A War on the ‘Khans’; How Do Indian Extremists Use Bollywood to Combat Islam?

Indian Bollywood film studios are known for playing important roles in maintaining the peaceful coexistence of all religions in the country, especially Hindus and Muslims.

Over the years, Bollywood has produced many films that support the unity of Indians without fanaticism to a particular religion, such as: Amar Akbar Anthony film which supported brotherhood between Hindus, Muslims and Christians, and My Name Is Khan film, which defended Muslims against Islamophobia.

But the extremist Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which has been ruling for seven years, has recently begun pressing for a fundamental change in Bollywood's films of demonizing Muslims and foully portraying them as terrorists, which multiplied Hindu attacks against them.

 

Demonization of Muslims

This appeared recently in two cases, the first was the emergence of films that are hostile to Muslims such as Sooryavanshi film, which alleges the abduction of Hindu girls by Muslims to convert them to Islam.

On November 15, 2021, the American newspaper The Washington Post considered this film a dangerous development that makes it impossible, after watching it, not to think about Nazi Germany, where Hitler established a film industry that obeyed him and made propaganda films against the Jews.

This was followed by a Hindu campaign against what they called jihadist love in Bollywood, and they criticized the appearance of the Muslim hero in Indian films while kissing Hindu girls, because the actor is a Muslim and not an Indian.

The second case was represented in the increasing hostility towards the representatives of the Indian cinema and the distortion of their image by fabricating cases against them.

Such as the accusation of the son of the famous actor Shah Rukh Khan of being involved in a drug case to damage his father's image, which was described as being orchestrated.

On December 7, 2021, the British newspaper The Independent said that this comes as part of the attempts of extremist Indian nationalists to silence the voice of Bollywood symbols and tarnish their image.

“The reason for the campaign against Shah Rukh Khan was his explicit views against Hindu extremists, and his fear that religious intolerance would return India to the Middle Ages, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party took power,” it indicated.

Hindu fanaticism is not limited to attacking Muslims in Bollywood cinema; it turned to sports by attacking the only Muslim member of the Indian cricket team and calling him a traitor, because his performance against the Pakistan team in one of the World Cup matches, they did not like.

Cases were also fabricated against Muslim students on charges of terrorism and some of them were imprisoned on charges of supporting Pakistan in that match.

A clothing company also faced a campaign to boycott it because the models were without Hindu cultural labels.

A BJP MP warned a tire company for showing a Muslim superstar (Aamir Khan) in an advertisement for the Hindu festival of Diwali; a Muslim comedian was also forced to cancel his shows in Mumbai after Hindu extremists threatened to burn the venue down.

 

Bollywood Khans

Although the Muslim actor Shah Rukh Khan defended Muslims in the face of Islamophobia in his movie My Name Is Khan (I Am Not a Terrorist), but he was unable to defend himself in his country, under the current extremist government of India.

The reason is that the extremist ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and its supporters moved from attacking Muslim stores and companies to threatening Bollywood, due to the stardom of a number of Muslim actors working in its films, called the “Bollywood Khans.”

There are about 10 actors in the name of “Khan” in Bollywood, the most famous of them are the trio Shah Ru Khan, Aamir Khan, and Salman Khan.

Hindu extremists are calling for a boycott of their films and forcing Bollywood to stop producing films for them in which they accept Hindu women.

Shah Rukh Khan and other Muslim actors have been attacked on social media and accused of terrorism, the tax department pursued them, and their children were defamed by order of the authorities, according to The Independent newspaper.

Hindu extremists have previously accused Shah Rukh Khan of being a Pakistani agent and traitor who lives in India but whose soul is in Pakistan, which prompted him to write an article in 2013, criticizing Hindu extremism, and seeking to accuse him of being unpatriotic.

It is indicated that Shah Rukh Khan participated in 61 films, 17 of which earned revenues of about $13 million, owns a production company, and won several national and international awards.

 

The Independent newspaper referred to the arrest of Muslim comedian Munawar Faruqui on Indian New Year's Day (April 13, 2021) on accusations that he was making jokes that harmed the religious feelings of Hindus.

Faruqui spent 37 days in detention, simply because he was a Muslim, before the Supreme Court decided to approve his release on temporary bail.

Actor Aamir Khan was also subjected to the same hostility when he expressed his concern in 2016 about the increase in Hindu intolerance.

Supporters of the extremist ruling party launched a campaign against him that prompted the electronics brand Snapdeal to remove him from its advertising campaign.

The Tax Authority also attacked the homes of Muslims such as director Anurag Kashyap and actress Taapsee Pannu in Mumbai at the beginning of 2021 without justification, and the newspapers said it was a retaliatory raid, given Kashyap and Pannu's criticism of Prime Minister Modi.

“The current government understands the soft power of Bollywood, and this is the reason behind its attempts to control it,” said Kaveree Bamzai, author of the book The Three Khans and the Emergence of New Cinema in India.

“The government is pushing prominent Hindu figures in the film industry to adopt its idea of building the Hindu state, despite the rejection of this racism by many,” Bamzai told The Independent.

The Independent quoted Indian critics as saying that “the extremist Hindu government is flexing its muscles to control Bollywood, which is estimated to be worth billions, and relies on the Muslim actor as a global brand.”

 

Cultural Obliteration

Debasish Roy Chowdhury, an Indian writer, says in an article published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on November 1, 2021 that “Muslims suffer marginalization and hatred since the start of the frenzied Hindu nationalist rule of the BJP 7 years ago.”

The author of the book To Kill a Democracy: India's Passage to Despotism adds: “Under Modi, echoes of what happened in Nazi Germany in the 1930s are rising. Muslim actors are being harassed and more doors are closed in their faces.”

Chowdhury describes the arrest and imprisonment of actor Shah Rukh Khan's son as a suspected drug crime and a satirical theatrical, the law has become a fig leaf to hide the crumbling democracy.

“What happened with the Muslim star's son is just a drama that was organized for political distraction or corruption, and ensured that Modi's party and its governing institutions sought to crush Muslims with their bigotry,” he considers.

“The dramatic arrest of Shah Rukh Khan's son had a much greater purpose. It is sending a message that even the most powerful Muslims in India are not safe anymore,” he said.

The writer criticized the elimination of political representation of Muslims in Parliament, noting that “among the 303 members of the ruling (out of 543) in the House of Representatives directly elected by Parliament, there is not a single Muslim.”

“What is happening more like organized cultural and political obliterations and the systematic concealment of Muslims from history, cultural and public spaces by the extremist Hindu party, Islamic street signs, neighborhoods and cities have even been renamed Hindu ones,” Chowdhury considered.

 

Hindu Extremism

Supporters of the ruling party were not satisfied with attacking Muslim Bollywood actors and calling for a boycott of their films; but they intervened to produce films that hostile and incite Muslims, and show them brutally.

Sooryavanshi film is one of the last of these hostile films, and it revolves around a fictitious story about the kidnapping of Christian girls by Muslims to convert them to Islam, and also promoted myths about the conspiracies of the so-called jihadist love.

The Washington Post says about the film that full of the disgusting scenes about Muslims, and highlights the dangers of lies in Indian cinema in the recent period against Islam.

“This film reflects a terrible picture of Islamophobia. The problem is that this is one of the most successful films in India. This contributes to a climate of hatred and discrimination against more than 200 million Muslims in the country,” it said.

“The film does not attempt to hide its agenda, and its support for Hindu nationalism for Modi’s government, and it justify the oppression of Muslims in Kashmir under the pretext of eliminating terrorism,” it also indicated.

“If Bollywood continues this aggressive bias into nationalism and anti-Muslim hatred, it will have blood on its hands,” the American newspaper warned.

On the popular level, some extremists are inciting against Muslim actors under the pretext of kissing Hindu girls in Indian temples, and demand a boycott of any Bollywood films that depict what they call jihadist love between Muslims and Hindus.

 

 

 

Islamophobia

On January 18, 2020, another Bollywood movie, Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior film, sparked a great controversy in India, due to its distortion of the image of Muslim historical leaders.

The film also came in conjunction with a propaganda campaign launched by Modi's party to mitigate the impact of the constitutional amendments introduced by the government to the naturalization law, which target Muslims and consider them second-class citizens.

This film came just one year after the anti-Muslim film Padmavati, which talked about a Muslim leader named Alauddin Khilji, as the film portrayed him as a bloodthirsty leader, who shed a lot of blood in order to expand his empire in southern India.

The film was keen to show Muslims in a brutal way, such as depicting a Muslim leader torturing a person while biting a piece of crocodile meat, in order to highlight his animal characteristics.

By doing so, the film seeks to perpetuate a historical stereotype about Muslims, which is the image of savage, meat-eating and bloodthirsty Muslims, as Indian critics say.

Indian Bollywood has the largest audience in the world, according to the statistics of Statista, selling 2 billion film tickets a year and producing 1,000 films a year, according to the Financial Times on January 13, 2020.

In January 2020, Bollywood entered into an unexpected clash with Modi, when stars participated in demonstrations at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi against the anti-Muslim citizenship law and violence against students.

This prompted ruling party’s extremists to demand that some of them be killed such as actress Deepika Padukone, who joined the demonstrations, along with actor Farhan Akhtar, actor Mohammad Zeeshan and director Anurag Kashyap, according to the Financial Times.