Like many other Indians I was so excited that Slumdog Millionaire, a movie set in India, received the best movie award at the Golden Globe Awards that I rushed to see it. However, my pride and joy turned to sadness because, for no special advantage to the storyline, it showed Hindus rioting and killing Muslims. It also showed eye-gouging of a child in the context of a favorite bhajan (devotional song) of so many Hindus, darshan do ghanshyam. In fact the screenplay has been changed substantially from the novel to include sensational but defamatory materials. Although a vast majority of Hindus are secular and nonviolent (the number of sectarian killings in India, although not justified- are far less than in Northern Ireland, Horn of Africa, Pakistan and many other parts of the world), since the Bombay riots of 1993, it has become a trend in Bollywood to depict Hindus as killers of Muslims, because Hindus are soft targets, not reacting as angrily or violently as some other communities do when their prophets are slighted . Starting with Bombay (1995) that was based upon the Bombay riots of 1993 that were started by Muslims in South Bombay but subsequently avenged by Shiva Sena, Bollywood has made Parzania (2005) and Dharm (2007) in which Hindu mobs are shown marauding Muslim neighborhoods. Parzania (2005) sounds like a one-sided extrajudicial trial and conviction of Hindus of Gujarat and tries to incite negative feelings against Hindus in Parsees who have lived in harmony with Hindus for centuries. It does not mention the beginnings of these riots in Godhra in which innocent pilgrims were burned to death (although the beginning did not justify the end). Dharm (2007), too, shows a Muslim mother pleading with a Hindu priest to take her child in his care to save him from Hindu mobs attacking and killing Muslims, but his humanity takes the better of his orthodox views and he risks is life to save the child. These movies gloss over the fact that the majority of Muslims in India live in harmony with Hindus.
Negative stereotyping of Hindus in Bollywood is coming from several quarters. Some producers and writers who themselves are products of secular and liberalized Hinduism, such as Geeta Mehta, have made a business of profiting from the social evils that crept into Hinduism in the medieval times. Instead of presenting a balanced picture of the good and bad in the religion and depicting a few enlightened characters from within the Hindu society as well as bad ones they present an almost evil caricature of Hinduism. While her theme of atrocities against widows is noble her movie does not include enlightened Hindu characters (Hindus reformers as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Debendra Nath Tagore and Swami Dayananda campaigned against mistreatment of widows) and adds fuel to the fire by showing child abuse. In Chingari (2006) Mithun Chakravorti plays the role of a pundit who rapes village women in the name of tantra. Although the movie ends with a rebellion by women, one gets the impression that pundits and swamis are rapists and imposters. Banaras (2006) shows the cruelty of an upper caste Hindu against the lower caste lover of his daughter and once again the complicity of Hindu priests in the injustice.
While Bollywood brazenly portrays the social evils of Hinduism (because Hindus are indifferent or tolerant), it rarely displays the social evils of other religions and communities in India, perhaps for fear of reaction and agitation. While Hindu priests and rituals are often scandalized, the clergy of other religions are shown as noble and kind. While the sacred words of other religions are used respectfully in appropriate contexts, Hindu sacred words such as Om Shanti Om (Om Shanti Om, 2007) are used profanely in dance sequences involving half-clad women gyrating sensually.
Bollywod has tremendous power in shaping the fashions, social behavior and worldview of Asian-Indians and others' view of India and Hinduism and therefore, should be cognizant of its social responsibility. While I understand that media has a responsibility to create awareness about social evils and am not advocating for sanitized images of religions, I object to the discriminatory behavior of Bollywood towards Hinduism and its priests, rituals and sacred words. I urge Bollywood story writers, movie directors and producers to present a balanced view, not to hurt the feelings of any community, not to belittle their prophets, avatars and clergy and not to incite hatred against a particular religion or community.
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