Hindus Tighten Their Grip on Bollywood: How Does It Affect Muslim Actors?

The Indian authorities, led by the extremist Hindu party, Bharatiya Janata (BJP), stepped up their restrictions on the Bollywood film industry, especially its Muslim heroes, and began imposing restrictions on their films on the grounds of “insulting the Hindu faith.”

The last of these restrictions was the postponement of the new film, Pathaan, in which the Indian Muslim international star, Shah Rukh Khan, is among the heroes after extremist nationalist groups linked to BJP threatened to prevent the film screening, claiming that it offends Hindus, according to The Times.

Hindus called for a boycott of Pathaan, claiming it depicts “Muslim terrorists” as victims. The invitations came despite the fact that the Muslim actor plays in the film the role of an Indian Muslim officer who defends his country against a terrorist attack.

The Hindus protested, claiming that an actress appears in the film wearing an orange bikini, which is the color of the flags and clothes of the extremist Hindu party, and sang, saying: “Besharam Rang,” which means “shameless color.”

 

Threats and Boycotts

A Hindu monk in Madhya Pradesh, called Jagadguru Paramhans, had previously threatened the Indian Muslim actor Shah Rukh Khan saying he would burn him.

On December 26, 2022, Paramhans accused Shah Rukh Khan of insulting the sacred color (saffron) for Hindus after using it in a song in his new movie.

The Central Board responsible for certifying films demanded changes after objecting to the film’s heroine, Deepika Padukone, who wears a saffron bikini, during Shah Rukh Khan’s song, claiming that the Hindu party considers it a “sacred color.”

The New Yorker said on October 10, 2022, that film censors from the Bharatiya Janata Party have begun to refuse many films, claiming they include swearing and references to sex, but the refusal is, in fact, due to reservations about Muslim actors.

The magazine explains that this government censorship did exist in the past but was overcome by appealing to the court. In 2022 the government abolished this court, and the only way for filmmakers became the long and costly litigation process.

Despite the Hindu campaigns to boycott the film and stop its screening, film critic Shubhra Gupta said the tsunami of fans poured in to buy tickets for the movie, so much so that she couldn’t find tickets for her family.

She explained to The Times that the turnout for watching the film on opening day is unprecedented, and all cinemas have full reservations.

Shah Rukh Khan, who returned to the cinema after nearly four years, was not the only one to suffer from the Hindu boycott campaigns for his latest film.

These hostile campaigns succeeded in prompting Indians to boycott films of some other Muslim stars, such as Aamir Khan’s movie Laal Singh Chaddha, the Indian version of the Forrest Gump American movie, which prompted the actor to issue a statement saying: “I love my country, please don’t boycott my film.”

Even Hindu actors who praised the films of fellow Muslims, such as Hrithik Roshan, were targeted by these extremists, and their films became the target of the same boycott campaign.

Civic Media Observatory confirms that veteran Bollywood actors Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor were subjected to fanatical Hindu boycott campaigns on social media just because he is Muslim and she is Hindu in Laal Singh Chaddha film.

Right-wing groups participated in a similar boycott campaign against actor Aamir Khan in 2015 after he stated that his wife (Hindu) feels insecure in India due to the increased religious intolerance in the country.

 

Manipulating Bollywood

The decline of Bollywood religious tolerant “old form” started in conjunction with the rise of Hindu cultural intolerance and the ensuing marginalization of Muslims in politics, culminating in the era of the current regime, which came to power in 2014 by “manipulating” cinema.

One of the weapons of these extremists was the implementation of Hindu boycott campaigns against Bollywood, claiming that their goal was to “clean it up,” as for them it was “a den of sex, drugs and Hindu hatred,” but their real target was Muslim actors.

The most targeted in this campaign were the “Khan trio,” Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, and Salman Khan, Muslim actors who have dominated Bollywood films for nearly 25 years.

Asia Sentinel website confirmed on January 14, 2023, that Indian cinema is gradually turning to submit to Hindu nationalism, and fears are growing that it will become completely in the grip of the far right and the Hindu party.

The website quoted “critics” that the famous Indian Bollywood film industry is currently working to “freeze” Muslim actors and move away from entertainment to serve the right-wing political goals of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

The industry is also heading, under pressure from the ruling Hindu party, to the so-called “cultural purification of Indian society,” which means the systematic marginalization of minorities, especially Muslims. This is supported by organized boycott campaigns on Twitter run by BJP activists.

The Asia Sentinel also noted that the growing Hindu right-wing influence in the film industry represents a growing concern that they seek to impose Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism, across the country as the BJP government works to destroy ways for other religions and ethnic groups.

The Civic Media Observatory’s research said that right-wing Hindu groups had identified Muslim Bollywood actors and the entire industry as their target, claiming that they are liberal elites trying to brainwash the country and be hostile to Hinduism.

The Observatory noted that extremist Hindus classified Muslim actors like Aamir Khan as “terrorists.” A bogus conspiracy theory called “Love Jihad” has been created, claiming that Bollywood is encouraging Muslim men to marry Hindu women to convert them to Islam.

It also stated that with the rise of Hindu bigotry and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party to power, the Hindu nationalist agenda had been strengthened, and fringe Hindutva groups now took center stage in political talks, leading to increased discrimination against Muslims.

The extremist Bharatiya Janta began pressing for a fundamental change in the stories of Indian film studios to “demonize Muslims” and present them as terrorists, which doubled the Hindu attacks against them.

 

Antagonizing and Defaming

This has recently emerged in two cases: the first is the emergence of anti-Muslim films, such as Sooryavanshi, which alleges the kidnapping of Hindu girls by Muslims to convert them to Islam.

The Washington Post considered the film as a dangerous development that makes it impossible, after watching it, not to think about Nazi Germany, where Hitler established a cinematic industry that obeyed him and made propaganda films against the Jews.

The second case was the increasing hostility towards Muslim Indian cinema actors; this was represented through fabricating cases against Muslims, such as accusing the son of the famous actor Shah Rukh Khan of being involved in a drug case to damage his father’s image.

The Independent said on December 7, 2021, that this is part of the attempts of extremist Indian nationalists to silence the voice of the symbols of the Indian film industry (Bollywood) and to tarnish their image.

It pointed out that this campaign against Shah Rukh Khan was because of his frank statements against Hindu extremists and his fear that “religious fanaticism will return India to the Middle Ages” after the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party assumed power.

The film industry in India has the largest global audience, according to Statista, as it sells two billion cinema tickets and produces 1,000 films annually, according to what was published by the Financial Times on January 13, 2020.

In January 2020, Bollywood entered into an unexpected clash with the Modi government 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 extremists to demand the killing of some of them, such as actress Deepika Padukone, who joined the protesters along with actors Farhan Akhtar and Muhammad Zeeshan, and directors Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar and her brother, according to the Financial Times.

Hindu campaigns are not limited to running coordinated boycott campaigns for films of Muslim heroes. The extreme right has sought to influence Bollywood by producing films that glorify India’s Hindu past and distort the realities of its Islamic past.

 

Falsify History

The Times confirmed on June 21, 2022, that the Hindu Indian government is working to delete any references to Islamic rule from the school curricula and everything related to the Muslims who ruled the country for many centuries.

It said that this step comes after the distortion of the image of Islamic rule in Bollywood Indian cinema and the Hindu party films’ encouragement to attack the former Islamic rule of India.

As part of the five-year review of curricula and textbooks, the Indian authorities deleted chapters detailing the Mongol ruling families, as well as removed all references to the rule of the first sultans and the rise of Islam in India.

Many historians have credited the Mongols with establishing a rich culture within India, including monuments such as the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort in Delhi, but the Mongols fell from the throne at the hands of the British after the country’s rebellion in 1857.

It is noteworthy that the Mongol empire ruled most of the country from the beginning of the 16th century until the middle of the 19th century, while Islam reached what was known as the Sindh countries (Pakistan and India) since the Umayyad era; Muslims ruled that country for 8 centuries.

As part of the Indian government’s extremist attempts to cover up the crimes of the Hindus and the prime minister, the government criticized a BBC documentary about Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat riots.

On January 22, 2023, the Indian government claimed that it had blocked videos and online tweets sharing links to the BBC film, calling it “hostile and anti-India propaganda, undermining the sovereignty and integrity of India.”

The two-part documentary proves that Hindu nationalist Modi, then president of Gujarat, ordered the police to turn a blind eye to violence in the state that left 1,000 people dead, mostly from the Muslim minority.

In 2002, riots took place in Gujarat after 59 Hindus were killed in a train fire, and the government accused 31 Muslims. Hindus began killing Muslims, who human rights activists estimated numbered nearly a thousand.

The documentary includes a report issued by the British Foreign Office quoting unnamed sources that Modi met with police officers and ordered them not to interfere in acts of violence against Muslims committed by right-wing Hindu groups that followed the killing of Hindus.

The report pointed to “political motives” for the systematic acts of violence aimed at “ethnic cleansing of Hindu areas of Muslims,” and accused Narendra Modi of being “directly responsible” for the massacre there.