A Queer Critical Analysis of Contemporary Representations of the Churail in Hindi Film

Popular Hindi Cinema, or Bollywood, has relied on archetypal character tropes that place women in a “good” versus “bad” binary. The origins of this binary have been predicated upon the social construction of gender in order to position the most “authentic” Indian women as moral and virtuous, as per conservative Hindu dogma. Representations of the churail (witch) have been traditionally positioned as evil and placed firmly on the “bad” side of the gender binary. However, recent representations of the witch have repositioned the churail as a sympathetic fighter for gender justice. The chapter examines four churail films: Veerana (1988), Chudail No.1 (1999), Stree (2018) and Roohi (2021). Taking examples from these films, the chapter shows how this trope is deployed to represent contests between female bodily autonomy and patriarchal social structures. The chapter offers new ways of looking at contemporary witch films in Bollywood, through a critical queer and feminist lens.