From boycott to blessings: Bollywood’s Kumbh cleansing
This article first appeared in Maktoob Media on 10/03/2025.
In a bid to paper over the deaths at Maha Kumbh and of those who lost their lives en route to Prayagraj, as well as reports indicating with scientific finality that the Ganga at the Sangam wasn’t fit for bathing, the last fortnight saw a massive publicity endeavour for the event, with Bollywood in tow. This needs to be viewed in the context of what happened a couple of years back, when Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, on a visit to Mumbai to promote his state as a destination for filmmaking, met a delegation comprising Bollywood actors, directors and producers.
In a break from the scripted routine for such interactions, actor Sunil Shetty felt ballsy enough to address the elephant in the room that had been romping over the Hindi film industry’s fortunes since 2020. Speaking on the ‘Boycott Bollywood’ hashtag that was doing the rounds on social media, Shetty said, “99% of the people working in the industry are good people. We don’t do drugs all day. This hashtag needs to be removed. There can be a rotten apple in the basket, but all of us are not like that. Our stories and music connect India to the world. This stigma must be removed. Please convey this message to PM Narendra Modi as well.”
Shetty’s bravado stemmed from his political naivete. Adityanath and most Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politicians are adept at virtue signalling and playing to the gallery. Privately, they abhor criticism. Requesting a BJP politician to help end the ‘Boycott Bollywood’ trend is a bit like asking the artist to burn their art, no? Perhaps Shetty wasn’t aware that Adityanath has, in the past, likened Shah Rukh Khan to Hafiz Saeed when Khan had condemned the climate of intolerance in the country. If Shetty was actually aware of Adityanath’s history and still said what he said, I’m a fan!
Adityanath’s rejection of criticism veers towards being comical in its blatancy. After the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) found really high levels of faecal coliform bacteria in the Ganga, indicating the presence of untreated sewage and faecal bacteria, the UP CM publicly rejected the CPCB report, asserting that the river’s waters weren’t just fit for bathing but drinking too. He could have proven his point by visiting Kumbh again, this time doing aachman—the Hindu ritual of drinking a sip of water during puja or prayer—for the cameras. Many on social media challenged him to do the same. Adityanath, though, is nothing if not shrewd; his government did the next best thing – get Bollywood’s who’s who with their sudden-found Sanatan spirituality to touch down in Prayagraj for a holy dip. The list of invitees from Mumbai was also perfect; the tourists included Rajkummar Rao, the underdog who’s made it in a nepotistic world with wife, actor Patralekha; Akshay Kumar, Prime Minister Modi’s favourite journalist; and Vicky Kaushal, with bulging Hindu credo, having recently portrayed a lesser-known Maratha warrior who fought against Aurangzeb in the movie Chhaava, and his wife, actor Katrina Kaif who arrived with her mother-in-law. Someone who really needs a holy dip? Actor-couple Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor Khan, having been recently attacked in their home, apparently by a Bangladeshi infiltrator. Mr. and Mrs. Khan, though, I suspect, weren’t invited.
So, two years after Shetty requested Adityanath, the latter seems to be helping put an end to the Boycott Bollywood trend in his own way – get the uncultured elites reacquainted with their faith, publicly so; get them to make films that toe the line, if not play well within it; and, command from them a public display of obeisance to the state and its tallest leaders. This is not to say that the actors who visited Kumbh may have done so only out of compulsion. One’s faith need not be an adornment for public display. Actors need not have talked about their religiosity in the past to want to visit Kumbh in the future. Yet, contextualizing ‘Bollywood at Kumbh’ within the ongoing Sanskritisation, rather sanitisation (why defame Sanskrit!?) of Hindi films provides a clearer perspective. Biopics galore, of lesser-known Hindu warriors who fought against Muslim ‘invaders’. Parallelly, there’s a stream of mind-numbing romcoms set in the Hindi heartland that rehash common tropes and predictably bomb at the box office. Then there’s the more obvious politically charged cinema which seems bankrolled by the Hindu Right. The plots of these films are mere excuses for demonising Muslims under the garb of revealing hidden histories of Hindus’ persecution, which perhaps explains why most of these films are just really badly done, not just from a film critic’s standpoint; they end up being absolute duds at the ticket windows.
The silver lining here is that the ‘Boycott Bollywood’ trend has dissipated. As storytelling gets ‘boxed in’ by cultural sensitivities enforced by vigilantes, and actors compelled to put up fronts in public to hide their true selves, there’s very little that’s left to be boycotted. Visiting Kumbh when the administration is busy covering up its maladministration, and speaking highly of your VIP experience while commoners languish through subpar facilities, is nothing but a way of thanking the powers that be for reining in the ‘Boycott Bollywood’ brigade. It’s a quid pro quo that we’ll continue seeing in the time to come. The passage of time will make this phenomenon less muddy, more apparent. For now though, everyone in the public eye can take a public dip in the muddy waters of the Sangam to signal obeisance to the Hindu Right. There’s a good chance they’ll be benefactors of benevolence soon after.
Harshit Rakheja is a social and political affairs commentator. Read more of his work on Shilam.