Covering Bollywood and the Hindi Cinema

Then purist abhor it, the populist love it. Yes I am talking about the term Bollywood which like the film industry has always been embroiled in controversies. Many of the respected actors hate the term ‘Bollywood’. In fact Amitabh Bachchan on record has said how much he detests this term which conveys second best to Hollywood. I do agree he has a valid point as Bollywood is its own entity and nothing like Hollywood (Apart from the odd movie we plagiarize here and there!).

But have you wondered how did the term Bollywood came to be? It was Amit Khanna a filmmaker, cinema scholar and the president of the Film & Television Guild who gave birth to this contentious term in the mid seventies. The story goes that he coined the term in one of his columns and the rest as they say was history. It caught on like wildfire which the purists are still trying to extinguish! Quite unsuccessfully I may add. This is what Amit Khanna said in an interview:

“People still have a problem with the word ‘Bollywood’. But the whole notion of what’s pejorative has changed. We’ve to see the Indian film industry as a brand. To say Bollywood is demeaning is to question a brand name like Coke or Macdonalds.”

So let me know what you guys feel about the term and do you think we should be renamed the Hindi Film Industry or Hi-Fi?

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