Postsecular Longings? Religious Dissent, Faith, and Gurus in Indian Cinema

While the figure of the ‘Indian guru’ has established itself as a source of spiritual knowledge in the West, it played a unique role in the construction of the secular image of post-independence India. Historically, gurus, fakirs, or monks were considered neither a threat to the construction of secular India, nor were they given a privileged treatment on the basis of their religious denomination. Such secular ‘indifference’, however, has been challenged by competing narratives of religious modernities in popular culture, particularly in Hindi Cinema. Drawing from three recent productions – Oh My God (2012), PK (2014), and Dharam Sankat Mein (2015) – this article argues that the specific generic, cinematic, and narrative devices employed in these films gesture towards what Manav Ratti has identified as a ‘postsecular’ move in India, one that helps articulate the paradox of ‘nonsecular secularism, a non-religious religion’ wherein the figure of the guru serves as a tabula rasa of repressed secular anxieties.