In India, movie awards were never about cinematic brilliance. Instead, they showcased star power and right connections. Due to this, the National Film Awards were held in high esteem. Away from the razzmatazz and Bollywood-centric nature of discourse, the National Awards were seen as the most authentic barometer of filmmaking quality.
A National Award was a stamp signifying that an actor or movie is of the highest quality, regardless of how that movie or acting performance did at the box office. Actors were judged according to whether, and how many, National Awards they had collected in their careers.
All that is a thing of the past now. The National Awards have been turned by the Narendra Modi-government into a Sarkari version of the many commercial film awards that populate the Indian television.
The latest National Film Awards announcements drive home this point with great emphasis. Shahrukh Khan has been given the ‘Best Actor’ award for an ordinary, propaganda-driven movie called ‘Jawan’. His performance may not have been worst, but, in a large country like India with multiple regional film industries, was it the best acting performance this year?
Not surprisingly, this is Khan’s first National Film Award. His selection reeks of this current Prime Minister and BJP’s desperate attempts to earn the approval of a viciously anti-Hindu and, ironically, anti-BJP Bollywood.
The movie ‘Jawan’ featured a monologue from the lead actor where he tells the ordinary people of India to cast their votes not on the basis of religion but on more justified grounds. This was not a subtle way to say that voters should shun the BJP. But this Bollywood-obsessed central government would bend over backwards to please the Bollywood brigade.
But its not just ‘Jawan’ whose selection should raise eyebrows. Most of the most prominent awards have gone to Hindi movies. This is grave injustice to several regional industries like the Marathi industry which regularly churn out quality cinema.
The attempt here seems to be to gain as many eyeballs as possible for the National Awards. So, instead of rewarding high-quality but unheralded work from distant quarters of India, the organizers of the awards – the central government – wants to celebrate the same trash that inundates television screens.
After a long hiatus, Shahrukh Khan used his deep connections in Bollywood to give an impression that he has made a great comeback. Through hard-to-verify claims of success of his movies and media propaganda, he has got himself back into the spotlight.
All this would have been tolerable if it was limited to the opaque and incestuous world of Bollywood. However, the government also jumping on the bandwagon and playing to the gallery shows how badly the prestige of the National Film Awards have been diminished.