Raj Kapoor: The Socialist Showman

This case examines the career of Raj Kapoor, the legendary Bollywood filmmaker of the postwar decades. It explores how Kapoor built RK studios after 1948 by releasing a series of movies that combined romance with social messages focused on the fate of the common man in a world of social injustice. The case discusses how women were depicted in Kapoor’s films and enables a discussion of the role of cinema in propagating gender stereotypes and contributing to the challenges faced by women in rural India today. The case also explores the huge success of Kapoor’s films in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in the Communist world. During the postwar decades there were two global worlds. In the Western world, Hollywood provided a stream of cinematic entertainment. In the Communist world, Bollywood provided the same service. They each provided alternative visions of the world.