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The story of India but will India buy it?

Michael Wood… passionate about India.

British historian and broadcaster Michael Wood had been wanting to make a serious film on India for well over a decade but, at the time, there were no takers in the West for a programme on a struggling Third World country.

India was simply not on their “radar,” Mr. Wood says.

Then India’s economic miracle happened and suddenly it became marketable. The BBC said, yes, it was a good idea; and America’s Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) agreed. With a budget of a little over £1 million, jointly funded by BBC and PBS, Mr. Wood and his collaborator Rebecca Dobbs, a TV producer and director with her own independent company called Maya Vision International, set out on a journey to explore the Indian subcontinent, and document the events that shaped its development from ancient times to the present.

The result is a six-part series, The Story of India, screened by the BBC recently as part of its India season to mark the 60th anniversary of India’s Independence. The film, which took nearly two years to make, will be shown on PBS next year with a new and “simplified” commentary to make it easier for Americans to understand.

The film, which has already been acquired by several global networks, is being lapped up especially by nostalgic Indian expatriates and earnest Indophiles in search of a quick “spiritual” fix.

Mr. Wood drew a full house when he gave a talk at the Cheltenham Literature Festival last weekend to plug the film breathlessly billed as a portrayal of the “astonishing riches of India’s past….from unforgettable landscapes to architectural splendours and colourful rituals.”

If it sounds like a blurb from an India tourism poster, never mind. The film is meant to “celebrate” India and Mr. Wood, a self-confessed Indophile, makes no apologies for his “touristy” pitch. Tell him that he is in danger of becoming a poster boy for Indian tourism (in his Cheltenham talk he even borrowed the Tourism Ministry’s slogan “Incredible India” and gave tips on planning a journey to India), and he responds with a disarming smile as though saying: “So what?”

What is important is the impact the film is making, particularly on people who have never been to India. The response, according to Mr. Wood, has been overwhelming. “People have been coming up to me and saying how much they learned from it,” he said.

Indian expatriates say the film has made them proud of their country of origin and made them want to go there. One Kerala-born Indian, who came to Britain at the age of four, said he wanted to thank Mr. Wood for such an informative film. “I want to shake his hands. It is absolutely brilliant, haven’t seen anything like this before,” he said quivering with excitement.

More discriminating critics, however, have questioned Mr. Wood’s rose-tinted view of India which glosses over inconvenient truths about its society, notably issues to do with caste and religious tensions. “It’s relentlessly hagiographic…almost like the Films Division documentaries of the sixties verging on propaganda,” one critic said.

Mr. Wood doesn’t want to be drawn into a controversy saying it is not possible to tell the story of a vast, complex, and old civilisation such as India through one film. “You need a hundred films to cover India,” he told his Cheltenham audience adding: “When you set out to tell a story like this you don’t really know where to start. The story of India is also the story of ideas that still shape the world.”

But even as the film is widely seen as the biggest “free advertisement” India could have hoped for, New Delhi, surprisingly, has shown little interest in it. Ms. Dobbs, as passionate about India as Mr. Wood (the name of her company is a give-away), is keen for the film to be shown in India emphasising that it must be seen by people whose land and culture it celebrates.

A name that repeatedly crops up, as Ms. Dobbs talks about her efforts to get the Indian government interested in her film, is Ambika Soni, the Minister of Tourism and Culture. “We’ve been told to approach her…Let’s see,” she says in a slightly weary tone.

The Wood-Dobbs team first went to India in the 1980s to make an 80-minute documentary, Darshan: An Indian Journey, which introduced the outside world to the country and its culture. It was shown on Channel 4 and ITV and is still remembered as among the best films of its genre at the time.

Since then they have been in and out of India countless times; have “loads” of friends in India, especially in the south; and can’t stop talking about its “rhythm” and “diversity.” Any lingering doubts about their passion for India disappear when you discover that Mr. Wood’s two daughters have Indian names — Minakshi and Jyoti — and that Ms. Dobbs’ first business partner was an Indian: hence, Maya Vision International.

“You know what Maya means?” she asks and then helpfully supplies the answer herself while, on the next table, Mr. Wood is busy signing copies of the book of the film and explaining his vision of India to another journalist.

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