Vol. 7, Issue 2, Part L (2025)

Popular cinema in India occupies a powerful position in shaping public imagination, moral sensibilities and collective understanding of social realities. This paper is an attempt to examine how caste and religion are represented in contemporary Indian popular cinema arguing that films do not merely mirror society but actively participate in producing meanings, silences and hierarchies around social identity. Drawing on sociological and cultural theory, the study explores how mainstream and select regional films since the early 2000s have negotiated caste and religious identities in a period marked by liberalization, identity politics and heightened media saturation. The paper shows that while caste has long remained invisible or euphemized in mainstream cinema, recent years have witnessed a cautious and selective acknowledgment of caste-based suffering, often framed through victimhood, redemption or saviour narratives rather than structural critique. At the same time religion is frequently mobilized through symbols, rituals, emotional spectacle etc. serving both as a marker of cultural continuity and as a site of political meaning. Minority religious identities are often represented through lenses of fear, suspicion or moral testing, while majoritarian symbols increasingly appear normalized and depoliticized. The study argues that popular cinema operates as a contradictory space where social inequalities are occasionally exposed but more often softened, individualized or displaced through melodrama and affect. By analyzing cinematic narratives, visual symbolism, character archetypes, the paper highlights how films contribute to the normalization of certain identities while marginalizing others. Ultimately, the paper contends that contemporary Indian cinema plays a crucial role in shaping everyday understandings of caste and religion making it a key site for examining the cultural politics of representation, power, and social change in India.