Well, this term has become very common nowadays and almost every netizen must be well aware of this. Whenever a new Bollywood movie is released, the first ever hashtag that trends on Twitter is about boycotting it. Now, this is not the case with all the movies, but selectively for some, majorly including a particular cast (i.e. particularly because of any actor/actress/director/producer or any crew related to the movie), or because of its plot, now that can include, the story, the visuals, the dialogues or anything. Now, the big question arises, after watching the performance of Bollywood movies in the past few months, can we conclude that is it the end of the Bollywood era?

Looking at the data, in the last year, amongst the top 3 grossing movies in India, only 3 movies are from Bollywood, that include Tanhaji, Sooryavanshi and 83. Looking at the trends, in 2019, Bollywood accounted for 44% of revenue in Box office while in 2021 the share has dropped up to just 27%. Kollywood as well as Tollywood movies seem to gain more popularity in India on the other hand. Their share in the revenue as well as in the table of the top-grossing movie has seen quite a rapid growth. Well, this can be easily proved by the very fact of the massive success of movies released recently such as KGF 2, Pushpa etc.
The 3 major reasons that explain the downfall of Bollywood include:

1. Connections with the underworld (Mafia)

Not digging very deep into it, but in the past several actresses have been allegedly seen having relationships with mafias and gangsters. The Gulshan Kumar murder was also quite in news. Not only romantic relationships but, apart from that, we have seen several big superstars also claiming that the mafia's money has been used in producing movies. The mafias found the business model of Bollywood movies quite lucrative which is also one of the reasons why they have been quite involved in this business. Since Sanjay Dutt was arrested for hiding an AK 47 rifle as well as a 9mm Pistol of Shakeel Bhai (Mafia), Bollywood started maintaining distance from them as the Police started to keep an extra eye on these stars for the same as well as on their source of earning and movie fundings. Later when in the year 2000, the movie Chori Chori Chupke Chupke was released, it was alleged that Chota Shakeel’s money has been used to make the movie. Only Preity Zinta confessed it in front of the court, and all the actors who accepted the fact while in police custody turned out in court and refused the same.

2. Rise in Nationalism

One can go through the research of professor Dheeraj Sharma published in Hindustan Times to get a better idea about why a “rise in the feeling of nationalism” is necessary for the Indian audience as well as how Bollywood has been framing a false image of India until now in the mind of the audience. After reading the article, one thing is sure, you will surely start hating Bollywood even more, because of the cheap tactics it has been using till now and knowing about the type of propaganda Bollywood has been promoting for years.
Link for the article:  https://www.hindustantimes.com/editorials/stereotypicality-in- indian-cinema-is-not-a-healthy-trend/story-y6SG1xuOvBb0cZfWJpUg0H.html

3. Link with extremist terrorist organisations

Not only with the terrorists, but Bollywood actors have also been quite into the news for maintaining relations with Anti India Radical Islamist Organizations as well. Here, also we will not put a lot of names, but one can surely search about this on the net to gather more information and facts on the same. Big actors like Sonam Kapoor, and Anil Kapoor becomes a part of this list also.

Some past instances when some movies and actors faced backlashes over their movies:

1. Deepika Padukone for Padmaavat as well as Chhapaak

In her movie, Padmaavat, Rani Padmaavati played by Deepika has been depicted wrongly. Padmaavat is believed to be the biggest ever controversial movie in the history of Bollywood. The major reason for the same was that at the start of the movie, it was claimed that there has been a scene where the Rajputana princess Padmaavati has been shown in a slightly intimate scene with Alauddin Khilji. This was a major play with the facts as this is completely wrong and out of knowledge. There has been not a single text or evidence proving this. After this controversy, Sanjay Leela Bhansali said that there has been no such scenes in the movie, and several scenes were reshot after which the movie got a chance to be released on screens. Well, I guess this was not for Deepika. Again, Deepika Padukone faced the same backlash when she came out at the site of CAA protests when he reached JNU in support of protesting students. People called this off as a publicity stunt and as a consequence her movie, Chhapaak failed severely at the box office as it was boycotted even though the movie was based on such a serious social issue.

2. Nepotism - Alia bhatt for Sadak 2

After the mysterious death of Sushant Singh Rajput, people have started taking the issue of nepotism in Bollywood quite seriously. Well, this is a good thing as now, the real, raw and actual talent doesn’t have to suffer and they get a proper stage in the industry to showcase their talent. One such backlash was faced by Alia Bhatt’s movie “Sadak 2”, whose trailer also become the most hated video ever on YouTube with 13M dislikes!

3. Fawad Khan for Ae Dil Hai Mushkil

This movie faced boycotts over one of the stars casts of the movie Fawad Khan. Soon before the release, we lost many of our brother soldiers on 28th September 2016 in the Uri attack by the neighbouring country. Soon after which demands were raised to remove Fawad khan from the movie. Well, the movie experienced no change and was released one month hence, which was the major reason why it flopped heavily at the Box office.

4. Ranbeer Kapoor for Shamshera

His recent movie, Brahmastra was quite successful at the box office but his previous release, Shamshera, a movie which was made on a 150 crores budget failed heavily at the box office. In this movie, hatred against Hindu Dharam has been shown which can be noted down quite clearly after watching the movie. Even though the movie had a huge star cast including actors such as Sanjay Dutt and Vaani Kapoor, this movie failed heavily at the box office. In the movie it is shown that the English men had no problem with Indians, rather the upper-caste Indians had a problem with the lower-caste ones. What a big joke!

5. Aamir Khan for Lal Singh Chadha

His recent movie, Lal Singh Chadha, also faced severe backlash and didn't perform as his recent movies used to, even though Aamir Khan released his movie after such a long time gap. To blame someone for this, Aamir khan is himself responsible for this. In an old interview, he has been seen talking about how his wife is scared about her child, and the atmosphere in India and has been also seen saying about how he wants to leave India. He also said that how he and his wife are afraid about residing in India. This is completely wrong as well as intolerable, as a nation which gave you all the respect and everything speaking such things at national level leave a very wrong impression. Apart from that, his movie “PK” was declared anti-Hindu because of some inappropriate scenes depicted in the movie. Well, these were the major reasons why before even watching the movie, people decided to boycott his movie. Aamir Khan also apologised for this, but let's see when people will start accepting him again back. One of the major reasons why Lal Singh Chadha flopped was because of Kareena Kapoor Khan's (The female lead in the movie) comment telling people that "if they want to watch the movie, they can and if they don't they don't have to", which served as oil in the fire.

6. Akshay Kumar for Rakhsha Bandhan

The Akshay Kumar starrer also faced similar backlashes, not because of him but because of their screenwriter Kanika Dhillon. Before entering into the field of screenwriting, she used Twitter to write about several sensitive issues such as “Hijab Ban”, “Gou Mutr”, "CAA" etc which were not only Hindu phobic rather also hurt Hindu sentiments. Her tweets were completely inappropriate as well as misleading. So as soon as people saw that Kanika is a screenwriter of a movie which is based on Hindu tradition, the audience decided to boycott the movie.

Here, I mentioned only a few instances of the many ones, and there have been several more of them. Some other popular names in the list include Aadipurush for their poor VFX as well as for wrongly depicting Hindu Mythological characters’ appearances, Liger for Vijay Deverakonda's criticism of boycott trends, Brahmastra for Ranbir Kapoor's gastronomy comments and about how he spoke that he loves to eat “Beef”. Now coming to my view/opinion: Indian audiences should not boycott any actor/actress by his/her religion but rather by the propaganda they are driving or promoting. The Indian audience has now become woke and taking a strong stand against such content which is leaving a deeply negative impact on our audience. This is a good thing as of now, as this leaves a message for all the producers as well as directors about the type of content they have to create. Earlier, they used to believe that Indian audiences will consume anything that they will show in the name of the big star cast they have, but now the entire scenario is reversed. The audience is supporting films with content that is worth watching rather than because of the cast. The audience should support any film that positively depicts India, and not entertain the audience of any other nation.
Now, that doesn’t mean playing with the facts, but rather depicting facts clearly and not inclining the movie towards a particular ideology. Bollywood should stop brainwashing the minds of the audience with false facts and information. I guess the audience has made this quite clear in front of the entire Bollywood industry.

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