Ektaa Kapoor has put a blunt accusation on the record: the Hindi film industry, she says, has a Hinduphobia problem, and it surfaces both in how it treats personal faith and in how it receives folklore-led storytelling.
Speaking on Ranveer Allahabadia’s podcast, the Balaji Telefilms chief argued that the industry is comfortable with animation but uneasy with Indian mythology and folklore. That gap, in her telling, is not about craft or scale; it is about cultural comfort.
The personal cost of a tika
Kapoor recalled being judged early in her career for wearing a tika and a dhaaga. Somebody asked her why she dressed like a freak, she said; the same surprise met her when she went to a club after visiting a mandir. The reaction, she argued, treats visible Hindu faith as a costume rather than a conviction.
“Wearing a tika and wearing your, your religion on your sleeve is such a problem,” she said.
Her broader point is that Bollywood borrows confidently from global fantasy but treats local myth as something that must be justified. The Vvaan, rooted in regional legend, becomes the immediate test of that reflex.
The film at the centre
The remarks arrive as The Vvaan continues its theatrical run after a September 25 release. Critics have panned the fantasy-adventure, but the film is edging towards the hundred-crore club.
Key details from the conversation and the film’s run:
- The film: The Vvaan, directed by Deepak Kumar Mishra
- Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Tamannaah Bhatia, Anup Soni, Sunil Grover, Shweta Tiwari and Maniesh Paul
- Source material: folklore around the Maa Van Devi Temple near Bihta in Patna district, Bihar
- Box office: edging towards the hundred-crore club
- Critical response: panned by critics
Kapoor has also pushed back on the criticism that the film resembles television. She called that register foundational to Indian entertainment, a framing that turns the snark about serials into a statement about what Hindi storytelling has always been.
Why the framing matters
For an industry that has repeatedly drawn on religious imagery, Kapoor’s charge is less about whether faith appears on screen than about the tone surrounding it. A tika or a dhaaga, in her account, is read as provincial, while serialised storytelling is treated as a limitation instead of a format.
The box-office test gives the argument a commercial edge. If a folklore-led film crosses the hundred-crore mark without critical approval, it becomes a reference point for producers weighing whether regional legend can be scaled as theatrical intellectual property. Audiences have already been voting; the hundred-crore line would make that vote difficult to dismiss.
For now, the claim and the film are travelling together: a cultural provocation from one of the industry’s most influential producers, made just as her own production tests the audience she is asking Bollywood to stop underestimating.
Source: Outlook India
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