By all accounts, during the 1920s and 1930s the British India government's interest in Indian film audiences was governed by racial anxiety rather than a desire for economic profit. The state seemed preoccupied with the content of North American films viewed by Indian audiences rather than with flooding India's market with British films. One is provoked to ask why a state, constituted on the strength of its exploitation of Indian raw materials and markets on behalf of imperial Britain, did not give film its passing consideration. The obvious answer is that Britain never had the opportunity. Since inception, India's film market was exploited by the United States until Indian films were able to create a domestic audience "without quota or subsidy," 1 consolidated with the arrival of sound technology and political independence. Another (perhaps less obvious) answer is that the British Indian state did [End Page 83] evaluate India as a potential film market to assist imperial Britain. The traces of this negotiation are submerged because the imperial agenda, in an increasingly politicized and anti-imperial context, involved subterfuge, indirect interrogation, internal dissension, and eventual repudiation.
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