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Junaid Kathju

The release of the Hindi film Chhaava has inflamed communal tensions in India, triggering violent protests and renewing debate about Bollywood’s use of controversial and often inaccurate historical narratives to appeal to the country’s dominant religious group.
The film depicts the life of Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, a Maratha king who fought against Mughal emperor Aurangzeb before he was killed. Historians have criticised the film for misrepresenting key figures and events from the Maratha-Mughal era.
On Monday, violence broke out in Maharashtra’s Nagpur region where members of far-right groups Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal turned up to demand the demolition of the grave of Aurangzeb, whom they accused of persecuting Hindus and attacking temples during his reign from 1658 to 1707.
Maharashtra’s Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, a senior member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said on Tuesday that Chhaava might have contributed to inflaming Hindu sentiments.
His statement has reinforced concerns among film experts who argued that Indian cinema was increasingly aligning with the Hindu nationalist ideology of Hindutva.
Ira Bhaskar, a professor of cinema studies at the School of Arts & Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, said Bollywood had departed from its traditionally secular approach to filmmaking since 2014 when the BJP first formed the government.
“It is clear that films like Chhaava are leading to inflamed emotions,” she said, highlighting a scene in which Aurangzeb was shown torturing Sambhaji Maharaj.

“This kind of whipping up of the emotions makes it clear that there is a deliberate attempt to feed an anti-Muslim and Indian victimhood narrative that has been in place ever since 2014,” Bhaskar said.
Observers said Padmaavat, The Kashmir Files, and The Kerala Story were examples of other films released in recent years that had distorted history and stirred religious sentiments among Hindus by portraying Muslims as villains.
Bhaskar said such films reflected the views of the BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a far-right Hindu nationalist organisation allied to the ruling party.
“Now the question is, why should these emotions be inflamed? Surely, the directors and actors also have a responsibility towards larger polity. But these filmmakers are deliberately falling in line and getting kudos from the ruling party,” she added.
“Some of these films were even endorsed by Prime Minister [Narendra Modi] himself,” Bhaskar said, referring to The Kashmir Files, which portrays the plight of Kashmiri Hindus who have to flee from the divided region due to the activities of pro-Pakistan militants.
Referring to Aurangzeb, Bhaskar said the Mughal emperor was the latest historical figure to be “under the attack” of filmmakers.
Author Ram Puniyani lamented the decline in standards of Indian films in tandem with the rise of Hindu nationalist politics from the 1990s.
“This is a very retrograde moment for Indian cinema that such propaganda films with no aesthetic value are being promoted,” Puniyani said.

The BJP government had spent the past decade reshaping historical narratives in a way that deepened communal divisions, and the task of presenting rational and scientific information had become very challenging, he added.
“I think it will be a long battle to confront them on a political level. We have enough objective narrations, but they are being downplayed, and the historians and narrators are being demonised as leftists or antinational,” he said.
India is the world’s largest producer of films, with revenue from the industry growing to US$2.3 billion in 2023, according to Statista, a data intelligence platform.
Commercial considerations
Aditi Sharma, a documentary filmmaker, said Indian films were often made to mirror the predominant social, cultural and political trends in the country to appeal to the mass audience.
“If the prevailing sentiment revolves around the Ram Temple, Bollywood churns out films and shows centred on the Ramayana. If the discourse vilifies Muslim invaders as the root of India’s historical and present problems, the industry readily capitalises on it,” said Sharma, founder of the India Doc Project, a documentary-making platform.
Similarly, directors appeared to have latched to the formula of the “angry young man” and “macho hero” formula to achieve box office success, with villain themes ranging from corrupt officials and businessmen to India’s arch-rival Pakistan.

“The hero’s template remains unchanged, but the villain has been systematically redefined, now depicted as a Muslim man. This caters to what is believed to be the majority’s expectations,” Sharma said.
Sanjay Kumar, a political analyst, said the patriotic and Hindu nationalistic themes in Indian films had proven to be a successful formula for box-office success.
Among them, The Kashmir Files and Padmaavat have earned US$39 million and US$65 million, respectively, in global box office takings. But the runaway success is Chhaava, with its global revenue reaching US$86 million and is still rising.
Kumar, who had served as the director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, said many of these filmmakers were not “ideologically committed”.
He added: “Just like any other good businessmen, they are also thinking about what is going to sell in the market. And in the current moment that [Hindutava] is the dominant mood of the country, so they are picking up the pulse of the people and come up with a similar product.”


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The blockbuster Chhaava, which has led to violent protests, has sparked debate on whether Indian directors have forsaken historical accuracy


The blockbuster Chhaava, which has led to violent protests, has sparked debate on whether Indian directors have forsaken historical accuracy.


Are Indian films tapping Hindu nationalism to achieve box-office success?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The blockbuster Chhaava, which has led to violent protests, has sparked debate on whether Indian directors have forsaken historical accuracy

The blockbuster Chhaava, which has led to violent protests, has sparked debate on whether Indian directors have forsaken historical accuracy