An increasingly polarized world is questioning canonized ideas of liberalism and democracy, in an environment of hate, demagogy and economic crunch. As the world comes face to face with extremist regimes in powerful countries such as the US, India and Brazil, ideology emerges as a major point of contention. Contemporary debate in India is centered on aspects of discrimination and othering of a whole community of Muslims, owing to a right-wing government discourse which has attempted to construct a nationalistic, puritan and predominantly “hindu” identity. What occurs in India post-BJP is a complex case of discrimination against Muslims, based on the narrative developed in western nations post 9/11. Amid calls for nationalistic rejuvenation along the lines of a puritan “Hindu” nation, Muslims stand as the artificially invented “other”, linked to a distorted understanding of the past, and a mediatized refashioning of the present. This refashioning depicts the Muslims as unpatriotic, economically advanced and primarily different from the mainstream.
Construction of a new narrative in the post-truth milieu demands a particular set of tools, one that is heavily achieved through media narratives, particularly through dominant institutions such as Bollywood. The biggest film industry in the world, Bollywood enjoys a vast fan following, and massive appeal to audiences inside India, and among Indian diaspora scattered across the world. A surge in historical epics (Padmavat, Tanhaji, Manikarnika) and nationalistically driven (Uri, Josh) films is a noteworthy trend in Indian cinema today mirroring the country’s overall debate over carving out a puritan “Hindu” identity. This paper delves into the space given to Muslims and Islam in these films in order to understand the narrative around this minority community. It is under this backdrop that this paper seeks to delve into the subjects chosen by film producers in Indian cinema, to understands the changing narrativization around Muslims in their projection. As its central question, the paper seeks to ask, what role does Bollywood’s nationalistic trend play in the changing narrative around Muslims and Islam in India? It furthers seeks to investigate whether these films have propagated the othering of the Muslim community in India, along religious and patriotic grounds. This is done through a discourse analysis of selected Bollywood films released in the duration of 2017-2020, using the theoretical concept of Gramsci (1971), in his typology of “hegemony”.
Bollywood has been chosen as a unit of analysis for its wide-ranging appeal to South Asian audiences and more recently, its increasing clout in other parts of the non-Western world. Wide-ranging studies have explored its importance as a medium for non-western discourse.
Expected results from the analysis hope to inform the complex narrative under which Muslims are relegated to negative, anti-national and overall deviant forms of portrayals. They are caught in a spiral of neo-orientalism that informs the state’s Hindutva ideology. The Bollywood business complex is a commercial entity that panders to the dominant mood in the country, resulting in a regressive impact on a society that is greatly influenced by its narrativization and character-building.