Historical Bollywood films parroting Nagpur project, says Swara Bhaskar
The Hindu
‘Time for art and artistes to challenge authoritarianism’
Actor Swara Bhaskar has said that historical films being made in Bollywood today are parroting the revisionist project of Nagpur (headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh).
“You will realise that the script is parroting the revisionist project of Nagpur, where suddenly all medieval kings are awful villains. The Central government has realised the power of Bollywood and moved swiftly by giving patronage to a certain kind of filmmakers and artistes,” she said while delivering the 6 th edition of the Dr. T.K. Ramachandran memorial lecture on ‘The Artist as Citizen: How I set fire to my Bollywood career and other musings’ organised by Friends of T.K. collective at TDM Hall here on Thursday.
Maintaining that fascist rule anywhere in the world would understand the power of art and will try to control it, Ms. Bhaskar said art and artistes must engage against authoritarianism. “If we don’t, the fascist State will make us engage according to their logic and their motivation. We may not even realise that we are serving their narrative,” she said.
On repeated comments on social media that politics is not her job, Ms. Bhaskar said it was also not her choice. “It is my compulsion. I did not choose it. It chose me and chose all of us. In new India, a new kind of politics is deciding what we eat, what we wear, what films we watch, who we date, whom we marry. We better wake up. They want all of us to be bound to our chosen paid job and not engage with or open our mouth or say anything about anything else,” she said.
Writer N.S. Madhavan spoke about Dr. T.K. Ramachandran, who was a public intellectual, speaker, author, teacher, and culture critic.
Around 440 MBBS graduates of 2021 are not required to undergo one year of compulsory rural service as per the bond signed by them while joining the medical course through government-quota seats in 2015 as the High Court of Karnataka has said the law, enacted in 2012 for mandatory rural service, remained unenforced for 10 years as it was published in the official gazette only in July 2022.