A new essay in Organiser argues that Hindi cinema has become what it calls the nation’s “unelected historian,” answerable to the box office rather than to cultural memory. The occasion is the release of “Mangal Rang,” a song from the forthcoming Ramayana: Part 1, which some listeners heard in the cadence of a qawwali even though it has not formally been labelled one. The disquiet, the essay says, is older than a single track.
From custodian to scriptwriter
For centuries, the essay observes, Bharat’s memory was carried by kathavachaks, grandmothers and Ramlila troupes. In the last hundred years, the cinema screen joined them—and in many homes quietly displaced them. Dadasaheb Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra (1913) and Lanka Dahan (1917) drew on the epics with reverence. But the essay traces a long shift toward licence: Mughal-e-Azam (1960) gave Akbar’s queen the name Jodha Bai, a name historians cannot verify, and by Jodhaa Akbar (2008) the invention had hardened into presumed fact. The pattern repeats with Padmaavat, retitled under certification pressure, and Adipurush, whose dialogues were revised after public protest.
A borrowed script for living custom
The sharper claim is about imitation. Indian weddings once differed by region—Gaye Holud, Kashi Yatra, Juroon—but many families now follow a choreographed sangeet-and-mehendi template drawn from film. A living practice becomes a performance, and the performance is what the next generation remembers. Even qawwali, the essay argues, has been flattened into a clapping, dance-floor filmi formula. The essay is careful on one point: the objection is fidelity, not faith. Baiju Bawra’s “Man Tarpat Hari Darshan Ko Aaj” (1952), sung by Mohammed Rafi and composed by Naushad in Raag Malkauns, endures because its makers surrendered to the tradition they served.
The ₹400-crore counter-proof
The essay’s decisive answer to the assumption that authenticity does not sell is commercial. Doordarshan’s Ramayan drew 7.7 crore viewers on a single day during the 2020 lockdown. Munjya (2024), built on Konkan folklore, earned more than four times its ₹30 crore budget. Most striking, the Kannada film Kantara (2022), rooted in the Bhuta Kola worship of Tulu Nadu, grossed over ₹400 crore worldwide. It travelled precisely because it refused to dilute its roots.
Research before production
The essay stops short of calling for bans or censorship. Its remedy is process:
- Engage historians, folk practitioners and communities at the outset, not under protest.
- Treat regional forms as living practice with ritual grammar, not as costume or showpiece.
- Let local conviction shape the project; Kantara and Munjya show it can travel.
For our readers, the piece is most useful as a framework: cultural criticism of Hindi cinema lands hardest when it names specific failures and specific counter-examples. The risk is overstatement—Bollywood is no one’s only memory keeper—but the evidence it assembles is hard to dismiss.
Source: Organiser
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