from the skies and Vithoba emerged from the flying plane.
Eyewitnesses rushed to Tukaram's home and informed his wife that Tukaram was on his way to Vaikuntha, the
Abode of God. His wife ran toward the hills, only to see him take off in the Viman (Flying plane). To this day,
devotees gather at the hillock and sing his praises. However, Starr forwards the opinion that he was probably
murdered because of his successful reformist activity that had rocked the establishment and by getting rid of his
body, they were able to spread the rumour that he had gone to heaven in a heavenly chariot

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Lalleshwari

Lalleshwari (1320–1392), also known as Lalla, Lal Ded or "Lal Arifa". She was a mystic of the Kashmiri Shaivite
sect,and at the same time, a Sufi saint. She is a creator of the mystic poetry called vatsun or Vakhs, literally 'speech'.
Known as Lal Vakhs, her verses are the earliest compositions in the Kashmiri language and are an important part in
history of Kashmiri literature.

Lal Ded and her mystic musings continue to have a deep impact on the psyche of Kashmiri common man.
Lalleshwari was born in Pandrethan (ancient Puranadhisthana) some four and a half miles to the southeast of
Srinagar in a Kashmiri Pandit family. She married at age twelve, but her marriage was unhappy and she left home at
twenty-four to take sanyas (renunciation) and become a disciple of the Shaivite guru Siddha Srikantha (Sed Bayu).
She continued the mystic tradition of Shaivism in Kashmir, which was known as Trika before 1900.

Lal Vakh

Lala Vakh, literally mean sayings of Lala or Lala Ded:Lalleshwari is said to be Forerunner of Medieval Mystics As
in the rest of India, the middle of the 14th century was a period of religious and moral fermentation in Kashmir.
Buddhism had practically disappeared from the Valley, though we find mention of Buddhist priests and viharas in
the later Rajataranginis. Tilakacharya, described as a Buddhist, was a minister of Zain-ul-Abidin. Most of the
Buddhist theologians and saints finding the Valley uncongenial, had left for Ladakh and Tibet. The long period of
political instability which followed the peaceful and enlightened reign of Avantivarman (855-83 A.D.) was
responsible for the ossification of the predominant religion, Shaivism, into elaborate and complicated rituals which
dominated all social and cultural activities. Shaktism, born of the love for Durga worship, had degenerated into
grotesque forms of rites and ceremonies. Vaishnavism was not a strong element in the religious fabric of the Valley,
but in the 11th century it received further nourishment from the teachings of Ramanuja who travelled all the way
from Madras to Kashmir to fight Shaivism at its fountain-head. And with the destruction of temples and images by
several Hindu kings like Harsha, as well as by Muslim zealots, Hindu worship was driven to the seclusion of the
home or of 'natural' (Svayambhu) images - rocks, or ice formations, or springs. Sanskrit became the domain of the
learned few, the common man having taken to a form of Prakrit which though retaining its essentials, was yet
wholly different from the 'Language of the Gods'.
Impact of Islam:In this troubled period of political uncertainty and changing social values, the people of the Valley
were subjected to the impact of Islam. From a close contact between the two religions and their deep influence on
each other, there resulted the evolution of what may be called Medieval Reformers or Mystics.

For more than two hundred years Islam had, in central Asia and Persia, been similarly influenced by the teachings
and dogmas of Mahayana Buddhism and Upanishadic philosophy, resulting in the emergence of a cult of Islamic
mystics. Fortunately, the new religion entered the Valley in this form, being carried there by enlightened Sufis like
Bulbul Shah. With their humanistic approach to religion, they found a ready and sympathetic response from the
Kashmiris, already permeated with the teachings of mystic saints and "seers".

For, it was during this period of religious fermentation that a need had been felt for a new approach to religion
embracing all creeds and castes appealing to the 'heart' rather than the 'head'. Thanks to its rich religious and
philosophic traditions, Kashmir rose to the occasion and produced a number of mystics and saints who by their
teachings and their lives of complete self- abnegation were the living embodiments of true religion and morality.

Mother Lalla Appears: Foremost among them was the great mystic "seer", Lalleshwari, popularly known as Lal Ded
(Mother Lalla), who profoundly influenced the thought and life of her contemporaries and whose sayings still touch
the Kashmiri's ear, as well as the chords of his heart, and are freely quoted by him as maxims on appropriate
occasions. She was born in about the middle of the 14th century of the Christian Era in the time of Sultan Ala-ud-
din. Lall's parents lived at Pandrenthan (ancient Puranadhisthana) some four and a half miles to the south-east of
Srinagar. She was married at an early age, but was cruelly treated by her mother-in-law who nearly starved her. This
story is preserved in a Kashmiri proverb: Whether they killed a big sheep or a small one, Lalla had always a stone
for her dinner - an allusion to her mother-in-law's practice of putting a lumpy stone on her platter and covering it
thinly with rice, to make it look quite a big heap to others. And yet she never murmured.

Her father-in-law accidentally found out the truth. He got annoyed with his wife and scolded her. This incident
invited more curses on Lalla. Her mother- in-law poisoned the ears of her son with all sorts of stories. Ultimately,
the anomalies and cruelties of wordly life led her to renunciation and she discovered liberty in the life of the spirit.

She found her guru in Sidh Srikanth, whom she ultimately excelled in spiritual attainments:She pursued Yoga under
Sidh Srikanth, until she succeeded in reaching the 'abode of nectar'. But she did not stop there. All around her was
conflict and chaos. Her countrymen and women needed her guidance. She had a mission to perform, and well and
effectively she did it. Her life and sayings were mainly responsible in moulding the character of her people and
setting up tradition of love and tolerance which characterises them even today.

As Wandering Preacher

Eventually she gave up her secluded life and became a wandering preacher. She led a severely ascetic life, clad in
the bareness of one who had forsaken comforts, and by example and precept conveyed her teachings to the masses.
Like Mira she sang of Siva, the great beloved, and thousands of her followers, Hindus as well as Muslims,
committed to memory her famous Vakyas.

There is a high moral teaching which Lalla demonstrated when during her nude state a gang of youthful rowdies
were mocking her. A sober-minded cloth vendor intervened and chastised them. On this she asked the vendor for
two pieces of ordinary cloth, equal in weight. She put them on either shoulder and continued her wandering. On the
way some had salutations for her and some had gibes. For every such greeting she had a knot in the cloth, for the
salutations in the piece on the right, and for the gibes in the piece on the left. In the evening after her round, she
returned the pieces to the vendor and had them weighed. Neither had, of course, gained or lost by the knots. She thus
brought home to the vendor, and her disciples, that mental equipoise should not be shaken by the manner people
greeted or treated a person.

So that her teachings and spiritual experiences might reach the masses, she propagated them in their own language.
She thus laid the foundations of the rich Kashmiri literature and folklore. More than thirty per cent of the
Kashmiri idioms and proverbs derive their origin from her Vakyas.

Spiritual and Philosophical Vakyas

These Vakyas or sayings are an aggregate of Yoga philosophy and Saivism, expressive of high thought and spiritual
truth, precise, apt and sweet. Her quatrains are now rather difficult to understand as the language has undergone so
many changes, and references to special Yogic and philosophic terms are numerous therein.

Some of these sayings have been collected and published by Dr. Grierson, Dr. Barnett, Sir Richard Temple and
Pandit Anand Koul and apart from the consideration that they explain the Saiva philosophy of Kashmir through the
Kashmiri language, they exemplify the synthesis of cultures for which Kashmir has always been noted.

Lalla fills her teachings with many truths that are common to all religious philosophy. There are in it many touches
of Vaishnavism, the great rival of Saivism, much that is strongly reminiscent of the doctrines and methods of the
Muhammadan Sufis who were in India and Kashmir well before her day, and teachings that might be Christian with
Biblical analogies, though Indian's knowledge of Christianity must have been very remote and indirect at her date.

Lalla is no believer in good work in this or in former lives, in pilgrimages or austerities. In one of her sayings she
criticises the cold and meaningless way in which religious rituals are performed: She is a strong critic of idolatory as
a useless and even silly "work" and adjures the worshippers of stocks and stones to turn to Yogic doctrines and
exercises for salvation:

But Lalla is not a bigot; she constantly preaches wide and even eclectic doctrines; witness the following and many
other instances: "it matters nothing by what name the Supreme is called. He is still the Supreme;'' ''Be all Lhings to
all men;" ''the true saint is the servant of all mankind through his humility and loving kindness," "It matters nothing
what a man is or what his work of gaining his livelihood may be, so long as he sees the Supreme properly."

She puts no value on anything done without the saving belief in Yogic doctrine and practice, one of the results of
which is the destruction of the fruits of all work, good or bad. The aspirant should try to auain perfection in this life.
He only requires faith and perseverance:

She is a firm believer in herself. She has become famous and talks of the "wine of her sayings" as something
obviously precious, and alludes often to her own mode of life, fully believing she has obtained Release.

The Great Mystic

The greatness of Lalla lies in giving the essence of her experiences in the course of her Yoga practices through the
language of the common man. She has shown very clearly the evolution of the human being, theory of nada, the
worries and miseries of a jiva and the way to keep them off. The different stages of Yoga with the awakening of the
Kundalini and the experiences at the six plexi have been elucidated by her.

Much can, indeed, be said on her work as a poet and more, perhaps, on her work in the spiritual realm. But at a time
when the world was suffering from conflict - social, political and economic - her efforts in removing the differences
between man and man need to be emphasised.

The composite culture and thought she preached and the Orders she founded was an admixture of the non-dualistic
philosophy of Saivism and Islamic Sufism. As long back as the 13th century she preached non-violence, simple
living and high thinking and became thus Lalla Arifa for Muhammadans and Lalleshwari for Hindus.

She was thus the first among the long list of saints who preached medieval mysticism which later enwrapped the
whole of India. It must be remembered that Ramananda's teaching and that of those that came after him could not
have affected Lalla, because Ramananda flourished between 1400 and 1470, while Kabir sang his famous Dohas
between 1440 and 1518, and Guru Nanak between 1469 and 1538. Tulsidasa did not come on the scene till 1532
whereas Mira flourished much later.

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Meera Bai was one of the foremost exponents of the Prema Bhakti (Divine Love) and an inspired poetess. She is
regarded as an incarnation of Radha. She sang in vraja-bhAshA, sometimes mixed with rAjasthAni, in praise of
Giridhara GopAla (Shri Krishna), her lord for whom she developed in her heart the most intense love and devotion.
Meera occupies indeed a sacred place in the history of Indian thought and culture for her deep and passionate
religious devotion, as also for her poetry in which her genius was well revealed, and which was never bereft of
beauty in the true sense of the term. Her odes and hymns are so rich, sweet and inspiring, not because of any high
rhetoric or dexterity of language, but because they are characterized by a tenderness and simplicity of feeling as
genuine outpourings of a heart completely dedicated to God.

Much legend has gathered around the name of Meera, and there is a good deal of controversy surrounding her time
(when she lived) and connection with the MewAr ruling family. According to Tod, the historian, she was the queen
of RAna Kumbha of MewAr to whom she was married in 1513.

Although Karnaparampara legends maintain that she was born in Udhaipur to king Bhoonayaka and Chandramukhi,
there is consensus among many as to the following account: Born in Kurkhi in 1499 A.D., she was the daughter of
RAna Ratan Singh (a Ranthor) of Merta (between Ajmer and Jodhpur). Merta was a small state in Marwar,
Rajasthan ruled by the Ranthors, great devotees of Vishnu. Meera was raised and nurtured by her grandfather Rao
Duda in the fortress city of Merta. As customary with royal families, her education included knowledge of
scriptures, music, archery, fencing, horseback riding and driving chariots – she was also trained to wield weapons in
case of a war. However, Meera also grew up amidst an atmosphere of total Krishna consciousness, which was
responsible in molding her life in the path of total devotion towards Lord Krishna. It is said that at the age of five,
she was given a vigraha or statue of Lord Krishna by a mendicant saint passing through the kingdom. Historians
claim that this mendicant was Raidas, who initiated Meera into the practice of Shabd or Nada Yoga 1. Meera
developed an instant loving attachment to the idol and began spending most of her time in bathing, dressing and
worshipping the image as though it were real. She danced about the image in ecstasy. She sang beautiful songs in
front of the image. She talked to the idol. She slept with the image. She was always present in all divine discourses
in the palace, more of which were on BhAgavatam and Krishna Leela.

When she was just four years of age, she manifested her deep devotion to Krishna. Meera watched a marriage
procession in front of her residence. Meera, the child, spotted the well-dressed bridegroom and asked her mother
innocently, "Dear mother, who will be my bridegroom?" Meera’s mother smiled, and half in jest and half in earnest,
pointed towards the image of Sri Krishna and said, "My dear Meera, Lord Krishna - this beautiful fellow – is going
to be your bridegroom". Soon after, Meera’s mother passed on. As Meera grew up, her desire to be with her
Krishna grew intensely and she believed that Lord Krishna would come to marry her if he could accept a
cowherdess Radha as his dear consort. In due course, she became firmly convinced that Krishna was to be her
husband. The benign influence of Rao Duda's wisdom, the pain of losing her parents at a tender age and her
certainty that she was Krishna's chosen beloved, gave a unique strength and resolve to Mira's personality. Meera
was soft-spoken, mild-mannered, gifted, sweet, and sang with a melodious voice. She was reputed to be one of the
most extraordinary beauties of her time with fame spreading to several kingdoms and provinces. Her fame spread
far and wide. RAna Sangram Singh, commonly known as RAna Sangha, the powerful King of Mewar, approached
Rao Duda for Meera’s hand in marriage to his son Bhojraj (also known as RAna Kumbha or
KumbhaRAna). Bhojraj wanted to marry Meera for her pious nature and divine intent. Rao Duda agreed to the
union. However, Meera could not bear the thought of marrying a human being when her heart was filled with
thoughts of every nature, all about her Krishna. But unable to go against her beloved grandfather’s Rao Duda’s
word, she finally consented to the marriage. It is also said that Lord Krishna intervened timely in her dream to
advise her, “if the gopikAs could do their duty to their husbands, tend their families and above all be totally devoted
to me all the time, you can do the same thing. Do your duty. I shall not leave you any time”. Meera was wed to
RAna Kumbha in 1513, before she turned 14.

As ordained, Meera was dutiful. She left for Mewar with the RAna Kumbha. She obeyed her husband’s commands.
Scholars maintain that KumbhaRAna was a great devotee of the Lord himself, and wrote the treatise known as
‘Rasipriya’ and a grammatical work ‘SangIta rAjam’ on the immortal work of Jayadeva, GIta Govindam. He had
sought Meera’s hand out of admiration for her devotion and love to the Lord, which he felt he shared. It is ironic
that the RAna should forget this in the years that followed.

After her household duties were over, Meera would go to the temple of Lord Krishna, worship, sing and dance
before the image daily. The little image would get up, embrace Meera, play on the flute and talk to her.
KumbhaRAna’s mother and other ladies of the palace did not like the ways of Meera, as they were worldly-minded
and jealous. Meera’s mother-in-law forced her to worship Durga and admonished her often. But Meera maintained,
"I have already given up my life to my beloved Lord Krishna". Meera’s sister-in-law Udabai formed a conspiracy
and began to defame the innocent Meera. She informed RAna Kumbha that Meera was in secret love with some one,
that she witnessed Meera talking to her lover(s) in the temple, and that she would show him the persons if he would
accompany her one night. The ladies further raved that Meera, by her conduct, had brought a great slur on the
reputation of the RAna family of Chitore. The enraged Kumbha ran with sword in hand towards Meera, but as luck
would have it Meera had gone to her Krishna temple. A sober relative of the RAna counseled him, "RAna! You will
forever repent for your hasty behavior and consequences. Enquire into the allegation carefully and you will find the
truth. Meera is a great devotee of the Lord. Remember why you sought her hand. Out of sheer jealousy the ladies
might have concocted scandals against Meera to incite you and ruin her". Kumbha calmed down and accompanied
his sister who persistently took him to the temple at dead of night. RAna Kumbha broke open the door, rushed inside
and found Meera alone in her ecstatic mood talking and singing to the idol.

The RAna shouted at Meera, "Meera, show me your lover with whom you are talking now". Meera replied, "There
sits He—my Lord—the Nanichora who has stolen my heart". She went into a trance. The ladies floated other rumors
that Meera was mixing very freely with Sadhus. Meera was unaffected by such scandals and continued to invite
BhAgavathAs to join her in Krishna bhajan at the temple. She stood unruffled in the face of accusations from the
royal family. When questioned about her marital responsibilities, Meera responded that it was Krishna to whom
she was married. KumbhaRAna was heart-broken but remained a good husband and sympathizer of Meera until his
death.

One historical version of Meera’s life states that the RAna Kumbha died in a battle within ten years of their
marriage, as did her sympathetic father-in-law RAna Sangha (who named Meera his successor before dying). At
this juncture, the RAna’s relatives began persecuting Meera in various ways, even though Meera had no desire for
the throne. The tortures and torments came from the brother and successor of KumbhaRAna (Meera’s late husband)
and his cousin sister Udabai. It was no different from what Prahlada was subjected to by his father Hiranyakashipu.
Hari shielded Prahlada. Here, Krishna always stood by Meera. Meera was sent a basket with a cobra inside and a
message that the basket contained a garland of flowers. Meera, after meditation, opened the basket and found inside
a lovely idol of Sri Krishna with a garland of flowers. The relentless RAna (her brother-in-law) sent her a cup of
poison with the message that it was nectar. Meera offered it to her Lord Krishna and took it as His Prasad. It was
real nectar to her. The bed of nails that the RAna sent transformed into a bed of roses when Meera reposed on it.

When the torture and scandals continued, Meera sent a letter to Goswami Tulsidas and asked for his advice 2. She
wrote, "Simply because I am constantly tortured by my relatives, I cannot abandon my Krishna. I am unable to carry
on with my devotional practices in the palace. I have made Giridhar Gopala my friend from my very childhood. I
feel a total bondage with him. I cannot break that bond".
Tulsidasji sent a reply: "Abandon those who cannot understand you and who do not worship RAma or SyAma, even
though they are your dearest relatives. Prahlada abandoned his father; VibhIshana left his brother RAvana; Bharata
deserted his stepmother; Bali forsook even his Guru; the Gopasthrees, the women of Vraja, disowned their husbands
to get to their Krishna. Their lives were all the happier for having done so. The relation with God and the love of
God are the only elements that are true and eternal; all other relationships are unreal and temporary". Meera met up
once again with her Guru and mentor Raidas, who is said to have lived to a ripe age of 118 years. She went into the
slums often to be in the satsang of this great teacher. This was the impetus and inspiration behind the many queries
and controversies that she raised about Kulam in her songs.

The other version about what happened to KumbhaRAna (Meera’s husband and King) is one where the RAna
outlives (survives) Meera. In this version, the confused RAna turned a deaf ear through Meera’s trials and
tribulations at the hands of his conniving relatives; however, he became heart-broken upon Meera’s departure from
Mewar. The turning point in Meera’s life (which precipitated her departure from Mewar and hence her earthly
bonds) occurred when once Akbar and his court musician Tansen came in disguise to Chitore to hear Meera’s
devotional and inspiring songs.3 Both entered the temple and listened to Meera’s soul-stirring songs to their heart’s
content. Akbar was really moved. Before he departed, he touched the holy feet of Meera and placed a necklace of
priceless gems in front of the idol as a present. Somehow the news reached the KumbhaRAna that Akbar had
entered the sacred temple in disguise, touched the feet of Meera and even presented her a necklace. The RAna
became furious. He told Meera, "Drown yourself in the river and never show your face to the world in future. You
have brought great disgrace on my family".
Meera obeyed the words of her husband and King. She proceeded to the river to drown herself. The names of the
Lord "Govinda, Giridhari, Gopala" were always on her lips. She sang and danced in ecstasy on her way to the river.
When she raised her feet from the ground, a hand from behind grasped her and embraced her. She turned behind and
saw her beloved GiridhAri. She fainted on Him. After a few minutes she opened her eyes. Lord Krishna smiled and
gently whispered: "My dear Meera, your life with your mortal relatives is over now. You are absolutely free. Be
cheerful. You are and have always been mine. Proceed immediately to the bowers of Vraja and the avenues of
Vrindavan. Seek Me there, my dear. Start now".

Meera walked barefoot on the hot sandy beds of Rajasthan. On her way, many ladies, children and devotees received
her with great hospitality. She reached Brindavan. She reached the Chitchor GopAla. It was at Brindavan that she
again met and was inspired by Sant Raidas. She went about Brindavan doing Oonchavritti and worshipped in
the Govinda Mandir which has since become famous and is now a great place of pilgrimage for devotees from all
over the world. Her devotees of Chitore came to Brindavan to see Meera. A repentant Kumbha came to Vrindavan
to see Meera in the disguise of a mendicant, revealed himself and prayed that he may be forgiven for all his previous
wrongs and cruel deeds. He begged that Meera return to the kingdom and was assume her role as the queen once
more. Meera at once prostrated before her husband, and gently added, “What is Kulam or lineage, heritage or
inheritance? What is the meaning of the division amongst devotees as KshatriyAs and BrahmanAs and shudrAs and
the like? Who is man and who is woman? Krishna is the only Purusha and all of us are women. He is Pati and we
are all Pasus. I am no more Queen than you are King. There is only one King and my life belongs to
him.” Kumbha reminisced for a moment of the days when he wrote the treatises on Gita Govindam and how he had
desired the hand of the finest lady of his times for spiritual reasons. His eyes welled up when he was forcibly taken
to his dark days of jealousy, rancor and the torture he inflicted on the great soul of divine import. The
KumbhaRAna, for the first time, truly understood Meera’s exalted state of mind and prostrated before her in
reverence. He then promptly left Vrindavan a changed soul.

Jiva Gosain was the head of the Vaishnavites in Brindavan. Meera wanted to have Darshan of Jiva Gosain. He
declined to see her. He sent word to Meera that he would not allow any woman in his presence. Meera Bai retorted:
"Everybody in Brindavan is a woman. Only Giridhar Gopala is Purusha. Today only I have come to know that there
is another Purusha besides Krishna in Brindavan". Jiva Gosain was put to shame. He felt that Meera was indeed a
paramabhaktha or the supreme devotee of the Lord. He at once went to see Meera and paid her due respects.

Meera’s fame spread far and wide. She was immersed in satsang day in and out. At the request of KumbhaRAna,
Meera returned to Mewar and Kumbha agreed to her request that she would reside in the temple of Krishna but
would not restrict her movements and wanderings. From Mewar, she once again returned to Brindavan, and then
went on to Dwaraka. The King went with her. Dwaraka was to be the place where her GopAla would take her unto
Him at the temple of Ranchod.

There are, once again, two versions to Meera’s union with her Supreme Lord. In one version, the following took
place on Krishna’s JanmAshtami at the temple of Ranchchorji (Krishna). There was much happiness all around in
the abode of the Lord. The light of the lamps, the sound of the bhajans and the energy from the devotees’ ecstacy
were filling the air. With Tamburi in one hand and cymbals or chipla in the other the great tapasvini was singing
ecstatically with her Gopala smiling in front of her closed eyes. Meera stood up and danced with her song ‘Mere
Janama MaRAna ke sAthee’, and when the song ended, Kumbha gently approached her and requested her to come
back. Meera said, ‘RAnaji, the body is yours and you are a great devotee, but my mind, emotions and the soul are all
HIS. I do not know what use am I to you at this state of mind’. Kumbha was moved and he started singing with her
in unison. Meera rose up abruptly, stumbled and fell at the flowers on the feet of GiridhAri. ‘Oh, GiridhAri, are you
calling me, I am coming’. When Kumbha and the rest were watching in awe, there was a lightning which enveloped
Meera and the sanctum doors closed on their own. When the doors opened again, Meera’s saree was enveloping
Lord Krishna’s idol and her voice and the flute accompaniment were the only sounds that could be heard.

In the second version, Meera was invited back to Mewar by the RAna just as she had reached Dwaraka. Reluctant
to leave her Krishna, Meera asked permission to spend the night at the temple of Ranchhorji. The next morning her
lifeless body was found lying at its feet. It is believed that her spirit entered the deity during the night.

Historians and scholars put this date at 1546 A.D.

Meera’s Songs and Her Cosmic Vision

Meera had the beautiful cosmic vision. She saw Krishna in trees, in stones, in creepers, in flowers, thunder,
lightning, and in every living and non-living being. As long as there remains the name of Krishna, the name of
Meera will be forever remembered. It is extremely difficult to find a parallel to this wonderful personality “Meera”.
She was a saint, a philosopher, and a romantic poet. She was a versatile genius and a magnanimous soul. Her life has
a singular charm, with extraordinary beauty and marvel. She was a princess, but she abandoned the pleasures and
luxuries incident to her lofty placement in worldly sense, and chose instead, a life of poverty, austerity, TyAga,
Titiksha and VairAgya. Though she was a delicate young lady, she entered the perilous journey on the spiritual path
amidst various difficulties. She underwent various ordeals with undaunted courage and the conviction that came
from the ideals of Truth that she held. She stood colossal in her resolve and possessed a gigantic will. She rowed
her boat dexterously in a stormy sea of family troubles and difficulties and reached the other shore - the kingdom of
supreme love and peace. She belonged to the gentle fair sex and yet was undaunted in spirit and more courageous
than trained warriors. Though she was young, she bore persecutions silently. She endured the piercing taunts and
sarcastic criticisms of the world bravely. She was a true SthithaPragnya.

Meera’s songs infuse Faith, Courage, Devotion and the unconditional Love of God in the minds of the devotees. The
songs inspire the aspirants to follow the path of devotion through a simple sAdhana, true love, and they produce in
the singer and the listener a unique experience of exhilaration and tranquility at the same time. Meera was fearless in
her nature, simple in her habits, joyous in her disposition, amiable in her deportment, graceful in her behavior and
elegant in her demeanor. She immersed herself in the love of Giridhara Gopala. The name of Giridhara Gopala was
always on her lips. Even in her dreams, she lived in Sri Krishna. Meera was a scholar in her own right: she is
credited with the two poetic works ‘rAg-Govind’ and a commentary on Jayadeva’s ‘GIta Govinda’, which had had a
profound influence on her psyche as a child. Despite her scholarship, Meera chose to express her love for Giridhari
through the simplest and sweetest of lyrics. Meera’s mystic songs act as a soothing balm to the wounded hearts and
tired nerves of those who toil in this world under the heavy burden of life. The sweet music of her songs exerts a
benign influence on the listeners, removes discord and disharmony, and lulls them to sleep. Meera’s language of
love is so powerful that even a pronounced atheist will be moved by her devotion.

Meera had AnurAga and Ragatmika Bhakti. She never cared for public criticism and the injunctions or
interpretations of the scriptural ordinances. She danced in the streets. She did no ritualistic worship. She had
spontaneous love for Lord Krishna. From her very childhood she poured forth her love on Lord Krishna. Krishna
was her husband, friend, all relations and the Guru. Krishna was her PRAnanAtha. Meera had no doubt exhausted
her vAsanAs in the preliminary modes of worship in her prior births.

In her divine intoxication, Meera danced in public places. Her exalted state could not be adequately described in
words. She was sunk in the ocean of Premabhakti. She had no consciousness of her body and surroundings. Who
could gauge the depth of her devotion? Who could understand her internal state of Premabhava? Meera was like
Lord Gauranga. She was an embodiment of love and innocence. Her heart was the temple of devotion. Her face was
the lotus-flower of Prem. There was kindness in her look, love in her talk, joy in her discourses, power in her speech
and fervor in her songs. What a marvelous creation of God! What a personality of charm! Meera veritably taught the
world the way to love God.

So many princesses and queens have come and gone. So many princesses, and queens have appeared on the stage of
this world and vanished. How is it that the queen of Chitore alone is still remembered? Is this on account of her
beauty? Is this on account of her poetic skill? No. It is on account of her renunciation, single-minded devotion to
Lord Krishna and the self-realization. She conversed with Krishna. She ate with Krishna, her Beloved. She drank the
Krishna-premarasa. She sang from the core of her heart about her unique spiritual experiences. She was indeed one
of the foremost embodiments of Premabhakthi that ever walked on earth.
However
The event of great importance in Meera’s life (timing has always been questioned) is when she came into contact
with RavidAs, or RaidAs, the cobbler saint, who initiated her into the path of Shabd Yoga. Scholars differ about the
identity of Meera's master. Sant Mutt traditions maintain that RavidAs was the disciple of Kabir (1398-1518) and
lived to an age of 118 years. As per these accounts RavidAs lived from 1414 to 1532 or 1434 to 1552 - which makes
it plausible for Meera to be his disciple. By most accounts, Raidas was the saint-mendicant whom Meera met as a
child and who had given her the Krishna idol. At Brindavan, Meera sought Raidas’s satsang in the slums; he became
the inspiration for her to raise questions and controversies in many of her songs about birth and lineage.
There is controversy over whether Meera actually corresponded with Goswami Tulsidas.
There is controversy over whether the visitors that touched Meera’s feet in reverence at the temple at Mewar
were indeed Emperor Akbar and his court musician Tansen.

Poetry

Meera's songs are in a simple form called a pada (verse), a term used for a small spiritual song, usually composed in
simple rhythms with a repeating refrain, collected in her Padavali. The extant versions are in a Rajasthani and Braj, a
dialect of Hindi spoken in and around Vrindavan (the childhood home of Krishna), sometimes mixed with
Rajasthani, and in Gujarati:

That dark dweller in Braj

Is my only refuge.

O my companion, worldly comfort is an illusion,

As soon you get it, it goes.

I have chosen the indestructible for my refuge,

Him whom the snake of death will not devour.

My beloved dwells in my heart all day,

I have actually seen that abode of joy.

Meera's lord is Hari, the indestructible.

My lord, I have taken refuge with you, your maidservant

Although Meera is often classed with the northern Sant bhaktis who spoke of a formless divinity, there is no doubt
that she presents Krishna as the historical master of the Bhagavad Gita who is, even so, the perfect Avatar of the
eternal, who is omnipresent but particularly focussed in his icon and his temple. She speaks of a personal
relationship with Krishna as her lover, lord and master. The characteristic of her poetry is complete surrender. Her
longing for union with Krishna is predominant in her poetry: she wants to be "coloured with the colour of dusk" (the
symbolic colour of Krishna).

Mirabai's contribution to the Bhakti movement was primarily in her music: she wrote hundreds of songs and
initiated a mode of singing the songs, a raga. About 200-400 songs are accepted by scholars as being written by
Mirabai; another 800-1000 have been attributed to her. Mirabai did not credit herself as the author of the songs -- as
an expression of selflessness -- so her authorship is uncertain. The songs were preserve orally, and were not written
down for a long time, which complicates the task of assigning authorship.Mirabai's songs express her love and
devotion to Krishna, almost always as Krishna's wife. The songs speak of both the joy and the pain of love.
Metaphorically, Mirabai points to the longing of the personal self, atman, to be one with the universal self, or
paramatma, which is a poet's representation of Krishna.

Mirabai was a "loyal wife" according to her people's tradition only in the sense that she devoted herself to her
chosen spouse, Krishna, giving to him the loyalty she would not give to her earthly spouse, the Rajput prince.

Mirabai wrote her songs in Rajasthani and Braj Bhasa languages, and they were translated into Hindi and
Gujarati.After some years of wandering, Mirabai died at Dwarka, another place sacred to Krishna.

Mirabai's willingness to sacrifice family respect and traditional gender, family, and caste restrictions, and to devote
herself completely and enthusiastically to Krishna, made her an important role model in a religious movement that
stressed ecstatic devotion and that rejected traditional divisions based on sex, class, caste, and creed.
Syed Amanullah Meer Taqi was the only son of a Sufi saint, Meer Muttaqi. When Meer was a little child, his
father looking at his face used to say which is this fire burning within your heart that is reflecting on your face. Sufis
are lovers of God and so he thought that it was the fire of love for Allah. Living in a atmosphere of sufism at a very
young age had profound effect on Meer. He did not have much desires for worldly things.

While on his death bed, his father instructed Meer to "Adopt the path of love. A life without love is an ordeal and
losing one's heart in love is the real art. Though this path is riddled with difficulties, love is what drives the world."
This is a philosophy reflected by Meer in most of his works.

After his father's death, at the age of 11 years, he was abandoned by the people in whose care he had been left. His
elder step-brother also treated him badly. Meer left Agra for Delhi in search of livelihood . Samsamudaula gave him
a scholarship of one rupee per day, but this did not continue for long because in 1739, Nadir Shah attacked Delhi in
which Samsamudaula was killed. At that time Meer was in Agra. After staying in Agra for few days, Meer again
went to Delhi. In Delhi, he stayed in the home of Khan Arzoo, who was the maternal uncle of Meer's step-brother
Hafiz Muhammad Hasan. Muhammad Hassan wrote a letter to his uncle criticizing Meer. Soon Meer was homeless
and jobless and roaming in the streets aimlessly.

After Nadir Shah's carnage there was no charm left in Delhi for the poets, many of them moved to Lucknow. Meer
came to Lucknow in 1783; Nawab Asafaddaula fixed him Rs. 200 a month stipend.

His early experiences in life and shortness of money though had made a permanent change in his nature and even in
the peaceful atmosphere of Lucknow he lived a terrible life. Simple things used to make him upset, many times he
walked out of the Nawab's court. In 1810 he died in Lucknow.

Meer has been called the Imam (leader/pioneer) of Urdu shayari and this was accepted by the greatest Urdu poets.
Shayars of the stature of NaasiKH, GHalib and Zauq used to call him Ustad as is evidenced by these shers:

Instead of using high-falutin' Faarsi, Meer would use a common and easy to understand style of narration
which not only increased the simplicity and beauty of GHazal, but also magnified it's effect to an extent that
would leave the listener spell-bound.

Born in Agra, India (then called Akbarabad), ruled by the Mughals at the time. He left for Delhi, at the age of 11,
following his father's death. His philosophy of life was formed primarily by his father, whose emphasis on the
importance of love and the value of compassion remained with him throughout his life and imbued his poetry. At
Delhi, he finished his education and joined a group of nobility as a courtier-poet. He lived much of his life in
Mughal Delhi. Kuchha Chelan, located in famous grain market Khari Baoli, in Old Delhi was his address at that
time. However, after Ahmad Shah Abdali's sack of Delhi each year starting 1748, he eventually moved to the court
of Asaf-ud-Daulah in Lucknow, at the king's invitation. Distressed to witness the plundering of his beloved Delhi, he
gave vent to his feelings through some of his couplets.

"Kya bood-o-bash poochhe ho Purab ke sakino

Hum ko gharib jaan ke hans hans pukar ke

Dilli jo aik shehar tha aalam mein intekhaab

Rehte the muntakhib hi jahan rozgaar ke

Jisko falak ne loot ke viraan kar diya

Hum rahnay walay hain ussi ujray dayar ke"

Literary life

Mir migrated to Lucknow in 1782 and remained there for the remainder of his life. He died, of a purgative overdose,
on Friday, 21 September 1810
His complete works, Kulliaat, consist of six Diwans containing 13,585 couplets, comprising all kinds of poetic
forms.

Mir's literary reputation is anchored on his ghazals. Mir lived at a time when Urdu language and poetry was at a
formative stage - and Mir's instinctive aesthetic sense helped him strike a balance between the indigenous expression
and new enrichment coming in from Persian imagery and idiom, to constitute the new elite language known as
Rekhta or Hindui. Basing his language on his native Hindustani, he leavened it with a sprinkling of Persian diction
and phraseology, and created a poetic language at once simple, natural and elegant, which was to guide generations
of future poets.

After his move to Lucknow, his beloved daughter died, followed by his son (either Mir Faiz Ali or Mir Kallu Arsh),
and then his wife. This, together with other earlier setbacks (including his traumatic stages in Delhi) lends a strong
pathos to much of his writing - and indeed Mir is noted for his poetry of pathos and melancholy.

What Mir was practicing was probably the Malamati or “Blameworthy” aspect of the Sufi tradition. Using
this technique, a person ascribes to oneself an unconventional aspect of a person or society, and then plays out its
results, either in action or in verse. He was a prolific writer. His complete works, Kulliaat, consist of 6 dewans,
containing 13,585 couplets comprising all kinds of poetic forms: ghazal, masnavi, qasida, rubai, mustezaad, satire,
etc.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------
Mirza Ghalib

Born-27 December 1797, Agra, Maratha Confederacy

Died- 15 February 1869 (aged 72)Delhi, Punjab, British India

Pen name-Asad, Ghalib

Occupation- Poet

Period-Mughal era

Genres-Ghazal

Subjects-Love, Philosophy

Dabir-ul-Mulk, Najm-ud-Daula Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan pen-name Ghalib Asad, asad means lion) was a
classical Urdu and Persian poet from India during British colonial rule. During his lifetime the Mughals were
eclipsed and displaced by the British and finally deposed following the defeat of the Indian rebellion of 1857, events
that he wrote of.Most notably, he wrote several ghazals during his life, which have since been interpreted and sung
in many different ways by different people. He is considered, in South Asia, to be one of the most popular and
influential poets of the Urdu language. Ghalib today remains popular not only in India and Pakistan but also
amongst diaspora communities around the world.

Family and early life

Mirza Ghalib was born in Agra into a family descended from Aibak Turks who moved to Samarkand after the
downfall of the Seljuk kings. His paternal grandfather, Mirza Qoqan Baig Khan was a Saljuq Turk who had
immigrated to India from Samarkand (now in Uzbekistan) during the reign of Ahmad Shah (1748–54). He worked at
Lahore, Delhi and Jaipur, was awarded the subdistrict of Pahasu (Bulandshahr, UP) and finally settled in Agra, UP,
India. He had 4 sons and 3 daughters. Mirza Abdullah Baig Khan and Mirza Nasrullah Baig Khan were two of his
sons. Mirza Abdullah Baig Khan (Ghalib's father) got married to Izzat-ut-Nisa Begum, and then lived at the house of
his father in law. He was employed first by the Nawab of Lucknow and then the Nizam of Hyderabad, Deccan. He
died in a battle in 1803 in Alwar and was buried at Rajgarh (Alwar, Rajasthan). Then Ghalib was a little over 5 years
of age. He was raised first by his Uncle Mirza Nasrullah Baig Khan. Mirza Nasrullah Baig Khan (Ghalib's uncle)
started taking care of the three orphaned children. He was the governor of Agra under the Marathas. The British
appointed him an officer of 400 cavalrymen, fixed his salary at Rs.1700.00 month, and awarded him 2 parganas in
Mathura (UP, India). When he died in 1806, the British took away the parganas and fixed his pension as Rs. 10,000
per year, linked to the state of Firozepur Jhirka (Mewat, Haryana). The Nawab of Ferozepur Jhirka reduced the
pension to Rs. 3000 per year. Ghalib's share was Rs. 62.50 / month. Ghalib was married at age 13 to Umrao Begum,
daughter of Nawab Ilahi Bakhsh (brother of the Nawab of Ferozepur Jhirka). He soon moved to Delhi, along with
his younger brother, Mirza Yousuf Khan, who had developed schizophrenia at a young age and later died in Delhi
during the chaos of 1857

In accordance with upper class Muslim tradition, he had an arranged marriage at the age of 13, but none of his seven
children survived beyond infancy. After his marriage he settled in Delhi. In one of his letters he describes his
marriage as the second imprisonment after the initial confinement that was life itself. The idea that life is one
continuous painful struggle which can end only when life itself ends, is a recurring theme in his poetry.

Royal titles

In 1850, Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar II revived upon Mirza Ghalib the title of "Dabeer-ul-Mulk". The Emperor
also added to it the additional title of Najm-ud-daulah] The conferment of these titles was symbolic of Mirza
Ghalib’s incorporation into the nobility of Delhi. He also received the title of 'Mirza Nosha' by the emperor, thus
adding Mirza as his first name. He was also an important courtier of the royal court of the Emperor. As the Emperor
was himself a poet, Mirza Ghalib was appointed as his poet tutor in 1854. He was also appointed as tutor of Prince
Fakhr-ud Din Mirza, eldest son of Bahadur Shah II,(d. 10 July 1856). He was also appointed by the Emperor as the
royal historian of Mughal Court

Being as a member of declining Mughal nobility and old landed aristocracy, he never worked for a livelihood, lived
on either royal patronage of Mughal Emperors, credit or the generosity of his friends. His fame came to him
posthumously. He had himself remarked during his lifetime that although his age had ignored his greatness, it would
be recognized by later generations. After the decline of Mughal Empire and rise of British Raj, despite his many
attempts, Ghalib could never get the full pension restored

Poetry career

Ghalib started composing poetry at the age of 11. His first language was Urdu, but Persian and Turkish were also
spoken at home. He got his education in Persian and Arabic at a young age. When Ghalib was in his early teens, a
newly converted Muslim tourist from Iran (Abdus Samad, originally named Hormuzd, a Zoroastrian) came to Agra.
He stayed at Ghalibs home for 2 years. He was a highly educated individual and Ghalib learned Persian, Arabic,
philosophy, and logic from him.[

Although Ghalib himself was far prouder of his poetic achievements in Persian[ he is today more famous for his
Urdu ghazals. Numerous elucidations of Ghalib's ghazal compilations have been written by Urdu scholars. The first
such elucidation or Sharh was written by Ali Haider Nazm Tabatabai of Hyderabad during the rule of the last Nizam
of Hyderabad. Before Ghalib, the ghazal was primarily an expression of anguished love; but Ghalib expressed
philosophy, the travails and mysteries of life and wrote ghazals on many other subjects, vastly expanding the scope
of the ghazal. This work is considered his paramount contribution to Urdu poetry and literature.

In keeping with the conventions of the classical ghazal, in most of Ghalib's verses, the identity and the gender of the
beloved is indeterminate. The critic/poet/writer Shamsur Rahman Faruqui explains that the convention of having the
"idea" of a lover or beloved instead of an actual lover/beloved freed the poet-protagonist-lover from the demands of
realism. Love poetry in Urdu from the last quarter of the seventeenth century onwards consists mostly of "poems
about love" and not "love poems" in the Western sense of the term.

His letters

Mirza Ghalib was a gifted letter writer. Not only Urdu poetry but the prose is also indebted to Mirza Ghalib. His
letters gave foundation to easy and popular Urdu. Before Ghalib, letter writing in Urdu was highly ornamental. He
made his letters "talk" by using words and sentences as if he were conversing with the reader. According to him "sau
kos se ba-zaban-e-qalam baatein kiya karo aur hijr mein visaal ke maze liya karo" [ from hundred of miles talk with
the tongue of the pen and enjoy the joy of meeting even when you are separated] His letters were very informal,
some times he would just write the name of the person and start the letter. He himself was very humorous and also
made his letter very interesting. He said "main koshish karta hoon keh koi aisi baat likhoon jo parhay khoosh ho
jaaye" [I want to write the lines that whoever reads those should enjoy it] When the third wife of one of his friends
died, he wrote... Some scholar says that Ghalib would have the same place in Urdu literature if only on the basis of
his letters.They have been translated into English by Ralph Russell, The Oxford Ghalib.

Ghalib was a chronicler of this turbulent period. One by one, Ghalib saw the bazaars – Khas Bazaar, Urdu Bazaar,
Kharam-ka Bazaar, disappear, whole mohallas (localities) and katras (lanes) vanish. The havelis (mansions) of his
friends were razed to the ground. Ghalib wrote that Delhi had become a desert. Water was scarce. Delhi was now “ a
military camp”. It was the end of the feudal elite to which Ghalib had belonged.

His pen name

His original Takhallus (pen-name) was Asad, drawn from his given name, Asadullah Khan. At some point early in
his poetic career he also decided to adopt the takhallus 'Ghalib' (meaning all conquering, superior, most
excellent).Popular legend has it that he changed his pen name to 'Ghalib' when he came across this sher (couplet) by
another poet who used the takhallus (pen name) 'Asad':

The legend says that upon hearing this couplet, Ghalib ruefully exclaimed, "whoever authored this couplet does
indeed deserve the Lord's rahmat (mercy) (for having composed such a deplorable specimen of Urdu poetry). If I
use the takhallus Asad, then surely (people will mistake this couplet to be mine and) there will be much la'anat
(curse) on me!" And, saying so, he changed his takhallus to 'Ghalib'.

However, this legend is little more than a figment of the legend-creator's imagination. Extensive research performed
by commentators and scholars of Ghalib's works, notably Imtiyaz Ali Arshi and Kalidas Gupta Raza, has succeeded
in identifying the chronology of Ghalib's published work (sometimes down to the exact calendar day!). Although the
takhallus 'Asad' appears more infrequently in Ghalib's work than 'Ghalib', it appears that he did use both his noms de
plume interchangeably throughout his career and did not seem to prefer either one over the other.

Mirza Ghalib and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan

1855, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan finished his highly scholarly, very well researched and illustrated edition of Abul
Fazl’s Ai’n-e Akbari, itself an extraordinarily difficult book. Having finished the work to his satisfaction, and
believing that Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib was a person who would appreciate his labours, Syed Ahmad
approached the great Ghalib to write a taqriz (in the convention of the times, a laudatory foreword) for it. Ghalib
obliged, but what he did produce was a short Persian poem castigating the Ai’n-e Akbari, and by implication, the
imperial, sumptuous, literate and learned Mughal culture of which it was a product. The least that could be said
against it was that the book had little value even as an antique document. Ghalib practically reprimanded Syed
Ahmad Khan for wasting his talents and time on dead things. Worse, he praised sky-high the “sahibs of England”
who at that time held all the keys to all the a’ins in this world.

The poem was unexpected, but it came at the time when Syed Ahmad Khan’s thought and feelings themselves were
inclining toward change. Ghalib seemed to be acutely aware of a European[English]-sponsored change in world
polity, especially Indian polity. Syed Ahmad might well have been piqued at Ghalib’s admonitions, but he would
also have realized that Ghalib’s reading of the situation, though not nuanced enough, was basically accurate. Syed
Ahmad Khan may also have felt that he, being better informed about the English and the outside world, should have
himself seen the change that now seemed to be just round the corner. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan never again wrote a
word in praise of the Ai’n-e Akbari and in fact gave up taking active interest in history and archaeology, and became
a social reformer.

Personal life

Mirza was born in Kala Mahal in Agra. In the end of 18th century, his birthplace was converted into Indrabhan
Girls' Inter College. The birth room of Mirza Ghalib is preserved within the school. Around 1810, he was married to
Umrao Begum, daughter of Nawab Ilahi Bakhsh Khan of Loharu (younger brother of the first Nawab of Loharu,
Nawab Mirza Ahmad Baksh Khan, at the age of thirteen. He had seven children, none of whom survived (this pain
has found its echo in some of Ghalib's ghazals). There are conflicting reports regarding his relationship with his
wife. She was considered to be pious, conservative and God-fearing.
Ghalib was proud of his reputation as a rake. He was once imprisoned for gambling and subsequently relished the
affair with pride. In the Mughal court circles, he even acquired a reputation as a "ladies man„

He died in Delhi on February 15, 1869. The house where he lived in Gali Qasim Jaan, Ballimaran, Chandni Chowk,
in Old Delhi has now been turned into 'Ghalib Memorial' and houses a permanent Ghalib exhibition.

Religious views

Ghalib was a very liberal mystic who believed that the search for God within liberated the seeker from the narrowly
Orthodox Islam, encouraging the devotee to look beyond the letter of the law to its narrow essence. His Sufi views
and mysticism is greatly reflected in his poems and ghazals

Like many other Urdu poets, Ghalib was capable of writing profoundly religious poetry, yet was skeptical about the
literalist interpretation of the Islamic scriptures. He staunchly disdained the Orthodox Muslim Sheikhs of the Ulema,
who in his poems always represent narrow-mindedness and hypocrisy:In another verse directed towards the Muslim
maulavis (clerics), he criticized them for their ignorance and arrogant certitude: "Look deeper, it is you alone who
cannot hear the music of his secrets". In his letters, Ghalib frequently contrasted the narrow legalism of the Ulema
with "it's pre-occupation with teaching the baniyas and the brats, and wallowing in the problems of menstruation and
menstrual bleeding" and real spirituality for which you had to "study the works of the mystics and take into one's
heart the essential truth of God's reality and his expression in all things"

Ghalib believed that if God laid within and could be reached less by ritual than by love, then he was as accessible to
Hindus as to Muslims. As a testament to this, he would later playfully write in a letter that during a trip to Benares,
he was half tempted to settle down there for good and that he wished he had renounced Islam, put a Hindu sectarian
mark on his forehead, tied a sectarian thread around his waist and seated himself on the banks of the Ganges so that
he could wash the contamination of his existence away from himself and like a drop be one with the river.

During the anti-British Rebellion in Delhi on 5 October 1857, three weeks after the British troops had entered
through Kashmiri Gate, some soldiers climbed into Ghalib's neighbourhood and hauled him off to Colonel Burn for
questioning. He appeared in front of the colonel wearing a Turkish style headdress. The colonel, bemused at his
appearance, inquired in broken Urdu, "Well? You Muslim?", to which Ghalib replied, "Half?" The colonel asked,
"What does that mean?" In response, Ghalib said, "I drink wine, but i don't eat pork."

Views on Hindustan

In his poem "Chirag-i-Dair" (Temple lamps) which was composed during his trip to Benaras during the spring of
1827, Ghalib mused about the land of Hindustan (the Indian subcontinent) and how Qiyamah (Doomsday) has failed
to arrive, in spite of the numerous conflicts plaguing it

Said I one night to a pristine seer

(Who knew the secrets of whirling time)

"Sir, you well perceive

That goodness and faith,

Fidelity and love

Have all departed from this sorry land

Father and son are at each other's throat;

Brother fights brother, Unity and federation are undermined

Despite all these ominous signs,

Why has not Doomsday come?

Who holds the reins of the Final Catastrophe?

The hoary old man of lucent ken

Pointed towards Kashi and gently smiled

"The Architect", he said, "is fond of this edifice

Because of which there is color in life; He

Would not like it to perish and fall."

Contemporaries and disciples

Ghalib's closest rival was poet Zauq, tutor of Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the then emperor of India with his seat in Delhi.
There are some amusing anecdotes of the competition between Ghalib and Zauq and exchange of jibes between
them. However, there was mutual respect for each other's talent. Both also admired and acknowledged the
supremacy of Meer Taqi Meer, a towering figure of 18th century Urdu Poetry. Another poet Momin, whose ghazals
had a distinctly lyrical flavour, was also a famous contemporary of Ghalib. Ghalib was not only a poet, he was also a
prolific prose writer. His letters are a reflection of the political and social climate of the time. They also refer to
many contemporaries like Mir Mehdi Majrooh, who himself was a good poet and Ghalib's life-long acquaintance.

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My Experiments with Truth

Gandhi’s experiments with truth are his experiments with life and his different natural, candid and naive reactions to
the spur of moments. Gandhi begins with his childhood experiences, moves on to his school days memoirs and
subsequently his journey to Europe, experiments in South Africa, India and his entry in the national politics,
freedom struggle and his experiments with nonvoilence,satyagrah.All these experiences have been candidly narrated
by the author.His experience evoke a sense of morality and musings keeping readers spelt
bound.Plain,simple,ordinary and very bizarre accounts as these are appeal to the readers .These truths come from the
depth of heart.Any reader may find these accounts as Gandhi’s moral courage, his convictions and above all guts to
speak in public.He touches imagination of the readers, as he grows to share his fears, apprehensions and little known
secrets. Gandhi never sounds louder, never unengaging but his experiences are inspiring. The grains of truth are put
on test. Many of his experiments may not go with the ideology of the readers but no one may question the moral
courage inherent in those experiments. Gandhi himself finds some of these unacceptable at later stage of life. He
confesses that on many counts, he was adamant, unyielding but his lived even his whims and fancies as his
convictions .Gandhi’s subjectivity has an undertone of objectivity. He shares his human fears, anxieties and failures
in context of a cultural matrix, He speaks of his child marriage which was very common in India in his time and of
late in states like Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, Gandhi speaks in a tone of a reformer, a psychoanalyst, a moralist
and visionary. He shares with his readers how Indians who went England to pursue further studies feared to be
ridiculed to confess that they are married. Gandhi had also this fear but he overcame it with his sense of truth,There
are many such naive issues which he discusses as his experiments with truth.This piece of autobiography held as
the most successful work in the genre of autobiography depicts Gandhi as an ordinary man with humane
limitations,foibles,deficiencies and weaknesses growing in a legendary figure of the 20 th century and generation to
come,Einstein rightly pointed out”Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and
blood walked upon this earth”.

WHY DOES GANDHI CALL IT AN EXPERIMENT...?

Gandhi wrote in introduction to this book that one of his friends called Anand Swami once asked him what led him
to set on this adventure while writing autobiography is more akin to the Westerners.Sharing his apprehensions he
further asked “Supposing you reject tomorrow the things you hold as principles today ,is it not likely that men who
shape their conduct on the authority of your word ,spoken or written, maybe misled?”Gandhi was influenced b y
this experiences,accounts as he grew with life.He called his experience not truth but experiments with truth because
the validity,empirical results would remain a subject to revision and above all there is no single way to see the truth
though it is monotheistic in nature.Even the Upanishads say that truth is one but scholars interpret it in many
ways.Therefore Gandhi decided to speak of his experiments only.His experiments in personal, political, religious
and spiritual fields narrated in this book took a shape of an autobiographyargument.He clarified that these would be
a series of my lived.Gandhi calls it THE STORY OF MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH.These include
experiments with non-violence ,celibacy,other Gandhian tools of political experiments and other principles of
conduct considered to be distinct from truth.To Gandhi truth was not only truthfulness of words but truthfulness in
thought and action also,and not only the relative truth of our conception but Eternal Truth that connects us to one
who is supreme and Absolute.Thus Gandhi loved to call his accounts experiments with truth and not only my
autography or autobiog raphy ,

Gandhi’s experiments in South Africa was designed to show that the concept of Satyagraha was derived not from
moral theory or doctrine,but from the experience and practice.The narrative is driven by the conflict between ,on the
one hand,Gandhi and his Satyagrahis ,and on the other, South African government.Mixing military and religious
metaphors,Gandhi portrayed himself at once as a general directing a campaign and as a leading disciples on a
pilgrimage.The narrative shifts swiftly between scenes describing high politics and Gandhi’s imprisonment in
Johannesburg,Gandhi’s experiments in South Africa exemplified his the most distinctive formal trait as a writer.He
dramatised the events with utmost economy of words thus lending a theaterical significance to his narrative.Take for
instance,the extraordinary economy with which he describes the event that was to acquire a mythic status the turning
point in Gandhi’s life,the event that set him on his path .

“I was pushed out of the train by a police constable at Maritzburg ,and the trains having left,was sitting in the witing
room ,shivering in the bitter cold,Ididnot know where my luggage was ,nor did I dare to inquire of anybody ,lest I
might be insulted and assaulted once again.Sleep was not out of the question.Doubt took took possession of my
mind .Late at night I came to the conclusion that to run back to India was cowardly .I must reach Pretoria ,without
minding insults or even assaults.Pretoria was my goal.”

Thus was Gandhi launched on his Satyagraha campaign ,and on his political destiny.South Africa ,Gandhi
concluded ,was “where I had realised my vocation in life.” With this now clear ,he left South Africa for India in
1914.The subsequent years: 1915,1917, 1920,1922,1930-1936 ,1942 went down in the history of India as
significant landmarks during which Gandhi made many experiments in the political, social, and spiritual fields.
Gandhi’s legendary “Great Trial” published in YOUNG INDIA made Britishers restless as it became a nationalist
lore. Gandhi made it clear that in indicating himself, he did so according to his own ethical principles of non-
violence and not the statutes of the British laws-which in his words were no less than a “subtle but effective system
of terrorism and an organised display of terrorism and an organised display of force.” The dramatisation of his
own life , its transformation into a permanent performance ,was Gandhi’s greatest literary achievement. Gandhi’s
life is itself a great narrative parabola , driven by an unfailing internal momentum. A young hero is exiled from his
home in Western India to London and then to South Africa: through the injustice and humiliation he suffers there at
the hands of his rulers ,he learns spiritual and physical fortitude :he returns to pursue a quest to free his homeland of
alien rule :he inspires his people to superman feats ,and leads them to liberty but at the moment of triumph he is
consumed ,as his people gain their freedom. With artful alertness ,Gandhi allowed the details of this life to be
constantly witnessed and recorded befitting for a barrister whose language ,manners, and theatrical sense of
confrontation were all shaped by his encounter with the British laws.

The Story of My Experiments With Truth’ was delivered in the form of a sequence of parables ,a modern recension
of the Budhist Jataka tradition.It could be read as a historical and political quest for freedom and nationhood,as well
as spiritual mission of purification and salvation .Individual drama was masterfully blended with historical epic. He
insisted that ‘I write as the spirit moves me at the time of writing...’It was not accuracy but truth that he was after:
and the standard that he implied set not by memoires or his history writing ,but by science .Gandhi described himself
in the book as scientist ‘and one of the tropes that he evoked , is that of experiment. The experimental theme recurs
; Gandhi writes of ‘experiments’ in the field of politics, experiments in the field of spiritualism, experiments on his
body and experiments on in dietetics and principal and current experiments. The weekly instalments of his life-
stories were as laboratory reports., dissection of lived experiences. Gandhi wrote ‘I claim for them nothing more
does than the scientist who, though he conducts his experiments with the utmost accuracy ,forethought and
minuteness ,never claims and finally about his conclusions, but keeps an open mind regarding them.’’
 GANDHI’S ENGLISH PROSE AND STYLE

Gandhi was a multi faceted personality. In his multiple roles , whatever he did ,his works bore the imprint of his
originality and style. And why not ? After all every man is style. Undoubtedly, Gandhi was innovative and
experimental in his style of functioning. He was original to his core. His political movements against the British
government: social reform programmes , methods of mass mobilization , tools of protest and agitation reflected the
originality and straightforwardness of his personality. His words were simple, ideas were comprehensible and the
consequent effect was mass appeal. Like his life ,his writings were crystal clear and coherent and systematic.
Gandhi as a prose writer had all these ingredients of the person that e was. He was a powerful prose writer. He had
clarity of thought and vision, strange power of fusing thought with emotion, integrating words with pictures and
creating a deep and lasting impact on his readers. His descriptive skill has been revealed in most of his prose
writings. Now the question rises, what makes his prose so powerful. The answer lies in the originality of the
content, honesty of purpose and truth of mind and heart. Truth and statement of truth in itself is powerful. Gandhi
didn’t speak like Jesus and Confucius in parables and anecdotes but in a narrative which were loaded with true
stories scattered around him and his works which he chose to narrate or write. He talked of commonplace things and
commonly shared realities evoking a sense of community feeling and social cohesiveness. Thus the impact was
overwhelming.

Gandhi’s style was never ornamental nor did he write vaulting prose. He mixed high style with low with profound
wit and maturity. Gandhi used English as his medium of expression as a tool of defiance .He experimented with the
language by using an idiom closer to Indian languages. Barely a fortnight before his death he wrote “English and
English scholars in India think that there is something special about my English .” It is difficult to understand the
nuances of his prose style but one can see the richness of his prose, his frequent use of Indianism. He used
neologism , code mixing and some of the words of the source language. Gandhi was known for precision and
economy of words. His description of Mertizberg ,where he was thrown out of first class compartment is
remarkable for brevity in style. He used words like ‘Himalayan mistake’, coined the word ‘QUIT INDIA’ and
popularised the word ‘fast’. Gandhi freely mixed flinched clichés and and new coinages. Gandhi’s unornamented
style diverged entirely from the mauve prose of earlier autobiographies and political writing. Undoubtedly, Gandhi
was gifted with strange alchemical writing.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------

‘Aankhon Dekha Gadar ‘ is Hindi translation of Vishnu Bhatt Godse’s novella “Manjha Parvas”. Originally
written in Marathi. Godse was a poor Brahmin who set on a journey of north Indiato earn money to liquidate debts
of his parents .He held from a Marathi family sustaining on parental profession of performing religious and cultural
rituals befitting to purohits.The family income was meagre and author’s parents had incurred heavy debts .Young
Vishnu set on a journey along with his uncle to earn money by performing religious worship and rituals.He was
caught into vortex of 1857.His authentic record of various events of 1857 revolt spreading
overGwalior,Jhansi,Kalapi,Kanpur and Benaras has been woven into a historical epic of individual
experiences.Narrated in first person his experiences are replete with physical,geographical,social,cultural ,religious
and historical details.Godse was gifted with srange sense of observation.His observations are not superficial but
these get immense historical and literary significance with his unbiased comments.He narrates his lived experiences
with poetic imagination particularly when he describes the violence ,atrocities and cruelty inflicted on innocent
Indian masses .His narrative gets a theatrical dimension as he blends his accounts of unfortunate journey, personal
loss, sufferings of the people .He has an eye for details while portraying persons,places,rituals,dresses,
manners,seasons and flora and fauna.Godse’s greatness lies in his objective analysis of a scene, situation and
individual.Like an objective historgrapher he is detached ,like a human being he is he is overwhelmed by strange
customs and suffering of the masses.One could marvel at his minute details while portraying Rani Lakhshmi Bai of
Jhansi,.His description of Tantia Tope and Nana Shaheb is equally thrilling .What is most significant about his eye-
witnessed,live accounts is that he sustains interests of readers from the beginning to the end .The romance of
adventure ,thrill ,the religious performance and gory tales of bloodshed and mayhem seemed to have attained a
panoramic view .

The most outstanding leader of revolt was Rani of Jhanshi whom she calls Bai sa hib who took the leadership of
sepoys at Jhanshi.Lord Dalhousi e ,the Governor general of india had refused to allow the kingdom to the princely
states where the kings had no legal heirs. After her husband dies and had annexed the state by the application of
doctrine of lapse. Rani had tried every thing to reverse the decision. Godse describes her various attempts and mode
for reversal of this decision which are also historically authenticated. When nothing worked she joined sepoys and in
time, became one of the formidable enemies the British had to contend with Godse examiners like a historian, why
did the sepoy revert?

A proclamation issued at Delhi indicates the immediate cause: “It is well known that in these days all the English
have entertained these e designs – first, to destroy the religion of the whole Hindustani Army and then to make
people by compares on christia. The bad service condition, deployment of sep in Burma and intruise on of Christian
mission vary in the barracks fueled the fire. Added to these causes which Godse highlights with details is
introduction of Engiled rifle. The cartilages of the new rife had to be bitten off before loading and the grease was
reportedly made of beef and pig teaic fat. The sepoys felt their religion was in real danger. The revolt of the sepoys
thus became a popular upsising. The battle Godse recalls between ‘Gura’ or ‘Kala’ took ugly turn. The denounces
the inpunanitarian acts of both the Britishers as well as Hindustani. Godse sees the revolt as symbol of people’s
simmering discontentment against the British rule. But he paints this state of restlessness and anarchy with a
wholestic approach. For instance, while describing the uprisings at different epicentres he visited, he never fails to
highlight the loot, arson and in human acts of local antisocial elements to grind their own axes. Amidst the mod,
bloody flares, he weeps to see the apparent loss of lone, compassion and humanism it self. The abject indifference of
his fellow Brahmins in the lonely forest, where his uncle faints, and his repeated request fall flat on them evokes a
pathetic feeling.

Godse depicts the revolt in Gwalior, Kanpur and Lucknow. He tells us how the Peshwa of Bittos joined the upsising.
His description of mad masses, marching cavalry and beating of arums evoke the scene of war depicted by many
medieval posts. His pictures are never static but dramatic and moving. He arouses the readers sensually as he
describes foods, music, wars and mundane issues. What appeals to the readers is his quality of mixing mundane
affairs with situations of war. Perhaps Godse intends to say his readers that “war annals will pale into night are their
stories live”. He says that inspite of loot, killings ,deceits and foul plays the general drama of human live never
ceased .He comments on the religious faith of the people ,worships, offerings ,oblation,donations and Yajna.Some
of these were performed to win over the enemies .Godse was essentially a religious man and he is deeply moved by
indiscriminate killing of innocent white women and children made captive by the sepoys of Nana .He writes “The
gruesome murder of women and children ,I don’t know ,whether it was ordered Nana or his men did it, but it was
most shameless act or part of Hindus.”

His description of Gadar ,the blowing of cannons ,bullets and explosives has been made quite interesting .His
description of gadar , the blowing of cannons,bullets and explosiveshas been quite interesting.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------

PHOTOGRAPHY

1. This Act has been repealed by the Cinematograph Act, 1952 (37 of 1952) s.18 which reads thus: {"The
Cinematograph Act, 1918 (2 of 1918) is hereby repealed: Provided that in relation to Part A States and Part B States
the repeal shall have effect only in so far as the said Act relates to the sanctioning of cinematograph films for
exhibition."} {The Act has been amended in the U.P.by the U.P.Act 7 of 1942, in Madhya Pradesh by Madhya
Pradesh Act 17 of 1952; in Punjab by Punjab Act 11 of 1952; in Orissa by Orissa Act 2 of 1954 and in Andhra by
Presidents, Act 4 of 1955.}

An Act to make provision for regulating exhibitions by means of cinematographs.

WHEREAS it is expedient to make provision for regulating exhibitions by means of cinematographs; It is hereby
enacted as follows:-

2. Definitions

In this Act, unless there is anything repugnant in the subject or context:-

1
[ "adult " means a person who has completed his eighteenth year ;]
2
[ "Authority" means the Authority constituted by the Central Government under section 6 ;]

"Cinematograph" includes any apparatus for the representation of moving pictures or series of pictures;

" Place " includes also a house, building, 3[tent or any description of transport, whether by sea, land or air ;] and

" Prescribed " means prescribed by rules made under this Act.

1. Ins. by Act 39 of 1949, s.2.

2. Ins. by Act 62 of 1948, s.3.

3. Subs. by Act 62 of 1948. s.3, for " tent or vessel ".

1
[2A. Rule of construction in the application of Act to Part b States
In the application of this Act to any Part B State, unless there is anything repugnant in the subject or context,-
2
[(a)* * *]

(b) References to the District Magistrate shall be construed as references to the corresponding authority in the Part B
State; and
2
[(c)* * *]

1.Ins. by Act 62 of 1949, s.4, as amended by the A.O.1950.

2. Cls.(a) and (c) omitted by the A.O.1950.

3. Cinematograph exhibitions to be licensed

Save as otherwise provided in this Act, no person shall give an exhibition by means of a cinematograph elsewhere
than in a place licensed under this Act, or otherwise than in compliance with any conditions and restrictions imposed
by such licence.

4. Licensing authority

The authority having power to grant licences under this Act (hereinafter referred to as the " licensing authority ")
shall be the District Magistrate, or, in a presidency-town 1 , the Commissioner of Police: Provided that the State
Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, constitute for the whole or any part of a State such other
authority as it may specify in the notification to be the licensing authority for the purposes of this Act.
The words "or in the town of Rangoon " rep.by the A.O.1937.

5. Restrictions on powers of licensing authority

(1) The licensing authority shall not grant a licence under this Act, unless it is satisfied that-
(a) The rules made under the Act have been substantially complied with; and

(b) Adequate precautions have been taken in the place in respect of which the licence is to be given to provide for
the safety of persons attending exhibitions therein.
1
[(2) The grant of every licence shall be subject to the conditions that the licensee will not exhibit, or permit to be
exhibited, in such place-

(a) Any film other than a film which has been certified by the Authority as suitable for unrestricted public exhibition
or for public exhibition restricted to adults, and which when exhibited, displays the prescribed mark of that
Authority, and has not been altered or tampered with in any way since such mark was affixed thereto;

(b) Any film which has been certified by the Authority as suitable for public exhibition restricted to adults to any
person who is not an adult;

(c) Any film contrary to any directions that may be issued from time to time in this behalf by the Central
Government under sub-section (2A);

And such conditions shall be deemed to be inserted in every licence.

(2A) The Central Government may from time to time issue directions to licensees generally, or to any licensee, in
particular, for the purpose of regulating the exhibition of any film or class of films so that scientific films, films
intended for educational purposes, films dealing with news and current events, documentary films or indigenous
films secure an adequate opportunity of being exhibited.]

(3) Subject to the foregoing provisions of this section, and to the control of the State Government, the licensing
authority may grant licences under this Act to such persons as it thinks fit, and on such terms and conditions and
subject to such restrictions as it may determine.

Subs.by Act 62 of 1949, s.5, for sub-sections (2) and (2A).

6. Certification of films
1
[6. Certification of films

(1) The Central Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, constitute an Authority in the prescribed
manner for the purpose of examining and certifying films as suitable for unrestricted public exhibition or for public
exhibition restricted to adults, and prescribe the manner in which the Authority shall exercise the powers conferred
on it by this Act.

(2) If the Authority after examination considers that a film is suitable for unrestricted public exhibition or that,
although not suitable for such exhibition, it is suitable for public exhibition restricted o adults, it shall grant to the
person applying for a certificate in respect of the film a " U " certificate in the former case and an " A " certificate in
the latter case, and shall in either case cause the film o be so marked in the prescribed manner, and any such
certificate hall, save as hereinafter provided, be valid throughout the territories which this Act extends.

(3) If the Authority is of opinion that a film is neither suitable or Unrestricted public exhibition nor for public
exhibition restricted D adults, it shall inform the person applying for the certificate of its decision.

(4) Any person applying for a certificate, who is aggrieved by the decision of the Authority refusing to grant a
certificate or to grant only an "A" certificate, may, within thirty days from the date of such decision appeal to the
Central Government, and the Central Government may, after such inquiry as it considers necessary, pa such orders
thereon as it thinks fit.
(5) If the Central Government rejects an appeal on the ground that a film is neither suitable for unrestricted public
exhibition n for public exhibition restricted to adults, it shall, by notification the Official Gazette, direct that the film
shall be deemed to be uncertified film in the whole of the territories to which this Act extends.

(6) For the purpose of disposing of any appeal under this section the Central Government may demand the
exhibition of any film before any authority specified in this behalf.

(7) Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act' the Cent Government may, of its own motion, by notification in
the Office Gazette, direct that-

(a) A certified film shall be deemed to be an uncertified film in the whole or any part of the territories to which this
Act extends, or

(b) A film in respect of which a "U " certificate has b granted shall be deemed to be a film in respect of which an " A
" certificate has been granted.

Explanation.-The grant of an " A" certificate in respect of any film shall not be deemed to prohibit the exhibition
thereof to children below the age of three.]

1 S. 6 were subs, for he original ss.6 to 9 by Act 62 of 1949 s.6 (from 15-1-51).

7. Power of State Government or local authority to suspend exhibition of films in certain cases
1
[7. Power of State Government or local authority to suspend exhibition of films in certain cases.

(1) The State Government, in respect of the whole State or any part thereof, and the District Magistrate or the
Commissioner to Police, in respect of the district or town within his jurisdiction, may, if it or he is of opinion that
any film, which is being publicly exhibited, is likely to cause a breach of the peace, by order suspend exhibition of
any film, and during such suspension the film shall deemed to be an uncertified film in the State or the district or to
as the case may be.

(2) Where an order under sub-section (1) has been issued District Magistrate or a Commissioner of Police, a copy
the together with a statement of reasons therefor, shall forthwith forwarded by the person making the same to the
State Govern and the State Government may either confirm or discharge the order.

(3) No order made under this section shall remain in force for more than two months, but the State Government
may, if it is of opinion that any such order should continue in force for a further period, refer the matter to the
Central Government for decision.

(4) On receipt of any reference under sub-section (3), the Central Government may, by notification in the Official
Gazette, direct that the period of suspension shall be extended by such further period as it thinks fit or that the film
shall be deemed to be an uncertified film in the whole or any part of the territories to which this Act extends.]

1. S. 7 were subs, for he original ss.6 to 9 by Act 62 of 1949 s.6 (from 15-1-51 ).

8. Penalties
1
[8. Penalties

(1) If the owner or person in charge of a cinematograph uses the same or allows it to be used, or if the owner or
occupier of any place permits that place to be used, in contravention of the provisions of this Act or the rules made
thereunder, or of the conditions and restrictions upon, or subject to, which any licence has been granted under this
Act, he shall be punishable with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees, and, in the case of a continuing
offence, with a further fine which may extend to one hundred rupees for each day during which the offence
continues, and his licence, if any, shall be liable to be revoked by the licensing authority.
(2) The exhibition of a film contrary to any order or direction under sub-section () or sub-section (7) of section 6 or
section 7 shall, in the area to which such order or direction relates, be deemed to be a contravention of the conditions
mentioned in sub-section (2) of section 5 and shall be punishable as provided in this section.

(3) If any person is convicted of an offence punishable under this Act committed by him in respect of any film, the
convicting Court may further direct that the film shall be forfeited to the Government.]

1. S. 8 were subs, for he original ss.6 to 9 by Act 62 of 1949 s.6 (from 15-1-51 ).

9. Power to make rules

1
[9. Power to make rules

(1) The Central Government may make rules 2 for the purpose of carrying into effect the provisions of this Act.

(2) In particular, and without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing power, rules made under this section may
provide for-

(a) The manner in which the Authority shall be constituted;

(b) The delegation of any of the powers of the Authority to such person or persons as the Authority may nominate in
this behalf;

(c) The procedure of the Authority for examining and certifying films as suitable for public exhibition, and all
matters ancillary thereto and the fees to be levied by such Authority;

(d) The appointment of officers subordinate to the Authority and the regulation of the powers and duties of such
officers;

(e) The conditions subject to which any certificate may be granted under this Act or the circumstances in which any
certificate shall be refused;

(f) The manner in which any appeal under this Act may be preferred;

(g) Any other matter which by this Act is to be prescribed.

(3) The State Government may make rules to provide for the regulation of cinematograph exhibitions for securing
the public safety.

(4) All rules made under this Act shall be published in the Official Gazette, and on such publication shall have effect
as if enacted in this Act.

(5) All rules made by the Central shall be laid b Government under this Act shall be laid before 3[Parliament] as
soon as may be after they are made.

1. S. 9 were subs, for he original ss.6 to 9 by Act 62 of 1949 s.6 (from 15-1-51 ).

2. For the Cinematograph (Censorship) Rules, 1951, see Gazette of India , 1951, Extraordinary, Pt.II, Sec.3,
p.1.

3. Subs.by the A.O.1950 for " the Dominion Legislature ".

10. Power to give directions

1
[10. Power to give directions
The Central Government may give directions to any State Government as to the carrying into execution in the State
of any of the provisions contained in this Act or of any rules or orders made thereunder.]

S. 10 were subs, for he original ss.6 to 9 by Act 62 of 1949 s.6 (from 15-1-51).

11. Power to exempt

1
[11. Power to exempt

The Central Government may, by order in writing, exempt 2 subject to such conditions and restrictions as it may
impose, any cinematograph exhibition or class of cinematograph exhibitions from any of the provisions of this Act
or of any rule made thereunder.]

1. S. 11 were subs, for he original ss.6 to 9 by Act 62 of 1949 s.6 (from 15-1-51 ).

2. For such general exemptions, see Gazette of India, 1952, Pt.II, Sec 3, pp.1578 and 1580.
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Auteur theory

In film criticism, auteur theory holds that a director's film reflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they
were the primary "auteur" (the French word for "author"). In spite of—and sometimes even because of—the
production of the film as part of an industrial process, the auteur's creative voice is distinct enough to shine through
all kinds of studio interference and through the collective process.
In law, the film is treated as a work of art, and the auteur, as the creator of the film, is the original copyright holder.
Under European Union law, the film director is considered the author or one of the authors of a film, largely as a
result of the influence of auteur theory.[1]
Auteur theory has influenced film criticism since 1954, when it was advocated by film director and critic François
Truffaut. This method of film analysis was originally associated with the French New Wave and the film critics who
wrote for the French film review periodical Cahiers du Cinéma. Auteur theory was developed a few years later in
America through the writings of The Village Voice criticAndrew Sarris. Sarris used auteur theory as a way to further
the analysis of what defines serious work through the study of respected directors and their films.
Origin

Auteur theory draws on the work of a group of cinema enthusiasts who wrote for Cahiers du Cinéma and argued that
films should reflect a director's personal vision. They championed filmmakers such as Howard Hawks, Alfred
Hitchcock, and Jean Renoir as absolute 'auteurs' of their films.. Although André Bazin, co-founder of the Cahiers,
provided a forum for Auteurism to flourish, he explained his concern about its excesses in his article "On the Auteur
Theory" (Cahier # 70, 1957). Another element of Auteur theory comes from Alexandre Astruc's notion of
the caméra-stylo or "camera-pen," which encourages directors to wield cameras as writers use pens and to guard
against the hindrances of traditional storytelling.
Truffaut and the members of the Cahiers recognized that movie-making was an industrial process. However, they
proposed an ideal to strive for, encouraging the director to use the commercial apparatus as a writer uses a pen, and,
through the mise en scène, imprint his or her vision on the work (minimizing the role of the screenwriter).
Recognizing the difficulty of reaching this ideal, they valued the work of directors who came close.
The definition of an Auteur was debated upon since the 1940's. Andre Bazin and Roger Leenhardt presented the
theory that it is the director that brings the film to life and uses the film to express their thoughts and feelings of the
subject matter as well as a world view as an auteur. An auteur can use lighting, camerawork, staging and editing to
add to their vision. [2] Michel Foucault wrote a literary piece called 'What is an author?" which contributes to the the
Auteur Theory. The texts relation to an anuthor is the "author function". This is connected to a legal system
concerning who owns the text. This theory has become more complex than just attribution. According to Foucault,
"author" does not refer to just a real individual but rather as an alter ego of an actual person. "author" is too narrow
of a defnition for some who Foucault calls "founders of discursivity".
[edit]Truffaut's development

In his 1954 essay "Une certaine tendance du cinéma français" ("A certain tendency in French cinema"), François
Truffaut coined the phrase "la politique des Auteurs", asserting that the worst of Jean Renoir's movies would always
be more interesting than the best of the movies of Jean Delannoy. "Politique" might very well be translated as
"policy" or "program"; it involves a conscious decision to value and look at films in a certain way. One might see it
as the policy of treating any director that uses a personal style or a unique world view as an Auteur. Truffaut
criticized the Cinema of Quality as "Scenarists' films", which are works that lack originality and rely on literary
classics. According to Truffaut, this means that the director is only a metteur en scene, a "stager". This tradition
suggests that the screenwriter hands the script to the director and the director simply adds the performers and
pictures. [3] Truffaut provocatively said: "(t)here are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors".
Truffaut's article, by his own admission, dealt primarily with scenarists or screenwriters, precisely the screenwriting
duo Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, who, Truffaut believed, simplified and compromised many of the great works of
French literature in order to support the political agenda of their day. In Truffaut's article, he references the
director Claude Autant-Lara's characterization of his adaptation of Raymond Radiguet's Devil in the Flesh as an
"anti-war" book, citing the problem that the book pre-dated the Second World War. Truffaut applied the term
"auteur" to directors like Jean Renoir, Max Ophuls, Jacques Becker, Jacques Tati, and Robert Bresson, who, aside
from exerting their distinct style, wrote the screenplays or worked on the writing of screenplays of their films.
In its embryonic form, the auteur theory dealt with the nature of literary adaptations and Truffaut's discomfort with
the screenwriters Aurenche's and Bost's maxim that any film adaptation of a novel should capture the spirit of the
novel and deal only with its "filmable" aspects. Truffaut believed that film directors like Robert Bresson were able
to use the film narrative to approach even the so-called "unfilmable" scenes. To support this assertion, he used the
film version of Georges Bernanos's Diary of a Country Priest.
Much of the writing of Truffaut and his colleagues at the film criticism magazine Cahiers du cinéma was designed to
lambaste not only the post-war French cinema but especially the big production films of the cinéma de
qualité ("quality films"). Truffaut's circle referred to these films with disdain as sterile, old-fashioned cinéma de
papa (or "Dad's cinema"). During the Nazi occupation, the Vichygovernment did not allow the exhibition of U.S.
films such as The Maltese Falcon and Citizen Kane. In 1946, when French film critics were finally able to see the
1940s U.S. movies, they were enamoured with these films.
Truffaut's theory maintains that a good director (and many bad ones) exerts such a distinctive style or promotes such
a consistent theme that his or her influence is unmistakable in the body of his or her work. Truffaut himself was
appreciative of directors whose work showed a marked visual style (such as Alfred Hitchcock) as well as those
whose visual style was less pronounced but whose movies reflected a consistent theme (such as Jean Renoir's
humanism). Truffaut et al. made the distinction between auteurs and 'metteurs en scene', the latter not being
described as inferior directors making inherently poor films, just lacking the authorial signature.
[edit]Impact

The auteur theory was used by the directors of the nouvelle vague (New Wave) movement of French cinema in the
1960s (many of whom were also critics at the Cahiers du Cinéma) as justification for their intensely personal and
idiosyncratic films. One of the ironies of the Auteur theory is that, at the very moment Truffaut was writing, the
break-up of the Hollywood studio system during the 1950s was ushering in a period of uncertainty and conservatism
in American cinema, with the result that fewer of the sort of films Truffaut admired were actually being made.
The "auteur" approach was adopted in English-language film criticism in the 1960s. In the UK, Movie adopted
Auteurism, while in the U.S., Andrew Sarris introduced it in the essay, "Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962". This
essay is where the term, "Auteur theory", originated. To be classified as an "auteur", according to Sarris, a director
must accomplish technical competence in their technique, personal style in terms of how the movie looks and feels,
and interior meaning (although many of Sarris's auterist criteria were left vague [citation needed]). Later in the decade,
Sarris publishedThe American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968, which quickly became the unofficial
bible of auteurism.
The auteurist critics—Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer—wrote mostly about directors,
although they also produced some shrewd appreciations of actors. However later Truffaut wrote: the auteur theory
"was started by Cahiers du Cinema and is forgotten in France, but still discussed in American periodicals." One
might add that it is misunderstood by most critics, and kept on life support by Wikipedia.
[edit]Criticism

Starting in the 1960s, some film critics began criticising auteur theory's focus on the authorial role of the
director. Pauline Kael and Sarris feuded in the pages of The New Yorker and various film magazines.[4][5] One
reason for the backlash is the collaborative aspect of shooting a film, and in the theory's privileging of the role of the
director (whose name, at times, has become more important than the movie itself). In Kael's review of Citizen Kane,
a classic film for the auteur model, she points out how the film made extensive use of the distinctive talents of co-
writer Herman J. Mankiewiczand cinematographer Gregg Toland.[6] But Kael's objections to the "auteur theory"
were many and are best learned by reading her essay "Circles and Squares".
Notable screenwriters such as Ernest Lehman,[7] Nicholas Kazan,[8] Robert Riskin[9] and William Goldman[10] have
publicly balked at the idea that directors are more authorial than screenwriters, while film historian Aljean Harmetz,
referring to the creative input of producers and studio executives in classical Hollywood, argues that the auteur
theory "collapses against the reality of the studio system".[11]
The auteur theory was also challenged by the influence of New Criticism, a school of literary criticism. The New
Critics argued that critics made an "intentional fallacy" when they tried to interpret works of art by speculating about
what the author meant, based on the author's personality or life experiences. New Critics argued that that
information or speculation about an author's intention was secondary to the words on the page as the basis of the
experience of reading literature.[citation needed]
In 2006, David Kippen coined the term Schreiber theory to refer to the theory of the screenwriter as the principal
author of a film.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------

Feminist film theory is theoretical film criticism derived from feminist politics and feminist theory. Feminists have
many approaches to cinema analysis, regarding the film elements analysed and their theoretical underpinnings.
History

The development of feminist film theory was influenced by second wave feminism and the development of women's
studies within the academy. Feminist scholars began taking cues from the new theories arising from these
movements to analyzing film. Initial attempts in the United States in the early 1970s were generally based
on sociological theory and focused on the function of women characters in particular film narratives or genres and
of stereotypes as a reflection of a society's view of women. Works such as Marjorie Rosen’s Popcorn Venus:
Women, Movies, and the American Dream (1973) and Molly Haskell’s From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of
Women in Movies (1974) analyze how the women portrayed in film related to the broader historical context, the
stereotypes depicted, the extent to which the women were shown as active or passive, and the amount of screen time
given to women.[1]
In contrast, film theoreticians in England began integrating critical theory based perspectives drawn
from psychoanalysis, semiotics, and Marxism, and eventually these ideas gained hold within the American scholarly
community in the later 1970s and 1980s. Analysis generally focused on "the production of meaning in a film text,
the way a text constructs a viewing subject, and the ways in which the very mechanisms of cinematic production
affect the representation of women and reinforce sexism".[2]
In his article, "From the Imaginary Signifier: Identification, Mirror," Christian Metz argues that viewing film is only
possible through scopophilia (pleasure from looking, related to voyeurism), which is best exemplified in silent
film.[3]
According to Cynthia A. Freeland in "Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films," feminist studies of horror films have
focused on psychodynamics where the chief interest is "on viewers' motives and interests in watching horror
films".[4]
More recently, scholars have expanded their work to include analysis of television and digital media. Additionally,
they have begun to explore notions of difference, engaging in dialogue about the differences among women (part of
movement away from essentialism in feminist work more generally), the various methodologies and perspectives
contained under the umbrella of feminist film theory, and the multiplicity of methods and intended effects that
influence the development of films. Scholars are also taking increasingly global perspectives, responding
to postcolonialist criticisms of Anglo- and Eurocentrism in the academy more generally. Increased focus has been
given to, "disparate feminisms, nationalisms, and media in various locations and across class, racial, and ethnic
groups throughout the world".[5]
[edit]Key themes

The gaze and the female spectator

In considering the way that films are put together, many feminist film critics have pointed to the "male gaze" that
predominates in classical Hollywood filmmaking. Budd Boetticher summarises the view thus: "What counts is what
the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero,
or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest
importance." [1] Laura Mulvey's germinal essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (written in 1973 and
published in 1975) expands on this conception of the passive role of women in cinema to argue that film provides
visual pleasure through scopophilia, [2] and identification with the on-screen male actor.[3] She asserts: "In their
traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for
strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness," [4] and as a result contends
that in film a woman is the "bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning." [5] Mulvey argues
that Freud's psychoanalytic theory is the key to understanding how film creates such a space for female
sexual objectification and exploitation through the combination of the patriarchal order of society, and 'looking' in
itself as a pleasurable act of voyeurism, as "the cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking." [6]
Whilst Laura Mulvey's paper has a particular place in the feminist film theory, it is also important to note that her
ideas regarding ways of watching the cinema (from the voyeuristic element to the feelings of identification) have
been very important in terms of defining spectatorship from the psychoanalytical view point.
Mulvey identifies three "looks" or perspectives that occur in film which serve to sexually objectify women. The first
is the perspective of the male character on screen and how he perceives the female character. The second is the
perspective of the spectator as they see the female character on screen. The third "look" joins the first two looks
together: it is the male audience member's perspective of the male character in the film. This third perspective
allows the male audience to take the female character as his own personal sex object because he can relate himself,
through looking, to the male character in the film.[7]
In the paper, Mulvey calls for a destruction of modern film structure as the only way to free women from their
sexual objectification in film, arguing for a removal of the voyeurism encoded into film by creating distance
between the male spectator and the female character. The only way to do so, Mulvey argues, is by destroying the
element of voyeurism and "the invisible guest".[citation needed] Mulvey also asserts that the dominance that men embody
is only so because women exist, as without a woman for comparison, a man and his supremacy as the controller of
visual pleasure are insignificant. For Mulvey, it is the presence of the female that defines the patriarchal order of
society as well as the male psychology of thought.[citation needed]
Mulvey's argument comes as a product of the time period in which she was writing. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema" was composed during the period of second-wave feminism, which was concerned with achieving equality
for women in the workplace, and with exploring the psychological implications of sexual stereotypes. Mulvey calls
for an eradication of female sexual objectivity in order to align herself with second-wave feminism. She argues that
in order for women to be equally represented in the workplace, women must be portrayed as men are: as lacking
sexual objectification.[citation needed]
Mulvey posits in her notes to the Criterion Collection DVD of Michael Powell's controversial film Peeping Tom that
the cinema spectator’s own voyeurism is made shockingly obvious and even more shockingly, the spectator
identifies with the perverted protagonist. The inference is that she includes female spectators in that, identifying with
the male observer rather than the female object of the gaze. [6]
B. Ruby Rich argues that women’s relationships with film is instead dialectical, consciously filtering the images and
messages they receive through cinema, and reprocessing them to elicit their own meanings. [7]
Coming from a black feminist perspective, bell hooks put forth the notion of the “oppositional gaze,” encouraging
black women not to accept stereotypical representations in film, but rather actively critique them. [8] Janet
Bergstrom’s article “Enunciation and Sexual Difference” (1979) uses Sigmund Freud’s ideas of bisexual responses,
arguing that women are capable of identifying with male characters and men with women characters, either
successively or simultaneously.[9] Miriam Hanson, in “Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification: Valentino and Female
Spectatorship” (1984) put forth the idea that women are also able to view male characters as erotic objects of
desire.[9] In "The Master's Dollhouse: Rear Window," Tania Modleski argues that Hitchock's film, Rear Window, is
an example of the power of male gazer and the position of the female as a prisoner of the "master's dollhouse". [10]
Carol Clover, in her popular and influential book "Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror
Film" (Princeton University Press, 1992) argues that young male viewers of the Horror Genre (young males being
the primary demographic) are quite prepared to identify with the female-in-jeopardy, a key component of Horror
narrative, and to identify on an unexpectedly profound level. Clover further argues that the "Final Girl" in the
psychosexual sub-genre of Exploitation Horror invariably triumphs through her own resourcefulness, and is not by
any means a passive, or inevitable, victim. Laura Mulvey, in response to these and other criticisms, revisited the
topic in “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ inspired by Duel in the Sun” (1981). In
addressing the heterosexual female spectator, she revised her stance to argue that women can take two possible roles
in relation to film: a masochistic identification with the female object of desire that is ultimately self-defeating or a
transsexual identification with men as the active viewers of the text. [9] A new version of the gaze was offered in the
early 1990s by Bracha Ettinger, who proposed the notion of the "matrixial gaze".
[edit]Realism and counter cinema
The early work of Marjorie Rosen and Molly Haskell on representation of women in film was part of a movement to
make depictions of women more realistic both in documentaries and narrative cinema. The growing female presence
in the film industry was seen as a positive step toward realizing this goal, by drawing attention to feminist issues and
putting forth alternative, more true-to-life views of women. However, these images are still mediated by the same
factors as traditional film, such as the “moving camera, composition, editing, lighting, and all varieties of sound.”
While acknowledging the value in inserting positive representations of women in film, some critics asserted that real
change would only come about from reconsidering the role of film in society, often from a semiotic point of view. [11]
Claire Johnston put forth the idea that women’s cinema can function as "counter cinema". Through consciousness of
the means of production and opposition of sexist ideologies, films made by women have the potential to posit an
alternative to traditional Hollywood films.[12] In reaction to this article, many women filmmakers have integrated
"alternative forms and experimental techniques" to "encourage audiences to critique the seemingly transparent
images on the screen and to question the manipulative techniques of filming and editing"
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Formalist film theory is a theory of film study that is focused on the formal, or technical, elements of a film: i.e.,
the lighting, scoring, sound and set design, use of color, shot composition, and editing. It is a major theory of film
study today.
[edit]Basic Theory

Formalism, at its most general, considers the synthesis (or lack of synthesis) of the multiple elements of film
production, and the effects, emotional and intellectual, of that synthesis and of the individual elements. For example,
take the single element of editing. A formalist might study how standard Hollywood "continuity editing" creates a
more comforting effect and non-continuity or jump cutediting might become more disconcerting or volatile.
Or one might consider the synthesis of several elements, such as editing, shot composition, and music. The shoot-out
that ends Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western "Dollars" trilogy is a notable example of how these elements work
together to produce an effect: The shot selection goes from very wide to very close and tense; the length of shots
decreases as the sequence progresses towards its end; the music builds. All of these elements, in combination rather
than individually, create tension.
Formalism is unique in that it embraces both ideological and auteurist branches of criticism. In both these cases, the
common denominator for Formalist criticism is style.
[edit]Ideological Formalism

Ideologues focus on how socio-economic pressures create a particular style, and auteurists on how auteurs put their
own stamp on the material. Formalism is primarily concerned with style and how it communicates ideas, emotions,
and themes (rather than, as critics of formalism point out, concentrating on the themes of a work itself).
Two examples of ideological interpretations that are related to formalism:
The classical Hollywood cinema has a very distinct style, sometimes called the Institutional Mode of
Representation: continuity editing, massive coverage, three-point lighting, "mood" music, dissolves, all designed to
make the experience as pleasant as possible. The socio-economic ideological explanation for this is, quite crassly,
that Hollywood wants to make as much money and appeal to as many ticket-buyers as possible.
Film noir, which was given its name by Nino Frank, is marked by lower production values, darker images,
underlighting, location shooting, and general nihilism: this is because, we are told, during the war and post-war
years filmmakers were generally more pessimistic (as well as filmgoers). Also, the German Expressionists
(including Fritz Lang, who was not technically an expressionist as popularly believed) emigrated to America and
brought their stylized lighting effects (and disillusionment due to the war) to American soil.
It can be argued that, by this approach, the style or 'language' of these films is directly affected not by the individuals
responsible, but by social, economic, and political pressures, of which the filmmakers themselves may be aware or
not. It is this branch of criticism that gives us such categories as the classical Hollywood cinema, the American
independent movement, the New American independent movement, the new queer cinema, and the French, German,
and Czech new waves.
[edit]Formalism in Auteur Theory

If the ideological approach is concerned with broad movements and the effects of the world around the filmmaker,
then the auteur theory is diametrically opposed to it, celebrating the individual, usually in the person of the
filmmaker, and how his personal decisions, thoughts, and style manifest themselves in the material.
This branch of criticism, begun by François Truffaut and the other young film critics writing for Cahiers du cinéma,
was created for two reasons.
First, it was created to redeem the art of film itself. By arguing that films had auteurs, or authors, Truffaut sought to
make films (and their directors) at least as important as the more widely-accepted art forms, such as literature,
music, and painting. Each of these art forms, and the criticism thereof, is primarily concerned with a sole creative
force: the author of a novel (not, for example, his editor or type-setter), the composer of a piece of music (though
sometimes the performers are given credence, akin to actors in film today), or the painter of a fresco (not his
assistants who mix the colours or often do some of the painting themselves). By elevating the director, and not the
screenwriter, to the same importance as novelists, composers, or painters, it sought to free the cinema from its
popular conception as a bastard art, somewhere between theater and literature.
Secondly, it sought to redeem many filmmakers who were looked down upon by mainstream film critics. It argued
that genre filmmakers and low-budget B-movies were just as important, if not more, than the prestige pictures
commonly given more press and legitimacy in France and the United States. According to Truffaut's theory, auteurs
took material that was beneath their talents—a thriller, a pulpy action film, a romance—and, through their style, put
their own personal stamp on it.
It is this auteur style that concerns formalism.
A perfect example of formalist criticism of auteur style would be the work of Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock primarily
made thrillers, which, according to the Cahiers du cinema crowd, were popular with the public but were dismissed
by the critics and the award ceremonies, although Hitchcock's Rebecca won the Oscar for Best Picture at the 1940
Academy Awards. Though he never won the Oscar for directing, he was nominated five times in the category.
Truffaut and his colleagues argued that Hitchcock had a style as distinct as that of Flaubert or Van Gogh: the
virtuoso editing, the lyrical camera movements, the droll humour. He also had "Hitchcockian" themes: the wrong
man falsely accused, violence erupting at the times it was least expected, the cool blonde. Now, Hitchcock is more
or less universally lauded, his films dissected shot-by-shot, his work celebrated as being that of a master. And the
study of this style, his variations, and obsessions all fall quite neatly under the umbrella of formalist film theory.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Psychoanalytic film theory, despite its relatively late development, has become one of the most widely practiced
theoretical approaches to cinema studies today. This is largely owing to the fact that psychoanalysis and film
technology were born in the same era, and essentially grew up together. Thus, as cinema quickly came to focus on
ways of rendering subjective experiences--the innermost psychological depths of the characters it portrayed--it
naturally drew upon the newest conception of subjectivity offered in the field of psychology, namely the
psychoanalytic conception of it. A great many films from the first half of the 20th Century accordingly drew upon
such psychoanalytic concepts as: the unconscious (see Keaton's Sherlock Jr.), dreamwork (see Cavalcanti's Dead of
Night), the Oedipus complex (see Olivier's Hamlet), and psychoanalysis itself (see Hitchcock's Spellbound).

Despite the fact that so many films so overtly incorporated psychoanalytic concepts, film studies did not really begin
to examine this incorporation until the 1960's and 70's. There are two reasons for this: first, because film studies did
not really exist as a recognized academic discipline until roughly this period; and second, because the emergence of
film studies as a discipline happened to coincide with a rekindling of interest in psychoanalysis (largely brought
about by the innovative new approach to this subject in France). Thus, while the birth and development of early
cinema coincided with that of psychoanalysis, the birth of cinema studies as a discipline similarly coincided with a
renaissance in psychoanalytic theory. Historically speaking, film and psychoanalysis have always been close
siblings.

Fine and good, you say, but what exactly is psychoanalytic film theory? It is an approach that focuses on unmasking
the ways in which the phenomenon of cinema in general, and the elements of specific films in particular, are both
shaped by the unconscious. Whose unconscious? This is where things get a little tricky. The unconscious studied by
psychoanalytic film theory has been attributed to four different agencies: the filmmaker, the characters of a film, the
film's audience, and the discourse of a given film.

1. The Filmmaker's Unconscious. In its earliest stages, psychoanalytic film theory compared films to such
manifestations of the unconscious as dreams, slips of the tongue, and neurotic symptoms. Just as these are
considered to be manifestations of a patient's unconscious, films were considered to be manifestations of a
filmmaker's unconscious. This kind of psychoanalytic film theory is somewhat out of fashion today.

2. The Character's Unconscious. Another application of psychoanalysis to cinema studies--one still occasionally
seen today--focuses on the characters of a given film and analyzes their behavior and dialogue in an attempt to
interpret traces of their unconscious. This approach, when it first appeared, was immediately attacked by skeptical
film critics who pointed out that fictional characters, insofar as they are not real people, have neither a conscious nor
an unconscious mind to speak of. However, the psychoanalysis of film characters quickly found new credibility with
the next stage in the development of psychoanalytic film theory--the analysis of the audience's unconscious as it is
prompted and shaped during a film viewing.

3. The Audience's Unconscious. The audience-focused approach will often focus on the way in which the behavior
and dialogue of certain characters can be interpreted as manifestations of our unconscious, insofar as we come to
identify ourselves with them when we visit the cinema. Thus, as we sit quietly in the dark and forge our psychic
bonds with this or that character, we unconsciously project our own fantasies, phobias, and fixations onto these
shimmering alter-egos. Whenever they inevitably say or do something that even tangentially touches upon one of
these fantasies, phobias, or fixations, we derive unconscious satisfaction or dissatisfaction accordingly.

4. The Unconscious of Cinematic Discourse. Finally, the most recent version of psychoanalytic film theory more or
less abandons the character-centered approach altogether, focusing instead on how the form of films replicates or
mimics the formal model of the conscious/unconscious mind posited by psychoanalysis. Thus, for example, the
psychoanalytic film theorist might focus on the way in which the formal procedure of editing will sometimes
function similarly to the mechanism of repression by cutting out a crucial, emotionally charged moment which,
though unseen, will continue to resonate throughout the film (as in the markedly absent moment of actual
cannibalism in Mankiewicz's Suddenly Last Summer). Here the unconscious that is unveiled belongs neither to the
filmmaker, nor to a character, nor to an audience of viewers, but rather to the film's own discourse. The unconscious
is thus conceived as an organization of hints and traces of meaning residing within the audio-visual language of the
cinema. (Of course this unconscious can always become appropriated by the film-viewer--apropos the third form of
psychoanalytic film theory--to the extent that he or she internalizes this language during the film-viewing situation).

So psychoanalytic film theory unmasks the psychic mechanisms functioning in the unconscious of: filmmakers,
characters, viewing audiences, and specific instances of cinematic discourse. In the remainder of this discussion, I
will demonstrate how the last three variations of psychoanalytic film theory can expose the machinations of the
unconscious as they are at work in the central character, the audience, and the cinematic discourse of Chris
Marker's La Jetée. (I won't presume to venture any guesses as to what is on Marker's unconscious mind).

The unconscious mechanism that I will focus on here is that of fetishism. Here, briefly, is Freud's explanation of this
mechanism. The fetish-object (which is to say, the particular object that procures sexual gratification for the
fetishist: e.g., shoes, undergarments, fur coats, etc.) is revered as if it were a penis--and not just any penis, but
specifically the one belonging to the fetishist's mother! This of course sounds ridiculous and not a little disgusting.
Freud clearly has some serious explaining to do. He explains himself thus: when a young boy (for Freud, all
fetishists are male) first sees a woman--usually his mother--in the nude, he mistakenly conceives that she has been
castrated. This troubles him not only because he shudders to think or her pain and humiliation, but because it
suggests to him that he too is vulnerable to castration. So to help himself deal with his fear of castration, he will find
a way to blank out the image of his mother's apparently mutilated genitals. He will fixate on the last object that he
saw the split-second before his eyes encountered that terrifying lack of a penis. If the occasion of this traumatic
sighting was a scene of undressing, then he might fixate on his mother's undergarments. If he were gazing upwards
from the floor to his mother's naked body, he might fixate on her feet or shoes (if she is wearing them). If he only
gradually sees her lack of a penis after first seeing her ample pubic hair, then he might fixate on the pubic hair, or by
visual association, on a piece of fur clothing that resembles pubic hair (e.g., a fur coat or hat).

Later on, after the young fetishist matures and comes to understand that there are two sexes, he will repress both his
fear of castration and his feelings of relief brought on by his mental substitution of an object to fill in for the missing
maternal penis. These repressed feelings will be shunted into his unconscious, where he will still harbor them, even
though he is not consciously aware of any of this. Thus, on one (conscious) level, the fetishist has come to
understand that there are two sexes and that women do not have penises because they belong to the opposite sex. But
on another (unconscious) level, the fetishist will still fear his mother's--and potentially his own--castration, and he
will continue to crave the release from fear that the fetish object seems to grant. Consciously, the fetishist knows all
about the nature of normal sexuality, but he nevertheless craves his fetish-object instead of, or in addition to, a
sexual partner. He himself does not know why he craves this object. The explanation can only be found, so Freud
explains, by psychoanalyzing the fetishist's unconscious.

This theory of fetishism, as Freud stated it, is a bit much to swallow--even for many strict Freudians. It seems to be
too hung up on penises and literal castration, too localized below the belt, that is. Recent psychoanalytic theory has
offered another, more general articulation of Freud's insight. Instead of a child feeling terrified by his mother's
apparently literal castration, it is possible that when the child sees her nakedness he feels terror at the realization that
there are two sexes. This realization suggests that biology and society have separated him from his mother by
putting her into a different category. Henceforth he will be "cut off" from her--in a purely metaphorical sense,
castrated. Thus, this theory goes, the young fetishist seizes upon the fetish-object, in the manner Freud described, in
an effort to disavow sexual difference. Later he will consciouslycome to accept sexual difference, but unconsciously
he will still harbor the fantasy of there being only a single sex to which he, his mother, and all the women who can
potentially replace her belong. Now let's see how this mechanism of fetishism can inform the different aspects of the
unconscious vis-a-vis La Jetée.

1. The Character's Unconscious. La Jetée, at first glance, seems fairly remote from the psychoanalytic theory of
fetishism. And yet, if we look closely at the protagonist's character, we might begin to see a certain fetishistic
dimension to his fascination with the image of a woman that he retains. With the exception of an explicit emphasis
on sexual difference, all the aforementioned coordinates are firmly in place: metaphorical castration (i.e.,
separation), fixation upon an object (i.e., the image of the woman), the preference shown to his relationship to the
object over his relationship to living persons (i.e., his rejections of a present and future society to return to an image
from his past).

Here we should also recall that the protagonist initially

fixates upon the image of this woman at the moment
when he sees a man (himself) die. Metaphorically
speaking, it is he himself who is perceived to be
castrated (cut off from their union), while she is merely
vulnerable (to the coming holocaust). This reverses one
aspect of the Freudian dynamic of fetishistic fear, but
otherwise the model holds. By retaining the last joyful
image of their potential union, the man will be able to
mentally disavow all evidence of their inevitable
separation. He will, in other words, suppress his ability
to recognize himself as the man who is killed while
running to grasp the woman.

The fetishistic cast of the protagonist's character is furthermore stressed by the form of narrative discourse Marker
adopts in this film. It is presented as a sequence of still-images--which is to say, a photo-roman. Thus the image of
the woman that the protagonist imprints into his memory is literally objectified for the audience, rendered as a
photo-chemical imprint, namely a photograph. This serves to heighten our sense of the image's status as a fetish-
object--comparable to a fading photograph that a pining lover might carry in his wallet.

2. The Unconscious of Cinematic Discourse. Let us skip for the moment our examination of the way this film can
expose a form of unconscious fetishism on the part of the audience. Turning then to the unconscious of the film's
discourse, we find the coordinates of fetishism similarly inscribed in the form of the photo-roman, or more precisely,
in the film's single instance of deviation from this form. I refer to the moment when the sequence of still-images is
sped up to the point of momentary superimposition, or lap-dissolve. This yields, for a brief moment, the effect of
cinematic "live-action." We are, (literally) for the blink of an eye, transported into the medium of motion pictures, or
as it is commonly called, the "movies." This brief moment in the film serves to underscore the photographic (as
opposed to cinematic) form which dominates the rest of the film's discourse.

Photographs imply, among other things, a sense of chronological separation from the persons or things
photographed--a sense that we are "cut off" from them. "Live-action," by contrast, creates a sense of their immediate
presence. But this instance of live-action radically undoes any sense of immediate presence. Here, in the gradual
transformation from photographic sequence to live-action film, we see how the sense of immediacy is artificially
produced in the movies. The slow formal transformation recalls us to the fact that live-action cinema is actually
never anything more than a sped up sequence of projected stills with fractional, flickering moments of darkness
separating them. This produces the stroboscopic illusion of a continuous image in various stages of movement--the
so-called phi-effect upon which all cinema relies. Thus cinema inscribes a series of gaps (dark spots between
frames) which "cut up" the projected image, and then cinema subsequently disavows these cuts by way of certain
fetishistic sleight of hand (persistence of vision, flicker-fusion, and beta-movement). In the slow emergence of
cinema at this single point of La Jetée, we catch a brief glimpse of the fetishistic unconscious of the film's discourse,
a discourse that photographically alludes to loss and alienation, only to disavow this by deploying the standard
cinematic technique (live-action cinematography) for recovering the immediate presence of what has been lost.

3. The Audience's Unconscious. The disavowal of the gaps between the photographic frames furthermore bears
upon a form of fetishism unconsciously at work in the film's audience. For in addition to a sense of loss and
remoteness, photographs also implicitly underscore the fact that they were themselves "taken" elsewhere, and, in
this case, by someone else (the filmmaker). Psychoanalytic film theorists refer to this elsewhere as the "fourth field"
(the unseen area behind the camera in any given shot), and to this someone as the "Absent One." As soon as film-
audiences become conscious of the fourth field and the Absent One who resides there with his camera, they lose the
feeling that they are in control of their own gaze. They come to discover that they are being coerced, through a
careful manipulation of compositional framing, lighting, editing, and so forth. They perceive that they are being
made to see only what the Absent One (the director, the photographer) wants them to see. Thus audiences come to
realize that they are alienated, "cut off" from their own powers of vision. The foregrounded artifice of photography
in the photo-roman functions to drive this awareness home. The brief eruption into live-action cinema then provides
a welcome moment of respite, a moment when the viewer can once again regain the illusion that he or she is seeing
all there is to be seen, without the coercive mediation of an Absent One. Here, suddenly, the darkness framing each
photographic instant disappears (or appears to disappear) as the photographs merge into a living, moving form--
someone we can look at, so it seems, from our own perspective. This is what psychoanalytic film theorists refer to as
"suture": the condition that arises when the perceived control held by the Absent One dissolves, and the audience
accordingly relates to the film's field of view as if they themselves were in control of the film's visual field and
capable of moving freely about in it. Suture thus names a fetishistic mechanism by way of which the audience
disavows the loss of its visual powers and unconsciously subscribes to the fantasy of its own all-seeing gaze.

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Structuralist Theory

For the purposes of the course, we will separate structuralism from semiotics even though they are closely linked.
Indeed, as James Monaco says in How to Read a Film, semiotics is structuralism’s offspring; and it is true they both
stem from the idea that the most important aspect is the significance of underlying structures. Where existentialism
and phenomenology worked much more from the individual consciousness, structuralism and semiotics are more
interested in what shapes that consciousness. Thus the unconscious isn’t so much an individual’s as a culture’s.
What is the best way to make sense of our behaviour we may ask; is it through the individual or through looking at
the structures producing that behaviour? Structuralism proposes the latter.
As film theorist Stephen Heath reckoned, “’structure’” should be understood as a process, or network of processes,
whereby individuals are put in place in society”. Heath believed it was essentially a linguistic issue, in that
“language played an important part, ‘calling up’ individuals, thereby transforming them into subjects.” This was in
some ways a combination of the work of structural anthropologist Levi-Strauss, and the Marxist Louis Althusser, a
philosopher who talked of ‘interpellation’ – how the subject is shaped by structures much greater than his or her own
will and motivation. This is a point we will later address in relation to ideology.

For the moment what we want to look at are films that loosely utilise Structuralist principles as a way of escaping
from what were called Dominant modes of cinema: generally mainstream productions that privileged the individual
over the structure. As the well-known and well-respected playwright but often conservative Hollywood scriptwriter
David Mamet stated: a good story needs a hero with a clear goal. Would Structuralist oriented films not beg to
differ, and propose that Mamet is offering false consciousness as a truism? A Structuralist inclined critic might
rephrase Mamet’s statement conditionally: if at the present moment in time you want to make a film that will likely
make money and appeal to the mass market, have a hero with a strong goal.

What we will explore here are films that eschew this assumption in a number of ways; some working loosely within
dominant narrative modes; others more radically rejecting both character and story. Filmmakers who were interested
in the structure of society without questioning the nature of the image itself would include Costa-Gavras, Gillo
Pontecorvo and Francesco Rosi. These were all filmmakers of the sixties and seventies who generally looked not at
individual struggle, but networks of power and resistance. In Rosi’sSalvatore Giuliano, the eponymous character is
an absent presence as Rosi investigates landscape and locale to see why Sicilians would turn Giuliano into a hero. It
is not Giuliano’s heroics that interest Rosi; more the social inequalities that turned him into a hero of the people.
Later Rosi films like The Mattei Affair and Illustrious Corpses are more character focused, but again it is the social
structure that fascinates.
In Costa-Gavras films, like Z and State of Siege, the Greek director offers a cinema of logistics that is consistent
with a Structuralist approach. Certainly some critics have seen his work as too close to any number of late
seventies/early eighties films where journalistic and crusading figures pursue the truth – films like The China
Syndrome, Under Fire,Silkwood and The Year of Living Dangerously all come to mind, as well as Costa Gavras’s
own Missing, starring Jack Lemmon. But the late sixties Z is more analytically precise. This is less about the figure
pursuing the truth, no matter Jean-Louis Trintignant’s judge’s crusade, as the lie – the social discourse that needs
protecting – pursuing the figure. It lies in the way in which society takes out people whose perspective is at odds
with the ruling elite. In this it bears similarities with Rosi’s Illustrious Corpses, and perhaps also Alan J.
Pakula’s The Parallax View. Again, we don’t have a hero with a goal; more an inquiry without end, no matter if
both Pakula and Rosi’s films do possess central characters.
Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers we could say has a goal but no hero: it is an exemplary piece of accessible
political cinema as it details the birth of a nation. As it cuts from the Algerians fighting for national definition, and
the French army determined to ferret out the freedom fighters, so the film examines the different perspectives to try
to understand the dynamics behind each faction. In Pontecorvo’s following film, Burn, he possesses a central
character, but Marlon Brando’s William Walker is hardly heroic. He is a colonial plunderer, playing games with
various factions to maximise his own interests. Pontecorvo isn’t concerned though with Brando’s character, in
Walker’s biography, so much as the way certain figures existed to exploit certain situations. Pontecorvo examines
the colonial structures in which a character like Walker can become successful.
Generally the films mentioned have regarded the political as more important than the personal. In this sense they are
consistent with a Structuralist discourse insisting that the self is less significant than the structure with which he is
contained. There is a fine scene inIllustrious Corpses where the central character is told that independently minded
thinkers like Sartre are all very well but they misconstrue the nature of society: that it is not society that exists for
the individual; but the individual who exists for society. This is couched as a conservative argument; while of course
for thinkers like the Marxist Althusser might agree that society is also structured for the society over the individual,
but want radically to change that society. Now when Robert Philip Kolker mentions Burn in his book, The Altering
Eye, and says that Burn, for example, is “a radical analysis of history contemporary as well as past,” but adds that it
was “so apparently harmless a film that, in the late seventies, and with relatively few alterations, it was shown on
American network television on a Saturday evening”, some might insist this proves how finally lacking in the
radical such films happen to be.
What none of the above films manage to do is, in philosopher and film theorist Gilles Deleuze’s words, “lay into the
signifier”, or, in Godard’s, illustrate the way “the sign forces us to see an object through its significance”. We will
talk more about this in relation to semiotics, especially, but for our purposes here, Rosi, Pontecorvo and Costa-
Gavras, could be perceived as formally conservative filmmakers. They may question the centrality of the subject,
but they don’t quite find an aesthetic form that offers new solutions in thought. For this purpose there were other
filmmakers: Godard, the Straubs, Jancso and Glauber Rocha amongst them.

How did they lay into the signifier, to force the viewer to confront the sign rather than the object? In Godard’s case
he did so by calling into question the images we see, so in La Chinoise, for example, Jean-Pierre Leaud’s character
talks about the difficulty of combining Marxist-Leninist thought with revolutionary activity, and says there is a
saying that it is like shooting at a target. At the same time we see him shooting an arrow at a target: as figurative
language becomes literal and perhaps absurd. In Weekend, Godard offers a sociologically realistic scene of a
housing estate, but also shows the characters losing their tempers and reversing their cars into each other. This
would be an example of what Structuralist commentators like Jakobson and Shklovsky would call
‘defamiliarization’. When the young boy shouts to his parents that the neighbours have damaged ‘the Dauphin’ – a
particular make of car – what matters is not the violence, so much as the viewer’s awareness that this is a fictional
image, no matter its representational realism. Would a young boy not usually say someone has hit the car rather than
damaged the Dauphin? Is this Godard’s joke on a consumerism so virulent that it becomes part of a child’s basic
vocabulary? As Godard once said, “it isn’t blood, it is red”. This is a filmmaker refusing to take what is shown for
granted: that we need to interrogate cinema as a series of signs, not a barely transparent reality
Miklos Jansco was never formally confrontational in the way Godard happened to be, but he achieved an equal
degree of distance through camera placement. Jancso’s films are famous for the length of their takes. Described as
“analyses of oppression”, by critic Mari Kuttna in an article called ‘Hungarian Rhapsodies’, Jancso usually works in
extremely long takes which bring out the idea that every aspect of our lives has a political dimension. Kuttna insists
there are “no private acts”, in his work, “even in love, sex and family relationships, people respond to, or rebel
against, the current social order.” In one scene inThe Round-Up, a character tries to run away and Jancso films it
with no sense of personal immediacy. The man runs but the camera stays where it is, and moments later the man is
caught and walks back to the place where he ran from. Where most filmmakers would use close-ups to identify
clearly the characters, and cut between the escapee and the soldiers, Jancso wants the oppressive aspect to be more
present than the human one.
This is to some degree true of Glauber Rocha’s work as well, where in Antonio das Morteshe may use far more
identificatory devices than Jansco, but he also works with an emotional distance as characterization is less important
than myth and history. In the Straubs’ History Lessons, for much of the film the camera remains fixed as we witness
a young man driving through the streets of Rome. The camera movements are dictated by the car’s, as we see
through the windscreen events in contemporary Roman life. Whether mundane or fascinating, the camera’s position
is unchanging, just as the sound must be direct, with no post-synching. What we see and hear is relatively un-
manipulated, as the Straubs offer long takes of unedited footage. These scenes are interspersed with the driver in the
present interviewing figures from Rome’s ancient past. The purpose is not to create character identification, but a
comprehension of the political past and the political present.
In the late sixties a loosely Structuralist theorist, Michel Foucault, announced the death of man, and central to this
was how man is no longer the agent of his own existence, but very much a figure interpellated into a world whose
structures precede him and will probably outlast him. For some filmmakers to try and suggest options within this
pessimistic perspective character must be eschewed, and aesthetic form and content examined.

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The History Of Indian Cinema

Cinema is one of 's most vibrant cultural products and a major industry which is as old as Hollywood .
Itproduces around a quarter of the world's films; its 13,000 cinema halls have a daily audience of around 15 million
and many of these films are hugely popular overseas. has not one, but several filmic styles which can be
distinguished in terms of film-making (methods of production anddistribution), the film text (technical and stylistic
features, language) and by the film's reception (by the audience and by critics). These styles cover "art" cinema,
made in several Indian languages, including English and "commercial" cinemas, also made in several languages.
The commercial cinema of Bombay (Mumbai), made in the national language, Hindi has established itself as the
national cinema, and although its reference may be national, it shares the key features of melodrama, the use of song
and dance, and the operation of a star system with cinema across Bollywood.

The Beginning:
Cinema came to on July 7, 1896 with a screening of the Lumiere Brothers' Cinematograph films inBombay . Yet the
first entirely Indian-made film, Raja Harischandra, (produced and directed by DG Phalke) was released in 1913.
Phalke was inspired to make a film about Indian mythology after seeing a film about the life of Christ. His style of
film drew on emerging modern "Indian" art forms, chromolithography and photography, religious processions and
performances, folk and urbantheatre, and foreign cinema. This new hybrid created by Phalke became the norm
immediately in three of Indian cinema's popular genres: the mythological, the devotional (films about the lives of
saints) and the historical. Other genres, grouped loosely as "social films", set in contemporary , were also established
during the silent period

The Talkies:
The coming of sound with the first Indian talkie, Alam Ara (1931), soon divided the cinema
audiences. Bombay became the centre of the Hindi-Urdu film, using a form of spoken language, which was
understood at varying levels over much of north . Hindi was later to become the (contested) national language of ,
like Urdu was to . This Hindi-Urdu film evolved a style which would be seen as national, while the other cinemas
began to be regarded as local or regional.

A studio system thrived in Bombay until the late 1940s with the emergence of the independent producer, who saw
the star as the critical box-office factor, and began to chase the big stars for their movies. The stars in turn hiked
their prices to unheard of levels, eating up most of the producers' budgets, a trend which has continued to the present
Indian film industry.

The Golden Era:

Following independence in 1947, the 1950s and 60s are regarded as the "Golden Age" of Indian cinema in terms of
films, stars, music and lyrics. Genre was loosely defined, the most popular being "socials", films which addressed
the social problems of citizens in the newly developing state. This era saw the emergence of director/producers such
as Raj Kapoor (Shree 420 /The Fraud 1955), Guru Dutt (Pyaasa/Thirst 1957), Mehboob Khan (Mother India 1957),
BR Chopra (Naya Daur /A New Age 1957) and Bimal Roy (Madhumati1958). Meanwhile, Satyajit Ray, who made
his first film, Pather Panchali /Song of the road, in 1955 with help from the West Bengal government, established
himself as one of the world's great film makers and was given international recognitionwhen he was awarded an
Oscar for lifetime achievement (1992).

The 1970s Hero:

The 1970s saw the rise of 's greatest superstar, Amitabh Bachchan (Sholay/Embers 1975), whose roles as the "angry
young man" or "industrial hero" (Kishore Valicha), touched a particular nerve during this troubled era. It also saw
the swansong of the Muslim social and the historical film, in one of the most exquisite and popular films:
Pakeezah/The Pure One, 1971, which has become a cult classic. It was during this decade that state sponsorship
allowed Indian "art" or "parallel" cinema toflower briefly, with films ranging from the avant-garde cinema of Mani
Kaul to a realistic style best made by Shyam Benegal, featuring some of India's most admired actors, Shabana Azmi,
Smita Patil, Om Puri and Naseerudin Shah.

The Cinemas Re-hall:

Although colour television was introduced in in the 1980s, it was pirated videocassettes which were seen to pose the
greatest threat to the cinema. Cinema halls played mostly to male, working-class audiences, so it is not surprising
that this decade is largely remembered as an age of the actionmovie, experiments with disco dancing and rape-
revenge movies. The increasing availability of the audiocassette during this decade led to a revival in film music and
the return to popularity of the teen romance, with roles taken by a new generation of younger stars, who dominated
the 1990s: Madhuri Dixit, Juhi Chawla, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan. Despite the arrival of
satellite and cable television, the family audience was coaxed back into the cinemas by a policy of video-holdback
and the refurbishment of the cinema halls. This was led by Sooraj Barjatya, who's Hum aapke hain kaun...!/What am
I to you? (1994), was the biggest box-office hit in Indian cinema history with the slogan "The greatest institution is
the human family".

A new wave of film makers, who made films in the more technologically advanced South Indian studios, began to
release dubbed versions of their films which were major critical and commercial successes in the north. At the
forefront of these was Mani Ratnam (Bombay 1993/4), who introduced the music director AR Rehman to the world,
whose sophisticated compositions made film music appeal to a new generation.

By the end of the 1990s though, it was clear that the only films which could compete with Hollywood at home and
abroad were the super plush romance movies originally created by Yash Chopra, one of the top directors in 1970s,
whose influence as producer, director and mentor saw the biggest hits from these years: Dilwale Dulhania
Le Jay enge and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai .

has the world's biggest movie industry in terms of the number of movies produced (around 800 movies annually). It
is a great sector for foreign investment by corporatised entertainment companies. Though risks are high on a per-
movie basis, the risk spreads out across a number of films. However, the domestic film-making industry, despite its
prolificacy, is yet to acquire the character of professionalism on a large scale.

A Brief History of Indian Movie Industry:

Motion pictures came to in 1896, when the Lumière Brothers' Chinematographe unveiled six soundless short films
in Bombay (now Mumbai). This was just one year after the Lumière brothers (inventors of cinematography) had set
up their company in Paris .

The first Indian on record to make a movie was Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatvadekar (nickname: Save Dada). He
made one short film on a wrestling match at the Hanging Gardens in Bombay , and another on the playfulness of
monkeys. Both these shorts were made in 1897 and were publicly exhibited for the first time in 1899 using Edison 's
projecting kinetoscope inside a tent which the film maker had himself erected. s first feature film – named "King
Harishchandra" – was released in 1913. It was made by Dhundiraj Govind Phalke (nickname: Dadasaheb Phalke,
1817-1944). This was a silent movie.

By 1920, film making had taken the shape of an industry. The first talkie made in was "Alam Ara" (produced by
Imperial Film Company) released in 1931.

Until the 1960s, film-making companies, many of whom owned studios, dominated the film industry. Artistes and
technicians were either their employees or were contracted on long-term basis. Since the 1960s, however, most
performers went the freelance way, resulting in the star system and huge escalations in film production costs.
Financing deals in the industry also started becoming murkier and murkier since then.

Indian Parallel Cinema:

Through his first film Pather Panchali (1955) Satyajit Ray became the pioneer of a genre of films latter known as the
'Indian Parallel Cinema'. Even though Ritwik Ghatak made his first film Nagarik in 1952, he became well known by
his film Ajantrik (1958) and became a strong presence in parallel cinema. Mrinal Sen made his first film Raatbhor in
1955.

The first film society was founded in Bombay in 1943 and Satyajit Ray founded a film society inCalcutta in 1947.
By the beginning of 1970s there existed above 150 film societies all over . Through these societies people could see
the best of Indian cinema and also they got access to the best of foreign cinema. The first International Film Festival
of India was held in Bombay , Madrasand Calcutta by the Films Division in 1952. Western classics like De
Sica's Bicycle Thieves shown in the film festival created waves among young filmmakers who were frustrated with
the mindless song-dance dramas made in . The Film Training Institute of India (FTII - presently Film and Television
Institute of India) was set up in Pune in 1961 and the National Film Archives of India (NFAI) was established in
1964. The Film Finance Corporation (FFC) was set up by the Government in 1960, with the objective
of giving loans to directors who wanted to make feature films outside the commercial circuit. All these factors lead
Indian Cinema to a revolutionary change, a new genre of Indian films arrived, which are often termed as the 'New
Wave Indian Cinema' or the 'New Indian Cinema'.

Indian New Wave

Mrinal Sen's Bhuvan Shome (1969) and Mani Kaul's Uski Roti (1969), both sponsored by State owned Film Finance
Corporation (FFC), inspired by the French nouvelle vague, set new film sensibility and cinematic language in India.
This movement was labelled as the 'New Indian Cinema' or the 'New Wave Indian Cinema'. FTII graduates Kumar
Shahani, Mani Kaul, Saeed Mirza, Shyam Benegal and Ketan Mehta were the important names of New Wave Indian
Cinema in Hindi. Mani Kaul's Ashad Ka Ek Din (1971) and Duvidha (1973), Kumar Shahni's Maya Darpan (1972)
and Shyam Benegal's Ankur (1973) played important role in this new movement in Hindi during the 1970s. M S
Sathyu's Garam Hawa (1973) Govind Nihilani who entered film industry as Shyam Benegal's cameraman made his
directorial debut through Aakrosh (1980) he continued making socio-political films like Party (1984), Tamas (1987)
and Drishti (1990). Saeed Mizra made notable political films like Arvind Desai ki Ajeeb Dastan (1978), Albert Pinto
ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai (1980), Mohan Joshi Haazir Ho! (1984) and Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro (1989).

Adoor Gopalakrishnan through his first film Swayamvaram (1972) extended the New Wave Cinema
toMalayalam cinema. Aravindan through his first film Uttarayanam (1974) strengthened the movement. John
Abraham, K R Mohanan and P A Backer were strong presence of the new Malayalam cinema.

Kannada was the other film industry in South India, which took over the cinema movement in South India. B V
Karanth, Girish Karnad and Girish Kasaravalli spearheaded the Kannada parallel cinema. Girish Kasaravalli,
graduated from the Pune Film Institute, directed his first film, Ghata Shradha in 1977, which won the National
award for best film.

In Assamise, Janu Barua made his first film Aparoopa (1982). His Halodhia Choraye Baodhan Kali (1987), which
achieved international recognition, dealt with social problems of rural Assam. Bhubendra Nath Sikia made his first
film Sandhyarag (1977) followed by Agnisnaan (1985), Kolahal (1988), Sarothi (1991) and Abarthan (1993).

Current Affairs
India has the world's biggest movie industry in terms of the number of movies produced (around 800 movies
annually, mostly in the Hindi language. Tamil, Telegu, Bengali and Malayalam are the languages in which most of
the non-Hindi films are made).

Today, the technology of film-making in India is perhaps the best among all developing countriesthough the films
themselves remain mostly repetitive in storyline and content. Superior movies, in thematic and creative terms, are
made in many developing countries with less sophisticated technologies.

According to unofficial estimates available in January 2001, the Indian film industry has an annual turnover of Rs.
60 billion (approximately US$1.33 billion). It employs more than 6 million people, most of whom are contract
workers as opposed to regular employees.

The above statistics cannot however be used to calculate the movie industry's share in the GDP
oremployment generation. This is because a vast proportion of the turnover takes place outside the legaleconomy.

Though India’s overall entertainment industry is taking on professional colours (with the rise of TV production
companies), India's movie industry per se remains highly informal, personality-oriented and family-dominated.

Until the late 1990s, it was not even recognised as an industry. Even though it has since been recognised as an
industry, banks and other financial institutions continue to avoid the industry due to the enormous risks involved in
the business. Two banks, Canara Bank and Indian Bank, have reportedly lost heavily by financing films. However,
the prospects of bank financing and riskinsurance are becoming brighter, albeit at a slow rate (as explained further
down this report).

As a result, the financing of films in India often remains shrouded in mystery

Surprisingly, however, the oft-murky world of film industry’s finances has not tainted the film industry’s perception
in the general public eye or in the government’s attitude. Even though manyfamous people from the movie industry
have risen to positions of political and social responsibility, including seats in federal and state parliaments, none of
them have cared to reveal – or have been under pressure to reveal – the truth about the industry's finances.

Some developments in the years 2000 and 2001 – including the arrest of a leading financier, Bharat Shah for his
alleged links with a fugitive gangster – have not yet brought to public knowledge the inside economics of the
industry.

The rot or financial amorality of India's film industry seems to have set in since the 1960s. Until the 1960s, film
producers would get loans from film distributors against a minimum guarantee: this meant that the distributors had
to ensure that the film was screened in cinemas for a fixed minimum period. If this minimum guarantee was
fulfilled, the producers had no further liability. Profit or loss would be the destiny of the distributors.

(There are exceptions, however. India's most celebrated film-maker, the late Satyajit Ray, is known to have pawned
his wife's jewellery to part-finance his first film).

Star System: The financing pattern, centred on distributors, is suspected to have changed since the 1960s when the
studio system collapsed and 'freelance' performers emerged. This gave rise to the 'star system' in which actors
and actresses ceased to have long-term contractual obligations towards any studio or film production firm (such as
the now defunct Bombay Talkies, New Theatres and Prabhat Studios). Rather, they began to operate
as freelancers commanding fees in proportion to the box office performance of their recent films. This increased
costs of film production since the more successful actors and actresses hogged major proportions of the producers'
budget. In the changed system, distributors would pay 50 per cent of the film-making cost leaving it to the producer
to get the rest from other sources.

The 'other' sources are:

– conventional moneylenders (who lend at an interest rate of 36-40 per cent annually);
– non-conventional but corporate resources,
– promissory note system (locally called 'hundi' system): this is the most widely prevalent source, and
– underworld money: about 5 per cent of the movies are suspected to be financed by these sources.

Film production thus became a risky business and the relationship with usurious money-lendersstrengthened over
the years.

As at the start of 2001, a reasonable budget film in Hindi could cost US$1.75 million. A low budget Hindi film can
be made for even as low as Rs. 15 million.

A big budget Hindi movie can cost in excess of US$30 million. The 'bigness' of the budget is attributable mainly to
the high fees paid to 'stars', celebrated music directors, high-end technologies and expensive travel costs to shoot in
exotic locations worldwide.

At the time of writing, it is believed that 'stars' like Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan are paid Rs. 20 million
(US$440,000) per film. In contrast, script writers and film editors remain poorly paid. In an interview, India's so-
called 'superstar' Amitabh Bachchan (whose wax statue stands at Madam Tussaud's in London) attributed the lack of
strong storylines to the poor money paid to writers.

India has a National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) which finances some films. A few film makers, who
would find it hard to obtain finance from the regular sources, have been financed by the NFDC. However, NFDC
cannot be considered to play a central role in the film industry because it finances too few films which, too, are not
of the type that has made the Indian film industry so vibrant. It however goes to the NFDC's credit that, without it,
some of India's best film makers wouldn't have got a break in the industry.

Another shortcoming with the NFDC is that it funds films only at the production stage while ignoring the just-as-
important marketing stage.

The film industry i

s currently losing unestimated volumes of revenue due to competition from local cable operators who illegally beam
newly released movies into the drawing rooms of their subscribers.

Future
This is not intended to be a scare story, however. As mentioned above, the overall entertainment industry in India is
taking on professional colours and this will change the culture of the film industry too. Some film production
companies, such as Mukta Arts, have made public share issues, thus keeping out of the world of murky financing.

The Film Federation of India is actively seeking to make film financing a viable proposition for banks. It is likely
that films would also be insured to offset possible losses for banks.

The granting of industry status to the film industry will eventually allow overboard financing of films, though this
will result in production of fewer films than at present.

Stricter enforcement of copyright law will help the film industry in its fight with cable operators. Foreign
entertainment companies, with steady revenue streams, can do good business if they investin Hindi and other Indian
language films. Despite high risks on a per-movie basis, the risk spreads out across a number of movies.

Indian cinema: history

Following the screening of the Lumière moving pictures in London (1895) cinema became a sensation across
Europe and by July 1896 the Lumière films had been in show in Bombay (now Mumbai).[18] The first short films in
India were directed by Hiralal Sen, starting with The Flower of Persia (1898).[19] The first full-length motion picture
in India was produced by Dadasaheb Phalke, a scholar on India's languages and culture, who brought together
elements from Sanskrit epics to produce his Raja Harishchandra (1913), a silent film in Marathi. The female roles in
the film were played by male actors.[20] The first Indian chain of cinema theaters was owned by the Calcutta
entrepreneur Jamshedji Framji Madan, who oversaw production of 10 films annually and distributed them
throughout the Indian subcontinent.[20]

Raghupathi Venkaiah Naidu[21] was a Indian artist involved photography and in many aspects of the Cinema of
India. He was the first owner of movie theatres in Madras, and the producer and director of the first few silent Indian
movies and talkies. The Raghupathi Venkaiah Naidu Award is an annual award introduced to recognize people for
their lifetime achievements and contributions to the Telugu film industry. Andhra Pradesh State Government
incorporated this prestigious award in 1981 in the honor of Raghupathi Venkaiah Naidu, a pioneer of Indian film
industry. The winner of each year will be felicitated and presented a Golden Nandi, a Gold medal, citation and cash
prize of Rs 50,000 at the state government's Nandi Awards functions.

During the early twentieth century cinema as a medium gained popularity across India's population and its many
economic sections.[18] Tickets were made affordable to the common man at a low price and for the financially
capable additional comforts meant additional admission ticket price. [18] Audiences thronged to cinema halls as this
affordable medium of entertainment was available for as low as an anna (4 paisa) in Bombay.[18] The content of
Indian commercial cinema was increasingly tailored to appeal to these masses. [18] Young Indian producers began to
incorporate elements of India's social life and culture into cinema. [22] Others brought with them ideas from across the
world.[22] This was also the time when global audiences and markets became aware of India's film industry. [22]

Ardeshir Irani released Alam Ara which was the first Indian talking film, on 14 March 1931. [20] H.M. Reddy,
produced and directed Bhakta Prahlada (Telugu), released on Sept 15, 1931 and Kalidas (Tamil) [23] released on Oct
31, 1931. Kalidas was produced by Ardeshir Irani and directed by H.M. Reddy. These two films are south India's
first talkie films to have a theatrical release.[24] Following the inception of 'talkies' in India some film stars were
highly sought after and earned comfortable incomes through acting.[20] As sound technology advanced the 1930s
saw the rise of music in Indian cinema with musicals such as Indra Sabha and Devi Devyani marking the beginning
of song-and-dance in India's films.[20] Studios emerged across major cities such as Chennai, Kolkata, and Mumbai as
film making became an established craft by 1935, exemplified by the success of Devdas, which had managed to
enthrall audiences nationwide.[25] Bombay Talkies came up in 1934 and Prabhat Studios in Pune had begun
production of films meant for the Marathi language audience.[25] Filmmaker R. S. D. Choudhury produced Wrath
(1930), banned by the British Raj in India as it depicted actors as Indian leaders, an expression censored during the
days of the Indian independence movement.[20]

The Indian Masala film—a slang used for commercial films with song, dance, romance etc.—came up following the
second world war.[25] South Indian cinema gained prominence throughout India with the release of S.S. Vasan's
Chandralekha.[25] During the 1940s cinema in South India accounted for nearly half of India's cinema halls and
cinema came to be viewed as an instrument of cultural revival. [25] The partition of India following its independence
divided the nation's assets and a number of studios went to the newly formed Pakistan.[25] The strife of partition
would become an enduring subject for film making during the decades that followed.[25] After Indian independence
the cinema of India was inquired by the S.K. Patil Commission. [26] S.K. Patil, head of the commission, viewed
cinema in India as a 'combination of art, industry, and showmanship' while noting its commercial value. [26] Patil
further recommended setting up of a Film Finance Corporation under the Ministry of Finance.[27] This advice was
later taken up in 1960 and the institution came into being to provide financial support to talented filmmakers
throughout India.[27] The Indian government had established a Films Division by 1949 which eventually became one
of the largest documentary film producers in the world with an annual production of over 200 short documentaries,
each released in 18 languages with 9000 prints for permanent film theaters across the country.[28]

The Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA), an art movement with a communist inclination, began to take
shape through the 1940s and the 1950s.[26] A number of realistic IPTA plays, such as Bijon Bhattacharya's Nabanna
in 1944 (based on the tragedy of the Bengal famine of 1943), prepared the ground for the solidification of realism in
Indian cinema, exemplified by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas's Dharti Ke Lal (Children of the Earth) in 1946.[26] The IPTA
movement continued to emphasize on reality and went on to produce Mother India and Pyaasa, among India's most
recognizable cinematic productions.[29]

Satyajit Ray

was an Indian Bengali filmmaker. He is regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of 20th century cinema.[1] Ray was
born in the city of Kolkata into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and literature. Starting his career as a
commercial artist, Ray was drawn into independent filmmaking after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and
viewing the Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves of Vittorio De Sica during a visit to London.

Ray directed thirty-seven films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts. He was also a fiction writer,
publisher, illustrator, graphic designer and film critic. Ray's first film, Pather Panchali (1955), won eleven
international prizes, including Best Human Documentary at the Cannes film festival. This film, Aparajito (1956) and
Apur Sansar (1959) form The Apu Trilogy. Ray did the scripting, casting, scoring, cinematography, art direction,
editing and designed his own credit titles and publicity material. Ray received many major awards in his career,
including 32 Indian National Film Awards, a number of awards at international film festivals and award ceremonies,
and an Academy Honorary Award in 1991.

He used actors of diverse backgrounds, from famous film stars to people who had never seen a film (as in
Aparajito).[46] Robin Wood and others have lauded him as the best director of children, pointing out memorable
performances in the roles of Apu and Durga (Pather Panchali)

Ray's work has been described as full of humanism and universality, and of a deceptive simplicity with deep
underlying complexity.[54][55] The Japanese director Akira Kurosawa said, "Not to have seen the cinema of Ray
means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon." [56] But his detractors find his films glacially slow,
moving like a "majestic snail."[26] Some find his humanism simple-minded, and his work anti-modern; they criticize
him for lacking the new modes of expression or experimentation found in works of Ray's contemporaries, such as
Jean-Luc Godard.[57] As Stanley Kauffman wrote, some critics believe that Ray "assumes [viewers] can be interested
in a film that simply dwells in its characters, rather than one that imposes dramatic patterns on their lives." [58] Ray
said he could do nothing about the slow pace. Kurosawa defended him by saying that Ray's films were not slow,
"His work can be described as flowing composedly, like a big river". [59]

Critics have often compared Ray to artists in the cinema and other media, such as Anton Chekhov, Renoir, De Sica,
Howard Hawks or Mozart. The writer V. S. Naipaul compared a scene in Shatranj Ki Khiladi (The Chess Players) to
a Shakespearean play; he wrote, "only three hundred words are spoken but goodness! – terrific things
happen."[19][60][61] Even critics who did not like the aesthetics of Ray's films generally acknowledged his ability to
encompass a whole culture with all its nuances. Ray's obituary in The Independent included the question, "Who else
can compete?

Political ideologues took issue with Ray's work. In a public debate during the 1960s, Ray and the Marxist filmmaker
Mrinal Sen engaged in an argument. Sen criticized him for casting a matinée idol such as Uttam Kumar, whom he
considered a compromise.[63] Ray said that Sen only attacked "easy targets", i.e. the Bengali middle-classes.
Advocates of socialism said that Ray was not "committed" to the cause of the nation's downtrodden classes; some
critics accused him of glorifying poverty in Pather Panchali and Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder) through lyricism
and aesthetics. They said he provided no solution to conflicts in the stories, and was unable to overcome his
bourgeoisie background. During the naxalite movements in the 1970s, agitators once came close to causing physical
harm to his son, Sandip.[64] Early in 1980, Ray was criticized by an Indian M.P. and former actress Nargis Dutt, who
accused Ray of "exporting poverty." She wanted him to make films to represent "Modern India
Theories of Communication

Chapter 1 focused on the developmental stages of Communication and summed up Communication as a complex
and dynamic process leading to the evolution of meaning.

The study of communication and mass media has led to the formulation of many theories: structural and
functional theories believe that social structures are real and function in ways that can be observed
objectively; cognitive and behavioral theories tend to focus on psychology of individuals; interactionist theories
view social life as a process of interaction; interpretive theories uncover the ways people actually understand their
own experience; and critical theories are concerned with the conflict of interests in society and the way
communication perpetuates domination of one group over another .

The earliest theories were those propounded by Western theorists Siebert, Paterson and Schramm in their
book Four Theories Of the Press (1956). These were termed "normative theories" by McQuailin the sense that they
"mainly express ideas of how the media ought to or can be expected to operate under a prevailing set of conditions
and values." Each of the four original or classical theories is based on a particular political theory or economic
scenario.

I) CLASSICAL THEORIES

Authoritarian Theory

According to this theory, mass media, though not under the direct control of the State, had to follow its bidding.
Under an Authoritarian approach in Western Europe, freedom of thought was jealously guarded by a few people
(ruling classes), who were concerned with the emergence of a new middle class and were worried about the effects
of printed matter on their thought process. Steps were taken to control the freedom of expression. The result was
advocacy of complete dictatorship. The theory promoted zealous obedience to a hierarchical superior and reliance
on threat and punishment to those who did not follow the censorship rules or did not respect authority. Censorship of
the press was justified on the ground that the State always took precedence over the individual's right to freedom of
expression.

This theory stemmed from the authoritarian philosophy of Plato (407 - 327 B.C), who thought that the State was
safe only in the hands of a few wise men. Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679), a British academician, argued that the
power to maintain order was sovereign and individual objections were to be ignored. Engel, a German thinker
further reinforced the theory by stating that freedom came into its supreme right only under Authoritarianism.

The world has been witness to authoritarian means of control over media by both dictatorial and democratic
governments.

Libertarianism or Free Press Theory

This movement is based on the right of an individual, and advocates absence of restraint. The basis of this theory
dates back to 17th century England when the printing press made it possible to print several copies of a book or
pamphlet at cheap rates. The State was thought of as a major source of interference on the rights of an individual and
his property. Libertarians regarded taxation as institutional theft.Popular will (vox populi) was granted precedence
over the power of State.

Advocates of this theory were Lao Tzu, an early 16th century philosopher, John Locke of Great Britain in the17th
century, John Milton, the epic poet ("Aeropagitica") and John Stuart Mill, an essayist ("On Liberty"). Milton
in Aeropagitica in 1644, referred to a self righting process if free expression is permitted "let truth and falsehood
grapple." In 1789, the French, in their Declaration Of The Rights Of Man, wrote "Every citizen may speak, write
and publish freely." Out of such doctrines came the idea of a "free marketplace of ideas." George Orwell defined
libertarianism as "allowing people to say things you do not want to hear". Libertarians argued that the press should
be seen as the Fourth Estate reflecting public opinion.

What the theory offers, in sum, is power without social responsibility.

Social Responsibility Theory

Virulent critics of the Free Press Theory were Wilbur Schramm, Siebert and Theodore Paterson. In their book Four
Theories Of Press, they stated "pure libertarianism is antiquated, outdated and obsolete."They advocated the need
for its replacement by the Social Responsibility theory. This theory can be said to have been initiated in the United
States by the Commission of The Freedom Of Press, 1949. The commission found that the free market approach to
press freedom had only increased the power of a single class and has not served the interests of the less well-off
classes. The emergence of radio, TV and film suggested the need for some means of accountability. Thus the theory
advocated some obligation on the part of the media to society. A judicial mix of self regulation and state regulation
and high professional standards were imperative.

Social Responsibility theory thus became the modern variation in which the duty to one"s conscience was the
primary basis of the right of free expression.

Soviet Media/Communist Theory

This theory is derived from the ideologies of Marx and Engel that "the ideas of the ruling classes are the ruling
ideas". It was thought that the entire mass media was saturated with bourgeois ideology. Lenin thought of private
ownership as being incompatible with freedom of press and that modern technological means of information must
be controlled for enjoying effective freedom of press.

The theory advocated that the sole purpose of mass media was to educate the great masses of workers and not to
give out information. The public was encouraged to give feedback as it was the only way the media would be able to
cater to its interests.

Two more theories were later added as the "four theories of the press" were not fully applicable to the non-aligned
countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, who were committed to social and economic development on their own
terms. The two theories were:

Development Communication Theory

The underlying fact behind the genesis of this theory was that there can be no development without communication.
Under the four classical theories, capitalism was legitimized, but under the Development communication theory, or
Development Support Communication as it is otherwise called, the media undertook the role of carrying out positive
developmental programmes, accepting restrictions and instructions from the State. The media subordinated
themselves to political, economic, social and cultural needs. Hence the stress on "development communication" and
"development journalism". There was tacit support from the UNESCO for this theory. The weakness of this theory
is that "development" is often equated with government propaganda.

Democratization/Democratic Participant Media Theory

This theory vehemently opposes the commercialization of modern media and its top-down non-participant character.
The need for access and right to communicate is stressed. Bureaucratic control of media is decribed.

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2) MAGIC BULLET/ HYPODERMIC NEEDLE/ STIMULUS RESPONSE THEORY

Before the first World War, there was no separate field of study on Communication, but knowledge about mass
communication was accumulating. An outcome of World War I propaganda efforts, the Magic
Bullet or Hypodermic Needle Theory came into existence. It propounded the view that the mass media had a
powerful influence on the mass audience and could deliberately alter or control peoples' behaviour.

Klapper (1960) formulated several generalizations on the effects of mass media. His research findings are as
follows: "Mass-media ordinarily does not serve as a necessary and sufficient cause of audience effect, but rather
functions through a nexus of mediating factors and influences. These mediating factors render mass-communication
as a contributory agent in a process of reinforcing the existing conditions."

The main mediating factors which he considers responsible for the functions and effects of mass communications
are
- selective exposure i.e., people's tendency to expose themselves to those mass communications which are in
agreement with their attitudes and interests; and
- selective perception and retention i.e., people's inclination to organize the meaning of mass communication
messages into accord with their already existing views.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------
3) TWO STEP FLOW THEORY

In the early 40"s, before the invention of television, Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Goudet conducted an American
survey on mass campaigns. The study revealed that informal social relationships had played a part in modifying the
manner in which individuals selected content from the media campaign. The study also indicated that ideas often
flowed from the radio and newspapers to opinion leaders and from them to the less active sections of society. Thus,
informal social groups have some degree of influence on people and mould the way they select media content and
act on it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------
4) ONE STEP FLOW THEORY

This theory simply stated that mass communication media channels communicate directly to the mass audience
without the message being filtered by opinion leaders.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------
5) MULTI STEP FLOW THEORY

This was based on the idea that there are a number of relays in the communication flow from a source to a large
audience.

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6) USES AND GRATIFICATION THEORY

This theory propounded by Katz in 1970, is concerned with how people use media for gratification of their
needs. An outcome of Abraham Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs, it propounds the fact that people choose what they
want to see or read and the different media compete to satisfy each individual"s needs.

In the hierarchy of needs, there are five levels in the form of a pyramid with the basic needs such as food and
clothing at the base and the higher order needs climbing up the pyramid. The fulfillment of each lower level need
leads to the individual looking to satisfy the next level of need and so on till he reaches the superior-most need of
self-actualization.

The Uses and Gratifications approach reminds us that people use media for many purposes. As media users
become increasingly confronted with choices, this approach should direct our attention to the audience. Lull's
television research found that families used television for communication facilitation, relationship building,
intimacy, and for structuring the day. In general researchers have found four kinds of gratifications:

1. Information - we want to find out about society and the world- we want to satisfy our curiosity. This would fit
the news and documentaries which both give us a sense that we are learning about the world.
2. Personal Identity - we may watch the television in order to look for models for our behaviour. So, for example,
we may identify with characters that we see in a soap. The characters help us to decide what feel about ourselves
and if we agree with their actions and they succeed we feel better about ourselves.
3. Integration and Social Interaction - we use the media in order to find out more about the circumstances of other
people. Watching a show helps us to empathize and sympathize with the lives of others so that we may even end up
thinking of the characters in programme as friends.
4. Entertainment - sometimes we simply use the media for enjoyment, relaxation or just to fill time.

Riley and Riley (1951) found that children in peer groups used adventure stories from the media for group games
while individual children used media stories for fantasizing and daydreaming. The study thus found that different
people use the same messages from the media for different purposes.

Katz replaced the question "what do media do to people?" with the question "what do people do with the
media?" Katz, Gurevitch & Hass found that the media are used by
individuals to meet the following specific needs :

Cognitive needs (acquiring information, knowledge and understanding);

Affective needs (emotional, pleasurable experience);
Personal integrative needs (strengthening self image);
Social integrative needs (strengthening self image);
Tension release needs (escape and diversion)

McQuail, Blumler and Brown suggested the following individual needs categories:

1) Diversion (emotional release)

2) Personal Relationships (substitute of media for companionship).
3) Personal identity or individual psychology (value reinforcement, self understanding.)
4) Surveillance (information that may help an individual accomplish tasks.)

B. Rubin and Bantz (1989) studied the uses and gratifications of "new technology" by examining VCR use. They
found the following motives for VCR use:
1) library storage of movies and shows
2) watching music videos
3) Using exercise tapes
4) renting movies
5) letting children view
6) time-shifting
7) Socializing by viewing with others
8) Critical viewing including TV watching and studying tapes

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7) SPIRAL OF SILENCE THEORY

Propounded by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, this theory states that the media publicizes opinions that are mainstream
and people adjust their opinions according to their perceptions to avoid being isolated.Individuals who perceive their
own opinion as being accepted will express it, whilst those who think themselves as being a minority, suppress their
views. Innovators and change agents are unafraid to voice different opinions, as they do not fear isolation.
8) CONSISTENCY THEORIES (1950s)

Festinger formulated the consistency theories that talked about people"s need for consistency in their beliefs and
judgements. In order to reduce dissonance created by inconsistencies in belief, judgments and action people expose
themselves to information that is consistent with their ideas and actions, and they shut out other communications.

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9) McCOMBS AND SHAW"S AGENDA SETTING THEORY

This theory puts forth the ability of the media to influence the significance of events in the public's mind. The media
set the agenda for the audience's discussion and mentally order and organize their world. The theory is consistent
with a "use and gratification" approach. McCombs and Shaw assert that the agenda-setting function of the media
causes the correlation between the media and public ordering of priorities.The people most affected by the media
agenda are those who have a high need for orientation

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10) Media Dependency Theory

Developed by Ball-Rokeach and DeFluer, the key idea behind this theory is that audiences depend on media
information to meet needs and reach goals, and social institutions and media systems interact with audiences to
create needs, interests, and motives in the person. The degree of dependence is influenced by the number and
centrality of information functions and social stability. Some questions that this theory raised were :
Do media create needs?
Do people turn to media to achieve gratification and satisfy needs?
Are media needs personal, social, cultural, political, or all of these?
"The media are our friends"??

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11) STEPHENSON"S PLAY THEORY
Play is an activity pursued for pleasure. The daily withdrawal of people into the mass media in their after hours is a
matter of subjectivity. The effect of mass communication is not escapism nor seducing the masses. Rather it is seen
as anti-anxiety producing, and are regarded as communication-pleasure.

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12) MODELING BEHAVIOUR THEORY

Behaviors which are modeled from media experiences can become habitual if found useful and/or if they are
reinforced in the environment. This is not about violent or criminal behavior.

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CULTIVATION THEORY
George Gerbner tried to determine the influence of television on viewers" ideas of the environment they lived in. He
found that dominance of TV created a common view of the world and that it homogenized different cultures. TV
portrayed the society as a bad place to live in leading to people becoming distrustful of the world. Over time,
particular symbols, images, messages, meanings become dominant and are absorbed as the truth. Cultural
stereotypes, ways of assessing value and hierarchies are established.

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14) Diffusion of innovations theory

Pioneered in 1943 by Bryce Ryan and Neil Gross of Iowa State University this theory traces the process by which a
new idea or practice is communicated through certain channels over time among members of a social system. The
model describes the factors that influence people's thoughts and actions and the process of adopting a new
technology or idea.

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15) Social learning theory
Formulated by Albert Bandura at Stanford University, this specifies that mass-media messages give audience
members an opportunity to identify with attractive characters that demonstrate behavior, engage emotions, and allow
mental rehearsal and modeling of new behavior. The behavior of models in the mass media also offers vicarious
reinforcement to motivate audience members' adoption of the behavior.

Baran and Davis (2000) classify mass communication theories into three broad categories:
1. microscopic theories that focus on the everyday life of people who process information - for example, uses and
gratifications, active audience theory, and reception studies;
2. middle range theories that support the limited effects perspective of the media - for example, information flow
theory, diffusion theory, and
3. macroscopic theories that are concerned with media's impact on culture and society - for example, cultural
studies theory.

Theories of mass communication have always focused on the "cause and effects" notion, i.e. the effects of the media
and the process leading to those effects, on the audience's mind. Harold Lasswell andBerelson have succinctly
expressed this idea. Lasswell's essential question is timeless (1949): "Who says what in what channel to whom with
what effects?" Berelson said: "Some kinds of communication, on some kinds of issues, brought to the attention of
some kinds of people, under some kinds of conditions, have some kinds of effects." (1949).

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Wilbur Schramm stated: "In fact, it is misleading to think of the communication process as starting somewhere and
ending somewhere. It is really endless. We are little switchboard centers handling and rerouting the great endless
current of information.... " (Schramm W.1954) quoted in McQuail & Windahl (1981)

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16) The Osgood and Schramm circular model emphasizes the circular nature of communication.

The participants swap between the roles of source/encoder and receiver/decoder.

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17) Gerbner's General Model

Gerbner's General Model also emphasizes the dynamic nature of human communication.

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18) the Shannon-Weaver Model.

Shannon and Weaver produced a general model of communication known after them as the Shannon-Weaver
Model. It involved breaking down an information system into sub-systems so as to evaluate the efficiency of various
communication channels and codes. They propose that all communication must include six elements:

Source
Encoder
Channel
Message
Decoder
Receiver
This model is often referred to as an " information model" of communication. A drawback is that the model looks
at communication as a one-way process. That is remedied by the addition of the feedback loop. Noise indicates
those factors that disturb or otherwise influence messages as they are being transmitter

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19) Berlo's S-M-C-R Model

Berlo"s SMCR (SOURCE, MESSAGE, CHANNEL, and RECEIVER) model focuses on the individual
characteristics of communication and stresses the role of the relationship between the source and the receiver as an
important variable in the communication process. The more highly developed the communication skills of the
source and the receiver, the more effectively the message will be encoded and decoded.

Berlo's model represents a communication process that occurs as a SOURCE drafts messages based on one's
communication skills, attitudes, knowledge, and social and cultural system. These MESSAGES are transmitted
along CHANNELS, which can include sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. A RECEIVER interprets messages
based on the individual's communication skills, attitudes, knowledge, and social and cultural system. The limitations
of the model are its lack of feedback

Terms used in the chapter:

Mass-media:
It is a collective phrase that represents not only the press, cinema, radio, television and internet, but also to some
extent, books magazines, pamphlets , direct mail literature, posters, folk media, and natural communication methods
such as rumours, education and preaching. It is so termed because its reach extends to vast heterogeneous
populations. Generally the mass media employ technological means to communicate to the masses. They are
founded on the idea of mass production and distribution. Wiebe defined mass media as those readily available to the
general public.

Selective attention:
The media are full of competing messages. The process of screening vast amount of information in which one has
no interest through mental filters is called selective attention, for example, an adult will be more tuned to listening to
the news while a child would rather watch a cartoon show.

Selective perception:
This is the tendency to interpret communication messages in terms of one"s existing attitudes. People of distinct
psychological character same media content in different ways. This depends on factors such as age, values, family,
opinions etc. Selective perception is influenced by social relationships.

Selective retention:
The ability of an individual to retain certain messages in his mind while ignoring others is called selective retention.
This is influenced by various psychological and physiological factors such as choice, values, culture, emotions etc.

Selective exposure:
Some individuals are exposed to certain media effects/messages while some are not. This screening aspect depends
on many factors such as reach of media, accessibility, age, cultural acceptability, taboos, etc.

Opinion leaders/change agents:

The opinions of people in a group are influenced by what they hear from "opinion leaders". An individual who is a
member of a group manifests certain characteristics in his thinking and behaviour that contribute to the formation of
"public opinion". The opinion of the leader is based on rational thinking due to education and experience. They
weigh the pros and cons of the information they receive and then give their judgement on it.
Encoder:
In the process of communication, the sender or source of the message is referred to as the encoder.

Decoder:
The person receiving the message and decodes it is referred to as the decoder.

Feedback:
Feedback, a term form cybernetics, the study of messages. It refers to an inquiry, response or experiment. Feedback
can be positive (when the required result is achieved) or negative; instantaneous(when the response is immediate) or
delayed. Feedback is used to gauge the effectivenss of a particular message put forth or situation that has taken
place.

Noise:
In all communication, there is a sender, a message/communication and a receiver. The meaning of a message is
greatly dependent on the culture in which it is transmitted. The sender encodes a message, the receiver decodes it.
Between the sender, the message and receiver, noise gets in the way and complicates the process. A noiseless
communication does not exist. There always is some kind of noise entering the communication. Noise can be
physical noise for example static or psychological i.e. when culture, taboos or values come into play to disrupt the
normal transmission process of communication. Misunderstanding of a particular message i.e. distortion of meaning
is a form of noise, example, the game of Chinese Whisper"a person starts off with a particular message and the
original message may be distorted by the time it comes to the final player.

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” Communication is transfer of information from one person to another,whether or not it elicits confidence.
But the information transferred must be understandable to the receiver – G.G. Brown.
2. “Communication is the intercourse by words, letters or messages”- Fred G. Meyer.
We can now proceed to define communication from what we have seen above. To define means to give the
precise and exact meaning of a word. The exact meaning of the word communicate is ‘to share’ or ‘to
participate’. The dictionaries say that communication is the transmission of a message or information by
speaking or writing. Another dictionary declares that communication is giving or exchanging information,
signals, messages by talk or gestures or writing. Yet another definition says that communication is social
intercourse. Communication is all this and much more. A good definition should not only give the precise
meaning but also throw light on the scope of the word / expression.
Communication is giving, receiving or exchanging ideas, information, signals or messages through
appropriate media, enabling individuals or groups to persuade, to seek information, to give information or to
express emotions.
This broad definition includes body-language, skills of speaking and writing. It outlines the objectives of
communication. It emphasizes listening as an important aspect of communication.

communication is a process of exchanging verbal and non verbal messages. It is a continuous process. Pre-requisite of communication
is a message. This message must be conveyed through some medium to the recipient. It is essential that this message must be
understood by the recipient in same terms as intended by the sender. He must respond within a time frame. Thus, communication is a
two way process and is incomplete without a feedback from the recipient to the sender on how well the message is

understood by him.
 Communication Process

The main components of communication process are as follows:

1. Context - Communication is affected by the context in which it takes place. This context may be physical,
social, chronological or cultural. Every communication proceeds with context. The sender chooses the
message to communicate within a context.
2. Sender / Encoder - Sender / Encoder is a person who sends the message. A sender makes use of symbols
(words or graphic or visual aids) to convey the message and produce the required response. For instance - a
training manager conducting training for new batch of employees. Sender may be an individual or a group
or an organization. The views, background, approach, skills, competencies, and knowledge of the sender
have a great impact on the message. The verbal and non verbal symbols chosen are essential in ascertaining
interpretation of the message by the recipient in the same terms as intended by the sender.
3. Message - Message is a key idea that the sender wants to communicate. It is a sign that elicits the response
of recipient. Communication process begins with deciding about the message to be conveyed. It must be
ensured that the main objective of the message is clear.
4. Medium - Medium is a means used to exchange / transmit the message. The sender must choose an
appropriate medium for transmitting the message else the message might not be conveyed to the desired
recipients. The choice of appropriate medium of communication is essential for making the message
effective and correctly interpreted by the recipient. This choice of communication medium varies
depending upon the features of communication. For instance - Written medium is chosen when a message
has to be conveyed to a small group of people, while an oral medium is chosen when spontaneous feedback
is required from the recipient as misunderstandings are cleared then and there.
5. Recipient / Decoder - Recipient / Decoder is a person for whom the message is intended / aimed / targeted.
The degree to which the decoder understands the message is dependent upon various factors such as
knowledge of recipient, their responsiveness to the message, and the reliance of encoder on decoder.
6. Feedback - Feedback is the main component of communication process as it permits the sender to analyze
the efficacy of the message. It helps the sender in confirming the correct interpretation of message by the
decoder. Feedback may be verbal (through words) or non-verbal (in form of smiles, sighs, etc.). It may take
written form also in form of memos, re

here are seven elements of communication:

Source idea (Source)

Message
Encoding
Channel
Receiver
Decoding
Feedback

Let's discuss each element.

The Source idea is the process by which one formulates an idea to communicate to another party. This process can
be influenced by external stimuli such as books or radio, or it can come about internally by thinking about a
particular subject. The source idea is the basis for the communication.

The Message is what will be communicated to another party. It is based on the source idea, but the message is
crafted to meet the needs of the audience. For example, if the message is between two friends, the message will take
a different form than if communicating with a superior.

Encoding is how the message is transmitted to another party. The message is converted into a suitable form for
transmission. The medium of transmission will determine the form of the communication. For example, the message
will take a different form if the communication will be spoken or written.

The Channel is the medium of the communication. The channel must be able to transmit the message from one party
to another without changing the content of the message. The channel can be a piece of paper, a communications
medium such as radio, or it can be an email. The channel is the path of the communication from sender to receiver.
An email can use the Internet as a channel.

The Receiver is the party receiving the communication. The party uses the channel to get the communication from
the transmitter. A receiver can be a television set, a computer, or a piece of paper depending on the channel used for
the communication.

Decoding is the process where the message is interpreted for its content. It also means the receiver thinks about the
message's content and internalizes the message. This step of the process is where the receiver compares the message
to prior experiences or external stimuli.

Feedback is the final step in the communications process. This step conveys to the transmitter that the message is
understood by the receiver. The receiver formats an appropriate reply to the first communication based on the
channel and sends it to the transmitter of the original message.

SOURCE

The source of the communication transaction is the originator of the message. Also known as the sender of
information, the source initiates the communication process. In speech communication, we can identify the source to
be the speaker, the one delivering the message. In daily life situations we are all sources of information as we relate
to others and speak our ideas to them. We are both a source of message, consciously and unconsciously.

MESSAGE

In the simplest sense, a message may be thought of as an idea, concept, emotion, desire, or feeling that a person
desires to share with another human being. A message may be in verbal or non-verbal codes. The purpose of a
message is to evoke meaning in another person. Some messages are intentional some are not.
CHANNEL

A channel is the means by which a message moves from a person to another. The channel is the medium or vehicle
by which we are able to transmit the message to the recipient. The means we use to communicate is the channel. The
country’s president to deliver his message to his fellowmen may speak face to face with an audience, via the
broadcast media or via print. Language is the basic medium of communication available to man.

RECEIVER The receiver gets the message channeled by the source of information. In a one way communication
process, he is in the other end. But in a dynamic communication process the receiver may start to share his ideas and
hence become also a source of information for the originator of the message. Listeners and audience are receivers of
information. In a classroom situation, the students spend a lot of time as receivers of information.
EFFECT

Feedback is that integral part of the human communication process that allows the speaker to monitor the process
and to evaluate the success of an attempt to get the desired response from the receiver. Also called “return signals,”
it has a regulatory effect upon the speaker since the speaker must adjust to the feedback responses in order to be
successful. In a public communication situation, the response of acceptance of the audience with their applause may
be considered a feedback.
NOISE

Noise may occur anywhere along the communication line, and it may be physical, physiological, or psychological in
nature. Noise is any interference in the communication process. Annoying vocal habits of the speaker may interfere
in the transmission of his verbal signals. Noise as a barrier may originate from the source or the receiver, from the
channel used in sending the message, or outside of the source and receiver’s control. The poor listening of the
audience and their unnecessary actions may also interfere in the communication process.
CONTEXT

Communication does not take place in a vacuum. Between communicators, the process takes place in a particular
communication situation where the identifiable elements of the process work in a dynamic interrelation. This
situation is referred to as the context - the when and where of a communication event. Communication contexts
vary depending on the need, purpose, number of communicators and the ways exchange is taking place.
Communication can be intrapersonal, interpersonal, group, organizational, cultural, public or mediated.
Knowing the elements of communication leads to a more meaningful understanding of the processes that make it
work. We communicate and we know it is important for us. To communicate effectively, we need to have an
understanding of how these elements work together in a process.

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Communication

Communication is a process of exchanging information, ideas, thoughts, feelings and emotions through speech,
signals, writing, or behavior. In communication process, a sender(encoder) encodes a message and then using a
medium/channel sends it to the receiver (decoder) who decodes the message and after processing information, sends
back appropriate feedback/reply using a medium/channel.

Types of Communication

People communicate with each other in a number of ways that depend upon the message and its context in which it
is being sent. Choice of communication channel and your style of communicating also affects communication. So,
there are variety of types of communication.

Types of communication based on the communication channels used are:

1. Verbal Communication
2. Nonverbal Communication
1. Verbal Communication

Verbal communication refers to the the form of communication in which message is transmitted verbally;
communication is done by word of mouth and a piece of writing. Objective of every communication is to have
people understand what we are trying to convey. In verbal communication remember the acronym
KISS(keep it short and simple).
When we talk to others, we assume that others understand what we are saying because we know what we are
 saying. But this is not the case. usually people bring their own attitude, perception, emotions and thoughts about
the topic and hence creates barrier in delivering the right meaning.

So in order to deliver the right message, you must put yourself on the other side of the table and think from your
receiver’s point of view. Would he understand the message? how it would sound on the other side of the table?

Verbal Communication is further divided into:

 Oral Communication
 Written Communication
Oral Communication

In oral communication, Spoken words are used. It includes face-to-face conversations, speech, telephonic
conversation, video, radio, television, voice over internet. In oral communication, communication is influence
by pitch, volume, speed and clarity of speaking.
Advantages of Oral communication are:
It brings quick feedback.
In a face-to-face conversation, by reading facial expression and body language one can guess whether he/she
should trust what’s being said or not.
Disadvantage of oral communication
In face-to-face discussion, user is unable to deeply think about what he is delivering, so this can be counted as a
Written Communication

In written communication, written signs or symbols are used to communicate. A written message may be
printed or hand written. In written communication message can be transmitted via email, letter, report, memo
etc. Message, in written communication, is influenced by the vocabulary & grammar used, writing style,
precision and clarity of the language used.

Written Communication is most common form of communication being used in business. So, it is
considered core among business skills.
Memos, reports, bulletins, job descriptions, employee manuals, and electronic mail are the types of written
communication used for internal communication. For communicating with external environment in writing,
electronic mail, Internet Web sites, letters, proposals, telegrams, faxes, postcards, contracts, advertisements,
brochures, and news releases are used.

Advantages of written communication includes:

Messages can be edited and revised many time before it is actually sent.
Written communication provide record for every message sent and can be saved for later study.
A written message enables receiver to fully understand it and send appropriate feedback.
Disadvantages of written communication includes:
Unlike oral communication, Written communication doesn’t bring instant feedback.
It take more time in composing a written message as compared to word-of-mouth. and number of people
struggles for writing ability.
2. Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal communication is the sending or receiving of wordless messages. We can say that communication
other than oral and written, such as gesture, body language,posture, tone of voice or facial expressions, is
called nonverbal communication.Nonverbal communication is all about the body language of speaker.
Nonverbal communication helps receiver in interpreting the message received. Often, nonverbal signals reflects
the situation more accurately than verbal messages.Sometimes nonverbal response contradicts verbal
communication and hence affect the effectiveness of message.
Nonverbal communication have the following three elements:
 Appearance
Speaker: clothing, hairstyle, neatness, use of cosmetics
Surrounding: room size, lighting, decorations, furnishings
Body Language
facial expressions, gestures, postures
Sounds
Voice Tone, Volume, Speech rate
Types of Communication Based on Purpose and Style
Based on style and purpose, there are two main categories of communication and they both bears their own
characteristics. Communication types based on style and purpose are:
1. Formal Communication
2. Informal Communication
1. Formal Communication

In formal communication, certain rules, conventions and principles are followed while communicating
message. Formal communication occurs in formal and official style. Usually professional settings, corporate
meetings, conferences undergoes in formal pattern.
In formal communication, use of slang and foul language is avoided and correct pronunciation is
required. Authority lines are needed to be followed in formal communication.
2. Informal Communication

Informal communication is done using channels that are in contrast with formal communication channels. It’s
just a casual talk. It is established for societal affiliations of members in an organization and face-to-face
discussions. It happens among friends and family. In informal communication use of slang words, foul
language is not restricted. Usually. informal communication is done orally and using gestures.
Informal communication, Unlike formal communication, doesn’t follow authority lines. In an organization,
it helps in finding out staff grievances as people express more when talking informally. Informal
communication helps in building relationships.

erbal communication
Verbal communication is a type of communication where the information flows through verbal medium like words,
speeches, presentations etc. In verbal communication the sender shares his/her thoughts in the form of words. In
organizations, individuals communicate verbally among each other in the form of dialogues, speech, presentations,
discussions to name a few. The tone of the speaker, the pitch and the quality of words play a crucial role in verbal
communication. The speaker has to be loud and clear and the content has to be properly defined. Haphazard and
unorganized thoughts only lead to confusions and misunderstandings among individuals. In verbal communication, an
individual must understand the importance of words and how to put them across.

While speaking the pitch ought to be high and clear for everyone to understand and the content must be designed keeping
the target audience in mind. In verbal communication it is the responsibility of the sender to cross check with the receiver
whether he has downloaded the correct information or not and the sender must give the required response.

Sarah to ken - “I want a glass of water” is an example of verbal communication.

Non verbal communication

Imagine yourself in a situation, where you can’t speak but have to communicate an urgent information to the other
person or for that matter, you are sitting in an important meeting and you want to express your displeasure or
pleasure to your colleague without uttering even a word. Here non verbal mode of communication comes into
picture. Facial expressions, gestures, hand and hair movements, body postures all constitute non verbal
communication. Any communication made between two people without words and simply through facial
movements, gestures or hand movements is called as non verbal communication. In other words, it is a speechless
communication where content is not put into words but simply expressed through expressions If one has a headache,
one would put his hand on his forehead to communicate his discomfort - a form of non verbal communication. Non
verbal communications are vital in offices, meetings and even in romantic chats.

Visual Communication
Before planning any outing or tour, Sandra always refers to the map of that place. Through the map, she tries to find out
more about the place, the route to reach that place, hotels, shopping joints etc. The map is actually passing information
about the place to Sandra or communicating with Sandra. This mode of communication is called visual communication. In
visual communication, the recipient receives information from signboards, displays, hoardings, banners, maps etc. The
sign board of Mc Donald’s or KFC indicates eating joints - a form of visual communication. The sign board of “No
Parking Zone” communicates to the individuals that any vehicle must not be parked in the vicinity - again a mode of visual
communication. Vision plays a very important role in visual communication and it depends on the recipient how to
interpret the message.

However, the commonly known types of communications are :

Intra-personal communication skills : This implies individual reflection, contemplation and meditation. One
example of this is transcendental mediation. According to the experts this type of communication encompasses
communicating with the divine and with spirits in the form of prayers and rites and rituals.

Interpersonal communication skills : This is direct, face-to-face communication that occurs between two persons.
It is essentially a dialogue or a conversation between two or more people.

Nonverbal communication is usually understood as the process of communication through sending and receiving
wordless (mostlyvisual) cues between people. Messages can be communicated through gestures and touch, by body
language or posture, by facial expression and eye contact. Nonverbal messages could also be communicated through
material exponential; meaning, objects or artifacts (such as clothing, hairstyles or architecture). Speech contains
nonverbal elements known as paralanguage, including voice quality, rate, pitch, volume, and speaking style, as
well prosodic features such as rhythm, intonation, and stress. Likewise, written texts have nonverbal elements such
as handwriting style, spatial arrangement of words, or the physical layout of a page. However, much of the study of
nonverbal communication has focused on face-to-face interaction, where it can be classified into three principal
areas:environmental conditions where communication takes place, physical characteristics of the communicators,
and behaviors of communicators during interaction.
mportance

“Most social psychologists will tell you that nonverbal communication makes up about two-thirds of all
communication between two people or between one speaker and a group of listeners.” [1] Nonverbal communication
can portray a message both verbally and with the correct body signals. “There are numerous elements of what we
call body language. They include physical features, both changeable and unchangeable, your gestures and signals
you send to others at a conscious and unconscious level, and the space that you use when communicating with
others.”[1] The wrong message can be established if the body language conveyed does not match a verbal message.
Nonverbal communication strengthens a first impression in common situations like attracting a partner or in a
business interview. “You have less than ten seconds and realistically close to four seconds to make a
good impression on those with whom you come in contact.”[1] First encounters or interactions with another person
strongly affect a person’s lifestyle. “People are more likely to believe that the first things they learn are the
truth.”[2] When the other person or group is absorbing the message they are focused on the entire environmentaround
them, meaning, the other person uses all five senses in the interaction. “Sight makes up 83% of the impact on the
brain of information from the senses during a visual presentation. Taste makes up 1%, Hearing makes up 11%, smell
3% and touch 2%.”[3]
Four Principles of Interpersonal Communication

These principles underlie the workings in real life of interpersonal communication. They are basic to
communication. We can't ignore them

Interpersonal communication is inescapable

We can't not communicate. The very attempt not to communicate communicates something. Through not only
words, but through tone of voice and through gesture, posture, facial expression, etc., we constantly communicate to
those around us. Through these channels, we constantly receive communication from others. Even when you sleep,
you communicate. Remember a basic principle of communication in general: people are not mind readers. Another
way to put this is: people judge you by your behavior, not your intent.

Interpersonal communication is irreversible

You can't really take back something once it has been said. The effect must inevitably remain. Despite the
instructions from a judge to a jury to "disregard that last statement the witness made," the lawyer knows that it can't
help but make an impression on the jury. A Russian proverb says, "Once a word goes out of your mouth, you can
never swallow it again."

Interpersonal communication is complicated

No form of communication is simple. Because of the number of variables involved, even simple requests are
extremely complex. Theorists note that whenever we communicate there are really at least six "people" involved: 1)
who you think you are; 2) who you think the other person is; 30 who you think the other person thinks you are; 4)
who the other person thinks /she is; 5) who the other person thinks you are; and 6) who the other person thinks you
think s/he is.

nterpersonal communication

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Interpersonal communication is often defined by communication scholars in numerous ways, usually describing
participants who are dependent upon one another. It can involve one on one conversations or individuals interacting
with many people within a society. It helps us understand how and why people behave and communicate in different
ways to construct and negotiate a social reality. While interpersonal communication can be defined as its own area
of study, it also occurs within other contexts like groups and organizations. Interpersonal communication is the
process that we use to communicate our ideas, thoughts, and feelings to another person. Our interpersonal
communication skills are learned behaviors that can be improved through knowledge, practice, feedback, and
reflection.
Interpersonal communication includes message sending and message reception between two or more individuals.
This can include all aspects of communication such as listening, persuading, asserting, nonverbal communication,
and more. A primary concept of interpersonal communication looks at communicative acts when there are few
individuals involved unlike areas of communication such as group interaction, where there may be a large number of
individuals involved in a communicative act.
Individuals also communicate on different interpersonal levels depending on who they are engaging in
communication with. For example, if an individual is communicating with a family member, that communication
will more than likely differ from the type of communication used when engaged in a communicative act with a
friend or significant other.
Overall, interpersonal communication can be conducted using both direct and indirect mediums of communication
such as face-to-faceinteraction, as well as computer-mediated-communication. Successful interpersonal
communication assumes that both the message senders and the message receivers will interpret and understand the
messages being sent o
way he actually wants i.e. purchase the handset and increase his billing.

The Aristotle model of communication is the widely accepted and the most common model of communication
where the sender sends the information or a message to the receivers to influence them and make them respond and
act accordingly. Aristotle model of communication is the golden rule to excel in public speaking, seminars, lectures
where the sender makes his point clear by designing an impressive content, passing on the message to the second
part and they simply respond accordingly. Here the sender is the active member and the receiver is passive one.

Aristotle, a great philosopher initiative the earliest mass communication model called “Aristotle’s Model of
Communication”. He proposed model before 300 B.C who found the importance of audience role in communication
chain in his communication model. This model is more focused on public speaking than interpersonal
communication.

Aristotle Model of Communication is formed with 5 basic elements

(i) Speaker, (ii) Speech, (iii) Occasion, (iv) Audience and (v) Effect.

Aristotle advises speakers to build speech for different audience on different time (occasion) and for different
effects.

Speaker plays an important role in Public speaking. The speaker must prepare his speech and analysis audience
needs before he enters into the stage. His words should influence in audience mind and persuade their thoughts
towards him.

Example:

Alexander gave brave speech to his soldiers in the war field to defeat Persian Empire.

Speaker - Alexander

Speech - about his invasion

Occasion - War field

Audience - Soldiers

Effect - To defeat Persia

Wilbur Schramm conceptualizes it as sharing of experiences on the basis of commonness while Mc Quail said
communication is the process which increases commonality. Others conceptualize communication as an exchange of
facts, ideas, or opinions by two or more persons (Newman & Summer). It is the exchange of information and
transmission of meaning (Katz & Khan). Scholars like Aristotle and Plato have termed the process of
communication as Rhetoric.

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What is a Model?
• A model is a systematic representation of an object or event in idealized and abstract form. Models
are somewhat arbitrary by their nature.
• Communication models are merely pictures; they’re even distorting pictures, because they stop or
freeze an essentially dynamic interactive or transitive process into a static picture.
• Models are metaphors. They allow us to see one thing in terms of another.

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The Shannon-Weaver’s Model of Communication
The Shannon-Weaver’s model is typical of what are often referred to as transmission models of
communication. Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver were two different entities that jointly produced a
model known after their names.
Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver produced a general model of communication:
This model is now known after them as the Shannon-Weaver’s Model. Although they were principally
concerned with communication technology, their model has become one which is frequently introduced to
students of human communication early in their study.
The Shannon-Weaver’s Model (1947) proposes that all communication processes must include following six
elements:

Source
Encoder
Message
Channel
Decoder
Receiver

These six elements are shown graphically in the model. As Shannon was researching in the field of
information theory, his model was initially very technology-oriented. The model was produced in 1947.
The emphasis here is very much on the transmission and reception of information. 'Information' is
understood rather differently from the way you and I would normally use the term, as well. This model is
often referred to as an 'information model’ of communication.
Apart from its obvious technological bias, a drawback from our point of view is the model's obvious
linearity. It looks at communication as a one-way process. A further drawback with this kind of model is
that the message is seen as relatively unproblematic. It is fine for discussing the transformation of
10
'information' but when we try to apply the model to communication, problems arise with the assumption
that meanings are somehow contained within the message.

Detailed analysis of the model

The Source
All human communication has some source (information source in Shannon's terminology), some
person or group of persons with a given purpose, a reason for engaging in communication. You'll also find
the terms transmitter and communicator used.

The Encoder
You, as the source, have to express your purpose in the form of a message. That message has to be
formulated in some kind of code. How do the source's purposes get translated into a code? This requires an
encoder. The communication encoder is responsible for taking the ideas of the source and putting them in
code, expressing the source's purpose in the form of a message.
In person-to-person communication, the encoding process is performed by the motor skills of the source -
vocal mechanisms (lip and tongue movements, the vocal cords, the lungs, face muscles etc.), muscles in the
hand and so on. Some people's encoding systems are not as efficient as others'. So, for example, a disabled
person might not be able to control movement of their limbs and so find it difficult to encode the intended
non-verbal messages or they may communicate unintended messages.
A person who has suffered throat problem may have had their vocal cords removed. They can encode their
messages verbally using an artificial aid, but much of the non-verbal messages most of us send via pitch,
intonation, volume and so on cannot be encoded.
Shannon was not particularly concerned with the communication of meanings. In fact, it is Wilbur
Schramm's model of 1954 which places greater emphasis on the processes of encoding and decoding. We
will discuss threadbare Schramm’s model in next lecture with special emphasis on the provision of
interpretation of a message for a logical understanding of what has been sent by the source originally.

The Message
The message of course is what communication is all about. Whatever is communicated is the
message.
Denis McQuail (1975) in his book Communication writes that the simplest way of regarding human
communication is 'to consider it as the sending from one person to another of meaningful messages'.
The Shannon-Weaver’s Model, in common with many others separates the message from other
components of the process of communication. In reality, though, you can only reasonably examine the
message within the context of all the other interlinked elements. Whenever we are in contact with other
people we and they are involved in sending and receiving messages. The crucial question for
Communication Studies is: to what extent does the message received correspond to the message
transmitted? That's where all the other factors in the communication process come into play.
The Shannon-Weaver’s model and others like it tends to portray the message as a relatively uncomplicated
matter. Note that this is not a criticism of Shannon since meanings were simply not his concern:
Frequently the messages have meaning that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with
certain physical or conceptual entities. (These considerations are irrelevant to the engineering problem).

The Channel
The words channel and medium are often used interchangeably, if slightly inaccurately. The
choice of the appropriate channel is a vitally important choice in communication. It's obvious that you don't
use the visual channel to communicate with the blind or the auditory channel with the deaf, but there are
more subtle considerations to be taken into account as well.
11

Physical noise
Shannon is generally considered to have been primarily concerned with physical (or 'mechanical' or
'engineering') noise in the channel, i.e. unexplained variation in a communication channel or random error
in the transmission of information. Everyday examples of physical noise are:
• A loud motorbike roaring down the road while you're trying to hold a conversation.
• Your little brother standing in front of the TV set.
• Mist on the inside of the car windscreen.
• Smudges on a printed page.
• 'Snow' on a TV set.
It might seem odd to use the word noise in this way. In this technical sense, 'noise' is not necessarily
audible. Thus a TV technician might speak of a 'noisy picture'. However, it is possible for a message to be
distorted by channel overload. Channel overload is not due to any noise source, but rather to the channel
capacity being exceeded. You may come across that at a party where you are holding a conversation amidst
lots of others going on around you or, perhaps, in a communication lesson where everyone has split into
small groups for discussion.
Shannon and Weaver were primarily involved with the investigation of technological communication. Their
model is perhaps more accurately referred to as a model of information theory (rather than communication
theory). Consequently, their main concern was with the kind of physical (or mechanical) noise discussed
above.
Transfer of a mismatch between the encoding and decoding devices to the study of human communication
and you're looking at what is normally referred to as semantic noise That concept then leads us on to the
study of social class, cultural background, experience, attitudes, beliefs and a whole range of other factors
which can introduce noise into communication.

Semantic noise
Semantic noise is not as easy to deal with as physical noise. It might not be an exaggeration to say
that the very essence of the study of human communication is to find ways of avoiding semantic noise.
Semantic noise is difficult to define. It may be related to people's knowledge level, their communication
skills, their experience, and their prejudices and so on. It all depends on the commonality of experiences on
part of the receiver to understand message from sender.

The Decoder
The notion of a decoder reminds us that it is quite possible for a person to have all the equipment
required to receive the messages you send (all five senses, any necessary technology and so on) and yet be
unable to decode your messages.

The Receiver
For communication to occur there must be somebody at the other end of the channel. This person
or persons can be called the receiver. To put it in Shannon's terms, information transmitters and receivers
must be similar systems. If they are not, communication cannot occur. (Actually Shannon used the term
destination, reserving the term receiver for what we have called decoder.
What that probably meant as far as he was concerned was that you need a telephone at one end and a
telephone at the other, not a telephone connected to a radio. In rather more obviously human terms, the
receiver needs to have the equipment to receive the message. A totally blind person has the mental
equipment to decode your gestures, but no system for receiving messages in the visual channel. So, your
non-verbal messages are not received and you're wasting your energy.

1949 – Shannon- Weaver’s Model of Communication

Feedback is a vital part of communication. In the class room students’ facial expression tell the
teacher to go to what extent to make students understand the point under discussion. More or less, these
expression would guide the teacher where and when to finish.
When we are talking to someone over the phone, if they don't give us the occasional 'mmmm', 'aaah', 'yes, I
see' and so on, it can be very disconcerting. In face-to-face communication, we get feedback in the visual
channel as well - head nods, smiles, frowns, changes in posture and orientation, gaze and so on.
Why do people often have difficulty when using computers, when they find it perfectly easy to drive a car?
You'd think it should be easier to operate a computer - after all there are only a few keys and a mouse, as
against levers, pedals and a steering wheel. A computer's not likely to kill you, either. It could be due to the
lack of feedback - in a car, you've the sound of the engine, the speed of the landscape rushing past, the
force of gravity. Feedback is coming at you through sight, hearing and touch -overdo it and it might come
through smell as well. With a computer, there's very little of that. In fact you apply more of your brain as
what you must be doing next rather than shaping your activity whether it’s being liked or not by the
machine.

Feedback by definition
In its simplest form the feedback principle means that a behavior is tested with reference to its
result and success or failure of this result influences the future behavior
Though not exactly cut-out for human communication, the Shannon-Weaver model provides clear
guidelines for researchers to mark more avenues for graphic presentation of the elements in daily human
communication.

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Basic functions of mass communication can be divided into broad three classes: informing, persuading and
entertaining.

1. Informing: The most important function of mass communication is dissemination of information to the public
primary through news media-electronic and print. Information diffused through these channels (media) is
about new events, products, changes in policies, ideas, philosophies and so forth. Mass media are particularly
effective to spread current information having news values.
2. Persuading: Persuasion is another function of mass media. Because of its having persuasive potential, both
electronic and print media are used for advertising products, services, business, charities, or for political
campaign.
3. Entertaining: Entertainment is the most common function of mass communication. When used for
entertainment, the mass media publicize such programs as are pleasurable to the consumers or at least they
provide the audience with some sort of escape of diversion from anxieties of daily life. For example,
Newspapers for this purpose may include comics, crossword puzzles and the like. Televisions may show
situation comedies, drama, variety shows, etc. Radio entertainment primarily consists of music, talk shows,
etc.
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Wilbur Schramm (1954) was one of the first to alter the mathematical model of Shannon and Weaver. He
conceived of decoding and encoding as activities maintained simultaneously by sender and receiver; he also made
provisions for a two-way interchange of messages. Notice also the inclusion of an “interpreter” as an abstract
representation of the problem of meaning.

b. Strengths

i. Schramm provided the additional notion of a “field of experience,” or the psychological frame of reference;
this refers to the type of orientation or attitudes which interactants maintain toward each other.

ii. Included Feedback

1.) Communication is reciprocal, two-way, even though the feedback may be delayed.

a.) Some of these methods of communication are very direct, as when you talk in direct response to someone.
b.) Others are only moderately direct; you might squirm when a speaker drones on and on, wrinkle your nose and
scratch your head when a message is too abstract, or shift your body position when you think it’s your turn to talk.

c.) Still other kinds of feedback are completely indirect.

2.) For example,

a.) politicians discover if they’re getting their message across by the number of votes cast on the first Tuesday in
November;

b.) commercial sponsors examine sales figures to gauge their communicative effectiveness in ads;

c.) teachers measure their abilities to get the material across in a particular course by seeing how many students
sign up for it the next term.

iii. Included Context

1.) A message may have different meanings, depending upon the specific context or setting.

2.) Shouting “Fire!” on a rifle range produces one set of reactions-reactions quite different from those produced in
a crowded theater.

iv. Included Culture

1.) A message may have different meanings associated with it depending upon the culture or society.
Communication systems, thus, operate within the confines of cultural rules and expectations to which we all have
been educated.

v. Other model designers abstracted the dualistic aspects of communication as a series of “loops,” (Mysak, 1970),
“speech cycles” (Johnson, 1953), “co-orientation” (Newcomb, 1953), and overlapping “psychological fields”
(Fearing, 1953).

c. Weaknesses

i. Schramm’s model, while less linear, still accounts for only bilateral communication between two parties. The
complex, multiple levels of communication between several sources is beyond this model.
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F. Non-linear Models

1. Dance’s Helical Spiral, 1967

a. Background

i. Depicts communication as a dynamic process. Mortensen: “The helix represents the way communication
evolves in an individual from his birth to the existing moment.”

ii. Dance: “At any and all times, the helix gives geometrical testimony to the concept that communication while
moving forward is at the same moment coming back upon itself and being affected by its past behavior, for the
coming curve of the helix is fundamentally affected by the curve from which it emerges. Yet, even though slowly,
the helix can gradually free itself from its lower-level distortions. The communication process, like the helix, is
constantly moving forward and yet is always to some degree dependent upon the past, which informs the present and
the future. The helical communication model offers a flexible communication process” [p. 296].
b. Strengths

i. Mortensen: “As a heuristic device, the helix is interesting not so much for what it says as for what it permits to
be said. Hence, it exemplifies a point made earlier: It is important to approach models in a spirit of speculation and
intellectual play.”

ii. Chapanis (1961) called “sophisticated play:”

The helix implies that communication is continuous, unrepeatable, additive, and

accumulative; that is, each phase of activity depends upon present forces at work as they are
defined by all that has occurred before. All experience contributes to the shape of the
unfolding moment; there is no break in the action, no fixed beginning, no pure redundancy, no
closure. All communicative experience is the product of learned, nonrepeatable events which
are defined in ways the organism develops to be self-consistent and socially meaningful. In
short, the helix underscores the integrated aspects of all human communication as an evolving
process that is always turned inward in ways that permit learning, growth, and discovery.

c. Weaknesses

i. May not be a model at all: too few variables.

Mortensen: “If judged against conventional scientific standards, the helix does not fare well as
a model. Indeed, some would claim that it does not meet the requirements of a model at all.
More specifically, it is not a systematic or formalized mode of representation. Neither does it
formalize relationships or isolate key variables. It describes in the abstract but does not
explicitly explain or make particular hypotheses testable.”

ii. Generates Questions, but leaves much unaswered.

Mortensen: “For example, does not the helix imply a false degree of continuity from one
communicative situation to another? Do we necessarily perceive all encounters as actually
occurring in an undifferentiated, unbroken sequence of events? Does an unbroken line not
conflict with the human experience of discontinuity, intermittent periods, false starts, and so
forth? Is all communication a matter of growth, upward and onward, in an ever-broadening
range of encounters? If the helix represents continuous learning and growth, how can the
same form also account for deterioration and decay? What about the forces of entropy, inertia,
decay, and pathology? And does not the unbroken line of a helix tacitly ignore the qualitative
distinctions that inevitably characterize different communicative events? Also, what about
 movements which we define as utterly wasted, forced, or contrived? Along similar lines, how
can the idea of continuous, unbroken growth include events we consider meaningless,
artificial, or unproductive? Countless other questions could be raised. And that is the point.
The model brings problems of abstraction into the open. “rtificial, or unproductive? Countless
other questions could be raised. And that is the point. The model brings problems of
abstraction into the open. “
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Agenda-setting theory describes the "ability [of the news media] to influence the salience of topics on the public
agenda."[1] That is, if a news item is covered frequently and prominently the audience will regard the issue as more
important. Agenda-setting theory was formally developed by Dr. Max McCombs and Dr. Donald Shaw in a study on
the 1968 presidential election. In the 1968 "Chapel Hill study," McCombs and Shaw demonstrated a strong
correlation (r > .9) between what 100 residents of Chapel Hill, North Carolina thought was the most important
election issue and what the local and national news media reported was the most important issue. [2] By comparing
the salience of issues in news content with the public's perceptions of the most important election issue, McCombs
and Shaw were able to determine the degree to which the media determines public opinion. Since the 1968 study,
published in a 1972 edition of Public Opinion Quarterly, more than 400 studies have been published on the agenda-
setting function of the mass media, and the theory continues to be regarded as relevant. [3]

Core Assumptions and Statements

Agenda-setting is the creation of public awareness and concern of salient issues by the news media. Two basic
assumptions underlie most research on agenda-setting: (1) the press and the media do not reflect reality; they filter
and shape it; (2) media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more
important than other issues. One of the most critical aspects in the concept of an agenda-setting role of mass
communication is the time frame for this phenomenon. In addition, different media have different agenda-setting
potential.

[edit] The Cognitive Effects of Agenda-Setting

Agenda setting occurs through a cognitive process known as "accessibility." [8][9] Accessibility implies that the more
frequently and prominently the news media cover an issue, the more instances of that issue become accessible in
audience's memories. When respondents are asked what the most important problem facing the country is, they
answer with the most accessible news issue in memory, which is typically the issue the news media focus on the
most. The agenda-setting effect is not the result of receiving one or a few messages but is due to the aggregate
impact of a very large number of

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Normative theories

Introduction:

Normative theories were first proposed by Fred Siebert, Theodore Peterson and Wilbur Schramm in their book
called “Four Theories of the Press”. At first the word “Normative Theory” was pronounced in USA during the
height of ‘cold war’ with communism and soviet. Often it called as western theories of mass media.

A Normative theory describes an ideal way for a media system to be controlled and operated by the government,
authority, leader and public. These theories are basically different from other communication theories because
normative theories of press are not providing any scientific explanations or prediction. At the same these “four
theories of the press” were came from many sources rather than a single source. Sometimes media practitioners,
social critics and academics also involved to develop these normative theories.
Normative theories are more focused in the relationship between Press and the Government than press and the
audience. These theories are more concern about the ownership of the media and who controls the press or media in
the country.

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Authoritarian Theory

in Communication Theory, Authoritarian theory describe that all forms of communications are under the control of
the governing elite or authorities or influential bureaucrats.

Authoritarians are necessary to control the media to protect and prevent the people from the national threats through
any form communication (information or news). The press is an instrument to enhance the ruler’s power in the
country rather than any threats. The authorities have all rights to permit any media and control it by providing
license to the media and make certain censorship.

If any media violate the government policies against license, then the authority has all right to cancel the license and
revoke it. The government have all right to restrict any sensitive issues from press to maintain peace and security in
the nation.

Censorship:
Censorship is a suppression of any communication which may consider as harmful to the people, King, government
and its nation. Especially these censorship methods are much familiar in press which against the freedom of speech
and freedom of expression. In some other cases, the censorship helps to protect the rulers and authorities from
sensitive issues.

There are different types of censors like

 Political censor

 Moral censor

 Religious censor

 Military censor

 Corporate censor

Examples of Authoritarian theory:

For right Nikolai Yezhov, standing near Stalin was removed from this photograph after he shot dead in 1940. These
types of censors are common during Stalin’s reign.

 Here, Journalist or any media persons should not have any rights to comment, discriminate or stand against
the government. Sometimes, an authority gives considerable freedom to minority thoughts and cultural
issues to promote them if it doesn’t make any threats to authority or ruler.

 King – King is the authority, who has all rights to control the communication and no one can question
against the king.
“The French king Louis XIV was concentrated in his person parliamentary, law making and judicial power.
He was the authority of Supreme Court as well as he can condemn a men to death penalty without any
rights appeal”.
  Dictatorship – During the world war II Hitler and Mussolini are the two major authorities who controlled
the press in Germany and Italy. Press was under the control of the authority and No press can’t question
against or publish against these two dictators.

 Few countries blocked wiki leaks website from its country to maintain the internal security because the
wiki leaks are not ready to compromise with government censorship and realising classified documents
against the government.

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Libertarian Theory

Introduction:

The Libertarian theory is one of the “Normative theories of press”. The theory which is originally came from
libertarian thoughts from 16th century in Europe. The libertarian theorists are against the authoritarian thoughts.
International trade and urbanization undermine the power of a rural aristocracy which leads various social
movements raise includes the Protestants reformation, that demands individual’s freedom and their own lives and
free thoughts. Liberalism means information is knowledge and knowledge is power. Libertarianism is free from any
authority or any control or censorship. The libertarianism is an idea of individualism and limited government which
is not harmful to another.

Libertarian theory:

Libertarian theory sees people are more enough to find and judge good ideas from bad. The theory says people are
rational and their rational thoughts lead them to find out what are good and bad. The press should not restrict
anything even a negative content may give knowledge and can make better decision whilst worst situation. The
libertarian thoughts are exactly against or opposite to the authoritarian theory which means the authoritarian theory
says “all forms of communication works under the control of government or elite like king”.

Strength and Weakness:

1. Freedom of press will give more freedom to media to reveal the real thing happening in the society without
any censorship or any authority blockades.
2. Is reliable with U.S media traditions.
3. It gives more values for individuals to express their thoughts in media.
4. Theory excessively positive about media’s willing to meet responsibilities which may leads people into
negative aspects.
5. Is too positive about individual ethics and rationality.
6. Ignores need for reasonable control of media.
7. Ignores dilemmas posed by conflicting freedoms.

Example:

Wiki leaks website published all sorts of confidential or restricted files in public space and especially classified
documents. These articles are providing brief knowledge about the government and its activities which helps people
to identify what is happening in the society and its gives great choices to elect a better president in future.

Sometimes these documents may work against the government and its authority that is why most of the country is
not willing to allow libertarian thoughts because it may affect their power and kingdom.

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Social Responsibility Theory
in Communication Theory

Introduction:

In mid 20th century most of the developing countries and third world nations have used this social responsibility
theory of press which is associated with “the Commission of the Freedom of Press” in United States at 1949. In the
book “Four theories of Press” (Siebert, Peterson and Schramm) it’s been stated that “pure libertarianism is
antiquated, out dated and obsolete.” That paved way for replacement of Libertarian theory with the Social
responsibility theory.

Social Responsibility Theory:

Social responsibility theory allows free press without any censorship but at the same time the content of the press
should be discussed in public panel and media should accept any obligation from public interference or professional
self regulations or both. The theory lies between both authoritarian theory and libertarian theory because it gives
total media freedom in one hand but the external controls in other hand. Here, the press ownership is private. The
social responsibility theory moves beyond the simple “Objective” reporting (facts reporting) to “Interpretative”
reporting (investigative reporting). The total news is complete facts and truthful but the commission of the freedom
press stated that “No longer giving facts truthfully rather than give a necessary analysed or interpretative report on
facts with clear explanations”.

The theory helped in creating professionalism in media by setting up a high level of accuracy, truth, and
information. The commission of press council also included some tasks based on social responsibility of media,
which are as follows:

1. Formulate the code of conduct for the press.

2. Improve the standards of journalism.
3. Safeguarding the interests of journalism and journalist.
4. Criticise and make some penalty for violating the code of conduct.

The theory allows

1. Everyone to say something or express their opinion about the media.

2. Community opinion, Consumer action and professional ethics.
3. Serious invasion of recognized private rights and vital social interests.
4. Private ownership in media may give better public service unless government has to take over to assure the
public to provide better media service.
5. Media must take care of social responsibility and if they do not, government or other organisation will do.

Critics of Social Responsibility Theory:

1. Avoids the conflict situation during war or emergency by accepting the public opinion.
2. Media will not play monopoly because the audience and media scholars will rise questions if media
published or broadcast anything wrongly or manipulate any story.
3. Media Standards will improve.
4. Media will concern all class audience rather than focus on higher classes in the society.
5. Media may work autonomously but certain thing is controlled by the government and other public
organisation.

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Soviet Media Theory
Introduction:

After the 1917th revolution, the Soviet Union was restructured with new political system based on the Marxist-
Leninist principles. The newly formed communist party by Lenin shows much interest in the media which serves to
the working class in the country and their welfares. So the Soviet originates a theory from Marxist, Leninist and
Stalinist thoughts, with mixture of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ideology is called “Soviet Media Theory” is
also known as “The Communist Media Theory”. The same theory was developed and followed by Adolf Hitler’s
Nazi in Germany and Benito Mussolini in Italy.

Soviet Media Theory:

Soviet media theory is imitative of Leninist principles which based on the Carl Marx and Engel’s ideology. The
government undertake or controls the total media and communication to serve working classes and their interest.
Theory says the state have absolute power to control any media for the benefits of people. They put end to the
private ownership of the press and other media. The government media provide positive thoughts to create a strong
socialized society as well as providing information, education, entertainment, motivation and mobilization. The
theory describe the whole purpose of the mass media is to educate the greater masses of working class or workers.
Here, the public was encouraged to give feedback which would able to create interests towards the media.

According to authoritarian theory, the media controlled and censored by the ministries in the country but libertarian
is fully free without any intervention of any authority or government, Social responsibility theory – press freedom in
one hand but other hand they controlled the press by raising question and Soviet media theory, the whole control of
the media is under the leader of the nation.

Critics of Soviet Media Theory:

1. Soviet media theory looks similar like authoritarian theory but the core part is different from each other. In
authoritarian theory is a one way communication, there is no feedback allowed from the public but in
Soviet media theory is a two way communication at the same time the whole media is controlled or works
under the leadership.
2. Private ownership is not allowed which leads the press without any restriction and it can serve people
without any authoritative blockades.
3. Soviet media theory allows some restriction based on the nation interest rather than personal.
4. Under communist theories like soviet media theory, the journalist or press should support the leadership
rather than a watchdog.

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