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In spring 2014, I was teaching Romeo and Juliet to a class of particularly intelligent and articulate undergraduates who were not warming up to Juliet, describing her as "submissive" and "timid." Their Juliet was more akin to the nai'f Juliet of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet than the impassioned Juliet of Shakespeare's text.1 This is when I decided to introduce them to Sanjay Leela Bhansali's RamLeela, a 2013 Bollywood fusion of Romeo and Juliet (a western text from the sixteenth century) and Ramayana (an eastern text believed to date from the second century BCE).2 The combination of sources is inspired, as Romeo and Juliet is probably the most famous love story in the world and the Ramayana-a tale that centers on Ram and Sita-is one of the most auspicious love stories in Hinduism. However, I was chiefly interested in my students' reaction to the film's protagonist, Leela, who is an amalgam of Juliet and Sita. As they studied Leela, they not only discovered the worlds of Bollywood and Hindu mythology but also began reevaluating and reengaging with Shakespeare's Juliet, now realizing the full implications of her extraordinarily brave decision to marry into the enemy camp and stay faithful to her love under tremendous pressure.
The almost complete reversal of their responses to Juliet after watching Leela led me to my current research on Shakespeare's women in Bollywood. The larger project looks at how The Hungry (an Indian Titus Andronicus) chiefly becomes Tamora's story, or the way in which Omkara (an Indian Othello) has Emilia avenge Desdemona's death, or how Tabu was reluctant to accept the role of Ghazala (Gertrude) in Bhardwaj's Haider (an Indian Hamlet) but then created one of the most nuanced Gertrudes in cinematic history.3 I realized that Bollywood was producing empowering readings of Shakespeare's heroines in part through its reliance on a unique blend of sources. Since Leela started me on this journey, this essay is about her; it examines how, on the one hand, working with Shakespeare encourages Bollywood directors and actresses to celebrate Indian women's sexual agency on screen and how, on the other hand, templates from Indian mythology can contribute towards strengthening Shakespeare's women.
Leela as Juliet
As we see a wide shot of Leela sitting on her balcony...