Controversial Religious Films From Bollywood

“The purpose of religion is to control us, not to criticize others”.
- Dalai Lama

Religion is a force or feeling that unites people and provides identification in a society or community. Religion had taken prominence in India in the period of the Indus Valley Civilization and since then it has occupied an important space in human life. Everything growing has to cross with the contrast of religion, then how can Bollywood escape from it. Bollywood has also faced several religions’ contrast to a great extent. For Bollywood, religion has more than often been an issue of negative publicity but a few movie makers have taken the responsibility of breaking the bounds of what can and cannot be shown on the silver screen. The journey was taken up with Raja Harishchandra (1913), the first silent and religious movie of Bollywood but without any contrast with faith. Gradually its seeds on Bollywood’s plot started to yield fruits, heading to the duality.

Subsequently, with the influence of a film titled ‘Train To Pakistan’ led to a massive controversy between Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims. The partition of India led to even more unrest between the different religions and brought Mano Majra to a chaos. Further, several movies between “2005-2015” have released with the same dichotomous contrast. The films faced negative backlash because they touched upon topics that are quite sensitive and emotional for the masses, such as religious and political beliefs and superstitions. Examples include ‘Dharm Sankat Mein’ (2015), ‘OMG: Oh My God’ (2012), ‘PK’ (2014), ‘ My Name Is Khan Click to look into! >> Read More... ’ (2010), ‘ Baby Click to look into! >> Read More... ’ (2015), ‘Dozakh: In Search Of Heaven’ (2015), etc.

Regarding “Dharm Sankat Mein”, the story of the movie was deemed very sensitive for the society and thus a Maulvi and a Pandit were added to the supervising committee of the certification of the movie so that they could get the extremely hurtful scenes removed. The whole line was made owing to the identity crisis of Protagonist ( Paresh Rawal The Padma Shri award winner who shot to fame with >> Read More... ) because he was born Muslim but brought up by a “Hindu Brahmin Family”. ‘My Name Is Khan’ starring Shah Rukh Khan Shah Rukh Khan or also known as SRK is a prominent >> Read More... with a spirit-touching dialogue- “My name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist” had to bear backlash from a political party in West India and they also wanted to ban the movie completely. Unexpectedly, after two years of the movie Shah Rukh Khan was caught in ‘extended questioning’ by New York Click to look into! >> Read More... airport security. Though the precise causes it had not been brought out, it was rumored to be racial profiling.

“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another”
- Jonathan Swift

Unlike India, Muslims were not free in America post the World Trade Centre fiasco. The perception of America towards Muslims- "Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims" is being justified in a doubtful manner in this film, so keeping this movie at the base, the political activist started to fight for their call. Many films like ‘Oh My God’ focused on the issue of making religion a business and a commodity in India where a huge number of Gods and Godesses are worshipped blindly. The direct claim on God-man left many people much distressed. Post one year the High Court of Madhya Pradesh got the Censor Board to reprimand the negative feedback made about Hinduism in the film due to a petition that was filed against the movie for hurting religious sentiments.

Being in continuous controversy, Bollywood is still contrasting the sensitive issue of “religion”. India, a place where the population of God is more than the humans, where no one accepts the humiliation of their deity, in that nation Bollywood, the biggest film production industry intentionally always used to ridicule ‘the supreme power.’ The effects of this ridicule are always higher than they expect, that keep Bollywood always in the moot court of the ‘Judicial system of India.’