In films, heroines reveal cultural values, gender roles and social challenges experienced by their culture. Therefore, viewers can use Bollywood heroines as a lens through which to view the experience of the Indian woman and Indian culture. Recently, as the Indian diaspora has grown in size and influence, a new strand of Bollywood films dealing with the theme of first- or second-generation Indians living abroad has emerged. These Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) face a very different reality than Indians living back home. The differences between Indian and NRI cultures are exemplified by the different portrayals of their heroine in Bollywood films, particularly through song and dance numbers. The experience of the young Indian woman in the modern age is characterized by a conflict between Indian tradition and contemporary global culture. Historically the archetype of the ideal Indian woman has been used to build unity, identity and national pride. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the public imagination equated the ideal woman with “mother India”. This idea was fueled by art, literature and especially cinema. Heroines were characterized as “passive, victimized, sacrificial, submissive, glorified, static, one-dimensional, and resilient” (Virdi, 60). The social expectation of women to display these traits persists into the present day. Women struggle to reconcile these qualities with contemporary values ​​such as independence, freedom and gender equality. Therefore young women are still subject to the wishes of their fathers, and the unofficial caste system still limits their social mobility; yet at the same time they dance in nightclubs and wear short skirts. The conflict between tradition and modernity is exemplified by events such as the beer bar girl ban, in which young women who earned a living by dancing in bars were banned from their profession for reasons