the Hausa people’s engagement with Indian films is not just a passing trend but a cultural cornerstone that shapes their everyday life. In the late 1980s, a new wave of Hausa prose fiction writers emerged, weaving love stories and emotional themes in their works. This development prompted comparisons between their storylines and Hindi films among literary and cultural critics, leading to a rich cultural discourse about the influence of Indian cinema on Hausa culture. (66)
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In this paper, I discuss the influence of Indian cinema on the social life of the Hausa, particularly through the medium of Hausa literature, focusing on littatafan soyayya (love stories). I explore how the popular romance genre, which emerged in 1989, has nurtured a readership and literary movement that are passionate about protagonists who mirror the love and sexual encounters depicted in Indian cinema. My analysis also explores the diverse viewpoints and contestations that have arisen among various groups, including authors of those books, readers, cultural critics, and religious leaders. These viewpoints and contestations range from the celebration of cultural exchange to concerns about the erosion of traditional Hausa values.
The data for this article was collected through several phases of fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2017 as part of my doctoral research. During this period, I interviewed many authors who have also ventured into filmmaking, including scriptwriters and film producers. Additional fieldwork took place in 2023 and 2024, during which I interviewed contemporary Hausa authors and enthusiastic fans of Indian films who are also readers of soyayya novels. The active participation of the audience has been instrumental in shaping this research. Along with consultations of secondary sources related to Hausa prose fiction that enrich this study, I employed comparative analyses of selected Hausa books and the corresponding Indian films from which they were adapted. (67)
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The interplay between Indian cinema and soyayya literature in northern Nigeria reflects broader cultural concerns and has sparked extensive public debates regarding the direction of the region's cultural landscape. In August 2007, a remarkable incident occurred when Malam Ibrahim Shekarau, the then Governor of Kano state, led a public ‘ceremony’ to incinerate thousands of soyayya novels confiscated from students at a local secondary school. Shekarau was elected governor through a populist agenda of implementing sharia (Islamic law) reforms, which included the censorship of popular culture, specifically targeting soyayya literature and Hausa films. (78)
While this is a general paper, and not all soyayya novels will be romance as defined for the purposes of this database, I'm including this precisely because it gives an overview. It builds on Brian Larkin's "Indian Films and Nigerian Lovers: Media and the Creation of Parallel Modernities."
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