The Bollywood film industry has been financed to feed the ‘jingoistic agenda’ of the Modi-led BJP government ‘like Nazi-led Germany’ and the Muslims in the industry are forced to remain silent, said the Veteran India actor Naseeruddin Shah.
In an interview with a famous Indian channel, the Indian actor expressed his views about the pro-establishment content and said that the BJP government encouraged and financed the Bollywood film industry to make pro-establishment and propagandistic films.
Shah said, “They are being encouraged by the government to make pro-government films, to make films lauding the efforts of our beloved leader. They are also being financed, and also promised a clean chit if they make movies that are propaganda, to put it bluntly,”
The channel reported that he had no definite proof but the actor remarked that it was very clear and obvious from the kind of the “big-budget films that are coming” nowadays which “cannot disguise the jingoistic agenda”.
The actor said that most of the stars of the industries are silent because they fear being pointed out and harassed. He gave the example of the Khans saying, “They are worried because of the harassment they face. They have so much to lose. It’s a question of their entire establishments getting harassed.”
The veteran actor also spoke about the recent discrimination against the Muslims in the industry which was free from islamophobia in the past before the BJP government initiated their jingoistic approach towards nation-building. He said that Muslims are often penalized and punished for voicing their opinion.
In the past, the Bollywood film industry was free of Islamophobia and religious discrimination but now the industry is being encouraged by the government to make more pro-establishment films, he said. Shah gave the example of the Nazi government in Germany and how it too used film to spread its ideology.
In 2015, the actor received a heavy backlash from the fascist-minded Hindu supporters of BJP for praising a Pakistani book written by Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri merely because he was a Muslim. He was labeled as anti-Indian.
