The entertainment industry in India has been on a burn since the past few months. Matters came to a head this week when a Twitter war of words broke out between two stalwarts of Indian cinema – Kannada star, Kiccha Sudeep and Bollywood star, Ajay Devgn. It was a debate over ‘Hindi’ and its status, or otherwise, of being the National language of the country.
Though the two stars kept it light and polite between them, and ended the matter on a peaceful note, it was the fringe players that actually got Twitter smack in a raging storm of hateful tweets.
It all started with the stunning pan-India rampage of three films from the South — two Telugu and one Kannada. Yes, we’re talking about Pushpa, RRR and KGF Chapter 2. Both Bollywood and Kollywood felt the pinch of these films’ success. Both felt left out from the box office race. It wasn’t like they didn’t have their share of successes. The Tamil film industry had Beast, while Bollywood had Gangubai Kathiawadi to boast of.
Yet, the success of the three South films have opened up battle lines like never before. Bollywood and its stars have received verbal bashing like never before. The Hindi film industry is being labelled a spent force, and Hindi a highly overrated language. South film fans leave no opportunity to ridicule the Hindi film industry. Name-calling is rampant, with Bollywood being insulted with names like ‘Bullywood’, ‘Nepo-wood’, ‘Remakewood’ and what not.
Slowly but steadily, one notices a certain arrogance creeping into the tone and words of South film fans. The blockbuster success of KGF 2 has come as the final nail in the coffin of Bollywood, and a very obvious conceit in their social media interactions with Bollywood fans. Bollywood has become the favourite whipping boy of everyone – from film fans to film industry trackers to influencers and journalists, and lastly, even for some of its own fraternity members. Anyone and everyone takes pot-shots at Bollywood; and gets away with it – to the beats of cheers and claps!
Stung by the constant taunts and insults, the Hindi belt has started to fight back. Every debate on Twitter has started to turn into a full-blown battle between Hindi speakers and South film fans. This past week has been the pits. From arguments over the supremacy of the varied film industries of India, the chatter has now turned into a battle over languages. Any and every one with a social media account is weighing in with their two bits. Both sides are are indulging in disgusting debates over the superiority or inferiority of languages. Politicians from both sides of the spectrum are adding fuel to fire by ‘othering’ particular Indian languages to suit their political agenda.
All of this makes us wonder – has the success of pan-India films like Pushpa, RRR and KGF 2 widened the North-South divide instead of bringing the two sides together? The current situation certainly looks to be so.
What do you think?
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