By Ujwala P and Rita Cardeira
New Delhi, Apr 4 (EFE).- With general elections around the corner in India, the last few weeks have witnessed several movie releases that promote or support the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who appears favorite to secure a third term in power.
The movies are based on issues such as politicians from the BJP, a university known as the bastion of left-wing activism and on historical figures and events, among others.
Some of these movies directly refer to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government, presenting it in a favorable light ahead of the elections, to be held in seven phases between Apr. 19 and Jun. 1.
In the movie Article 370, based on the Modi government’s controversial decision to remove the special status for Jammu and Kashmir, a Narendra Modi look-alike serving as prime minister leads bureaucrats and intelligence officers in the fight against militancy in Muslim-majority Kashmir.
While critics dubbed the movie, released in February, as a thinly veiled propaganda film, Modi said, “I do not know what the film is all about, but (…) it will be useful for people to get correct information” on the abrogation of Article 370.
A movie on India’s premier institution, Jawaharlal Nehru University, known as a critical voice against the Hindu nationalist BJP, hit the screens on Apr. 5.
“Can one educational university break the country?” the movie trailer asks of the institution that has produced many notable figures, including Nobel laureate in economics Abhijit Banerjee and several politicians across the political spectrum.
There is a clear relationship between these “propaganda” movies and the BJP government, Delhi University professor Apoorvanad Jha told EFE.
“They are mutually beneficial because these movies will help the BJP politically, and the BJP, in return, will ensure revenue and profit for these filmmakers,” Jha said.
In recent years, lawmakers from the ruling BJP have promoted movies that suit their pro-Hindu ideological narrative.
The movie The Kerala Story, based on young girls manipulated by Muslim men to join the militant group Islamic State in Syria, was one such case.
The movie, released in May 2023, was made tax-free in several BJP-ruled states whose chief ministers promoted the film.
It belongs to the list of “opportunistic, quickly made, badly researched, badly acted cinema with shoddy direction,” film critic and screenwriter Raja Sen told EFE.
“Directors and actors heading towards right-wing cinema are doing it out of a certain opportunistic desperation,” Sen said, adding they do so so that the prime minister or the home minister can discuss it at a political rally or make it tax-free.
Among the movies released in March were a biopic on Savarkar, a historic figure from the far-right Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) idolized by the BJP, and a movie called “Bastar: The Naxal Story,” which showed the decades-long conflict between the Indian forces and the left-wing militia in central India.
Censorship under the Modi government has given rise to such propaganda movies, Sen said.
“We are seeing a certain level of cultural imposition that is becoming very hard to get away from,” he said, adding, “it’s worrisome for the industry right now because a lot of independent voices and a lot of strong voices are not being allowed to make films or tell stories the way they want to tell them.”
The sudden surge of propaganda movies in Bollywood, the Hindi cinema industry, comes after the 2022 success of The Kashmir Files, a movie on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, a minority Hindu group, from their homeland.
While the movie claimed to be based on true events, movie critics called the story one-sided, distasteful, and frightening.
The public reaction to the movie called for violence against Muslims in India and blamed the main opposition party, Congress, for the atrocities against Kashmiri Hindus.
The movie collected $40.4 million at the box office, compared to the around $2 million spent on making it.
“Having tasted blood with Kashmir Files, the industry thought they would keep doing this every month and make money out of it,” professor of cinema and literature at Krea University in Andhra Pradesh, Sayandeb Chowdhry, told EFE.
But the recent bunch of pro-government Bollywood movies have not been able to replicate the success of Kashmir Files.
“I think people have started to realize the pattern and hence are not taking these movies seriously,” Chowdhry said.
Regardless of their commercial success, experts fear the ripple effects of these movies around the election season.
“Movies can shape our imagination, change the way we look at the world, and affect our vital decisions. One of them is the way we vote,” said Professor Jha. EFE
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