There’s More To Indian Cinema Than ‘Bollywood’!

In foreign countries, Indian cinema means ‘Bollywood’. But in India, the picture is explicitly different. After the Baahubali franchise, Pushpa, RRR, KGF, and a few other Pan-India films from the South have emerged as successful grossers, it sounds eccentric to hear the inaccurate definition of Indian cinema.

Most of the Bollywood films of late are also remakes of South flicks. Ergo, to say that Bollywood represents the Indian Film Industry is like saying Hindi is the National Language of India, which is actually not. A few foreign news portals mentioned RRR’s success as Indian cinema’s biggest action film ever, starring Bollywood A-list actors.

Hindi is a widely spoken language but we have 25 other official languages that are spoken in India. The connection here is, the film industry is divided by language and state and each state has its own taste and flavour of cinema. South films cannot take the essence of partying and socially-accepted comedies like Bollywood. Similarly, the thought-provoking and realistic story-telling in South films are a novelty in the North.

And no movies are so commercially well written and executed like Telugu Cinemas. With the consistent reference of Bollywood being called the whole of Indian Film Industry has gone beyond annoyance. The Indian film industry is very huge and not one language nor a state’s cinema can represent the varied intelligence, the wide flavours and taste of our entire country.

So why not come up with a brand new word to call all film industries in India as one?! After several foreign websites mentioned RRR as a Bollywood film just because it is an Indian film, netizens schooled the editors for calling the term incorrectly. Bollywood is the sobriquet for the Hindi language film industry and the term is often incorrectly used as a synecdoche to refer to the whole of Indian cinema.

However, it is only a part of the large Indian film industry, which includes other production centres producing films in many languages. In conclusion, the foreign portals need to fathom that Bollywood is a subset and only refers to the Hindi film industry. We also have a lot of other regional industries and after how the southern film industries have stolen a march with their tried-and-tested formula for success, the term needs to be changed.