f The soul gets typecast: The reincarnation film in popular Hindi cinema

This article introduces the reincarnation film as an (unacknowledged) Indian film genre. After a brief historical overview of the reincarnation film, the genre’s conventions are explored through an analysis of select films – particularly Neel Kamal (1968) by Ram Maheshwari and Om Shanti Om (2007) by Farah Khan. Rather than applying a psychoanalytical approach (which would suggests that these films are primarily concerned with sexual trauma and surfacing repressed desires), I observe how reincarnation philosophy informs the style and form of these texts to address Hindu anxieties about rebirth. Reincarnation narratives are not simply a by-product of the western Gothic, but informed by and best understood in relation to ancient Indic cultural practices. Furthermore, Hindu cultural consciousness conflicts with key psychoanalytical concepts of death and the past. This research addresses the cultural specificity of film genre. It demonstrates how religious philosophy can be used to investigate film aesthetics as an alternative to the common-practice application of western psychoanalysis.