When does cinema stop being entertainment and become propaganda? Hindi film has long romanticised the nation, but what’s happening now is something else entirely. In the latest Himal Footnotes, associate editor Nayantara Narayanan sits down with film critic Anna MM Vetticad and journalist Raza Rumi to talk about how Bollywood has become a vehicle for Hindutva ideology by manufacturing mythic pasts, normalising anti-Muslim violence and lending cinematic glamour to the BJP’s political project. Using the Dhurandhar franchise as a case study, they ask harder questions about the industry: How does propaganda disguise itself as entertainment? What happens when the line between fiction and political fact-making is deliberately blurred? And what has been lost from the Hindi cinema that once held space for a more plural, secular India?
Disclosure: I know Raza Rumi and have worked with him when he was at “The Friday Times”. I was mostly doing editorial work during what was essentially a summer internship. He has written a book about his experiences traveling in Delhi (where I believe his family was from). The book is called Delhi By Heart: Impressions of a Pakistani Traveller.
By Umair Javed
At this admittedly early stage of a changing world order, multipolarity is cementing domestic tendencies that already prevail. The status quo, along with the economic interests aligned with it, will continue to navigate geopolitics in ways that serve regime consolidation rather than broad-based development. For that calculus to change, the three issues/ contradictions identified above would need to become the organising basis of a political challenge capable of compelling a renegotiation of state-society relations. That is a high bar. But it is the only honest answer to the question of what multipolarity can offer a country like Pakistan. The world can change its architecture without changing who benefits inside Pakistan’s borders. That part remains entirely a domestic problem and a domestic responsibility.
3) Nothing can stop the breakup of Britain. Even Farage is powerless.
By Aris Roussinos
What is being replaced is ‘Urduwood’, which was pushed by the former supporters of Pakistan movement, who after partition either did not go to Pakistan or returned from there after a short stay, like qaifi azmi.
“Urduwood” is a Hindu right-wing term. Please don’t use it again.
It is not up for debate that over the last decade Bollywood has produced many films which are either anti-Pakistan or anti-Muslim. “Padmavat” and “Dhurandhar” are just two examples.
Personally, I’ve almost stopped watching Bollywood entirely as I don’t wish to be exposed to anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistani discourse.
The last Bollywood film I saw was perhaps “Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui” since it was about trans issues.
“Muslims In Danger of Becoming Second Class Citizens, They’re in a Very Grave Situation”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je6dvjKWrnA
Karan Thapar in conversation with Najeeb Jung
Urduwood became Hindiwood and soon Hinglishwood.
The decline in Bollywood is a case study.. now the jokes are lame, the humor is crass, the accent bad, acting even worse.
Before the nudity was limited to item numbers with nautch girls, now nanga-pan is common & every other actress needs to show some skin.
Akshay Kumar appeared to have perfect Urdu prouniciation back in the 90’s. and now he cannot even pronounce the basic Urdu words properly, I think he is an intelligent guy who knows his current audience. Many actors have gone through a very similar transition.
Something similar is happening in Pakistan too but at a much slower pace.
I think high culture of any society gets downtrodden when masses adopt it within one generation without being actually immersed into it. Hindi was always an experiemnt that failed to take off, Urdu’s rich legacy has now being actively destroyed in India.
went all downhill when they switched from Persian
The switch from Persian happened almost a century before independence and was never the language of media in either Pakistan or India. The only remaining farsi-speaking holdout in south Asia is the Hazara community in Pakistan – although there are debates whether Hazaragi is a dialect of Persian or its own language.
we find it amusing how Pakistanis are so invested in Urdu but not in Persian, which is the Mother Language of Indo-Islamicate civilisation
By the 19th century, Persian was only used to create homoerotic poetry, while Urdu created Pakistan. Urdu was simply superior.
this is the exact same argument Hindutvas use about Hindi versus Urdu (Urdu is the language of courtesans, Hindi is the vigorous language of state).
as we like to say Pakistanis are simply Hindus of the Middle East, which we of course approve of, but it’s cute how they are so oblivious to that..
Pakistan is not part of the Middle East. No amount of wishing is going to change geography.
I know your “Hindus of the Middle East” remark is to be taken in a lighter spirit but placing Pakistan in the Middle East is just something that I am viscerally against.
well Pakistanis seemed very happy about it
Which Pakistanis?
When George W. Bush placed Pakistan in the “Greater Middle East” many Pakistanis were quite offended.
Anyway, people can categorize Pakistan however they want. Geography is a reality. As is the fact that half Pakistan’s population is Punjabi and thus very much South Asian.
There is a problem with this argument. Hindi can never become elite and take the place of Urdu like Urdu took over Persian. Thats because English exists and the elite prefer English. Hindi will never develop elite culture because elites neglect it. Its also pretty unnatural and not organic, so its speakers are still confused whether they are speaking Urdu or Hindi
If we are not mistaken English took over from Persian..
We do not intend to litigate this-
Persian needs no advocacy but it is worth noting that even the Urdu “titans”, Ghalib & Allama Iqbal, bowed before the Persian language..
No, Urdu took over from Persian as official langauge and lingua franca. English never really got off the ground producing elite culture until recently.
Allama Iqbal wrote in Persian in the early part of life thinking he was speaking to a global Muslim audience but soon realized after World War 1 that Persian has become irrelevant. So he concentrated more on Urdu.
Ghalib isn’t even recognized by Persian speakers.
I don’t think it’s fair to say “Persian had become irrelevant”. Urdu poets such as Ghalib and Iqbal considered Persian to be the prestige language of poetry.
Ghalib didn’t take his Urdu divan all that seriously.
That said, in today’s context, many Pakistanis can barely understand Ghalib’s Urdu poetry so to expect familiarity with Persian is a stretch.
I’m definitely in this category. I’m very much of a “brown sahib”. My dad still understands Ghalib along with T.S. Eliot. In fact he wrote a book called “Thinking With Ghalib”
https://www.libertybooks.com/thinking-with-ghalib-poetry-for-a-new-generation-9789697834297
Exactly Persians can understand the Shahnameh to this day.
Pakistani nationalism is such an oddball; it constantly demands consumption and competition with its neighbours.
When its roots are in post-colonial elite machinations..
Iran wasn’t colonized.
Pakistan was part of the British Empire.
Just as India has an Anglicized elite so does Pakistan. My parents are part of the social class that went to convent schools where obviously it was English Literature that was studied.
In my own case, my Urdu is weak because I spent my entire life abroad.
In any case, Pakistan’s identity doesn’t have as much to do with Urdu as it does with Islam. I don’t think Sindhis, Pashtuns and Baloch really care all that much about Urdu.
We don’t think the subordinated ethnicities even care that much for Muslim nationalism.
as we can see that once a province went majority Muslim, it had no real qualms about being in a nationally distinct federation.
yes the conversation on Urdu versus Persian is absurd. Urdu has been entirely hollowed out by English
Persian became irrelevant by the 1900’s. It was always an elite language but even the elite abandoned it in favor of Urdu. All newspapers in Lahore in 1900 were in Urdu or English, none in Persian.
Ghalib’s poetry is easily understood by anyone who went to an Urdu medium school or reads Urdu media.. although people whose primary language of insturction is English will find it hard to understand, they will find it hard to understand even modern Urdu media
as you say, that brief period under colonial masters (the Brits), Urdu attained its full flowering even though it was still subordinated to English..
Pakistani nationalism contorts itself to always be competing with more deeper and prestigious cultural forms of its neighbours (whether Afghanistan, India or Iran).
Frances Pritchett has written that the height of Urdu’s development occurred at the court of Bahadur Shah Zafar before 1857.
The direct quote from Nets of Awareness is:
” Urdu poetry was widely and seriously cultivated: there were not only frequent mushairahs at the Red Fort, but also weekly ones held on the Delhi College premises as well as numerous privately sponsored ones. When it came to poets, Bahadur Shah’s circle included, besides himself, one great poet, several major ones, and literally dozens of highly competent minor poets”
Ghalib wrote in extremely Persianized Urdu. It’s not something understood by anyone who reads Urdu media.
You can try running this experiment. Ask any Millennials how much Ghalib they know and understand. I bet you the results will not be impressive.
I am someone who sings ghazals (mostly Faiz). I can understand Faiz sahab’s Urdu but not Ghalib’s.
And I am someone who comes from a partly Muhajir background. My grandmother was from Agra. She had a lot of Urdu poetry memorized.
It was the British who made the Urdu the official language of Punjab after they annexed that province.
Ghalib, Mir and Iqbal wrote all their serious poetry in Persian. That’s just a fact.
But Persian is even more of a foreign language for Punjabis (for example) than Urdu is. Native Punjabi speakers can sort of understand Urdu. They wouldn’t be able to understand Persian.
So for Pakistan the only viable choices are Urdu and English.
“Urdu was simply superior”–
I wouldn’t go that far. Also, there is no need to denigrate Persian.
Persian is a foreign language for most Indian and Pakistani Muslims. It was the language of the Mughal court but the average Muslim wouldn’t have understood it.
By the time of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the court had also shifted to Urdu. Bahadur Shah Zafar himself wrote Urdu poetry.
Urdu is Pakistan’s national language hence why Pakistanis are invested in it.
we find it amusing
Frances Pritchett has written about how Bahadur Shah’s court was a thriving center of Urdu poetry. So at least since the 19th century, Urdu has been the prestige language of North Indian Muslims.
Bollywood and by extension, India’s loss of soft power over Pakistan needs to be studied. They really fumbled the Pakistani masses and especially the youth. I don’t think they’ll ever claw back the market.
India’s loss of soft power over Pakistan is definitely an important topic.
Conversely, Raza Rumi mentioned in the linked video that Pakistanis in North America (he’s based in New York) were flocking to movie theaters to watch “Dhurandhar”. Presumably, they know it’s anti-Pakistan. RR’s point was that Pakistanis want to stay engaged with what Indians think of them.
We also do have to admit that BB is objectively correct when he states that “Dhurandhar” has been in the top 10 on Pakistani Netflix for a number of weeks. RR also made this point.
I would never watch it but other people clearly are watching it. As I’ve repeatedly noted here, I don’t watch Bollywood. To be fair, I barely watch movies. If I do so, it’s almost always Western content.
STOP Commenting on my threads.
How many times do I have to repeat that you are banned?
I will indiscriminately delete any comments you make on my threads. Don’t waste my time.
yes why do Pakistanis watch otherwise if not Bollywood; Hollywood?
there is no doubt that the English speaking segments do that
Mirzapur is probably one of the few Indian productions in the last 10 years that went viral in Pakistan (movies/shows portraying gang culture are somewhat popular in Karachi and Lahore).
Also it’s clearly not Anti Muslim or Anti Pakistani so it tracks
This is anecdotal but out of 60 close friends and family, about 6-8 of them would watch bollywood movies every now and then, and none of them have watched Dhurandar and all of them watched Mirzapur S1.
modern day Bollywood is also at a dissonance from contemporary Pakistani values.
Pakistanis response to sex and violence in Hollywood but they expect Bollywood to be closer to home
“Why five new districts in Ladakh have led to fears of exclusion, gerrymandering”
By Safwat Zargar
https://scroll.in/article/1092682/why-five-new-districts-in-ladakh-have-led-to-fears-of-exclusion-gerrymandering
tbf your article makes it worse; it’s almost certainly designed to offset the Muslim presence
with respect this is over-litigation.
our understanding is that the two main districts (Shi’ite versus Buddhist) are being split into 7 districts; 5 Buddhist and 2 Muslim.
even though the populations are roughly the same size. we also recall Ladakh was under severe agitation by the majority Buddhist population.
It is important in life to be able to make logical leaps; the current government does not enfranchise Muslims and will play minorities off another.
“so non-Indian reading of tea leaves on a so-called open thread cannot be questioned, and comments get deleted. ”
It clearly says “Kabir’s Open Thread”. This clarification is there precisely so I can ban you and BB.
Don’t play these games with me.
You are an author. You have the ability to make your own threads. You are persona non grata on my threads. Don’t waste my time.
Behind gender transition-themed film ‘Baapya’, an ‘important journey from denial to acceptance’
https://scroll.in/reel/1092791/behind-gender-transition-themed-film-baapya-an-important-journey-from-denial-to-acceptance
“How Bollywood Assimilates and Stereotypes Sikh Identity”
By Harjeet Singh
https://thewire.in/film/how-bollywood-assimilates-and-stereotypes-sikh-identity
“Pakistan has a supreme court. Then it built a supremacist one”
By Usama Khawar
https://www.dawn.com/news/2000148/pakistan-has-a-supreme-court-then-it-built-a-supremacist-one
Disclosure: Usama is a friend of mine. He is a practicing lawyer and teaches law at LUMS. He studied law at Columbia University.
Hussain Rehar heads to Cannes With a Collection Reclaiming Lahore’s Fashion Legacy
images.dawn.com/news/1195296/hussain-rehar-heads-to-the-cannes-with-a-collection-reclaiming-lahores-fashion-legacy
“Arun Shourie’s services as a prophet of Modi’s India”
By Mihir Dalal
https://www.himalmag.com/politics/arun-shourie-bjp-modi-indian-express