Bollywood Is a Major Target for Right Wing Groups Looking for Signs of ‘Hinduphobia’
Within the latest Amazon collection Tandav, a school pupil named Shiva is launched because the eponymous Hindu deity in a mock-mythological play. With the celestial sage Narada, he devises social media methods to counter the rising recognition of Lord Rama in up to date India, whereas the on-screen viewers of the play bursts into roars of laughter.
Actual-life Hindu nationalists in India, however, had been enraged by this satirical sequence. Quickly this video clip was made viral on Twitter by Hindutva teams, influencers and their followers as proof of the present’s ‘Hinduphobia’. The ‘profane’ prospect of a Muslim actor-activist, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, caricaturing the deity intensified the social media agitation. Within the following days, the present’s director issued a public apology, and the scene was faraway from the collection.
Regardless of that, a number of FIRs have been registered in several states towards the makers of Tandav. The Supreme Courtroom has declined the present’s creators any interim safety from arrest. When Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub’s lawyer defined to the SC bench that he was solely taking part in a personality, Justice M. R. Shah reminded him, “You can’t play the function of a personality which hurts the spiritual sentiments of others”.
Determine 1: Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub as Lord Shiva in Tandav
From ‘love jihad’ to ‘City Naxal’, a vicious vocabulary of hate towards minorities and dissenters has powered the Hindu right-wing ecosystem in India. ‘Hinduphobia’ is a brand new American import into the Indian right-wing lexicon. The time period has been coined by Rajiv Malhotra, an Indian-American Hindutva ideologue, and popularised by US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. Hindutva teams in India and abroad have recognized ‘Hinduphobia’ in 4 main websites – Muslim-majority nations in South Asia, anti-caste and Left politics in India, Western academia and Bollywood. These 4 websites replicate geopolitical, ideological, tutorial and cultural anxieties inside the Hindu proper.
Bollywood is presently present process a structural shift with the daybreak of the digital. Excessive (OTT) streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon, in addition to native platforms akin to Hotstar and SonyLIV are reconfiguring Bollywood’s manufacturing, exhibition and distribution fashions. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this transition by maintaining Indian audiences away from theatres and largely proscribing them to their telephones, computer systems and sensible televisions. The rise of spiritual nationalism in India beneath Narendra Modi has coincided with a growth in Web consumption. Nonetheless, OTT platforms have principally promoted secular leisure à la Bollywood and infrequently pushed anti-establishment content material.
Lakshmi by Raja Ravi Varma (1894), Public Area through Wikimedia Commons
Tandav’s case is a latest addition to an extended historical past of Hindu viewers anxieties with the depiction of divinity in visible tradition. From its earliest years, Indian cinema relied on audiences’ familiarity with puranic (Hindu mythological) tales and their devotional fervour for Hindu deities. The darshan (sight) of Hindu gods exterior unique spiritual areas was enabled by Raja Ravi Varma and Dadasaheb Phalke’s pioneering endeavours in mass tradition. Late nineteenth century chromolithography and early twentieth century cinema made Hindu gods extra visually accessible and undermined inflexible caste hierarchies.
Regardless of its emancipatory potential, the ever-present visible illustration of Hindu divinity within the colonial period raised alarm amongst staunch devotees. In 1921, a letter to the editor of the Instances of India titled ‘Who Insults Hindu Gods?’, complained how “folks of all races” couldn’t solely see Hindu deities on garments, matchboxes, cinemas and sweetmeat store boards, but in addition carry out as Hindu gods and goddesses on stage.
Letter in TOI (November 5, 1921, p. 14)
Whereas Hindu mythology paid nice dividends on the field workplace, movies with Muslim actors taking part in Hindu gods confronted incessant agitation. Throughout a screening of Bilwa Mangal in 1932 in Lahore, a bunch of Hindu males protested towards the casting of a Muslim actor for the function of Lord Krishna and “tore the display screen with a knife throughout the interval”. Some years later, a Bombay-based movie journal raised issues about how the North Indian movie press had interpreted Sardar Akhtar’s portrayal of Lord Krishna within the movie Bharosa as “an insult to Hindu faith”.
With the post-Independence rise of ‘social’ movies, the mythological style largely pale into the background. Requires stricter censorship for movies based mostly on Hindu deities had been met favourably by the Congress authorities beneath Jawaharlal Nehru. There was an ulterior motive at play, particularly in Madras, the place a whole ban on the portrayal of Hindu divinity was seen as a chance to raise the standing of native ministers. The cantankerous Baburao Patel of Filmindia declared that “the Indian display screen has principally murdered our gods” and feared that “as soon as the Hindu gods of mythology are destroyed, secular deities of the Congress might be put in on the vacant altars”.
Illustration from Filmindia (July 1, 1956)
‘Hinduphobia’ is a contemporary repackaging of anti-Muslim prejudices and anti-Congress sentiments that originated within the late colonial interval and has taken root within the present Modi regime. The outdated cultural politics of damage has resurfaced, solely this time mockingly ensconced within the liberal language of ‘phobia’.
Due to some theatrical releases, the OTT platforms are bearing the brunt of this onslaught. Like Amazon’s Tandav, Mira Nair’s A Appropriate Boy on Netflix just lately got here beneath hearth for an inter-faith kissing scene inside a temple’s precincts. Final 12 months, the Ministry of Info and Broadcasting introduced all OTT platforms beneath its ambit. The rising mob censorship of internet content material is more likely to translate to extra official types of regulation as ‘Hinduphobia’ rears its ugly head.
Regardless of Bollywood’s liaisons with the BJP, the movie business’s privilege and recognition make it a smooth goal for rank political opportunists masquerading as warriors of the Hindu religion. Bollywood professionals, particularly its Muslim stars, have been focused by far-right Hindu teams like Shiv Sena and Karni Sena now and again. Nonetheless, with an unprecedented rise of media-manufactured hate, the movie business’s recognition has maybe by no means been this susceptible. Final 12 months, the Indian information media’s campaign towards Bollywood, within the wake of actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s loss of life, grew to become an underhanded tactic to divert folks’s consideration from the Modi authorities’s poor dealing with of COVID-19 pandemic. On-line portals of unbridled disinformation and hate speech catered to related political opportunism.
Bollywood is India’s greatest artistic business and recognised as a significant affect on South Asian public tradition. It stays immensely in style amongst Indian diasporas and has additionally been acknowledged extensively as a smooth energy for India. Mining Bollywood movies for ‘Hinduphobic’ content material is due to this fact a strategic transfer supposed to reorient each nationwide and worldwide Hindu audiences within the period of world streaming.
A right-wing leaning Twitter account, Gems of Bollywood, has determined to undertake this mission. It excerpts and annotates ‘Hinduphobic’ sequences from yesteryear Bollywood movies in addition to up to date internet content material “to comprehensively carry out fact of Urduwood”, unmistakably a jibe on the secular workings of Bollywood, the unparalleled stardom of the three Khans, and the historic affect of Urdu writers within the movie business.
Gems of Bollywood’s tweet on Tandav
Gems of Bollywood’s painstaking curation may appear convincing to the transformed however a Bollywood buff would discover it laughingly embarrassing. Hindi movies from the Nineteen Eighties and 90s are retro reservoirs of cringeworthy content material. Gems of Bollywood exploits movies from this era particularly to mischaracterise Bollywood as an ahistorical and homogeneous underworld of ‘Hinduphobia’, rape tradition, casteism and so forth.
Whereas the Twitter account with over 80,000 followers has dodged media consideration thus far, a fact-checking web site has revealed important bot exercise on its posts, which can point out a excessive depend of pretend followers. Gems of Bollywood and its followers repeatedly shared ‘anti-Hindu’ clips from A Appropriate Boy and Tandav with the hashtags #BoycottNetflix and #BoycottAmazon respectively. Proper-wing politicians in energy choose up these cues and have bullied these streaming platforms with authorized motion for ‘insulting’ the Hindu religion.
The oft-heard phrase “Hindu khatre mein hai” (Hindus are in peril) has lengthy indicated the minority advanced of Hindus who represent round 80% of India’s inhabitants. Allegations of ‘Hinduphobia’ weaponise such unfounded fears to assault influential establishments and industries that don’t at all times toe the federal government line. Below a Hindu nationalist regime, the movie business’s lengthy historical past of secularism from the Nehruvian to neoliberal period has turn out to be a menace to itself.
However expenses of ‘Hinduphobia’ haven’t been levelled towards Bollywood stars alone. Humorist Munawar Faruqui has been incarcerated and denied bail for jokes on Hindu deities that he was “going to” say in his act. The authorized sway of such allegations is considerably higher towards susceptible artistes with much less monetary and authorized muscle. Because the time period ‘Hinduphobia’ features wider foreign money exterior far-right networks, Bollywood and different cultural our bodies that present secular leisure stay more and more vulnerable to the harmful fictions of Hindutva.
Rakesh Sengupta is a movie scholar pursuing his doctoral analysis on early Indian cinema in SOAS.
