Bollywood and Indian Culture

Is there anyone out there who believes that Bollywood is a true ambassador of Indian culture? I have never believed it to be the case. Bollywood has not done anything of late to prove me wrong. I will try to make a case here that not only do they not represent our culture but also their desire to peddle to the lowest common denominator of the society to make easy money makes them peddle stuff, which is out to destroy our culture.

Movies made by Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and their contemporaries in Bollywood made movies that represented India well. Even the Bollywood potboilers prior to the 1990s with its melodrama, seemed innocuous and in tune with sensibilities of a typical house hold. Something happened to Bollywood on it’s way to today. Let us examine.

Movies of today make you uncomfortable if you are with your parents or children. Sleazy dances with white women (what is with the Bollywood obsession with white women? Is it our slave mentality at work here?) are all over the place. The lifestyle depicted in these movies is often that of unbridled promiscuity. If a non-Indian watched these movies, they would think that pre and extra marital sex in India is as common as smell of garam masala. However, it seems that promiscuous behavior has become common in our urban areas. The young Indians seem oblivious to the emotional and health cost associated with this kind of behavior. We are already seeing a dramatic increase in divorces. AIDS is already an epidemic with Hepatitis C ready to claim the throne of the biggest killer. Cervical cancer is also associated with unprotected sex. Can I really claim that Bollywood is causing our young to divorce and have promiscuous sex? NO! However they are not helping the matter by repeated portrayal of this kind of behavior as the norm.

Idol worshipping goes hand in hand with movies. In Amitabh Bachchan’s heydays, you could see youngsters copying his hairstyle all over the place. Emulating his clothes and mannerisms were part of one’s growing up. However his movies were still tame compared to the smut being peddled today. It is one thing to copy the hairstyle and entirely different to copy the lifestyle of the stars. Idol worshippers try to copy the easy and not the hard stuff. No one got inspired to take on twenty men because he did so in Deewar. However, one cannot claim the same about the unbridled sex shown in today’s movies.

Stars of yesteryear were not exactly paragons of virtue. Maybe it was because of lack of media coverage that Indians were protected from their bad behavior. Today’s stars like Salman Khan are nothing short of criminals. In any other country, the man would have served significant amount of time in jail for vehicular manslaughter or domestic violence but not in India. He has gone from strength to strength thanks to our ever-forgiving audience including the Hindu middle class. We are bearing witness to Saif Ali Khan’s violent behavior (what else do we expect from a man whose name means sword of Ali). He seems to be an unstable person with a violent temper. However he has the money and star power, not to mention a mother with ties to the pseudo secular politicians. I can bet that the Indian establishment is going to ensure an honorable exoneration from his latest violent escapade and audience are going to forgive him and make his forthcoming movie a success. Bravo India!!

Then we have the reality shows, which seems to have lowered the level of sleaze if that were possible. Now we have porn stars becoming mainstream celebrities thanks to shows like Bigg Boss. Sonny Leone has now been hired to act in a mainstream movie by Mahesh Bhatt who never ever misses an opportunity to spew venom against the Hindu aspect of our culture. This sleazy bastard made one good movie and since has done nothing but soft-core porn. Of course if he is still in business then we only have the audience to blame.

We have always had Muslims dominating Bollywood. However in days past, they kept their fanaticism under wraps. They looked and talked like everyday Indians. But in today’s India, they seem to be emboldened by the power of pseudo-secular establishment. Shah Rukh Khan seems to be dropping his Insha-Allahs all over the place. In the latest Filmfare awards (what a crock of shit that was), he greeted AR Rehman with Asalaam Aleikum and was greeted back the same way. Rehman went on to say Alhamdulillah on the stage, which is essentially the same vein as Allah Ho Akbar. I wonder what would the reaction if someone went Bajrang Bali Ki Jai ho on such a stage? If anyone has seen Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday to the end, you know what the reaction would have been. A true blue leftist liberal, Kashyap depicted the Kar Sevaks around Babri Masjid as caricatures of Hanumanji. Essentially Monkeys. Of course he showed the bombers of Mumbai as men who were normally reacting to the goings on in Ayodhya.

Therefore in my opinion, majority of crap coming out of Bollywood is not representative of Indian culture at all. If anything, they are either actively destroying it (like Kashyap and Nandita Das) with their unfair and biased portrayal or indirectly like today’s mainstream moviemakers who are peddling smut.

Of course the ultimate responsibility of this perversion lies with the aam aadmi. If no one watches these movies then the moviemakers will be forced to respond. If we boycott the movies of criminal stars then the producers will get the message. If we do not fulfill our responsibility and succumb to Salman Khan’s antics then we have no right to be outraged by his bad behavior. After all, we enable him.

The image is from: http://www.indiamarks.com/guide/Ruling-Khans-of-Bollywood/595/