There are about 450 movies made on the Holocaust. With a simple web search, lists of hundreds of movies on black slavery open up. More than 100 movies, series, and documentaries have been made on the British monarchy. There are at least 100 superhero movies from the West. From documenting true stories and producing fictional scripts on true events in history to producing plain fiction, the Western film industry seems clear about its creative direction.
And yet Bollywood, considered to be the world’s largest film industry, massively fails to tell the tale of one of India’s most revered deities Bhagwan Shri Ram whose life story and principles are etched in the hearts and minds of every Hindu, the Indian majority.
‘Adipurush,’ a film written and directed by Om Raut on Ramayana, has received massive backlash from viewers over its boorish dialogues, vexatious optics, foolish casting, and blatant diversion from the facts.
The 600 crore-budget movie is produced by T-series and Retrophiles. Read the detailed review of the movie here. The credit for crass dialogues goes to Manoj Muntashir, who has now said that the few offending dialogues would be removed.
B-Town: A faraway world isolated from its country’s revered history
There are merely 3 movies on Ramayana, including Adipurush, from mainstream Bollywood; the first one is the highest-grossing of its time, Ram Rajya (1943), and the second is the renowned Sampoorna Ramayana (1961).
And yet Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana has set a benchmark too high for present-day B-wood to reach let alone breach. Ramayan (series) during the lockdown became the world’s most-watched show in April 2020; it was watched by 77 million people across the world on 16 April 2020.
The one and only movie on Mahabharat was produced in 1965 starring Dara Singh, Jeevan, Padmini, and many big names of the time. Another is BR Chopra’s Mahabharat which is a celebrated watch to this day.
From North to South, East to West, Jai Santoshi Maa (1975) swept the Indian landscape with its all-encompassing story of the Divinity of Goddess Santoshi.
Indian regional cinema on the contrary has tens of hundreds of Ramayanas, Mahabharatas, and several other such productions based on spiritual Indian history. And each of these productions is full of creativity in their story-telling.
These movies continue to strike a chord with the Hindu masses. Not to mention the massive reach of skits on Ramayana in remote areas of India, the Ramayana Path, and Geeta Kathavachan in small cities and towns; these continue to draw the Indian masses even in this age of technology.
Looking at the above trends, “modern-day” Bollywood has absolutely nothing to its credit in so far as the Divine and revered history of India is concerned. To them, like to the self-proclaimed left-liberal intellectuals, this is the stuff of mythology. And for this very reason, they can stake claim only to the flop-buster Adipurush.
Bollywood’s hate for the Hindu Identity
Forget spiritual history for a bit. How many movies has Bollywood made showcasing the truth about the partition of India? Zero. Whatever pain the Urduwood would have taken to make some 20-30 movies on 1947, they have all been highly politically correct.
Most of these movies are centred around Hindu-Muslim romances with the couple fighting against the world. Some common misleading projections have been that “both sides suffered,” “love goes beyond religion,” “Muslims didn’t want this,” “Islam only wants peace,” so on and so forth. Not a single director, screenwriter, or dialogue writer in this grand old film industry has neither cared for nor been able to explain that if any of these claims are true then why was Pakistan formed in the first place?
Then again, penetrating the glib mind is a wasted endeavour. The truth is too bitter for the strutting Bollywood wannabe. There will never be a movie about the truth about partition because “they can’t handle the truth”; Partition was the snatching of the Hindu land by deceit, it was an additional option for the Muslims to conveniently choose their homeland and in turn the forced removal of Hindus.
The condition of Pakistani Hindus today is proof of what the formation of Pakistan truly was; the formation of an Islamic nation was declared. Bollywood would rather play safe to appropriate this truth even today than bother writing a screenplay on the plight of Pak Hindu refugees, and Hindu women in present-day Pakistan.
There is no dearth of stories from Indian history that, if pursued with pure intentions, to tell the truth, can be produced as fiction and non-fiction too. But think about it…has there been any movie before The Kashmir Files (2022) that mainstream Bollywood made on the plight of Kashmiri Hindus?
Has there been any remarkable movie on our thousands of freedom fighters except for one on Veer Savarkar (2001) by the same name, and Manikarnika (2019) and perhaps a few more?
Forget making movies on the Indian struggle against jihadi Islam, Bollywood has comfortably forgotten the Mughal history of India and instead venerated Islam. From Coolie, Amar Akbar Anthony, Sholay, Avam (BR Chopra) to PK, Veer Zara, Tanhaji, Pathan, Main Hoon Na, and many many more.
Atheism and communism have been shamelessly philosophied by Dawood-wood whenever scenes on Hinduism were being shown, but for Bollywood, the same does not apply to Islam.
As if this was not enough, with Adipurush this industry has hit a new low by deliberately making a laughter show out of our beloved Devis and Devatas. Any of these “artists” trying to justify the same are rubbing salt in our wounds.
Where does Bollywood get its epiphanies from?
Even if one were to say that they try to copy the West, the sheer low quality of their work is surprising still. Some of the most famous Western movies of all time include Schindler’s List, Life Is Beautiful, The Help, The Imitation Game, 12 Years A Slave, Erin Brockovich, Argo, Catch Me If You Can, Rush, Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, The Blind Side, Munich, The Vow, A Few Good Men and Jojo Rabbit.
These range from a variety of true events or are based on actual circumstances. From Holocaust, black slavery, biopics, and crime to romance, nation, and more, which subjects have foreign cinema including Hollywood not touched upon in so far as their history and culture are concerned?
Even in their fictional projects, Hollywood has taken the premise of real events to present a new perspective compelling the audiences to think differently. Jojo Rabbit is one such movie…right from the cinematography to the storyline and acting, every element has done justice to showcase a 10-year-old boy’s worldview in Nazi Germany.
And yet, for critics like Rich Brownstein, who care more about the facts of their history than mere cinematography, creative ventures at the cost of truth are not enough. Brownstein has a strong disliking for Oscar-winning Schindler’s List.
He says, “The glorification of Nazis, I’m going to say, the humanization of barbarians is a hard no for me. I’m gonna hold the line there. And that’s my main complaint about ‘Schindler’s List.’ Oskar Schindler was a repulsive, repugnant, horrible human being while the first five-and-a-half million Jews were killed. He didn’t care; he participated. And then all of a sudden, he grew a conscience, so he became a normal person. He didn’t become a good person. You would think somebody who was a cog, who had been participating with the Germans since 1936, that guy doesn’t get elevated.”
Brownstein’s reservations are for more such critically-acclaimed movies with the argument that they humanize the perpetrators. This is even after 25% of all American-made Holocaust films have been nominated for an Academy Award.
Now compare the above situation to Bollywood. We have already established that they do not have much to their credit, but have surely made things worse. They don’t dare to make movies based on true stories because the truth does not support their narrative so let’s leave it at that; their movies have largely been based on fiction; they openly deny the suffering of Hindus and pitch Islam as the religion of peace and Hindus as corrupt; they preach brotherhood with Pakistan; they call Hindu history “mythology”; their unending humanitarian gyaan is reserved only for Hindus and Hindu Deities.
It is tough to say whether Bollywood derives any inspiration from the foreign cinema at all or if they only take away the wrong message to suit their agenda. The reason one thinks that Bollywood probably looks up to Hollywood is because of the wannabe Game of Thrones and Marvel-like optics in their movies, devoid of any cultural connection with the audience even when the story is India’s very own.
As far as Adipurush is concerned, whoever asked Om Raut and the team to touch the subject? Not the Ram-revering Hindu for sure. Unless of course, they meant to insult us.
No understanding of their audience, no understanding of their culture, no knowledge of history
How does the world’s biggest film industry in a country with 80% Hindu population manage to rip into shreds the story of Ramayana? The only logical answer based on the above anatomy is the deep cultural disconnect.
It takes knowing the pulse of everyday India. It takes witnessing the spiritual sentiments of a middle-class Hindu. It takes experiencing the Divinity at holy sites. It takes learning what it means to be stripped of one’s identity. It takes learning what it means to watch your old life being reduced to dust only to start a new one in a new land. It takes reading about the heroes in our history who chose death and suffering for the nation over compromise. That is if B-Town has the time for these apart from the exploits of fame and money.
Bollywood is marred by the blot of terrorism. Why we Indians, including ardent Hindus, have after all these years not banned Bollywood is beyond my understanding. The Indian Regional Cinema has much to offer as far as Indian culture and history are concerned. And as for creative inspiration, foreign cinema is at our disposal so long as we do not let falsehoods and half-truths veil our judgment.
Adipurush has proven that Bollywood is ill-intended toward Hindus, they lack the skill and delicate craftsmanship required to tell one of the greatest epics of this land and let’s not kid ourselves, they never meant to do justice to it. Any Hindu expecting Bollywood to tell their stories truthfully is fooling themselves.
