Introduce a good-looking, heroic, male protagonist and a pretty girl with an antagonistic father. Develop a flimsy love story, throw in some brawls with slo-mos and replays, and add scenic cuts to the lovers’ singing and dancing in Switzerland. Make the father abruptly realize the protagonist is the best option for his daughter and conclude with a lavish wedding.
For decades, popular Bollywood movie producers have championed this basic formula, consistently dominating the sphere of cinema in India. By advertising this style of movie internationally, Bollywood remains a growing multi-billion dollar industry with regional and global appeal. However, while the industry’s transnational fame comes from the advertisement of romanticized musical productions, new blockbuster films have directly propelled India’s populist regime—headed by Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—in its political messaging, playing a coercive role in dictating public thought.
Indeed, India’s decade-long standing government has been consistent in its efforts to expand the reach of films with fictionalized narratives to control public attitude and opinion. “The Kashmir Files,” released in 2022, documented violent attacks against Kashmiri Pandits, a group of Hindu minorities in a predominantly Muslim-populated region. While Hindu nationalists lauded the movie and publicly called for “revenge” against the Muslims immediately after its release, nonpartisan historians, experts, and government reports confirmed that the film exaggerated numbers, falsified dates, and forged stories of events that never occurred.
In the film’s telling of the attacks, Muslim militants aggressively invaded the Kashmiri Pandit’s village, Nadimarg, in broad daylight and proceeded to brutally gun down Hindus into an open grave with their Muslim neighbors turning a blind eye to what had just happened. Additionally, Sharda Pandit, one of the main characters in the film, was claimed to have been chopped into pieces by a mechanical saw. Yet, no government or local source ever verified these claims. Residents of Nadimarg themselves confirmed the Kashmiri Pandit attack happened during nighttime. The massacre was only discovered after its occurrence and the real-life story of Sharda Pandit was entirely unrelated to the attacks on Nadimarg.
In spite of the concerned proclamations of fact-checkers and locals of Nadimarg, PM Modi himself announced his certification of the film’s “truth-telling properties,” standing in opposition to some of India’s most esteemed scholars and legitimate government documents on the event. Thus, despite the polarizing responses to the movie, Modi’s public backing pushed people to theaters, earning the film over $41 million in gross value, making it the third-highest-grossing Indian film of 2022.
“The Kashmir Files” is not unique in its reception of Modi’s public remarks. For instance, “Hamare Baarah,” released in June of this year, navigates the changing demographics of India, particularly regarding population growth. The release of the film and its popularity coincided with Modi openly demeaning Muslims for having more children, leading to an increase in fallacious outcries against Muslims. Indeed, videos went viral of people in various locations shouting Islamophobic slurs outside movie theaters and some Hindu nationalist groups across India called for boycotting Muslim-owned businesses.
“The Kerela Story,” endorsed by the BJP and Modi who even set up special “educational” screenings of the film across India, claims Muslim men lure Hindu women to forcibly convert them to Islam. On the contrary, movies like “Tees” and “Lipstick Under My Burkha” which tell stories of Muslim men and women growing up in India, are either prevented entirely from being released or blocked by the BJP from being screened. Modi and the BJP have made their platform clear: content opposing the political narrative they wish to spread will not be aired.
While India’s public opinion primarily feeds off the BJP’s political platform and weaponization of propaganda, Modi’s personal branding galvanizes his voting bloc, allowing him to consolidate control. For people across India, the carefully crafted image of Modi as “one of them”—once a tea boy who somehow managed to climb to the country’s highest rank—symbolizes a beacon of hope and opportunity. In 2014, a picture of a young Narendra Modi cleaning the floor with a broom began spreading rapidly on news outlets, a pillar of his electorate campaign and personal image. It was later revealed that the photo was not Modi, but an unknown Indian citizen.
The BJP’s intentional efforts to misconstrue the media are nothing new. A false narrative once springboarded Modi’s “humble” character into India’s political spotlight, and fallacious propaganda continues to permeate his leadership.
However, while manipulating his personal story has improved his public image, Modi’s weaponization of Bollywood films has proven to be a double-edged sword. Despite increasing his ability to expand the reach of Hindu nationalist ideas, his blatantly anti-Muslim statements and public efforts to support Islamophobic films have not been well received. Considering the growing liberalism of India’s social environment and the backdrop of demographic changes, it is no surprise that Modi’s BJP drastically underperformed in the recent election.
In the 2019 election, a split in Muslim votes helped win the BJP and Modi seats in the five regions—Muzaffarnagar, Kairana, Meerut, Baghpat, and Aligarh—where Muslims form upwards of one-fourth of the population. This year, the BJP barely managed to win in two of the regions, Meerut and Aligarh, with opposition parties securing large wins in the others. The expanding climate of fear for minorities in India provokes them to get to the polls, damaging the political control the BJP has possessed for a decade. The collective belief within marginalized communities—that secularism will prevail over religious-based parties like the BJP—pushed Indian minorities to the polls this year and will continue to do so in the future.
Modi’s sectarianism which once consolidated his power and political capital now serves as his largest adversary. The integrity of the regime established by the BJP over the past decade is being actively threatened by the collective action of Muslims and marginalized communities, a result of Modi’s very own actions. Now, this is a movie worth watching.
Featured Image Source: Political cartoon of Narendra Modi playing in a playground with 2 signs in the background, reading Bollywood and Populism respectively. October 2024 © NightCafe Studio AI Image Generator
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