Bollywood is more than 100 years old and got its name from Hollywood and today, taking into account filmmaking across the world, Bollywood is second only to Hollywood in terms of size, number of films produced, money made, and in what’s called ‘soft international power.’ Take note, China’s film industry has been huffing and puffing to beat Bollywood to second place, but couldn’t for all the water in Pangong Tso Lake!

The Chinese film industry steers clear of political themes and memes. Wise decision, too. Which Chinese filmmaker will dare make a film on Tiananmen Square, 1989? ‘Are you joking, out of your head?’ will be the horrified response. The Chinese Communist Party is not a Censor Board, it’s a firing squad! And there is no Article 15 in China to make a political-secular statement with on screen.

Bollywood on the other hand is to the secular-born. For reasons unfathomable, filmmakers of the Indian subcontinent chose Bombay to make their dreams come true on celluloid and Bombay, like New York and Los Angeles, was a melting pot of people of all races, speaking an umbrella of languages, and in the process settling for what came to known as the ‘Bombayiah Hindi’, the ‘apunka Hindi.’

Of course, over the decades, Bollywood has shed much of early ‘Bombayiah’ traits and as the city transformed, so did Bollywood movies. More money poured in and much, much more money was made. Actors acquired glamour, courted love and came to have fantastic lifestyles and stupendous fan-followings. The first Bollywood families (film dynasts) took root and some of these glitterati were wooed by those in positions of power. It was a two-way trafficking of influence that Bollywood and the Lutyen’s power-circle preyed on.

For a long time, there was no rightwing, and what came to be called ‘bigotry’, at play. Movie-makers didn’t have to think ‘secular’ those days of before-1975, when ‘secular’ was added to the Constitution’s preamble and both country and Bollywood woke up to rightwing accusations of ‘pseudo-secularism’ and ‘minority appeasement.’ The first opposition to ‘secularism’ can be traced to that year of Emergency. Before that there was no ‘secularism’ to target even if there was an ‘ethos of secularism’ etched into the Indian psyche and nobody had read it from the preamble of the Constitution to remind people and government that religion and politics – religion and state – ought to be kept separate, apart at all costs.

Bollywood films from the earliest ones have had a lot of religion to them. Showing the plurality with a singularity of mission – all religions lead to that one God! Bollywood movies sent out an all-inclusive message of communal and religious harmony and amity. And the idea of secularism that’s been ‘Indian’ from time immemorial, as some champions of secularism keep saying.

Lead actors in Bollywood movies have all carried a secular halo. The villains may have had shades of the communal but that was only to give context to the plot and contrast the secular credentials of the hero from the communal taints of the villain. There were films like ‘Kabuliwalla’ which filled the heart with a special glow of religious harmony, happiness.

Bollywood-style secularism has always shown people of different faiths living in communal peace. Khan and Ram are friends forever! Amar, Akbar, Antony!!! The temple and the mosque were seen together. Bollywood stuck to these binaries and rarely dug communal roots. It’s only in recent times that Bollywood movies started scrutinizing secular credentials in secular India with films like ‘Mulk’, to cite one example.

Otherwise, Bollywood was happy making ‘boy-and-girl round the mulberry tree’ films. That being said, Bollywood has willy-nilly, through thick and thin, battered by violence and targeted by terror, kept firm to its secular ethos. In recent decades, following the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party – fed by the feeling that the RSS is here to stay and not going anywhere – and the slow decline of the Congress party, ‘secularism’ has taken a beating, under attack not only in Bollywood but across India.

So much so, for tens of thousands and thousands of Indians, ‘secularism’ is today a dirty word, a biased idea that divides people in the name of appeasement and plays one community against another, though, to be honest, this sounds like the perfect definition of/for communism.

Anyway, to get back to topic, Bollywood has always exuded a spirit of secularism. It’s the one ‘place’ where there’s no price tag on separating religion from religion to the detriment of the other. True, there’s a feeling that the average Bollywood-type, irrespective of which religious-mint, is more ‘Bend it like Khan’ than ‘Bol Bachchan’, but that could be because for a long time Bollywood is ruled by the Khans – Shahrukh, Salman and Aamir, not to forget Saif Ali ‘also’ Khan.

The moot point is, Bollywood is under serious assault. Partly, Bollywood itself is to blame. Largely, rightwing forces aligned to the ruling BJP at the Centre are after it. Running a vendetta-style multi-media campaign. That said, although ‘left-liberal secular media’ outnumber rightwing ‘propaganda machine-parts’, the perception is that public opinion is with the rightwing, and it’s uphill for Bollywood’s “druggies” at this point in time.

To get out of the sickening morass, certain people in Bollywood should turn a new leaf and shuck the marijuana-lifestyle. Narcotics is not nice and Bollywood’s reputation is in tatters. Second, Bollywood should correct the image that it’s financed by D-Company, money blacker than the insides of an intestine. Third, Bollywood is not “34 production companies.”

Bollywood is a whole mass of people with dreams and ambitions. Producers, filmmakers, lead actors and extras, technicians and sound technicians, theatres and processing labs, distributors and entertainers all…the whole paraphernalia. Last, the word ‘nepotism’ should go out the window, and ‘outsider talent’ should get the same chances ‘family talent’ gets.

Sushant Singh Rajput is a wakeup call. So far, ‘Justice for SSR’ does not have a ‘communal’ overtone. But there’s always a chance that it might acquire one. If time elapses and Bollywood’s fate is left to political imbeciles and wooden-headed cops. Police who don’t know what’s in an FIR. Police forget that there are in hack-dom these days of TV and Social Media ‘journos’ who can shine their way into all headquarters, including that of the Congress party, and shoot candid!

The danger to the “secular ethos of Bollywood” comes from powerful rightwing media, which lay claim to “honesty” and is ably helped by poor handling of situations by police and politicians. The secular left-liberal media, unfortunately, has laid itself open to charges of “corrupt practices” and collusion with shady police. Again, in these days of the coronavirus, Bollywood will have protect and nurture its secular ethos by itself, with movies that are so secular that it scares the wings off every rightwing bird. Come rain or sunshine, Bollywood should stay rooted to its secular ethos. (IPA Service)