As popular Hindi cinema reinvents itself under a global gaze, a stigma of illegitimacy persists. This stigma derives from popular Hindi cinema's long history of unacknowledged adaptation of various source texts, which is usually censured and dismissed, with little or no analysis, by critics. The Encyclopedia of Hindi Cinema models this paradox: “A large majority of Hindi films ape Hollywood in a manner singularly devoid of any kind of inspiration…. Interestingly, none of these films is a carbon copy of the original.” Bollywood Retakes resists the typical discourse that assumes popular Hindi cinema's proclivity for adaptation reveals a creative lack based on financial concerns. Instead, this dissertation argues that the interwoven textual, thematic and copyright relationships of adaptations dramatize new anxieties about Indian cinema's origins and legitimacy under the global gaze—anxieties stemming from concerns about cultural contamination and the blurred line of deference or defiance vis-à-vis multinational interests.

Beginning with a Hindi adaptation of Shakespeare, a touchstone for cinematic adaptation studies and Indian cinema, the dissertation argues that Maqbool (2003), an acknowledged adaptation of Macbeth, incorporates a pregnant Lady Macbeth who embodies the anxiety of influence. The pregnancy, itself borrowed from Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (1957), dramatizes the core tragedy of the childless couple while announcing a new generation of Indian cinema with its attendant concerns of biological, directorial, and international legitimacy. Whereas Maqbool advertises its source text, the most misconstrued adaptation in Indian cinema is the unacknowledged Hollywood to Bollywood adaptation, often considered cannibalistic. To address the ideological structure of the Hollywood template in the new Bollywood film, the dissertation provides case studies of two popular Hindi films, Shakti: The Power (2002), an adaptation of Not Without My Daughter (1991), and Phir Milenge (2004), an adaptation of Philadelphia (1993); together these films demonstrate how new claims about contemporary Indian citizenship are announced through the genre of the unacknowledged adaptation. Reversing the Hollywood-to-Bollywood discourse, the controversial Slumdog Millionaire (2008), an adaptation of several Indian inter-texts, illustrates the stakes of adaptation for Indian cinema: the right of self-representation and international recognition.