Only In India

There’s a supposedly satirical list circulated on social networks by certain self-appointed custodians of our society. One message in the long list reads, “In India worst films make the most money.”

The list should be improvised with the following:

1. We measure a person’s success by the money they make, but run down movies that are blockbusters.
2. In India, 0.001% of the people—the elite—decide what movies should rest of the people like. They decide what’s good and what’s “worst”.
3. In India bashing mainstream film makes one an intellectual, but criticising the ruling political party makes one anti-national.
4. Hardworking labourers and farmers have a low social status, while couch potatoes who watch Anurag Kashyap’s movies and AIB’s videos are among the most respectable people in the country.
5. People are not judged by their skills and actions, but by their caste and taste in cinema. 
6. You have absolute freedom of speech as long as you agree to the views of AIB or the ruling elite. 
7. A “bad” movie becomes an object of national outrage but a heinous honour killing doesn’t.

Film connoisseurship is taken too seriously in India since the advent of film cults. If highbrow cinema were that important, shouldn’t USA be the most loved country in the world? Eighty-nine percent of Pakistanis have a poor opinion of America. The numbers have only increased after Osama Bin Laden’s assassination. Iran makes highbrow movies. If watching movies were a measure of success, shouldn’t Iran be one of the most prosperous countries in the world? Iran has terrible human rights record; there’s no freedom of speech; women are forced to cover their heads in public; dissident intellectuals are jailed; a Canadian-Iranian women spent months in prison because she was “dabbling in feminism” etc. Whereas, Canadian cinema barely creates any ripples in the universe, yet Canada is a great country that looks at its bright future with its head held high.