Muzzling Bollywood: An Indo Brit speaks out

Yesterday on his BBC blog, Soutik Biswas's India, Biswas analyzed why Bollywood is incapable of taking a stand on any issue -- political or historical, on or off screen. This followed the news from the weekend, where actor Shahrukh Khan became an accidental hero against the Shiv Sena (a local political party and Mumbai's "self-appointed cultural police").

Khan's refusal to retract certain statements regarding Pakistani cricket players reminded Biswas of how easy it has been for the Shiv Sena or anyone else to "muzzle" Bollywood so far. "Why is Bollywood so ineffectual?" he poses the question. A multitude of factors, if Biswas is to be believed, are the reason.

1. Most commercial Hindi language cinema is largely estranged from the realities of modern-day India.
2. Mindless and regressive timepass cinema is killing the industry's imagination because the diaspora demand to see an urban, affluent, glossy India, the India they imagine they grew up in and wish they could live in now.
3. Bollywood is mythical, not historical. It works at the level of the myth. There is no engagement with history.
4. Films are just another commodity, with the seller going to any length to rake in the numbers.

Read the complete argument here.

In other news from Mumbai and beyond...

Art show "Everything is Real: After Life..." opens at Gallery Maskara this evening. Curated by the gallery owner Abhay Maskara, artists Neil Hamon, Peter Buggenhout, Nadia Lichtig, Ruben Bellinkx and Shine Shivan explore various facets of death, desire and the illusion of life in mixed media.

Actor Amitabh Bachchan launched the website of Marathi music directors Ajay and Atul Gogawale, who recently won the National Award for Best Music Direction for the film "Jogwa" at the 56th National Awards, making them the only music directors to have won it for a Marathi movie.