Dear Reader,After politics and religion, films are what unfailingly catch my fancy. I don’t have an exact order. Maybe it is the triguna (three qualities) of Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas (which, according to Hindu scriptures, exist in every human being), and they come to me one by one. Or perhaps the fascination with all three exists in me, with their proportions changing from time to time. Surely, I am yet to become trigunatit (having gone beyond the influence of the three qualities), so I’m stuck watching everything from mythologicals to malice, sometimes in the same week. In a nutshell, I am constantly pulled from one to the other.This week my attention was drawn to an immensely successful religious biopic, Hanuman Ansh, on the life of the mystic saint Neem Karoli Baba. The film’s earnings have already crossed Rs. 150 crore net at the box office in a little over a month since its release, a number that would make most star-studded releases envious. The film has nice songs, a story of spiritual sadhana, and a lot of miracle tales, but no bigotry or hate-mongering, which have become staples of many similar works in India recently.There is no controversy about the movie so far, though some disgruntled voices emerged when the film’s cast met Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath. I am not sure whether the meeting was to seek some tax-free SOP, or just a blessing that comes cheaper.The other film-related news was that the Punjab and Haryana High Court has quashed an FIR registered against the director, co-director, and producer of the movie Yaariyan 2. The complaint was that a song from the film on YouTube shows a clean-shaven artiste, Meezaan Jafri, wearing the Sri Sahib, since the Sri Sahib is one of the five Kakars (symbols) of the Sikh religion and, as per Sikh custom, a person is required to be Amritdhari or an initiated Sikh, to wear it. Jafri obviously is not an Amritdhari. The court, however, quashed the FIR, holding that the depiction could not be termed an insult to the Sikh religion.The incidents remind me of the frequent controversies nowadays over the use of religion in films to suit a political ideology, where gods of one religion are arrayed against the followers of another in some crude display of mindless triumphalism.Can we blame it on religion or religious movies? Not exactly. Hanuman Ansh was a reminder of that. Some might justify or criticise the scenes of miracles in the movie; no sign appeared promoting caste or communal disharmony. I particularly liked two scenes. In one, the young mendicant offers the fistful of food given to him to children from marginalised sections who are being discriminated against during a public feast. In the other, a Muslim police officer offers to have him eat at his residence, to which the Guru, Neem Karoli Baba, readily agrees. It is a story of compassion and not anger.In recent times, portrayals of temple prayers and Hindu rituals have been juxtaposed against another community’s aggressive military campaigns and distinct cultural markers, as in the 2018 movie Padmaavat, where the antagonist is Alauddin Khilji, or the 2020 movie Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior, where the protagonist invokes the Shiva Stotram before fighting the Mughal forces of Aurangzeb.One may argue that these are not essentially religious films but deal with different or biased versions of history. Still, pitting the rituals or slogans of different religions against each other has its own pitfalls for society.And in the process, religions get a bad name. I remember the emotional bond that the song “Jot se jot jagate chalo, prem ki ganga bahate chalo” (let us light one candle from another, let us spread the flow of love), from the 1964 movie Sant Gyaneshwar, sung by Mukesh and Lata Mangeshkar, had with people. Later, when the 1982 movie Sant Gyaneshwar, with Mahesh Kothare in the title role, was played on television, there was another song: “Prem ki boli bol tu, mukh se prem hi hai parmatma, kaun hai neecha, kaun hai uncha, sabme ek hi aatma” (speak the language of love, because God is nothing but love; who can be low and who can be high, when the same spirit dwells in all).Such movies have hardly created any public discord. Even when a new deity, Santoshi Maa, was added to the Hindu pantheon by Bollywood through the deeply devotional 1975 movie Jai Santoshi Maa, the movie posters were published in three languages—English, Hindi, and Urdu (this was well before the demand for a three-language formula), and advertisements ran in Urdu in at least three Delhi newspapers: Pratap, Milap, and Tej, all three Urdu papers owned by non-Muslims.Old-timers recall that when the movie was released at Paras, the largest cinema hall at Nehru Place in New Delhi, Hindu women performed aarti before the screen when the famous song “Main To Aarti Utaroon Re”, sung by Usha Mangeshkar, was played. The movie ran to full houses at Sooraj Cinema in Najafgarh, an area with a mixed population, and again during a rerun at West End Cinema in Muslim-dominated Old Delhi. There was not a speck of communal disturbance. It was also a commercial triumph, made on a shoestring budget that returned many times its cost.Similarly, the posters and advertisements for Dara Singh’s 1979 film Bhakti Mein Shakti appeared in Urdu newspapers as well. This movie ran for 75 weeks in a Delhi cinema hall, including a successful run in Shahdara, an area with a large Muslim population. Imperial at Paharganj and many cinema halls in the Walled City screened movies like Vishnu Puran, Har Har Mahadev, Char Dham Baar Baar, and Ganga Sagar Ek Baar.Why don’t filmmakers realise that it is not necessary to take up themes that deepen communal divides, give impetus to bigotry, and create social disharmony in order to make a movie succeed? Box-office success can be achieved even without these, even when the film in question is about a religion or a religious practice. Is it because some movies now come with a political agenda, or because the agenda has taken over the centre stage entirely? So even when you add a serious official word like “Files” as a suffix, the movie is still steeped in hate-mongering.But there have been silver linings. The critically acclaimed Pankaj Kapur-starrer Dharm (2007) had a protagonist who is a conservative priest who keeps his distance from Muslims but ends up raising a Muslim orphan. The emotional reunion between the priest and the child, after the child leaves him, is one of the film’s most moving moments.The 1961 movie Dharmputra dealt with post-Partition tension sensitively through the portrayal of a Hindu nationalist with strong anti-Muslim views who later discovers he was Muslim by birth. There was also a similar but more intense theme of a cross-cultural marriage caught in the crossfire of communal tension in the 1998 movie Zakhm, directed by Mahesh Bhatt, in which Pooja Bhatt played the mother of a character played by Ajay Devgn.We have read news of an FIR being filed against actors in the 2025 movie Jaat over a scene perceived as disrespectful to Jesus Christ, and of right wing groups demanding a ban on the movie Thank God (2022) for showing deities like Chitragupta and Yamraj in modern costumes. Aamir Khan’s son Junaid Khan’s debut in Maharaj (2024), on OTT, was criticised by Vishva Hindu Parishad leader Sadhvi Prachi, who felt it disrespected Sanatan Dharma. Adipurush (2023), starring Prabhas, a retelling of the Ramayana, faced criticism and court cases over its character design, storyline, and dialogue.It is a fact that art will inevitably cross some conventional boundaries, but have we become too touchy now, or are filmmakers finding it easy to rake up a row and rake in money by doing so? Many argue that cinema has always been part of the politics of its day, but have we seen this scale of hate-mongering in the past? Would it be good if politics kept away from cinema? Or am I becoming too idealistic in asking for art for art’s sake?I won’t deny that art and commerce make their adjustments, since the film industry needs to survive and money is needed. But is it not possible to make money without glorifying mindless murder and stereotyping a community as villains?I remember the benign, soft-spoken Rahim Chacha of Sholay. Will our next generation have any such memories to fall back on, or will their memories of cinema be reduced to box-office receipts and FIR numbers?Do write in before the next newsletter.Anand MishraPolitical Editor, FrontlineCONTRIBUTE YOUR COMMENTS