By Jayakhosh Chidambaran
In India, movies transcend entertainment and cathartic sensibilities. It often regresses into the distorted realms of individual and mass sensitivities, blurring the lines between mythology and history, fact and fiction, reel and real life. The consequences are demi-god movie stars, undulating fans and hypersensitive fan clubs, collective hysteria and suspension of critical faculties, epitomising the Indian metaphysical concept of “Maya” applied to the mundane world. ‘Bollywood’ represents the Indian movie industry to the outside world, eclipsing the relevance, content and aesthetics of thriving regional movies.
The self-identification with the protagonist in the movie, however ludicrous, false and irrational the character depiction might be, effectively awakens repressed sentiments pertinent to authority, system, ethnicity, race or culture. This emotional resonance, combined with the solace of vicarious vigilantism of the hero, has been the defining paradigm of a vast majority of Indian moviegoers. Realistic movies bereft of glitz, glamour, violence and opulence rarely succeed at the box office. Discernment has always been a casualty of the Indian audience, and this weakness is capitalised by the incumbent NDA administration, dominated by the BJP faction since its ascendancy in 2014.
The BJP and its Hindutva allies have recognised the immense potential of Bollywood and its soft power for pushing their ultranationalist agenda of a monolithic Hindu nation. Creating a monolithic identity warrants chiselling out the pluralistic and heterogenous ethos of a secular country, and according to Noam Chomsky, “If you want to conquer a people, create for them an imaginary enemy who seems more dangerous than you, and be their saviour.” The incumbent administration has identified and propagated Muslims as the enemy of the state and Islamophobia as the overriding rhetoric to sustain power.
A spate of movies misrepresenting Muslims and tarnishing their contributions to Indian society have been released in the last decade. The recent blockbuster “Chhaava”, a film on king Sambhaji Maharaj, son of the legendary king Shivaji Maharaj, has stirred a hornet’s nest by inciting anger and hatred against Indian Muslims. It recounts the story of the Maratha warrior king whose illustrious life was extinguished in the torture chambers of India’s most vilified Muslim emperor, Aurangzeb.
In a runtime of 136 minutes, 40 minutes are expended exclusively for fictionalised torture scenes, mostly in slow motion with meticulous attention to gory details, aggravated by a harrowing soundtrack and visual extravaganza. The film has been accused of unscrupulously fomenting a wave of Islamophobia in large swathes of North India and inciting communal riots in Nagpur over attempts to desecrate the tomb of Aurangzeb and alleged burning of the Quran by Hindu protesters, mobilised under Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the ‘cultural arm’ of the RSS, the radical Hindu supremacist paramilitary organisation. Social media feeds were replete with videos of children exiting the cinema halls in pain and anguish, some weeping bitterly over the reprehensible assault on Hindus. The hero of the movie expressed gratitude to these children on social media platforms, which could lead to indoctrination at their impressionable age. It is a time-tested strategy for conformance to an ideology.
In ancient and medieval India, every king who followed ‘Raja dharma’ was violent and brutal. They undertook wars for territorial expansion and to ascertain their suzerainty as overlords. They committed genocides, plundered and pillaged enemy kingdoms, and grabbed their wealth. A cursory glance at the historical records indicates that Indian kings under the various great Hindu empires were equally guilty of violence and bloodshed as the Muslim invaders of the Delhi Sultanate or the Mughals that ruled after them. The British East India Company and later the British imperialist project in India were far more discriminatory, divisive and exploitative than most Muslim rulers who had integrated into Indian culture by taking Hindu brides, promulgating and establishing secular and integrative policies and institutions.
This story was originally published in madrascourier.com. Read the full story here.
