Bollywood: A Perspective

Few days before, a friend of mine who is a staunch detractor of Bollywood for last 2 decades came up with an essay on how Bollywood has consistently spoilt, misled, ill-groomed generations of us and how it has worked towards making our younger lot lose faith in our religion and country, and how a big chunk of our society under influence of Bollywood has submitted itself slowly and steadily to the agendas of underworld, Leftists and enemy countries.  He has come up with all sort of convincing examples like transcripts of big stars chatting with the underworld lords sitting in Dubai, well concerted efforts in movies to malign Hindus and portray poor Muslims as innocent and loyal sorts, top stars’ love for Pakistan, some top star’s wife’s feeling of insecurity, Hindu practices trivialized and priests shown as crooks, and most recent examples related to few foolish or ill-intended stars who made anti-CAA statements and without knowing a bit about the issues participated in some protests at JNU. I called these convincing examples, because these examples are indeed very convincing.

And as I think more about it I too could come up with more… There are glorified and hyped writers and makers of movies that show orphan kids who grows into Amitabh or Rishi Kapoor later, being given food, clothing and shelter by Father from a church or by a poor Muslim family which can hardly meet its ends and then the adult Amitabh or Rishi will fight the Hindu upper-caste villain. The hero doesn’t enter a temple in his lifetime because the Hindu god didn’t do any justice to him, but he carries a metal badge with digits 786, gifted to him by a poor Muslim laborer and the badge keeps saving him from upper caste Hindu villains. Such writers and makers now preach us on tolerance. Some of them offer to return their awards if they see a slightest sign of perceived intolerance. Movie like PK spent reels on bashing Hindu religion but has only a slight, passing reference to Islam and Christianity. Movie like “Main hoon na” showed a Hindu terrorist and a patriot fighting him was a Muslim, and this movie came out around the time our Grand Old Party was writing a fresh narrative of Hindu terrorism. Great coincidence. And now we have celebs like Deepika stand united with JNU brigade, one that chants anti-India and free Kashmir slogans. 

All of his examples and his essay full of care for the country made me think, really think hard. How much an entertainment industry can influence the society? Or rather is it the other way round where art forms are a creative expression of the society? Is Bollywood a reflection of how and what we are? Aren’t the writers, directors and actors part of us? Isn’t their creative mind getting influenced by what’s happening around them? Aren’t their experiences shaping their psyche which translates into the creative outcomes? Or it’s a constant give and take and evolution?

If we let a large society be on its own while people live, work, stay together, fight and make friends, learn from experiences, make rules for themselves, and evolve, evolve and evolve… If we have such a real free society with no external influences manipulating it then definitely we are dealing with an ideal world where the society may express, learn, build and reflect and then express even better. There would be a constant churn where society may borrow ideas and learning from its creative outcomes to enhance itself, and feed it all back to next level of further evolved creative art. Such a society would eventually become a highly mature, liberal and romantic lot. Mesmerizing, isn’t it? Let us call it an ‘ideal free society’.

Well then, let us apply the same ideas to Indian society and Bollywood. India is full of varied castes, religions, languages, cultures within culture and similar is our Bollywood made up of us coming from varied states, religions and castes. A secular entertainment world reflecting a secular society. Is that so?

Are we really an ‘ideal free society’ left to itself to evolve, grow and mature? We were, we really were once upon a time, but not anymore.

We were the ones who built Hampi, Kahjuraho, Angkor Wat, Konark Sun temple, Caves and temples complex like Ellora enhanced by Hindus, Buddhist and Jain, Universities like Nalanda and Takshashila where people from world over flocked, and hundred thousand temples of varied faiths. We may have had our set of wars like Mahabharata and ones fought by Ashoka involving mass killings but over time we grew into the ‘ideal free society’ like I referred above, a mature, happy and peaceful society with little or no external influences, a liberal and romantic society at the core. Gradually over time we may have become so peaceful and complacent that we lost the zeal to fight and conquer or even defend ourselves. All this assuming that there is no reason to get into immature acts like burn and loot. Unfortunately rest of the world was not in the similar blissful state which led to the brutal rape, insult and looting of us that lasted for almost 800 years.

Remnants of our glorious past, the numerous exemplary structures built by varied faiths that coexisted, liberal that we were who flaunted Khajuraho too with pride, all of these evidences scattered across from Himalayas to Kanyakumari and from current Afghanistan to Mynamar and even beyond. This is the land of Hindustan where we had Shaiva, Vaishnava, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain as well as atheists and what not… all thriving, mixing, contributing and evolving together. We were invaded and ruled by outsiders who brought in a different style of evangelizing one’s religion as they believed that infidels had no right to live, something that we natives had never dealt with. Even during these times our core values still prevailed and we absorbed a lot of these outsiders with open minds and made them us and thus couple of more religions, Islam and Christianity got added to our mix.

After getting independence from the British Raj when the team led by Dr. Ambedkar defined our own Constitution (this is yet another example where we corrected perils from our past and openly accepted Dr. Ambedkar’s leadership), the original hand-written one signed by all its authors included sketches made by Nandlal Bose, of prominent historical personalities and incidents, like Ram, Krishna, Mahabharat, Chhatrapati Shivaji, Akbar, Maharana Pratap, etc. So even in 1950 it seems we were a secular enough society where followers and the leaders of no religion objected such pictures in the Constitution.

With all this said about how liberal and tolerant society we are, Bollywood, which is supposed to be our own expression should be a true reflection of what we are… Is that so?

What if the Government of India led by PM Narendra Modi decides to print and distribute copies of the Constitution now with a picture of Ram Mandir on the front page ???

How will it go with the society on the whole?

How will it go with the liberal Lutyens media, Bollywood and ‘prominent historians and scholars’?

Perhaps this may result into yet another Shaheen Bag like protest against saffronization of Constitution, where prominent Bollywood personalities will rush to support and ‘prominent historians and scholars’ may have yet another round of “award wapasi” offering. As a natural reaction the majority of the society may not cry foul but all these influential elements among us may strive hard to make us feel guilty, confused and weakly defensive.

Why and how did a truly liberal and mature society of thousands of years reach its current state and started shying away from calling a spade a spade?  Ram was a great king from this land, wasn’t he? Why does celebrating Ram translate to looking down upon other faiths to few? Shouldn’t we and don’t we celebrate all faiths.

A lot of wrong-doings to this society resulting into its current state have been done between 1950s and now, when this truly liberal and secular society, an ‘ideal free society’ was attempted to be corrupted, manipulated big way, used as an experimenting ground by Leftists during the cold war and esp. with full force and a free-hand after our Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was killed in Tashkent. Why blame just the Bollywood? Every prominent and potentially influential pillars, positions and institutes were exploited, corrupted and influenced. History books were re-written and Constitution too was not spared and the word “Socialist” was inserted in it during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency rule. Prominent plots across the country were doled out to institutes of certain faiths. Powerful positions were offered to leftward-leaning in media houses and large number of other institutes. Trivializing and shaming the majority religion became a regular practice such that we ourselves started looking down upon ourselves. Certain kind of movies and film makers were consistently getting easy funding from NFDC establishing whole new generations of movie makers, actors and award-winners (whom we see now as award-wapasi gangs), and the list goes on… all flourished abundantly during the times.

We were being manipulated to pose as a society that we were inherently not. All our wisdom, historically passed over generations was being trivialized and questioned. We were a confused lot, and all this continued for decades… Sikhs were massacred and Shahbano case verdict was twisted by misuse of brute majority and we looked on…

And then the first big reaction came out in open on the streets when RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal, BJP and the likes mobilized the masses to react. To pour their hearts out. Ram Mandir was actually a symbolic protest actually against the manipulation and suppression of decades. But the damage of decades was too deep. Politics, media, Education, Judiciary, Bollywood, Theater, … it was all under strong left influence for decades. Supporters of RSS and BJP out in open were in minority and they were shamed publicly in media and questioned for forwarding RSS agenda – as if RSS was some ISIS-like anti-humanitarian institute. Its self-starter and self-driven supporters were lesser in numbers and not enough to elect a majority Government. So coalition Governments came up, led obviously by milder and widely acceptable personality like Vajpayee, acceptable even by the standards of liberals and thus relatively harmless. Vajpayee became an easy target to defeat when the next opportunity posed itself. So ‘Shining India’ was questioned and beaten down resulting into the long regime of Manmohan Singh. First term was fine but second was beyond all limits of tolerance even for the liberals, and varied protests were thrown up, fed and funded by varied sources, both right and the left.

And then came the advent of the social media. Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and the list goes on… It was a huge shock and the moment of realization for the common man. Shock that we are not the minority, rather we never were, a realization that we were being played with and manipulated for decades while most of us think alike and a lot different than the narrative forced down our throats for decades, that we are the deserving lot who should write the right about our past, define the present right and shape the right future for us.

The outcomes were enormous and earth-shattering and in 2014 the first wicket to go down was politics… Fed by the massive support of common man, Modi had no reason to mince words or praise Jinnah to make him look acceptable to the masses, like Advani did in 2009. There was no confusion whatsoever. Media started seeing few changes around the time and we had Arnab with Republic and also Times Now like channels openly challenging, trivializing and questioning Congress, Left and the Lutyens media, something unheard and unseen in this country so far. It was an easy win because every vote counts and the common man had those in big numbers.

Damages of decades are too deep. Politics, Media, Education, Bollywood, Theater, … and by now in 2020 only politics is decisively right, while Media and Bollywood are right to some extent. We still have Pranav Roys, Barkha Dutts, Rajdeeps and the likes as TV media editors, and we still have Girish Kubers and the likes leading vernacular media in many states. Left wing still has a good grip of few sectors though not as powerful like earlier but enough to tarnish the image of the society and the country by means of some Shaheen Bag or some riot. Education sector is not cleaned up fully and we still have JNU, Jamia, Jadavpur with hard core left wingers still winning student body elections year after year.

Bollywood’s underworld funding has shrunk massively after 2014 and we see a lot of Corporates funding and producing movies. Many positive movies are being made with top stars and also newcomers and succeeding too. We have Wednesday, Baby, Masaan, Uri, Toilet, Mangalyaan and Tanhaji succeeding while PK, Raees, Dabang sequels and Chhapak struggling to survive. While we have some Swara, Deepika or Javed Akhtars, now we also have Kangana, Payal, Raveena, Ajay Devgan, Anupam Kher and Paresh Rawals. A movie was finally made on Tashkent Files, almost 50 years after the incident.

Heavily manipulated Bollywood was casting its dark shadow on us for decades but not anymore. Damages of decades are too deep and it may take longer for sectors like Bollywood or the print and TV media to get themselves out of their own dark shadows. Here we can’t vote out the unwanted elements just like that one fine day like we can do in a general election.

A large number of artists are still living in an illusion and romancing the idea that they are part of an ‘ideal free society’. Few are unaware of the reality and fail to see the larger picture whereas few are aware but do not dare to acknowledge. Such sectors have their own eco-systems too and revamping the eco-systems will need more time.

We were the ‘ideal free society’ historically but not for few decades post-independence. Bollywood could have been our true reflection but it couldn’t because of the deep damage of the decades… Corrective actions are underway and it’s a matter of time…