'A narrative is being built': Bollywood's battle for Indian hearts and minds.

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As India goes to the polls, debate rages as to whether its film industry supports Narendra Modi.

Bollywood stars pose with posters for PM Narendra Modi. The biopic was to debut during the election campaign but had its release date postponed after complaints. Photograph: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images
▼ Few politicians – let alone prominent world leaders – tend to run the gauntlet of quoting cheesy phrases from films when making a major speech, fearing derision and ridicule. But when Narendra Modibegan an address with a line from a Bollywood blockbuster, he struck gold.
“How’s thejosh?” the Indian prime minister asked in his speech at the National Museum of Indian Cinema in Mumbai in January. The audience clapped in delight, recognising the line (joshmeans passion or zeal) from last year’s hit film, Uri: The Surgical Strike. The film is a dramatised account of India’s 2016 military action in Pakistan-administered Kashmir following a militant attack on an army base. The film has been called patriotic by some and propaganda by others.
As Indians go to the polls, the past few weeks has seen a debate on whether Bollywood has become a partisan supporter of Modi and the government. It wasn’t just Uri, whose director, Aditya Dhar, said he was honouring the army rather than Modi. There’s also the group of Bollywood stars who flew on a private jet in January for a meeting with Modi, later posting selfies that attracted many followers and comments.

Narendra Modi meets a delegation from the Indian film industry in Delhi. Photograph: Twitter
Another story that fed into the debate concerned a Modi biopic, PM Narendra Modi.The trailer provoked criticism that the film was hagiography. It had been due for release on 5 April at the height of the campaign, but the Election Commission of India stalled its release after objections from the opposition  Congress party.
These events led to a flurry of comments from critics, with some alleging that Bollywoodis playing a leading role in helping Modi get a second term. Influential film critic Rajeev Masand told Reuters: “You can clearly say some of these films are propaganda films. There is no confusion on the agenda there.” Another critic Shubhra Gupta told Time: “It is all about working the optics and colonising the minds of the audience. A narrative is being built clearly, smartly and very insidiously.”
Writing in the Hindustan Times, columnist Smruti Koppikar said: “Bollywood’s participation in BJP’s [Bharatiya Janata party, which is led by Modi] propaganda has been extensive with actors, filmmakers and writers openly backing Modi, running down his political rivals, especially Congress president, Rahul Gandhi … and aligning their creative work with Modi’s agenda.”
In the past, Bollywood has largely stayed away from explicitly political films (▪ ▪ ▪)

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Seems different in light of different political affiliations