Social media these days is flooded with memes and short videos (also known as reels) of Allu Arjun starer Telugu movie Pushpa. The song ‘Teri Nazar..’ has been watched more than 160 million times and the movie’s Hindi dubbing itself has survived more than 50 days in the cinema halls and earned more than 250 crores. This success has emerged at a time when even grand Bollywood movies like Ranbeer Singh starer 83 and Salman Khan Starrer Antim etc. have been finding it extremely difficult to even survive on the box office, forget about becoming a blockbuster. The success of the South Indian movie Pushpa is not an exception. In fact, for the last couple of years, regional cinema, especially south Indian movies like KGF, Bahubali, kabali etc. have become much more popular than their Bollywood counterparts. So much so that the established Bollywood actors are themselves pondering for the reason. Bollywood over a period of time has become extremely repetitive, monolithic and filled up with movies copied either from Korea, the USA or Indian regional cinema (Spl. Telugu movies). Very conveniently, these copies are eulogised as “Indian remake”.
Bollywood movies, for the last couple of decades, have become out of sync with the thought process and mindset of the Indian masses, resulting in South Indian movies gaining prominence among the movie lovers of India. One of the reasons behind this epic fall has been the dominant narrative allegedly propagated by the Bollywood movies, which, severe film critiques argue, reflects their biases against the Hindu religion. In movies after movies, a Hindu Bania is always reflected as a fraud, who charges exorbitant interest from the poor and uses muscle power to settle the scores. Pandit/Pujari is made to look like a potential rapist and a conman. Temples are projected as safe havens for all anti-social activities. On the other hand, a religious leader of a minority community is pictured as a true patriot, an honest, upright person whose source of all this honesty and uprightness is his religion.
Interestingly, South Indian movies narrate well about the ancient culture of India, as well as about the social realities and problems, without exaggerating it. Historically, temples have been the centre of village economy too, apart from being that of spirituality. This fact is very well projected by the South Indian movies, while in the Bollywood movies, temples are used by actors for fliting or by the villain for some notorious activity. This is somewhat parallel to the history of North and South India. While North India’s history is marked with Delhi Sultanate and Mughals, South India feels proud about dynasties that have created magnificent physical and administrative structures like the Cholas, Cheras, Pandyas, Chalukyas, Hoysala and of course, the Vijaynagara kingdom.
Not every movie is bad in Bollywood. There are some movies that gained fame and money through the topic of nationalism like Uri, holiday, baby, Shehenshah, Tanha Ji, Kesari etc. to name a few. Bollywood needs to come up with more originality, creativity, innovation and respect for nationalism, freedom struggle and the ancient culture of India. Shunning the decade-old leftist ideological framework of story projection is the first step it needs to take. Merely having a big star in the movie is no more a guarantee for success. A good story, powerful acting and a convincing narrative are a must now. Bollywood can continue to ignore this at its own peril.