Bollywood and its Hindutva lens

Hindi films are drumming up the good Hindu vs evil Muslim binary, mixing religion with nationalism, and peddling selective stories. Rolla Das unravels their agenda

'Tanhaji' was slammed for being Islamophobic.

Bollywood can’t get enough of historical dramas. ‘Bajirao Mastani’, ‘Padmaavat’, ‘Panipat: The Great Betrayal’, ‘Tanhaji: The unsung hero’, ‘Manikarnika’ and ‘Samrat Prithviraj’ are a few examples of the streak that began in 2015. A problematic streak, it is, if one looks closely.

These films are explicitly framing a saffronised history of India — drumming up the good Hindu versus evil Muslim binary, invoking religious nationalism, and reiterating the need to save the motherland from foreign (read Muslim) invaders.

The aesthetics, timing and ‘tax-free release’ of the films are telling of the frame they are adopting. The claims of artistic imagination are a convenient escape from the director-producer-actors’ glaring nexus in propagandising the politics of the day.

Take the recently-released ‘Samrat Prithviraj’, starring Akshay Kumar, the poster boy of Hindutva as he has come to be known for his choice of films and off-duty appearances.

The film shows the 12th-century Rajput king Prithviraj Chauhan languishing in captivity forever and how he finally kills Mohammad Ghori of the Ghurid Empire in a gladiatorial encounter. Was that true? According to historians, he was released and did rule over a tributary area for some time.

The reiteration of saving Hindustan echoes through dialogues, background music and commentaries. I wonder which Hindustan are the makers referring to in the context of medieval India?

Sample this loose translation of the commentary the film makes in the penultimate scene: ‘The demise of the great Prithviraj Chauhan marked the end of the Hindu empire in north India and the sentiments of Rastriya Swabhimaan (national pride) awakened by him saw its fruition in the Independence’. India fought for 755 years to win over foreign oppressors before ‘Delhi Bharat Mata ki hui’ (that is, Delhi came back to India, our mother), the commentary continues. Historically, it is inaccurate.

Propaganda-wise, it is effective. It works in tandem with other narratives that merge spatially — and temporally-separate events — medieval India with contemporary India, inter-regional conflicts with nationalism, and Indians versus foreigners.

The Ghaznivid empire did capture significant areas of north India and took control of the Delhi Sultanate, which reigned in large parts of India from 1206 to 1526. But India back then was different from the India of today. There was no united Hindustan. Instead, we had the Delhi Sultanate, Kakatiyas, Hoysalas, Pandyas, Cheras, Paramaras and other regions with their kingdoms.

But the film omits the historical references to the ethnic lineage of Prithviraj being a Chauhan and Ghori being a Tajik and imposes the Hindu-Muslim binary. It speaks of the lack of nuance in research given that it has been long debated that the modern-day identities of Hindu-Muslim emanate from the colonial period — definitely not from medieval India.

Medieval history is complex. The erasure of the complex relationships between the various empires in the period is ahistorical.

There’s more. The film draws analogies with mythological Hindu characters like Rama and Krishna to invoke a frame that conforms to the saffron agenda, mixing up religion and nationalism, that is. Also one wonders what does the colour scheme of Hindu-saffron and Muslim-green serve apart from reinstating the binary of India and Pakistan?

‘Samrat Prithviraj’ or other such films are not a retelling of history, but a tool to propagate saffronised histories and divide communities. Aggressive nationalism, the supremacy of Hindu ideology, a call to return to the glory of the undivided Hindu nation and Muslims tormenting Hindus are common tropes.

So in the current political scenario where poems are being censored (a financially flourishing publishing house censored Varavara Rao’s poems), poets are being forgotten (Faiz is omitted from textbooks), and history books are being distorted to demonise communities and emphasise the good Hindu-evil Muslim binary, it is imperative that we take note of these manoeuvres and call out historical distortion. The popcorn can wait.

(The author teaches English and Cultural Studies and writes on cinema, gender and pedagogy).