Bollywood, or the Hindi film industry, is used to scripting and selling dramas, and not being the centre of a political one. This year began badly with COVID-19 shutting down the industry, then sections of news media portrayed it as a den of drugs and vice, and now it is caught in the middle of an overt political battle between the governments of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. The UP government wants Bollywood — at least its titans — to move to a new Film City being designed on the banks of the Yamuna. The Maharashtra government sees a conspiracy in this.
“We are creating something new. Why are you getting concerned,” posed UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to his Maharashtra counterpart Uddhav Thackeray while hobnobbing with business and Bollywood leaders in Mumbai on December 2. He appealed to the film fraternity to make UP, specifically the proposed 1,000-acre Film City in NOIDA, India’s entertainment hub. Thackeray’s party, Shiv Sena, dismissed that Mumbai’s film — or the larger entertainment — industry can be replicated elsewhere. However, the UP government shortlisted, on December 8, four firms for design, architecture, and construction of the Film City.
Aware of the political undertones, the Indian Motion Pictures Producers Association, the all-powerful body of filmmakers, wrote to Thackeray reaffirming its commitment to Mumbai. It described the city as “the heart and soul of the industry” and reassured him that its members “will never shift their base”.
Bollywood is an enormous, diverse and relatively secular applique of dream merchants and assorted supporting mini-industries such as music, software, graphics and design, books, periodicals, gaming, distribution, exhibition. Together, they comprise a vast army of professionals, mostly who migrated to Mumbai. The net worth of India’s film industry is Rs 183 billion (~$3 billion) in 2019-20, according to Statista and India Brand Equity Foundation; Bollywood accounted for nearly half of it. Clearly, Adityanath desires some of the multi-billion transactions in UP.
Mumbai, the quintessential city of dreams, carries within itself a long and glorious history of Indian cinema itself; Bollywood is only a limited version. Over decades, the city turned into a heady cocktail of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago rolled into one. Importantly, it offered an environment of relative security, freedom and easy money to film entrepreneurs to base the commerce of filmmaking; the studios were here, the star system flourished here, and later when it officially received the status of ‘industry’, the corporate offices took shape here after 2001. The advertising and news media are also located here. As Bollywood insiders say, they have an entire eco-system in Mumbai.
Bollywood, then, is hardly an industry that lends itself to relocation unlike industries with tangible assets and production units. The industry is essentially its people and ideas, coming from all directions and shaping stories that sell. The mix has helped shape Mumbai’s character as a melting pot; Bollywood reflects a mini-India. How can a people-driven and ideas-centric industry be uprooted from its environment and transplanted to another?
Even if it was possible, it is hard to imagine that pristine 1,000 acres specially developed stretch of land would motivate Bollywood to shift headquarters to UP. The state has high crime rates, instances of moral policing pour in nearly every day, caste and religious affiliations invite social exclusion or in some cases even death, and spatial mobility for women is severely limited or restricted.
The Marathi film industry in Mumbai-Pune receives a helping hand from the state government, but Bollywood does not; it doesn’t need one. That’s why it thrived irrespective of the government in Mumbai — an austere Morarji Desai, indifferent Prithviraj Chavan, over-enthusiastic Devendra Fadnavis, or whimsical Bal Thackeray. Its biggest dream merchants and stars picked their political affiliations with care but there were always some rebels. That’s the nature of the industry. The BJP now sees sections of Bollywood as too secular, not falling in line.
Bollywood and Shiv Sena have shared a love-hate relationship though the first full-length feature film, Raja Harishchandra, pre-dates the party by more than half a century. Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray was often an extra-constitutional censor. So, Shiv Sena cannot claim to speak for or protect Bollywood against ‘outsiders’. However, faced with an aggressive Adityanath, the Sena-led government is going out of its way to ensure Bollywood’s biggest are happy in Mumbai.
This, then, is not merely about Bollywood and its billions; politics is at the heart of it. The industry is caught in a proxy battle between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena. This battle becomes even more ominous against the buzz that the BJP plans to divest Mumbai of its pre-eminent position as the hub of business, commerce, and entertainment — to centralise power in and around Delhi and to get politically even with its old ally, Shiv Sena. This drama has far-reaching implications for Mumbai — and Bollywood.
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