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Wednesday, October 05, 2005
A strain of saffron
Shyam Benegal is quoted by PTI as saying:
That's the worrying part.
Saffronisation of the polity during late 1990s was sharply reflected in popular Hindi cinema made in that period. Some of the Hindi films made during that period displayed an intransigence where Pakistan and Muslims are made synonymous.I think Benegal is confusing correlation with causation here. (Post hoc ergo propter hoc.)I don't believe that the BJP/NDA government was influential enough to inspire the subject of Bollywood films. The saffron beliefs that Benegal talks about were -- and are -- widely prevalent across India, something that is reflected in the fact that Border and Gadar were huge hits, and the BJP did come to power at the centre. Mainstream producers make films according to the market, and politicians play to the votebanks. Rather than one causing the other, the saffron strains in Bollywood and Indian politics both came from the same source: the Indian people.
Nationalism and secularism was considerably narrowed down and made an exclusive preserve of the Hindu Community. You can see this in JP Dutta's hit film Border. Excessive jingoism is even more crudely depicted in another film Ghadar [sic].
That's the worrying part.
