Just how is India perceived by the outside world? The same way we perceive the rest of the world - through the media, be it old or new, and here we take a look at some of the most successful Hollywood/Western films that have a strong Indian influence.

One that immediately springs to mind is 2012’s Life Of Pi, starring Indian actor Suraj Sharma (who went on to appear in the likes of Umrika and Phillauri). While India does feature though, it is only really in passing as most of the film is about how he survives a shipwreck, adrift in the ocean with a Bengal Tiger… 

A more obvious example – and one that was both set and filmed in India is Slumdog Millionaire, produced back in 2008. 

Directed by Danny Boyle - of The Beach, 28 Days Later and Sunshine fame – the movie took several awards in the west, including eight Academy Awards, seven BAFTAs and four Golden Globes and made an overnight sensation of Dev Patel – who played Jamal Malik – and his co-star Freida Pinto (who played Latika), with Patel’s character eventually winning the big prize at the end of the film after he correctly guesses the final answer to India’s version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire - perfectly illustrating the psychology of risk taking.

What is clear with this film, however, is that the film makers didn’t take many risks with how they portrayed India. Indeed a lot of academics have branded it ‘poverty porn’, adding that it merely reinforces Western stereotypes.

Top Indian film maker Adoor Gopalakrishnan was especially critical too, noting it is a “very anti-Indian film” and one that “underlines and endorses what the west thinks about of us”: “I was ashamed to see it was being appreciated widely in the west...” he told NDTV back in 2009.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (again featuring Patel) was also filmed and produced in India, but again while it did well in the UK and worldwide, it seemed to reinforce some of the same stereotypes as Slumdog, albeit to a lesser extent. It was however praised at the 2012 Mumbai Film Festival, scooping the Best International Film award for the way it showcased India as a shooting location. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – its sequel – offered more of the same with most of the original cast returning, such as Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Bill Nighy.  

There has been other examples of western films to feature India, and if you go back to the 1980s, we had A Passage to India and 1982’s Ghandi - starring Ben Kingsley. Gandhi was particularly popular and needs no introduction.

It was the highest-grossing film of all time in India in 1982 and was also the opening film last summer at the Independence Day Film Festival marking the 70^th Indian Independence Day, which indicates how well it is regarded to this day. Granted there’s a certain irony given the actor playing Gandhi is British, but that takes nothing away from Kingsley’s Oscar winning performance in Richard Attenborough’s epic and it is worth noting Kingsley is of Indian descent - his birth name was actually Krishna Pandit Bhanji, so his choice to play Gandhi was pretty apt really.