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| A still from the film 'Kedarnath' |
Have you recently watched a Bollywood film and come away wondering just what you saw? Was something missing in the screenplay, was the script tawdry, the cinematography unflattering or the direction haywire? Or was it something wholly different but just as disturbing.
Good news, you are not alone.
Some instances, in Bollywood depictions of romance, conflict and social tensions, are so overt as to morph into being almost commonplace and hard to notice.
But if there's one aspect that most mainstream Hindi films have in common, it is the peculiar treatment of characters from a particular minority community. It makes me wonder (and I'm convinced I'm not alone here) just what is really going on in Bollywood.
Here are some examples which readily come to mind:
1. In Gangubai Kathiawadi, Alia Bhatt's character is shown to be brutally assaulted -- sexually and otherwise -- by a man who belongs to said religious minority. However, in the next cinematic breath, Gangu's tormentor is publicly beaten up and rendered unconscious by a member of this same minority community, in a role essayed by Ajay Devgan. In essence, the crime and excess of one member of the minority community is sought to be offset by the courage, impartiality and benevolence of another.
2. In the film War, Tiger Shroff plays a secret agent, once again from a minority community, who is shown to be exerting heavily to exonerate his father's name -- who might have been a 'traitor'. All the slick action shots and lingering close-ups apart, the viewer gets the overwhelming impression that the film is just an exercise in clearing Shroff's character's name and pushing the narrative that the minority is wholly nationalist and patriotic.
3. "Lab pe aati hai dua...." is a very popular anthem in Pakistan. But seeing it being played out in a Bollywood film -- Raazi -- gave me a bad case of nationalistic rashes, since it featured as part of the song 'Ae watan' which was penned by India's celebrated lyricist Gulzar. On closer look, not just this song and those lines but critical parts of the script and its narration seem to have deviated from the original, fact-based version of the story, released in the book named 'Calling Sehmat' written by Harinder Sikka, on which the film Raazi is based.
Apparently, lyricist Gulzar admitted to have been 'inspired' by Mohd Iqbal, Pakistan's celebrated and much revered poet while writing 'Ae watan' and even called it his tribute to Iqbal. There were several other problems that author Harinder Sikka had with the final cinematic product and these can be read here in this interview he gave to the Hindustan Times. Sikka even said that letting Meghna Gulzar (daughter of Gulzar) direct the film adaptation of his novel was the 'biggest blunder' he committed.
4. Kedarnath is a film set against the backdrop of the 2013 Kedarnath floods, and ideally, the focus should have been on either the temple itself or the floods but it is, predictably, on a character from the minority community, played by the late Sushant Singh Rajput. The film goes on to follow a predictable pattern, with the family of Sara Ali Khan's character shown to be anti-minority, bigoted and vindictive while Rajput's role seeks to portray him as god-fearing and loyal and ultimately making the supreme sacrifice in the line of romance ;-)
Some majority community organisations raised objection to this film being released and accused it of promoting 'Love Jihad'.
5. The eponymous Bajirao Mastani is the story of Peshwa Bajirao I and Mastani, his second wife and the trials and tribulations they face during the course of their tumultous romance. Hailed as lavish and well-researched, what rankles is the song 'Aayat', which is picturised on Bajirao and shows him singing paeans of his deep love for Mastani. The problem with this song is its lyrics, which seem eons away from any language or dialect Peshwa Bajirao I is likely to have spoken in the early 18th century.
Sample this:
Read more: https://www.hinditracks.in/aayat-hindi-lyrics-bajirao-mastani
Read more: https://www.hinditracks.in/aayat-hindi-lyrics-bajirao-mastani
Read more: https://www.hinditracks.in/aayat-hindi-lyrics-bajirao-mastani
Read more: https://www.hinditracks.in/aayat-hindi-lyrics-bajirao-mastani
Read more: https://www.hinditracks.in/aayat-hindi-lyrics-bajirao-mastani
Read more: https://www.hinditracks.in/aayat-hindi-lyrics-bajirao-mastani
Read more: https://www.hinditracks.in/aayat-hindi-lyrics-bajirao-mastani
Read more: https://www.hinditracks.in/aayat-hindi-lyrics-bajirao-mastani
Read more: https://www.hinditracks.in/aayat-hindi-lyrics-bajirao-mastani
Tujhe yaad kar liya hai aayat ki tarah, Qayam tu ho gayi hai riwayat ki tarah, Marne talak rahegi tu aadat ki tarah
It would have still made sense had Mastani's character been shown singing these lines. Peshwa Bajirao I using such florid language seems either too far-fetched or shamelessly agenda-driven.
6. PK is purportedly a film based on the experiences of an alien -- played by Aamir Khan, his many encounters with the weird and the wonderful related to life on earth. How does such a film feature in this list? Well, in the name of artistic licence, the makers showed a man dressed up as the Hindu god Shiva seeking shelter in a washroom. It also enumerated the problems with several religions on our planet but reserved the most critical censure for a particular one, practised mainly in the Indian sub-continent, while not even commenting adequately/critically on what ails others.
All this leads me to wonder 'why'. How does this profit the makers of these (and several other) films? Who are their real financiers? What is the agenda behind these covert 'entertainers'? Did the producers believe they would get away with their shenanigans and none would be the wiser? Just how dumb do they think the Indian movie-going public is? Is there something else at play here -- a bid to push a certain kind of rendering, an attempt to overwrite history, omit inconvenient truths, rewrite unpopular narratives and obfuscate evidence which causes them harm?
You be the judge of that. The evidence, overwhelmingly, is in favour of a critical appraisal of Bollywood's declared and undeclared agenda and against selective, offensive depictions of the truth told in a way that most suits them and their moneybags.
