Overview[]
The name Bollywood refers to the Hindi language movie industry of India, based in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay), as well as the music that is part and parcel of the Hindi filmmaking industry. The name is a portmanteau of the names "Hollywood" and "Bombay."
The industry temporarily collapsed in the 1980's amid the chaotic backdrop of post-Doomday India. However, with the establishment of the Union Interim Parliament reuniting northern India, and subsequently the vast majority of the Indian subcontinent, Bollywood began a resurgence.
Already a massive industry before Doomsday, Bollywood is now the world's largest movie industry in terms of the number of films produced per year and ticket sales.
Origins and Pre-Doomsday History[]
A poster for 1960's Mughal-e-Azam.
The earliest Indian short films were made in 1898. Dadasaheb Phalke's silent Raja Harishchandra (1913) was the first feature film made in India. By the 1930s, the industry was producing over 200 films per year. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Indian movies were largely escapist, but also featured themes that supported the Indian independence movement.
The Golden Age of Bollywood[]
A poster for Mother India, featuring the lead actress Nargis. The movie is often considered to be Bollywood's thematic equivalent to Gone With the Wind.
The period from India's 1947 independence through the early 60's has often been nicknamed the "Golden Age" of Hindi cinema, as the era produced many critically-acclaimed movies that were beloved by audiences, such as Mother India (1957), about the struggles of a mother trying to raise her sons in their poverty-stricken village, and Mughal-e-Azam (1960), a drama about a legendary story set during Mughal-era India.
This era saw the rise of many stars, such as Nargis (star of Mother India), Dilip Kumar, and Raj Kapoor of the famous Kapoor family, which had been involved in Bollywood almost since the beginning.
The Classic Bollywood era[]
Amitabh Bachchan, the "angry young man" of the Classic Bollywood era.
The 1970's was an exciting time for Bollywood, as a new generation of young stars rose to prominence, and kicked off an era of crowd-pleasing classics. While romance movies were still the core of Indian cinema, younger directors and actors began integrating a grittier style, and many movies featured a stark and frank look at bandits (called dacoits), as well as conditions in urban slums. The new movies often channeled an undertone of general dissatisfaction with conditions and the tensions that were present in 1970's India.
Aiding in the excitement surrounding 1970's Bollywood was the rise of several new actors and actresses who became superstars. More recent generations often remember the 70's and early 80's in Bollywood as a time of larger-than-life superstars. These actors included legends like Rishi Kapoor of the Kapoor movie dynasty, Jitendra, and Sharmila Tagore. Perhaps the most prominent among this new generation was Amitabh Bachchan, who often played the role of the "angry young man" who epitomized the dissatisfaction many young Indians were feeling at the time.
One of Bachchan's most groundbreaking roles was in the landmark 1975 movie Sholay ("embers" in English). The movie was India's take on the Clint Eastwood/Sergio Leone-style spaghetti westerns that were popular at the time. The movie took place along India's frontier, amidst a backdrop of rising crime. In the movie, Sanjeev Kumar plays a retired police officer who is also a local thakur (landowner) finds his family murdered by a deranged bandit named Gabbar Singh. The Thakur attempts to get revenge on Singh, whose bandits seize him and cut his arms off, but then let him go so that he can live in agony. The Thakur then hires two small-time thieves named Jai (played by Bachchan) and Veeru (played by Dharmendra) to capture Singh. The two have several humorous adventures and romances with the two female leads played by Hema Malini and Jaya Bhaduri, but also run into several tragedies. The movie mixes drama, comedy, tragedy, and action, all against an Indian version of a "Wild West" style backdrop, and went down in history as the highest-grossing movie in Bollywood history, still being played in movie theaters more than a decade later.
The 70's saw the rise of what would become Bollywood's signature style, the masala movie, which (like the example of Sholay) often blends various genres together, with musical numbers being consistent throughout.
Doomsday and Collapse[]
India was not targeted on Doomsday. However, the global effects of the nightmarish day would have horrifying effects on India nonetheless. When India lost communications with the outside world, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi initially tried to delay the truth from coming out, claiming that there was a problem with India's communications satellites, a ruse that most people saw through very quickly. PM Gandhi then attempted a news blackout, as she had during the Emergency of the mid-70's, Despite this, the truth quickly spread anyway and PM Gandhi faced a major public backlash once more.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed a news blackout soon after Doomsday in an attempt to quell public unrest. The move backfired massively.
As word of Doomsday spread throughout India, many Indian families were in agony as they realized their family members who had gone abroad to the UK, the USA, and Canada (and almost always to the major urban centers of those countries) had surely perished. The streets of India's cities echoed with the anguished cries of many elderly mothers who knew their beloved children would never return.
Global wind patterns meant that the fallout from Doomsday would also affect crop yields in every country on Earth, including India. The economic fallout was equally devastating. A calamitous decrease in food imports and fertilizers, paired with the bad growing season caused by Doomsday's climatic effects, resulted in a series of famines. Civil unrest, already at a high before Doomsday, escalated. Crackdowns occurred against the rioters, and rebels, who in the state of unrest held more support than they had had previously.
The Harmandir Sahib ("abode of God" in English), also known as the Golden Temple of Amritsar, as seen in a 21st century picture. It is considered the holiest site in Sikhism.
One of these crackdowns was against Sikh militants operating out of the Golden Temple in Amritsar. This was the last straw for PM Gandhi's Sikh bodyguards, who promptly assassinated her. The Sikh population in the northwest then rose up in rebellion. Seeing an opportunity while the Indian military was distracted, Maoist insurgents in the northeast also rose up. Tamil nationalists in the south followed suit. Soon, rebellions were erupting all over India and riots engulfed several major cities.
The movie studios in Bombay quickly shut down as a result of the chaos, and several movie stars and playback singers retreated to their private villas, protected by armed bodyguards.
The Bollywood Renaissance[]
A Tentative Restart[]
In the late 1990's, the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, and the surrounding areas were mostly stable, and executives in Mumbai (Bombay's new name) began to take tentative steps at restarting Bollywood. As northern India stabilized, and the rump government of the Republic had showed staying power in this part of the subcontinent, there was a general sense that the movie industry could safely resume, albeit slowly. There was also rising nationalism, as people noted a general sense of regret throughout the subcontinent over the collapse of the Republic of India.
A poster for Shah Rukh Khan's first movie role. In the foreground: SRK. In the background: veteran actor Rishi Kapoor (l) and actress Divya Bharti (r).
The movie industry started small, making a few here and there that became regional favorites, though most of the movies shown during this period consisted of dry propaganda films. One of the young new actors discovered during this era was an upstart named Shah Rukh Khan.
Khan quickly became a favorite with audiences in Mumbai and the surrounding region, and word of mouth gradually spread to other Hindi-speaking parts of India. Khan consistently appeared in new movies produced by the slowly-reviving movie industry, and his presence along with several other young actors such as Kajol Mukherjee, Saif Ali Khan, Aamir Khan, and others began attracting more and more people back into theaters, providing a fresh infusion of rupees to the industry.
A breakthrough moment came in 1998, when the movie execs at Dharma Productions (one of the few production companies that had opened since the 90's began) took a chance on a script called Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (English: Something Happens). The movie starred Shah Rukh Khan as a widowed father who rekindles a relationship with his former best friend from college, played by actress Kajol Mukherjee. The movie was a runaway success, and word of mouth quickly spread. Soon, movie theater companies across northern India began requesting copies of the movie to screen in their theaters. In an era when most movies were still rather dry films about the past, the new movie was seen as a return to the family-friendly entertaining style of the "Classic" era.
The album cover for the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai soundtrack, featuring actress Kajol Mukherjee and actor Shah Rukh Khan on the cover. Most songs featured the voices of playback singers Udit Narayan and Alka Yagnik. In Bollywood, the movie and music industries are almost entirely one and the same, and most mainstream movies are known as much for their soundtrack as for the movie itself. The KKHH soundtrack was a massive success.
The roaring success of the movie signaled to movie executives that the ground was fertile for Bollywood to fully reopen. KKHH's success prompted investors to put more money into the movie industry, which began producing a more ambitious number of movies, to which audiences heartily responded. Bollywood was back.
Government officials also took a close notice, realizing that the rebirth of Bollywood was coinciding with (and certainly helping to fuel) a widespread renewal of Indian patriotism. These government officials took steps (such as loan grants and shipping) to aid Bollywood studios in distributing their movies throughout the Indian subcontinent, in some cases even quietly encouraging movie piracy in areas where theaters were still closed, in order to spread excitement about the rebirth of Hindi cinema and fuel Indian patriotism.
Sure enough, by 2003, the time was ripe to act, and at a historic summit in Delhi, the leaders of the majority of Indian states agreed to reunite under the banner of the Union Interim Parliament.
Many years later, actor/producer Karan Johar would look back on this period and reflect on the role Bollywood had played in India's rebirth. Johar famously commented "Bollywood had come back...and it had brought India back with it."
Late 1990's-2009[]
The era that would come to be known as the Bollywood Renaissance was now in full swing. Many fresh faces entered the scene, most prominently Hrithik Roshan (son of director Rakesh Roshan), who burst onto the scene in 2000's blockbuster hit Kaho Naa...Pyaar Hai, winning several awards and the loyalty of India's movie-going audiences at the same time. Other new stars including actress Kareena Kapoor and her sister Karishma, actress and model Aishwarya Rai, actor Vivek Oberoi, action star Akshay Kumar, and many more.
Bollywood veteran Amitabh Bachchan, as seen in an early 21st century photo. Bachchan made a major comeback around the start of the century that has continued unabated ever since.
But it wasn't just fresh faces exciting the audiences. Many veterans from Bollywood's pre-Doomsday past returned to the big screen, most prominently Amitabh Bachchan, who made a major comeback during this period. Veteran playback singers such as the legendary Lata Mangeshkar (often nicknamed "the Nightingale of India") had also come out of retirement, exciting audiences of all ages.
Poster for K3G (the nickname Indians often affectionately give the movie). From left to right: Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol Mukherjee, Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan, Kareena Kapoor, and Hrithik Roshan. The movie centers around the tensions within a wealthy family when one son (played by Khan) falls in love with a woman from a poor family impoverished by the economic aftereffects of Doomsday, amidst the backdrop of an India still recovering from the wounds of post-Doomsday chaos.
One of the biggest blockbusters of this period was Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham..., which brought together the new generation's two biggest star actors, Shah Rukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan, as brothers, with Amitabh Bachchan and his wife Jaya as their parents, and Kareena Kapoor and Rani Mukherjee as the brothers' love interests (continuing a trend of pairing Khan and Mukherjee together on screen). The movie was a family drama with hit musical numbers and became a Bollywood classic.
Issues of Nepotism and Propaganda[]
This era saw the rise of many action movies. Actor Akshay Kumar often featured in the action movies of this era. Critics observed that Akshay Kumar's movies often tended to be rather blatant propaganda vehicles for the UIP's ruling party, and even seemingly apolitical movies would often turn out to have a didactic point to make towards the end of their stories.
Another noticeable trend was the perpetuation of Bollywood dynasties, with many of the children of Classic-era Bollywood stars getting hired rather quickly to starring roles, often to mixed results.
This trend of nepotism has continued to be a major point of contention in Bollywood into the modern era, with many fans grumbling that talented newcomers were starting to be crowded out in favor of less-compelling actors who happened to be the children of stars from the Classic Bollywood era. Rumors of non-dynasty actors being blacklisted have persisted till the present day.
Nevertheless, many of the stars from the Bollywood Renaissance era continued to be prominent in the ensuing decades, and several of the movies from this period are remembered as classics. And historians often note the intertwined relationship of the Bollywood Renaissance with the rise of the Union Interim Parliament.
2010-Present[]
By the end of the 2000's the stability brought by the UIP and the resultant reunification of a national audience allowed Bollywood to resume its massive pre-Doomsday slate of movies per year. By 2010 it had become the world's largest movie industry.
A picture of actor Ranbir Kapoor from 2015, during his promotion of his then-latest movie, Bombay Velvet. The movie mostly takes place in 1960's Bombay, but features an epilogue showing what happened to its fictional characters after Doomsday.
In the 2010's, the industry also welcomed the arrival of several new actors, such as Ranbir Kapoor (son of classic Bollywood legend Rishi Kapoor), Rajkummar Rao, Kartik Aaryan, the Khurrana brothers, Sushant Singh Rajput, and actresses like Katrina Kaif, Anushka Sharma, and Deepika Padukone.
On the Bollywood music scene, new playback singers included Arjit Singh, siblings Tony and Neha Kakkar, Guru Randhawa, Ankit Tiwari, and Honey Singh.
This decade also saw Bollywood begin to take more creative risks. The classic masala movie remained the heart of Hindi cinema, but writers found ways to add new dimensions to them. Movies began to explore darker, grittier themes, raunchier comedy styles, social issues facing modern India, and to allow more actresses to be the lead stars of their movies. The movie studios began to increasingly push the limits of the UIP's content censorship.
One example of this trend was 2018's Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety, a buddy comedy that featured somewhat edgier social themes, and a much more raunchy and provocative style of humor and content than what would have been possible in previous generations. The movie was a blockbuster hit among younger Indians.
Doomsday-themed movies[]
Actress Rani Mukerji in a promotional still from her role in Maa ka Pyaar, about a Calcutta woman whose son was in England on Doomsday and whose husband is killed in a subsequent food riot. The movie follows her struggle to survive in the chaos of post-Doomsday India.
This creative freedom has also resulted in a wave of topical movies centered around social issues, including dealing with the aftermath of Doomsday. One example was 2019's Maa ka Pyaar ("Mother's Love"), starring Rani Mukerji as a devoted mother living in Calcutta in 1983. Her son (played by Aparshakti Khurana) had recently moved to England to pursue his studies at King's College London. When Doomsday strikes, Mukerji's character is anguished, as she realizes her son must have perished. Things get worse for her when India collapses into civil war and chaos and her husband (played by Pankaj Tripathi) is killed by rioters. Distraught, Mukerji's character struggles to survive in the chaos of post-Doomsday India, undergoing much suffering in the process. The movie's themes have resulted in frequent comparison's to 1957's Mother India. In a shocking twist, the second half of the movie reveals that the protagonist's son had gone with friends to visit the England on the weekend of Doomsday, survived, and moved to South Africa with a British convoy in the mid-80's in an attempt to get home. During the final act of the movie, he returns to India by boat and begins frantically searching for his family upon arriving in Calcutta, finally reuniting with his now-aged mother in the early 1990's. The movie ends with a short text dedicating the film to all the families that suffered on or after Doomsday.
Legendary actress Sharmila Tagore (left) will reportedly feature in Shah Rukh Khan's upcoming epic about India in the immediate aftermath of Doomsday, playing the controversial role of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (right).
As of 2020, actor Shah Rukh Khan's production company Red Chillies Entertainment is said to be preparing an epic movie about post-Doomsday India, tackling the social turmoil that had faced the nation in the 1980's. Khan has stated that the company is working to ensure that all sides of these issues are handled tastefully, and in a way that encourages Indian unity rather than division. The movie will be directed by Dibakar Banerjee, and will feature an all-star cast, including Shah Rukh Khan himself, Amitabh Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, Anushka Sharma, Ranbir Kapoor, Kriti Sanon, Sushant Singh Rajput, and feature Sharmila Tagore in the controversial role of Indira Gandhi. Recent news on the movie's production has revealed that Red Chillies Entertainment has hired composer A.R. Rahman to compose the score, while Arjit Singh will perform most male vocals on the soundtrack. The most electrifying bit of recent production news, however, has been that classic Bollywood playback singer Lata Mangeshkar has agreed to temporarily come out of retirement to perform female vocals on the soundtrack.
There have been widespread rumors that the production of Khan's epic has had frequent visits from agents connected to the political world, leading some to speculate that the political establishment may be pressuring Red Chillies Entertainment not to lean too heavily on the politics of the early 1980's. Critics are beginning to complain that this averseness to tackling these issues may result in Sharmila Tagore's eagerly-awaited portrayal of PM Gandhi being reduced to a glorified cameo to lessen the chances of controversy.
Current connections to the political world[]
Observers have noted that the Indian central government has leveraged Bollywood's popularity to cultivate a form of "soft power" to help feed the popularity of Indian reunification movements in the remaining separatist states. Bollywood's popularity has helped foster a sense of "Indianness" among many, and Prime Minister Singh and others have been very keen to help promote it, despite the increasing movement of the studios to push against content censorship. Indeed, observers have noted that, for example, actor Akshay Kumar has intensified the propagandistic themes of his movies even more than previously, as India has risen to a stronger position post-reunification. Many of Kumar's movies have been said to promote a somewhat aggressive stance for Indian foreign policy.
Bollywood's status as one of the key establishments that led to the formation of the UIP in the first place has virtually guaranteed it official favor. However, as the rising generation of filmmakers increasingly chafes against the censorship and demand for propagandistic themes pushed by the Indian government, it looks like the next generation of Hindi film-making may be conflicted between the desire for a less deferential movie industry vs. the propaganda that is accompanying India's push to assert itself as a rising superpower in the new post-Doomsday world order