Dia Mirza. File photo: X/@deespeak
Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation recently took down a video featuring actor Dia Mirza urging residents not to burst crackers on Diwali after BJP leaders objected to Mirza’s choice for the campaign, branding her as someone against ‘Hindutva’. For decades, Hindi cinema has celebrated its composite cultural identity, with artistes from different religious communities collaborating, creating and entertaining across boundaries. Is that celebrated inclusivity being tested today?
When actor Dia Mirza agreed to appear in a Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) video this month, appealing to Mumbaikars to avoid bursting firecrackers during Diwali, it should have been an unremarkable act of civic responsibility. An environmental message, delivered by a familiar face, encouraging people to celebrate responsibly. Instead, it became a controversy about religion, identity and who was entitled to participate in a Hindu festival.
The BMC had roped in several celebrities for its pollution-awareness campaign, following a suggestion from the Bombay High Court. But Mumbai BJP president Ameet Satam objected to Mirza’s inclusion. Mumbai Mayor Ritu Tawde subsequently accused the actor of taking an anti-Hindu and anti-Hindutva position. The civic body eventually removed her video from its social media platforms.
On November 3, 2026, the Bombay High Court expressed its displeasure at the decision and directed the BMC to restore the video. “Are we not a secular country?” the Bench of Justices Girish Kulkarni and Neela Gokhale asked, observing that Mirza had delivered a perfectly reasonable message about environmental and noise pollution. The environment, they reminded the authorities, should not be given any other colour. Mumbai survived on “togetherness and strong feeling of belongingness”. One observation went to the heart of the controversy: “No person should be isolated from a festival being celebrated in the country.”
The episode was revealing because an ordinary environmental appeal had been transformed into a test of religious and political allegiance. It raised an uncomfortable question: who gets to participate in India’s shared cultural life without having their motives questioned?
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For Bollywood, an industry that has long drawn pride from its composite cultural identity, the question is particularly uncomfortable.
“The current socio-religious climate is forcing us all to reconsider what belonging means in an environment where religious identity is increasingly read into professional choices, public statements and even the characters actors portray,” says sociocultural historian and commentator Mukund Kule. He points to an increasingly narrow definition of social acceptability. “It is as if unless you are acceptably ‘upper caste and upper class Hindu’, it is enough for anyone in Bollywood to make fair game of you.”
It is a considerable distance from the cultural imagination that once defined Hindi cinema.
For much of its history, the film industry has been among India’s most visible expressions of cultural intermingling. Its stars, writers, lyricists, composers and filmmakers came from different religious communities, creating a shared emotional vocabulary that audiences across boundaries could call their own. Consider the iconic devotional song Man Tarpat Hari Darshan Ko Aaj from the film Baiju Bawra (1952); the lyrics were written by Shakeel Badayuni, composed by Naushad and sung by Mohammed Rafi, all three Muslims.
As film historian Rachel Dwyer observes in the book Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema, “The Indian film industry itself has always had a mixture of communities, from different regions and religions, whether as directors, writers and stars.” She illustrates this through BR Chopra’s Naya Daur (1957), starring Dilip Kumar and Vyjayanthimala. Its largely Muslim writing team included Akhtar ul-Imam and Akhtar Mirza; its lyricist was Sahir Ludhianvi; its music directors were Hindus OP Nayyar and Hemant Kumar; and its singers included Mohammed Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar. The film was a collaboration across religious boundaries made visible and enduring.
“This was part of the industry’s cultural imagination,” says Rockstar (2011) writer Muazzam Baig. “The Urdu-inflected language of Hindi cinema, its music, poetry and storytelling were shaped by a remarkable exchange of influences. The creative partnerships that produced some of its most enduring work rarely required people to establish their religious credentials before collaborating.”
The devotional song Man Tarpat Hari Darshan Ko Aaj from the film Baiju Bawra (1952) was written by Shakeel Badayuni, composed by Naushad and sung by Mohammed Rafi, all three Muslims. Photo: Wikipedia
In recent years, some of Bollywood’s most prominent Muslim personalities have faced hostility for expressing opinions on public affairs, questioning government policies or speaking against the targeting of minorities. The familiar call to “move to Pakistan” has become a recurring feature of the abuse directed at them, Baig points out.
Few have responded as forcefully as Naseeruddin Shah.
At an interaction with select media persons on the sidelines of the release of his new play 27 Seconds (the play premiered earlier this month), adapted from Salman Rushdie’s memoir Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder, Shah was asked what it meant to be a minority Muslim in contemporary India.
“I’m determined not to feel scared…This is the country where my forefathers are buried, and any… who tells me to get out of here has a fight on his hands.” He was equally emphatic about his right to love his country while criticising it whenever he believed it needed criticism. “Every citizen should have that right.”
There is something deeply unsettling about an internationally acclaimed actor, whose career spans decades, feeling compelled to assert his right to belong. Shah’s words reflect the frustration of someone who refuses to accept that his citizenship and patriotism should depend on political conformity. “My concerns extend beyond the abuse directed at me personally,” he says, pointing to the normalisation of hostility towards minorities and the growing difficulty of expressing dissent without being accused of being anti-national. “The BJP is hell-bent on taking revenge against everyone who doesn’t agree with its ideology a 100 per cent. All such people are being targeted by weaponising communal otherisation by the brainwashed.”
Lyricist and screenwriter Javed Akhtar has encountered similar hostility. A self-described atheist who has spent more than six decades in the film industry, he has repeatedly challenged attempts to define patriotism through religious identity. At the launch of Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut’s book, Narkatala Swarg (Unlikely Paradise) in May 2025, he spoke about the abuse he receives from people who call him a kaafir (non-believer) or a jihadi and tell him to go to Pakistan. His response was characteristically caustic: “If the choice was between Pakistan and hell, I’d rather go to hell.”
Yet Akhtar’s reflections on Bollywood’s secularism are more complicated than a straightforward defence of its record. He argues that Muslim characters have often been confined to a romanticised world of nawabs, poets and courtesans, while the burden of demonstrating secularism falls disproportionately on Hindu protagonists. Hindi cinema, he suggests, was comfortable displaying religious tolerance as long as communities remained within their familiar cultural worlds. The real test came when they interacted, particularly in matters of love and marriage. Films such as Achhut Kanya (1936), Sujata (1959), Julie (1975), Bombay (1995) and Veer-Zaara (2004) offer different ways of examining these boundaries.
At the same time, Akhtar has been an emphatic defender of the industry’s professional culture. Responding to objections to Aamir Khan playing Krishna in a proposed Mahabharata adaptation, he had described the film industry as “the citadel of secularism”, saying that in his 53 years in it he had neither experienced nor witnessed communal bias. Earlier this year, he disagreed with composer AR Rahman’s suggestion that a shift in power within the industry might have a communal dimension, arguing that Bollywood had historically been religion-agnostic and professional decisions were driven by talent.
The apparent contradiction is worth examining. An industry can be integrated in its employment practices and creative collaborations while its films reproduce stereotypes and unequal assumptions about religious identity. Its secular credentials cannot be assessed merely by counting who gets hired. They must also be measured by the stories it chooses to tell and the relationships it allows its characters to inhabit.
Akhtar’s partner, five-time National Award-winning actor Shabana Azmi, has similarly spoken about the hostility directed at both of them. She told this writer that they have found themselves on the wrong side of both Hindu and Muslim extremists. “Since both sides can’t tolerate us equally, we must be doing something right,” she laughs. For Azmi, the real divide is between liberals and the intolerant rather than Hindus and Muslims. “The truth of India is her composite culture, and that’s what we have celebrated all our lives,” she says.
The anxieties are not confined to public statements and social media abuse. They may also be entering the creative process.
One revealing indication came from filmmaker and casting director Honey Trehan, who spoke in January this year about his involvement in a film project based on a real-life Muslim personality. He claimed he had received an extraordinary instruction: “I was very clearly told, ‘Cast a Muslim superstar if you want, but the character he plays has to be Hindu’.”
The project was eventually abandoned. Trehan also expressed concern about the industry’s changing willingness to put minority characters at the centre of big-budget narratives. “You can’t make Udta Punjab (2016) or Haider (2014) or even a Mulk (2018) in today’s times,” he said, suggesting that political polarisation had altered the atmosphere in which filmmakers operate.
The distinction is important. It is one thing for Muslim actors to continue getting work. It is quite another for them to enjoy the freedom to portray characters whose religious identities are integral to the stories being told.
“If a real-life Muslim hero has to be converted into a Hindu character to make a film commercially acceptable, what exactly is being accommodated?” asks Kule. “The actor’s presence, perhaps, but not the identity or history that gives the story its meaning.”
Trehan’s claim, alongside experiences shared by others in the fraternity, suggests that apprehensions about religious identity are not necessarily isolated. Characters are altered, scripts diluted and projects abandoned because of anxieties about their reception. The pressures need not come as explicit instructions. A producer anticipates a boycott, a distributor worries about controversy, or a streaming platform becomes reluctant to commission a politically sensitive project. The result can be the same: stories that are never told.
Shabana Azmi compares the reception of her 2026 release Batwara 1947, in which Sunny Deol played a Muslim character, with Amitabh Bachchan’s earlier acceptance in Muslim roles such as the one in Coolie (1983). Photo: Wikipedia
Filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee knows something about the consequences of such apprehensions. His Tees (which looks at themes like censorship, displacement and authoritarianism), originally titled Freedom, has remained in limbo after Netflix shelved its release following the Tandav controversy (Saif Ali Khan’s 2021 Amazon series was alleged to be offensive to some communities). His observations about self-censorship capture how fear can operate without anyone having to issue a formal ban. “Suddenly everyone wants to crawl when simply asked to bend,” he has said.
Shabana Azmi raises a related concern about changing audience expectations. Referring to the reception of her 2026 release Batwara 1947, in which Sunny Deol played a Muslim character, she compares it with Amitabh Bachchan’s earlier acceptance in Muslim roles such as the one in Coolie (1983). “If you compare it with the earlier acceptance of Amitabh Bachchan playing Muslim characters in films like Coolie, one can only question whether the contemporary environment had altered audience expectations,” she says. “You can’t accept Sunny Deol as a Muslim character, but it is acceptable to see the number 786 [a religiously and culturally significant number in Islam] used in Deewaar (1975). Suddenly such familiar cinematic conventions now attract a different response.”
These observations raise uncomfortable questions. Is religious identity increasingly influencing casting decisions? Are audiences becoming more particular about who can portray whom? And are filmmakers responding by making safer creative choices?
There is, however, another side to this story. Nawazuddin Siddiqui offers a strikingly different assessment when asked whether there is discrimination between Hindus and Muslims in the film industry.
“Not at all. In fact, the rest of society should learn from Bollywood.” Asked whether he had personally experienced discrimination because of his Muslim identity, he says, “Never.”
His experience matters. It would be simplistic to assume that every Muslim professional experiences Bollywood in the same way, or that every production house and workplace is affected by the same tensions. But the experience of one successful actor cannot necessarily be extrapolated to the much larger workforce that makes the industry function.
“Being Muslim in Bollywood cannot remain confined to the familiar names who appear on posters, at film festivals and on television interviews,” says Kule. The more revealing stories, he argues, lie with assistant directors, screenwriters, editors, cinematographers, costume designers, make-up artists, sound engineers, production managers, casting assistants and technicians. Their professional lives depend on informal networks, personal recommendations and repeated collaborations. Unlike established stars, they may have little room to walk away from an uncomfortable situation or publicly challenge a colleague. Their next assignment could depend on a phone call being returned or a recommendation being made.
“Not only are Muslim professionals finding it more difficult to get hired, but they are being asked to demonstrate a degree of political or cultural conformity not expected earlier,” claims Kule. Jokes, casual remarks and conversations about religion, he adds, have acquired a different edge. Muslim professionals are becoming more guarded about expressing their opinions. He recalls how Muslims increasingly avoid discussing communal incidents, even in professional settings, creating “a culture of silence developed around subjects that might make colleagues uncomfortable”.
There is also a class dimension. A superstar can refuse a role or speak publicly without necessarily jeopardising a livelihood. A junior professional may not have that luxury.
“An SRK or Aamir may have the freedom to refuse a role or speak publicly. But an upcoming professional like me may not have the luxury of risking a working relationship,” says a popular character actor, who has built a reputation for turning the nice-guy image into an art of delicious mischief. “If this is happening to me after so many ads and films, imagine how vulnerable to informal exclusion the Muslim production assistant dependent on daily employment may feel.”
The ability to withstand prejudice is not distributed equally. Stardom offers protection; financial security offers choices. Someone waiting for a break may have neither. For a production assistant or junior technician, exclusion need not arrive through a dramatic confrontation. It could mean not being called for the next project, being left out of an informal professional circle, or simply becoming less visible when opportunities are distributed.
There is no single Bollywood experience. Siddiqui’s account of an industry that could teach the rest of society about communal harmony sits alongside Baig’s description of guarded conversations and Trehan’s account of a project abandoned over the religious identity of its protagonist. Shah’s defiance coexists with Akhtar’s faith in the industry’s professional secularism. Azmi’s conviction in India’s composite culture is tempered by her questions about changing audience sensibilities.
These experiences need not cancel one another out. Together, they reveal an industry negotiating the difference between its professional culture, public image and the wider political climate in which it operates.
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Cinema helps shape how a society imagines itself. It determines whose stories are worth telling, whose pain is recognised, whose love is considered legitimate and whose presence is taken for granted. An industry that allowed Mohammed Rafi to sing for Hindu heroes and Sahir Ludhianvi to write poetry that became part of the country’s collective memory should not become timid about the very cultural exchanges that made it distinctive. As Kule puts it, “The most telling measure of Bollywood’s secularism may not be whether a Muslim superstar continues to headline a blockbuster, or whether an established actor can afford to tell an online troll to go to hell. It may lie in the prospects of the young Muslim writer pitching a story, the assistant director hoping for a promotion, the technician waiting for the next call and the filmmaker who wonders whether a character can retain the religious identity of the real person on whom the story is based.”
And perhaps that brings us back to the controversy over a simple Diwali pollution-awareness video. The question was never merely whether one actor should appear in a civic campaign. It was whether participation in shared public life could be made conditional on someone else’s approval.
Mumbai’s togetherness, as the Bombay High Court reminded the civic authorities, is not a favour extended by one community to another. It is a collective inheritance.
Bollywood, at its best, has understood this instinctively. “Its music, dialogue, poetry and performances have crossed boundaries that politics has repeatedly tried to erect. The industry now faces a test of whether it can continue to practise what it once so effortlessly celebrated,” says Baig. “For the people who make its films, the question is no longer simply whether there is a place for them in Bollywood. It is whether they can occupy that place without having to explain, defend or conceal who they are.”
