The charismatic film pioneer Himansu Rai (1892–1940) is best remembered as the founder of Bombay Talkies, a studio practically synonymous with early Indian cinema. That his successful career in India followed an extended stint in Germany is widely known, but the significance of those years within Rai’s wider artistic and business trajectory remains understudied. Working with the German director Franz Osten, Rai acted in and produced three silent films – Die Leuchte Asiens (1925), Das Grabmal einer großen Liebe (1928), and Schicksalswürfel (1929) – that would dramatize Indian history and mythology and garner enthusiastic responses from German audiences. This study uses Rai’s personal papers and underutilized German newspapers to explore those films and the publicity around them, locating Rai himself as a critical factor in their success. It argues that Rai cultivated distinct on- and off-screen personas that worked together to satisfy Orientalist visions of India on the one hand and expectations for an intellectual in Europe on the other. Rai – who was equally at home performing maharajas in films and granting interviews in suits – responded to these pressures by turning them into a career-making opportunity, marketing himself as the embodiment of his country and its ethos.

Andrew Halladay is a cultural historian of South Asia with a particular interest in late colonial North India. Currently an assistant professor in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, he holds a doctoral degree in History and South Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago and was previously a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University. His work has appeared in Modern Asian Studies and The Historical Journal and has received support from the Fulbright-Nehru Program and the American Institute of Indian Studies. His first book project, A Distant Throne: The British Sovereign in the Mirror of Indian Nationalism, explores popular responses to the figures of George V (r. 1910–36) and Edward VIII (r. 1936) in colonial India.