Indian Soap Opera Win Hearts and Eye-Balls Internationally

Over the past 10 years, Indian television series have become a feature in many households across Ghana as they’ve become available on cable and satellite channels.

Romantic dramas (such as Til the End of Time) and historical dramas (such as Razia Sultan), have gained popularity. One show loosely based on Jane Austen’s classic novel Sense and Sensibility called Kumkum Bhagya has even been dubbed in Twi, an Akan language spoken in southern and central Ghana. Based on the success of the show, the stars of Kumkum Bhagya traveled to Ghana for a tour in 2017.

The history of Indian media in Ghana—the subject of my PhD thesis as well as a recent academic paper—extends back to the mid-1950s. At that time, Sindhi and Lebanese film distributors and cinema owners circulated Hindi films throughout the country, screened in cinema halls in most major urban centers.

The films were popular among all Ghanaians during the postcolonial period. In the intervening decades they have remained popular within Ghana’s majority Muslim communities. These include majority Muslim cities in the north, such as Tamale. It also includes zongos, neighborhoods that tend to be majority Muslim communities found in nearly every urban setting. Zongos developed as settlements of foreign traders. Each has its own complex history of colonial segregation, with many zongos dating back to the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The popularity of Hindi films in zongo communities came through vividly in an interview I conducted with one of Ghana’s former cinema owners. They recalled that at one point during the 1960s, Kumasi’s Rex Cinema, located near a zongo neighborhood, played the Hindi film Albela (1951) every Friday night for a year, selling out its 2,000-seat capacity each week.

The postcolonial circulation of Hindi films in Ghana reveals the early cosmopolitan engagement that Ghanaian viewers had with South Asian popular media during the time of independence in both countries. In cities like Tamale, the popularity of Hindi films has continued to grow over time.

In April 2015, when the Indian soap opera Banoo Main Teri Dulhann—“I Will Be Your Bride”—appeared on Ariana TV, a channel in Afghanistan, something was amiss. As the title song rang out, women in bright salwar kameezes danced onscreen, and the lead character, dressed in shiny, red bridal wear, ran into the arms of her lover. The characters spoke Pashto, and “Ram” had been changed to “khuda.” The actresses’ uncovered shoulders and midriffs appeared blurry and pixelated. In another scene, a man held a plate full of candles in front of something, but it was not quite clear what. The Hindu idol he was worshipping had been censored from the episode.

Banoo Main Teri Dulhannis not the only programme to receive such treatment. Indian soap operas, often criticised in their own country for being too regressive, are considered not just too liberal, but even transgressive in Afghanistan. Thus, when the original episodes first arrive in dubbing studios, Afghan video editors must blur all objectionable content in the scenes, such as too much bare skin, Hindu ways of worship, alcohol and anything that could offend religious sentiments. Hindu idols are a big no-no, as idol worship is considered one of the gravest sins in Islam. The editors rarely ever cut entire scenes, and usually, blurring does the trick.

After the visual clean-up, the dialogue goes to the translators, who replace all references to Hindu culture with terms and concepts that would be acceptable to Islamists. Agle janam mein—in the next life—becomes Dar duniya-ye baid, or in the afterlife, and Hai Ram becomes Ya Allah. This censorship is a pre-emptive measure taken by production firms to avoid trouble from the government and religious hardliners, who have constantly panned the shows for being “un-Islamic” over the last 15 years.