I’ve been watching Royals—Netflix’s palace drama starring Bhumi Pednekar, Ishaan Khatter and featuring Nora Fatehi—and it struck a familiar chord with where our comment threads, concerning Pakistaniat, have been going post-conflict.
It all began with grace.
Years ago, a Sinhala pop hit — Manike Mage Hithe — went viral as an IndiGo air hostess danced mid-flight. Simple. Elegant. Subcontinental. Un-Bollywood.
Two years later, it reappears: Nora Fatehi and Sidharth Malhotra, glammed up in Mughal court-wear, gyrating under chandeliers, mouthing Urdu couplets. Same song, different universe. Bollywood hadn’t remixed it. It had annexed it.
That’s the pattern: Bollywood doesn’t just Hindi-fy — it Mughalizes. Every regional input is re-rendered through a Ganga-Jamuni lens. The vibe is Ganges. The look is Indus. And the aesthetic is unmistakably Mughal. This is the real Indo-Pak cultural divergence:
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India kept the composite culture but detached it from religion.
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Pakistan kept the religion but purged the composite.
Even the Manike lyrics springs from Urdu, sung by Hindus, choreographed like a Mughal durbar, branded “Indian,” and watched 138 million times. The tragedy? Pakistan owns the aesthetic—but lost the apparatus.
Censorship, nationalism, and lost infrastructure killed its cultural soft power. Bollywood filled the vacuum, selling Pakistan’s own sensibilities back to the world, wrapped in silk and Urdu. Bollywood doesn’t appropriate—it absorbs.
It speaks Urdu in Devnagari, casts Indus faces in Ganga stories, and performs Mughal nostalgia for a global market. And maybe that’s why Hindu nationalists hate it: because it reminds them of everything they claim to reject—but secretly desire.
Final Thought
Culture survives. The state doesn’t. In another world, Manike Mage Hithe would have starred Mahira and Fawad. Instead, it stars India—draped in Mughal nostalgia, choreographed in Urdu, framed by the Taj Mahal.
As Indian as it isn’t, the Taj reminds us: some inherit the monument, others the memory. And in Bollywood—like Mother Indus—it all flows back together.
Hindi is hindustani/hindvi with bent of sanskrit ……… Urdu is hindustani/hindvi with bent of Persian.
To say bollywood is in Urdu with devanagari script is plain wrong.
Also the urdu words in bollywood came mostly because the writers were urdu speakers from northern UP, that had started changing as more and more ‘Hindu’ writers came along, from UP or otherwise.
Why do you find it to be wrong. Urdu = Hindi in the colloquial, so it depends on who listens to the song. Maybe the Devanagri bit is off but the song isn’t presented as written.
I do feel Xerxes is not fully correct about why Hindu Nationalists do not like Bollywood. The dislike is pretty complicated, there are multiple reasons I can think of.
Happily this is voted on by the box office regularly and Bollywood has been getting regular updates on the dissatisfaction.
So Hindu nationalist don’t hate Bollywood b/c it’s “Mugalizes/Urduizes” everything, which it does, but b/c it goes out of its way to vilify Hinduism – playing on caste stereotypes, show the religion in a bad light to even fully disrespect it, while playing clear of criticising Islam. It has also indirectly, at times directly, insulted the Indian army. Hence the notion that many leading Bollywood stars are considered sell-outs to Pakistani funders
The recent example is of course many of the leading/powerful Bollywood stars silent on Operation Sindoor by the Indian army, yet they’re quick to post on “All Eyes on Palestine” type of stuff.
Common public has also found many of the south Indian stars and movies more appealing b/c of their vivid celebration of more Hindu/Indigenous culture rather than constant glorification of Mughals. Plus their stars act more nationalistic and proud Hindus in public.
Not Mughalizes I think, it Punjabizes; larger than life culture, afflicting both sides of the border.