Battle of films begins as politically charged biopics aim to win election votes
INDIA’S general election may be eleven months away, but already the groundwork for the political battle is being laid on the silver screen with several Bollywood biopics of leading political adversaries currently in the works.
Whichever party is in power often ‘sponsors’ films that project it and its leaders favourably while denigrating its rivals ahead of elections.
By doing so they hope to influence a substantial number of over 900 million eligible voters in a country with the world’s largest movie-going audiences. In 2016, over 2.2 billion movie tickets were sold across India, second only to China’s 1.25 billion.
“These films will expose the truth about all these leaders and influence the voters,” a senior MP from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party MP, who declined to be named, told The Sunday Telegraph. The vote is set to be a battle between Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP and the projected coalition led by the Opposition Congress Party.
Three such films are due for release before the 2019 elections: ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’ depicting Congress Party’s Manmohan Singh’s chance elevation for a decade to the country’s top job in 2004; ‘Indira’ will portray Indira Gandhi’s 15 years as Indian premier; and an as-yet unnamed biopic on Mr Modi.
“These films will expose the truth about all these leaders and influence the voters,” said a senior BJP MP, who declined to be named. Meanwhile, the film on ‘Mr Singh’ is based on an unflattering 2014 biography of the Oxbridge educated PM by his press advisor Sanjay Baru and is slated for a December release. It stars veteran Bollywood star Anupam Kher, 63, portraying Mr Singh.
Mr Kher is well known for his sympathies towards the BJP’s hard line Hindu nationalist agenda and his wife is a BJP MP. The film on Gandhi is based on another critical biography “Indira: India’s Most Powerful Prime Minister” by journalist Sagarika Ghose.
Bollywood sources said it is widely expected to emphasise the assassinated Gandhi’s ‘dictatorial’ streak by portraying the 19-month long internal emergency she imposed in 1975 after being indicted for electoral malpractices.
During this period Gandhi suspended civil liberties, censored the press and forcibly sterilised tens of thousands of young men in an effort to slow the birth rate, acts that are frequently highlighted by the BJP to denigrate the Congress Party. Gandhi will be played by Bollywood star and BJPsympathiser Vidya Balan, 39, who acquired the book rights for the film earlier this year, claiming she had always wanted to play Indira Gandhi.
“Such films that are focused on political leaders are force multipliers for parties ahead of elections” said Ms Ghose.
These biopics reach a wider audience than books and tend to shape some voters thinking, she added. In the meantime, BJP MP and Bollywood veteran Paresh Rawal, 63, has been cast as Mr Modi in the nameless biopic on him that is believed to be a ‘cinematic hagiography’ of the Indian PM. It is said to highlight Mr Modi’s monumental rise from a railway station tea vendor in western Gujarat state to the provincial chief minister and then India’s PM in 2014.
“Only I can play Modi” Mr Rawal was recently quoted as saying. “I say that even at the cost of sounding pompous because I really love him... I understand what he says.”
Film critic Shubra Gupta, however, says films on political personalities are “tricky” and their fallout with regard to influencing voters “unpredictable”. “It all depends of how the subject is handled by the filmmaker and how sympathetically it is received by the audience” she said.
The link between Bollywood and politics is well established, with a host of Indian film stars standing for election. The best known was big-screen icon Amitabh Bachchan who became an MP in the mid-1980s, but resigned soon after. Currently the BJP has at least four actors as MPs, including Smriti Irani, the federal textiles minister.