The Promotion of Peaceful Coexistence between Hindus and Muslims in the Bollywood Film Industry

India has been constantly beset by religious, linguistic, socioeconomic and regional clashes since its partitioning in 1947 (Dalmia 2011, 58). Contemporarily, religious riots are commonplace and in certain areas, such as Dharavi, violence has become accepted as the norm (Sardar 2006, 30; Sen and Wagner 2009, 306). The media plays a pivotal role in Indian society, as in the West, and has the power not only to transfer information to the masses but to mould people’s beliefs (Leab 2002, 120; Balraj 2011, 91). The efficacy of the media as a tool for positive or negative social change has been demonstrated in the twentieth century. Many scholars, for instance, believe that communism fell in the former U.S.S.R. partially due to the influence of Western music and culture on Eastern Bloc youth (Dalmia 2011, 58-59). The media was also used in the Balkans to spread nationalist propaganda and facilitated the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia (Rajgopal 2011, 237). In India, the Bollywood film industry has an enormous influence on popular culture (Chatterjee 2009, vii). Now the largest film industry in the world, it produces over 900 films per annum that are viewed globally by approximately three billion people (Mehta 2005, 52; Gokulsing and Dissanayake 2004, 10; Dalmia 2011, 58). Significantly, Muslims are well represented in the industry and many Bollywood films depict the suffering of Indian Muslims, demonstrate that Muslims can be loyal citizens of India and encourage Muslim youth to practice non-violent forms of Islam. After introducing the roots of religious conflict in modern India, this essay examines the message of Bollywood films and the stance that the industry takes against fundamentalist violent expressions of Hinduism and Islam.

Tension between Hindus and Muslims in India began to intensify during the lead up towards independence. Mahatma Gandhi, realising the limitations of what Western secularism could offer Indian society, worked tirelessly to promote Sarvadharma Sambhav, the peaceful coexistence of all religions (Sen and Wagner 2009, 304). Nevertheless, tensions continued to rise and violence erupted upon India gaining independence in 1947, resulting in the partitioning of Pakistan and East Pakistan from predominantly Hindu India (66). Since then, Hindu nationalism has remained a dominant force in Indian politics. According to Wellman and Tukono (2004, 292), a religious communities oppose competing communities in order to strengthen their sense of identity. Between 1999 and 2004, the Bharatiya Janata Party was in government and promoted the ideology of Hindutva, insisting that Hindus constitute the Indian nation as its original inhabitants and are the sole creators of its culture (Sen and Wagner 2009, 309, 313). This has fuelled numerous atrocities against India’s Muslims in the last decade, often perpetrated by ordinary citizens (30). For example, during the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat, Hindu women actively encouraged the rape of Muslim women and shielded rapists from the police (Banaji 2006, 132). Meanwhile, some Muslims from Jammu and Kashmir feel like they no longer have a place in India and have formed terrorist independence movements (Sardar 2006, 31). Consequently, violence has become a regular part of the daily discourse in some areas and regularly claims lives (Sen and Wagner 2009, 306). Clearly, India has not yet resolved the nation’s Hindu-Muslim divide and the promotion of peaceful coexistence is of prime importance to the country’s future.

Despite the fact that Muslims comprise approximately eleven percent of India’s population, they are still not entirely integrated into the mainstream of politics and public institutions (Sardar 2006, 30). This is a reflection of the aforementioned ideology of Hindutva, which encourages the idea that India is a Hindu nation and should be governed by Hindus (30). Yet, in bold defiance of this discriminating ideology, Muslims retain a very high visibility in the Bollywood film industry. For example, the current three highest-grossing male actors in India are all Muslims with the well-known Muslim surname Khan (Dalmia 2011, 61). Shah Rukh Khan, the most popular of these three megastars, has actually taken it upon himself to promote a respectable image of Islam to the public (62). The situation is much the same with Bollywood music. In 2010 the two biggest hit songs, “Munni Badnam Hui” and “Sheila Ki Jawani”, were choreographed by Farah Khan (58). Likewise, Bollywood’s most respected composer A. R. Rahman, who created the music for Slumdog Millionaire, is a devout Sufi and is known to pray regularly (62). This openness towards Muslims is also evident linguistically in Bollywood movies’ titles, songs and dialogues. Ever since the creation of the first Hindi talkies, Muslim Urdu writers have had a significant presence in Indian cinema (Trivedi 2006, 58). As a result of this influence, Bollywood films are generally made in a stratum of the vernacular that is readily understood by both Hindi and Urdu speakers (Trivedi 2006, 53). This is in stark contrast to the government’s sanctioning of Sanskritic Hindi, which is difficult to understand for Urdu speakers and the uneducated, as the official language of India (53). In fact, the dialect of Hindi that is used in Bollywood films is frequently so close to Urdu that some commentators question whether the films are in Hindi at all. Yet, even though the films are generally not in a highly Sanskritic Hindi, neither are they in a strongly Persianised Urdu (54). Rather, they are made in a colloquial Hindi-Urdu vernacular that crosses religious and cultural barriers in an effort to welcome people of both religions to enjoy the film (Trivedi 2006, 53). In light of the numerous Muslims in the Bollywood film industry as well as its openness to Urdu culture, Bollywood films are evidently a valuable platform for the promotion of peaceful coexistence between Hindus and Muslims.

Despite the fact that Muslims are so prominent in the Bollywood industry, some social commentators argue that its films reinforce the image of Muslims as the “other”, creating mistrust towards them and facilitating their ostracism in Indian society (Balraj 2011, 92). For instance, Muslims are frequently portrayed as either the victims or the perpetrators of crime in the Mumbai underworld (93). When dealing with politics, many Bollywood films blame the nation’s political problems on extremist Islam (Kabir 2010, 377; Dirks 2008, 134). In such films, Muslims are usually identifiable through their stereotypical clothing and grooming. For instance, whilst most men under forty in India have moustaches, Bollywood characters tend to be clean shaven, except for Muslims, criminals and some other characters who can be identified by their beards (Dwyer and Patel 2002, 84). However, even though India’s political problems are frequently blamed on stereotypically-dressed Muslim terrorists, many Bollywood films recognise the responsibility of the state in marginalising India’s minorities and depict the suffering they undergo on a daily basis (Gokulsing and Dissanayake 2004, 68). Bombay, released in 1994, is the story of forbidden love between a Hindu journalist and a Muslim woman. The tragic events of the second half of the film demonstrate the harm inflicted on all members of the community by racial hatred and religious riots (68). In the end of the film, people of various religions form a human chain against the rioters and demonstrate that a community must stand together to combat violence (Banaji 2006, 136-7). Whilst Bombay shows the harm caused to communities by religious hatred, films such as Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro, Garam Hawa and My Name is Khan portray the specific suffering inflicted upon Muslims in India and abroad due to negative stereotypes of their religion. In each of these films, the protagonists live in a hostile world and are ostracised by those around them simply on account of the religion they are born into (Gokulsing and Dissanayake 2004, 67; Balraj 2011, 93-94). These films’ portrayal of the suffering caused by religious hatred is highly significant as this issue is frequently overshadowed in Indian society by the problem of poverty (Saari 2009, 61). Whilst garibi hatao, the removal of poverty, is a noble cause, it is also essential people understand that religious discrimination is a major social problem in India that destroys many homes and needs public concern in order to create a better future for the nation (61).

Bollywood directors also combat the discrimination against Muslims in Indian society by including patriotic Indian Muslims or Pakistanis who are loyal friends to their Indian neighbours in their films’ narratives (Banaji 2006, 154). In Mission Kashmir, I.G. Khan is a heroic Muslim police officer who fights against separatists terrorists in Kashmir, has an unconverted Hindu wife Neelima, and frequently offers sentimental statements about the loyalty of Muslims to the nation (Kabir 2010, 379). Likewise, in My Name is Khan, although the protagonist is ostracised simply due to his Muslim surname, Khan, he heroically overcomes his difficulties and demonstrates that Indian Muslims are not the enemies but partners in the battle against terrorism (384). Lal (1998, 495), on this basis of films such as these, argues that Indian cinema has a greater tendency towards inclusiveness than otherness. This is very important to the promotion of non-violent attitudes towards Muslims as it challenges the concept that all Muslims are an imposition on Hindu India, an idea frequently promoted on Indian television and in the news (Sardar 2006, 30). According to Nepstad (2004, 298), religious terrorists have a strong tendency to portray the perceived enemy in Manichean terms as completely wicked. Peacemakers, however, realise that the line between good and evil lies within each individual, not between religious or ethnic groups (298). Thus, by including heroic Muslim protagonists in Bollywood films, the industry is undermining the notion that all Muslims are terrorists and promoting the peacemaking concept that a person’s goodness is not dependent on their religion.

The portrayal of modernised Muslims as the protagonists in Bollywood films not only encouraging Hindus to accept Muslims as a vital part of India, but critiques fundamentalist Islam to the films’ Muslim audiences. Bollywood films are in fact very popular in Muslim countries (Dalmia 2011, 59). Although the films were banned in Pakistan between 1965 and 2008, they were still watched through satellite and smuggled video tapes (59-60). When the ban was lifted on Indian films, people flooded to cinemas to demonstrate their support for the industry (60). In addition to Pakistan, Bollywood films are also widely watched in the Middle East, which is the industry’s third largest overseas market, and a Bollywood theme park is currently being constructed in Dubai (59). The extreme popularity of the films has aroused the concern of Islamic fundamentalists, who are worried about the influence the films have on Muslim youth (58). According to Sen and Wagner (2009, 299), religious fundamentalism is inversely related to modernity and secularism. In the case of Islam, terrorist organisations demand an extremely strict version of the faith and require people to make a strong stance against Western influence (Nepstad 2004, 297). In stark contrast to these fundamentalist characteristics, Muslim characters and actors in Bollywood demonstrate a willingness to adapt to modernity and compromise with contemporary culture (Dwyer and Patel 2002, 83). An example of this is the aforementioned Mission Kashmir, in which the protagonist I.G. Khan espouses a benevolent expression of Islam that is exulted above the fundamentalist form practiced by the film’s terrorist villains (Kabir 2010, 379). In addition to critiquing violent expressions of Islam, films such as this also challenge Indian Muslims to remain loyal to the interests of the nation, in direct contrast to the philosophy promoted by terrorist organisations which demand that people be primarily loyal to Islam and sanction the breaking of laws (Nepstad 2004, 297). A moderate form of Islam is also promoted by members of the Bollywood film industry in their off-screen lives. For example, Shah Rukh Khan has embarked upon a personal crusade against Islamic fundamentalism, speaking of the true Islam of Allah and the false Islam of the Mullahs (Dalmia 2011, 62). Likewise A.R. Rahman uses Sufi prayer to attain a sense of relaxation and containment, promoting the message that religion is about personal spiritual elevation, not fighting (62). The ability of these films and actors to have a tangible influence on Muslim society is demonstrated by the fact that Bollywood film stars are publicly idolised in Pakistan and many Pakistani weddings are now Bollywood-themed, imitating the clothes and setting of a wedding in a film (60). It is hard to image that people could idolise Bollywood’s actors and emulate its cultural form without being influenced by its message (60).

The Bollywood film industry, with its far-reaching influence on popular culture, has a great potentiality to facilitate social change in India (Kumar 2008, xv). In contrast to the lack of Muslims in India’s mainstream political and public institutions, Muslims are very well represented in all aspects of the film industry (Dalmia 2011, 61). Even though Muslims are at times represented in Bollywood films as the “other”, many storylines describe the suffering caused to Muslims in India and have patriotic Muslim protagonists. This alerts audiences to the fact that religious discrimination is a real problem in Indian society which needs to be addressed and challenges the belief that Muslims are an imposition on Hindu India (Saari 2009, 61; Sardar 2006, 30). The exaltation of benevolent patriotic Muslims in the industry also encourages Muslim youth to pursue non-violent forms of Islam in preference to that which is being promoted by certain Mullahs (Dalmia 2011, 58, 61). Nevertheless, despite the Bollywood film industry promoting the coexistence of different faiths in India, religious violence continues to claim many lives in large metropolises (Sen and Wagner 2009, 306). Unfortunately, the benefit of Bollywood’s message is weakened by the fact that other forms of the Indian media, at times with the support of the government, vilify India’s non-Hindu population and blame them for the nation’s troubles. A similar message has been promoted through the Hindutva ideology of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which maintains that India is a Hindu nation and should be governed by Hindus (Sardar 2006, 30). Literary and cultural productions can facilitate political and intellectual efforts to promote peace, but they rarely singlehandedly change a nation (Kumar 2008, xv; Dalmia 2011, 58-59). The Bollywood film industry has a powerful message of peaceful coexistence for Hindus and Muslims, but this needs the support of politics and other forms of media in order to realise a radical change in Indian society.

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