Filmmaker, photographer, and author Anu Malhotra has dedicated over three decades to documenting India’s indigenous cultures and spiritual traditions. Her extensive work, which spans pioneering Indian television to immersive ethnographic studies, poses a fundamental question: what vital lessons can the modern world glean from ways of living it risks forgetting?
From Television Pioneer to Ethnographer
Malhotra’s career began in 1994 when she founded AIM Television, producing over 600 hours of non-fiction programming. She introduced groundbreaking reality-style travel series like Namaste India and Indian Holiday, along with culture and lifestyle shows, significantly shaping urban television and fostering discussions around women’s agency.
In 2000, she notably coined the phrase “Incredible India” and created the initial flagship films for the Tourism Ministry, showcasing India as a vibrant, living civilization to international audiences. Beyond entertainment, Malhotra also leveraged media for social change. Her public-health campaign, Haath Se Haath Mila, in collaboration with the BBC World Service Trust, tackled HIV/AIDS stigma. Featuring over 60 Bollywood icons, it reached 100 million viewers and earned her the UNAIDS Global Award in 2007 for its measurable behavioral impact.
However, as mainstream television increasingly gravitated towards sensationalist family dramas, Malhotra chose to depart from broadcast media. This decision, coupled with a severe health crisis, marked a creative turning point, leading her towards ethnographic filmmaking, fine-art photography, and documenting communities whose traditions faced erosion from modern development.
Challenging Assumptions of Beauty and Community
During her documentation of the Apatani people in Arunachal Pradesh’s Ziro Valley, Malhotra encountered a worldview that profoundly challenged her own assumptions about beauty. Elderly Apatani women, adorned with dark facial tattoos and traditional rattan nose plugs called yaping hulo—historically used to signify tribal identity and deter abductions—candidly suggested she, too, would look beautiful with them.
“The production crew was horrified,” Malhotra recalls with a laugh. “But it revealed something fundamental: beauty is framed by the world you inhabit. Step into another culture, surrender your ego, and your unquestioned assumptions unravel.”
Her films, such as Tribal Wisdom, which documents seven indigenous communities, and Coming Full Circle, exploring India’s wisdom traditions, emerged from extended field immersions. These experiences deepened her understanding of community responsibility, spirituality, and ecologically conscious living.
In Wokching, a Konyak Naga village in Nagaland, Malhotra witnessed an extraordinary display of collective responsibility. After an accidental fire destroyed nearly 40 homes, neighboring villages mobilized immediately, bringing aid and helping rebuild without waiting for official relief. Her interpreter, Pong, observed, “In cities you value individual success, whereas we prioritize community harmony.”
Exploring the Realm of Shamans and Cultural Memory
Malhotra’s exploration culminated in the award-winning documentary and book, Shamans of the Himalayas. This intimate portrait delves into the world of Goors—spiritual mediums who enter trance states through drumming, incense, and chanting to resolve disputes, address psychological distress, and restore communal balance. Access to these sacred practices required immense humility and respect, with filming permissions often granted through ritual divination.
Recognizing that film alone could not capture the full richness of indigenous heritage, Malhotra created Soul Survivors, an immersive exhibition. Combining large-format photography, documentary footage, soundscapes, ancestral artifacts, and handwoven textiles, it brought audiences closer to Apatani, Konyak Naga, and Tibetan nomadic traditions. The exhibition was featured at New Delhi’s National Museum, Bikaner House, and COP28 in Dubai in 2023.
Her latest initiative, Anamnesis: The Sacred and the Seen, aims to extend this work through multimedia and interactive platforms, ensuring the preservation of cultural memory and making ancestral wisdom accessible to future generations.
With over 20 national and international awards, including India’s highest honor for women’s empowerment, the Nari Shakti Puraskar in 2018, Anu Malhotra’s consistent purpose remains clear: to document what modernity often overlooks. Her work compels us to consider what wisdom from our ancestral past we are willing to carry forward as we build the future.