THE Hindi film industry in Bombay has in the past contributed immensely in the growth of peace, solidarity and secular nationalism and progressive popular culture in India. The actors, directors, singers, artists, producers and writers of Bollywood have challenged power and stood behind people and their citizenship rights by upholding highest traditions of art and cinema.

However, the market-driven commercial culture motivated by profit has diminished such noble traditions within the India’s tinsel town. Commercialisation has dehumanised, distilled and alienated actors from the people and their issues.

The profit-driven advertisement industry helped this process to grow to sell dreams and alienate people from their everyday realities. The market and religious forces have used popular culture of art and cinema to promote and propagate their ahistorical and reactionary ideology to capture power in the name of culture, religion and nationalism. Such transformations have produced celebrities like newly inducted Padma Shri Kangana Ranaut.

Talking abou the far-right BJP election victory, Kangana Ranaut said that “as far as freedom in 2014 is concerned I specifically said physical freedom we may have but consciousness and conscience of India was set free in 2014 …  A dead civilisation came alive and fluttered its wings and now roaring and soaring high.”

She acts and speaks as the mouthpiece of Hindutva propaganda machine. But she is not alone within her ideological narratives. From Narendra Modi to most ministers, MLAs and MPs of Hindutva politics believe, share and promote Kangana Ranaut’s position. Her rants are very popular among the ruling dispensation today. Many Bollywood celebrities are adherents of Hindutva politics and openly admire Modi.

The cocktail of ignorance and arrogance of Bollywood celebrity status defines the views of Kangana Ranaut. Her abhorrent and ahistorical views on the Indian freedom struggle, Mahatma Gandhi, contemporary governance and different welfare policies are products intellectually bankrupt climate created by the Hindutva street politics.

Kangana Ranaut’s support for mass violence against minorities defy any form of human logic. However, Kangana Ranaut is not an individual aberration. She is a proud product of Hindutva factory of hate. She is victim of Hindutva propaganda and a culture of ignorance promoted by the Hindutva mass culture. Hindutva politics militarises the minds of people against science, reason, history and human civilisation.

The idea is to discredit the heroic history of the national freedom struggle in which Hindutva forces did not participate — in fact, Hindutva forces were allied with British colonialism in opposition to the Indian freedom struggle. They weakened the national struggle for freedom then and are weakening India and Indian constitutional democracy today.

Celebrities jumping on board with ahistorical and reactionary Hindutva politics need to understand that Hindutva is a dangerous trap for the future of art and cinema. The politics of hate diminishes the power of art and cinema, transforming them into mere tools of ruling-class propaganda of mass domestication where ideas of freedom and creative liberties are buried alive.

Celebrities as citizens are shareholders of Indian democracy and secular society in India. It is in the interests of celebrities, their art and cinema to reclaim the lost glories of film industry which had a history of questioning power in defence of people and their citizenship rights. We swim together as citizens or sink together as slaves in the ocean of Hindutva ignorance.

Dr Bhabani Shankar Nayak is a senior lecturer in business strategy at Coventry University.