Objection, M'Lord

Description

From the impassioned defence counsel of Damini to the avenging vigilante of Sholay, popular Hindi cinema has long served as the primary socio-cultural site through which ordinary people form their expectations of justice and understanding of legal institutions. One of the first scholarly works to bring together law and cinema in an Indian context, Objection, M'Lord argues that both are crucial archives of Indian modernity, and that Hindi cinema is not merely a mirror of legal culture but an active participant shaping social and legal consciousness. Drawing on a diverse archive of films spanning seven decades, the book traces the many registers in which cinematic justice operates: the Constitutional imagination of the Nehruvian era, the melodrama of the courtroom, the ethics of revenge, the murky world of encounter killing, and the relationship between law and the senses. Central to the book's argument is the concept of cinemality, a porous boundary where cinema, legality, and criminality fold into each other. Moving beyond representation, Objection, M'Lord also examines cinema's life in law—as property, speech, and a contested object of regulation. Questions of censorship, copyright, and the evidentiary status of the moving image reveal that law and cinema are not merely thematic neighbours but intertwined institutional forces that significantly shape people's social perceptions and experiences.