Sticking to script? When films meet polls

DURING a visit to Jammu on February 20, and ahead of another to Kashmir, which would mark his first to the Valley since the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi remarked: “I do not know what the film is all about, but yesterday I heard on TV that a film is coming on Article 370. Good, it will be useful for people to get the correct information.”

The PM was referring to Article 370, the Yami Gautam-starrer, which was released just days after Modi returned from Jammu.

In 2019, also an election year, Modi had made a reference to another Bollywood film, about another incident involving Kashmir, while addressing the inaugural event of the National Museum of Indian Cinema in Mumbai. “How’s the josh?” he asked the crowd, including many Bollywood personalities, borrowing a dialogue from the blockbuster Uri, which was based on the “surgical strikes” by the Indian government on Pakistan soil following an attack on an Army base.

Gautam stars in both the films while Dhar, who directed Uri in 2019, has produced Article 370.

Besides Uri, 2019 had seen Mission Mangal, which was based on the life of ISRO scientists behind India’s Mars Orbiter Mission; and The Accidental Prime Minister, centred on the tenure of Manmohan Singh.

Five years apart, Bollywood again appears to be in sync with the government on its political messaging ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

Bastar: A Naxal Story will hit the theatres on March 15. The film’s trailer talks of the Naxalist movement leaving 15,000 citizens and 74 security personnel dead. It adds that their killing had been “celebrated” by students at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Actress Adah Sharma, who plays an IPS officer, says in the trailer: “In Bastar (Chhattisgarh),