Global Shakespeares and the Postcolonial Archive: Insights from a Digital Indian Film Database

This article starts with the hypothesis that a digital database of over one hundred Indian film adaptations and appropriations of Shakespeare’s plays across various Indian vernacular languages identifies appropriation strategies that significantly challenge and reshape the global understanding of Shakespeare. I argue that the analysis of such a database allows us to fully grasp how Shakespeare is transformed within postcolonial contexts. These transformations not only decenter the Western canon but also expose the unique adaptation practices in India, where the most frequently adapted plays differ notably from those in the anglophone tradition. Although scholarship on the postcolonial archive has gained importance with works like Achille Mbembe’s “The Power of the Archive and Its Limits” (2002) and Ann Laura Stoler’s Along the Archival Grain (2009), there remains a critical gap regarding the intersection of the postcolonial archive and Shakespearean adaptation. This research addresses this gap and demonstrates how postcolonial theory can expand our understanding of the archive as a dynamic space of resistance and cultural negotiation, since Indian film adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays often localize the plays, turning the archive into a site of reclamation. The first section of this article theorizes the colonial and postcolonial archive. The second section offers an analysis of the findings – including the most frequently adapted plays, the phenomenon of remakes, and the shifting treatment of Shakespeare from the colonial to the postcolonial period. Thus, this article offers new insights into the field of Global Shakespeare.