Words, Sounds, Images: A History of Media and Entertainment in India by Amit Khanna. Published in 2019 by HarperCollins Publishers India, A-75, Sector 57, Noida, 201301. Pp: xxiv + 855. Price: Rs 1,499.
That the contribution of Parsis to the mass media sector in India is significant enough to merit honorable mention in any definitive history of the subject can hardly be doubted. Whether in the area of movies or newspapers, theater or television, Parsis have left a distinctive mark for over a century now. That contribution has been recognized not only through official honors and professional accolades within the country but also through prestigious awards globally. This has frequently elicited the admiring comment that 
Parsis have punched well above their weight in the world of media and entertainment.
The book under review purports to be an encyclopedic history of the creative and performing arts in India. If the blurb accompanying it is to be believed, it "presents an exhaustive account of the evolution of media and entertainment in India — from the Indus Valley civilization right up to the 21st century.” Its author, Amit Khanna (pictured), we are further informed, is "perhaps the only media professional who has worked across every segment in the field: print, radio, television, films, stage, live entertainment and digital media.” Such gushing puff, coupled with the sheer size of the volume (at over 855 pages, it is a veritable door-stopper) cannot but make the reader approach the book with high expectations.
Those expectations are, alas, likely to be dashed. For a start, anyone who has the patience and the stamina to go through the entirety of the tome will struggle to escape the feeling that they have read little more than a book of lists (the author anticipates this criticism in his preface, but underplays its validity and significance). Secondly, the level of engagement with the subject matter is so superficial that any claims to scholarship (the book is, suggests the author, a piece of "academic work”) will ring hollow. And to cap it all, the book is so riddled with grammatical, spelling and syntactical errors — as well as an uncaring attitude to editing — that even those with a benevolent bent of mind will soon start despairing.
What then does the book contain? Its 10 chapters are arranged chronologically to deal, respectively, with a historical look at music, dance, literature and other arts in ancient India (going back to the Indus Valley civilization), their evolution through the age of "discovery and invention” between the 15th and 19th centuries (encompassing Mughal and British influences), the dramatic development of mass media brought about by the advent of color printing and other technological advances during the British Raj, the fitful growth of radio, motion pictures and newspapers under the license-permit-quota raj of Nehruvian post-independence India, the "glorious decade” of the 1960s when the country "thrived culturally” even as it "struggled economically and politically,” the dark decade of the Emergency (1970s), the "busy decade” of the 1980s when video and audio cassettes replaced tapes and records and "Coke and Pepsi returned to India with a bang,” the "defining decade” of the 1990s when "India took the first steps towards becoming a nation of abundance,” the millennial years when technology reshaped the media and entertainment industry, and the "networked world” of the 2010s which heralded "the age of mass distraction.”
Parsis get their due mention in this narrative, starting with a reference to the contribution that the community has made to theater from as far back as the 1860s. The growing popularity of Parsi plays, with their "exaggerated actions, bombastic dialogs and melodrama,” notes the author, led to some theater companies venturing as far as north India with scripts translated into Hindustani. Fardunji Murzban is credited with founding the venerable Bombay Samachar in 1822, Dadabhoy Naoroji with launching Rast Goftar in 1851, B. K. Karanjia with editing Movie Times in the mid-20th century, Ardeshir Irani with starting Imperial Movietone in 1926. Others finding mention include Dinshaw and Eddie Billimoria (actors), Homi and J. B. H. Wadia (film director and writer-producer, respectively), Manchersha Billimoria (film distributor), Burjor and Nadirsha Tata (documentary filmmakers), Sohrab Modi (stage and film actor, producer and director), Keki Modi (cinema owner), Khurshed Minocher-Homji (the first woman music composer in Indian films, going by the nom de plume of Saraswati Devi), Abad Karanjia (movie critic), Adi Marzban (stage actor and playwright), Kersi Lord (arranger), Mehli Mehta (conductor), Bachi Karkaria, Russi Karanjia, D. F. Karaka, Coomi Kapoor (journalists), J. S. Bhownagary (playwright and documentary filmmaker), Fali Billimoria (short films maker), Fali and Jal Mistry, Faredoon and Nariman Irani (cinematographers), Minoo Katrak (sound recordist), C. R. Irani (editor and managing director of The Statesman), Gulshan Ewing (née Mehta, magazine editor) and Ronnie Screwvala (media magnate and online education entrepreneur). There is even a reference to Shapoorji Doongaji who, through his munificence, helped Omkarnath Thakur reach dazzling heights of Indian classical music as a doyen of the Gwalior gharana and as dean of music at Banaras Hindu University.
As a book of lists, the volume does a satisfactory job. But one serious shortcoming which detracts from its usefulness even as that, let alone as a work of reference, is the absence of a back index. The flaws don’t of course end there. The book abounds with clichés, banal statements, factual errors (e.g. Jawaharlal Nehru, we are told, went to Eton — rather than Harrow), odd phraseology (e.g. ‘theatrical footfalls;’ ‘love for the Bacchus;’ ‘monstrous hit’ — for marvellous/magnificent; ‘passed in 2011’ for passed away in 2011), indifference to movie titles (Ram Teri Ganga Maili Ho Gayi for Ram Teri Ganga Maili), lackadaisical spelling (e.g. ‘Girja’ for Girija; ‘Bhonsale’ for Bhosle; ‘Kamla’ for Kamala; ‘Lois’ for Louis; ‘Centre’ for Center — all these in names or titles) and typographical errors (e.g. ‘printng’ for printing, ‘Briij’ for Brij, italicization of some film titles not others). The editing is characterized by a laxity that discerning readers will not miss: among other things, passages are repeated, people are discussed without introduction, and the prose is flaccid.
What many will find more irritating is the tendency on the part of the author to indulge in self-praise to a degree that is, even by Indian standards, capable of provoking comment. There is no subtlety involved here. He was, he avers without a blush, one of the "top lyricists,” a veteran in tinsel town as early as the 1980s (less than a decade after he "settled down in the film world”), and one whose position "opened access to the hallowed royalty of Bollywood” at the age of 23. This is coupled with condescension towards some of the very people who gave him that status, viz "the most commercial, even crass producers, distributors, exhibitors and technicians.” He reminds readers that he was "a bit of an anomaly in Bollywood — an English-speaking Stephenian who was clued into world cinema” but who had to work among some lowly folk (Khanna studied in St Stephen’s College, Delhi). The urge to impress, too, comes through no less unmistakably when, for example, he says: "I became the youngest member of the esteemed Film Producers Guild of India — then limited to only 35 of the top filmmakers — and was soon an office bearer and, thus, a major interlocutor in the industry’s internal problems as well (sic) its interaction with the government… I was the media darling (sic) and often featured in gossip columns and sometimes in mainline press (sic), particularly because I was articulate in English and Hindi. This was also the time I became a regular at film parties.”
Ironically, Khanna’s entire career owed its success to a break — and continuing generous support — he had received from one of the most sophisticated and articulate members of the film fraternity, Dev Anand (whose fluency in both English and Hindi was legendary). Mercifully, Anand receives due praise at the hands of the author — which redeems this work somewhat.
Also redeeming, it has to be said, are some insights that Khanna offers on the personalities, events and controversies of the entertainment industry, especially in recent decades. But such insights are few and far between and they are lost in the thicket of banalities that dominates this book.
All things considered, there remains a strong case for a comprehensive history of the Indian media and entertainment industry to be written, not least because of the very impressive strides that this sector has made in the past century-and-a-half. One could even argue that Khanna is better placed than many others to write that history because of the ringside view he occupied in the industry for nearly two generations. Unfortunately, he has not quite risen to the challenge in this tome, which is a pity. VENKAT IYER
Iyer is a UK-based barrister and legal academic.