Producer Ekta Kapoor has defined Hindi television and film for decades, but in a podcast conversation with Ranveer Allahbadia she said there is still one part of her identity that draws judgment: her faith. The word she used for the pattern she sees in the entertainment industry is “Hinduphobia.”
Her argument is not about a single project. It is about a reflex. Kapoor asked why Western traditions and cultural references pass with little comment in creative spaces, while Hindu customs and Indian folklore are treated as something that must be explained or defended. That gap, she said, becomes most visible when a film or series reaches for mythology.
Faith, folklore and the double standard
For Kapoor, the difference is sharp:
- Western traditions are absorbed into entertainment with little resistance.
- Hindu customs, she says, are treated as sectarian, superstitious or non-serious.
- Indian folklore is treated as harder to package than animation.
That framing matters because it shapes what gets pitched, what gets greenlit and how a story is marketed.
The cost of visible faith
Kapoor also recalled being called a freak and mocked when she was younger for wearing a tika and dhaaga. The markers that she now wears as a rooted public image were, in her account, a reason for people to judge her in social and professional spaces.
She remembered one episode in particular: she went to a club straight from a mandir. The immediate surprise was summed up in the question “Did you go to a mandir?” Her answer was yes, and her reply was “What’s so shocking?”
For Kapoor, that reaction reveals a wider assumption: devotion and a modern social life are expected to live in separate boxes, and the first is considered slightly embarrassing when carried into the second.
A film that tests the reflex
The conversation arrives as she is promoting The Vvaan, a mythological thriller with Sidharth Malhotra and Tamannaah Bhatia. The film mixes fantasy and the supernatural, set against a forbidden forest, and takes inspiration from folklore connected to the Maa Van Devi Temple near Bihta in Bihar’s Patna district.
Kapoor said the film’s numbers are strong, but for her the more important test is whether a story built on Indian folklore can be received without apology. She added that acceptance is growing now, even if the reflex she is naming has not fully disappeared.
That distinction is the real argument for Hindi cinema. The industry has long drawn from epics and folk tales, but often through safe frames such as period dramas, devotional films or children’s adaptations. A leading producer carrying folklore into mainstream fantasy, and naming the resistance around it, turns a personal grievance into a current business conversation.
The comments carry weight because Kapoor is not an outside critic. She has produced across television and film for decades, and she is describing a pattern from inside creative and commercial spaces. When a figure with that record says visible Hindu identity is treated as a liability, the claim is harder to dismiss as a personal complaint.
Source: Mid-day
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