This book deals with an important and too-often ignored area of cultural studies. To examine the enormous industry of Indian popular cinema is to study Indian modernity at its very rawest. The questions and perspectives this book presents provoke a thinking of cinema that is political in the widest sense - from cinemas importance in ideas of nation and national cultural formation to psycho-social perspectives on identity, class and gender.The contributors deal with a range of themes from the metaphor of the slum as a defining cultural phenomenon to personal reflections on the political meanings and strategies of South Asian film, from Tamil blockbusters to the intrinsic ineffectivity of TV as a propagator of state ideology. Whilst the book is essential reading for students and academics of film, media and of South Asian studies. It will also fascinate anyone with an interest in the genuinely global phenomenon of South Asian cinema.