The rendering of Eastern philosophical thought in the Star Wars movies.

Watched the movie 'Star Wars Episode 2- Attack of the clones' today on DVD. I had watched the movie in the theaters when it was released several months back and decided to refresh my memory. The concept of the 'Force' and the characterization of the Jedi seem so suggestive of Eastern Philosophical thought. Did some casual browsing to see if I can get any clues to the motivations behind the characters and found several references to George Lucas being strongly influenced by Joseph Campbell, who himself seems to have been influenced by a man who was a renowned indologist- Heinrich Zimmer. The strong resemblance to Eastern religion and the similarities of some characters and storylines to Hindu mythology is not confined to this movie. Another recent blockbuster that comes to mind is the Lord of the Rings. While consensus might be that Tolkien was influenced by the storylines of the Kalevala, one cannot but admire the striking similarities of the characters to the Pandavas. There is the deposed King who is the rightful heir to the throne, the strongman who wields an axe, the flamboyant archer and the two-of-a-kind Frodo and Sam who seem to map to the Nakula and Sahadeva. The storyline of a group on a quest encountering staggering impediments along their path is not new either. The guiding light of a spiritual guru and elaborate storylines that explain the alliances and enmities between various kings are so recollective of the Mahabharatha. The slaying of the dark commander of the evil armies, a wraith who could be slain by no man, by a woman was to me a fascinating rendition of the slaying of Bhishma.

The interpretations and renditions of the Hindu classics in Western movies, literature and other forms of publicized thought seems to be pretty widespread-from the obvious 'Legend of Bagger Vance'(which was basically the Bhagavat Gita, with the hero-Matt Damon- even revealingly named R.Juna!!) to less visible and probably even ruthless plagiarizations. The mood seems to swing from the Beatles style 'it is cool to be Indian' to the hippie style 'we need to be High to be Indian' to the more practical, 'let us just use the good ideas that came from India'. The willingness to attribute the source of the inspiration, however, does not seem to readily take a visible form. The motivations for the reticence towards acceptance are indeed a puzzle to me.

Back in 1985, my father bought a one year old, shiny red Maruti Suzuki 800. The Maruti was an almost revolutionary newcomer to the Indian car market at that time and it was met with immediate competition by a rather similar minded car called the 'Dolphin'. The car stood out on the Indian roads amongst the lumbering Ambassadors and the 'forever in second place' Fiat Premier Padminis. My father was proud of his buy and the whole family very much enjoyed our rides in this peppy little car, which at that time was the Porsche of the Indian roads. Needless to say, we took a lot of long road trips on that car. A little competition developed between my father, myself and my little sister. The competition was to see who would be the first one to spot the next Maruti on the road and yell out 'Maruti Suzuki'(which in the heat of competition quickly evolved to 'Martiisskii')-with negative points for getting confused by a 'Dolphin'. The funny thing was that(and to cut short what appears to be a rather verbose segway from my original point of discussion), within a very short period of time, it appeared to us that everyone and his uncle owned a 'Martiiskii'. Is my spotting of 'Indianness' in just another real fun movie just a natural consequence of being of that nationality?

BBC America now airs an old TV series called 'Goodness gracious me' starring Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal. Some episodes are indeed very funny with several having a recurrent theme. One theme that comes to mind is a vignette that features a disgruntled, middle aged Indian living in Britain with a grown up son who was born and brought up there. The father character obsesses about the origins of everything being Indian with one hilarious scene showing him compulsively wrapping a turban on a bust of Shakespeare in a city park. Is my spotting of 'Indianness' is just another real fun movie just a real world example of this stereotype?

What I really think is that usage and reinterpretation of ancient thought in a different context is not really new to our times. Examples abound to support that. The interesting exercise for me to pursue will be to sufficiently educate myself on what really is Indian thought and what the factually proven influences have been. I have used the words 'Indian' and 'Hindu' rather interchangeably and while that is not to exclude Buddhist, Jain, Islamic and other thought, it is intended to represent a class of thought processes with the 'Hindu' word representing that sense of inclusion.