Why did Bollywood decide to ignore the plight of Palestinians?

On the evening of May 6, Met Gala’s most controversial edition in recent history was rolled out at the Upper West Side neighbourhood of New York City.

As celebrities gave final touch to their jewelleries and outfits precariously made of sand clocks and thousands of crystals, which needed small teams to lug them around, and public relations teams uploaded Instagram-able dressing room vibes, a pro-Palestine demonstration was taking place outside the event venue against the silence of the participants over what’s happening in Gaza.

Met Gala is an annual fundraising event that raises money for the Costume Institute of Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met). This year’s charity event was named “Sleeping Beauties, Reawakening Fashion”!

The pro-Palestinian protest did not disrupt the sartorial event that had big names from the world of fashion and entertainment in attendance. They included Zendaya, Alexander Skarsgård, Janelle Monáe, Vera Wang, Jude Law, Raye, Sarah Pidgeon, and Bollywood’s Alia Bhatt amongst others.

Unlike the symbolic pro-Palestinian fashion statements at Cannes red carpet that followed a few days later, the Met Gala evening was devoid of any political statements.

At the Cannes, Cate Blanchett’s dress made much noise. The actress who was attending the high profile film festival for the world premiere of her film ‘The Apprentice’ (based on former US President Donald Trump's early life) wore a black gown from Jean Paul Gaultier’s collection that had a white back and a green lining. The black gown revealed olive-green lining as Blanchett raised its train more than once while walking on the red carpet. The ensemble on the bright red carpet resembled Palestinian flag. At the same event, Dutch-American model Bella Hadid was spotted in a dress made out of red and white keffiyeh fabric.

So did the Met Gala, go in vain – yes and no.

The evening that displayed deafening silence of the rich and famous when it comes to the issue of Gaza, also saw social media users coming together to call out the celebs who have decided to remain mum on the Israeli brutalities.

The protests dovetailed into one of the fastest spreading online campaigns called the Celebrity Block List or Blockout 2024.

The campaign set off after former American model-turned-influencer Haley Kalil uploaded a video chiming to a TikTok video that included “let them eat cake”, a notorious, historical remark made by queen Marie-Antoinette of France during the French revolution at a time when hundreds of French peasants starved and died. Kalil who later apologised, and deleted her video, has a fan following of 9.9 million.

Blockout 2024, sort of a digital guillotine, urges people to block their favourite celebrities across all social media networks if they have chosen to remain quiet over Israeli brutalities in Gaza.

Blocking means not seeing any content from celebrities, which in turn is expected to impact their revenue from paid partnerships and eventually lead to a fall fan following.

The block list named all the bigwigs who attended the Gala including Bollywood actress Alia Bhatt who also faced criticism for remaining silent. But that didn’t have any impact on Bhatt, who continued with her public appearances and attended a Gucci event a week later in London.

The silence of Bollywood

Bhatt’s silence is not an anomaly but a pattern in the Indian entertainment industry. Indian movie stars have mostly chosen to remain silent on what’s happening in Palestine, just like they didn’t say much against Russia's war in Ukraine.

Bollywood by and large has maintained this status quo. Neither have the industry collectively or individually spoken about the growing anti-secular and anti-liberal climate in India or other social injustices that have rocked the nation in recent times.

Of course there are rare exceptions to this passivity. Deepika Padukone visited the Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2020 when it was the epicentre of protests against Citizenship Amendment Act. The actor did not give any statement but just stood by the students and later left.

Bollywood legend Aamir Khan used his stardom to speak about social issues including water scarcity in rural Maharashtra.

However, given such atmosphere of indifference at large, there has been no outcry over the ongoing genocide that’s taking place against the Palestinians for six months now.

With exception of a few posts on X by actors such as Swara Bhaskar, Sonam Kapoor, and Kalki Koechlin during the initial days of this war, there has been no wider condemnation of the Israeli actions.

To understand the psyche behind this uncanny quiet of Bollywood it is important to deep dive into its recent history that can be pieced together through seemingly random and interspersed incidents. These form the bedrock for the timidity of conscience and the unbearable indifference, deterring the much-needed response on Gaza.

Two sides of the same picture

Hindi film industry popularly termed as Bollywood has been by far one of the most popular cultural products of India.

For many people, India is synonymous to Bollywood. However, with the consolidation of the far-right political power, there has been a noticeable shift in its popularity as a culture of negating and shaming Bollywood stars has emerged.

Perhaps it began as early as 2017 with an episode of popular talk show ‘Koffee with Karan’ when actor Kangana Ranaut (an election candidate for Hindu nationalist BJP party in 2024) accused filmmaker Karan Johar of nepotism.

The debate, now seven years old, gained momentum after actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s untimely demise. Around the same time a hashtag called #BoycottBollywood popped up on social media.

The users of the hashtag made sure that they trolled films which in their understanding were ‘anti-Hindu’, or had ‘love jihad’ as the central storyline or encouraged so called ‘nepotism’.

They did not spare any Bollywood actor on those perceived lines. Also a little ahead of the release of a film that involves a liberal, secular artist/star, there would be a consolidated effort to create a negative buzz.

Among a host of films that took the brunt of this torrent of negativity is ‘Lal Singh Chaddha’ (2022) starring Amir Khan who also produced the film, ‘Brahmastra’ (2022) starring Ranbir Kapoor, and even web series like ‘A Suitable Boy’.

In an effort to tarnish the image of the artists, old interviews were dug out of stars like Aamir Khan’s interview of 2015 where the actor had spoken about growing intolerance in India while ‘A Suitable Boy’ was in the line of fire scene in which a Hindu girl and a Muslim boy kissed.

Bollywood, meanwhile, responded in different ways. On the one hand a section of producers, directors and actors like Amitabh Bacchan, Akshay Kumar, Anupam Kher sided with the right-wing cultural narrative by overtly supporting anti-Muslim, anti-minority, and violent discourse.

This meant production of a barrage of jingoistic cinema that would highlight India’s forever ‘enemy Pakistan’ and sometimes China in a bad light or period films that tell how vile the Mughal Muslim rulers of India were.

Others avoided political discourse by remaining conspicuously absent while others like Priyanka Chopra subscribed to politics of duplicity - being a war hawk and an UN Goodwill Ambassador all at once.

There have been a few industry veterans like Nasiruddin Shah and Javed Akhtar who have continued to hold on to their liberal views and continued to raise concerns about growing intolerance and bigotry in the past decade.

The Palestine question

It is in the backdrop of this recent history that the apathy of Bollywood over the war in Gaza should be considered. Then there’s the larger picture of India-Israel relations, which have improved significantly in recent years as New Delhi became the largest arms importer from Tel Aviv.

Although India has a history of diplomatically supporting the Palestinian resistance, the coziness between prime ministers Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu has led to whitewashing Israel’s occupation.

In 2018, the Israeli government Netanyahu even tried to use Bollywood as a soft board to promote anti-Palestine art-washing. Israel lured Bollywood artists by offering favourable shoot locations and other filming benefits as part of film tourism. Plans were put in place to shoot films in Tel-Aviv and Old Jerusalem.

Within India, Bollywood firmed up its overt fascination with Hindutva rhetoric more than ever, in the form of period films like Padmavat (2018), Tanhaji (2020), and Samrat Prithviraj (2022).

Also filmmakers who were otherwise known for their creativity started weaving in the far-right narratives into their works without hesitation like in Raazi, Pathaan, RRR, Animal, or Dunki.

In many of these films, successful at the box office starring mega celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Ranbir Kapoor, and Ranveer Singh there were dollops of ‘othering’ Dalits, Muslims, and the indigenous people.

The industry continued to popularise everything that was wrong with India, moving away from its diverse and plural social structure. Given this scenario it was easier for Israel to gaslight the already Islamophobic and neo-nationalist discourse.

Hypothetically, let’s assume that not everyone in Bollywood has rebooted according to the majoritarian narrative. What’s going on with these people? Unfortunately, even they have remained silent because that’s what the market dictates.

Bollywood’s unresponsiveness to Gaza that grabbed eyeballs at the Met Gala is an extension of this behaviour. Actress Alia Bhatt choosing not to speak on Palestine until very recently is a reflection of this pattern.

In a late wake-up call nearly hundred Bollywood and Indian film celebrities including Bhatt, Kareena Kapoor, Rashika Mandana, Madhuri Dixit, Huma Qureshi and others took to their social media in last two days joining the worldwide slogan and hashtag #All Eyes On Rafah after Israeli air strikes killed dozens of Palestinians at a refugee camp in Rafah.

But why did it even take the Indian film industry six months and more than 35,000 dead Palestinians - many of them children - to respond to the gravest humanitarian disaster in recent history?

It might seem unimaginable in these times but for most of its hundred-year plus history, Bollywood has been a bulwark of India’s secular nationalism.

Its creative expressions upheld constitutionally approved pluralism, while responding to social inequalities or injustices.

Each decade has produced a range of cinema including the ones that openly spoke about problems India faced - unemployment (Footpath,1953), caste discrimination (Sujata,1959) poverty and workers’ rights (Deewar,1975) or films which depicted India’s progress (Naya Daur and Mother India 1957) and communal harmony (Dhool Ka Phool,1959, Amar, Akbar, Anthony 1977). These films are apt examples of how Bollywood had in the past stood on the right side of history.

Present-day Bollywood cannot afford to project itself as an ally of those voicing concerns over social or humanitarian issues not even if it’s witnessing a genocide.

Literally for Bollywood the stakes are far too high. With millions invested in big budget film projects, Bollywood celebs can’t act like Clooney or Ruffalo routinely or even as a pacifist Susan Sarandon.

The only hope that remains is perhaps a repeat of pro-Palestinian fashion statement like the sliced watermelon clutch held by Kani Kusruti, one of leading actors of “All We Imagine as Light” that won the Grand Prix at the recently concluded 77th Cannes Film Festival.

Will Bollywood learn?