BOLLYWOOOD ? AN UNRELATED COUSIN OF HOLLYWOOD ?

BOLLYWOOOD ? AN UNRELATED COUSIN OF HOLLYWOOD ?

The Mumbai film culture is a sham and a shame, a degenerate, make-believe, profit-spinning, lowly, capitalist representation of our national culture. And to call the Mumbai film industry 'Bollywood' is indicative of our lack of national identity -- in so far as it is concerned -- and our easy tendency to imitate the West. No wonder Swamiji has exhorted us to give up base imitation of the West and to affirm proudly that we are Indians in the truest sense of the term. But, alas ! we have failed him and proudly and with utter unconcern for his clarion call to that effect and with total disregard for the national ignominy that thus occur, continue to sell our national identity at every step of our living. Call you these westernised Indians proper Indians, who so quickly become infatuated with the frothy manners of the West while failing conveniently to absorb their noble social principles of mutual help, cooperation, coordination and respect for all? No, these ones who reside in the upper echelons of the Anglicised section of Indian urban society care not to be wholly Indian but must pretend to be universal beings in absorption of everything flimsy from the West while disregarding the latter's more serious commitment to national good and national culture. These ones are neither Indians nor Americans but are a curious hybrid of unassimilated elements of indigenous and alien culture, a new transitional species altogether that must die in the advancing tide of times when the nationally rooted will triumph in glorious self-affirmation. Arise India and usher in that day !

Written by Sugata Bose